Faking LOTRO playtime on Steam

[alwaysbroke]

You don't need a game account to fake your playtime on Steam. You don't even need to sign-in. You just need to open the launcher.

Your playtime increases just leaving that launcher open. If you also launch the game client you'll gain double playtime. Isn't that neat? It makes me wonder about the authenticity of the reviews there. There's a regular stream of new positive reviews that tend to have hundreds to thousands of hours of playtime. Yet in game we're back to pre-gundabad population and new epic levels of lag. They can't all be fake though because you need to put money into Steam to make a review.

[Fadil]

You don't need a game account to fake your playtime on Steam. You don't even need to sign-in. You just need to open the launcher.

Your playtime increases just leaving that launcher open. If you also launch the game client you'll gain double playtime. Isn't that neat? It makes me wonder about the authenticity of the reviews there. There's a regular stream of new positive reviews that tend to have hundreds to thousands of hours of playtime. Yet in game we're back to pre-gundabad population <snip>.

Are you sure about that?
Atm the influx of new players is quite big and I saw +1600 players on, on more than
one occasion the last days on Evernight alone.
I also read threads elsewhere how much people enjoy the fact that the lower
level areas are so populated again.

Edit, some quotes from Reddit:

"Just have to say, as a returning player for the last 4 years, seeing all the low-lvl areas as crowded as they are is honestly such a good vibe."

"Same! I have actually had to wait for respawns of quest mobs all the way through - Evendim and Forochel, Moria ... all over ME."

"My brother recently came back to the game and I tried it for the first time I was totally surprised how busy the low level zones were, the downs was packed."

[alwaysbroke]

Are you sure about that?
Atm the influx of new players is quite big and I saw +1600 players on, on more than
one occasion the last days on Evernight alone.
I also read threads elsewhere how much people enjoy the fact that the lower
level areas are so populated again.

Am I sure about what? The population numbers? As sure as I can be on my server because I'm looking at the ingame socials on a daily basis. The numbers are back to pre-gundabad levels. I didn't suggest this was uniform so please spare me the generality rant. This thread is about faking steam playtime.

I'm sure faking steam playtime is easy. Those numbers that steam show for players active can also be faked. It only takes opening the launcher, not even sign-in, to add to Steam playtime and active count. That's what I said.

Opening the launcher adds to playtime and active count. Additionally opening the game doubles playtime contribution and active count. Steam doesn't know the difference between a launcher and client and treats them like two instances of the game. I played for one hour, three-way, with the launcher open. When I closed LOTRO down, Steam had added 4 hours of playtime.

[Plidak]

Discord shows "currently playing lotro" with client open, so nothing new.

[DoRonRon]

We had 1200+ non-anons on Evernight the last couple of weekends. Free stuff will do that, just short of the queues of the last summer giveaway?

If the late game is too much to bare, then it might send peeps on to lower alts for a reminder of what the game used to be.

On the premise that steam players are playing a variety of games some aren't perhaps so deep into the games' systems to see where they are failing us?