Thread: Feedback: Producer's Letter: October- 2010

"It has been more than a month now since we launched Enedwaith and Book 2, and we hope you’ve been enjoying the new content and other changes to the game! It’s been such a pleasure to see how friendly and helpful all of you are to the new players just joining, and how busy many of the towns have been!"

Read more in the latest Producer's Letter from Kate “Nereid” Paiz and post your comments here!

Turbine’s philosophy on making great MMOs centers around the following four points:

So which of those following 7 points are the 4 that Turbine cares so strongly about?

The one about customer support was kinda funny, probably left in as a result of not proofing /mildsarcasm

Separating Epic updates from content sounds nice.... if it means things flow with greater frequency. Otherwise it sounds like a great way of delaying even more.

Giving away the newer regions for free (Epic line free, quest pack purchase) sounds kinda lame. Oh well, it is a taste-testing venue.

Ever the cynical,

I am really happy that you have chosen to do a Producer's Letter! This is a great way to communicate with us and we appreciate it much. I am also looking forward to seeing your new update plans implemented - it is a great idea to separate from the Epic updates because I can see how that would paint you in a box.

On a slightly less enthusiastic note, I am a little disappointed to see there is nothing listed for level capped players (besides RKs and LMs) in the upcoming update... Was kind of hoping you would note the popularity of the 3man classic instances and perhaps add Sword Halls and Water Wheels to the re-vamped classics. However, I do see that you noted there is more to come in the release so I can wait...

Yes, I would like to hear more about how they are going to deliver new content and continue the epic storyline.

Am I the only one who thinks these Tasks are the new daily quests? Guess we'll have to wait for the diary on them.

I like the idea of separating the link between Epic Books and content updates. That way, we can have more frequent (yet smaller) updates. However, one of the best things about this game is the Epic, so please keep those coming on a regular basis!

Thx to Kate for the letter, and I look forward to future letters

PS nit-picky, but I am confused on Kate's method of counting, heh

I made two main points at GDC (other than talking about the results), which are:

Turbine’s philosophy on making great MMOs centers around the following four points:
<seven bullet points>

Originally Posted by ArcticAurora

So which of those following 7 points are the 4 that Turbine cares so strongly about?

The one about customer support was kinda funny, probably left in as a result of not proofing /mildsarcasm.

Nice catch. It was a formatting error. There are two sets of bullet points. Somehow they were lumped together. It's been fixed.

Originally Posted by Clover

"It has been more than a month now since we launched Enedwaith and Book 2, and we hope you’ve been enjoying the new content and other changes to the game! It’s been such a pleasure to see how friendly and helpful all of you are to the new players just joining, and how busy many of the towns have been!"

Read more in the latest Producer's Letter from Kate “Nereid” Paiz and post your comments here!

Sorry but half of her bullet points are BS, pure and simple.

• Give players ways they can customize how to pay and play the game, with different account levels, payment options, and content types – making sure that we offer something for every player interested in the game.
• Make the buying experience as easy as possible and integrate into gameplay – in game purchase experiences that are awkward and hard to understand do not encourage repeat business.
• Provide responsive and reliable customer service for players, including actively listening to player concerns and responding to feedback with game changes or adjustments. As a result of the change in our business model, we have grown our view on how to develop new content and features for the game.
• Optimize the Store. Focus on improving the buying experience and catalog offering to make sure player needs are being addressed is vital to having a healthy business.

The half that deals with the Store; where is she getting her data from? Surely not from the section of the board that Victorie frequents? Heck, just checked the Dev tracker and most of her posts are not listed there...

A LOT of the "how friendly and helpful all of you are to the new players just joining" had to deal with Turbine's fiasco with billing services.

Did she mention that there are still No Point Cards for sale? Something that was mentioned Prior to F2P launch to be coming "soon"? It's been almost 2 months!
Did she mention this?

Originally Posted by Victorie

Hey Typha,

You are correct that VIP does not include Moria. I'm very sorry that you received an incorrect confirmation email. I believe that we are aware that email needs to be updated, but I'll make sure they know.

Victorie

Or
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...t=#post5039811

How about
That Lifetime VIPs still cannot find out what their anniversaries are short of looking for 3 year old cc statements?


Sorry Clover, not directed at you at all. But having Paiz spew stuff for publicity is one thing, and for those to be posted here where people actually Know and See what's really happening - yes, even to the limit of what we Can see, is something else.

someone made the point in another thread that the epic story is only 5 weeks behind where the ring got destroyed, so it's pretty much necessary for them to do that decoupling or else they're simply going to run out of game-time to add content.

I'd like to say thank you for the producer's letter. I like to see info from the top, as I then feel I'm getting more/more accurate information.

As to the rest of it...

A month in, I still hate ftp and think the whole idea sucks. Yeah, it's brought new players in. Gee thanks, now starting my newbie crafters, I can get tier 6 khazad tin, cheaper than tier 1 tin. Yay, what a great benefit. I have to turn off ooc and usually advice channels in Bree area, due to all the wow whiners complaining about how bad this game is. Yay, I feel the benefits already. I try to donate things to new players, and help with advice, but wait a min, with layering, they can't find me. Yay, such an awesome benefit. I feel so privileged to have predicted these types of things before ftp started. I don't feel privileged at having seen them come true. As a note, I've made a couple of good friends and met some great folks who started ftp, then became subscribers.

I do like the new zone, and the changes to my hunter. I enjoyed the new book. Do I think they outweigh all the downsides of ftp? Not even close.

I don't care for the store, as I feel a lot of it is oriented toward making the game easier. This would be part and parcel with the split ups of some of the dungeons and the ability to enter instances from anywhere. I can understand wanting them more utilized, but when the pattern keeps being carried out, in the end, everything is being handed to players willing to pay cash for it. I want a game with a struggle in it. I don't want to see the struggles be something that can't be overcome, but I don't want to just blow through a game yawning the whole way, either. That is the way I feel a lot of these changes will lead to, demanded by the new crop of whiners demanding things be handed to them.

So the long and short is, ftp still was a lousy idea, and poorly executed.

Ceonyc
Brandywine

There's also a distinct difference between quality storytelling and quality content. I personally click past dialogue windows. Yes, I'm one of those who makes the average CreComm. writer shake their head in disgust, as I blaze onwards. It's the destination, not the journey. I'd rather have quality content. I couldn't care if lorem ipsum was autofilled into the quest windows. Blablabla gather 10, or blablabla kill 20 would be totally sufficient. If I wanted storytelling, I'd read a book. Now that isn't to disparage or want the writers fired. No, they have a job, and an audience. I'm not in it, but push comes to shove - I want content over quality. Both ideally, but with deference to the prior.

And yes, if a statement comes out from an Ex-Pro level person, it's going to be largely fluffy happy stuff. Mistakes are glossed over, if mentioned, and it's largely focused on PR. Nothing wrong with it per se, but just the facts.

Wow. Very interesting developments.

I'm not sure I like the Book-less update scheme. If all updates still have to go through the QA/Palantir/Bullroarer cycle, how are they going to be more frequent? It's already going to be at least two months before we get the next update. We used to get full Book updates in SoA on that schedule. Now we can't even get Books included that often? I'll reserve full cynicism until we actually see how the schedule plays out, but if we don't get a true Book 3 update with instances until end of Q2 next year? I see no improvement there.

The actual improvements slated for the next release, however, do sound great. Class balance tweaks are always good.

Vault updates are in high demand. The changes Ransroth has outlined will be a huge step to winning over skeptics about the new system.

Not sure about these task things. As fast as the early levels go by, do we really need more content down there?

Free Volume 2 access is awesome! That's a real incentive for people to keep playing for sure. However, does that mean that the free cap is now 65? Otherwise how would a Freemium player capped at 50 be able to play through that content?

Originally Posted by spiritintelligencia

On a slightly less enthusiastic note, I am a little disappointed to see there is nothing listed for level capped players (besides RKs and LMs) in the upcoming update... Was kind of hoping you would note the popularity of the 3man classic instances and perhaps add Sword Halls and Water Wheels to the re-vamped classics. However, I do see that you noted there is more to come in the release so I can wait...

Why would SH and WW be scaled? They're level 65 and 60 instances - still end-game content. What are you going to scale them to? It would be much more effective to scale GA, Fornost, or one of the Angmar instances so that it serves more people rather than revamping instances that people are still running regularly at cap.

More generally, just because Paiz outlined four items for an upcoming patch doesn't mean that's all it will include. That's quite literally never the case. Let's at least wait for patch notes before we pronounce the update as DOA.

My reaction is 2-fold. I like the idea of having updates without books. Implementations like the LM update can move forward without having to wait on the epic storyline and subsequent landmass additions. Smaller updates more frequently. Win.

I was hoping for more end game stuff...quests and instances with the next update. I guess as long as we don't have to wait until March for it I'll be happy. If we get the LM update in November with a book update in January, that would be acceptable.

Excellent! This sort of communication has been sorely missing from LOTRO for a long time. As for all the sunshine and rainbow comments in there, well that is to be expected, and I don't really mind as I've come to expect thick marketing spin from Turbine. Its just very nice to see that Turbine will hopefully give players a heads up on what's coming and the direction the game is taking

I'm not convinced I'm happy about the smaller update scheme. while it's nice to get stuff every 2 months it's kinda irritating when there isn't something new to do with an update. while an Epic book might not be needed with every update new content should be there, be it land-mass, instances or something. it's hard to judge based on a press release (which is what this letter feels like) but for now I'm not convinced this direction is a good one, it feels like someone at Turbine is trying to say "ok, take this and hold on for a couple of months while we work on the real stuff".

Originally Posted by Skigorn

I was hoping for more end game stuff...quests and instances with the next update. I guess as long as we don't have to wait until March for it I'll be happy. If we get the LM update in November with a book update in January, that would be acceptable.

I am guessing there will be more end-game stuff with each content update, book or not. Remember, we just go Enedwaith, but no instances, so I am guessing that we will see Enedwaith instances in November. But, I am also guessing we are going to have to pay for access to them, VIP's included.

And I do agree that it's nice to not have to wait for the next book to get any changes done in the game.

Originally Posted by jayssen

Excellent! This sort of communication has been sorely missing from LOTRO for a long time. As for all the sunshine and rainbow comments in there, well that is to be expected, and I don't really mind as I've come to expect thick marketing spin from Turbine. Its just very nice to see that Turbine will hopefully give players a heads up on what's coming and the direction the game is taking

I've grown to hate the sunshine and rainbow and fluffy bunny comments. Save the spin for the magazine and television ads. Don't try to (re)sell the game to people that are already playing.

First, I'm still waiting to hear more regarding Sapience's announcement a while back that prior subs who go to Premium will have access to Swift Travel. As I've said before, I won't spend another dime on this game going forward until this happens, though it should really be added for all characters on premium accounts imho. All denying swift-travel is going to do is cause players to go look at other games which don't treat them that way.

As to what is specifically covered in this letter:

I don't really understand the idea of opening up the volume 2 and 3 stuff if you don't own Moria. Are the sub-65 level caps going away? Will you be able to buy The Great Delving separately? If not, this makes little sense imho.

Also on the topic of the epic books, I recently did all of Volume 1 on my Premium account. If you aren't going to allow swift-travel for everyone, I'd highly suggest removing access to the epic books after the one where you go to east Angmar. There is so much needless riding back and forth to Forochel, GF, Rivendell and several other areas that this is excruciating to do without swift-travel. You REALLY don't want new players to think that spending 10 times as much time traveling as questing is what they should expect for the rest of the game.

As far as splitting epic quests off from other content releases, I think this is the right move. It doesn't make any sense to couple them together unless they are being developed at the same pace anyway. When trying to cater to people buying things with micro-transactions, I doubt that will often be the case.

Sigh... Turbine, Do you even care about pvp at all? No really, An actual question, do you really care at all, I mean, its been a long time since anything new has come to the pvp side...

I like the idea of changing the way new content is released. Especially if this translates into bugs being fixed alot sooner. How many times have we had to wait until the next book update for bugs to be fixed, this change should see an improvement in this area.

I am a bit disappointed in that Kate didn't go off on a Jobsian tirade against SOE's Everquest 2 Freemium or even WoW releasing a Balrog into their world

The separation of updates from the Epic story is a bit shocking but as always I will see how it pans out. As for Moria and Mirkwood...I would love to see Inspired Greatness for the story line instances (2.5.5 can be atrocious to get a group for let alone having people stick around the entire time). Maybe the addition of a 52-58 zone so Moria can be avoided except for the class quests would be great and may even inspire me to get my stalled out alts that are 40-54 at the moment out of their rut.

Originally Posted by gangsta77

Sigh... Turbine, Do you even care about pvp at all? No really, An actual question, do you really care at all, I mean, its been a long time since anything new has come to the pvp side...

duh..lotro doesnt have pvp.

more important then PvMP is Hobnanigans....which has gone neglected for far longer then anything else in this game even PvMP.

either fix it and bring it back or get rid of that frakking tease of a playing field

So far most of the changes have been fine. But what I do not like is the hounted burrow, it's WAY to dark for hobbits! Bilbo would never do such a thing! It's totally a Middle-Earth halloween! I don't think Tolkien would like hobbits having halloween. I know I don't.

this is great shift from no info at all to some info. i hope you guys keep up the communicatoin with monthly producer's letters and more dev and community team post with info and answers to our questions. overall its greate to hear the new way updates will work.

Originally Posted by tanis0

Are the sub-65 level caps going away? Will you be able to buy The Great Delving separately? If not, this makes little sense imho.

I don't think there's a level cap but either way, if you do the epic storyline when it's red or yellow you level up on it without doing much else. It is very XP heavy. Only occasionally do you need some extra XP to get over a though spot and then you can kill mobs for deeds.

%%

Anyway...

I am a little unclear as to whether LOTRO will be more or less epic storyline oriented. As far as I am concerned the code changes associated with the f2p change (but not f2p as such) have limited enjoyment of many activities in the game, in fact most of them. The epic storyline is IMHO the major thing left that is untouched and I thought that this the intention - turn the game more into an interactive movie. Instead of a socializing adventure with lot of stuff to do, including many "idle things".

But now you say there'll be updates without extension of the epic storyline. Does that mean you give us new "fighting things" along the lines of when you gave us skirmishes?

LOTRO is a game about the journey more than the destination. We all know how the story is going to end. It's about telling our own stories on the way to the One Ring being destroyed. Not so much grinding a new raid every 6 months.

Originally Posted by JeanCarlo

where is she getting her data from? Surely not from the section of the board that Victorie frequents? Heck, just checked the Dev tracker and most of her posts are not listed there...


Did she mention that there are still No Point Cards for sale? Something that was mentioned Prior to F2P launch to be coming "soon"? It's been almost 2 months!
Did she mention this?

Pretty simple. Points cards were delayed due to some miscommunications with vendors. You'll see Target and Gamestop start carrying them around the begining of November. Sorry this wasn't communicated earlier but we've only recently confirmed what happened and when it will be resolved (as in literally the past few hours).

Trying to use forum posts as any sort of definitive data is a bit like looking at a glass of water and saying it represents the entire water supply of the planet. A point I think everyone has heard us repeat many times when talking about the suggestion forums or the tell the community team threads. One source of data, and a sometimes a good place to start your investigations, but not definitive by a long shot.

Originally Posted by tanis0

...I'm still waiting to hear more regarding Sapience's announcement a while back that prior subs who go to Premium will have access to Swift Travel.

Unless something changed and no one told me, that should be in the November update.

It will take some getting used to but putting the epic questline on it's own schedule could turn out to be a good thing if it means more frequent updates to other areas of the game. Also, giving access to Mirkwood and Moria seems fair so free players can get a taste of what those areas are like and get some people moving through these areas again.

The vault updates and LM/RK revamps are also nice. But as others have said, hopefully we will see additional scaled instances, new instances and other goodies either in the next update or the following one...keep up that steady flow of new stuff to keep everyone's bellies full! Even if stuff isn't due out in the very next update some hints for what is coming in the near future would go a long way toward keeping people interested and excited.

Not that this will be read by anyone who can make a difference, but I'll give my feedbck anyway.

Originally Posted by Kate Paiz

• Listen to your players. Players vote by buying or playing content or items they like the best, and by giving direct feedback through the forums, customer service, and chat in game. By staying tuned in on how players are feeling about the game, devs know better what to add, what to fix, and how to ensure that players keep having fun.

While I understand why you made the store, please don't make us continue purchasing fixes to flaws in the design. Case in point, some deeds require the player to kill 450 of each type of mob. Instead of reducing the amount, you added items so that we could pay to reduce the number of kills, or just bypass the deed altogether by buying the virtue outright. In the case of sub-par radiance armor, you sold us stat tomes to make up for the lost stats of our old armor sets.

I understand that you want people to use the store, but making us buy our way through design flaws is like buying a value meal at McDonalds, getting only a cup of ice instead of your drink, then being told "sorry we ran out of soda, but we'll give you a cup of water for only $2.99 more".

On the topic of updates, I wanted to let you know that we have shifted the way we think about our releases. In the past our updates depended on new Books being added to the Epic story. Going forward, updates will not always feature a new installment in the epic story line. By decoupling the Books from Updates we’ll have the flexibility to offer different types of new content and new features in each release.

In other words, you want to focus your resources on where the bulk of the players are, rather than where the story is heading.

Our next update is right around the corner and while I don’t want to spill it all, here’s a quick look at some of what you can expect in the November Update:

• Tasks - a new content type for all players to enjoy in the early game
• A major revision to the Vault
• New skills and updates for the Lore-master and Rune-keeper classes.
• A change to the way we handle the Mines of Moria and Siege of Mirkwood expansion packs.

So I guess the new timeline of one zone and two epic books per year is here to stay.

We’re listening, so please let us know what you want to see in the game, in the store, or in your experience with us in general.

I would like to see less hand-holding and more adventuring.

When I run through the SOA zones, I'm almost always finding new quests that I missed last time around. When I ran Mirkwood and Enedwaith, there was so much hand-holding that I couldn't miss a quest even if I tried. Even with the quest guide turned off, there was no sense of adventure, no real exploration. By the time I finished the epic quests and their associated hubs, there were no exploration deeds left to complete, no unfinished slayer deeds, and only minimal rep grinding to do.

In the SOA zones of similar size, I've still got uncompleted exploration deeds, untouched slayer deeds, and new quests around almost every corner.

Please, give us the world of discovery that we had with Shadows of Angmar (and Moria to some extent), not just a vaguely interactive story where each line is little more than a slight variation of the "kill ten boars" quest.

I had a feeling the Epic Books would be separated from the updates, as I could see them running into problems with providing more frequent updates that always included Books. See, Book 2 of Volume 3 brought us into Enedwaith. Book 3 would have to continue that story, which really should be pushing southwards, so unless they dilly-dallied in Enedwaith for Book 3 they'd have to add a new region or instances to give a setting for the book. Otherwise their only option would be to send us back around Eriador where we've already been before (like Book 1 of Volume 3), which most of us are sick and tired of.

The class changes and additions sounds good, as do the vault changes.

The Tasks sound intriguing and I'd like to know more about them.

I'd also like to know what else we can expect in the update to keep us busy over the Winter months.

I hope we're going to see more Skirmishes being added to the game, in addition to the revamped instances. It's been a long while since we got a new skirmish and the system is still relatively new. There should be some Moria ones and others set in regions that have not been given a skirmish yet (Angmar, Forochel, etc.)

EDIT: I would also like to make the point that while I am not against separating the Epic Books from the updates, this is on the understanding that we get substantial enough updates to make up for the loss of the book. If we look at DDO the updates they've been getting lately are very substantial. Update 7 includes two new races, new instances and raids, and plenty more. While obviously not the same kind of game I hope we will get good content in both quantity and quality in LOTRO like what's happening in DDO. I am optimistic and glad to see an update coming this soon

-Bel

Originally Posted by Sapience

Trying to use forum posts as any sort of definitive data is a bit like looking at a glass of water and saying it represents the entire water supply of the planet. A point I think everyone has heard us repeat many times when talking about the suggestion forums or the tell the community team threads. One source of data, and a sometimes a good place to start your investigations, but not definitive by a long shot.

Hence, my caveat on my own post

Originally Posted by JeanCarlo

snip...

yes, even to the limit of what we Can see

Even then, as one of the examples (nor did I cherry pick this, it was simply in the first 10 or so of Victorie's latest posts) of these kinds of issues is that the automated mail for upgrading F2Ps is still something that needs updating. Now, obviously, it could be just that One time that this happened, but I highly doubt that. And something I did Not put down is that the Store can't cant 1, round correctly, and 2, can't seem to display them correctly either. Now This, I'm fairly sure if Universal if/when there is a rounding portion (Horse skill, ND and Evendim 75% off, so far) whether we See every occurence of it or not.

the producer's letter should lets us know NEW things that are comming up not stuff we already know about. i know this is the first letter but this is for future.

Originally Posted by Elderban

I am guessing there will be more end-game stuff with each content update, book or not. Remember, we just go Enedwaith, but no instances, so I am guessing that we will see Enedwaith instances in November. But, I am also guessing we are going to have to pay for access to them, VIP's included.

They already said early 2011 for the new instances.

And I do agree that it's nice to not have to wait for the next book to get any changes done in the game.

Yes this would be nice if you take out the fact that real content update will be even slower then they have been. The only reason they are redoing the old instances is because they had nothing else the can give us. Also the reason the are splitting them up so it will triple the amount of updates they can use them in. If they didn't split them up they would run out to fast, and then the updates would be 90% store items with a little other stuff with it. The "updates" are going to very small with most of it being store items, and the scaled instances.


I've grown to hate the sunshine and rainbow and fluffy bunny comments. Save the spin for the magazine and television ads. Don't try to (re)sell the game to people that are already playing.

Already happening with people having to rebuy SOA content.

Nothing to get excited over just PR spin, and letting us know the game is now 100% focused on MT.

While it is to be expected that the first few updates after f2p are focused more on low-leveled players, I do hope these updates will turn more toward end-game content in the not too distant future.

I'm not sure what armour and stats Staff must possess in preparation to post here with any degree of survivability, but I appreciate the communication. I sincerely hope that pessimism from within our ranks is received constructively w/o retributive action or lack of attention (as I perceive is the case concerning PvMP).

Glad to hear that Turbine et.al. have received a nice shot-in-the-arm from F2P. It will be fun to see what that yields in the form of reciprocation.

Developers should not feel constrained to implement good ideas only in conjunction with major Book updates. I look forward to what you have in the works! An excellent job has been done with many peripheral things in this game (some personal favorites: Haunted Burrow and the new level-up tree animation).

I'd love to feel like our ideas are considered, as there is a wealth of very intelligent and interesting ideas in this community; though, I understand not every whim can be entertained.

Bullroarer is an excellent tool. It's smart to encourage people to spend time there. I'd simply ask that you provide an easy-to-find list of things you are looking to polish; I'd rather work on my live account than blindly level a destructible in BR.

I look forward to updates and upgrades to LM. Thanks!

Originally Posted by nolins12

While it is to be expected that the first few updates after f2p are focused more on low-leveled players, I do hope these updates will turn more toward end-game content in the not too distant future.

If you take a look at DDO there content updates are heavily focused on below level cap players. Another reason why they are splitting up updates and new books is so they can fully focus on low level content to sell in the store. Just by reading what she wrote she clearly say they are fully focused on the store. Any one who was still holding out hope they would not need to ever buy from it past the free points got there hopes shot down today by this producers letter.

It's good to be here!
Like many, I came to LOTRO from one of the bigger names in MMOs hoping for a better community and different storyline, using F2P as my segue from world to world. I've certainly not been disappointed here, either. The areas are beautiful, the quests are detailed, all in all it's a great experience!
With the new increase in revenue, though, perhaps some changes could be made in development to make the overall game experience even better- more "polish" as far as item use sounds, richer zone ambient sfx (waterfall rumble, thunder, etc) and different NPC lines. (Is it just me or do NPCs often sound irritated to deal with you, or overly depressed?) In the broad scope, this game is gorgeous and the world itself is very submersive, but those details could only improve the gameplay experience.
Including these improvements or alterations as an optional, purchaseable bonus pak would be fine, too.

Thank you for providing us with a beautiful game, I'm in Middle Earth as often as time allows!

Thanks for the letter. I know this is from the 10,000 foot leel but still nice to hear some of your plans.

Comments:

As for allow folks to continue with the Epic past SOA, I think that is a reasonable idea and one that will bring more people into the game.

Breaking the Epics away from the releases is also a good idea. I think this will allow for a lot of side areas to be developed and released. How many times have folks asked to visit Dale and Lake town? Well be removing the epic books from the releases, i think we can find a way to visit those areas now. They do NOT have to be part of the Epic story.

I do know that they listen to the players. I have seen three speific items I mentioned on the suggestion forums get placed into the game. (Not signed, but suggested) yes this is over 3 years but I am just one person. So if they have placed just one good idea from even 1% of their players they are listening.

PvMP or PvP is just not part of this game. It has never been and I do not see it changing. I personally enjoy a visit to the moors once in awhile, but it has never been a high priority for me and also about 80%+ of the player base. Once more they are listening to the players by seeing what is being used. The moors just is not used that much.

Once more thanks for the letter and I hope to see more of these in the future.

Bluntly, I'm discouraged.

Moria released -six- great instances, plus a (at the time) very difficult raid. Loth added some small group content, a relatively challenging 6-man, and a rich 6-boss raid.

The biggest problem with Mirkwood wasn't the new content (though I still feel Dungeons is too much of a time-sink to be viable). It wasn't that the trash-to-boss ratio in BG was so goofy. BG was, and remains, a difficult and interesting raid. We have LT-HM on farm, but bluntly every run is still a fairly exciting challenge.

The biggest problem was that raising the level cap trivialized all of the previous content. DD, HoC, Watcher, DN... are stupidly, boringly, uninterestingly easy now. So... you've got 2 (discounting dungeons) new 3-mans, 1 new six man, and 1 new 12 man... while deprecating 2 3-mans, 7 6-mans, and 2 12-mans.

Oops?

Annuminas, Barrows, Mirobel, and Helegrod were entertaining for about two days. Our kin cleared every hard mode in 1 or 2 attempts our first try. Put simply... the challenges are NOT challenging, and the rewards are NOT interesting (LI treadmill!) Grinding out 50 or 100 sup marks kept us out of trouble for a few days... but just about everyone decided a 'good enough' LI was better than another 100 runs through a boring instance. The lack of challenge (and lack of rewards) in the new instances combined with lack of challenge in the outlevelled instances means that the only 'interesting' content left is SG and BG.

.... which are the same two instances we've been running since Mirkwood released. (December, 2009.) That's ELEVEN MONTHS running the same two instances. The last time there was that long of a time period was the release of moria... six instances, a huge epic story, and a brutal raid.

Oops?

We've gone from having 16-18 people wanting to go on every BG run to barely 6. People are bored out of their minds. Including me as raid leader/kin leader.

I'm about ready to make an account on *censored--competing MMO* simply to have some content!

I'll admit... I'm a lifetime subscriber. And I've bought a pile of points, tomes, etc. Turbine successfully pulled another $50-$100 out of me with the launch of F2P. But they're about to lose me, and any future earning potential, for good.

I need real content. Soon. Otherwise I'm going to have to go elsewhere to find it. My play time has already dropped to near 0 (scheduled BG raids only... and since we're starting to have trouble putting togeather a full group for BG, when those get cancelled... I play Civ5)

Well, I think Turbine needs to stop talking about doing things, and actually do them.

The F2P world is a rather cut throat business. If you don't produce a constant stream of updates to the game then people will move on to another F2P game. A small patch every 2 months isn't going to cut it.

Look at Everquest II. They went free to play about the same time LOTRO did. But they just had a content update. And I am not using Sony as an example of a well run company, either. To the contrary. But somehow they can manage to add more content to their games than Turbine does to this one.

G'day,
Once again I am disappointed to see that the long term paying
customers seem to be ignored.
Ok so you are making a lot of new money and getting new players
while many of my long time playing friends have decided enuff is enuff.
With no real new stuff or lvl cap increase with the f2p there is really
not much to do at end game but endless grinding.
BUT most of all and amazing to me and many other players is the total
lack of ANY of the PvMP requests for a new area and a fixing of existing
problems being taking into consideration.
Once you reach end game there needs to be more than endless grinding or
the game becomes extremly boring and PvMP is were a lot of end game people
go until they realise just how bad it has gotten out there
Once again I beg the turbine team to do a new PvMP area. We have been running
on the same piece of land for 3 years. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do some work on PvMP

The October 2010 Producer's Letter was interesting. The Task change appears interesting, but I perceived the vault changes the most interesting, though. The enabling of Epic Quests to Free-to-Play accounts in expansion content appears to be a good idea! Additionally, the changes to new content also appears to be good, and interesting!