Does This Indicate Not Many Are Left Working On LotRO?

[enginekid]

The launcher still says Update 11 is Coming Soon?!

I have been playing constantly for years and never see these kinds of mistakes, until recently. Now things like this seem to be happening all the time. Maybe it indicates not enough human resources are now allocated to this game? Perhaps they have been sent to work on the other new game?

[hisoka-thorongil]

Pst, Turbine doesn't care anymore. This shouldn't come as any surprise to you or anyone else.

[PypeRings]

Yah, I pretty sure there have been plenty since around the time they were working on ROI.

I think its pretty obvious that: 1) the player base has declined 2) the revenue has declined (not entirely their fault, there is/was a recession). Therefore budgets and staff have declined including possibly the churn through the developers and support staff as the company's priorities move to newer games.

It's an old game. Enjoy it or don't. Play it or move on. Hardly earthshaking.

[SapienChavez]

i have never played any game with as many typos as this game.

when RoI came out, it felt like they didnt even hit a spell-checker, let alone proof-read anything.

[mjk47]

Launcher splash screens have always lagged behind the content updates. No idea why. I guess the launch checklist does not have a "tidy up the ads" step

[manstan]

One question, have you reported any of it? No? Then you are part of the problem.
Unreported issues don't get fixed.

[Mord420]

One question, have you reported any of it? No? Then you are part of the problem.
Unreported issues don't get fixed.

Reported ones rarely get fixed either.

[Cheery]

I am a fan of Tolkien and The Lord of the RIngs. I reread it every few years.
I am a fan of LOTRO. It is my first MMO and I am impressed with the beauty of its landscape and the stories contained within the Epic Quests.

I recognize that Eriador and Moria seem to be more imaginative than what has followed. However, mounted combat was quite an achievement and promises to get even better.

If the economy's slump has reduced profits and, therefore, staff, that makes Turbine no different than most other companies. However, there are many indications that the economy is again improving. Perhaps Turbine will rebound.

I've noticed that there are fewer players on my server and fewer players looking for fellowships. Some of my kinmates have gone off to play other games. This happened before and several came back. Maybe some will come back this time. Some of these people use LOTRO as their base game while they experiment with new ones.

I have enough patience to wait a while. I play my lower level characters for the fun of learning another class.
I hope that Turbine continues LOTRO. I want to see how they will handle Book 4.

[Ferthcott]

Remember how people complained that only Store gets enough attention?



Oh, 75... well, way to downplay your own offer. But it gets better.



Wait... where are those two 3-mans, you know, those two virtually no one is playing? Can't find them in Moria Questpack, can't find them in Instance section. F2P, I guess





As for reporting - unless due diligence suddenly became conditional, there's a difference between not helping to deal with a bug and being "a part of the problem" called "negligence". Or "lack of the idea what is even being sold". Both are usually fixed in-house, resorting to strangers and their tickets looks... embarrassing.

[enginekid]

... embarrassing.

Is that a recent screenshot taken from the lotro store?

It says: Meet the Rangers of Estildin?!

It is incorrectly spelled, it should be Esteldin.

... how embarrassing.

[manstan]

Reported ones rarely get fixed either.

I didn't say they would, just stands a far better chance of getting fixed when they know it's broke

[Sapience]

I didn't say they would, just stands a far better chance of getting fixed when they know it's broke

This is true.

More than likely someone missed an image file when changing things. I'll pass it along.

[Ferthcott]

Is that a recent screenshot taken from the lotro store?

It says: Meet the Rangers of Estildin?!

As recent as it can be, taken few hours ago.

I didn't mind Esteldin part that much. Consider that those two other gems present Questpacks as less valuable than they really are.

[manstan]

As for reporting - unless due diligence suddenly became conditional, there's a difference between not helping to deal with a bug and being "a part of the problem" called "negligence". Or "lack of the idea what is even being sold". Both are usually fixed in-house, resorting to strangers and their tickets looks... embarrassing.

No it looks like common mistakes made when you have a lot going on. It looks like a concerned community trying to help out making a game the best it can be.

You're ship wreck on a deserted island, which do you think will get you saved, putting a note in a bottle and trowing it in to the ocean{posting on the forum} or using a cell phone to call the coast guard{filing a bug report}?

[PypeRings]

Not trying to excuse it but this kind of thing is endemic these days. I see online stories by major new organizations with spelling and grammatical errors all the time. I guess proofreading is a dead art.

[Ferthcott]

No it looks like common mistakes made when you have a lot going on. It looks like a concerned community trying to help out making a game the best it can be.

You're ship wreck on a deserted island, which do you think will get you saved, putting a note in a bottle and trowing it in to the ocean{posting on the forum} or using a cell phone to call the coast guard{filing a bug report}?

Mistake itself can be explained in many ways. I don't mind either. I am not on a desert island, this does not affect me, personally, in the slightest. I'd rather see a hundred more of them. At such point things usually get fixed - not the mistakes themselves, but whatever is behind them too.

This kind does not need a set of hoops to be reproduced, a dedicated team to hunt them down among all class combinations, system specs, additional factors. It requires two things:

1. a person who knows what is being sold while typing descriptions,
2. another - or the same - person reading through modified version at least once; anytime - even a month later would work in comparison.

If this has to be "outsourced into tickets" too, then maybe this is the real problem, not those few details that ended up wrong with no damaging potential.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

Not trying to excuse it but this kind of thing is endemic these days. I see online stories by major new organizations with spelling and grammatical errors all the time. I guess proofreading is a dead art.

It got cost reduced out of the process. Back in the 70s when I started as a software engineer we had proof readers, editors and all kinds of human resources to check word choice, spelling, grammar, layout and correct use of punctuation.

Over the years all these people were dismissed. Now as senior software designer when I write a document, there is nobody to check anything. All I got is a software tool. They are not that good. They will always tell you if you misspelled Lothlorien (that is not in the dictionary). I put sea instead of see - the dictionary is happy.

Where I work, a significant number of people are English As A Second Language. They can't proof read. It left up to the few native English speakers with passable language skills to do it all.

Most of the errors go undetected to the customer or some organization outside of development. If we are lucky they send us a big batch of lowest priority errors documenting all the language mistakes.

Software designers tend to be good at artificial languages. Natural languages tend to be painful because of all the exceptions and minor case rules. I've seen plenty of software that passes all the syntax checks fails miserably at run time kind like the sea and see issues.

[Hetweith]

It got cost reduced out of the process....


...Software designers tend to be good at artificial languages.

here is the other part that was cost reduced out of the process

[Ferthcott]

Software designers tend to be good at artificial languages.

I know you didn't mean it this way, but I still had fun with my epiphany:

I know how to fix LOTRO! Let's tell software designers they do not have to write Store descriptions anymore!

[ColorSpecs]

The launcher still says Update 11 is Coming Soon?!

I have been playing constantly for years and never see these kinds of mistakes, until recently. Now things like this seem to be happening all the time. Maybe it indicates not enough human resources are now allocated to this game? Perhaps they have been sent to work on the other new game?

Worse. It indicates not many left are playing LOTRO.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

I know you didn't mean it this way, but I still had fun with my epiphany:

I know how to fix LOTRO! Let's tell software designers they do not have to write Store descriptions anymore!

Turbine hired a published author to do a lot of writing in game. Obviously there is no writer - English major in the Microtransaction department that handles the Lotro Store.

That is of course the other common problem for companies that have some writers like Turbine. Berephon only deals with his particular area which is in game writing.

Back in the old days, I read books by people like Asimov. You would never find "This is my toy friend" in one his books where it should "This is my boy friend". I find wrong word choices quite often in books written currenty or in the past ten years.

[weiminc38]

Does Turbine still hire anyone to do English language checking for their ingame? Would really be interested in that personally.

[Namesse]

I didn't say they would, just stands a far better chance of getting fixed when they know it's broke

Yet it is only a chance. I've bugged their spelling of "judgement" before and I still see the same mistake repeated everywhere. The correct spelling is "judgment," it looks odd yet it is correct. I don't know why they can't fix words that get the red squiggly line under them in Word, it's an indicator that there's something wrong.

[Steppenwulf]

Not trying to excuse it but this kind of thing is endemic these days. I see online stories by major new organizations with spelling and grammatical errors all the time. I guess proofreading is a dead art.

Should be News, not new. Sorry couldn't help myself b/c of the nature of your post. ;p

[PypeRings]

Should be News, not new. Sorry couldn't help myself b/c of the nature of your post. ;p

I blame dyslexia for all my dropped or added letters and any other faults in my writing, which are many.

And also, you're hired.