Can't take much more of standing stone games nonsense

[Faudyen]

I love this game, played it for well over a decade on several accounts.
Today the expansion came out as well as the decoration to port us to the new zone. The decoration requires that you have completed the book quest.
Really? So I have to do this on every alt that I want to use the decoration that I got for pre ordering the ultimate edition of the expansion? I'm really tired of standing stone games attitude that purchasing the expansion is not enough for them.

Here is the short of it. I paid $129 for a non functioning in game decoration because standing stone games has decided to gate a $129 real money item behind a quest line.

I'm also annoyed at their anti alt attitude.

I get that the book quests take time to create, but guess what? They are not fun or interesting after you've done them 10 times.

I feel like I've spent a decade, at least, supporting this game, as well as, it's developers and they turn around and slap me in the face.

[Thurinuor]

I love this game, played it for well over a decade on several accounts.
Today the expansion came out as well as the decoration to port us to the new zone. The decoration requires that you have completed the book quest.
Really? So I have to do this on every alt that I want to use the decoration that I got for pre ordering the ultimate edition of the expansion? I'm really tired of standing stone games attitude that purchasing the expansion is not enough for them.

Here is the short of it. I paid $129 for a non functioning in game decoration because standing stone games has decided to gate a $129 real money item behind a quest line.

I'm also annoyed at their anti alt attitude.

I get that the book quests take time to create, but guess what? They are not fun or interesting after you've done them 10 times.

I feel like I've spent a decade, at least, supporting this game, as well as, it's developers and they turn around and slap me in the face.

It sounds like this is a bug. Maybe SSG should give a title for completing the book once for the whole account, so every alt can use it.

[Aradvlador]

I love this game, played it for well over a decade on several accounts.
Today the expansion came out as well as the decoration to port us to the new zone. The decoration requires that you have completed the book quest.
Really? So I have to do this on every alt that I want to use the decoration that I got for pre ordering the ultimate edition of the expansion? I'm really tired of standing stone games attitude that purchasing the expansion is not enough for them.

Here is the short of it. I paid $129 for a non functioning in game decoration because standing stone games has decided to gate a $129 real money item behind a quest line.

I'm also annoyed at their anti alt attitude.

I get that the book quests take time to create, but guess what? They are not fun or interesting after you've done them 10 times.

I feel like I've spent a decade, at least, supporting this game, as well as, it's developers and they turn around and slap me in the face.

Imagine people paying 129$ for a verry weak quest pack, cant call it an expansion since there is nothing new added into the game, they even thought its a bit plain and added the allegiance faction, like that counts for something. you can buy the most recent exciting games with less money. they call "expansion"every little qp this days, even 40$ are way to much for same old stuf.
Also i found it weird that there is not an outcry on forum about this.

[Nebless]

While it sucks, Turbine did the same when they gated Mines of Moria behind a quest line also to enter.

[LagunaD2]

While it sucks, Turbine did the same when they gated Mines of Moria behind a quest line also to enter.

That quest line was part of the expansion, not old content, and could be done considerably faster than the ~3.5 hours required to do the four books gating Gundabad.

[TobiasEstForte]

I've read it's possible to ride there via area boundary, and Skarhald has a new stable master location under "Gundabad". Seems you can just tag the stable master and use that rather than rely on a decoration.

[Raninia]

This is something we're looking to change in the next patch.

[Faudyen]

This is something we're looking to change in the next patch.

Thank you Raninia for your response.

[Cutedge]

I mean, it's not a bug. You can see MoL talking about it in another thread. It's something they felt one way about, some people in the community disagree and they are ultimately looking at changing.

I know people are mad this wasn't fixed on Bullroarer but the team at SSG is incredibly small (it seems) so I'm not shocked by this. This expansion had a pretty aggressive timeline and it came in really hot. Same goes with the legendary item revamp. I'm not sure how you balance that, because people are mad that both there isn't enough content (which is funny considering how little content is coming from something like World of Warcraft these days, which has the most meager patch cycle this expansion I've seen for any mmo that isn't in 'maintenance mode') and that the content isn't polished enough and has bugs. SSG needs to ramp up, which I can only hope they are getting the resources for from eg7. They have a good opportunity to get more players from the Amazon LOTR show coming next year and I hope they can take advantage of that, but it will require changes to help people onboard and get involved in the game. Some of which are easy tweaks (less gating of content behind paywalls early on, quest packs for SoA should just go away honestly), some of is going to be a lot harder (polishing up UI, fixing longstanding graphical issues with characters, improving performance, getting a launcher set up that isn't garbage), and some of it should really happen and just isn't feasible (graphical updates).

Hopefully we'll get a post-Gundabad roadmap and the team can slow down slightly and get focused on some tuneup because some of these new systems are just too rough around the edges. But ultimately I still think things are really improving so I don't know why that person was raging on Raninia (edit: posts were removed i guess). I mean we got the first PvMP update in what, a decade? Not to mention that there have been a number of graphical updates and tweaks, a lot of which aren't even mentioned in the patch notes for some reason (for example, there was some sort of adjustments to reflections in places, especially the Shrine, so now I can run reflections on a higher level while still getting better fps in areas that used to have serious framerate dips since as around Hobbiton when looking down the river). I dunno, I feel a lot of hope for LOTRO and I hope it continues to improve.

[Fantomex]

I've also played the game for over a decade on multiple servers and accounts. I have 10 characters at level cap on my main one. They were all caught up on books before the expansion with relative ease.

Guess this is the problem with the F2P model. The increasing expectation that paying for the game means you skip playing it.

[Sphen5117]

...

Hopefully we'll get a post-Gundabad roadmap and the team can slow down slightly and get focused on some tuneup because some of these new systems are just too rough around the edges.

To be fair, while there is plenty I love about this game, it even has many older elements that were left in the dust and need brought up to speed, simply just in terms of usefulness-at-more-levels. Skirmishes, for example. Also, much of the nuance in crafting. Like weaponsmith crafting weapons now in a post-legendary weapon world? And champions throwing weapons, that sort of only exist up until Minas Tirith?

I haven't lost hope, but am pointing out the criticisms out of faith that SSG is capable of addressing them.

[Strider5548]

Imagine people paying 129$ for a verry weak quest pack, cant call it an expansion since there is nothing new added into the game, they even thought its a bit plain and added the allegiance faction, like that counts for something. you can buy the most recent exciting games with less money. they call "expansion"every little qp this days, even 40$ are way to much for same old stuf.
Also i found it weird that there is not an outcry on forum about this.

You can't really place relative value on LOTRO's offerings. You can buy New World for less than 40 bucks and no monthly fee, that's about what it costs for 2 mounts in the LOTRO store. The cost to entry is also pretty insane for this game. Even if you have VIP, you are paying hundreds of dollars to get all the expansions, then what do you need to get your new character up and running? At least 10 bucks for a third trait set up, at least 100 bucks if you are maxing out all stat tomes, 50 bucks if you are buying a premium house, 80 bucks if you are buying a premium kin house, etc. etc.

I spent at least 400 bucks just to start some characters over on Treebeard, and I still paid 129 bucks for this expansion even though the content (aside from missions) and valars are not usable on the legendary servers.

My point is, you can't compare, yes LOTRO is insanely priced, but LOTRO also doesn't have a million players. It's a niche MMO with a devoted following, so those of us who are here gladly pay hundreds or thousands every year despite all the issues we complain about.

We should be thankful to SSG for making a game we love, and SSG should absolutely be thanking us for keeping this game alive.

[Froyo_K_Baggins]

It sounds like this is a bug. Maybe SSG should give a title for completing the book once for the whole account, so every alt can use it.

No, it sounds like SSG as usual.

[Cutedge]

To be fair, while there is plenty I love about this game, it even has many older elements that were left in the dust and need brought up to speed, simply just in terms of usefulness-at-more-levels. Skirmishes, for example. Also, much of the nuance in crafting. Like weaponsmith crafting weapons now in a post-legendary weapon world? And champions throwing weapons, that sort of only exist up until Minas Tirith?

I haven't lost hope, but am pointing out the criticisms out of faith that SSG is capable of addressing them.

Oh yeah, totally. While this game isn't Star Trek Online in terms of how many systems are just piled on top of other systems, there are so many things that are just left over that really should be tweaked and improved. Mounted Combat being the most obvious example. I still think they should just increase all the turn rates by like 25-50% so the horses don't look like they are tokyo drifting and then it would probably be fine, but you ultimately run into this problem of "oh no one runs that anymore".

I'd love for them to take a page out of FFXIV and find ways to promote running content of all levels but I wonder how feasible that is.