The real issue, I think is one of changing the agreement with the players. In the case of the winter horse, I assumed the agreement was that I would be able to get the old horse this year. That assumed agreement was changed, and I think it’s pretty obvious it changed because of the cash shop model adopted by LotRO.

This new horse is another change in the agreement. The agreement was that if you tried enough and were lucky, you’d get the horse. Getting one was a bragging point, even if the only real point was that you were a lucky bastard. With the item being sold in the cash shop, completely out of season mind you, that agreement changed.

Now, yes, there was no explicit agreement. But, I’ve learned in pratice that there are a lot of assumptions made by players when playing your games. And, you violate those assummptions at your own peril. I suspect quite a few people shared these assumptions and are going to be cranky. It usually takes a while before the wholesale complaining starts, though, especially if it’s something minor that doesn’t affect the individual.

I think I’m particularly disappointed because I’m a fan of Turbine’s games. I was really excited since it seemed they were doing the “free to play” thing right, but these particular events have left me disappointed both as a developer and as a player.

I hereby invoke the “Slippery Slope” argument.
Item Shops always start innocent and small, see Guild Wars, by now there is no month where not at least one fluff costume gets sold. It will not only be fluff in GW2, I am afraid.

If the droprate for something I can sell for 1495 points is 5%, how far can you push it? I would reduce it to 3%… to make some more people buy? :>

I get something which I consider valuable. The next day someone gets the exact same thing at a much lower cost. What part of the analogy did you not understand? The casino thing, that works if all we’re talking about is random drops without the drops moving to the cash shop.

Or again, as I (and many others elsewhere) argued, *because* the horse is random, it doesn’t specifically matter if it’s in the shop or not.

If it’s RANDOM then it isn’t SKILL or EFFORT. It isn’t like buying a Monet then someone buys a forged copy. It’s like going to a casino one weekend and losing a thousand bucks while your buddy wins a thousand. You knew the “risk” going in and chose to play anyway.

In future, anyone who remembers this will probably be weighing up whether they want to grind for it and take their chances, or pay for the thing instead later. For some players, that’s going to affect the fun of future events. I’m not sure how I feel about it – I liked the diversity of seeing all the rare items in the game and knowing that some had come from old instances, others from festivals 2 years ago, some from cash shop, some from ultra rare drops etc.

Or another way to see it, is that when people spend huge amounts of time on something, they will often rationalize it by increasing their perception of its value. The cost of this is normally not realized, since people got what they wanted and the value of it increases proportional to the time cost. Then another cost is made, most likely a cheaper one, and the perceived cost is shattered. The problem isn’t that the players did something wrong or unusual, since inflating value based on time is central to MMOs, but that the inflation was removed so suddenly and significantly. If it cost a bit more, that would ease the blow, perhaps even remove most of the complains.

However, if it significantly changes content, or gives players with deeper pockets access to content that other players will not have access to, then it is most certainly a problem.

In this particular case: meh.