Five New Instances in Update 5

[DelgonTheWise]

According to Turbines current Whitehand competition in the rules section the Value of TP's has been set at 14 Dollars for 1000 TP.

With ROI costing 5995 points unbundled for the Quests/Draigoth raid and instance in update 5, players who choose to pay in Turbine points will be forking out 83.93 Dollars worth of Turbine points. Holy cow Batman.

If you believe that MSRP or some disclosure is a real price, whatever. On the sale that comes every few months, $50 = 6900 TPs... Anyone who pays full price for TPs, well, guess they don't mind paying rack rate at hotels or airlines either.

[BellusDuFenna]

If you believe that MSRP or some disclosure is a real price, whatever. On the sale that comes every few months, $50 = 6900 TPs... Anyone who pays full price for TPs, well, guess they don't mind paying rack rate at hotels or airlines either.

That's not the point, though. Sure, people can buy their TP on sale, and pay less than those who don't. People can also spend their valuable time and grind for hours to earn those TP in-game, and thus pay nothing at all (other than the value of their personal time).

I don't know about you, but I don't want to consider LOTRO a second job, thus I won't grind for TP. My time is valuable, I work a very long week, and thus I consider what free time I have more valuable than the time I am working, and won't spend it grinding points to shave a few dollars off of an expansion's cost. Furthermore, since the "6900 TP for $50" deal only comes up once in a while, we have to go off of what the prices are for points on a normal day, in order to determine their value in comparison to buying the expansion for cash. And by doing so, buying the expansion components in the LOTRO Store is significantly more expensive than buying it through the Web Store.

I'm not against Turbine making a profit, far from it. If they don't prosper, then the game suffers, and I want to see this story through to the end. That said, the component costs for this expansion are very high, and dismissing the concerns of those who think those costs are too high because one can occasionally buy points on sale, or grind for the points for hours on end, is unfair and does the community a disservice.

[Arbalister]

I admit I don't have an English degree nor should I need to in order to understand a message being posted about a product I use on the related official forums.

The problem is that, the way people pick apart *any* statement Turbine makes, it wouldn't be an english degree you'd need if they chose to release a statement that can't be misinterpreted (willfully or accidentally). It would be a law degree.

I don't really think the information flow would be the same if they started requiring company press releases come from their legal department, so they can't be misrepresented, do you?

[nirsul]

The problem is that, the way people pick apart *any* statement Turbine makes, it wouldn't be an english degree you'd need if they chose to release a statement that can't be misinterpreted (willfully or accidentally). It would be a law degree.

I don't really think the information flow would be the same if they started requiring company press releases come from their legal department, so they can't be misrepresented, do you?

The problem (and we've had this discussion before) is that they're seemingly collectively overly concerned with people misinterpreting their statements. They have a company culture of secrecy going back to AC1, and yes, I was there to watch it develop also. However, the degree to which they've taken it is ridiculous, and the continued blaming by some people of the morons who take "maybe" as a "promise" for Turbine's current lack of communication problem is disingenuous at best.

It is NOT the fault of customers that they want (and have the legal right) to make informed buying decisions between various pricing options, and can't because the company won't tell them those prices. It is NOT a gamer's problem that he/she wants to know as much about the product they're being asked to buy and play as they can, and yet have to extrapolate from snippets of badly worded marketing info what that might be. Those kinds of thing as reasonable desires for customers and players, and a company not being willing to meet those desires makes the company at fault. And no, I don't think that the excuse of "they haven't decided what the TP cost is" absolves Turbine of their responsibility to actually MAKE THAT DECISION at the same time as they do the pre-order cost, exactly so that we as customers can make informed decisions about what's the best way to buy it for each of us.

In other words, it's not the fault of the customer if they take the clear meaning of the actual words that were used and apply that meaning, then make the logical conclusion as in this case. That's a problem of clarity for the writer, not the reader. And the lack of clarity is there exactly because they try to keep things too close to the vest info-wise. Loosen up the secrecy, but learn to word things in a precise manner with conditionals. Granted, not something a lot of gamers, programmers, math geeks and whatever else they've hired as customer contact people know how to do in my experience, but then they should hire someone who does.

Now, while I assume you're trying to be snarky by saying they need press releases from their "legal department", but they do in fact need to run some of their press releases and stuff by whatever lawyers they have, because if they would have some of this stuff wouldn't have happened. There IS a legal environment they exist in and they need to actually start understanding and acting on that. Companies that don't eventually end up in hot water, and WB as a large company is a target for all kinds of stupid stuff. Do you seriously think some excessively angered player WON'T push this kind of dispute past where it in the grand scheme of things (as a game) ought to go? And who would that have the potential to hurt the most? The US legal system isn't known for being completely rational you know ...

That's one of their problems IMO, that they act as if they're still the little dev house created by some buddies with a pretty friendly bunch of players/customers letting Microsoft handle the marketing/customer service/etc obligations for them, as opposed to what they are now. They are a company selling a product internationally that's subject to a bunch of different legal requirements, and they need to both realize that and act on those requirements (a point I made not too long ago also). They ARE the sellers now, not just a bunch of coders, and thinking and acting like a corporation including understanding the business rules they have to live by (and hence, talking to their lawyers every once and awhile) would be good for them. And they're a unit of a large company that's seen as having deep pockets, which makes them a bigger, more attractive target, and they'd do well to actually remember that.

TBH though they're not the only MMO (and, in my experience, software) company that could use that advice.

[champs-are-us]

very good

[Arbalister]

The problem (and we've had this discussion before) is that they're seemingly collectively overly concerned with people misinterpreting their statements. They have a company culture of secrecy going back to AC1, and yes, I was there to watch it develop also. However, the degree to which they've taken it is ridiculous, and the continued blaming by some people of the morons who take "maybe" as a "promise" for Turbine's current lack of communication problem is disingenuous at best.

And yet - the forums are teaming with it, even right now. :-)

[UnlikelyBeing]

And yet - the forums are teaming with it, even right now. :-)

I still remember when I first started playing lotro, players on the forum whining on the grounds that something or other had been promised and not delivered or not delivered on time. While they had the right to complain about it, the reality was that it was something that hadn't been promised, merely mentioned as a possibility. In such cases the players were making assumptions and Turbine had no responsibility to them other than to clarify / reassert that whatever the 'some thing' was doesn't have a release date or was delayed etc.

I also remember the amusement (along with frustration at times) from players on forums discussing comments made in the media and at conventions by Steefel. Someone would say 'ooh he said this was coming' and within a heartbeat someone would post a reply laughing and saying 'take it with a pinch of salt!'.

However, the above two examples are not where we are at now. Now we have information withheld, a paid product being promoted listing features that are not contained within said paid product, press releases saying that features *will* come with ROI (new pvp zone) when they had not firmly decided to follow through on it.

This does fall fair and square at Turbine's feet and it is deceptive marketing and they are on very shaky grounds with both their local state laws and European ones (perhaps others too). The player / reader cannot be blamed for taking official information published by Turbine (whether as a press release or on the forum) at face value. There are laws to protect consumers so that we can generally trust what company's tell us when it comes to buying a product and it is Turbine's responsibility to be clear in the information they do give us and comply with such laws.

[Kerin_Eldar]

I also remember the amusement (along with frustration at times) from players on forums discussing comments made in the media and at conventions by Steefel. Someone would say 'ooh he said this was coming' and within a heartbeat someone would post a reply laughing and saying 'take it with a pinch of salt!'..

Quite possibly because Steefel had a history of saying things to the 'press' (as a general term) which later turned out to be patently wrong: it's so long ago I forget the details, but there was a classic one in which pre-MoM he said some feature would be present (something to do with vault space I seem to recall), which had to be corrected by Patience (as it then was IIRC) not long after.

[MasterBurik]

So, uh...any news on what else is in Update 5? Like Vol 3 Book 5? Or is it a secret for another month or two? Not that I'm not satisfied with RoI so far...