Lottery?

[leglaith]

I remember, a couple years back, there was a lottery drawing once a week. You had a reason to log in and enter for a random chance at something quite new and rare. I miss this incentive. It gave me something to keep coming back...I enjoyed a little chance at something. Can we please get together and maybe bring it back? Thanks much! (going on my 6yr. V.I.P. and 9+ toons in to my journey)

[Polymachos]

The lottery was based on a database that somehow took the information from the playing servers, and used that for a comparision/match with the lottery conditions (so that the rewards will be appropriate to the respective level). One day there was a big outage, and the lottery system was damaged, with no backup available. Sapience restarted it several times, trying to make it work again, but couldn't really get it running. In the end, the lottery was ditched.

This is what I know about the story (and witnessed while the whole thing was going on).


Greetings, Polymachos

[fallohide]

I remember, a couple years back, there was a lottery drawing once a week. You had a reason to log in and enter for a random chance at something quite new and rare. I miss this incentive. It gave me something to keep coming back...I enjoyed a little chance at something. Can we please get together and maybe bring it back? Thanks much! (going on my 6yr. V.I.P. and 9+ toons in to my journey)

Dead and buried several years ago, and not coming back. They used data from mylotro, which died before the "new" forums went up. I think it was gone even before Codemasters was bought out/merged. There are a ton of 4+ year old posts on this subforum that talk about it.

There's still a daily "reason to log in" - hobbit presents.

[Anax_Basileus]

I remember that outage... was a big disappointment... because you could get some great stuff from the lottery... now we have hobbit presents which doesn't really do much in my opinion. Especially when I often get a stupid simple horn which is completely useless.

[Vicka]

I miss the chance to get a mount. Got one of the PAX mounts on one character.

[Valakircka]

was really awesome!!!
got several mounts for my toons!
if it wasnt the lottery i wouldnt be able to get em!
steed of the burglar on 2 toons
steed of minas ithil
cremelo to almost all of them
n more i cant recall!

[Nymphonic]

was really awesome!!!
got several mounts for my toons!
if it wasnt the lottery i wouldnt be able to get em!
steed of the burglar on 2 toons
steed of minas ithil
cremelo to almost all of them
n more i cant recall!

Yeah, it was a bummer when the system went down, I got some really good stuff from the lottery.

[Arestelle]

I remember that outage... was a big disappointment... because you could get some great stuff from the lottery... now we have hobbit presents which doesn't really do much in my opinion. Especially when I often get a stupid simple horn which is completely useless.

I miss the lottery, but don't knock Hobbit Presents too hard -- yeah, I've got Dale-Men's Crams coming out my ears and I don't know what to do with rally horns or landscape soldier tokens, and the mark and shard quantities are a joke, but the stockpile of unopened Mathom armour I had built up over time came in very handy while leveling my hunter to 115 without Mordor. Ever since they changed it to boxes that aren't pinned to class or level till you open them, and then open on level instead of at the most recent 10th level, those are way more useful.

Plus, the gold's always nice.

[Xephita]

The lottery system was the best, either they have nobody skilled enough to rewrite a lottery system or they are too stingy to give anything but the lame hobbit presents out for free.

[Arestelle]

The lottery system was the best, either they have nobody skilled enough to rewrite a lottery system or they are too stingy to give anything but the lame hobbit presents out for free.

Or they simply don't have the dev time available that it would require. I doubt skill has anything to do with it.

[Khally]

I just have to say, that whole Mylotro system was amazing. I really loved it and miss it. It seemed like an awesome way for us as a community to come together outside of the game to get to know one another, ask questions we might be too embarrassed to ask on the forums, and tell silly stories. I'm sure there's no way to bring it back, and I don't mean this as an insult to what we DO have now... Just that Mylotro was a wonderful thing. I'm grateful that we got to experience it, and I still miss it. (If you're one of the golden oldies like me who still even remember it! LOL)

[maartena]

I remember the Lottery and the MyLotro system. I was told at some point that they had a few issues of in-game stalking that included some legal deposition involving Lotro, and that they at that point decided to not do any work on that system for the site revamp..... Things like last logon date/logoff date were shown, even if the character was anonymous and with it they could figure out if a character was online right NOW, even though in-game it wouldn't show until they logged off..... So it might be a good thing that was removed.

That said: It was also incredibly useful for your OWN characters..... I always used it because I ALWAYS forgot what I needed to craft for an alt.... did the character already have better earrings or pants? I would then logon and check out the character and see what he/she had equipped so I wouldn't over-craft. I blew a good many guild cooldowns after it was removed making a "guess" on whether the character needed something. So I wouldn't mind getting it back..... in a way that the information is NOT public to anyone, but just to yourself so you can see your characters from a web browser.

The lottery.... it was always been explained that the code for it was buggy, and that they decided to remove it and replace it with something new.... and as such: The Hobbit Gift was born! It essentially replaced the lottery, and had many of the same rewards.

In a sense, the lottery did return in the form of a 500 LP prize with the weekly Lotro Beacon newsletter.

I don't think the lottery as it was will ever return, but I do think its time to rotate some Hobbit Present prizes to new things!

[Insanesoul]

I remember the lotteries for fun stuff like Bree Cheese.

[Valakircka]

I remember the Lottery and the MyLotro system. I was told at some point that they had a few issues of in-game stalking that included some legal deposition involving Lotro, and that they at that point decided to not do any work on that system for the site revamp..... Things like last logon date/logoff date were shown, even if the character was anonymous and with it they could figure out if a character was online right NOW, even though in-game it wouldn't show until they logged off..... So it might be a good thing that was removed.

That said: It was also incredibly useful for your OWN characters..... I always used it because I ALWAYS forgot what I needed to craft for an alt.... did the character already have better earrings or pants? I would then logon and check out the character and see what he/she had equipped so I wouldn't over-craft. I blew a good many guild cooldowns after it was removed making a "guess" on whether the character needed something. So I wouldn't mind getting it back..... in a way that the information is NOT public to anyone, but just to yourself so you can see your characters from a web browser.

The lottery.... it was always been explained that the code for it was buggy, and that they decided to remove it and replace it with something new.... and as such: The Hobbit Gift was born! It essentially replaced the lottery, and had many of the same rewards.

In a sense, the lottery did return in the form of a 500 LP prize with the weekly Lotro Beacon newsletter.

I don't think the lottery as it was will ever return, but I do think its time to rotate some Hobbit Present prizes to new things!

lottery had lot better rewards for its times! cant even remember how many exclusive horses i had won in there!
considering me the problem of the code was pushing those items in the store! in that times the only horse i bought from the store was the steed of the night
it was right before the lottery started, then i never bought a store exclusive till anorien when i bought the steed of citadel guard n steed of the white city

[Xephita]

The lottery was based on a database that somehow took the information from the playing servers, and used that for a comparision/match with the lottery conditions (so that the rewards will be appropriate to the respective level). One day there was a big outage, and the lottery system was damaged, with no backup available. Sapience restarted it several times, trying to make it work again, but couldn't really get it running. In the end, the lottery was ditched.

This is what I know about the story (and witnessed while the whole thing was going on).


Greetings, Polymachos

I too was around at the time and after, I'm one of those players who hasn't played a while again but comes back every so often.

I like how they keep using this as a reason though, bit worrying that out of all the people running the games these days nobody can work out some way of putting a lottery system back into place.

I suspect it's more about not wanting to give too much away for free now.

[Cordovan]

The lottery was tied to the MyLOTRO blogging platform and API hookup that is long gone and not really able to come back without a complete redesign and rebuild. Fun fact: back in the day I was actually sometimes the person who determined what items were in the lottery, for both LOTRO and DDO. It was part of my regular schedule in like 2010-2012ish or whatever.

[WillOTheWisp]

the MyLOTRO blogging platform and API hookup that is long gone

Was that the API which allowed you to see characters, including all their equipment, on the LOTRO website?
If I remember correctly, it even displayed a history of when a character had leveled up.
You could also see all the members of a kinship.
I thought that API was a very cool feature.

[Tansy]

This lottery was the greatest. I’m still nostalgic about it to this day.

Please please please bring something like this back. Even if it’s only a VIP perk.

[DavidmeetHal]

Was that the API which allowed you to see characters, including all their equipment, on the LOTRO website?
If I remember correctly, it even displayed a history of when a character had leveled up.
You could also see all the members of a kinship.
I thought that API was a very cool feature.

I remember reading posts by people saying that the feature was used by stalkers to find and harass them across servers with the annon option being clunky and sometimes not working.


God, that sounds like a nightmare.

[auximenes]

I so wish there was a built-in way to export your character data to a file.

[OghranNasty]

Not built-in, but there is a way: Lotro Compendium.

It is a separate application that communicates with the game through a small plugin. The app lets you browse you characters and see gear, stats, deeds and a whole lot of other stuff. And you can export a character to an xml file. Pretty neat.

[auximenes]

Thanks, I haven't looked to see what's out there in many years.