Quote Originally Posted by Vastin View Post
Pacing is in fact the main reason for the raid locks. In theory it helps keep the community together in terms of timing and their interests in the game.

In the past we've run into the problem that the community divides widely in the pace at which they approach the game. Some people only run a couple hours on the weekend, maybe do one or two instance runs and they're done for the week. At the other end of the spectrum some groups will literally run instances nonstop for 48 hours straight from the moment the content drops - and then yeah, they're bored and out of sync with the rest of the community, which has barely even gotten a look at it yet.

So the locks serve as a server-wide pacing mechanism. It certainly doesn't keep everyone on the same page community-wise, but it helps keep them in the same general ballpark, at least for a while. Granted, it may seem a little old-fashioned in the age of binge watching Netflix shows, but that's the reasoning at any rate.

Maintaining some sense of community is a Big Deal(tm) in an MMO, especially a very long running one like LOTRO, and there are a lot of basic design elements to the genre that make it especially difficult to maintain - such as leveling, which striates the community all over the board into groups that have difficulty playing with each other. Thus we make efforts where we can to try to keep the concept of community and group play relevant.

Another reason for the locks, frankly, is that they also give us time to address serious problems that might arise, such as content or reward exploits, before they can cause too much damage and force us to commit a server-wide rollback or something horrible like that.

-Vastin

Locks on raid should be always. But locks on 3/6man instances are not good and very unhealthy for lotro community. I think, you understand that Vastin.