Just a tip, LOTRO.

If you're trying to grow the game again, you think you could do basic stuff like having a website that is responsive and a game client that doesn't take a day to patch? Seriously, you haven't re-based your client download in how long?

Just some suggestions. These are two things that are very cheap and easy. You can run a responsive website that is mostly text/images and a forum from your basic home internet service now days.

Just my suggestions.

With warcraft in an utter downward spiral and nothing else out there really worth playing, you would think you could lure back a bunch of old school lotro players. Especially those that fled during the mounted combat disaster. Spend a little on marketing too.

I'd love to see this game grow back into a thriving MMO with raid content and raiding kins again. Engine and graphics are still fine for this day and age. Hell game still has better graphics than new games coming out.

I agree about the website, especially the forum site. There is no notification for PMs, I sometimes get logged out when I submit a post, I can't log in from the mobile site(I have to go to full view to log in, and it's been like this on multiple phones), and there are times where my work comp, desktop at home, and phone all require refreshing just to get the site to show up on screen.

Aye, the website has become pretty unreliable for communicating lately. Messages or replies to PM's arriving late or not at all, and posts not entering when you hit send, but a while later.

Yes, even trying to sign-in often ends up on an error page after having filled in account name and password, then if backstep sometimes it will be logged in and You can proceed to the forums, sometimes You end up back at the fields and having to fill in the account and password again and hit submit etc. Also takes longer again to load sometimes, just as long as before the move. Not every time, but often enough to be annoying.

Now it seems PM's gets lost for a day or so and can arrive late as well. Not to mention no notification when getting a PM (although that has been like that for years, even if once upona time it did work). It is not working very well.

Oh and yes, the sign-in page has a error or warning icon in the browsers toolbar, saying it's not secure, but then once finally signed in it goes away. I guess it's the https certification that is not working as it should, or something.

The time to upgrade all the hardware has passed long ago. Ideally Lotro woukd have had a 64 bit client, top of the line website and other modern tech for years now, but for some reason that never happened. Maybe once the 64 bit client is finished the engineers can move onto updating other projects.

As for returning to a thriving mmo, I'm not sure it's possible. There is simply too many issues that went neglected over the years, like not upgrading the client or website. And the ssg team is too small to make any major changes/fixes to the game in a timely manor. The best they can do is release content every 6-8 months and fix what they can on between.

I think it is a little unfair to take a poke at the website... Even in the heyday it wasn't really any better and all the recent buggy stuff has only really come about due to them having to find ways to prevent spammers having us where we were 12 months ago.
Yes, we can spout things like " there should be 24/7 mods on the forum" and "there should be a lot more budget allocation to front end community services"....

But, reality is, the revenue from Lotro and DDO are combined and allocated back minus all the overheads .. and content and design are always going to be way above community services.

I guess you should ask yourself this... What do you want from this aged game? How would you allocate a budget? Website over the next update? All focus on raids and itemization for the raids over lets say... the epic story?

Maybe make your list and lets see how far we would get ....

I suspect there is very little they can do with the forum without spending money on new software - go look at the foot of the page - they are running an obsolete version.

This is actually an UPGRADE on how it was 2 years ago, when I pointed out the forum software version hadnt been upgraded since the game was launched; that the version being used was already 10 years old (4.0.xx)

So signed.
/Edit: i dont want to do PR.: but my Internetprovider has got souch webpages with sandbox - creating.
And they are online.

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Originally Posted by rhugga

a game client that doesn't take a day to patch?

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That is largely dependent on your internet speed and your computer. With my fairly recent computer (built in 2017), a SSD drive, and a fast internet connection it takes about 60-90 minutes to download the ENTIRE game from scratch and patch it. If you play on an old dinky laptop with a 5400 rpm drive on old dinky wifi on an old dinky DSL line.... well, that is not really SSG's problem to fix, now is it? ;)

The game downloads individual files, but to give you an idea.... on 100 Mbps internet, it will take about 45 minutes to download all the data. The unpacking/unzipping and patching into game files part will take just about as long, but depends on the speed of the computer and the hard drive.

As far as the WEBSITE goes.... you are right though. It's dinky, it fails a lot, Cordovan has said that they are aware of it, but they don't have the time to fix it right now, and they will release an updated site later this year.

Edit: c.rap.py isn't allowed, so I changed it to dinky! :D

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Originally Posted by maartena

...

Edit: c.rap.py isn't allowed, so I changed it to dinky! :D ...

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Eheh! Priceless. :)

To all who were complaining about PMs, you need to manually enable PM notifications in general settings. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by xxSniperxx

To all who were complaining about PMs, you need to manually enable PM notifications in general settings. :rolleyes:

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I, at least, do have that setting on, yet I do *not* always see/get notifications. Site rebuild, hopefully, will address that.

The web site has been quite cranky indeed over the past 24-48 hours. Hopefully this is just a short-term blip. We are working to get an updated base client out soon as well.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

The web site has been quite cranky indeed over the past 24-48 hours. Hopefully this is just a short-term blip. We are working to get an updated base client out soon as well.

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I've had trouble logging in for like 2 years.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

The web site has been quite cranky indeed over the past 24-48 hours. Hopefully this is just a short-term blip. We are working to get an updated base client out soon as well.

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Nice!

I love it when you tell us anything about literally anything that's going on. ;-}

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

The web site has been quite cranky indeed over the past 24-48 hours. Hopefully this is just a short-term blip. We are working to get an updated base client out soon as well.

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I'll take a note of the:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

...soon...

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:p

You forgot to add the ™ after though. :)

Jokes aside. Nice to hear. Have a look into the warning icon up in the toolbar in for example Google Chrome as well on the sign-in page, before You fill in accout name and password and hit enter. It's warning that the site is trying to run a scrip from an unverified source. Probably something to do with the https certification or something like that anyway. Since we do fill in our account names and passwords it would be nice to get verified that it is from a safe source. Considering that in the past fake LoTRO cloned sites did exist and could fool some to fill in those things and potentially have their passwords and such stolen. It's a tool to be sure to verify it's the official LoTRO site. Not fool proof of course, but at least one assurance.

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Originally Posted by Rimenuir

I've had trouble logging in for like 2 years.

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Yep. Half the time I login, I get a blank error page.

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Originally Posted by gildhur

Yep. Half the time I login, I get a blank error page.

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Until recently, I thought that was just me.

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Originally Posted by Lord.Funk

I'll take a note of the:

:p

You forgot to add the ™ after though. :)

Jokes aside. Nice to hear. Have a look into the warning icon up in the toolbar in for example Google Chrome as well on the sign-in page, before You fill in accout name and password and hit enter. It's warning that the site is trying to run a scrip from an unverified source. Probably something to do with the https certification or something like that anyway. Since we do fill in our account names and passwords it would be nice to get verified that it is from a safe source. Considering that in the past fake LoTRO cloned sites did exist and could fool some to fill in those things and potentially have their passwords and such stolen. It's a tool to be sure to verify it's the official LoTRO site. Not fool proof of course, but at least one assurance.

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Noscript (Firefox), only shows 3 scripts trying to run, SSG's , ajax-googleapi - which causes problems some times, so I have disabled, and Google-analytics (spyware), which I have permanently blocked.
If you have more than this, you may have spyware/trackers installed, or unfriendly browser extensions.

Something's changed today ...at least for me.

Site is snappy and responsive. I don't need 5 or 6 clicks/reloads to get to the forums today like I have as long as I can remember.

I agree with the concept, but the game is to instance and raid heavy now, we need to get people back in the environment.

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Originally Posted by Occum

Something's changed today ...at least for me.

Site is snappy and responsive. I don't need 5 or 6 clicks/reloads to get to the forums today like I have as long as I can remember.

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Dont say that!!!

Every time things improve and someone comments on how well everything is working, it all turns to crapola again!!

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Originally Posted by Nymphonic

Until recently, I thought that was just me.

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I've had trouble for years getting logged into this site on the first try.

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Originally Posted by xxSniperxx

To all who were complaining about PMs, you need to manually enable PM notifications in general settings. :rolleyes:

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Yup, know that, and setting is correct. Still, notifications are not always forthcoming. Sometimes I get them, but most of the time, not.

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Originally Posted by Arnenna

Yup, know that, and setting is correct. Still, notifications are not always forthcoming. Sometimes I get them, but most of the time, not.

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Mine has always been switched on, but I have only once has an in-forum notification, and that was about 4 years ago.

Re forum loading times improved. It seems they MAY have fixed the TLS handshake issue, as it now flickers up and vanishes, rather than hanging around waiting for it multiple times. Forums still took 16 seconds to reach the lpassword prompt this morning, but that is about half the time it has been taking in recent months.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

The web site has been quite cranky indeed over the past 24-48 hours. Hopefully this is just a short-term blip. We are working to get an updated base client out soon as well.

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The website has, for me, been near useless since SSG took over.

I can never log in on the first attempt.
This is the ONLY forum of any type I use that I have to log in to every time I visit.
And the forum itself is slower than molasses on a cold day, in Canada.

I know of people I have directed here because I've been so enthusiastic about the game, and they have one experience of the Forum and walk away.

Your Official Forum is the "first impression" you make on a potential customer, you don't get a second chance to make a first impression, and this first impression just isn't good enough.



All The Best

So after years of jankiness, for the past several days the Forums have been functioning PROPERLY for me. :p

Anyone else confirm? :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Moondog548

So after years of jankiness, for the past several days the Forums have been functioning PROPERLY for me. :p

Anyone else confirm? :D

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Actually REACHING the server is still taking much too long; but they do appear to have sorted the TLS handshake issue, so once you have reached the website and logged in, everything is much faster.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Moondog548

So after years of jankiness, for the past several days the Forums have been functioning PROPERLY for me. :p

Anyone else confirm? :D

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Yarbro

Actually REACHING the server is still taking much too long; but they do appear to have sorted the TLS handshake issue, so once you have reached the website and logged in, everything is much faster.

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Yeah, I spoke WAY too soon. :p

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Moondog548

Yeah, I spoke WAY too soon. :p

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The TLS handshake issue has made a HUGE difference when trying to log in via my mobile connection; it now takes about as long as on my home fibre connection and doesnt constantly fail to load the various parts of the webpage - requiring several refresh attemopts just to reach the log in prompt.

It still takes its time refreshing though, on the fibre connection it is like a greased weasel - even with the extra net congestion of millions of children playing Fortnite/Roblox all day.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by maartena

That is largely dependent on your internet speed and your computer. With my fairly recent computer (built in 2017), a SSD drive, and a fast internet connection it takes about 60-90 minutes to download the ENTIRE game from scratch and patch it. If you play on an old dinky laptop with a 5400 rpm drive on old dinky wifi on an old dinky DSL line.... well, that is not really SSG's problem to fix, now is it? ;)

The game downloads individual files, but to give you an idea.... on 100 Mbps internet, it will take about 45 minutes to download all the data. The unpacking/unzipping and patching into game files part will take just about as long, but depends on the speed of the computer and the hard drive.

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That's simply not true for everyone. I'm on gigabit FiOS, so it's definitely not my ISP. It's not my system, since I've got a 2.8gHz processor, an SSD with barely anything on it, and 16gb of RAM. I last updated when the legacy servers came out (not that long ago) so I don't have a ton of patching to do.

And yet, I've been trying to patch the damn game for 3 days. If I let it go overnight, at some point it hangs and stops updating until I restart the program. It's beyond frustrating to decide I have a weekend I can actually have time to play and then not be able to play because it's downloading the patch at 280kbps (I timed it).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by katespace77

That's simply not true for everyone. I'm on gigabit FiOS, so it's definitely not my ISP. It's not my system, since I've got a 2.8gHz processor, an SSD with barely anything on it, and 16gb of RAM. I last updated when the legacy servers came out (not that long ago) so I don't have a ton of patching to do.

And yet, I've been trying to patch the damn game for 3 days. If I let it go overnight, at some point it hangs and stops updating until I restart the program. It's beyond frustrating to decide I have a weekend I can actually have time to play and then not be able to play because it's downloading the patch at 280kbps (I timed it).

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You need to patch for 3 days? I call BS!
I can do a fresh install on my laptop from 2008 in a 5-6 hours if I leave it running and don't do anything else.

I don't have gigabit FiOS, my processor is weaker, and I have less RAM, so how do I patch faster then you? Explain this to me.