Are LotRO GMs Ignoring Legitimate Bug Complaints?

[Dastardly]

Are LotRO GMs Ignoring Legitimate Bug Complaints?

Players in LotRO have been complaining about the same issue for approximately a month, but administrators keep on saying it's not a known issue.

Whether free-to-play or subscription based, the handling of bugs is a major issue in the MMO market, at least in my mind.

When a player finds a bug, the expectation is that there will be some way for them to quickly notify the staff about this bug so that it can be fixed. No reasonable player expects it to happen instantaneously, but they shouldn't have to expect to be told to continually reproduce the bug to fill out a detailed report. There's the major problem I have with current MMOs.

Content in MMOs has steadily gotten smaller in scope over the years. Skill systems have been boiled down to class systems. PvP has been boiled down to instances, rather than opt-in flagging. Game worlds are so tightly zoned that you don't often encounter people outside your level range. Player housing is nearly gone, and is token when present. Crafting has gotten as simple as it can get. Yet subscription fees have remained the same, because people are used to paying them. Even in the F2P market, players end up paying far more for these online experiences than they would for an offline game.

Add to this the bug problem. The player suddenly has the responsibility to continuously document bugs in order for them to be addressed, or the player has the responsibility to use an elaborate work-around (if one exists).

The current state of MMOs? Paying far more money, for far less game, and far more player responsibility. That's a sad place to be.

 

[AndyFromMonday]

generally ridding yourself of the hard core players that are the foundation of most MMOs.

Sorry but that's completely untrue. The very foundation of most MMO's is the casual market whereas the hardcore one tends to be very small. Look at what happened to Aion, a supposedly hardcore MMO for the hardcore market. It bombed and it bombed big.

OT: Well done, Turbine. I applaud your attempts at deceiving your audience.

 

[Parnage]

f2p market downside. What you gunna do? Leave? Sokay. You already spent some cash to have a fancy shirt or some such.

Seriously Turbine is rare to care about this kinda stuff as far as I am concerned. They still completely ignore the Ranger classes in Dnd online.

 

[night_chrono]

Not Surprised. I have been temp banned in LOTRO for swearing in private chat before. Their GM's are the worst.

 

[infernovolver]

Oh my lord. Where have I heard this story before. Since when did The Escapist do articles on how badly some MMO publishers/developers treat their own customers and how little they support their own game?

 

[BabyRaptor]

A month? Dude, there are things in WoW that have been broke since Burning Crusade...I mean it sucks, yeah, but it's not the end of the world. Work around it.

 

[rmb1983]

generally ridding yourself of the hard core players that are the foundation of most MMOs.

Sorry but that's completely untrue. The very foundation of most MMO's is the casual market whereas the hardcore one tends to be very small. Look at what happened to Aion, a supposedly hardcore MMO for the hardcore market. It bombed and it bombed big.

OT: Well done, Turbine. I applaud your attempts at deceiving your audience.

He was pointing at the people who'll be long-term subscribers, rather than those in the small majority whose only real ambition is end-game content.

OT: Odd, I never had a whole lot of issue with the LotRO GMs, back when I played. Granted it was a good while prior to them switching it to a F2P model, and they might have cut the better ones loose, but it's still a bit shocking that they'd blatantly ignore something that's being thrown at them with such frequency. You'd think it'd at least have gotten investigated, and they'd tell players it's being worked on.
I will admit, though, their GMs have always had cookie-cutter responses, whether it was actually someone typing directly to me from that end or just copy-pasting text. Aside from one who went out of her way quite a bit (such as porting gold spammers into PvP areas to be killed over and over by the opposing side), they all seemed bland and bored, for the most part.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Overall, LOTRO is a very solid game and bugs like this are quite rare. Unfortunately, however, complaints about the in game CSR/GM staff aren't. If there's one consistent complaint about the game, it's that the GMs all seem to operate under different rules and you never know exactly what sort of help you'll get when you submit a ticket. It's also pretty consistent that support tickets get closed without any sort of resolution. While one can understand that issues aren't always resolvable in an instant, if they are resolvable by lowly GM staff at all, a little tact and a more thoughtful version of "Sorry, I can't help you" can go a long way. Copy and paste responses or just closing the ticket as soon as someone logs off aren't the right way to do things even if the end result may be the same as legitimately saying "Sorry."

 

[Smooth Operator]

That's pretty much the standard company response, what bugs? our games are perfect as they are!
Then they fix the problems quietly so they don't haveto admit anything, and who will you believe those pesky users or the developers.

And how this thing usually goes down in a company is: A team makes game, then A team moves on to new games, and a B team is quickly put together for the mop up duty and some extra content.
Sadly the B team has no real clue how to fix bigger problems so they need to go back and forth with the A team what can be done, this ofcourse takes alot longer then it should.

Meanwhile the PR department denies everything to keep the word from getting around, minimizing the backlash.
Episode 3? Don't be silly, we never heard of such a game!

 

[njsykora]

March Mayhem finallists 2008 (I think) ladies and gentlemen.

 

[Cenequus]

If you think doing a skirmish/dungeon on tier 2 is hard you should see tier 3. But anyway about the bug,to be hones I learned about it here. I was a Codemaster player so when they switched the Eu servers back it's not that I rushed for the new forums either. Still ingame and inguild never seem to have heard about it. I'll do a skirm later on tier 2 later to check it out for sure.

 

[Nick Holmgren]

For all the boring and menial stuff you have to do at the start, EVE keeps looking better and better.

 

[DTWolfwood]

how many paying customers are there? considering the free to play status it has now <.<

Fair enough if there was still a mandatory monthly sub for the game for this shit to not fly, but when the entire game is based off of nickel and dime for the few who are willing to pay, there really isn't much incentive for them to do anything.

Im a lifer for that game, but even i don't expect much of a reaction out of the GMs even if i complained so many years after its release.

 

[skateblind]

We have never been at war with EastAsia.

Very good book, just finished reading it. I think it is spelt Eastasia though, not EastAsia.

OT: If they keep making waves and publicising the problem, then someone at the game company will get their arses kicked or fired for not doing their jobs properly.

 

[ProtonGuy]

Oh crap it's the one Bug to rule them all! Quick we must burn it in the fires of Mordor!

 

[Genixma]

Welcome to the F2P market.

Seconded.
I am just guessing that the money they made from initial subscription paid release finally ran out.

 

[Lyri]

Welcome to the F2P market.

Ehhh, I wouldn't judge it on that merit. You have to pay to play the harder content on LOTRO, which would include Tier 2 Challenge Mode quests. The F2P content is all the easier leveling. This makes it all the more serious since Turbine is basically ignoring their paying customers. Bad business.
I would expect many of those players have already suspended their subscriptions, and either moved on to something else or just perusing the F2P end to see if Turbine finally caves in.

I've played a few F2Ps in my time and this is honestly how they end up turning, the thing is it's not the super hardcore crowd that really bring in the money, it's the levelers.
Priority fixes will go to those guys first so people can continue to level up and have a smooth experience.
As long as that part of the Cash shop is working fine, it's win.

Eh... I have seen F2P that get bug fixes more often and fix major ones. Most times if a bug is posted on the forum of most mmo's, it would be fixed in the upcoming or next patch. This is just the fault of the company.

If you're on about Guildwars, that's an exception to the rule.

Lots of these Korean grindfest mmos have terrible bug fixing.

 

[Chubbs99]

I recall similar things happening in DDO (turbines other, seemingly less loved game (personal opinion)). So this doesn't really surprise me much. I did what I could, and voted with my wallet and have stopped supporting Turbine and their business. I remember a joke passing around at least in my old DDO guild of Coming Soon(tm) to the DDO store: Bug Fixes

 

[DeadAccountMoveAlong]

Really, nobody? I have to be the one to say it? *sigh* fine.

Working as intended.