Lottery, that would last at least 24 hrs

[Misapprehension]

For all that i know, there has been no lotteries for a few months already. I check them at least twice a day, and no i am not going to get up 3 times per night just to check a lottery, just because my time-zone is different from US.

Any chance that there will be any lotteries that are available at least 24 hours?

[Sapience]

For all that i know, there has been no lotteries for a few months already. I check them at least twice a day, and no i am not going to get up 3 times per night just to check a lottery, just because my time-zone is different from US.

Any chance that there will be any lotteries that are available at least 24 hours?

There have been about 35 of them over the past month. Some have been 6 hours, some 12, some 24 hours. The Helm's Deep lottery that gave away a Helm's Deep Premium key to the winners lasted about 72 hours. A few, like Yesterday's Hobbit lotteries lasted 2 hours but repeated about every 45 minutes to an hour. So you had multiple lotteries that run up to about midnight.

[Vexendynamus]

Only players who camp Facebook and Twitter have any chance at catching lotteries. Thirty five in the last month? I have seen two.

[HaleElven]

There have been about 35 of them over the past month. Some have been 6 hours, some 12, some 24 hours. The Helm's Deep lottery that gave away a Helm's Deep Premium key to the winners lasted about 72 hours. A few, like Yesterday's Hobbit lotteries lasted 2 hours but repeated about every 45 minutes to an hour. So you had multiple lotteries that run up to about midnight.

Is it too much to ask that there be some structure to the Lottery timing system?

I mean, nearly every time I go to the screen it only says "No active lotteries." And, if I get that every other day I check on lotteries, that doesn't tell me if, or how many lotteries came and went on the one day, night, half-hour, I didn't spend constantly refreshing the page. Nor, does it tell me when the next lottery is.

How about instead of simply saying "No active lotteries.", you say "Lotteries will be held every [XYZ]. Check back then." and a possible "Also, there will be additional lotteries to celebrate Frodo's Birthday on [ABC]."

[ertr]

There have been about 35 of them over the past month. Some have been 6 hours, some 12, some 24 hours. The Helm's Deep lottery that gave away a Helm's Deep Premium key to the winners lasted about 72 hours. A few, like Yesterday's Hobbit lotteries lasted 2 hours but repeated about every 45 minutes to an hour. So you had multiple lotteries that run up to about midnight.

I usually check the lotteries page several times per day and I have seen no more than 7 or 8 of those 35 lotteries.
Most types of lotteries you need to be lucky to win. Here you need to be lucky to even find out that there is a lottery going on. That is not fun.

Please do not run *any* lotteries that last less than 24 hours. Then we will only need to check once per day, and (more importantly) everybody gets a chance to enter every lottery regardless of which timezone we live in.

[Sapience]

Only players who camp Facebook and Twitter have any chance at catching lotteries. Thirty five in the last month? I have seen two.

Three of the lotteries I mentioned were announced on twitter and Facebook, the rest were not.

[Vexendynamus]

Three of the lotteries I mentioned were announced on twitter and Facebook, the rest were not.

Ah. Then camping the forums is the only way. No thanks.

[Stubbins]

I think I caught one of the lotteries. Very sneaky indeed!

[DelgonTheWise]

Ah. Then camping the forums is the only way. No thanks.

Once I check a number of times and there isn't a lottery, I tend to stop looking. So I agree with the above. If they are going to be unscheduled and you need to manually click on the lottery button to find them, if they aren't up much only the most dedicated/compulsive will do participate after they get out of the habit. Rats will only click on the lever so much if the behavior is not reinforced....

[CmdrMagic]

There have been about 35 of them over the past month. Some have been 6 hours, some 12, some 24 hours. The Helm's Deep lottery that gave away a Helm's Deep Premium key to the winners lasted about 72 hours. A few, like Yesterday's Hobbit lotteries lasted 2 hours but repeated about every 45 minutes to an hour. So you had multiple lotteries that run up to about midnight.

Sapience are you absolutely certain there is no issue with some individuals seeing lotteries? I typically check lotteries at a minimum of once a day. Given that, I would not expect to hit every single 6 or even 12 hour lottery, but I should be hitting every lottery over 24 hours in length. I do not know for certain how many lotteries I have entered in the last month but I am certain it is not anywhere close to 35.

When you say 35 lotteries, does that count every server lottery for Helm's Deep as an individual lottery? If that were the case that would account for about 29 of the 35 lotteries.

Thanks

[Sapience]

Sapience are you absolutely certain there is no issue with some individuals seeing lotteries? I typically check lotteries at a minimum of once a day. Given that, I would not expect to hit every single 6 or even 12 hour lottery, but I should be hitting every lottery over 24 hours in length. I do not know for certain how many lotteries I have entered in the last month but I am certain it is not anywhere close to 35.

When you say 35 lotteries, does that count every server lottery for Helm's Deep as an individual lottery? If that were the case that would account for about 29 of the 35 lotteries.

Thanks

Yes, because even if you don't have an account and aren't logged in they are visible. Even if the lottery is for a level 85 on a server you don't play on you'll see it. For that matter even if you don't play lotro and check the page you'll see it.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

When you say 35 lotteries, does that count every server lottery for Helm's Deep as an individual lottery? If that were the case that would account for about 29 of the 35 lotteries.

Thanks

Some days there were a lot of lotteries. You missed a day. You could miss out on maybe 7 different lotteries. A lot of these lotteries were called Test Lottery. They had a number associated like 73, 74, 75 and 77 all which I won these four and 76 were all on August 27, 2013. There was one called "A Thing with Things" for 75-85 level characters on August 20, 2013.

[Rainith]

Once I check a number of times and there isn't a lottery, I tend to stop looking.

Excellent, it is working just as planned, the more people that give up, the better my chances are.

[AsmodeusRex]

Lasting 24 hours or over...don't be silly it might give others (that is non Yanks,their neighbours and non insomniacs) a chance of wining or as it seems to be now even entering one. Can't have fairness or a even playing field... just not done.

[Eliahnus]

Lasting 24 hours or over...don't be silly it might give others (that is non Yanks,their neighbours and non insomniacs) a chance of wining or as it seems to be now even entering one. Can't have fairness or a even playing field... just not done.

It's not exactly a secret anymore that Turbine only cares about the US playerbase (flash lotteries, server maintenance downtimes, HD legendary movie ticket, ...).
They are not really to blame, Turbine is an US company and displays some typical US mentality, they just don't know any better.

[Misapprehension]

the helms deep lottery and bee-pie lottery were the only ones ive seen, and mr. Sapience was very sneaky with the hobiit lottery, running it from midnight to early morning.

some kind of system would be really nice, and 24 hrs+ for a lottery... like every wednesday, or every sunday, to give a chance for everyone to enter

[Rainothon]

It's not exactly a secret anymore that Turbine only cares about the US playerbase (flash lotteries, server maintenance downtimes, HD legendary movie ticket, ...).
They are not really to blame, Turbine is an US company and displays some typical US mentality, they just don't know any better.

Though I too discern many typical US quirks in Turbine's actions and communications, it's unfair to say they don't care about their foreign playerbase. It's more than unfair, it's just not true.

Helm's Deep pre-orders were postponed to see if they could get the HD legendary movie ticket supported outside US.

Server maintenance downtime is done when there's -=staff=- around, go figure! This ensures downtimes have less chance of delays and that's good for every timezone.

Player Council members are chosen from around the globe and some get flewn in to Boston on Turbine's cost.

And sometimes things happen that fit EU timezones better and lo and behold the US playerbase whining when that happens.

Point is: Turbine appreciates their foreign customers. You may debate how you feel about/discern their appreciation, but you cannot deny facts.

[Rainothon]

Once I check a number of times and there isn't a lottery, I tend to stop looking. So I agree with the above. If they are going to be unscheduled and you need to manually click on the lottery button to find them, if they aren't up much only the most dedicated/compulsive will do participate after they get out of the habit. Rats will only click on the lever so much if the behavior is not reinforced....

Good thing my Chinese horoscope is that of the Rat.

Still I missed all the sneaky hobbitssses lotteries... Bugger that!

Mostly I miss the good old regular lotteries from the past.

[Rainothon]

Excellent, it is working just as planned, the more people that give up, the better my chances are.

I will -NOT- give up.

But sleeping does tend to stop me from entering lotteries anywhere from 18:00 EDT to 2:00 EDT, except for the occasional bout of insomnia. There's a point in people minding lotteries that don't run for 24 hours. This game has a global playerbase.

[Elazaer]

Seriously, there have been 35 lotteries this month only!?! O_o

I check at least a few times a day and I've only seen 2 lotteries in the last two months. The lottery for HD Premium and a ''1 to 3 lottery'' (together with the HD one).
I can't actually imagine how I've missed 30+ of them. That's at least one lottery a day. I check a few times a day and I still miss them? Then they must occur at night for me, I live in Europe.

I do think that it's kinda unfair that almost all of the lotteries are at times for the USA...

The last lottery I won is actually over half a year ago, ''Lottery of the Bag of Grabbing'', 2013-03-02.

[Schinderhannes]

I've came up with some new example lotteries in case Sapience is currently in a creative crisis.

[Khafar]

I do think that it's kinda unfair that almost all of the lotteries are at times for the USA...

That is of course a consideration, but I'm in the U.S., I check for Lotteries typically once a day, and I've seen a grand total of 3 - less than 10%.

I have to believe that most of the short ones are just tests, because it's pretty silly to run lotteries which are quite deliberately exclusive, both of people who aren't in western hemisphere time zones, and of people who aren't allowed to cruise game forums at work. Plus of course all the people who don't just camp out on these forums 24/7.

No, this sort of silly lottery schedule isn't going to get me to check them 10X a day. What it might do is entice me to write an app which checks them every few minutes, then notifies me if a new one pops up. If I do so, I'll share.

Khafar

[Mar-Evayave]

It's not exactly a secret anymore that Turbine only cares about the US playerbase (flash lotteries, server maintenance downtimes, HD legendary movie ticket, ...).
They are not really to blame, Turbine is an US company and displays some typical US mentality, they just don't know any better.

Wow... that is really ungrateful. I know this may come as a shock to a lot of people, but even the staff at Turbine need to sleep (and eat, and answer the call of nature, and chillax from time to time, and spend some time with the wife/husband/kids/boyfriend/girlfriend). Yeah, they actually do need to do that stuff, just like every other human being out there. Do you guys have panic attacks when Sapience decides to go to the Bahamas for a week (or wherever Sapience and his coworkers go for some simple vacation)?

Good gravy, crying over some missing lotteries or inconvenient downtimes? Bashing Turbine over it too? A large majority of non-US players (and gee, even some US players) always find some reason to bash Turbine for picking times that were inconvenient for them. Apparently they'd rather Turbine stay up overnight just so that the downtimes don't interfere with your precious playtime.

Regarding # of lotteries: I think there are something like 27 servers, so that is one HD Premium lottery for each of those, that did indeed last about 2-3 days. There were some test flash lotteries (5-6 maybe?). There was the lottery that ran almost the while time the HD lotteries (at least 24 hours for that one). Perhaps throw in a few more that I might have missed. That's over 30 lotteries. Each lottery, even if its the same thing just for diff. servers, still counts as one lottery (at least the way I understand it).

[wachkussen]

There appears to be another Helms deep key lottery ( on each server) running NOW. ( now being 8:30 PM UK time 24th of sept. ) It says it will be drawn on Friday ( which will be 27th of Sept). So that OUGHT to give all and sundry a decent chance of catching it. Assuming word spreads. Considering that there are still people out there who don't know that the birthday hobbits change on the hour, it might be unwise to take that as a given.

[Sapience]

Perhaps throw in a few more that I might have missed. That's over 30 lotteries. Each lottery, even if its the same thing just for diff. servers, still counts as one lottery (at least the way I understand it).

Actually when I mentioned there having been about 35 lotteries, I was speaking of each lottery 1x. So technically if you want to count per server you need to multiply my 35 by 29.

There appears to be another Helms deep key lottery ( on each server) running NOW. ( now being 8:30 PM UK time 24th of sept. ) It says it will be drawn on Friday ( which will be 27th of Sept). So that OUGHT to give all and sundry a decent chance of catching it. Assuming word spreads. Considering that there are still people out there who don't know that the birthday hobbits change on the hour, it might be unwise to take that as a given.

It officially ends at 11:00PM Eastern US Time on Friday. So it's about 79 hours from start to finish.