Thread: 21 Hall Attacked

Since Dwarves are continuously mining, what if a ENORMOUS Cave Troll broke through and attacked th 21st Hall? Just randomly appeared and everyone had to slay it. Somewhat like WoW did. Not even sure if they still do that, haven't played WoW since Lotro came out.

Originally Posted by Pale_Rider

Since Dwarves are continuously mining, what if a ENORMOUS Cave Troll broke through and attacked th 21st Hall? Just randomly appeared and everyone had to slay it. Somewhat like WoW did. Not even sure if they still do that, haven't played WoW since Lotro came out.

There is an instance in which the 21st Hall is attacked and you have to defend it. It's Vol. II, Book 5, Chapter 5; which used to be such a godawful mess that people went for years not being able to complete the Book because they couldn't get through that chapter. It's now been reworked into a set of three instances involving Orc (et cetera) attacks in three parts of Moria, one of which is the 21st.

But that's an instance. It's soloable or small-group-able. You really don't want a monster running loose in the 21st Hall, where there are enough NPCs and players going about their business to make the place Lag City already.

If you've ever done any of Turbine's betas, or if you played AC2, you may have some experience of what it's like when, e.g., a cave troll spawns in a populated area and with the speed of electrons, everybody knows about it and ports in to help fight it. The frame rate slows down to three or four per minute. You spam and spam your attacks and you can't tell if they're coming off at all, let alone if they're hitting. And then everything freezes and the next thing you know, "Connection to the server has been lost" and players across the length and breadth of North America join in a lusty cheer, "We broke the server! We broke the server!"

Turbine has learned by experience that events like that, which are a hell of a lot of fun, had better be done only in beta -- when the purpose of the exercise is to see if they can get enough players and enough mobs in the same landblock, trying like mad to kill each other, to bring the server down. This gives Turbine extremely valuable information on just what the servers can handle, and an inkling of what it'll be like in live, where even without invading cave trolls you could get so many players and NPCs crowded together that it all falls down.

It would be fun ... though I hope the cave troll would move slowly enough that those of us who didn't want to fight him could get away. But it would result in more lag than anybody wants if they're not trying to break the server.

It's a great idea but the lag would be awful.

Originally Posted by djheydt

There is an instance in which the 21st Hall is attacked and you have to defend it. It's Vol. II, Book 5, Chapter 5; which used to be such a godawful mess that people went for years not being able to complete the Book because they couldn't get through that chapter. It's now been reworked into a set of three instances involving Orc (et cetera) attacks in three parts of Moria, one of which is the 21st.

But that's an instance. It's soloable or small-group-able. You really don't want a monster running loose in the 21st Hall, where there are enough NPCs and players going about their business to make the place Lag City already.

If you've ever done any of Turbine's betas, or if you played AC2, you may have some experience of what it's like when, e.g., a cave troll spawns in a populated area and with the speed of electrons, everybody knows about it and ports in to help fight it. The frame rate slows down to three or four per minute. You spam and spam your attacks and you can't tell if they're coming off at all, let alone if they're hitting. And then everything freezes and the next thing you know, "Connection to the server has been lost" and players across the length and breadth of North America join in a lusty cheer, "We broke the server! We broke the server!"

Turbine has learned by experience that events like that, which are a hell of a lot of fun, had better be done only in beta -- when the purpose of the exercise is to see if they can get enough players and enough mobs in the same landblock, trying like mad to kill each other, to bring the server down. This gives Turbine extremely valuable information on just what the servers can handle, and an inkling of what it'll be like in live, where even without invading cave trolls you could get so many players and NPCs crowded together that it all falls down.

It would be fun ... though I hope the cave troll would move slowly enough that those of us who didn't want to fight him could get away. But it would result in more lag than anybody wants if they're not trying to break the server.

Isn't the layering stuff supposed to deal with this kind of problem though? If the troll only appeared in one layer then the number of people would be limited. Of course people would complain that they missed the troll but they can just wait til next itme.

Errr... I regard places like Bree or the 21st Hall as safe places... locations where I can park my toon and go afk to deal with some small RL issue. I don't like the idea of having to worry about some random monster barging in there and potentially attacking my toon. That would make those safe places pretty unsafe.

I'm fine with monsters attacking me in the wilderness when I go afk; that's my own fault then. I'm also okay with monsters attacking cities in instances as I wouldn't consider any instance a safe place. But I personally prefer to have some kind of safe haven in game so I don't have to log out my toon every time I need to take a bio-break.

Originally Posted by LordFrieza

Isn't the layering stuff supposed to deal with this kind of problem though? If the troll only appeared in one layer then the number of people would be limited. Of course people would complain that they missed the troll but they can just wait til next itme.

You are doing a live event you can not layer. That is quite doable Turbine can disable the layer tech. The Troll and everybody will be in the same layer.

Sure Turbine could leave layers on but there is only one live event operator. There is only one Troll. The other layers are quiet. The people arriving - where the troll? Can you invite me to a group? I want to transfer to the Troll layer.

In any event the 21st Hall with the Troll have a bazillion people. Nobody will be able to move. I was in the Beta layer test where Turbine sent a Balrog to Thorin's Hall right near the statue. Turbine wanted to see how an overloaded layer worked. What effect an over loaded layer had on the other layers. Turbine had a lot of employees assigned to this activity. There were at least two observers plus the Balrog operator in my layer.

Maybe they could add a meter to the lotro store which shows the per capita TP expenditure of the server. Should it fall below a certain threshold, a massive balrog would block access to every vault in the game. And drop only 1 copper when killed

Originally Posted by LordFrieza

Isn't the layering stuff supposed to deal with this kind of problem though? If the troll only appeared in one layer then the number of people would be limited.

Not being a Turbine programmer (I wish), I don't know how the layering system works down in its code. It's possible that if there were a troll attacking 21st *all* the layers would get him.

Of course people would complain that they missed the troll but they can just wait til next time.

Gee, ya think? I think people would be yelling and screaming to get somewhere else, by the fastest available milestone or goat available.