Quote Originally Posted by fallohide View Post
Maybe so - but I think fishing had a lot of interested players when it first went live. In fact, if I remember right, it was one of those things that people had asked about for some time that actually was implemented. I think the reason it flopped though had more to do with its lack of functionality than with a lack of player interest. Anglers pressed a single button over and over again only to fill up their severely limited inventory spaces with dozens of garbage items (including the fish) that had no use and vendored for 1cp each.

I'd just love to see Turbine fix some of the things that players are constantly asking (even complaining) about rather than see another new, possibly half-finished, feature that will, after a month or two (or even a day or two for the more hardcore players) simply get added to the list of things players are complaining about.

Yes, there are always going to be someone who complains no matter how things get fixed. But there is a palpable difference in the way it affects game/forum atmosphere when the complaints are aimed at "you nerfed uberattack!" compared to when the complaints are "awesome new horse... which is screwed up to the point that I can't get one... again". One is a disagreement with how powerful a feature is; the other is Turbine can't seem to get its act together.

Those two things have very different effects on player morale.

You have some points, although I feel your characterization of the current mess with Will Peartree is a bit unfair - everyone will have a chance to get the nifty new festival horse - just a bit later than anticipated.

The removal of Will to avoid damage to the in-game economy (yes, there are still those of us for whom 10+ gold is a large amount of gold - and I'd hazard a guess that it's still a large majority of the player base to boot) was a swift reaction - driven in large part, I'd guess, by past experience with such issues where they did NOT remove it and then had to deal with the repercussions to the in-game economy.

It's interesting to see someone else's take on the same events and come up with such a different interpretation of what's going on.