Forbid Passwords to GLFF

[Rampagingdeath]

Let me stop smashing my head against the stone wall in my computer room for 30 seconds and say this, third post in this thread, from Sapience himself and I quote.....

Because GLFF is a user created chat channel there is no way to do this

Got that? no matter how much you try and put a spin on it or attempt to bend reality around to your way of thinking the above quote is the start and end of this conversation.

[TinDragon]

If I remember correctly, these are player written guides that Turbine is promoting. Yes, GLFF is a good thing to join. Yes, it is moderated...somewhat. That still does not make it "official".

The rest of the guides were. This was the first one, written by someone actually at Turbine (in theory).

Got that? no matter how much you try and put a spin on it or attempt to bend reality around to your way of thinking the above quote is the start and end of this conversation.

I see, you must be a dev at Turbine in addition to a member of the Player Council. Otherwise, how would you know there's no possible way to do it? Quoting Sapience doesn't mean anything when it comes to stuff like this: he's essentially PR. He's not a dev.

I personally can think of a very easy way to do it. One character per server, doesn't even need to be a GM, joins the channel as soon as the server comes back up. Since Turbine turns the servers on and it would be Turbine's character, it'd always be the first character in the channel, thereby preventing a password.

See? Easy fix, no reason to get your knickers in a bunch.

Additionally, didn't Sapience already post that you guys (the player council) were discussing alternate methods like, at this very moment? If it's brought up for discussion it's obviously kinda important. There's no harm in brainstorming in here to see if we can think of some good ideas.

[Rampagingdeath]

I see, you must be a dev at Turbine in addition to a member of the Player Council. Otherwise, how would you know there's no possible way to do it? Quoting Sapience doesn't mean anything when it comes to stuff like this: he's essentially PR. He's not a dev.

well I highly doubt that Sapience quotes things off the top of his head, no doubt he spoke to someone first - you know - someone who really does know

I personally can think of a very easy way to do it. One character per server, doesn't even need to be a GM, joins the channel as soon as the server comes back up. Since Turbine turns the servers on and it would be Turbine's character, it'd always be the first character in the channel, thereby preventing a password.

See? Easy fix, no reason to get your knickers in a bunch.

My knickers are silk and frilly, they don't bunch at all.

Additionally, didn't Sapience already post that you guys (the player council) were discussing alternate methods like, at this very moment? If it's brought up for discussion it's obviously kinda important. There's no harm in brainstorming in here to see if we can think of some good ideas.

Ack, sorry, as I'm no doubt you are aware I'm not at liberty to divulge anything the council is/isn't/ may be discussing, it's a cliche and I'm surprised no-one has used it yet, but I could tell you - but then I'd have to kill you. However what I can tell you is that whatever the council are discussing there is nothing to stop anyone from browsing threads to court general opinions so by all means brainstorm away, it may get picked up and forwarded and end up in game, it's just that rather annoyingly (for lots of reasons) you'll never get to know.

[Sapience]

So let me put forward a few facts so the 'debate' can end quickly.

GLFF is a user created channel. As such a user can choose to password protect it as they can with any user created chanel. GLFF has no official status what-so-ever. We recommend new players take advantage of many things other players create; Guides, chat channels, kinships, websites. It does not make them official in any way. It simply means we felt they were a good resource. Unless the argument is you would like us to take charage and responsibility for all of those things? I don't think that would make too many people happy.

Even if we changed the current official LFF channel to GLFF, people would still be able to create channels other players may choose to use in large numbers. Maybe they would make a "moors GLFF" because GLFF would become exactly what its name implies and not just a 'random chat' that the player created channel is. And GMs would be free to act accordingly to enforce our rules and policies on that channel. Some of the chat that currently goes by unnoticed or unreported may become very noticed and frequently reported.

[Crell_1]

So let me put forward a few facts so the 'debate' can end quickly.

Even if we changed the current official LFF channel to GLFF, ... because GLFF would become exactly what its name implies and not just a 'random chat' that the player created channel is. And GMs would be free to act accordingly to enforce our rules and policies on that channel. Some of the chat that currently goes by unnoticed or unreported may become very noticed and frequently reported.

If the discussion is about the creation of yet another LFF channel, but global. I'd be infavor of regional-LFFs all being converted to a GLFF channel, and the creation of a /GLOBAL chat channel. =)

[hucklebarry]

I would really appreciate it if the devs will form a list of the names of the highest population channel from each server, and modify the game code to forbid those channels from ever having a password, thus protecting the general server population from the trolls who are using the channel system against us.

Thoughts/suggestions/flames/trolls?

While I agree with an official GLFF... the way you worded this suggestion is a big "NO" from me. Looking at the population of some smaller servers, I would not be surprised at all if GLFF was not the largest channel on the server. I was a member of one channel (not GLFF or any variation of it) that was larger than GLFF on various servers. If you want to say that we need an official GLFF... YES! If you think channels should be commandeered solely based on population... NO! That is simply removing a feature away from the players.

[Sapience]

If the discussion is about the creation of yet another LFF channel, but global. I'd be infavor of regional-LFFs all being converted to a GLFF channel, and the creation of a /GLOBAL chat channel. =)

it is easier to convert existing channels than it is to create entirely new ones. It would most likely, and again this is a conversation and not a done deal and not any kind of promise, mean turning /lff into /glff and making it global.

[vineyarddawg]

it is easier to convert existing channels than it is to create entirely new ones. It would most likely, and again this is a conversation and not a done deal and not any kind of promise, mean turning /lff into /glff and making it global.

<sarcasm_font>

So, I'm reading from this... you're promising it "NOW™" or "In The Future™"?

</sarcasm_font>

[Almagnus1]

I'd be in favor of adding a Global channel (being the official spiritual successor of GLFF), provided that we get GLFF and GTrade channels as well, with GLFF and GTrade being enforced to ONLY being LFF and trade requests. That would give those that wanted to hit the entire server for trade and LFF requests a place to do so, without having to deal with GLFF's current stupidity.

And waaaay off topic (but on the subject of channels), would it be possible to get a "Targeting" channel added to the 'Moors?

[Frisco]

it is easier to convert existing channels than it is to create entirely new ones. It would most likely, and again this is a conversation and not a done deal and not any kind of promise, mean turning /lff into /glff and making it global.

Why not change /Regional? 6 years, and I still have no idea what that channel is for.

[bohbashum]

Why not change /Regional? 6 years, and I still have no idea what that channel is for.

on my server they seem to use it for differant language chat. no idea if thats the purpose.

I'm all for haveing a glff if you honestly don't think the general trolling/gold-sellers are an issue on it. wouldn't want to ask GM's to do anymore work to report people who are mis-useing glff if it becomes an officially supported channel. I guess making a globalooc too could lessen the chances of a default global channel being used as a troll factory

or just make it "global" no lff on it, so you can use it just like people use globallff now. instancing/trading/general chat. that will lessen the chat-police feeding the trolls. and give you (GM's) no reason to put in more work to police miss-use of the channel

[Crell_1]

Honestly, if the channel doesn't allow for regular global trade and other chatter as well, I'm not sure how much more use it'll see.

A sanctioned global /ooc is more in line with what I'm looking for so I can free up a user-channel or 2.

I'm aware it'd take more work to engineer a new channel, I also think that both a /GLFF and a /Global would serve useful roles in the community. It'd certainly help make the server feel livelier.

Even yesterday I got a tell from someone asking how to speak on /Glff ; They'd managed to get introduced to the channel but not how to speak?

This ought not happen!

The creation of a global-chat channel helps to foster a server-community feel. Making it official decreases the likelihood that players will use it to be offensive. It seems to take players stepping way over the line to get anything done about actions in a user channel, or even in tells sadly.

[Mephistophelis]

To be frank, there are a number of channels on LOTRO that seem to be heavily under-used eversince the popularity of GlobalLFF gave way. It would be better to just merge some of those channels together as one Global channel for the sake of the argument. As GlobalLFF is virtually now used as a trade/advice/LFF/OOC and a guild recruitment channel, it would be better off simply merging those channels as one. It wouldn't really make that much of a difference to the current existing environment, except the fact a new Global channel would be readily-available. The disadvantages to having a Global channel ready-available is that as mentioned previously, it can cause gold-sellers to take advantage of it. I hold closely to my previous suggestion in which only Premium/VIP players may communicate through the Global channel.

Other than that, I welcome the idea of merging the aforementioned channels into one Global channel.

[arqui]

I believe that a Global lff is one of the most important feature that this game does not have. Assembling a group, in particular at low to middle lvls, is really hard, and the current glff is too much used by trolls to be fully used for this purpose.

[Almagnus1]

I hold closely to my previous suggestion in which only Premium/VIP players may communicate through the Global channel.

Given how easy it is to go from F2P => Premium, this is more than an acceptable solution.

I also find it completely hilarious that the gold spammers would have to pay to spam XD

[Sapience]

Given how easy it is to go from F2P => Premium, this is more than an acceptable solution.

I also find it completely hilarious that the gold spammers would have to pay to spam XD

If you think about it, when the game was subscription only and required a box purchase to play they were paying quite a lot to spam.

[Isharra]

This is at least a little uneducated on my part, but I am not sure how an official glff channel would be any different from an unofficial one in terms of gold selling. I haven't seen any gold selling spam since the brief outbreak we had I think two years ago. That was amusing on Vilya since at that time, our glff channel had around half a dozen users - most people used Unite instead and therefore were completely unaware of the spam attack.

If there truly is a concern about gold spam with an official glff channel, maybe some consideration should be given to naming it something else as a precaution? Some ideas are: /global, /vilya (or insert other server name for other servers), /server, or /world.

[TinDragon]

Global LFF and Global Chat channels please Sapience. Allows us to have an official LFF channel that can't get blocked, and with the creation of a global chat channel, leaves that channel for LFF only. (I don't care about the people chatting in LFF channels, I just care about the people complaining very loudly about those people.)

I don't know how well a LFF to GLFF conversion would work, since a lot of the lower zones like to use LFF specifically for questing in that area, and our server's GLFF kinda gets annoyed when people look for quest buddies and such. They'd get over it, I'm sure. However, I'm betting an OOC to GOOC conversion would work excellently for people who love chatting with other people. God knows nothing ever said in OOC is regionally-based anyway.