"Issues beyond our control"

[arrakis42]

While there is a complete lack of info or communication on the forums, several minutes of discussion about the issues are found on this Twitch stream from today:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/717099109

[soltasword]

[IMG] [/IMG]

[War_Council]

I work in IT as a sysadmin. I understand that there are challenges in maintaining enterprise level server clusters. I also believe that any IT problem "beyond your control" represents poor planning. To be honest, I don't really care who's fault it is. I have been playing LOTRO with some friends for over decade, ever since open beta when the level cap was 15. The constant outages and server lag have spoiled our enjoyment of the game. Perhaps its time to move on.

[lockecd]

centrylink outage

https://downdetector.com/status/centurylink/map/

[Fishgood]

The Witching Hour approaches. It's 4am servertime. Let's see if the lag starts up again, like it has the last few days at this time.

Played this morning during the USA prime time with no problems. I'm beginning to wonder if their contract with the Data Center has the connection throttled or something. Sadly, this is the Oceanic primetime to play for me (Aussie).

[Ranatuor_Erutron]

I was able to play for an hour or so last night (UK 12am) on my wee ickle alt, getting them to the end of the Ered Luin epic prelude.
This morning 30 mins of ok, then someone broke the golden rule of Lag Club (tm) which was never mention lag. People seem confused still, if you log in and your first words to us who are already on are "Haz lag gone?" then sure enough, in 3-4 mins the lag monsta awakens from it's bleary slumber, rubs its eyes, and trundles towards us with smoke and brimstone. Then we all lag.

Please learn... first rule about lag club is we don't talk about lag club. And the second rule is sssshhh.

Oh and don't mention witches either, but that's another matter, one player upset them too.

[Nihria]

While there is a complete lack of info or communication on the forums, several minutes of discussion about the issues are found on this Twitch stream from today:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/717099109

lol, first 5 minutes have a LAG ^^


Edit: I posted this after dying in an instance due of lag, waiting for be able to recover. Now the connection is totally lost, and i'm not able to reconnect. 1......20 no logonserver found

[Aranaan]

Well I can accept that this might be problems outside their control, but how about managing your customers with some updated information?
There is NONE! NOTHING! NADA! Its like being cast into the void by the Valar.


The community management have turned so lazy and it shows. It does no care for its player base.
And weekends are obvious not work days at all at SSG, not even customer support.

With so little respect for their playerbase, and now with a quick rohan cashgrab, between two periods with server problems, we are seeing the end of lotro under SSG hands.

I hope SSG can sell the rights to lotro, to another company. A company with the heart for its customer and with a experienced community & leadership management.

[Evilmagpie]

Well I can accept that this might be problems outside their control, but how about managing your customers with some updated information?
There is NONE! NOTHING! NADA! Its like being cast into the void by the Valar.

This!
Incredibly telling. Total lack of understanding, information and communication on display here is breath-taking from any provider of services.
This scenario is lacking Service Management 101, and I completely challenge +Cordavan on recent separate lines of response on these forums as a very clearly inexperienced and generally uninformed position of Incident/Service Management.
Standing Stone need to be called out on this, and being the owner of two lifetime accounts and another VIP account, I wish I could vote with my feet, I certainly can by not making any further cash purchases . . .

I work in a senior position on national technology contracts, I am based in Europe, not the states.
The bottom-line is whether this is a video game service, or something else, I am a paying customer, consuming a service provided by Standing Stone Games and the quality of this service for two consecutive periods, the first lasting almost five days of disruption, for which compensation (Free codes) were issued and now this, another day 5 of another period of complete service instability.

To be very clear, Laurelin;
Wednesday August 19th EU Evening (Prime), Every 10-15 minutes, Packet Loss spiking quickly in seconds to 90+%. Clearing down over 10-15 minutes to 0% and then rinse and repeat 15 minutes later.
Thursday August 20th EU Evening (Prime), Every 8 minutes, Packet Loss spiking quickly in seconds to 95%. Clearing down over 10-15 minutes to 0% and then rinse and repeat 15 minutes later.
Friday August 21st EU Evening (Prime), Every 20 minutes, Packet loss spiking quickly in seconds to 95%. Taking longer to clear and hovering around 40-50% for considerable periods of time, 30 minutes+
Saturday August 22nd Evening (Prime) Similar behaviour to Friday
Sunday August 23rd Evening (Prime) Similar behaviour to Thursday.

Regardless of whom you are as people, and I am sure the SSG team care about their game as a labour of love, and Cordavan is a great community representative whom just needs people to accept the laid back nature of the responses that are given to the customer base and "sorry, it is what it is, its out of our hands, Oh well, you won't get anything more because legally it is a minefield" . . . . . NO!. Wrong attitude, wrong approach, ill-advised.

You are a business producing a Client Server application that is a video game product, funded and paid for by paying customers like us whom over 13 years have invested literally (in some cases) northward of $1000 dollars and then some, into your company in return for a service.
Your business is a Client-Server application that at present is effectively rendered useless, due to the inconsistent delivery of performance for client connections, and you are technically within Day 10/11 within the last 30 days. That performance is simply not acceptable . . . Not by any service standards.

"It is out of your hands . . . We have issues with a provider and cannot give too much information otherwise we compromise ourselves legally" . . . . Sorry just simply not the correct position to take.

1. As your customer I do not want nor need to understand the specifics of your technical service incident scenario. However what you really should be setting are my expectations accordingly for services I subscribe to and am invested within if you are following a sustainable approach. This is Service Management 101, this is called expectation management. It is utterly not acceptable to maintain a wall of silence around your broken services as you have technically done over the last five days, saving one initial and formal response posting.

2. A harsh truth, As your customer I have a certain level of emotional credit and investment with you the services provider, however, that line of credit has a limit when a certain trigger point is reached following disappointment or continued poor service provision, and as a result empathy and sympathy begin to drastically reduce. Because of that you now have a position where I am not invested enough to care whether this a third party to yourselves, or even a sub contractor, I don't care. You are Standing Stone Games, this is your service provision, your services, Lotro is your product for which I am a paying customer.
So therefore the posture becomes, your service, your accountability, couldn't care about your subcontractors issues, fix your service. Full Stop.


One final point worth mentioning and this is true within any business vertical in this technology and micro-services, instant gratification age, you cannot continue to assume the delivery and deployment of this product is a pet project and labour of love for everybody involved, that we all look through the same lens of perception that I am sure yourself and the team whom love their game after many years of toil see things . . . because the harsh reality is, not all of us do, NO. We are not a large arm-chair extension of the development team sir, we are paying customers, understand that.

We love the game because we love playing it, we love to be able to use it, fully functional, as a product, because we consume it. . . . . as a service.

Your position on this whole scenario needs to be re-evaluated and you need to start setting expectations and managing messages fast. Service Management 101.

Please heed these words, because I will continue to use the mechanisms available to me as a paying customer to continue surfacing the reality of the gameplay experience via communications channels in the industry, forums and social media to drive home this message, with the support of others, until we see a posture change from ill service management choices.

Good luck.

[Cordovan]

You may notice this thread is quite a bit shorter than it was a while ago. We've been having to do some cleanup following deliberate trolling and troll account behavior, so especially some of these recent issue threads are being moderated. Try not to respond to obvious trolls.

[Narthalion]

You may notice this thread is quite a bit shorter than it was a while ago. We've been having to do some cleanup following deliberate trolling and troll account behavior, so especially some of these recent issue threads are being moderated. Try not to respond to obvious trolls.

We really haven't had a statement on the latest performance issues in quite some time, Cord. Is there ANYTHING new you can share today concerning this past week?

[Cordovan]

We really haven't had a statement on the latest performance issues in quite some time, Cord. Is there ANYTHING new you can share today concerning this past week?

Work has been ongoing, and some work is being done this week to further refine the tools we have. Sorry I don't have much else to add.

[Narthalion]

Work has been ongoing, and some work is being done this week to further refine the tools we have. Sorry I don't have much else to add.

Thank you.

[maartena]

Work has been ongoing, and some work is being done this week to further refine the tools we have. Sorry I don't have much else to add.

I can at least tell you that I personally have not seen any issues since Sunday, so stuff seems to be stabilizing....

[Silmelin]

I can at least tell you that I personally have not seen any issues since Sunday, so stuff seems to be stabilizing....

I haven't seen any problems personally since Sunday either, I hope it is getting better

[Rugongrod]

[legotho]

Work has been ongoing, and some work is being done this week to further refine the tools we have. Sorry I don't have much else to add.

Could you at least post this somewhere where it's going to be found by casual readers? Given that you promised that

we will work to keep you updated here.

, it would be nice if you would actually do that.

[oldsneakers]

"Issues beyond our control" have returned this morning.

[LotroVidz]

"Issues beyond our control" have returned this morning.

SSG has left the chat.

[Once_of_Bree]

"Issues beyond our control" have returned this morning.

To be fair to SSG I'd guess this time it really is beyond their control - I'm in the UK got kicked out of game, servers and forums not accessible, but thanks to a tip on Twitter, VPN to the USA and forums and game available.

[Dinara]

I live on the East Coast of the USA, further south of SSG. I cannot get in game today. This is getting worse.
SSG could at least let us know what is going on even though they have no control over it.

[Marancil]

I live on the East Coast of the USA, further south of SSG. I cannot get in game today. This is getting worse.
SSG could at least let us know what is going on even though they have no control over it.

https://www.newsweek.com/cloudflare-...utages-1528601

a LOT of issues in many places.

[Cordovan]

I live on the East Coast of the USA, further south of SSG. I cannot get in game today. This is getting worse.
SSG could at least let us know what is going on even though they have no control over it.

We have been reading your reports this morning and have been investigating. So far this does appear to be related to the worldwide Internet issues being reported that have been attributed to an issue with CenturyLink.

[Thornglen]

We have been reading your reports this morning and have been investigating. So far this does appear to be related to the worldwide Internet issues being reported that have been attributed to an issue with CenturyLink.

Until just now I was unable to get to the forums or the game launcher. Both are now working, so it seems progress has ben made somewhere, but I can't yet speak to how stable it will be.

[Dinara]

https://www.newsweek.com/cloudflare-...utages-1528601

a LOT of issues in many places.

We have been reading your reports this morning and have been investigating. So far this does appear to be related to the worldwide Internet issues being reported that have been attributed to an issue with CenturyLink.

Thanks very much to both of you!