Lord of the Rings Online coming to China later in the year

by Shawn Schuster Jun 29th 2009 at 10:00AM

Filed under: Fantasy, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO industry

Lord of the Rings Online is coming to China later in the year, thanks to CDC Games and their partnership with Turbine. CDC Games is one of the largest online gaming distributors in China, and is said to be a pioneer in the 'free-to-play, pay for merchandise' business model in that country.

Despite what are said to be significant changes in the game from the version now played in North America, Europe, Russia and South Korea, the Chinese closed beta has been going very well for CDC with an 80 percent activation rate. These 'significant changes' include an enhanced PvP function, which CDC believes will cater more towards the Chinese playerbase that they already know so well.

Considering CDC Games' work with F2P games, we're curious about other 'significant changes' including a new business model for China, although there has been no official word on this.

Tags: cdc, cdc-games, lord-of-the-rings-online, lotro, port, pvp, turbine

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

mko said on 10:24AM 6-29-2009

I hate regional pricing. I mean sure it's good for Chinese but what about me. I don't even live in Europe but can only play in EU servers for ping reasons.

Gotta hand it to them though. Unlike Blizzard COG does not charge people that are not in Eurozone or UK in Euros

Jess said on 11:08AM 6-29-2009

This is probably going to send LOTRO through the roof as far as subscribers go. It's doing fine now, but this will be a significant spike in in overall subs (not that we'll ever know due to Turbine's secrecy on the issue grrrr.)

RogueJedi86 said on 11:57AM 6-29-2009

I wonder what sort of pvp changes they are making and if they could make those same changes to the US/EU versions to snag more players. I'd love more PvMP/PvP changes.

Alz said on 1:45PM 6-29-2009

I have to know what that enhanced PvP is... My account expires on the 4th and I have no intention of ever renewing it, but if they were to actually take PvP somewhere outside of just adding a new zone... I may consider returning.

Hub said on 2:11PM 6-29-2009

I always quiet liked the 'light weight' PVP zone on that game, except for the incredible bias for handing out rewards for ranged attacks. Maybe make a bit more cover to mess things up for all those archers and ranged attacks.

Nice to have an hours mindless running about after a hard days grind so to speak.

And I wont start on the whole free thing again, but.... please god no. The end :)

Jason said on 4:11PM 6-29-2009

I'm also curious about enhanced PvP. They can't really make it open world PvP cause it doesn't fit with the lore. There weren't Orcs rampaging thru Bree and the Shire. I like my PvP separate from the PvE world. I played AoC on a PvP server and there's nothing worse than getting ganked when I'm trying to quest. I might have enjoyed that game more if I played on a PvE server but too late now. I personally think pre-NGE SWG had the best PvP system for an MMO. Open world PvP but you could be covert if you didn't want to participate. This allowed people, like crafters, to go about their business without getting killed every few minutes. If you wanted to PvP you go overt and have at it.

Graill said on 4:12PM 6-29-2009

Enhanced pvp? so are we saying the current band of dev yokels wont be doing anything on lotr in china, and that devs in china that actually know lotr will implement what changes need to be made in regards to "the epic struggle" before it launches in china?