Withywindle's population is going down again. Please be nicer to players.

[Stabbitha]

Well, the glory days of the Steam + Recommended server status are over. Recommended server has rotated again, and the population is now again dropping.

Many F2P players who dipped in just to find out how the game is have now moved on and left.

Here are some stats on Withywindle's population (might not be totally accurate but gives some indication) and compare it to other servers: http://lux-hdro.de/hdro-live-withywindle.php

Withy had more than thrice of that a month or so ago.

I've had many complaints about some douchebagginess on /globallff (and siding with trolls) and players now wanting to leave for friendlier servers like the RP/RP-E ones, and if you want to dogpile on those guys as QQ, you guys are idiots. We've required everyone on our kin to /joinchannel globallff but a number have /leavechanneled it complaining of d-bags.

Please take better care of the user base on this server if you don't want the server to ghost town again as players either leave for other servers or leave the game altogether.

Maybe organize more events one of our kin members is willing to put up prizes like gold, etc. Also that thing about forming more kin alliances to keep things more lively.

Idunnow. What do you guys think?

Thanks.

[Wormbeak]

The population has always been dire ... especially in PvMP areas
Recommended server or not

[Landrovas]

That site uses logins to estimate populations. Comparing estimated population of recomanded server to after when its not recomanded doesnt work well.

I for one havent seen examples of "douchebaggines: on globallff. And also i was one of the people who advised all should go to global when familiar with the game, not before. The population of Withy grew when it was recomended, but as expected many did not return to the game after they played a little. It was expected and normal. If from the thousands of players that joined then 200 remain until end game and prosper then it is great.

The real reason why people left the game at this point is the fact that for f2p people this was the moment when they were left with nothing else to do. And most dont wanna buy vip/grind tp. So it has nothing to do with globallff or trolls. The ones that at level 25 already thing they assesed the comunity of a server and decide to go to a RP server (many probably dont even know what awaits them there) will probably leave the game when it doesnt suit them even there.

So no need to panic. The integration of new players is in the hands of each kin. My kin did a good job at that, we have already maybe 5-10 players from that wave that are raiding ToO with us. Many more are leveling slower and enjoying the game. Did all 400 we recruited stay in the game? no, many havent logged in ages. But again it is normal and expected.

[Kromachine]

the biggest problem in the server is the friendly support,the globallff troll players,most are the same trollers all the time,the bad wathcing etten players who play both sides every minute and aren't causals like other servers, and many more.
many times i see at advise channel niewbie questions and many troll answers from 75 players.
so the problem is the tact in the culture who learn or use in that server only.ppl like me who play lotro from the first day,and we come from other server who see the difference.

[JoeSO]

I will add my points of view:
1) I am not sure about the globallff... I am pretty sure many new players are not in the global.

2) I see the main reason of players leaving might be the need to buy content. I have experienced this in my kin. Many new players started (like 40), and no more than 10 of them kept playing. Free to play adds are nice, but they get somewhat angry when they are forced to pay or quit.

[CuruornEU]

99% of the population coming from a game going onto the steam f2p section leaves after a few weeks. I often find myself downloading these games and doing the same thing, because I just cba to pay for it.

This simply is the way it is.

[Macroscian]

Sounds like two servers I played:
Noone is on much
Those who are on are in the habit of being nasty to strangers

Mind, that's from someone who instead moved back to Brandywine - home of the beginners, the whiners and the trolls.

On Riddermark, ages ago, I took the time to run start instances such as GB just to show people around and give a few pointers. While this gave me eleventy personal messages a day asking for information from random strangers I had helped once, it seems that kept a few persons playing and having fun.

There's no need to give away stuff and cash and time to randoms but a smile and a real answer truly helps.

[Cillion]

I will add my points of view:
1) I am not sure about the globallff... I am pretty sure many new players are not in the global.

2) I see the main reason of players leaving might be the need to buy content. I have experienced this in my kin. Many new players started (like 40), and no more than 10 of them kept playing. Free to play adds are nice, but they get somewhat angry when they are forced to pay or quit.

Will share my thoughts and observations aswell..

Contrary to what Krom said,globallff,and moors are nicer then on most servers,albeit much less active! Most trolling and rudeness seemed to appear together with unfitting Names,that clearly belonged to new People. Rude behaviour,wanting to get answers in an instant,wanting help for every little Mobkill and whatnot,ninjainvites and generally not a nice attitude.. Im sure most of you freep 75s or active creepplayers noticed such things more then once..

Sure,some people might quit cause of some old guy trolling or making a joke on chat,or giving a stupid answer after 100 times the same Question,but i doubt that makes the main issue,cause for every rude guy there are 10 nice ones even on WW...


The biggest Issue,and i have said i at the start of this action,is and will always be Turbine There is nothing (unless you buy those players the content packs/TP to unlock stuff) that you will be able to do to keep Players,at the lvl region of 40,most run out of free Quests,Areas etc etc...
At that point Traitslots etc arent really important,but ppl notice that they will have to buy this stuff+ content if they want to keep playing,and lets be honest now,free to play attracts alot of ppl when it gets promoted like it did on steam,they come try it out,maybe even like it but at lvl 40ish they notice,oh if i dont pay i cant really play much of that game,and thats it then... Some dont want to pay,some cant pay,so they stop the game.

Now you could say well they can go grind TP ingame to unlock stuff.. But those that have the patience and time to do that to maybe in some Month starting to lvl up again and get to endgame,each time an xpac hits they know its the same again aswell,they are either fanatic lotro fans,and most likely already playing for some time,or love the game so much that they invest this time but i really think alot of People stop cause of that,regardless on wich Server.

[Maviarab]

Would personally have to disagree...don't see much difference on Withy to be honest....very active at the hours I play (like right now Turbine grrrrrr lol)...

As for the influx, if you ever thought more than 10% of the many who joined after the Steam promotion would actually stay, you were kidding yourself. It's all percentages, try something new, come to us from WoW etc etc...

Was never going to happen. We maybe recruited 200 new players, around 30 or so have stayed, around 20 of those are still active. Not a bad return in my personal opinion.

As for all the 'Withy is dying' and 'Whats wrong with Withy' blah blah posts...heard it all before...too many times....still an active friendly (in the main barring the odd few morons) server...little like the old 'pc gaming is dead' comments....

Roll on...Withy is fine...

[podgie_bear]

From a personal point of view, I did leave Withywindle to play on a quieter server while the rush of new players was on. But that is because I don't have a high end machine and the increased population took a massive toll on my fps, making the game completely unplayable for me in lower regions. Bree town was a nightmare and still has a problem in that running through Bree is more like a slideshow of still photos than a smooth animation. The performance is starting to get better for me now and I have started trying to play my characters there again, but it is still a problem in some areas at times.

I know I should upgrade my system, but to be honest with my limited funds it is pay for equipment or pay for Lotro!

[Maviarab]

Can understand that Podgie...

And yes you're in a sort of dilemma really hehe...but let me tell you, even my with my custom built system...even 'I' avoided Bree for a while lol....was just ridiculous...Though even certain other areas at the moment are not much better (Galtrev I look at you)...

But that's one reason I like Withy, it isn't as busy as some other servers, having to fight for quest mobs, or nodes...or that drop of honey etc etc...

I'm on Withy for a reason

[KSoze]

I think there is one very obvious reason for the population decrease:

People don't find lotro entertaining/interesting enough for continuous play.

As others have posted, most newcomers are unaware of globallff. That leaves /regional, and the response there is fairly limited.

[Maviarab]

Globallff has nothing to do with it imo...

I played for months without even joining...has zero indication or relevance on server population. I have it active now just to see some of the ridiculous conversations in there to cheer myself up lol.

As has been mooted, the 'decline' again is down to a few simple areas. Steam had a big promotion and thus the game was flooded with folk coming from 'other' games...


Once the initial honeymoon period is over, you either stay or go. Many did not stay, and that is to be expected. Many wanted war mechanisms, wizards, warlocks...why is the combat sluggish, where is this, where is that, why I can't do this...

Ummm...because this isn't generic hack & slash fantasy 47....this is LotR. One comment I made to a new kin member we got (he stayed) was:

If it's not in the books, then don't expect to find it in the game...

Once he got over that perception of what he thought the game should be and may have been, he is enjoying himself immensely

[Morakill]

As one of the players that came through Steam, I have insight from another point of view. As for Gliff channel, never joined it.

What almost put me off and others on this game is a reason not mentioned in the thread. The way the F2P system is setup is waaay too confusing. Being an older gamer, I like the "you want this content, buy this expansion". Here, you can buy the expansions, dont want the expansions? You can buy this quest pack, or this one, or this one. "If you join VIP, you get access to this, but not this and this".

There is no clear definition of what entails having the "full" game. This puts alot of people off. In my case, I liked the game so I boughtt the Mithril edition (on sale), the Steam edition (on sale), and subscribed to VIP. But I almost gave up altogether.

If I could make two suggestions to Turbine:

1) Offer a complete package that contains all content (QPs, Instances, etc). In which you would have to alter the benefits of VIP

2) Update the account page for the user that lists all of the content that is available, what you currently do not own, and the options to get it (Individually from store, as part of expansion "A", etc). At this point I still do not know what I am missing.

#2 above would help tremendously! I would not have second guessed whether I wanted to continue playing or not.

[Merigard]

I'm a new player. I play since June. This my first time playing any MMO in fact. I've always been sceptical about MMOs and only decided to give this one a go because a friend mentioned that as far as MMOs go, LotRo is well made. And its based on Tolkien...

Anyway, my experience has been positive. I think the game is indeed well made and very enjoyable on several levels.

I did not find it difficult to learn even though I haven't played MMOs before. On the basic level the game is easy enough for a casual gamer.

I do not have issues with it not being 100% free (well, technically it can be I guess, but then again not really). If I like the game, I don't mind investing some money in it. Diablo 3 retail cost three times what I have spent on Mithril Edition of LotRo and looking back I would have rather paid that money to Turbine than for Blizzard's overhyped blockbuster of a disappointment.

And I have not had any issues with the community. To be sure most 'vets' seem to just ignore the presence of newbies, but the few who actually care to answer the questions are quite enough. And from my experience joining a good kin makes all the difference - it provides all the community experience and support you need. And I don't believe it would have been a problem on this server since some of the kins were spamming their recruitment calls on regional to the point of becoming annoying.

As for helping with stuff and cash, I would not go crazy about it.
While learning myself, I tried to help others too. I have crafted armour to complete strangers as well as for my kin. I have answered many a question, sometimes going so far as guiding a player all the way from Bree to the farm to buy a horse. And this is where the bad comes in. Unfortunately many players I have thus helped didn't even say thanks. Obviously they didn't care about building connections to community. Neither did many of them care about the game because as soon as they encounter any difficulty they throw up their arms and declare the game lame (people like that made me wary of fellowshipping with random people).
In fact most of the negative experience I have got so far - trolling, lack of manners, useless fellowshipping etc. I have encountered from other newcomers like me. And you know what, I'm almost glad there are less and less of them around.

The bottom line is this - the game is OK. The server and the community is OK. I have experienced the way of a newbie first hand and didn't encounter any major issues.
If people leave, it most likely is not your (meaning Withywindlers) fault. People are fickle, they come and go, thats the way it is and there is little anyone can do about it. Those who are serious about the game will stay. And ultimately these are the people you want to play with anyway, right?

I'm not planning to leave just yet...

P.S. Oh, yes, that Globallff channel. I have never joined it as I never felt the need even after I learned about it. My impression is that most people don't know or don't care about it and I don't see how not joining it could make the game less enjoyable, so I agree with the view that the global channel is not the issue. I would rather see more people using the forum. Forum has the advantage of providing communication on a different level - more organised and less dependant on who happens to read the channel at any given time.

[Mirarian]

I have said many times since the boom started on WW we need to support our new players. One recurring fact in every MMO I have ever played is that people who get plugged into the community be it a circle of friends, a kin, a guild whatever tend to STAY. Those that don't frequently get bored and leave fairly quickly.

Of course there are always the ultimate solo players like me who do just fine totally alone but we are not that common. Most folks NEED that social component.

Now all that said it is pretty expected there would be some dropoff. Some are folks who got tired of F2P limitation and didn't want to grind TP to lift them. Some are folks who tried a bunch of servers and then picked their favorite (bon voyage and good luck to those wherever they landed). Some are folks who headed off to college and maybe can't play there. Some just didn't find the game to their taste. Some were rerolls from other servers who got tired of fighting for MOBs in a crowd of newbies. Probably 100 other reasons. Point is a dropoff is normal. We should keep a percentage that found a home on WW and that is a blessing.

[BrynleyDK]

The legends of the rohirrim took in 400 nearly 500 new players. Of those i would say we have 70 new full time members, we rarely have less than 20 people online no matter what time of the day or night it is and can have up to 60. Do i think the 70 who have stayed will be here long term? Yes because our kinship made them feel welcomed, i would say most if not all of them have gone vip bought stuff for the game they enjoy it and they will i think continue to. Now what we need is one more period as recommended server and we will have a good stable population, and dont forget in the next three to four weeks we will be having floods of older players coming back to check our rohan, and getting off there summer vacations.

[Stabbitha]

Yes, the dropoff is of course expected, with only a small portion expected to stay.

Still, coming from Landroval, the /globallff here is much less friendly, and people get angry at banter claiming "flooding".

We maybe need some kind of global chit-chat channel for those interested?

Btw, the biggest reason I've seen people leave is claiming they have no one to play with (or to talk to) when they hit 30s - not being aware of /globallff or the benefits of kins.

I suggest when there's random lower level people LFFing on /globallff, take a little time out from questing to assist them.

-- especially random bailouts during runs when someone leaves the fellowship mid or-end run, and need a quick bailout from the boss or so.

Again, make that broadcast every so often for people to join /globallff - and make it mandatory for kinnies to do so. Only a small portion of people playing at a time is actually on /globallff - I'd say most new players still don't know about the existence of /globallff.

And for /globallff, please be nicer to new players and less troll answers please (something that seems to have improved a bit from a few weeks ago, admittedly).

[iydiyd]

There is definately more players on Withy now than in Febuary. I havent seen any rudeness in globallff so Im wondering what you are speaking of.

[macroberts89]

I want to play. I was playing a couple of characters in the summer. Now, I just have absolutely no time. Alas. =(

My experience in Withywindle was all positive. Didn't meet anyone horribly troll, the couple of fellowships I ended up in a few times were fantastic, and all in all I've found that 99% of the people I encounter are well-mannered, fantastic people.

Of course, there will be the few loud idiots, but there's loud idiots in real life. I guess it's just something we all have to deal with. =)

[Phakdush]

Withywindle is still a recommended server, the drop of in new players and players that got part of the way towards level cap may be attributed to recent releases of new titles by other game providers, you also have to consider the fact some people may have gone to another server due to friends, population etc.

With Riders of Rohan just around the corner though we may see a boom in the population again as some of the more established player base comes back to check out all the new stuff.

[pad11]

My two cents, and this is my first post here on the forum, is that this game has been something of a revelation for me. As a long-time PC gamer, i have actively avoided MMOs because I feared general douchebaggery...but once I finally came to the conclusion that as much as I love single-player RPGs, city builders, etc...there is something very lonely about them. Don't get me wrong, I love them, always will...

I did some research when finally convincing myself to dip my toes in the water of MMOs and was immediately drawn to LOTRO for two reasons: it seemed upon research a more mature take on PC gaming and that the only PvP (or PvMP in this case) was purely voluntary and in a specific region.

All that said, I have found Withywindle a wonderful place to be and thanks to my kin (which is simply outstanding, couldn't be more impressed!), I am hooked...started as F2P and am now fully vested VIP with full game acces !

I have no history to say what the numbers should or shouldn't be...but I'm a newer player and have found Withywindle a very fine place to be.

Thx,
Paddyoh

[Milordas]

as for me WhityWindle server is da best. no lags, prety good population, european time... Showbourne? no way, theres insane lags, dont like when skills lagging 10 sec.

[Landrovas]

If anyone wants to throw the PC off the window reading a wall of text i have found info that prooves that in fact WW has a stable population greater than the one pre Steam and flood of new players. Still modest one but greater than before.

[Humps]

I arrived via the steam promo and chose Withywindle simply because it was the first server on the list I was presented with. My partner is a lifer and has played since the year dot and had he not been at work when I signed up (after years of nagging to give lotro a try) I would never have got here and been on his server instead.

Having said that I refused to change servers at the time because I had got to level 5 before he got home (whooo) and now a few months later I won't transfer because I actually love it where I am. I dragged my brother in who lives in Canada (me in the UK) and we have our 'bro time' in middle earth.

Most of the time I have no clue what I am doing but the thing I love about the game is that it lets me play my way regardless. WW is the same. I get lots of 'wanna join my kin' messages but when I decline (honestly I would not inflict my chaotic gameplay on anyone) I am ALWAYS met with a polite 'you know where we are if you change your mind/need anything'. Honestly, most every interaction I have had with other players has been very positive and welcoming. Of course there have been the odd high jinx and forced emotes but they are rare and if somone gets their kicks that way so be it. If I don't like it or it goes on a bit and they don't get bored then I just move along..... it's a big place after all.

After reading the horror stories on the forums about some of the stuff that happens on others servers it makes me thankful WW was top of the list that day. I have had no problems accessing anything I need. My bro and I have managed to get houses in the same neigbourhood (in fact next door to each other) and questing goes smoothly even when others are after the same mobs. The wait has never been horrendous if we have to hang around for respawns.

All in all and as a relative newb I think WW is a lovely, warm and welcoming place and certainly at this point have no desire to be anywhere else. My bro and I will be heading for Moria soon so we treated ourselves to the expansion triple pack and the ROR pack because they were all on offer. I am looking forward to exploring all the new stuff and more than glad we are doing it on Withywindle.

Just a new players perspective.
TLDR: You are not doing it wrong WW!