LOTRO approaching 1 million beta testers

I like Turbine’s strategy for rolling out the newest MMORPG Lord of the Rings Online. It’s a good roadmap for how to roll out a new game. First they offered a closed beta opportunity to anybody for a few weeks. Both myself and VTOR Author JohnnyRS covered that event. Then they went to the open beta for presell customers a full week ahead of the rest of the web. Those that pay $10 for the presell received two useful in-game items for every character created and the opportunity to pay founder prices for either a monthly acocunt ($9.99 instead of the projected $14.99/month) or a lifetime account of $199 USD.

And through April 24, 2007 when the full LOTRO game launches, those that meets the system and game requirements can get in and try out the game. A countdown to April 24 along with the number of “adventurers invited” continues to grow and looks like it will easily eclipse the one million mark.

The stats for how many of these people actually buy the full game or who have paid $10 for the presale probably won’t be shared, but I’d think the percentage of presale to full retail customers will be fairly high. I mean, why pay to start out characters and then not move them over? We already have two presell accounts in our home and are strongly considering paying $199 for a lifetime account on one of them. We’ll be $9.99/month the founder offer on the other.

The presale customers who don’t pay for and activate the full retail version within 30 days will lose their characters, which provides even more incentive. All around this appears to be a solid new release strategy. Have you seen another MMORPG launch strategy like this? Anything else you’d like to see from a new game or virtual world being released?