you know what it comes down to is that You can make some of the people happy all the time, all of the people happy some of the time but you can't make all of the people happy all of the time. no matter what the c-store does someone is going to be ****ed it's an inevitable fact. If you like it great if you don't too bad.

I dont mind things for sell in the C-Store my only complaint is the price of the Galaxy-X. I think it is twice what it sould be. I will probably buy when I get to T5 ships. As a LTS I know that if we dont buy from the C-Store the game might die. As a LTS I see it this way I have payed for 2 year ($300) and if the game goes passed that I made a good buy, but if the game dies before that because people dont wath to put some more money into it we all loss.

Actually, by all accounts LOTRO is doing fine, no concerns of "ill health." But Turbine saw such a huge return on the hybrid model for DDO that they adapted it for LOTRO as well. Who wouldn't? It's not an exact duplicate, because they have different models, but looking at the financials reported for DDO after the switch, the change for LOTRO was a no-brainer, regardless of how well it was doing.

Bear in mind that the current subscription model still holds true for LOTRO. Lifetimers and monthly subs still get all the perks and benefits of subscriptions, including free content updates. The only thing that has changed for them is the addition of a monthly allotment of Turbine Store points. A perk, not a cost (although they can still spend money on more if they *choose*, as with the C-Store).

The f2p component is an add on for those who don't want to commit to a subscription. LOTRO is not switching over, it is adding options to expand it's playerbase further. F2p can act as an extended demo; that is, you can keep playing, but you only get so much content for free. You can either nickle-and-dime your way up through the rest of the content or switch to a subscription model to get full access.

And what about Klingon ships?

Won't happen, they hate Klingons.

They're still searching the ocean for them.

Riiiiight. You just put a halt to content development for a year and spend that time building an entirely new payment structure that actually pulls in money from lifetimers because everything is going swell. A payment structure modeled on how they recesitated a dead P2P game. I'm well aware, nay, intimately aware of how the model being presented on the LotRO F2P beta server works. I have concerns - it takes a lot of points to raid-spec a character under the new rules. While the incentive points will cover the permanent purchases for 1 character, if you have a whole stable, you could be spending quite a bit to fully upgrade several characters. And the real money cost of stocking the new regen potions for a single 10 minute boss fight comes to over $20 cash-ey money.

The need for those elements will depend entirely on how the content writters scale future content, but they didn't put those things in to NOT make money.

THEY may hate the Klingon ships but there are a lot of people who do not and want to see more of them in game.

And face it feds ... You would actually enjoy having more variety in your targets as it gets old shooting the same old ships day after day.

I admit that Galaxy X because catnip for Klingons when it first entered the game and PvP as it was something new to shoot at.

I'm not just a Fed, if the Klingon side were a little more Robust I'd focus more on my Klingon Toon.

That's why we are fighting for better equality for the Klingon faction .... especially when it comes to new elements in game.

Strengthening what Klingons have ... C-store and otherwise ... gives more people a desire to play the game overall which makes for a strong MMO in the long run.