Where has Turbine gone and where is it going?

[Nymphonic]

This post is not about the game. The game is fantastic. Best MMO I have ever played(Well, old school SWG was better but had some major bugs). I've been playing for 6 years and I still have fun everytime I log on. And I can tell the devs really care about what they do. They goof sometimes, but they do care, and it shows.

No, this post is about Turbine as a business. Today I actually had $20 in my wallet, and to a parent putting his kid through college $20 is a treat, I went to Gamestop looking for a Turbine point card because I haven't put in one red cent since buying Isengard because I hate Digital River. And Gamestop had no Turbine cards.

I looked at the cards for Wizard 101, World of Warcraft, EA had a universal card for it's MMOs, there was one for Minecraft, but no LOTRO.

And I started thinking of the fact that for years, Turbine has made it hard for people to give them money. There is no link on the forum page to lead you to purchase an expansion, there were no cards at a dedicated video game shop while Wizard 101 had them in different price ranges, you have to make an account with Digital River to buy an expansion, and you can't get to the main LOTRO web site from the forum page. And this is hoping you don't get logged off while looking.

Speaking of Isengard, when I bought it, I had no code number and no indication that I was getting a code number for 8 solid hours. This is unacceptable.

And let's not forget Turbine's absolute lack of communicating with it's customers, especially with simply deleting and locking posts about forum performance issues and upcoming MMOs that people talk about in the off topic section.

And we have this thread about someone's character data being corrupted. There is a post in there stating that this has happened to someone multiple times and he was kind enough to give a set of instructions on how to recover your character. http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...ly-disapointed

You should NEVER in an MMO have to worry about your character data getting corrupted. This is supposed to be a AAA MMO.

As much as I love this game, I cannot recommend an MMO with a questionably run business. As cruddy as World of Warcraft(uh, that game bored me to tears) is, I never had a problem with Blizzard as a company.


I play on a nightly basis because I'm a lifetime member and LOTRO is a great game but the way it's run is sub par In MY Humble Opinion. I just feel sorry for the Devs not being able to do as much as they want to do.

*hits CTR-C just in case there is a log out*

[Tarmas_Eldar]

And I started thinking of the fact that for years, Turbine has made it hard for people to give them money.

They are making it impossible right now, for me at least.

"There was an error processing your request. Please try again."

That's what I get when I try to purchase points. Been the same for a few days. Nothing wrong with my cards. No changes made to my account.

[EU_Orc_Bane]

RIGHT! Just Stop! People like Nymphonic and Tarmas are NOT allowed to get their negativity on. We only just about survived the "post-Honvic not very happy" almost-depression and I don't think the game has sufficiently recovered from that to be able to take another body blow. IMHO

[Nymphonic]

RIGHT! Just Stop! People like Nymphonic and Tarmas are NOT allowed to get their negativity on. We only just about survived the "post-Honvic not very happy" almost-depression and I don't think the game has sufficiently recovered from that to be able to take another body blow. IMHO

Ok, you made me LOL! Too bad I gave out too much rep already.

[EU_Orc_Bane]

Ok, you made me LOL! Too bad I gave out too much rep already.

LOLs are worth far more to me than reps

[Pluck]

I too am utterly amazed that I cannot buy expansions directly from my account page. The Digital River page is confusing, and that should never happen when you are trying to sell a product. I had to remake a new account on that page because it wouldnt load up my old one. Thats just.. insane. They really DONT want my money!

[Maximilan]

I agree with the OP that Turbine is really selling themselves short from the business side. It's easy enough to download the game and enter with a F2P account, but where Turbine shoots themselves in the foot, is the real money they could receive IF they made it easier to purchase content/game items. They have made things needlessly complicated by using 3rd party vendors (Digital River), Lotro Market and THE store. While I did not have problems using DR, I didn't like the way this was distributed. The Market (which I've never used) evidently has issues as well by the posts I've seen. The Store is abysmal now after the update, I could navigate a website faster 20 years ago with a dial-up than I can the store ingame now. The easiest part of this game should be purchasing something, NOT leveling!!! Geez, you'd think that'd be an obvious revelation!

It is one thing to have doubts/problems about the ingame aspects, such as a bugged quests, features that don't work as intended or excessive lag - it is another issue when customers have doubts about their money and what/when/how they will receive the purchased product. Turbine needs a better distribution system to deliver their products to the customer. They have shifted from retail stores to online madness and if it hasn't yet, it will affect their bottom line in the future. Lotro is a game for many types of people who may or may not have played an MMO before. It has a wide age range, diverse customer base, is based on popular book series and has international appeal. This is not a 'hardcore' type of game IMO, this is built more for the casual gamer. If you want broad appeal then you need the ability to distribute broadly, which has not happened.

Please realize I've been a Turbine customer for 10 of the past 12 years, playing Asheron's Call and now Lotro for over 5 years. I understand the 'shift' in marketing and distribution (doesn't mean I like it) and why they went F2P instead of subscriptions. However, they did not think through the distribution when they ended retail store participation, particularly with game expansions. I post this not as a complaint, but more of an observation from a long time customer. I hope Turbine can improve and enable Lotro to have a long bright future. However, my faith in their ability to do so has been steadily eroding and I doubt I will ever put any more real money into Turbine. I will continue to play as a Premium player so long as I'm having fun, but I wouldn't be recommending Lotro to anyone else. My advice to Turbine on the distribution system is easy, it's called KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid. You'll make more money Turbine!

[Edrogar]

The Digital River page is confusing, and that should never happen when you are trying to sell a product. I had to remake a new account on that page because it wouldnt load up my old one. Thats just.. insane. They really DONT want my money!

What's confusing? Click Add to Cart --> Click Checkout --> Fill Out Form --> submit it and wait for the code in your email.

You don't need an account with them, filling out the form automatically makes you a temporary account for your purchase, as long as your payment method is valid then your good to go, i really don't see how that's complicated or much different from any other online store.

[Armitas]

I hear you. This is my favorite game as well, I want it to grow and thrive, and it hurts to see so many weeds grow free.

Worst website I've ever been to as far as reliability
Worst performance I have ever seen in a game
The closing of threads with no explanation breaks my trust in the forums
Abuses of the rep system that go unchanged
GMs that are mostly just autoreply dispensers
Hypocritical rules when it comes to pvp/pve

Despite all that it's a true testament to the quality of the game that it is still my favorite. The game is actually good enough that I can tolerate all the other things for the most part. So far I haven't gone complete nerd rage on them but I've come close.

cntrl C, always. It's become such a habbit I do it on emails without knowing.

[Flagge69]

Abuses of the rep system that go unchanged

cntrl C, always. It's become such a habbit I do it on emails without knowing.

yes, I constantly get abused by the help of the rep.system *sad.panda

I [strg]+[c] in any forum since two years now .... thx turbine ^^

[Maximilan]

you shouldn write things like that, it instantly disqualyfies you for an further serious discussion or evalution of the topic,

there IS a real world outthere, and understanding how it works would help you in turn to understand so many things that seem to confuse you at the moment.

Why did you write things like that? You don't have to agree, but attacking the OP shows a lack of maturity. Look at the previous post, it's not inflammatory - it simply shows a differing of opinion. I respect that whether I agree or not.

[Armitas]

there IS a real world out there,

I've played that game, it's completely broken and bugged. Crashes, forced log outs, laaag galore, takes forever to load in your character each day, and a massive grind fest.

[monteeburns]

look, this game is run by maybe 10 people at the moment, celestrata, the guy with the beard and glasses and sapience who locks into accounts of former or fictious developers now and then to make it look a bit more dedicated ... but thats it

Best post of the day, comedy at its finest.

I think you're being a bit unfair on nymph though, he hasn't let his love of the game cloud his judgement on how it's run, and not all F2P games are gougefests. Tera has no content restrictions and as yet I haven't seen a popup about the store, or anything that requires me to use it. That's how a F2P game should be, provide content good enough for players to want to play the game which in turns means more will visit the store because they want to. Not provide shoddy content and shove the store in people's face at every opportunity, and work out more ways to ensure players absolutely must visit the store.

A once great, still OK game, still around because it's backed by the IP, run by a shoddy business that doesn't appear to give two hoots about its customers. How many would still be here if another MMO had the Lotro IP? Probably only a couple of fanbois and their dog.

[Rufkin]

Originally Posted by Nymphonic ~ Best MMO I have ever played(Well, old school SWG was better but had some major bugs).

you shouldn write things like that, it instantly disqualyfies you for an further serious discussion or evalution of the topic

I don't know, SWG was the beginning of what we have now. Without their failure, would WoW, LOTRO, or any other MMO have known what not to do? I personally feel it was SWG that caused Turbine to limit our housing decorations and inventory space as much as they did. Not to mention creating instanced housing areas, can you imagine how horrible the landscape would be if Turbine had decided to allow you to place your house anywhere? That's just a small portion of the SWG failures, who knows how many more things were learned from them.

[Arrabell]

RIGHT! Just Stop! People like Nymphonic and Tarmas are NOT allowed to get their negativity on. We only just about survived the "post-Honvic not very happy" almost-depression and I don't think the game has sufficiently recovered from that to be able to take another body blow. IMHO

LoL.

[Nyrion]

I partially agree with you Nym. Partially in that they really haven't advertised the game well, or made it easy to spend money on it. I can also agree with the poor forum performance, and lacking game performance(although it's no where near the worst I've ever experienced. That would be a gross exaggeration). Locking threads about the performance issues is more iffy IMO, because those threads are created solely for people to vent their rage, justified or not. There's no discussion value, and honestly I think the only reason you're pointing out the lockings of those threads in particular is because for whatever reason it's more personal to you. Were they locking threads about some other common topic I get the feeling you wouldn't be nearly as ticked off by it. Frankly the principle of locking threads without explanation is what should be addressed, not on a subject by subject basis. As for people talking about other MMOs, that's fairly common practice I find, and not a big deal to me at all. You want to talk about an MMO, it's not difficult to find somewhere other than their competition's official forums.

The 'absolute lack of communication' is really the only part of your post I truly disagree with significantly. Turbine has made noticeable improvement in this aspect in recent months. The Twitter Dev Chats have been a great success in this regard, and hopefully the Player Council turns out similarly. The extended downtime was managed very well too. Communication hasn't been perfect, certainly there are huge gaps in certain aspects(such as the aforementioned performance problems), but I don't feel it's nearly as bad as you suggest.

Just my thoughts. Undoubtedly you feel differently, and that's fine.

[Sapience]

As virtually every post in this thread violates the community guidelines, I don't see much future for it.