Following Kate Paiz's news of Lord of the Rings Online's success at GDC Online, Senior Editor Chris Tom caught up with her to talk about LOTRO's free-to-play shift and what's in store for the game's future.

ZAM: With so much activity going on in the Turbine store, there are probably a few items that players have been purchasing in swarms. What are some of the most common purchases made? Were there any popular items that surprised the team?

Turbine: One surprise was that the Elf Queen's dress became so popular! It's a funny story - LOTRO has a great cosmetic system, and one of our QA testers, who was responsible for making sure we were ready to open the worlds after the update for Book 2 and free to play, purchased the elf queen's dress on all the servers to make sure the store was ready for primetime, because it was her personal favorite cosmetic in the store. As a result, it was in the best sellers list at launch, and more and more people saw it there and bought it, and it stayed in the best sellers list for weeks as a result!  On the less surprising side of things, among our best sellers are our various inventory storage options and stat tomes (which apply permanent bonuses to your character's main stats).

ZAM: And what about on the other side of the coin, with unpopular purchases that perhaps you thought would do well, but ended up not?

Turbine: A lot of the crafting recipes in the LOTRO Store were put there in case someone was having trouble finding a given recipe and was interested in buying it instead. But turns out, a lot of those crafting recipes have not yet been purchased, because people were either able to find them in game or less interested in buying them in the store.

ZAM: One of the unique aspects of the LOTRO store in comparison to the DDO store are the expansions (Mines of Moria and Siege of Mirkwood) that need to be purchased in order to advance to the higher level caps. Now that LOTRO has made the transition to its F2P model, should players expect more "quest pack" expansions in the form of new lands to be purchased, piecemeal, or will there, one day, be another full expansion down the line?

Turbine: Both, I think.  One of the changes we are making for our next update, coming in November, is that all players will be able to play through the epic quests in Moria and Mirkwood, but will need to purchase the rest of the quests through the Expansion Pack. Going forward, we'll probably release region and quests both in updates and in future Expansion Packs.

ZAM: And on that note, what sort of new things can players expect to see coming in the short-term; new cosmetic items, or perhaps some other convenience-related items that didn't make it into the first round?

Turbine: Our November Update will include a new type of store item that is a general ingredient pack for a given tier of crafting. This will allow players to buy a few premium ingredient packs to use for a variety of crafting recipes, thereby speeding up their crafting experience.

ZAM: To end on a more general note, there has been a recent upsurge in MMORPG development, and there will be a lot of new developers entering the scene in this year and the next. Given the amount of competition around, there have already been a few casualties of the market, most notably being the implosion Realtime Worlds' All Points Bulletin. As a veteran MMO development team with three successful MMORPGs under your belts, do you have any advice for some of these untested developers as they try to compete?

Turbine: Focus on gameplay.  If you have a really fun game that people like to play, you can survive a lot of challenges in the market. Gameplay and fun are king!

ZAM: And that's about all the questions we have for now! Thank you so much for answering and, once again, congratulations on the incredible success of Lord of the Rings Online!

Turbine: Thanks so much - talk with you again soon!