Thoughts on the Anniversary Event

[Domineaux]

Thanks for the 5 tokens almost everyone who entered was awarded but this in no way makes up for the fact that this event is amazingly ungracious for an Anniversary Celebration and while I don't blame you, I think decision makers at Turbine should stop with "turning a deaf ear" to the players who allow them a (lucrative) job.

Saying working as intended about this is just like what was said over radiance grind and (un)legendary items for 2 years before admitting they were horribly wrong.

[hardiborn]

Proper planning prevents poor performance. Thanks for the lottery tokens, really does not make up for such a dismal Anniversary. Has the sounds of backpedaling and scrambling to me. Throw some coins to the peons and they will be content right?? Good job Turbine!!

[Crell_1]

We can't set the number so high that its a 100% lock you'll win on every character because at that point the number of winners would take so long to process it is likely to crash the entire service and likely the mail service as well, and then no one would get anything. .

I'd always wondered if this was a resources issue.. Thanks for confirming it! Thanks for the additional lottos and increased chances to win tokens!

I'd like to point out that 5 tokens is the exact number still needed for a mount if you started doing it on the first day and only did races.

[Mandli]

The Mega lottery ended at 9PM, this was the lottery with very very good odds. While the lottery doesn't have an 'everyone wins' option, we can set the number of winners per world very high so that the odds are you'll win on at least one character. However when we do set them this high, it can take a little while for the system to send out all the mail.

We can't set the number so high that its a 100% lock you'll win on every character because at that point the number of winners would take so long to process it is likely to crash the entire service and likely the mail service as well, and then no one would get anything.

There is another lottery ending at 11PM Eastern. The number of winners per world is smaller but it repeats every few hours so you you could potentially win multiple times.

Also, the number of winners for the regularly scheduled lotteries (which also now include anniversary tokens) has been tripled.

Thanks for trying to mitigate some of the damage this poorly thought out event has caused. Many (if not most) of us truly do appreciate the effort. I doubt that many are going to tell you that, though.

[GodzillaX8]

Thanks for trying to mitigate some of the damage this poorly thought out event has caused. Many (if not most) of us truly do appreciate the effort. I doubt that many are going to tell you that, though.

I appreciate the gesture, but it in no way makes up for the still quite severe grind we are in store for if we intend on acquiring even half of the rewards.

Tossing us a handful of tokens when we need a truckload is nowhere near an adequate solution.

[Mandli]

I appreciate the gesture, but it in no way makes up for the still quite severe grind we are in store for if we intend on acquiring even half of the rewards.

Tossing us a handful of tokens when we need a truckload is nowhere near an adequate solution.

True. But, sometimes its the thought that counts. And we still have two weeks to go, so who knows...

At least his heart appears to be in right direction. We are obviously not just "talking to the hand."

IMHO

[komtrance]

Ugg. Sorry Sapience, usually the Turbine team does a great job for me during festivals and events. This one is not any fun for me and many other people. I have enjoyed working to get all the cosmetics and housing goodies for the other festivals, but this one is just not any fun. I'm not sure I understand Turbine's logic behind making rewards so time intensive and grindy.
This honestly doesn't feel like a 'thanks for playing for the last four years' event. I thought some of the suggestions people had to lower the cost of bartering sounded reasonable to me, but you make it sound like we are the ones who have the problem.
This is a Grind Festival. The rewards are for grinding. I do not like grinding. I will sit this anniversary out, unfortunately. I enjoy this game very much, but this is not a fun event. I hope the next event will be less frustrating. See you in May!
Thanks

+1. This should be a celebration of LOTRO's anniversary. Instead, it's more like a slap in the face. You either grind your behind off or avoid participating entirely. It's not like the other events where you get a decent amount of tokens for doing things you'd want to do anyway just for fun (haunted burrow, maze, etc.) If you want to participate, it's the once-every-24-hours races you can do at every event, or an extremely griefable PvP battle (which can be next to impossible to complete during prime time on populated servers). Oh yeah, or logging into the MyLOTRO site throughout the day hoping one of your toons might win one of the lotteries...but from the looks of it, people aren't having much luck with that either (excepting the big mercy lottery with the very high odds).

I appreciate Sapience not turning on the spin machine, but in this case the honest truth is more baffling and disappointing than anything else I was afraid of reading in his post. It's hard to believe that during the design process of this event not one person stood up and said, "Hey guys, grinding's not really that fun for me, especially when it's not going to improve my character any." It's worrisome when a game's designers fail to put themselves in the average player's shoes before pushing out content. Whose bright idea was it to turn what should be a fun event into a grind fest? It's almost like a designer from a rival game snuck into the Turbine HQ thinking, "How can I sabotage LOTRO during what should be its most important event and insult its players rather than thank them?"

I don't see how one can make a logical argument against lowering the barter cost (in time played) of items. What do we as players or Turbine stand to lose by having the housing items reduced to 5 tokens, for example? It would essentially be taking them to about the same time investment level as similar items during other events. The people who want to collect them all would be much more able to do so without it being too easy. Casual players would still be able to get a few of the items they want without dedicating all their play time for a few weeks to it.

For those not interested in the items, that's fine, no part of this issue should concern you. In fact, you should be happy that your friends and kinmates would spend less time grinding for the items and have more time for group content and having fun. Casual players make up a huge part of the LOTRO player base. It's not like they'd be giving away tier 9000 raid gear if the "festival" items were more easily attainable. Gear that improves your performance should be worked for, but these are cosmetic, *fun* items. If this stuff won't be getting added to the store, what's the reasoning for all this grinding? For the people in favor of keeping the anniversary event how it is now, I hope you're going to be campaigning for Turbine to make all the other events just as grindy, since that seems to be what you enjoy. Wanting to restrict the amount of people who can enjoy these items comes off to me as quite selfish.

...and that leads me to perhaps the saddest thing about it all: knowing that someone put work into designing these items, and such a small percentage of the player base will be able to actually appreciate them.

[Grinn]

Well as a Founding member I'd like to extend a Happy Anniversary to everyone, Staff & Playerbase (old & new) alike.
On an anniversary, it is a time to reflect on the good (and not-as-good-as-we'd-have-liked-it) we've all experienced here and look forward to the future (grind) and the upcoming year. (It was supposed to be appliances this year and Silver next year!)

After seeing the outstanding job that Turbine did for DDO's 5th anniversary event, where some of the gear that was obtainable rivaled a lot of the high-end stuff and the very entertaining way that the event was run, I can only Hope (token) that next year's LOTRO's 5th anniversary shall eclipse any other event we experience beyond the sack of Isengard.

All dissent aside, Happy Anniversary LOTRO, may your Ancient Gold Tokens bring you much-wanted Marks.

[Kallore]

I've been following this thread and agree with most of what's been said.

Just posting to thank Turbine for the increased lottery wins. It proves they're paying attention at least! And I would continue to happily approve of any further lottery odds increases (or barter decreases)

[Mandli]

+1. This should be a celebration of LOTRO's anniversary. Instead, it's more like a slap in the face. You either grind your behind off or avoid participating entirely. It's not like the other events where you get a decent amount of tokens for doing things you'd want to do anyway just for fun (haunted burrow, maze, etc.) If you want to participate, it's the once-every-24-hours races you can do at every event, or an extremely griefable PvP battle (which can be next to impossible to complete during prime time on populated servers). Oh yeah, or logging into the MyLOTRO site throughout the day hoping one of your toons might win one of the lotteries...but from the looks of it, people aren't having much luck with that either (excepting the big mercy lottery with the very high odds).

I appreciate Sapience not turning on the spin machine, but in this case the honest truth is more baffling and disappointing than anything else I was afraid of reading in his post. It's hard to believe that during the design process of this event not one person stood up and said, "Hey guys, grinding's not really that fun for me, especially when it's not going to improve my character any." It's worrisome when a game's designers fail to put themselves in the average player's shoes before pushing out content. Whose bright idea was it to turn what should be a fun event into a grind fest? It's almost like a designer from a rival game snuck into the Turbine HQ thinking, "How can I sabotage LOTRO during what should be its most important event and insult its players rather than thank them?"

I don't see how one can make a logical argument against lowering the barter cost (in time played) of items. What do we as players or Turbine stand to lose by having the housing items reduced to 5 tokens, for example? It would essentially be taking them to about the same time investment level as similar items during other events. The people who want to collect them all would be much more able to do so without it being too easy. Casual players would still be able to get a few of the items they want without dedicating all their play time for a few weeks to it.

For those not interested in the items, that's fine, no part of this issue should concern you. In fact, you should be happy that your friends and kinmates would spend less time grinding for the items and have more time for group content and having fun. Casual players make up a huge part of the LOTRO player base. It's not like they'd be giving away tier 9000 raid gear if the "festival" items were more easily attainable. Gear that improves your performance should be worked for, but these are cosmetic, *fun* items. If this stuff won't be getting added to the store, what's the reasoning for all this grinding? For the people in favor of keeping the anniversary event how it is now, I hope you're going to be campaigning for Turbine to make all the other events just as grindy, since that seems to be what you enjoy. Wanting to restrict the amount of people who can enjoy these items comes off to me as quite selfish.

...and that leads me to perhaps the saddest thing about it all: knowing that someone put work into designing these items, and such a small percentage of the player base will be able to actually appreciate them.

This ^^^

rep+1

[Jadrax]

I appreciate the gesture, but it in no way makes up for the still quite severe grind we are in store for if we intend on acquiring even half of the rewards.

Tossing us a handful of tokens when we need a truckload is nowhere near an adequate solution.

Unfortunately I do not think the issues are really possible to satisfactory fix at this stage. What they really need to do is add several more activities which reward Tokens, and that I fear can not be done in such a short time frame.

It is probably best for people to accept the almost apology of the lottery Tokens and move on - once they have passed on their disappointment.

[Hauk]

The gesture of the lotteries is appreciated, as is Sapience's interactions, however, for an anniversary event it is really disappointing. DDO's anniversary event gave everyone who logged in an item with the ability to grind to improve it. Unfortunately I have to head overseas next week and will be away for three weeks so there is little chance I will be able to grind enough with my 10 characters on one server and the three on another to even get the mounts. Would have been nice if there had been other ways to achieve the anniversary tokens needed (I would have preferred racing the horses every 5-10 minutes rather than the beer bash). Also given the amount of grind necessary I dont see too many getting the benefit of the double XP bonus. It seems you have to make a choice to do one or the other but not both.

[lastalliance]

Do lotteries actually have a set number of winners per server, or do they have a percentage chance per character?

[Thoroval]

The Mega lottery ended at 9PM

Could you please remove the level 5 requirement? Seems kinda arbitrary and some of us have characters we don't want to level that were created back when the Tutorial and Intro could be skipped.

[whheydt]

There's no real need to dump on Sapience, who was kind/brave enough to step into angry / disappointed customer threads and try to present Turbine's position. Whether the position is valid/acceptable is very well and good to discuss...but let's all keep it civil.

I agree that Sapience's "blunt" post was good. He laid out the facts as he knows them...and hopefully as they truly are (he is, after all dependent on what his sources tell him).

However, his doing so is neither kind nor brave. It's his JOB to step in and clear up misunderstanding, erroneous beliefs, and clean up threads--closing them as needed. In this instance, he's in a cleft stick. On the one hand, the players are upset--and justifiably so--on the other hand WB/Turbine is saying "this is the way it's going to be". Sapience is in the unenviable position of having to deliver the bad news, with as much good news as can be wheedled out of WB/Turbine management.

So while I appreciate his post, I appreciate it as being from a person doing a workman like job.

--W. H. Heydt

Old Used Programmer

[Sapience]

Do lotteries actually have a set number of winners per server, or do they have a percentage chance per character?

It's a fixed number. Lotteries are actually more like a raffle.

[Domineaux]

Only thing I see as good about this abysmal Celebration is the fact that we are all so busy complaining about the token grind that I haven't seen anyone complain about the fact that the horse race BARTER tokens don't go into the BARTER WALLET.

Yup, I'm a glass half full kinda guy

[GodzillaX8]

Only thing I see as good about this abysmal Celebration is the fact that we are all so busy complaining about the token grind that I haven't seen anyone complain about the fact that the horse race BARTER tokens don't go into the BARTER WALLET.

Yup, I'm a glass half full kinda guy

Whoa, you've got some lofty expectations, guy. Expecting them to actually make use of the barter wallet? Pfft.

[Dyfrin]

There are some inaccurate assumptions and perhaps a few expectations in this thread that I'll do my best to clear up. No spin, just info. So forgive me if this comes off a bit blunt.... it may even show up in a Twitter Flash lottery. We're giving you chances, we're not going to just hand it to you.


So with all of that said, let me just add that I'd encourage everyone reading this to enter the 6PM Eastern (-4 GMT) lottery for Anniversary Tokens. Your odds of winning will be very, very good.

In game items pretty much requiring out of game participation..
/shrug not what I signed up for.
Also not going to pretend my character is not an honorable human of dale, being instead a drunkard who revels in beer fights.. just so he can have a horse showing 4 years of his life in lotro..

As if alcohol in real life hasn't devastated enough lives.. let's masquerade it as frivolous and require it to celebrate a 4th year of existence.

[Lotroien]

Honestly... After the steed of night made its appearance I stopped collecting mounts.

Until that point I did my best to get all mounts available in game (30 or so) in at least my main toon. Since it's not possible no more to collect them all I don't even bother at this point.

Like many I've been here since Beta. I see the game heading in a total different direction. Do I like it? Nope. People are free to leave if they want to. And some will.

Cheers.

Yes, my wife left a week ago, and I "lost" 12 RL friends so far who left in about 5 month's time period since FTP launched, and while i do understand there reasoning it still leave a bad taste in my mouth.
LOTRO is just an amazing game, but with all that Store business, what seems to be the top most priority, and the constant advertising in the form of Store Buttons, the fun is getting sucked out on me pretty fast too.

Nothing against the store, besides some items I deem questionable, but why, o why I have to be reminded everytime about the store if I just open up a panel to look at my stats?

This game has so much potential, Turbine has show us they CAN deliver good content, but sadly these days it turns out to be not much more then numbless grindfests and after a little while put those items in the store for those who gave up on it. Now we are so far that it seems some people not even try to get the horsie at all and avoid this celebration thing as the plague.

I do not care about the anniversary thingie, or to have many horses, but understand the complaints about the grind.

I see even people here complaining who have more often pro Turbine post's. If this is just because a horsie(Instead of Store Buttons LOL) is involved or they finally see what really is going on doesn't matter and i don't want to go there anyway.

What matters and what it shows that really something is wrong on Turbine's end.

Indeed, everyone is free to leave, but if I ever leave because the cons outweigh the pro's it still will make me sad, but on the other hand, because i never really emotionally attached to any game, I will get over that.

I wish Turbine a lot of wisdom, it is not easy, beter yet, basicly impossible, to make everybody happy, but if even some of your most supportive players are negative about this anniversary thingy and some now even not too fond about the direction of the game as it is presently going they better start looking at ways how to improve on it.

People who are happy in the game have a tendency to spent more dough on a game then those who aren't happy.

[RicardoFurriel]

Who said everyone won 5 tokens?

Not a single toon here. Bad luck I guess.

[Joe-Phi]

Exactly! The Anniversary Event runs through May 2. You have plenty of time to earn tokens and enjoy the events.

Really! I just want to say: Thank you.

Because of my job and family life I simply do not have time to play each day. And because I am not really the fastest reacting player I simply am not really good in the beer fight.

conclusion: I will not be able to win anything in this anniversary event (perhaps with my non-played-alt on one of the Turbine worlds, as the lotteries are not available in the EU).

Turbine, sorry to say this: That is just a sad 4th anniversary for me. Nice items to win ... but not a chance to get one.

I absolutely do not have a problem with the cost of the horse. But ... it would have been nice, if the cost for some other items would have been at a level that a really casual player will be able to get them ... and there is non.

poor design decision. sorry to say this.

[Lohi]

for those 11 tokens you will get 1 hard tack ration and one athelas potion. If you are really lucky you might get a sapphire shard or a minor cosmetic item.

And this is the only thing we had for previous anniversary events too! This year we get more, and thus more complaining. With the normal tokens though you get them through normal adventuring and pretty soon you'll have all the cosmetic items you'll need, plus some shards/flakes.

If they had not added the anniversary tokens we wouldn't have these complaints. We'd have a bit of the normal "hey, nothing new this year, I told you F2P was a scam", and a few more "where's the bar fight they promised us?", but nothing to this degree of hatred. Sure it's no fun trying to grind out these tokens, but the solution is to either not grind them out, wait until the griefers have gotten tired of griefing, don't insist you get every item, or just ignore this part.

[Dralon]

Missed the first round of lotteries it seems. Since initially when this forum change happened I couldn't get to my characters (as they were all on my 2nd subscription on my account), I hadn't realized that once they got it set up to switch to that 2nd subscription , they had also made it so that lotteries didn't automatically appear on your blog page when available....that you had to activate a "widget". No wonder I couldn't find them.

Oh well, widget activated, next round of lotteries entered. /fingers crossed for a chance to eek closer to 30 tokens .... I'm feeling so celebratory ;/

[nyatar]

Man, 37 pages and I finally made it to the end of the thread.

I have always enjoyed LOTRO's festivals, and I tout them to my friends as one of the neat things about the game. In fact, I talk about LOTRO with my other MMO friends pretty often.

This event hasn't impressed me. I was actually playing the game while these magic lotteries were happening, which sucks, but that's not even really the point.

The insinuation that people are complaining because they want things for free is insulting. Numerous people have done the math, and the grind to get even one or two items is ridiculous.

One of the most repeated comments in this thread is "add other ways to get tokens". You'll notice that's very different from "GIVE MEE TOKENZ NAO PLZ". People are willing to put in the time and effort to get rewards, they just want to do fun and varied things. Weighting the tokens so heavily on the beer fight is neither fun nor varied. That took everybody in my kin about 10 seconds to figure out. Sadly, we were some of those who assumed that more was going to be revealed.

Guess we learned our lesson.

It's not going to really affect me; I'm a little bummed I won't be able to get something cool, but that's life. Finals and two jobs take priority. It kind of tarnishes my word-of-mouth a bit, though.