Players live outside the USA as well.....

[Tellion]

I was about to enter your White hand photo contest. Then I saw in the rules that it is for US residents only.
Hey, news flash..... allot of your players live outside the US, would be nice to be included. TYVM ..lol

[F2Play]

I was about to enter your White hand photo contest. Then I saw in the rules that it is for US residents only.
Hey, news flash..... allot of your players live outside the US, would be nice to be included. TYVM ..lol

You're flogging a dead horse, they don't seem to think the expense involved with making their contests available to all/most of their players are worth the good will it would generate.:/

[Khafar]

As they've explained in many, many prior threads on this topic... they simply don't have the resources (and large team of corporate lawyers) to run global contests, with the huge maze of contest laws that vary from country to country, province to province, state to state. Heck, they can't even include Rhode Island in the U.S. due to its strict laws, a state that's literally like 25 miles away from their offices.

They've promised to try and include more countries over time, but it's never going to include everyone. Even Blizzard, with their vast sums of money, cannot accomplish that.

Anyway, they've Closed the majority of the previous threads, and they'll probably do so to this one too.

Khafar

[Fin.]

Can we have a sticky/disclaimer that will clearly state that non-US residents are excluded from most of the contests, so there won't be spam of these threads?

[Yula_the_Mighty]

Can we have a sticky/disclaimer that will clearly state that non-US residents are excluded from most of the contests, so there won't be spam of these threads?

How would a sticky help?
All the sticky will do:

1) People will see the sticky - unlikely - generate Spam threads demanding a change.

2) People will not see - not read the sticky - generate Spam threads.

IMHO - A sticky will increase the number of complaints.

[Bunghelm]

The lottery is available outside the US, so it's odd that this competition isn't...

I guess it's because of shipping of the major prize, being a physical prize as opposed to electronic. Though I still wish I could enter for the other prizes. TP & stuff.

[Bunghelm]

Oh and another thing... the turbine launcher can know what country you are in, so WHY advertise the competition on the launcher and loading screens? It would make more sense to have it removed.

[Tullaian]

Lotteries laws are unique to each country and require in most cases seperated gaming/lottery licences and compliance rules. This isn't unique to Turbine or their fault in any way at all. It simply isn't possible in a cost effective manner for them to get a lottery licence in every country of the world.

The in game lottery doesn't count because they aren't distributing a cash prize but simply providing in game items within the context of the game which means that those lotteries escape that Gambling Commission definition of lottery.

[Aydee]

Kinda agree. It's a pain in the bum. I understand WHY it's an issue, and I appreciate it. But you still have a slightly bitter taste in the mouth...

There is ONE area that they need to work on though.

The Twitter Lotteries. This are like the 'in game lottery'. No borders, no requirements to be US.

And they occur at 2am AEDST and finish at about 6am.

If they went about 4 hours either way, it'd fit into a time when at least some of the rest of the world may be awake too.. ie: Start at 10pm finish 2am. A little late, but not out of this world crazy, OR start 6am finish at 10am.

Just 4 hrs, and it'd still likely fit within US Business hours (You may need to find that one guy in the office who always gets there at 7am or something), but it's not out of this world crazy.

You may note I'm not demanding that it happen between 2pm and 6pm AEDST. I'm expecting Turbine employees to be in bed at that time. But, it'd be nice if they happened when some of the rest of the world was awake too.

However, that's probably a seperate section of Turbine again... I'll just keep looking for the store specials. They're more useful on twitter.

Speaking of which. Have LOTRO gotten a G+ group yet?

AD

[lordjimdudkiewicz]

I was about to enter your White hand photo contest. Then I saw in the rules that it is for US residents only.
Hey, news flash..... allot of your players live outside the US, would be nice to be included. TYVM ..lol

I have a cottage behind my house I can rent you. Problem solved.

[BrianDavion]

ya know, maybe thew best form of protest would be to just enter these contests anyway, make the expense of filtering out non-American entries greater then expanding the contest to other countries

[Aydee]

Why do that? I don't hate the US player base because of this. I also don't hate Turbine because of this. It's the wonders of international law. It's far easier to just hate lawyers. :P

I'd LOVE to enter the competitions, but can't.

Perhaps we need to hand the lottery legislation to the same guys in America who do your drug legislation, whereby they are currently trying to legislate US law that applies to the international community. ie. A law stating that if you, as an American, plan to go to Amsterdam to smoke pot (Where it is legal), then you are in violation of US law and thus can be charged.

WHEEEEEeeeeeeeeee.

I suppose that above statement is more proof of how painful law can be at times. Law is there to protect, serve and hinder all the law abiding people out there. :P

AD

[chuimon]

Lotteries laws are unique to each country and require in most cases seperated gaming/lottery licences and compliance rules.

To make it even more complicated. Making a contest legal in one jurisdiction may make it illegal in another. From Sapience in another thread -

In beta we created a contest that did include several EU countries, though unfortunately not all of them. In order to make it work it required that we exclude a US state (Rhode Island), because the laws involved to make it legal in several countries made it illegal in that state.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...51#post5700851

[Shellra]

Those of us who have been gaming online for a while have seen this in numerous other places. It's still ####, but I came to terms with it a few years ago.

Americans get competitions, we get to not live in America, it's pretty win/win

[Khafar]

And they occur at 2am AEDST and finish at about 6am.

If they went about 4 hours either way, it'd fit into a time when at least some of the rest of the world may be awake too...

Of course, that's the problem: the world is round . If they moved it back to 7AM their time, that would be 2AM in Alaska and Hawaii (and 4AM in California, not exactly prime time in a state with nearly 40M people in it). Moving it 4 hours the other way would be somewhat better, at least as long as they don't have an operation in China.

The only way they're going to get better coverage in more places with those is if they run them longer, maybe 8-10 hours. Do that, and pretty much everyone should be able to find at least a few hours when they could participate.

Khafar

[Lohi]

The Twitter Lotteries.

Of course these completely discriminate against discriminating people who don't use Twitter! We have to keep reloading lottos every hour to see if there's something new. And these discriminate against the few people who are actually working while at work! Turbine hates us!

[enginekid88]

How would a sticky help?

a sticky on the forums would not help, but just like my other thread pointed out, the real reason players from other nations are trying to join the contest only to find out they cannot is because of this in-game advertisement:




Turbine should have the foresight to add an asterisk to the right of the word Contest, then below have that asterisk with the line U.S. Customers only

Photo Contest*

*US Customers only

Players might still not like that, and come to the forums to complain, but at least they won't be strung along for a half an hour, logging off the game to enter the contest and think about what photo to create. That's what happens to many people, and only afterwards do they realize they do not qualify to enter.

[MilkPudding]

The lottery is available outside the US, so it's odd that this competition isn't...

I guess it's because of shipping of the major prize, being a physical prize as opposed to electronic. Though I still wish I could enter for the other prizes. TP & stuff.

It's not a real lottery coz you don't even need to spend money or make any purchase to enter it and the prizes are strictly in-game stuffs. So by definition, it's not gambling at all and won't be regulated by the law.

Things will be different if it's, for example, 50 TP per entry for the prize of 100 bucks.

And there's little to do with shipping but contest rules in different countries (you know when you hold a contest to give out real life things as a company, it's not just as simple as shipping it).

[Celestrata]

As others in this thread have brought up, contest laws are quite complex and it's the main reason that not all of our contests work with all countries. While users outside of the US may not be able to enter the White Hand photo contest, you can enter our #WHITEHAND contest on Twitter, where you can win Isengard legendary keys.

And, as others have already mentioned what we said in prior threads here, I think we shall close this discussion.