Developer Diaries - Problem Loading Page

[Asterus]

Howdy folks,

Trying to locate some older dev diaries and a number of them don't seem to be accessible anymore. As an example when I try to go to:

http://archive.lotro.com/gameinfo/de...iary-enedwaith

This page gives me an error message: Problem loading page

Just wondering if these older articles are still available to be viewed or has SSG trashed them? Or if maybe I am doing something wrong such as having a setting in my browser that may be impeding the loading of the older material. Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Asterus.

[Thurallor]

You can use the Internet Wayback machine. Here's a snapshot from 2012:
http://web.archive.org/web/201212181...iary-enedwaith

[Cordovan]

When time permits I will look through the oldest part of the web site to see if any of that is still around but unpublished. My guess is it was not carried over during the 2013 web site update.

[Asterus]

Thanks guys, appreciate that!

[Cordovan]

Sadly, no luck on finding that dev diary, seems to be long gone.

[Asterus]

Pity. :-( But thank you for trying.

I was already aware of the Wayback machine but it is incomplete too. There quite a number of Dev dairies I was looking for.

Ah well, was worth a try. I'll still keep looking.

Thanks again, and regards,

Asterus.

[Thurallor]

Sadly, no luck on finding that dev diary, seems to be long gone.

How could something like that get just thrown away?

Apparently someone at Turbine did care about keeping those historical diaries accessible, or they would not have moved them to "archive.lotro.com". But that site doesn't work; it simply redirects users back to www.lotro.com, so there's a redirect loop.

It is a truly baffling blunder by Turbine/SSG. SSG has some very conscientious and dedicated employees, but apparently it has had some very negligent and careless ones, too.

[NotDarkbane]

How could something like that get just thrown away?

Apparently someone at Turbine did care about keeping those historical diaries accessible, or they would not have moved them to "archive.lotro.com". But that site doesn't work; it simply redirects users back to www.lotro.com, so there's a redirect loop.

It is a truly baffling blunder by Turbine/SSG. SSG has some very conscientious and dedicated employees, but apparently it has had some very negligent and careless ones, too.

The wayback machine found this.

[Cordovan]

How could something like that get just thrown away?

Apparently someone at Turbine did care about keeping those historical diaries accessible, or they would not have moved them to "archive.lotro.com". But that site doesn't work; it simply redirects users back to www.lotro.com, so there's a redirect loop.

It is a truly baffling blunder by Turbine/SSG. SSG has some very conscientious and dedicated employees, but apparently it has had some very negligent and careless ones, too.

Archive is its own thing not related to SSG; they do this for the whole internet. As to how it got lost, there were a bunch of articles from the pre-2013 version of the web site that did not get carried over to the new web site, and some but not all of those original document files were preserved over time.

[Thurallor]

Archive is its own thing not related to SSG; they do this for the whole internet.

"archive.org" is an independent web site that tries to save the history of the entire WWW.

"archive.lotro.com" is a web site operated by SSG, is it not? ("lotro.com" is owned by "The Saul Zaentz Company, dba Middle-earth Enterprises".)

As to how it got lost, there were a bunch of articles from the pre-2013 version of the web site that did not get carried over to the new web site, and some but not all of those original document files were preserved over time.

Where are the ones that were preserved? They are not listed in the Articles section of the web site.

[TearMaker]

"archive.org" is an independent web site that tries to save the history of the entire WWW.

"archive.lotro.com" is a web site operated by SSG, is it not? ("lotro.com" is owned by "The Saul Zaentz Company, dba Middle-earth Enterprises".)


Where are the ones that were preserved? They are not listed in the Articles section of the web site.

Someone has been systematically making articles and diaries disappear now for some years. It became overly apparent to me in the months following the change in the website when I think it was called my.lotro was removed... anyway it was when the lotteries were officially stopped and leaderboards were removed and blogs etc...

But, it did happen on a smaller scale earlier than that, it was funny how you could make an argument on the forums one week quoting and linking to old Dev diaries and posts but then reading a few weeks later and the link would either go nowhere or spin you back to where you were...

Example being in my case was usually some quote that a Dev had made or promise from a Prod. about Pvmp and they always failed on those promises... so you would highlight said conversation and a few weeks after either the old post or the entire old thread would have vanished. And when it is gone there is nothing you can do but keep searching and wondering what has happened until after years of this it suddenly dawns on you that someone is saving face or there is a group covering for each other. Or the previous CM was making his life easier by sanitizing the amount of work dropping at his feet.

History should never be rewritten - we who played are proud of the arguments we made in the early days to make this game better and also are proud of the Devs in those early days. They didn't get things right all the time but hey we are still here all these years on and we want to see the progression and where we came from.. This is why there was not a bad word said when we have a mini blog about quest building in the time before Lotro went live...

I would love to hear a more candid view (warts and all) regarding Pvmp and how it was rushed into game and then neglected forever... I am beyond the bitterness now and we all know it is never going to change but I would love one of the current Devs from back at that time to give us an idea of whether those Devs who have left and Blogged about it was true. Well that would be my dream and I am sure others would have a myriad of early stories they would love to hear and they are all good...

However, I think it possibly has stopped now but if not, this systemic destruction of Lotro historical documents has to stop..


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[Thruili]

How could something like that get just thrown away?

Apparently someone at Turbine did care about keeping those historical diaries accessible, or they would not have moved them to "archive.lotro.com". But that site doesn't work; it simply redirects users back to www.lotro.com, so there's a redirect loop.

It is a truly baffling blunder by Turbine/SSG. SSG has some very conscientious and dedicated employees, but apparently it has had some very negligent and careless ones, too.

Sometime between the release of Riders of Rohan and Helm's Deep in 2013 Turbine's executive Producer Kate Paiz decided to throw away all older developer dairies as they contained 'outdated information' and they did not want newer players to be confused. So everything prior to Riders of Rohan was trashed. I asked the Community Manager Rick Heaton for the diaries that were removed, and he confirmed they were gone for good.
If you are familiar with German, you could have a look at https://reiter-von-rohan.com/entwick...buch?start=132. These diaries go back to about free-2-Play in 2010. If you know how the older diaries were called, you could also find them in various forums all over the internet, but that is an arduous task to hunt them down.

[KongoOtto]

Sometime between the release of Riders of Rohan and Helm's Deep in 2013 Turbine's executive Producer Kate Paiz decided to throw away all older developer dairies as they contained 'outdated information' and they did not want newer players to be confused. So everything prior to Riders of Rohan was trashed. I asked the Community Manager Rick Heaton for the diaries that were removed, and he confirmed they were gone for good.

It's beyond me how anyone just throw those things in the trash instead just flag those 'outdated information'