Thread: Thoughts on the Anniversary Event

Seems Kins are taking over the Ale Hall. No real chance for for anyone else as they get ganked. This seems like a /fail to me .... 300 minutes if you win every fight to get a mount. Not much of a celebration it seems.

30 anniversary tokens and 3 race tokens, to get a mount
2 races a day, 14 days so most you can get racing is 3 race tokens and 25 anniversary token

Unless you do the win the beer brawl there is no way to get enough tokens to get the Anniversary horse. If you one every beer brawl that would be an additional hour in the beer brawl, if you win every one. realistically it will take four or five trys to get the hang of it, to win most of them.

Could they have added a couple more ways to get Anniversary tokens. Or is this to remind us how little content we had with the first festivals.

I see a Turbine limited time sale in the future, following the festival selling that mount "you missed". Never has a festival mount been even close to this long of a grind. I started it, but then realized I have better things to do this Easter weekend than grind an MMORPG for a silly horse, there is not even a reason to start.

EDIT: To save everyone from digging through this thread, here is the official reply:

Originally Posted by Sapience

The Anniversary Event runs through May 2. You have plenty of time to earn tokens and enjoy the events. Starting this weekend we'll be adding a thrid method of obtaining the Anniversary Tokens. They'll be in random lotteries for the remainder of the Anniversary Event.

For those who may not be aware, here's a full breakdown of Tokens and the level of mobs they drop from as well as the associated gift boxes.

All listed tokens can also be won through the LOTRO Lotteries.

Anniversary Token
Earned through participation in the Beer fight or through horse races.

Tin Token - Simple Gift Box
Level 1-10

Iron Token - Striped Gift Box
Level 11-21

Silver Token - Embossed Gift Box
Level 22-32

Gold Token - Decorative Gift Box
level 33-42

Platinum Token - Elegant Gift Box
Level 43-52

Ancient Silver - Token Extravagant Gift Box
Level 53-59

Ancient Gold Token Token - Lavish Gift Box or Gold Gift Box(Ettenmoors - The rewards are slightly different)
Level 60-65

I was clarified that the Lotteries was the third method of getting the Anniversary Tokens.

Later Sapience Added:

Originally Posted by Sapience

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.


The Anniversary Event is working as the team designed it. There is nothing missing or 'coming later'. What's listed on the official announcement is the event. Therefore, we will not be making any changes to how the events function or the rewards they offer. Nor will we be lowering the cost of the Anniversary Mount.

Some have suggested we're holding back, or possibly testing a way to force more players to buy the Anniversary Mount from the LOTRO Store later on. Let me be clear; the Anniversary Mount will not be making an appearance in the LOTRO Store. It was never placed in the store data and there is no intention to add it.

Likewise, there was never any intention to add Anniversary Tokens to the LOTRO Store. Again, they were never placed in store data and there was never an intention to do so. There are only three ways to earn Anniversary Tokens.

• The Beer Fight.
• Horse Races.
• LOTRO Lottery.

So while none of this is changing, there are some additional ways to earn tokens and mounts available to those using the Turbine service (I'm sorry, but we do not control the EU service so we cannot address any comments regarding the EU).

• The number of Anniversary Tokens awarded in the LOTRO Lotteries has been increased. Lotteries will always award 5 Anniversary Tokens and there will be multiple lotteries per day. Yes, you'll need to be lucky to win them, we're offering you an opportunity to gain additional tokens, not a effortless batch of free tokens. This is in addition to all of the traditional token lotteries that are exchanged for gift boxes.
• Tokens will be added to the regularly scheduled lotteries as well, starting with Today's Welcome Wagon, Free Peoples, Adventurer, and Stalwart lotteries. Again, this is an additional opportunity to earn tokens, not a simple 'everyone gets free tokens' offer.
• Finally, we'll be adding the Anniversary Mount to the lottery system and lotteries for it will run randomly starting today at 8PM Eastern (-4 GMT). All other start times will be random and yes 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.

Since there has been so many Lotteries for the Anniversary tokens, here are some helpful links:

Twitter Scan:
http://twitter.com/?q=from%3ALOTRO#!...h/FROM%3ALOTRO

Lottery:
http://my.lotro.com/home/lottery

Yeah this is another great example of how the game is going downhill fast since free to play. All they care about now is forcing people to buy things from the store, they don't care about content, quality, or the players, just ram more ???? in to force people to use the store.

I agree, the current festival is a farce and insulting.

I wish we could get someone at Turbine to weigh in on this issue and tell us how we are supposed to be able to get even the one mount, let alone all of the other cosmetic and decoration items available for anniversary tokens.

Are the anniversary tokens being added to the loot drop tables? That would fix the problem but at this time it appears they are not dropping anywhere, just the metal tokens.

Originally Posted by bvis

Yeah this is another great example of how the game is going downhill fast since free to play. All they care about now is forcing people to buy things from the store, they don't care about content, quality, or the players, just ram more ???? in to force people to use the store.

+rep when I can give some more again.

The tokens should be dropping as loot from mobs. They aren't going to drop on every mob. IN the past it's been every 7-10 mobs will drop one token. You should be able to get them that way.

It's also not hard to win the brawl.

Originally Posted by sirwillow

The tokens should be dropping as loot from mobs. They aren't going to drop on every mob. IN the past it's been every 7-10 mobs will drop one token. You should be able to get them that way.

It's also not hard to win the brawl.

The anniversary tokens needed for the mount DO NOT DROP from mobs, the only source is the race (1 per win) and the beer brawl (1 per win) I spent two hours non stop killing earlier got plenty of Ancient Gold Tokens, no Anniversary Tokens.

Originally Posted by sirwillow

The tokens should be dropping as loot from mobs. They aren't going to drop on every mob. IN the past it's been every 7-10 mobs will drop one token. You should be able to get them that way.

It's also not hard to win the brawl.

There are two types of 'anniversary tokens' - the metallic coins we've received in the past (and which drop from mobs in-game), and the new ones which are given out by the Beer Brawl and the races. The former are only used to exchange for gift boxes; the latter are used to purchase the cosmetics, housing items, and mounts.

Since you can only get 2x14=28 from the horse races (actually only 25, since you'll need 3 horse tokens as well), you need to win the Beer Brawl at least 5 times to get the Anniversary mount. You'll need to win it a lot more often if you want to get some cosmetic items, as well. I believe this is the grind to which people are objecting. If there were more avenues by which the second type of token could be acquired, there would be fewer objections.

Originally Posted by sirwillow

The tokens should be dropping as loot from mobs. They aren't going to drop on every mob. IN the past it's been every 7-10 mobs will drop one token. You should be able to get them that way.

It's also not hard to win the brawl.

they aint talking about the gift box tokens.

they are talking about the NEW tokens...you need 30 of for the mount plus 3 race tokens and 20 for each of the fluff items.

you can at this time ONLY get them from the horse race or beer brawl.

the NEW tokens DO NOT drop from mobs.

I joined when it became free to play, and only under great deliberation because I knew that places like Bree would exist.

Maybe I am different but I did end up going premium, then subscribing, then buying Moria.

For the most part--I haven't bothered with much of the "events". I have been too busy questing or getting defeated or bellyflopping off of high places and being incapacitated by misadventure.

I think this is just a temporary diversion--even the double XP for the weekend is encouraging people to play and not to collect beers.

I personally am not excited about the horse. If they had a fancy goat, then yes. I am getting ready to go into Moria and just purchased the Thorin's Hall rep goat.

Te fact that the tokens seem to carry over between events doesn't make me worry that all the effort is wasted. They remain in your barter wallet--I redeemed five silver tokens earlier today that I earned a long while back.

(I got a simple hauberk for my troubles).

Anyway, all of these events are just gravy. We're not entitled to free stuff, but I would like to see more hard to earn items. But then there will be discussions oh I dont want to Raid 3 weeks in a row to get the Ring of Unobtanium and it costs 50 gold on the AH, why can't I get it on the store.

These arguments I think are unwinnable. Talking about the good old days, the free players, and the store is just like sex politics and religion. There is no winning because the speaker usually believes they are right.

Keep in mind that before free play, the game was holding on via a very slim margin. Now with the store and microtransactions, they are in the black, far better than ever before. They attracted a wide new audience and provide a lot of play value for free.

I *never* would have tried it were it not free to begin with, and now I am a paying member.

Back when it came out I thought about it but was doing 60 hour work weeks. Then I forgot about it entirely. Then when I read it was free I decided well why not. And I am glad I did--except for people asking continously where to buy a horse if I ever show my face in Bree.

After I finished the Bree race, the countdown timer said 4 hours before retry. If that's accurate, and you hate sleep (as all good LOTROers should! ;-) you could get 12 tokens a day.

Originally Posted by Lamium

After I finished the Bree race, the countdown timer said 4 hours before retry. If that's accurate, and you hate sleep (as all good LOTROers should! ;-) you could get 12 tokens a day.

You can do the horse race once a day(if you win it) at both locations. The reason it said 4 hours is because (in your time zone) it is 4 hours till server reset. I think it resets at 3:00am pacific if I recall correctly.

Originally Posted by Odinshaw

Keep in mind that before free play, the game was holding on via a very slim margin. Now with the store and microtransactions, they are in the black, far better than ever before. They attracted a wide new audience and provide a lot of play value for free.

That is far from correct.

LOTRO was doing fine, but when DDO went from about to fold to making more than LOTRO, it was inevitable that LOTRO would also go F2P.

I had high hopes for F2p, looked forward at the incoming players and trusted Turbine said that the store would be focused on Modules (quests sets), cosmetics and minor convenience items. The fact that monthly player got a set of points monthly to get some extras and Free players could focus and earn points was a great idea.

The problems is that new items have became more and more of a grind. Festival tokens where 1 race win, and 6 tokens (which you got 3 from a race in lew of a ourse trade in) Then it became 8, then 12, then 20 and now 30 and three wins trade ins. Al while adding the festival horses to the store.

I never was a fan of "earning" thing while playing a game, but felt the rewards were to add to the experience. Just like I left DDO because there requirement to do the same thing OVER and OVER, I am seeing this in LOTRO. It used to be with festivals, if you did everything once you could get the mount or a couple items. Its more and more requirement to the events over and over just to get the basic cosmetics out of the event. But then, they are available at store after the event is over.

Originally Posted by Kyrra_T

You can do the horse race once a day(if you win it) at both locations. The reason it said 4 hours is because (in your time zone) it is 4 hours till server reset. I think it resets at 3:00am pacific if I recall correctly.

Server reset is 3am Eastern actually.

And I agree. This token grind coupled with the recent medallion grind for the new armour sets is a displeasing trend. It makes it so you have to do a small amount of instances/quests/races over and over and over and over and over, just for one small reward. Then on top of that, there are multiple rewards that many people want. In the instances, it's a whole set of armour. For this festival, people want the horse and the cosmetics and the house items.

Grindy McGrinder -_-

Just to clear something up, the beer brawls happen every 10minutes-ish, not 1 hour like the OP posted. I grinded up a dozen of them and nearly lost my sanity, though.

Given how much I really dislike the beer brawl, I'm glad I'm not liking the new horse either, I just hope the summer horse is nice.

Originally Posted by Kyrra_T

You can do the horse race once a day(if you win it) at both locations. The reason it said 4 hours is because (in your time zone) it is 4 hours till server reset. I think it resets at 3:00am pacific if I recall correctly.

Daaaang! I'd best head to Thorin's and go clubbin'.

so a few people who play in the festival long enough will be able to get the mount... sounds about right. Why make getting the mount easy? IF it was easy, it wouldn't be a real prize.

I agree with Odinshaw also. This is just extra fluff to a great game. - M.

Yes, it must be free2plays fault! Everyone, pitchforks and torches are on the left. All angry mobs, please watch the lawn....

I mean, this event could not be impacted at all by, IIRC update 3 being rumored to come out later this year. Oh, and surely they dont have a lot of people working on RoI, so it could come out in nov/dec. Nope, this all sucks due to f2p. This, of course, despite Yule festival being an awesome festival and having happened after going f2p. Nope, no, not at all... must be those evil Turbine people and those leeching f2players.....

Wanna yank the other one, it has bells and whistles!

The game that shall not be named gives their anniversary gifts for free.

Why attach a grind to something that everyone should be celebrating? Why create bad feelings on a important event for the game?

Originally Posted by Kerkat

The game that shall not be named gives their anniversary gifts for free.

Why attach a grind to something that everyone should be celebrating? Why create bad feelings on a important event for the game?

Yes, WoW gives some pretty cool vanity pets as anniversary gifts. Turbine gives us a ridiculous grind.

AFAIK the beer brawl runs every 9 minutes as long as there are 2 or more players inside the arena. What people seem to have missed is that there can be multiple winners per round this time, unlike previous festivals where there was only 1 winner per fight.

As long as you can hit 3 other players and get the beer back to the NPC before the fight ends, it should be easy enough to get enough tokens from the beer fight alone.

I really do think they are testing us to see how much of a grind we'll put up with. Too bad for them that they aren't seeing what they expected and that many people are choosing not to participate. So rather than thinking that everyone is going to grind 4 instances 2 times a week on 1 or more toons, they are likely seeing fewer instances being run overall as people refuse to fall for the grind.

Same with the anniversary horse, I used to get the festival horse for all my level capped characters and maybe a lowbie if I really liked it. Now, I'm not going to bother at all. Not buying it from the store either.

Originally Posted by xandervix_tog

AFAIK the beer brawl runs every 9 minutes as long as there are 2 or more players inside the arena. What people seem to have missed is that there can be multiple winners per round this time, unlike previous festivals where there was only 1 winner per fight.

As long as you can hit 3 other players and get the beer back to the NPC before the fight ends, it should be easy enough to get enough tokens from the beer fight alone.

More than one could win last time. The problem is that some people are enjoying hitting people while inducting on the beer keg and fail to realize the tables spwwn aprox 6 times. So they are bouncing people out for no good reason, because in a corner its pretty easy to bounce someone out.

Originally Posted by NamelessZombie

Yes, it must be free2plays fault! Everyone, pitchforks and torches are on the left. All angry mobs, please watch the lawn....

I mean, this event could not be impacted at all by, IIRC update 3 being rumored to come out later this year. Oh, and surely they dont have a lot of people working on RoI, so it could come out in nov/dec. Nope, this all sucks due to f2p. This, of course, despite Yule festival being an awesome festival and having happened after going f2p. Nope, no, not at all... must be those evil Turbine people and those leeching f2players.....

Wanna yank the other one, it has bells and whistles!

nah, more like Turbine sets the bar high.
such as the yule fest as you noted AND last falls fest.
then comes lotro's BIRTHDAY and we get a Grindaversary.
we get 4 fun festivals every year but they cant even put the same effort and fun into something that comes only once a year.

Originally Posted by NamelessZombie

Yes, it must be free2plays fault! Everyone, pitchforks and torches are on the left. All angry mobs, please watch the lawn....

I mean, this event could not be impacted at all by, IIRC update 3 being rumored to come out later this year. Oh, and surely they dont have a lot of people working on RoI, so it could come out in nov/dec. Nope, this all sucks due to f2p. This, of course, despite Yule festival being an awesome festival and having happened after going f2p. Nope, no, not at all... must be those evil Turbine people and those leeching f2players.....

Wanna yank the other one, it has bells and whistles!

The Yule Fest was cool. You could earn the mount in just a few days and grind out other fun cosmetics, not just on your main characters but on alts and do it without jaw grinding frustration. This event, not so much.

Originally Posted by Kerkat

The game that shall not be named gives their anniversary gifts for free.

Why attach a grind to something that everyone should be celebrating? Why create bad feelings on a important event for the game?

This game also gave out anniversary items for free last year, before F2P. Last year, for free, we all got a permanent 10% discount at the bard, or was it the stable master (one was anniversary and the other was for something else). Anyway they used to give away lots of cool stuff for free. Now the cool stuff is store exclusives obtainable through the ever fun fun fun method of transitive gaming. yay?

Originally Posted by Chiot

Then what is the point of offering an anniversary mount, if you cannot even obtain it during the festival?

Kind of a dumb design decision, don't you think?

But you can.. three races in one week is not that hard. And I believe BB is once every 10 mins. So, provided you get a token per try and so far I have, you can earn 6 tokens in 1hr play time.

So even if you get 6 tokens a day from doing the BarBrawl, it will take you what.. all of five days to get it? And you have until the 3rd....

The real question: Is the horse worth it? Imho... no. I like it, but its just not worth doing that many Bar Brawls to /me/. But I can't very well blame that on F2Play when the logical fault lies in the push for Update3 followed by RoI.

Originally Posted by Meagh

so a few people who play in the festival long enough will be able to get the mount... sounds about right. Why make getting the mount easy? IF it was easy, it wouldn't be a real prize.

I agree with Odinshaw also. This is just extra fluff to a great game. - M.

Then it shouldn't be any harder to acquire then a festival mount from spring, or any of the others.

Originally Posted by Chiot

Then what is the point of offering an anniversary mount, if you cannot even obtain it during the festival?

Kind of a dumb design decision, don't you think?

yes that's a very dum,b design decision. however earning the anni horse is easily doable. I've earned 20 tokens today, thats a bit more then I expect to earn each day daily in other situations yeah but I figure 10 a day would be easy, so you should be able to get a horse in 2-3 days with a bit of work

Originally Posted by NamelessZombie

But I can't very well blame that on F2Play when the logical fault lies in the push for Update3 followed by RoI.

I agree you can't blame F2P, since there are no store items to increase token gain.

But how can you blame Update 3? Having the races run every 2 hours, versus twice a day is simply a database setting. It's not some all-time-consuming change that would set Update 3 back by days or weeks. At most, it would set Update 3 back by about 30 minutes.

Originally Posted by probitas

Then it shouldn't be any harder to acquire then a festival mount from spring, or any of the others.

I got the Spring Festival mount without having to do anything more than once. Perfect design, if you ask me.

Originally Posted by Kerkat

The game that shall not be named gives their anniversary gifts for free.

Why attach a grind to something that everyone should be celebrating? Why create bad feelings on a important event for the game?

As much as I hate the game that shall not be named they know how to hold celebrations. Hell, Ultima Online GAVE me an etheral horse on my third anniversary.

An earlier post in this thread suggested that this may be a test to see how far we will grind. That is a possibility.

Originally Posted by Chiot

I only participate in festivals for the mounts (even if they are as butt ugly as this one happens to be.)

Not even going to bother with this one. Sounds like far too much work, and if I decide to miss a day or three, then it was a complete waste of my time. So not going to waste my time from the get-go.

Already enough grinds in this game, that I don't need another one attached to a festival.

Turbine: "Hey guys. Thanks for playing Lord of the Rings Online. As part of our fourth year anniversary we present you with another Grind. Thank you for playing and (hopefully) paying."

I agree that this festival was a let down, just saying not to blame f2p. Honestly, Im grinding out just enough to get my windmill.
Just cause I said its possible to get the mount doesnt mean its nice enough for me to bother going for. I am hoping the summer festival will end up being more like the AWESOME one in oct, or the Yule Festival.


Edit: And I am saying that with UD3 and RoI coming up, I just don't think anyone at Turbine/WB felt this was all that important. So not a lot of effort got put into it. Thats all.

Originally Posted by BrianDavion

yes that's a very dum,b design decision. however earning the anni horse is easily doable. I've earned 20 tokens today, thats a bit more then I expect to earn each day daily in other situations yeah but I figure 10 a day would be easy, so you should be able to get a horse in 2-3 days with a bit of work

Its doable but it isn't easy on player sanity. The problem isn't the beer brawl/horse race, the problem is that the only options are the beer brawl/horse race. On a crowded server, the beer brawl is an absolute nightmare and it is a griefer's paradise. I mean come on, every run is more than 15 people and the beer steins only rez 6 to 10 times.

I don't have the patience to keep banging my head to do that grind. If some do, great on them. But the fact is, its akin to torture for most people.

If they had one or two more quests to gain the special tokens it would be fine. If they had just put all the items in those gift boxes instead of the grind, it would be okay. At least people would have had a chance just doing their day to day activities. It would have been fine for most if the items were straight to the store specials. In fact the last option would have been more honest.

Originally Posted by NamelessZombie

I agree that this festival was a let down, just saying not to blame f2p. Honestly, Im grinding out just enough to get my windmill.
Just cause I said its possible to get the mount doesnt mean its nice enough for me to bother going for. I am hoping the summer festival will end up being more like the AWESOME one in oct, or the Yule Festival.

Whoa! Windmill? Is this a house decoration of some kind?

Originally Posted by NamelessZombie

I agree that this festival was a let down, just saying not to blame f2p. Honestly, Im grinding out just enough to get my windmill.
Just cause I said its possible to get the mount doesnt mean its nice enough for me to bother going for. I am hoping the summer festival will end up being more like the AWESOME one in oct, or the Yule Festival.

Why wouldn't F2P be blamed for the shift in design direction this game has taken? Don't you think it was a different game before F2P? Like I said above, last year they mailed us goodies thanking us for our loyalty to the game. This year it's an annoying grind with what we can be pretty sure will be available in the store. If that's not a direct result of F2P I don't know what is.

F2P and the shift in design philosophy has been a lot more dramatic than I anticipated. I expected something a lot more along the lines of DDO's transition.

Originally Posted by Chiot

I got the festival mount without having to do anything more than once. Perfect design, if you ask me.

You actually think getting something that is supposed to be celebrating 4 years of the game should be a large undertaking? Turbine doesn't really want people to have those rewards? Cause that's the way it seems to me. The bar brawl is little more than a glossed over pvp arena, chock full of pvp personalities. When you are running a festival, you aren't competing against players directly. But this celebration you are, and that just doesn't seem right somehow. Did someone in management decide to give the pvp people some love, and make the rest of us pay for it?

My Attempt to market Anniversary Four.

You thought you were upset during the first three years of Lord of the Rings Online? Well, we're upping the ante. Come grind with us to start off our fourth year. You don't know rage until you've tried to grind out this year's tokens.

The beer is on us! (Okay, not really, but they are only 45 Turbine Points in the LotRO store.)

Originally Posted by probitas

You actually think getting something that is supposed to be celebrating 4 years of the game should be a large undertaking? Turbine doesn't really want people to have those rewards? Cause that's the way it seems to me. The bar brawl is little more than a glossed over pvp arena, chock full of pvp personalities. When you are running a festival, you aren't competing against players directly. But this celebration you are, and that just doesn't seem right somehow. Did someone in management decide to give the pvp people some love, and make the rest of us pay for it?

If you'd read what I was replying too (or read anything else I'd posted in this thread), you'd see that I'm not impressed with the Anniversary Festival. And the mount I got without grinding was the Spring Festival mount.

Originally Posted by bvis

Yeah this is another great example of how the game is going downhill fast since free to play. All they care about now is forcing people to buy things from the store, they don't care about content, quality, or the players, just ram more ???? in to force people to use the store.

What? It's a horse. They give away horses like candy now. Just waste a bit of time over the course of a week or two, 500 silver and your set. Were you here 4 years ago when you needed to be level 30 and they cost 5 or 6 gold? Seriously, I have probably 10 mounts on my main and only ever paid for two, my first horse and first goat. You guys need to get a grip.