any word on the lotteries?

[Jumi]

thought they were back?

[Yula_the_Mighty]

They are.

Sapience stated lotteries would not be a regularly scheduled feature like they were previously.

Instead they will be a random lotteries, where there maybe no lottery for an entire week. The next week might have five lotteries. One of which is 3 days. Another is one day. The remaining three are 1-6 hours.

You will have to bookmark the lottery page. Keep checking for lotteries. Good news is that log in is not required to see the lottos. You can see all lottos even if you have no eligible characters.

[Khafar]

The remaining three are 1-6 hours.

Hopefully not. With customers around the world and people working 8 hour shifts where they cannot (or should not) spend time on the LOTRO forums, short lotteries will only be a magnet for player complaints. Best to just run them for 24 hours or more (when they're up).

Khafar

[Yula_the_Mighty]

Hopefully not. With customers around the world and people working 8 hour shifts where they cannot (or should not) spend time on the LOTRO forums, short lotteries will only be a magnet for player complaints. Best to just run them for 24 hours or more (when they're up).

Khafar

Back when the web services were working better there were quite a few short lotteries. The shortest being the Flash Lottos announced via a Tweet which were 20-30? minutes. Sapience would know. They were very short.

[Khafar]

Back when the web services were working better there were quite a few short lotteries.

Well, I don't think that was a grand idea either. People like lotteries, and Sapience fought hard to keep them. Running them in such a way that participation is minimized just doesn't make much sense. Players outside the US time zones have to put up with enough already, between inconvenient maintenance times and the inability to participate in any contest with a prize that has real-world value. At least the lotteries can be run so everyone has a fair shot.

Khafar

[Grhysli]

They are.

Sapience stated lotteries would not be a regularly scheduled feature like they were previously.

Instead they will be a random lotteries, where there maybe no lottery for an entire week. The next week might have five lotteries. One of which is 3 days. Another is one day. The remaining three are 1-6 hours.

You will have to bookmark the lottery page. Keep checking for lotteries. Good news is that log in is not required to see the lottos. You can see all lottos even if you have no eligible characters.

If this is the case then my vote is to just get rid of the Lotteries altogether.
Have spent the past couple weeks checking the Lottery page several times per day and it's a major letdown to see nothing run at all.

If it's just a now and then thing just scrap it already. Especially if it's only for things like fireworks, pipeweed, and 50 silver coins as has been the case lately. Thanks, but no thanks.

[TinDragon]

If this is the case then my vote is to just get rid of the Lotteries altogether.
Have spent the past couple weeks checking the Lottery page several times per day and it's a major letdown to see nothing run at all.

If it's just a now and then thing just scrap it already. Especially if it's only for things like fireworks, pipeweed, and 50 silver coins as has been the case lately. Thanks, but no thanks.

Ugh, no. Personally I'm enjoying the lotteries.

[Crell_1]

Have spent the past couple weeks checking the Lottery page several times per day and it's a major letdown to see nothing run at all.

My advice would be to to stop checking the page. Hope that your friends will tell you if there's something up worth entering. Or only check it when your visiting the forums for some other reason. No reason to shutdown a feature that lots of people are enjoying because you don't like to look at an empty page.

[Flixxer]

My advice would be to to stop checking the page. Hope that your friends will tell you if there's something up worth entering. Or only check it when your visiting the forums for some other reason. No reason to shutdown a feature that lots of people are enjoying because you don't like to look at an empty page.

that being said from a perspective from ppl that live in the "right" timezone.... i don't mind to have some flash or faster lotteries too, obviously there are ppl that like it, but i spend litarelly hours a day on the forums and i even miss many lotteries (been in one since last revamp), but these bonusses are the cream on the cake, and a cake tastes less without cream

[Eolynde]

I can't access the LOTRO site from work and I rarely get a chance to check Twitter or FB for any kind of flash lotto announcement for the simple reason that I AM at work and would get into trouble if I got caught; when I do manage to see a flash lottery, it's usually long after the thing has ended.

Basically I'm not thrilled with the idea of missing a good chunk of them because of the new format (or schedule whatever you want to call it) but it's something I'll just have to live with. At the end of the day the lotteries are a nice little added bonus, so I can't get too upset...maybe just a wee bit upset. :P

[Vexendynamus]

Something like 40 lotteries ran in first two weeks after the new site went live. I saw exactly two. The new system works great for those who camp Twitter, as they have very little competition. Of course they wish this new system to remain unchanged. My friends and I gave up. We cannot find these stealth lotteries. As always, some people win and some people lose.

[TinDragon]

Something like 40 lotteries ran in first two weeks after the new site went live. I saw exactly two. The new system works great for those who camp Twitter, as they have very little competition. Of course they wish this new system to remain unchanged. My friends and I gave up. We cannot find these stealth lotteries. As always, some people win and some people lose.

They haven't posted on Twitter once about lotteries being active since the new system was released. Think they mentioned once that they are doing lotteries but didn't have one active at the time. I'm also fairly certain they stopped posting lotteries on Twitter for a couple months before the forum revamp.
So yeah, doesn't really have anything to do with camping Twitter.

[Bryzinkta]

From my point of view there are no functional lotteries.

Not seen a single one, so as far as I am concerned they don't exist.

Typical Turbine cynicism.

[Macroscian]

Oh, there's been that many of them? I must start sleeping less and check lottery page more often =)

[tsunamimc]

I must start sleeping less and check lottery page more often =)

LOL...

I must be lucky get to check web at work as much as I want *looks around*

But I still miss some lotteries and you know what I do not care...

They are not essential just a nice, OK a very nice, EXTRA

Even when I win an ugly mask, even when I didn't win anything, I partook and finally even when I missed a lottery maybe there will be another soon

I weekly biggie or 2 and lots of little flashies would be the perfect mix for me

A long drought and then a tsunami {sic} is not so good!

[Khafar]

Oh, there's been that many of them? I must start sleeping less and check lottery page more often =)

I think I'm going to write a Chrome extension to check it for me every 15 minutes or so . I'm simply not going to manually check the lottery page many times a day.

Khafar

[tsunamimc]

BIG LOTTERY NEWS - just in case you didnt check,,,U can win Helms Deep! 1 lottery per server....
Also a lucky for some: 1 and 3 lottery for an extraordinary xp

[TaSwavo4God]

so we have not one lottery but one per drive to boost the beta which I assume is going on

we have had no lotteries other than HD-related for WEEKS

the lottery system is NOT up-and -running - it's written and forgotten as they have already done the x2 XP thing for everyone

sorry folks - but the lottery is a broken idea because YOU chose to abandon it
you can't abandon something and expect people to look each day in case you chose to bless us with a lottery
I say that - but I know you DO
you want folks to buy into other companies CASH revenue like facebook and twitter so we can be told when you might give a random chance of stuff

Are they even real? Who knows? As there is ONLY ONE - why not announce it?

[rosey21]

Would be so nice getting back on schedule with the lotteries having 2-3 a week.

[EmyrSelyf]

I don't think there was ever really supposed to be a schedule, but I'm guessing there will probably be a greater likelihood of them, though, after they recover from launch week.

[tsunamimc]

I don't think there was ever really supposed to be a schedule, but I'm guessing there will probably be a greater likelihood of them, though, after they recover from launch week.

I hope so...having none at ALL I have come to miss their infrequency....

[TaSwavo4God]

they said there would be a schedule - then there wasn't
then they started making all of them 'chances to win HD'
then the disappeared
then one more 'chances to win HD'

then nothing

Apparently the fall cosmetic hunt and treasure (larely cosmetic) hunt were more more important as they were already written and could be flipped on like a switch...
And a LOT more people would win and get stuff that would have them think "this game is awesome - lets wait it out until HD"

Synical? moi?

I'm cross at the lack of lottery - the code is in there to flip it on or off. They've decided that they do NOT want beta testers spending any time on live servers collecting there stuff if they win (that's the ONLY logic I can get from this) unless...

The store is clearly broken in some way - maintenance almost every day for a week is the sign.
I'm guessing they tied in lottery wins to that system - and it's broke

I said it in 2 lines of text - that would not destroy the world if we were told that
but hiding what is happening is just a case of 'users get lost until we are prepared to tell you good stuff'

[Khafar]

they said there would be a schedule - then there wasn't

Actually, this is something Sapience has been pretty clear about ever since they switched over to the new forums - there will be no "schedule". That's OK. What isn't OK is running them so sparsely, and often for such short intervals. That's a recipe to get most everyone to simply give up on them.

Someone more cynical than I might conclude that's what they want to happen, but that just doesn't make any sense. It would have been much simpler to just drop Lotteries when they dropped most of the other features that required character data.

I'm guessing they tied in lottery wins to that system - and it's broke

The lottery system has been "broken" for a long time (because it's tied to their flaky character data pulls... they've often excluded characters that should be included, and included characters which have even been deleted). That's not because of the Store, which seems to have its own problems.

Between the Lottery and the Store, I can guarantee that the Store will get orders of magnitude more attention - their revenues depend on it. And once the Store is fixed, I expect the Lottery will still have the same issues it's had for a long time now.

Khafar

[tsunamimc]

That's a recipe to get most everyone to simply give up on them.

Someone more cynical than I might conclude that's what they want to happen, but that just doesn't make any sense. It would have been much simpler to just drop Lotteries when they dropped most of the other features that required character data.Khafar

As they ARE still here, with there OWN page, I am giving the benefit of the doubt that Sapience and the LOTTERY crew are just a wee bit busy at the moment...that the only Lotteries I remember have been HD would kind of indicate this...not that I agree that that is stricctly the best strategy to keep ALL community happy...indeed the 'lottery check...no active lotteries'...is getting very stale, I still do it at least twice a day as you NEVER DO KNOW!

RE: data extraction issues...I think they got those sorted after the series of TEST lotteries...

I still prefer a useless gift won in the lottery to an any dropped in an Hobbit Present - it just feels better!

[Khafar]

RE: data extraction issues...I think they got those sorted after the series of TEST lotteries...

Doubtful. See here. If those were fixed weeks ago, they'd have updated the Known Issues list by now. Of course, we can't know one way or the other because it's been weeks since they ran any sort of lottery, to the best of my knowledge.

I know they're busy. But I don't really see the point of keeping these if they're run so sparsely that most people give up even looking for them.

Khafar