Another great example of how Turbine's censoring on the LOTRO forum works

[Redwolf]

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?355934-Is-priority-login-for-VIPs-working-or-not/page6

Thread is about the priority login for VIPs not working. As in not at all, confirmed multiple times with people dual-boxing VIP and non-VIP accounts. So far so good, **** happens.

Turbine waits for the topic to drift a little. In this case, the topic drifts towards "what's that 'server full' message about?", which despite the name of the message has nothing to do with the login priority queues or even the server being full. Then Turbine uses this as an excuse to close the thread about the original topic because they solved the latter problem(*), although the two have have nothing to do with each other.

If you now re-open a thread about the login queues you will, and I mean people did, in practice, receive an infraction for re-opening a closed topic.

This has been done pretty much for every uncomfortable topic around the f2p switch.


(*) ETA: except they didn't, it got worse later today but that doesn't have to do with the censoring.

 

[Palantir]

Interesting- but they did not fix the problem as I'm getting the "server full message" right now.

Also- what's up with "Veteran's Day" 11/11 sale" in the Turbine Store?
Really, do they need a sale on this day to "help" players? Seems a desperate cry for money.


View attachment 31674

 

[Redwolf]

Yeah, I don't have much confidence in their ability to implement or fix things right now

I started making a point buying the things I need (vault etc, payed with VIP points) when they are not on sale, so that I discourage this nonsense.

Not that I had time to play lately But hey I certainly don't think LOTRO is better than the real world

 

[Redwolf]

And another one. Hush hush close down the thread before the pesty original poster can reply with "no it doesn't".

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?367494-VIP-priority-log-in

Turbine seems to be very sensitive about the topic of VIP priorities. Or lack thereof.

 

[Philippe_at_bay]

They should be. They seem to have promised something (VIP accounts getting on before F2P accounts) that they haven't delivered.

Having said that, I really don't care if a F2P account gets on ahead of me, as long as I don't have to wait more than a minute or two to log on.

So far the only time I really had any trouble was when F2P was initially rolled out (early September?). Since then I've never had a problem that exiting and logging back in didn't seem to fix.

I wonder if some of the problems are being encountered by people who have several different account statuses or have switched them back and forth (i.e. they're confusing the Turbine server).

If I start getting shut out on a regular basis I'll revisit the issue, but as it stands this is not what is going to make me stop playing.

(What will get me to drop out is the dumbing down and the steroids. Again, I don't care much what other people load on their characters at the Turbine store. But the problem comes when you realize that character development is a big part of the gestalt of RPG's, and if you've got those great stats because you bought them, a big part of the fun just got yanked out of the system. So far I've only allowed one of my seven characters to use steroids, but it's a bitter pill to swallow to realize that he'll never really have accomplished anything he ever does. I seem to have dusted off Das Schwarze Auge and am spending the time with it that I used to spend on LOTRO. Of course, that's been dumbed down too, which is really annoying because ten years ago it was a great game).

 

[Redwolf]

They should be. They seem to have promised something (VIP accounts getting on before F2P accounts) that they haven't delivered.

Having said that, I really don't care if a F2P account gets on ahead of me, as long as I don't have to wait more than a minute or two to log on.

So far the only time I really had any trouble was when F2P was initially rolled out (early September?). Since then I've never had a problem that exiting and logging back in didn't seem to fix.

I wonder if some of the problems are being encountered by people who have several different account statuses or have switched them back and forth (i.e. they're confusing the Turbine server).

If I start getting shut out on a regular basis I'll revisit the issue, but as it stands this is not what is going to make me stop playing.

(What will get me to drop out is the dumbing down and the steroids. Again, I don't care much what other people load on their characters at the Turbine store. But the problem comes when you realize that character development is a big part of the gestalt of RPG's, and if you've got those great stats because you bought them, a big part of the fun just got yanked out of the system. So far I've only allowed one of my seven characters to use steroids, but it's a bitter pill to swallow to realize that he'll never really have accomplished anything he ever does. I seem to have dusted off Das Schwarze Auge and am spending the time with it that I used to spend on LOTRO. Of course, that's been dumbed down too, which is really annoying because ten years ago it was a great game).

Status right now is that there are no login queues (see my earlier posts about my theories about what they actually do), but that people get the "server full" message which doesn't have anything to do with the server actually being full. As mentioned that has been decleared fixed - multiple times

There are more and more voices saying that rebooting the servers (you can see that in the login queue count web page) reduces lag on individual servers for weeks. I think that Turbine's scalability changes that came with the f2p changes might have been biting off a little more than they can chew.

Myself I can't comment on the latter, I only log in occasionally when "forced" to such as to turn in fall festival rewards. These antics weaken my resolve to restart when life goes better.

 

[Palantir]

I haven't hit any problems myself since the 11/11 deal.

Considering all the alts I have my casual "jump on & craft / resource / mess around" time in LotRO has dropped like a rock. I'm spending that time now playing EvE.

 

[Redwolf]

Another one down.
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?368458-Lotro-and-account-theft-is-the-store-safe

Interesting topic: since your credit card is permanently on file, and since people who break into your account can buy stuff in store, and can reload TPs from your credit card without any further security measure, they could just max out your card buying things in the store they instantly flip for real-world money via gold selling.

The nagger here is that I have my credit card on file exclusively for VIP payments. I never buy points. But there is no way for me to ensure that. A breakin into my account allows the attacker to charge my card.

 

[Palantir]

Closed without any official word on the matter and on a very important issue: that is draconian & clearly uncalled for.

 

[jwb3]

The nagger here is that I have my credit card on file exclusively for VIP payments. I never buy points. But there is no way for me to ensure that. A breakin into my account allows the attacker to charge my card.

Well, I'm glad that when I decided it was time to spend money on D&D Online, I used ShopSafe, which generates a temporary virtual cc number -- just as someone in the LOTRO Forum's thread was talking about "the Europeans" having been able to do for years.

At least one of my cards offers Shopsafe via its website. A friend also uses it for all his online transactions, and has for a while.

You can give a maximum amount it can be charged for and an expiration date, so when I did it for a single $50 Premium payment I just gave an ex date of 2 months down the road and a max amount of $75 or $100 (my friend pointed out that sometimes the business places a test transaction to verify your account, so you want to leave some leeway). If it gets hacked before the two months are up, the most I'd be out would be the extra $25 or $50.

Admittedly it might have some drawbacks for VIP or other recurring payments, because either you'd have to generate a new number every month, or you'd have to set your expiration date and max amount to cover several months down the road. However, Shopsafe may have a way to do recurring payments, I don't know.


John

 

[Redwolf]

I used to have shopsafe but that credit card went away. Not sure I have one now.

 

[Redwolf]

And another one down. People discussed pretty decently why VIPs who don't regularly want to buy in the shop shouldn't be harassed with ever increasing more popups, splash screens and LOUD buttons to go to the store.

Turbine method? Wait until one person (and again one of their fainbois in this case) slams somebody and then close the thread for "personal attacks".

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?371375-Enough-is-enough-Turbine!/page23

From now on you will get an infraction for opening a thread on the topic of whether there's too much advertising in the face of VIPs because that would re-open a closed topic.

Well done, Turbine.

 

[Palantir]

They are very quick to shut down topics that shine a light on their $$ tactics.

That being the case, 23 pages of comments on "too much advertising" being thrown at us at every opportunity says it all.

Why can't they just have a "do not show again" option button for all those Store buttons once you see them? (Of course we know why...) I just can't believe they keep getting more aggressive with it. Long gone are the load screens being ABOUT the game, instead it's now all about what you can BUY in the game.

 

[Redwolf]

They are getting more honest. Now they just close threads that are not to their liking without waiting for a fake excuse:

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?371710-A-week-later-still-no-response-on-hacked-account/page3

 

[Palantir]

Good grief, what horribile service & indifference on Turbines part.

Did you see this thread? (OP post)

Sapience - Community Specialist

Raid Sets and Compromised Accounts.
Some players have recently expressed concerns regarding compromised accounts and the reimbursement of certain items. Typically our In-Game Anti-Fraud team will reimburse an amount of gold to cover lost gold and items. Some items, such as raid sets, cannot be replaced by simply repurchasing them. We have come up with a potential solution, but feel the community should have input before we make a final decision.

With few exceptions, the majority of compromised accounts are accessed for the gold or items that can be quickly sold to a vendor for their currency values. This is why most items of value are removed from an account once it is recovered. Because raid sets have a small currency value they are often sold along with all other items via the “sell all” option. To reduce the chance of these items being lost in the event your account is compromised our Customer Service team has proposed the following:


•Raid sets will be set to “no sale”. This will prevent any item identified as a belonging to a raid set from being displayed in a vendor’s window. This will prevent the item from being sold either intentionally or accidentally. You will still be able to ‘drop’ the item and permanently destroy it.
Note: We are not opening a discussion on hacking, compromised accounts, etc. We are asking a very specific question and would like to see how the community votes on this matter.

The poll question was:
Would you like to see this solution enabled in the game?
Yes/no
Making certain items unsellable is fine with me.
Having these items sellable is fine with me.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?366105-Raid-Sets-and-Compromised-Accounts.

That is their solution to having your account hacked to just make certain RAID items unsalable! Are they that blind up there or what?

How about asking this whacked out question: If your account is hacked and everything you had in-game is deleted should we restore your character from the backup: yes or no?


I liked one posters suggestion that they could just install “location verification” to the security system: if you live in Littletown USA and have accessed the game for 3 years from that location and suddenly an IP in China logs into your account it's locked up until verified by the account owner. That seems like one step they could take.

 

[Redwolf]

I can understand where this is coming from. They want a solution with no code changes. This way they can just set a bit in the unit database errr I mean item database.

Of course the fact that they are trying to get away from this problem without code changes is an indication of how important this problem is to them - about not at all.

I still haven't made up my mind whether I believe that it's the player's fault in all cases or whether there's some Turbine ooops in there, too.

 

[Redwolf]

Another one down.
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?368458-Lotro-and-account-theft-is-the-store-safe

Interesting topic: since your credit card is permanently on file, and since people who break into your account can buy stuff in store, and can reload TPs from your credit card without any further security measure, they could just max out your card buying things in the store they instantly flip for real-world money via gold selling.

The nagger here is that I have my credit card on file exclusively for VIP payments. I never buy points. But there is no way for me to ensure that. A breakin into my account allows the attacker to charge my card.

This topic got hot.
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?374290-Under-10-hours

Since the new one will be deleted when Turbine staff awakes here's the gits of it:

Under 10 hours

Thats how long it took for turbine to delete my thread which pointed out to ppl the risks posed to their personal funds by having a credit/debit card connected to the lotro store. Glad to see you care about your customers real lives, turbine. Follow industry standards.

*sets timer and waits*

 

[Palantir]

Looks like that thread was deleted in “under” 60 seconds... :crosseye:

I do believe that Turbine has had all it can take of "unfavorable anything” or Bad-Turbine PR threads.

Too bad they just don’t say they will look into correcting the problems instead of sweeping the concerns under the “locked” & deleted threads banner.

 

[Redwolf]

They really don't like certain discussions. Massively writing about account breakins:
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?378378-Massively-Takes-notice-of-LOTRO-account-hackings

In their defense, at least they stopped deleting threads shortly after closing them. Of the links in this discussion only one has since then been deleted.

 

[Palantir]

Great way for a company to lock up a discussion thread: nothing wrong on our end- it's your problem deal with it. :angry:

Be that as it may it's an outright disgrace for Turbine not to reset player’s characters that’ve been hacked. How hard can it be to just reset from a saved file?
I read the post by a founding member & beta tester of LotRO who had 9 level 65’s hacked & deleted- they did nothing for him, so why would they help out anyone else?

Hopefully this public embarrassment will shame Turbine into actually caring about its customers instead of just thinking up more ways to get a buck off them.

Speaking of getting more bucks- I saw this as a Lotto reward:
View attachment 32368
In a skirmish you normally have to wait for the combat to end to recall your skirmish soldier. But not if you spend a few bucks to buy this, now you can do it during combat.
But just where do you find these dropping in-game? Another store only item to give you and advantage in-game that you can’t get by playing the game.