Lord of the Rings Online - Ask Turbine #6 @ WarCry

Turbine made some negative waves a couple weeks ago when they announced that they and European publisher Codemasters would employ IP blocking to ensure that players played in their designated territories. The move was not unexpected, Codemasters obviously has an interest in protecting their revenue stream, but the plan was met with vocal opposition with the community and forced Turbine and Codemasters to reevaluate their plans.

"Well we launched the plans and we were wrong," Anderson admitted candidly. He told us that part of the reason they did this was a technical one. It was just easier to make two separate clients that pointed to the separate servers and that obviously Codemasters had paid for the exclusive European rights and they needed to support that. He told us that they proposed IP blocking as a way of protecting those rights and that Turbine accepted, with the assumption that the average fan wouldn't mind.