Are LotRO GMs Ignoring Legitimate Bug Complaints?

[Lawyer105]

I'm not surprised in the least. Turbine always seems to use "the lowest bidder" when hiring support staff AND IT SHOWS!

Hell... I got forumbanned there once for breaking a rule (posting in two similar threads or something). Seems reasonable... until you discover that is isn't a rule in the code of conduct, and was something that was being discussed internally as a potential addition to the CoC. Like I'm supposed to know that...

So yeah... Turbine staff suck.

 

[Shjade]

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.

Yeah...but I'm pretty sure those things broken in WoW aren't, for instance, "Raid bosses don't drop loot when killed," which is essentially the WoW equivalent for this LotRO bug.

 

[regeneration]

Incidentally, it is a known bug with a workaround (now):

Ivar Challenge Mode -- If a raid fails the encounter without failing the challenge mode, the fight does not reset correctly and will not spawn a challenge mode chest.

Workaround: In order to spawn the chest, the raid must fail the challenge mode by removing a corruption from a monster and then reset the battle by dying. Should the raid perish before removing a corruption, the raid can reset the battle by re-engaging Ivar, removing a corruption, and then failing the battle by either getting the monsters into the battle's entrance or by dying. In short, players must fail the challenge mode before failing the encounter in order to get the fight to reset properly.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?402596

I do see why people were upset though. . . I haven't personally made it to this particular boss, but I know that I would be beyond annoyed if the loot didn't drop. To be fair though, Turbine does try to fix this sort of bug fairly quickly once it makes it to the Known Issues.

 

[Formica Archonis]

We have always been at war with EastAsia.

Very true. Our Eurasian allies have been helping us in the fight since it began.

 

[Emergent]

Hell... I got forumbanned there once for breaking a rule (posting in two similar threads or something). Seems reasonable... until you discover that is isn't a rule in the code of conduct, and was something that was being discussed internally as a potential addition to the CoC. Like I'm supposed to know that...

Welcome to the internet. Even here at the Escapist you can have action taken against you on the forums for rules that are only hinted at in the ToS (remember kids, you can discuss piracy here but only if you bash it).

 

[theultimateend]

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

I hate when they ban me for breaking the Terms of Service contract I accepted.

It's so annoying.

 

[night_chrono]

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

I hate when they ban me for breaking the Terms of Service contract I accepted.

It's so annoying.

I was more going for "I hate it when the spy on my private chats". If I had stood in the middle of a busy city spamming obscenities I wouldn't be complaining. But they banned me for what happened in a PRIVATE chat.

Not to mention members of my kinship have struck up chats with LOTRO devs at conventions, and then after mentioning their kinship, got treated like shit and ignored. So the devs actively hate on the Kinship i'm in because we rock at the game, and have fun playing it.

 

[Craorach]

I'm confused as to why people are complaining about this.

If you find a bug, report the bug through the appropriate channels.. ie, those supported by the developers.

They will then investigate, until they have confirmed internally that it is there.. it is not a recognised bug... why? Because I could just log in and say "Oh, bug! I didn't get my free loot you should give me for being special!" and get rewarded otherwise.

Bugs are only "Known" when they can be confirmed, reward can only be given when GMs can witness either visually or in logs that they are deserved. It doesn't, and shouldn't, matter how people feel.. only what is confirmable by data.

I was more going for "I hate it when the spy on my private chats". If I had stood in the middle of a busy city spamming obscenities I wouldn't be complaining. But they banned me for what happened in a PRIVATE chat.

Any part of an MMO is their's to monitor, it doesn't matter where you are breaking the ToS, they are legally bound to record all chat and take action if it is complained about. If it is on the MMO, it is not private.

Considering your views on this, if they are representative of your Kinship, I'm not suprised devs don't want to talk to you. You sound like someone who views games purely based upon their high level content when LotRO is pretty much going in exactly the other direction.

 

[theultimateend]

I'm confused as to why people are complaining about this.

If you find a bug, report the bug through the appropriate channels.. ie, those supported by the developers.

They will then investigate, until they have confirmed internally that it is there.. it is not a recognised bug... why? Because I could just log in and say "Oh, bug! I didn't get my free loot you should give me for being special!" and get rewarded otherwise.

Bugs are only "Known" when they can be confirmed, reward can only be given when GMs can witness either visually or in logs that they are deserved. It doesn't, and shouldn't, matter how people feel.. only what is confirmable by data.

I was more going for "I hate it when the spy on my private chats". If I had stood in the middle of a busy city spamming obscenities I wouldn't be complaining. But they banned me for what happened in a PRIVATE chat.

Any part of an MMO is their's to monitor, it doesn't matter where you are breaking the ToS, they are legally bound to record all chat and take action if it is complained about. If it is on the MMO, it is not private.

Considering your views on this, if they are representative of your Kinship, I'm not suprised devs don't want to talk to you. You sound like someone who views games purely based upon their high level content when LotRO is pretty much going in exactly the other direction.

Man. I need you to follow me around. Save me the energy of needing to respond!

 

[duchaked]

aw, and LotRO is the one MMO I was considering getting into...well maybe still but hey, not even sure I have the time and energy to bother yet haha

 

[jp201]

I don't really understand why they can't compensate players through a GM if they find that they did in fact complete the challenge successfully. In WoW if an issue with a certain piece of loot occurred for example you kill a boss and the server crashes or something like that they would be able to tell if you did it or not and distribute loot accordingly.

 

[night_chrono]

I'm confused as to why people are complaining about this.

If you find a bug, report the bug through the appropriate channels.. ie, those supported by the developers.

They will then investigate, until they have confirmed internally that it is there.. it is not a recognised bug... why? Because I could just log in and say "Oh, bug! I didn't get my free loot you should give me for being special!" and get rewarded otherwise.

Bugs are only "Known" when they can be confirmed, reward can only be given when GMs can witness either visually or in logs that they are deserved. It doesn't, and shouldn't, matter how people feel.. only what is confirmable by data.

I was more going for "I hate it when the spy on my private chats". If I had stood in the middle of a busy city spamming obscenities I wouldn't be complaining. But they banned me for what happened in a PRIVATE chat.

Any part of an MMO is their's to monitor, it doesn't matter where you are breaking the ToS, they are legally bound to record all chat and take action if it is complained about. If it is on the MMO, it is not private.

Considering your views on this, if they are representative of your Kinship, I'm not suprised devs don't want to talk to you. You sound like someone who views games purely based upon their high level content when LotRO is pretty much going in exactly the other direction.

It's not like I tripped a some sort of censor, and was banned a few days later. I got slapped with the ban SECONDS after say "dicktits" in a PM. The other person was sitting a few feet from me IRL, and did not report me.

My views are not representative of my kinship. We all know it's about the leveling experience, not end game raiding. We just like to have fun, and turbine takes issue with us. GM's have shown up in our kinship chat and done mass bannings in an attempt to make an example.

You already have some notion about me because I did break the "TOS". (ever trying reading one of those? Gaurente you have broken one too). Turbine GM's really are just dicks. I wish there was a better way to convey this.

 

[tharglet]

It's not like I tripped a some sort of censor, and was banned a few days later. I got slapped with the ban SECONDS after say "dicktits" in a PM. The other person was sitting a few feet from me IRL, and did not report me.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of this kind of GMing. Only thing I would condone active monitoring for is things that would have serious legal implications.
If someone's saying swearwords in private chat, imo it should be up to the person receiving them to decide if they're offended or not. If a friend called me a dick, I wouldn't care as the company that I keep it would generally be a jest, but if it's something out of the blue, then I would mind. Then it's up to the GM to try and work out best they can if being offended was justified.

 

[rmb1983]

I'm confused as to why people are complaining about this.

If you find a bug, report the bug through the appropriate channels.. ie, those supported by the developers.

The reason people are complaining about this is because they're being low-balled by the support staff when a large handful of customers are using all available means to them to try and get a legitimate issue resolved.
The support staff in Turbine's games generally aren't well-regarded (especially less so since their games went to F2P models), and they're trying to shovel all responsibility onto the consumer. Regardless if a customer uses the wrong channel to present a gameplay issue, they're still required to send it over to the devs; telling a customer to effectively shut up and move on when they're trying to point out an actual bug is just poor form.

They will then investigate, until they have confirmed internally that it is there.. it is not a recognised bug... why? Because I could just log in and say "Oh, bug! I didn't get my free loot you should give me for being special!" and get rewarded otherwise.

Bugs are only "Known" when they can be confirmed, reward can only be given when GMs can witness either visually or in logs that they are deserved. It doesn't, and shouldn't, matter how people feel.. only what is confirmable by data.

People aren't asking for free loot, they're asking to get the bug looked into. Given the length of time it's gone on, and how consistently it's occurred on their live servers, if the devs haven't replicated it, yet, it's because they haven't even looked at it.

I was more going for "I hate it when the spy on my private chats". If I had stood in the middle of a busy city spamming obscenities I wouldn't be complaining. But they banned me for what happened in a PRIVATE chat.

Any part of an MMO is their's to monitor, it doesn't matter where you are breaking the ToS, they are legally bound to record all chat and take action if it is complained about. If it is on the MMO, it is not private.

Considering your views on this, if they are representative of your Kinship, I'm not suprised devs don't want to talk to you. You sound like someone who views games purely based upon their high level content when LotRO is pretty much going in exactly the other direction.[/quote]
They should only be monitoring private chats for flags, and looking into it if flags are triggered. Even then, there really shouldn't be any action for someone saying "dicktits" or any other sort of nonsensical, silly words to another person unless that person reports them. The fact that he got hit with the ban hammer so quickly after sending a private message that wasn't reported seems to imply that they either have an automated banning system in place, or they're just being vindictive pricks; the latter especially holds up if a GM jumps into your Guild/Kinship/Clan/etc's chat and starts banning people (unless said members are exploiting the game mechanics). While the whole of the game (private chats and all) IS theirs, it just screams that Turbine really needs to look into their GMs' attitudes and professionalism.
The funniest part is, it used to take twisting arms, legs and necks just to get them to squelch someone being virulent on public channels. Twisting from a large sum of players, as opposed to one person...who didn't even file a report?

Your last paragraph is just being unnecessarily judgemental. No matter what direction the game is going in, they should never ignore part of their content.
Just to clarify, though, devs typically enjoy talking to their end-gamers (unless a particular group of said end-gamers are assholes, but that's another matter entirely) because they usually see a whole lot more of the game and its mechanics, and are therefore usually provide better feedback.

aw, and LotRO is the one MMO I was considering getting into...well maybe still but hey, not even sure I have the time and energy to bother yet haha

It's a nice game, and the scenery is gorgeous. It gets awfully dull and repetitive at around 25+, though, and anything post-20 just feels lazily crafted.
Oh, and their GMs aren't exactly the greatest, but, you know, it's real purdy!

 

[night_chrono]

Another time I was sitting around just talking to the kinship, and literally everyone that was online was spewing their opionion on "veiny cocks". It was all a massive joke and I know for a fact that everyone had said "veiny cocks" multiple times. Then a GM pops into our chat with some copy pasted message about language and temp bans ONLY ME.

I would sort of understand if he/she had banned everyone that had said it. But to single a person is just plain wrong.

For the record not complaining cause it was me, would be equalily pissed if they had singled out anyone else.

 

[Furism]

I can confirm the low level of (in or outside) game level of customer support for LotRO. I'm a Premium member (meaning I paid for the game + first expansion), and I can't seem to talk with a GM. Even quick questions that would take two minutes to solve are closed without a GM talking to you.

They tend to simply close the tickets with some sort of copy/pasted text telling you to contact the online game support ; which is 100% automated response, they never got back to me either even if their automated response stated that responding to the automatic email would prompt a human to look into the case.

The only time a GM talked to me was when I had a question about my Rise of Isengard extension pre-order.

 

[Cosmicnoise]

Deleted, but will say Turbine GM's are vindictive and at the lowest point they ever have been as a company. They could really care less about the player unless you get lucky.