Important changes coming to the LOTRO Forums and MyLOTRO

[Nymphonic]

OK, I have to ask: why? These forums have some truly hideous problems with performance (intermittent), spontaneous log outs (seemingly random), and unencrypted authentication (always). Fixing those seems vastly more urgent/important than getting Lotteries on "day one".

If we could have new reliable, secure, and performant forums today, I'd quite gladly give up Lotteries for another 6 or 8 weeks. I seriously doubt I'm alone, and it seems unlikely that delivering the core capabilities after "only" three schedule slips makes it lots more difficult to finish adding a Lottery feature in the next pass...

Khafar

I pretty much have to agree with this.

[IkoanAdihsoy]

I know I probably won't get an answer to this until sometime tomorrow, but I'll ask it now anyway. Is the forum revamp still scheduled for this end of this month?

[Jenara]

OK, I have to ask: why? These forums have some truly hideous problems with performance (intermittent), spontaneous log outs (seemingly random), and unencrypted authentication (always). Fixing those seems vastly more urgent/important than getting Lotteries on "day one".

If we could have new reliable, secure, and performant forums today, I'd quite gladly give up Lotteries for another 6 or 8 weeks. I seriously doubt I'm alone, and it seems unlikely that delivering the core capabilities after "only" three schedule slips makes it lots more difficult to finish adding a Lottery feature in the next pass...

Khafar

Just have to say, especially since several have agreed with Khafar, that I personally agree with Sapience on this, and am glad to see him sticking to his initial request to the team.

For one, I know a number of players who only visit the forums for the Lotteries. If they see an interesting topic while they're on the site they'll go look at it, and maybe spend more time on the forums. No lottery and they don't come. I know of others who found the forums because of the Lotteries. They heard about them from kinmates or friends or on chat channels in game and discovered the forums in the process.

For two, if the Lottery doesn't come out with the forum upgrade it's very likely never to see the light of day again. I've seen far too often "we'll get to it after the primary goal is met" and then once the primary goal is met and released, all secondary goals get pushed to the bottom of the priority list, never rise to the top again. I'd far rather wait and have it all.

My 2 coppers ...

[Sapience]

I know I probably won't get an answer to this until sometime tomorrow, but I'll ask it now anyway. Is the forum revamp still scheduled for this end of this month?

That is the plan as far as I know as of this moment.

If we could have new reliable, secure, and performant forums today, I'd quite gladly give up Lotteries for another 6 or 8 weeks. I seriously doubt I'm alone, and it seems unlikely that delivering the core capabilities after "only" three schedule slips makes it lots more difficult to finish adding a Lottery feature in the next pass...

Khafar

You couldn't. The major delays have almost nothing at all to do with lotteries. it's integration and reintegration of various elements of backend systems. Lotteries have actually done very little to cause delays.

For two, if the Lottery doesn't come out with the forum upgrade it's very likely never to see the light of day again. I've seen far too often "we'll get to it after the primary goal is met" and then once the primary goal is met and released, all secondary goals get pushed to the bottom of the priority list, never rise to the top again. I'd far rather wait and have it all.
My 2 coppers ...

There is an element of truth to this. The Web team is a shared resource. It's not the "LOTRO" Web Team. We have an allocation and a set of requirements they are working to. If we did a "do this, then come back and do that" it could be a very, very long time before the allocation came back around to us and anything that fell under 'that' would have to wait until then. 'Then' could be a very long time indeed.

[Khafar]

The major delays have almost nothing at all to do with lotteries.

I was just going by your own words in this thread...

Today's dev discussion informed me that we're now looking towards the end of July for putting up the new forums and lottery. A good part of this delay is, I admit, my fault. Mostly because I keep holding them to the requirement I made that lotteries are available on day one of the new forums.

Khafar

[Sapience]

I was just going by your own words in this thread...

Khafar

Yep, but as it turns out there were other, more serious issues, that were actually delaying work on lotteries. Turns out the lotteries weren't that hard to get in and improve on once they actually got down to it.

There's a meeting later today to decide on when we go next week (looking very likely it will be monday). Once I have the final dates and info I'll make a post.

[Tirian-Hammerfist]

No mention of retaining the PvMP leaderboards, so it seems that the foolish idea of getting rid of them is going ahead. What a shame - this suggests to me that the goal is making the game experience worse for PvMP players, rather than just ignoring them, as was the previous position.

[Elithandir]

No mention of retaining the PvMP leaderboards, so it seems that the foolish idea of getting rid of them is going ahead. What a shame - this suggests to me that the goal is making the game experience worse for PvMP players, rather than just ignoring them, as was the previous position.

The leaderboards are inextricably linked with character data, the same data that also gives us these signatures and lets us view our characters on my.lotro. It's also the same system that populates the lorebook and lets us use that.

All of that is going away, resulting in a more streamlined forum that - hopefully - relies less upon tweaks and mods made by Turbine's team. I doubt someone said 'hey, let's really annoy the monster players and delete the leaderboards'; rather they were a casualty that accompanied the loss of character data.

Though, all that said, I'm at a loss as to how the lotteries will grab information like level, class, and race of a character without access to that information. There must be some sort of link between the two, but I suppose none of us will know until the update is live.

[Tirian-Hammerfist]

The leaderboards are inextricably linked with character data, the same data that also gives us these signatures and lets us view our characters on my.lotro. It's also the same system that populates the lorebook and lets us use that.

All of that is going away, resulting in a more streamlined forum that - hopefully - relies less upon tweaks and mods made by Turbine's team. I doubt someone said 'hey, let's really annoy the monster players and delete the leaderboards'; rather they were a casualty that accompanied the loss of character data.

I understand that it is linked in this way, however I do not view a streamlined forum as more important to me than the retention of these leaderboards. Sure, I've been logged out several times while trying to post, but other than that, this change will have little to no positive effect on me, whereas the removal of the leaderboards will significantly change my playstyle. While I agree that nobody set out to attack PvMPers with this, it seems that other things were safeguarded (e.g. lotteries, which are part of the MyLOTRO system) simply because they had the support of the relevant employee, unlike PvMP which doesn't appear to have such a vocal or prominent advocate.

[Reximus]

While I agree that nobody set out to attack PvMPers with this, it seems that other things were safeguarded

Other than Lotteries, and the Forums themselves, what has been safeguarded? The forum changes are taking much much more away from the PvE side of the community than it is the PvMP side.

I'm sorry all sorts of different people are losing features they care about, but frankly the current forums are so inanely broken they shouldn't even be considered worthy of being pre-alpha in quality, forget going on what, 3 years of beta. Strip it all out and make it work, they can look at adding other features back in the future.

[Bragard]

Oh on Monday, any danger of an End of thing's lotto, to say goodbye to this lotto system

[Tirian-Hammerfist]

Other than Lotteries, and the Forums themselves, what has been safeguarded?

I was referring specifically to the leaderboards - the pluralisation was unintentional.

[Sapience]

And we're off to the races:

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...2013-ESTIMATED

[Crell_1]

And we're off to the races:

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...2013-ESTIMATED

How about some closing lotteries for the old system before our change over?

'We're off to the races' (5 Mithril coins) (For the betting on the races),some Summer Fest tokens, a Pint of Ale!

Or something where there's a 'grant festival skill : X!' =)

[Bel-Astarte]

Hang in there.

[deeman25845601]

...simply because they had the support of the relevant employee, unlike PvMP which doesn't appear to have such a vocal or prominent advocate.

I doubt this is the case. But even if it is, the community is largely to blame for this. Every time a new PvP dev comes along and starts posting, every single reply is extremely negative. They can't do anything right, even if it is an improvement. I see no reason why a PvP dev would stick his neck out and try to same something for these same people.

[Elexicon]

If they are using our data APIs from Mylotro, yes.

One of our Kin's best aspects was that our Kin Crafters could look at offline members, craft new gear for them, and mail it to them. It helped our casual kin work. And now you've taken that away?? Congrats Turbine, you've just neatly destroyed most of our helpfulness to each other.

Makes me want to spit.



Does no one at Turbine understand humans? Even a little? You don't offer the coolest feature of my.lotro.com ... and let everyone get used to it... and then yank it with the suit-excuse of "well it wasn't official".

Telling us repeatedly that it's not supported is irrelevant. Consider how many "unofficial" extensions to gcc have become part of C++11 - and that it was the popular and useful features of every dev tool out there which made it into the next version. It is human nature that if it's useful and popular, and it's removed.. then you are going to leave a lot of people royally perturbed. I was looking forward to an intelligent approach of giving us more access to game data, not less!

If I had my choice between an API which allowed me to build a good Guild/Kin site and a revamped forums... then 'rm -rf forums'!

[Silmelin]

• Character and guild data will be discontinued. Please note that this will also impact any systems that rely on character data including PVMP leaderboards, Character Signatures, and API functionality (data.lotro.com).

English isn't my first language so I'm not sure if I understand this correctly, but does that mean that people can't stalk each other anymore by looking up someone's character and see what other characters that person play and what level and server and, well everything that person have done in game?

If that part is gone I'm really happy, since I feel like if I want to know something about someone the polite thing would be to ask, and not to go snoop around behind their back But I think that's because of my age. Kids today have grown up with things like Facebook and enjoy showing everyone everything they do all the time, so character data is something they would like to have available, while little old me prefer the old school way of getting information about people: Ask and give the person the option to not tell you things they wish to keep to themselves

[Druantia]

[QUOTE=Sapience;6759961]Soon we will be making several significant changes and updates to the LOTRO community websites. Some features of the existing community site will be upgraded, while others will be discontinued.

Glad the lotteries are back but not having mylotro is a bad move IMHO - it's nice to have an overview of all of your toons...

[Siliveth]

Removing the leaderboars is the worst move Turbine made in years. Seriously.

[sashak]

[*]Character and guild data will be discontinued. Please note that this will also impact any systems that rely on character data including PVMP leaderboards, Character Signatures, and API functionality (data.lotro.com).





any chance at all this can come back? can we throw some money at kickstarter or something? How much would it take to bring it back? Im willing to pitch in the first $25, pretty please?

[Yula_the_Mighty]

any chance at all this can come back? can we throw some money at kickstarter or something? How much would it take to bring it back? Im willing to pitch in the first $25, pretty please?

I would say the chance is zero.

After Turbine shut all this stuff down, Turbine kept the lottery. The lottery died when a power hit killed the server(s) that hosted the lottery and the exported data. Turbine half heartily worked on restoring the lottery. Finally gave up. Apparently Turbine lacks the will, resources and money to fix it.

The biggest problem with what you are asking is not the initial cost to develop the feature. What did in Turbine was:

1) The daily operating costs.

2) The need to expend resources to update and maintain the web features as each content update changes and evolves the game. Which was something Turbine did not have the resources for.

3) The original launch of these web features was flawed. There were a number of edge cases that resulted in the data being maybe 90% correct. The remaining 10% was either bad data exported or good data was not exported. Turbine never had the resources to improve the accuracy.

Given that Turbine did not have enough resources to improve web features. Turbine had a inadequate maintenance budget. Over time the working web functionality kept declining. Customers would complain that the poor quality web enabled data and features were a black mark on Turbine's reputation. Of course, what the customers wanted was Turbine to fix it. Turbine deciding fixing it is too costly. They turned it off.

The final problem is that Lotro is a older game whose revenue is declining. Each year difficult decisions have to be made on which members of the Lotro team have to transferred to anoth4r project or laid off. As the staff goes down, difficult decision have to made on what features to discontinue or reduce the support for. Once example was to not deliver any classic instances as part of the Helms Deep expansion or as part the regular content updates in 2014.

[sashak]

Hi Yula the Mighty,



Sorry for the delayed reply to your reply.

Thanks and there goes my wishful thinking out the window :P

In any event, I'll live.

I know lots of folks take the time complain and whine, I'll start by saying thanks for everything. I love this game.


p.s. i just discovered the notify me of changes subscription feature here