Thread: A word about the new gear offerings in the LOTRO Store

Originally Posted by Abiyah

A bit off-topic, but a question that's been in my head for awhile-- do the stat tomes all stack on each other? Are they additive, or does only the most current one take precedence? If the latter, then previous TP expenditures are lost; if the former, then that +70 is actually +280.

Each is a 10 point increase over the previous one. Tier 7 will take you from +60 to +70, it won't give you an additional 70.

Originally Posted by Killien

What the heck is so disgusting about that?

You're no longer living the experience of an MMO. You're bypassing the joys, the frustrations, the connections, the immersion, the accomplishments, the community, etc.

Ultimately, in my opinion, you're no longer playing the game as intended or was intended.

Originally Posted by PerinStone

"We won't sell end gear" and "we have no plans to sell end gear at this time" are not contradictory statements. Despite what the paranoid people on the forums want you to believe, "at this time" doesn't mean they were planning on doing it eventually.

I'm a lawyer. I see cases all the time where the inclusion or exclusion of one or two words or a short phrase can mean victory or defeat in large breach of contract disputes, or the difference between valid informed consent and actionable medical malpractice. Adam Mersky is a professional and trained communicator. He was making on-the-record statements during an official interview with a large gaming Web site. Every word he said was almost assuredly planned well ahead of time. If they were as adamant as Sapience's post seems here, then why did he bother adding "at this time?" Why would he have been allowed to say that by anyone at Turbine if there wasn't some meaning behind it? His words speak loudly and resoundingly. I'm not saying that he absolutely meant they were planning to sell raid gear at some point in the future, but why wouldn't his word choices reflect their staunch refusal to do that if that were the case?

Originally Posted by PerinStone

Each is a 10 point increase over the previous one. Tier 7 will take you from +60 to +70, it won't give you an additional 70.

That then is false advertising. The tome is stated as giving +70, but it only gives a +10? And you can't use T7 unless you use the previous 6?

Originally Posted by Sapience

We’ll take this as a sign that we need to do a better job in clear and open communication. In the future we will take more time to explain why - not just what we’re doing.

I disagree with many of your reasons, but thank you for providing them. It doesn't really help the pain of what has already been done, but it does help to hear that we won't have to endure more of that same type of pain.

Then again, we may endure more of that pain anyway.

As I said when F2P was in the early stages of development, F2P/MT games are like a fire. Play with one, and you're only going to get burned. People insisted that Turbine was different, that Turbine was the one fire that won't burn. But it did burn. It took a little longer than I expected, but it burned.

And now, you're insisting that your fire really doesn't burn. You're insisting that the burn was not caused by the fire, but by others misinterpreting your words.

I'm sorry, but after being burned by so many companies, including this one, I'm not sure I can trust you enough to stick my hand in that fire again.

With that being said, here's my opinions on your reasoning.

It’s that flow of new players that’s caused a difference in viewpoints between some of us at Turbine and some of you who play the game.

My viewpoint is the same viewpoint that Turbine representatives have stated over and over on the forums and in interviews. Unfortunately, I feel it's the Turbine of today who has altered their viewpoint, not the players.

We monitor and report internally on many aspects of the game as we strive to tune the experience. Something that’s emerged over time is an increasing gap between low level and high level players.

If armor stats was an issue, simply revert the guild armor change from last year.

Those of you who have been with the game since the beginning know that we have used a number of methods to adjust the game in an effort to help new players join the main community at the cap more quickly including XP adjustments, content changes, and itemization updates.

You also raised the level of guild armor (while leaving the stats untouched) and removed tier 4-6 non-guild recipes.

While I understand your reasoning for this armor, I feel that the problem was created not by the players, but by Turbine.

That commitment means that we are leaving some new players farther and farther behind the veteran community.

There are many ways to correct this. Faster XP gains, better stats on quest/crafted armor, fewer mobs per virtue deed, etc. All of these would be not only accepted, but appreciated by many in the community.

Instead, you sold level 28 crit-crafted armor to level 20s, and told us that better armor is available through gameplay.

We looked at progression and saw an analog to something we had witnessed before – in DDO. In that case we introduced low-level, but meaningful items into the game and saw that players who took that option progressed farther and stayed with the game longer.

When a customer leaves a free product/service, they only loss is the time invested. When that same customer spends money, the loss is measured in monetary terms, in addition to the time. Due to that monetary loss, the customer stays longer.

This isn't some new discovery, this is basic Economics.

While the theory is sound, I feel the same effect could have been achieved in many other ways that would less of an impact on the existing playerbase.

Based on this information and the trends from in-game, it seemed like the right time to try something similar for LOTRO.

In other words, your customer retention rate is dropping, and you're trying to bring it back up.

To be safe, we erred on the side of being too generous in value, thinking that few could fault us for doing so.

If you started too low, and people complained, it would have been easy to raise the stats (if you did it silently, most of us would have never known).

But since you started high, there's no way to easily reduce the stats to what the majority would find acceptable.

Our official line is and has been that we don’t sell end-game gear. Could somebody have shaved that line in discussions with the press or had their quote summarized into a statement they didn’t intend? Absolutely.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/07...-with-turbine/
"Turbine decided from the start that the store would not sell gear with any stats attached."

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01...not-advantage/
"This is a factual statement -- I know this, because I was present for that interview -- that was not contested by the company when we printed it, nor in the time after that it's been up on the site."

No offense, but I don't see any reasonable way in which "we will not sell end-game gear" could be twisted into "we will not sell any gear with stats". Assuming your statement is true, the line has always been "no end-game gear", the only possible explanation would be that Massively purposely twisted what was said.

Our goal is to allow players to customize their play experience to deliver as much fun per hour of play as they want without impacting the play of others.

Making changes that incentivize store purchases certainly does affect my fun per hour.

For example, when Burgs had Might as their main stat, I ran instances and killed mobs for gold in order to buy the relevant stat tomes. For the higher tiers, I bought rep items and used the earned TP to buy the tiers that weren't available on the AH.

With the revamp, those tomes are useless. In order to get back what I once had, I have to do that same grind all over again, or "conveniently" buy the tomes form the store.

Anything that’s compulsory to be competitive in ranked play or achieves something by degrading another player’s experience. We have not and will not make that part of our F2P offering.

Copied straight from the store on a newly rolled creep: "You do not need to meet any rank requirements to learn this skill when purchased form the LOTRO Store."

Compulsory to be competitive: Check. Rank zero creeps are effectively useless in PvMP.
Ranked play: Check.
Achieves something by degrading another player’s experience: Some say yes, some say no. For purposes of this list, I'll say no.

Even with one 'no', store-bought creep skills fit two of the three criteria that you claim would not be in the store.

This was our call and ours alone, so point the blame cannons right over here please.

If it makes you feel any better, I used the term "the decision makers", because I don't know exactly who makes the call in these situations.

After hearing the PAX East keynote, I suspect that Kate and Fernando Paiz are the ones steering the game in this direction, but I'll continue using the term "decision makers" because I understand that there are other execs involved in the process as well.

Furthermore, we actively tracked auction house prices in game to help set these values.

Money generated via the AH is not created, but transferred from one player to another.

Money generated form selling this gear to vendors is not transferred, but created out of thin air.

The main argument against selling gold in the store is not that it means others can buy more, but that it creates a large amount of gold with few gold sinks. This armor does exactly the same, with one step in between.

If we start seeing lots of kits going to high level players who do nefarious things with their purchased gold, we will consider the implications and adjust accordingly.

Define nefarious. If you mean gold sellers, that's fine, and something you should investigate in all cases, not just armor.

But my concern is not the gold sellers, but those who use the gold for legit purposes. For example, someone who spends the TP on the armor, sells that armor for gold, then uses that gold to buy a worn symbol. This exchange creates over 100 gold out of this air, which DOES have an effect on the economy. And depending on ones point of view, it could even be seen as buying end-game gear for cash.

Buying armor with TP is legit. Selling armor for gold is legit. Buying items from the AH is legit. So would this fall under "nefarious", or illegal, or would this be determined to be acceptable under the rules of the game?

We want everybody to have as much fun as possible, but we don’t want to do it by breaking the game. Anybody who’s participated in an end of beta event with us knows how fun an unbalanced game can be – but it can’t last.

Exactly. It can't last. Yet that is what you are creating. That is what some are asking for.

The items may stay or they may go. They may also be changed to better serve the needs of the game. We’ll know more in a few weeks.

While I doubt it will happen, thank you for giving us that small glimmer of hope that we won't end up seeing high level armor with similarly OP stats.

Originally Posted by Abiyah

That then is false advertising. The tome is stated as giving +70, but it only gives a +10? And you can't use T7 unless you use the previous 6?

http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Item:..._%28Level_1%29

Originally Posted by Ayrolen

http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Item:..._%28Level_1%29

OK, thanks.

Originally Posted by Sapience

the fact is that we get thousands of new players in LOTRO every single day.

Think for the world, and the world will be with you.

I've been sitting here for a couple of hours pondering my response. While I appreciate the effort to create more open discussion, I'm still angry that the armour is there in the first place and that's not ever going to change. I'm even angrier that the armour is so much better than anything that can be obtained in-game and that it can be sold to a vendor. Gold is SO easily obtained in this game that it is completely unnecessary to allow this armour to be sold for more gold. I was hoping to hear that that gear was being nerfed a bit and the vendorable status was being removed. That would make it slightly more palatable for me. Right now this just feels like, "Yeah, we read your 80 page thread, but we don't particularly care enough about all of you old fart players who have been supporting the game for 5+ years to take any action. So take it or leave it."

I apologize in advance for snipping apart your post. I am always annoyed when people snip apart posts which are meant to be one complete thought and pick it apart, but I'm breaking my rule of not doing that since this post was so long.

I also hope nobody (including any reps that read this) take this post as 100% negative, because in all honesty I'm glad (and quite excited) that FINALLY, after what has seemed like the majority portion of the games lifespan , the community is talked to like true customers.

• Turbine said that they would never sell gear in the store.

If we did, we apologize. We give a lot of interviews and talk to lots of people at tradeshows. Our official line is and has been that we don’t sell end-game gear. Could somebody have shaved that line in discussions with the press or had their quote summarized into a statement they didn’t intend? Absolutely. We’re not perfect. We’ve been very consistent with one message since announcing our move to F2P: We don’t sell end game gear, but we may introduce starter items or packs in the future like DDO. We’ve tried to be as open and straightforward as we can on this and other points.

This reads like a cop-out to me. I can't explain it in any other way. It's as if (and my suspicious side of me gets the better of me with this subject) the discussions on exactly how far the store will go has generally been purposely vague so that when something finally causes an up-roar/community backlash a well spoken post can be made explaining that "we didn't mean to make think something we didn't intend". Whether this is true or not the feeling of being misled by Turbine will not easily be repaired for me, and I'm willing to wager a good portion of the distraught community are in the same position.

• Patience said convenience, not advantage.

Very true. It’s one of our guiding principles. Some people have time, others have money and when players are willing to trade money for time we usually consider that a convenience. Our goal is to allow players to customize their play experience to deliver as much fun per hour of play as they want without impacting the play of others.

I could just be mistaken, but I seem to remember when the store relics were first introduced there was a lot of discussion about "Convenience, not advantage". I also remember many people linking to the exact forum post where Patience posted that line, and within days the thread that the quote was being linked from had been deleted. It makes me wonder if you (Turbine) truly don't see relics/potions/etc. in the store as advantage, or if you decided to rescind the statement back then and only now state that "nothing in the store is advantage" since you're trying to put a positive spin on the store.

• What’s not a convenience?

Anything that’s compulsory to be competitive in ranked play or achieves something by degrading another player’s experience. We have not and will not make that part of our F2P offering.

So, in PvMP (where arguably the only competitive/ranked play exists) you don't view store only potions/mount speed increases/damage and mitigation increases/etc. as advantage over players who don't acquire these purchases?

We will not sell end-game gear.

Like the above "misunderstanding" about not selling ANY gear in the store, could "end-game gear" be interpreted differently? Would gear that is superior to crafted gear or superior to purple raid sets and inferior to teal raid sets be introduced, only to be defended by moderators by saying it's not truly end-game since it isn't the best gear available?

That brings us to our final point: communication.

We’ll take this as a sign that we need to do a better job in clear and open communication. In the future we will take more time to explain why - not just what we’re doing.

I'm very grateful that somebody finally took the time to sit down and actually answer community questions, regardless of how long it took.

Again, I apologize if I sound bitter but after playing off and on (mostly on) since the open beta I have seen what is in my eyes a degrading of the game, so a long post just doesn't ease my suspicions as much as it will some of the other players.

A continual "monthly communal of concerns and solutions" would definitely be a strong step in the right direction to repair my (and likely others) views of the direction of LotRO.

Originally Posted by Ayrolen

I've been sitting here for a couple of hours pondering my response. While I appreciate the effort to create more open discussion, I'm still angry that the armour is there in the first place and that's not ever going to change. I'm even angrier that the armour is so much better than anything that can be obtained in-game and that it can be sold to a vendor. Gold is SO easily obtained in this game that it is completely unnecessary to allow this armour to be sold for more gold. I was hoping to hear that that gear was being nerfed a bit and the vendorable status was being removed. That would make it slightly more palatable for me. Right now this just feels like, "Yeah, we read your 80 page thread, but we don't particularly care enough about all of you old fart players who have been supporting the game for 5+ years to take any action. So take it or leave it."

I'm very impressed with your analysis.

Originally Posted by Killien

It's pretty simple actually. Spend a couple of hours killing 400 Wargs for a Virtue\Trait, or buy it on sale for 295TP... What the heck is so disgusting about that?

Originally Posted by JRonnie

Buying a scroll for the final tier 2 hard mode raid boss fight that reduces all incoming damage by 5% as well as stacks of the best morale and power pots available in the game (all only from the store) versus making the fight that much harder on yourselves by not buying that 'advantage' (in my opinion, but obviously not Turbines). That's what so disgusting to some of us.

Originally Posted by Hurin

Any chance that this will actually change your viewpoint, though?

One would assume you doubted such a thing existed because such a thing shouldn't exist. Now that you know that it does, perhaps it's time to join us in decrying its existence.

Will I admit that there are things in the store that are an advantage to have? Yes. The morale/power pots and apparently this damage scroll will give you an advantage if you buy them. I don't necessarily care though. Is the scroll that more powerful than the buffs you could get with destiny points? Maybe it is, I've never looked at the destiny point offerings after level 20 except for the dread removal.

I did a PUG in the Pits the other night and we wiped. While regrouping, I see a notice in the chat window that the tank got a scroll of dread removal. He must have just bought it from the store. Is that a bad thing? It saved us having to wait around 10 minutes for his dread to wear off.

I love this game. My wife loves this game. I want to see it succeed for the long term. I wouldnt care if they sold raid armour. I know a lot of people, Turbine included apparently, disagree. If they can sell something in the store that makes more money and keeps the game going longer and isn't drasticaly overpowered I am fine with it. Until it gets to the point where you have to buy things in the store I don't care what they offer. There have been a lot of arguments in the last couple of months that we've gotten to that point where you have to buy things from the store. I just don't see it. Are there things that are more advantageous than convenient? Yes, and I am sure they dread ever using that term. Is there anything that is game breaking in the store? No, and I don't believe there will be. I've said this before and I would hate to be proven wrong for many reasons. Sapience's post has given me faith that I won't.

Originally Posted by BrittainTheCommie

You're no longer living the experience of an MMO. You're bypassing the joys, the frustrations, the connections, the immersion, the accomplishments, the community, etc.

Ultimately, in my opinion, you're no longer playing the game as intended or was intended.

I do see your point, however for me, it's a case of how many times can you play through the same game in the same way over 4+ years and 4+ toons? I'm not going to run through the trait and deed system every single time.

The exact quote you cited was - "Some people have time, others have money and when players are willing to trade money for time we usually consider that a convenience."

You called it disgusting, I definitely call it convenience. New players can still experience all the things you mention, but they also have more choice of how to spend their game time (and\or money). And who are we to suggest one way is how the game should be played?

Originally Posted by Sapience

• Patience said convenience, not advantage.

Very true. It’s one of our guiding principles. Some people have time, others have money and when players are willing to trade money for time we usually consider that a convenience. Our goal is to allow players to customize their play experience to deliver as much fun per hour of play as they want without impacting the play of others.

• What’s not a convenience?

Anything that’s compulsory to be competitive in ranked play or achieves something by degrading another player’s experience. We have not and will not make that part of our F2P offering.

The big problem I have with your explanation here is that Turbine has introduced clear advantages through the store that directly impact the quality and fairness of pvp play. Heal over time morale and power pots, crumbled brands, +mount runspeed, remove broken legs scrolls - these are clear advantages in the Moors and should not be available for purchase if that is the model.

I know there are a lot of pvpers who would love to hear an explanation on how that is "convenience not advantage." Especially when it directly impacts a players ability to win fights and escape without harm by paying cash for tp. This sort of advantage for sale is what turns players against other players and ruins enjoyment of the challenge we go to the Moors to experience.

I also wonder at 7 tiers of stat increases not providing a clear advantage - that is +70 of any (or all) stats in a game where the caps have been removed.


I do appreciate the communication, but for me it is still too little too late. Until I hear that focused attention is being paid to following through with the advertised promise for a new pvmp zone and fixing the current bugs and advantages that are plagueing the pvp side of the game, I can't take Turbine too seriously. I bought ROI based on a promise for more attention to PvP and a new zone and that has since completely come off the table with no explanation. That has created a huge lack of trust between Turbine and the pvp community and should be addressed.

First off - I just want to say thank you for opening the lines of communication, especially as to the why. It's very appreciated and ...

Originally Posted by Sapience

We appreciate that fact and all we ask is that you view this as the first step on that long haul.

...it is a solid first step. Thank you.

As a player who has really dived extensively into the low-level armour crafting in the past couple weeks, I can definitely see a strong demand for players in those level ranges against a strong contrast of the little benefit to the higher level/already tiered crafter. I definitely agree that player investment at a lower level can also lead to higher retention, but that is not only for store purchases as it is also for gear purchases through the AH as well to a lesser extent.

I still have concerns surrounding the armour, but now I will just have to watch to see what will be the next step after this. I'm still terribly concerned of the following:

• The quality of the store-armour vs. in-game armour of the same min. required level as has been mentioned. I understand that there needs to be intrinsic value for a store purchase, but I would rather see armour that is on par to level (if they need to stay) at a lower price that is bound-to-account vs. higher priced and above level quality
• Store-exclusive relics. I'm having difficulty understanding how when these were released they were not end-game gear. Relics are an minor aspect of gear, and I'm very concerned that this will see a repeat in the future for current tier equivalent. Please do not add something similar to the game/store again.
• Relic removal scrolls in combination with legacy (no longer available) relics. While relic removal scrolls are available only via the store and some old relics are as strong or stronger than currently available relics. I'd hope that at some point L75 (or current level-cap) tier relics are added that would be the equivalent.
• Stat tomes available via game-play. I've played extensively for the purpose of obtaining the tomes via gameplay, as much as anyone I've come across. It's just has not feasible to try to obtain them only via gameplay (especially T4+).

Again, thank you for the communication. It's a great first step in feeling confident again in regards to the store's impact on the game, and I will watch hopefully to see further open communication and any possible adjustments. This is still only a first step and a year of waning confidence will take time to rebuild.

Originally Posted by uvm.tp

Which does not address the issue with TP being converted to gold on a compromised account. I know it's not something that is comfortable to talk about, but (a) is that a serious concern for you [because it IS a serious concern for many of us] and if so (b) What is the specific plan to change these items and the policy you have put in place to avoid creating this scenario (TP->Gold) in the future? Alternately, what is your policy change with respect to TP purchases being refundable if an account is compromised and used to convert real currency to in-game gold?

Originally Posted by PerinStone

Why is that a concern? If your account gets hacked you can enter a ticket and get your stuff back. Are you worried that they won't refund any TPs that were spent on armour which was then sold?

Well, let's see why that would be a concern. I don't think the main concern is about getting stuff back; the main concern is that now hackers have a more definite reason to try to get into an account. The concern then is for the credit card, not the stuff. It's a much, much broader problem than just losing one's character and in-game items. The door is open for such problems, and it's been opened by Turbine. That's the concern about the armor being vendorable. Not how much gold a character can make in-game with it, but that it's an enticement for a hacker.

Will Turbine also cover the expenses of the credit card theft?

Now that Turbine has confirmed someone that they intended for players to be able to sell this armor for silver, I have one question. When someone's account is hacked and they lose all of their Turbine Points will Turbine refund those lost points as part of their customer service?

Originally Posted by BrittainTheCommie

You're no longer living the experience of an MMO. You're bypassing the joys, the frustrations, the connections, the immersion, the accomplishments, the community, etc.

Ultimately, in my opinion, you're no longer playing the game as intended or was intended.

Since this was directed at obtaining virtues via the store OR acceleration via the store please address the following. When players, as they often do, go into a zone where the mobs are grey in order to kill the mobs for the slayer deeds, what have they accomplished?

I finished the wargs today in Moria. I'm level 75 and using an accelerator, I took out the required mobs in about 40 minutes. So long as we have the systems in place to accomplish deeds when they are trivial to us, I don't see the store as reducing the experience or joys.

As I stated before, the rewards do in fact increase with the slayer deeds in terms of coin, faction and resources, and when on level experience gained; when one avoids the store. So it still comes down to less time invested = less rewards.

As a prime example of the benefit of acceleration via the store I will bring up my wife's situation. I had much more free time in the past and accomplished at least 75% of the slayer deeds without any store assistance. I also gained a great deal of coin and faction items as well as craft resources that we share. My wife on the other hand can play far less, but would not enjoy logging in to a less capable character. We use deed acceleration and wipe the mobs quite efficiently. It allows her to spend more time playing in a manner that she enjoys without having to give up character advancement and thus feel like a burden to our Kin. Is killing 400 of a mob that you proved capable of killing 200 times so much more of an accomplishment?

Originally Posted by Abiyah

Well, let's see why that would be a concern. I don't think the main concern is about getting stuff back; the main concern is that now hackers have a more definite reason to try to get into an account. The concern then is for the credit card, not the stuff. It's a much, much broader problem than just losing one's character and in-game items. The door is open for such problems, and it's been opened by Turbine. That's the concern about the armor being vendorable. Not how much gold a character can make in-game with it, but that it's an enticement for a hacker.

Will Turbine also cover the expenses of the credit card theft?

This is something I'd like answered as well.

Originally Posted by Abiyah

[T]he main concern is that now hackers have a more definite reason to try to get into an account. The concern then is for the credit card, not the stuff. .... Will Turbine also cover the expenses of the credit card theft?

This is exactly the concern. The stuff or refunding the TP is a minor issue. Those are bits and this is a game. The issue is that a hacker can get into the account and even knowing they will not have permanent access to the account, they have a way to convert real currency into something of value that can be sent off the account. That is not possible for everything else in the store which is BindToAccount and not sellable.

Hmm... well, I can't say that I'm all that impressed. This type of response is fairly typical of Turbine and, honestly, comes across as rather condescending. I don't really enjoy being told that I interpreted something wrong or that, if something was said by a Turbine rep in an official interview, it's my fault that I took them at their word. When an official statement from Turbine tells me that I shouldn't always believe what is said in official statements from Turbine, I somehow feel my raised eyebrow is justified, particularly given that this is hardly the first time this sort of thing has happened (Legendary Items, anyone?). And I'm actually not even someone that cares all that much about beginner armour sets showing up in the store.

If there's one point in this posting I can, and will, loudly echo it's that Turbine really needs to wake up and understand how big of a problem it is when they don't talk to their playerbase. Again and again (and again) we see issues arise where Turbine does one thing and it's extremely clear that the player base wants something different. From class revamps to Legendary Items to accessibility to items for all play styles. It's all fine and dandy to mine statistics and data printouts to enable you to make better decisions, but they are no replacement for actually talking to the players.

Don't just tell players that you are doing things.
Don't patronize us by stating that if you had only explained why you are doing things then we'll all see things your way like good little children.
Do involve us in the decision making and allow our feedback to guide the development process where it is possible.
Do give our statements just as much weight as the coin you hope to hear jingling in your purse, even if that sometimes means that you'll have less cash to rub together in the short term.
Do, please do, take the muzzles off of the actual development staff so they can start talking to us regularly again.

Oh, and do fill us in on these supposed updates that the new revenue LOTRO has generated are going to make possible. Many many players were very disappointed in not only what was included in the RoI expansion pack but also in how it was released (both in stores and in gameplay). Just saying some sort of nebulous content is coming is not enough to rinse out the bad taste left in many of our mouths.

Originally Posted by Defense1977

Oh, and one other point. You stated that F2P "multiplied monthly audiences and provided an increase in revenues which we will re-invest in the game." [emphasis mine]. Do I take that to mean that you haven't re-invested these increased F2P revenues up to this point? That would explain a lot about ROI...

As someone who deals with this challenge every day, I would take it that:
- New revenue started to flow around F2P (Sept 2010)
- Authorizations to hire were launched & jobs posted in that timeframe (call it 4Q10)
- New hires came on board 1Q-2Q11
- New hires came up to speed on Turbine code/APIs/methodologies through 2Q-3Q11
- First New content delivery from new hires 2Q-3Q12

At least that's how MY products work! So the real test in my mind is what the 2012 roadmap looks like...

Originally Posted by Defense1977

If you were drafting Sapience's post (or one of the doubtless many people reviewing it) and Turbine had hired more staff or redirected more funds to LOTRO development in 2011 after all that supposed F2P money was coming in, wouldn't you have changed the wording to say "we are re-investing" in the game?

Given the firestorm, they are trapped between speed of response and editing every detail and thinking of every possible interpretation. Remember "will" can also be determination, as in "Darn tootin' we are reinvesting those extra dollars in the game"

Also, I doubt it's as carefully crafted as you think. I've seen incorrect statements in global product announcements that were literally checked over the course of multiple months by dozens of people. Items as stupid as *stating support for an operating system that is not supported*. Even blatently obvious stuff gets missed and what you are calling out is subtle. I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt on this one until the 2012 roadmap is published. (and this is just a reflection of my practical expertise in software development lead time - see above)

Great to hear from you Sapience! Keep up the communication, i sense a great year for LOTRO Maybe even a year of change.
Keep up the good work.
PvMP is waiting

I already said my piece on this and I'm not going to continue hashing it out and looking for pain points.

All I want to say is thank you for addressing this directly. I feel significantly better about it already. Maybe it's not exactly what I wanted, but it's a big step in the right direction either way. I can tell anyone without flinching that my company wouldn't be even remotely this apologetic if something like this happened, so it's nice to see something on that front lol. I hope future action solidifies these new promises -- that's the real test.

"To make it perfectly clear: We will not sell end-game gear." This is particularly good to hear and despite the flip-flop on stats based gear, I am hoping the reaction to this on both sides will make this stay true.

Oh Massively, how you're making me so so happy as of late:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01...ible-currency/

Ask yourself this: Can you believe another promise from the company? Can you believe the developers when they say anything about not paying for something? Or will it just sound like so much bleating?

As a developer, the worst thing you can do to your credibility is throw it away needlessly. There were ways that this stat armor could be sold without being a huge blow to Turbine's believability, but the company opted for none of those methods. Now the company is backed into a corner, and about the only thing that it can do to try and scrape its credibility back together is to reverse the decision -- something that appears unlikely to happen, to say the least.

As fluid as credibility is, it does have an effect on player faith, and if the players fundamentally believe that what they dislike about the game is never changing, it can much more easily eclipse whatever they do like about the game.

And that has a much higher cost than a few points in a cash shop.

The only thing I really want to know is - do we Wargies get muffins?

We'd really appreciate some muffins. Mmmmmm muffins......

Love & Hugs

Fluffy Hithy

Originally Posted by Ayrolen

I've been sitting here for a couple of hours pondering my response. While I appreciate the effort to create more open discussion, I'm still angry that the armour is there in the first place and that's not ever going to change. I'm even angrier that the armour is so much better than anything that can be obtained in-game and that it can be sold to a vendor. Gold is SO easily obtained in this game that it is completely unnecessary to allow this armour to be sold for more gold. I was hoping to hear that that gear was being nerfed a bit and the vendorable status was being removed. That would make it slightly more palatable for me. Right now this just feels like, "Yeah, we read your 80 page thread, but we don't particularly care enough about all of you old fart players who have been supporting the game for 5+ years to take any action. So take it or leave it."

You do nearly take the words out of my mouth. Words/communication is a good first step, but it's minor and at best stems the decline of confidence. It will take time and action to stop the decline and begin to restore it.

Originally Posted by Umbrarg

The only thing I really want to know is - do we Wargies get muffins?

We'd really appreciate some muffins. Mmmmmm muffins......

Love & Hugs

Fluffy Hithy

Muffins are completely out of the question. But maybe you could have a nice wargie biscuit.

Originally Posted by Sapience

That brings us to our final point: communication.

Also Turbine should learn to take criticism of both their product and employees from their customers without handing out infractions or banning accounts. Other businesses have their customers fill out comment cards to make improvements for their customers, Turbine's comment card are their forums. They really need to make note of those complaints, deal with them instead of deleting the thread or post and levying some type of punishment towards the author.

Does Turbine have any plans to help crafters and/or make crafting useful?

So, after reading this topic, we discussed this during dinner, & as I was trying to explain Turbine's reasoning, I remembered this:

" The items can be sold for Gold!

True. They can. As mentioned above, we were worried about these armors not having a high enough perceived value so we added the ability to vendor them to get some of the value back at the end of their useful life. As some commented at the beginning, gear changes and you level beyond it. We assigned a value to these items specifically because we recognized this issue. Furthermore, we actively tracked auction house prices in game to help set these values."


I think I'm a bit boggled by this. One of the major complaints I've heard, & said myself, is that by selling armor, the TS is directly competing with their craft-selling players. So rather than sell the armor with NO vendor value like other store-bought items, you looked at current auctions & gave the purchasing player the same amount of money back? I must be missing the point here, because this looks *bad.*

Originally Posted by Fipiara

You do nearly take the words out of my mouth. Words/communication is a good first step, but it's minor and at best stems the decline of confidence. It will take time and action to stop the decline and begin to restore it.

If I weren't such a huge loregeek and a lifetime subscriber, I'd be long gone by now. I stick around because I'm not a huge MMO fan in the general sense. This was my first MMO and chances are, it'll be the last one I'm ever this invested in. I'm glad I took a chance and got the lifetime sub, but right now I feel like I'm in a failing marriage with LOTRO. Logging in for anything more than a skirmish or checking the AH takes effort. In the old days I would be engrossed for hours at a time, getting excited to rush home from work and log in. Now it feels like more of an obligation. Please, Turbine, give me my fun back. Stop pushing your biggest fans away.

Thank you for the response, Sapience and team. For future reference however, this kind of explanation should be offered before such changes are made, not a week later and after an 80-page thread and a number of negative media articles. Right now, it looks like a scramble prompted by an apparently unexpected player reaction. It also looks like, had it not been for this significant reaction, you (as in the team, not you personally) would not have considered it necessary or helpful to actually tell your customers what you are doing and why you are doing it.

Originally Posted by Sapience

Some people have time, others have money and when players are willing to trade money for time we usually consider that a convenience.

In other words: everything than can be acquired in-game is entirely acceptable to be put in the store. Thank you for making that clear. At least we know where we stand. Accordingly, and because you are already offering end-game buffs and consumables, some of which are store exclusive, please forgive me if I take your "We will not sell end-game gear" statement with a copious amount of salt.

Anything that’s compulsory to be competitive in ranked play or achieves something by degrading another player’s experience. We have not and will not make that part of our F2P offering.

Does Turbine have its own dictionary? Here is the first definition of advantage, courtesy of Dictionary.com:

1. any state, circumstance, opportunity, or means specially favorable to success, interest, or any desired end.

That is, in fact, already part of your F2P offering, to a great extent, from store-only regen and cure potions to stat tomes, to mitigation scrolls and so on. Trying to reinvent the English language doesn't make it less so.

...MTX catalog...ranked play...

So who really wrote this piece? Lol.

Originally Posted by PerinStone

"We won't sell end gear" and "we have no plans to sell end gear at this time" are not contradictory statements. Despite what the paranoid people on the forums want you to believe, "at this time" doesn't mean they were planning on doing it eventually.

Except for the fact that they made exactly the same statement about Lotro going F2P (an even more important and far-reaching decision), while the F2P conversion was well under way, with MTX specialist Kate Paiz at the helm. Both facts were admitted much later. Evaluating Turbine's words in the view of past experience hardly qualifies as paranoid. It is simply not naive.

Originally Posted by Ellyllon

So, after reading this topic, we discussed this during dinner, & as I was trying to explain Turbine's reasoning, I remembered this:

" The items can be sold for Gold!

True. They can. As mentioned above, we were worried about these armors not having a high enough perceived value so we added the ability to vendor them to get some of the value back at the end of their useful life. As some commented at the beginning, gear changes and you level beyond it. We assigned a value to these items specifically because we recognized this issue. Furthermore, we actively tracked auction house prices in game to help set these values."


I think I'm a bit boggled by this. One of the major complaints I've heard, & said myself, is that by selling armor, the TS is directly competing with their craft-selling players. So rather than sell the armor with NO vendor value like other store-bought items, you looked at current auctions & gave the purchasing player the same amount of money back? I must be missing the point here, because this looks *bad.*

I just realized why they did this. They are only offering 3 armor pieces but with the gold you can purchase you'll be able to get jewelry, weapons, or the rest or your armor pieces from the AH. That is assuming though all the recent changes don't drive away all the crafters of course.

Originally Posted by Ellyllon

So, after reading this topic, we discussed this during dinner, & as I was trying to explain Turbine's reasoning, I remembered this:

" The items can be sold for Gold!

True. They can. As mentioned above, we were worried about these armors not having a high enough perceived value so we added the ability to vendor them to get some of the value back at the end of their useful life. As some commented at the beginning, gear changes and you level beyond it. We assigned a value to these items specifically because we recognized this issue. Furthermore, we actively tracked auction house prices in game to help set these values."


I think I'm a bit boggled by this. One of the major complaints I've heard, & said myself, is that by selling armor, the TS is directly competing with their craft-selling players. So rather than sell the armor with NO vendor value like other store-bought items, you looked at current auctions & gave the purchasing player the same amount of money back? I must be missing the point here, because this looks *bad.*

Not only this-- "we added the ability to vendor them to get some of the value back", but add in this-- "at the end of their useful life". In the other thread, a point was made, by Sapience, that one of the ideas behind the armor was that it would be bound to account, usable by any and all alts capable of wearing it. It has no "end of their useful life". Not until a player decides they're done with the game, and by then vendoring it will be unnecessary.

Originally Posted by Defense1977

Let me put it this way: If you were drafting Sapience's post (or one of the doubtless many people reviewing it) and Turbine had hired more staff or redirected more funds to LOTRO development in 2011 after all that supposed F2P money was coming in, wouldn't you have changed the wording to say "we are re-investing" in the game?


The fact that the future-tense 'will' was used seems purposeful to me. (And I'm speaking as someone who used to draft press guidance for a government agency on a daily basis). I'd love to be proven wrong about this, but to do so would require Turbine to share more info than they'd be comfortable with.


Moreover, if you're expecting to see big new things this year, then Turbine probably needs to have made these investments already given the lead time for developing content.

Very good points, and I certainly won't argue -- certainly not with the way the tail(Store) seems to be wagging the dog(Game) nowadays.

Still, I'm one of those players in for the storyline, and if that storyline is entertaining to me, I stay. If it isn't, I go. If the next region is as huge (in content, if not in area) as say Moria, I'll forgive a lot of Store indiscretions.

But I may well be playing another game while I wait.

None of the issues raised in the 80-page store comment chain is taken care of, weasel words aplenty, items are still in the store, advantage that ISN'T advantage, a leech attaches itself to the carotid and sucks the life from the game. Fine. Let the zombie shuffle on, dragging its coffers and storefront with it (Jacob Marley needs the company, I suppose) but I cancelled my sub, deleted the game and give two fingers up to the whole outfit.

I would like to thank turbine for this. I think it was great for you guys to come out and speak about it truthfully and answer the largest unsolved question in this entire debate: will end-game gear be sold? Your answer for most of us, well for me at least was satisfying. Obviously there is a long road ahead and this sort of communication should take place more frequently and perhaps even before certain items are added to the store. The post was well written and took the time to explain most of the questions people wanted to hear for the most part.

Of course there are people who are still angry and worried over this event but I for one am now quite content to know that my worries are over for now. Personally I think that people should be thanking turbine for listening and hoping for a far more communicative and promising future in 2012 rather than bashing on the post and dissecting it to little pieces. What does that show about us as a community? We ask and whinge and complain to get a response and in return when we do get that answer, we still whinge and complain? I think we should all as a community just stand back and look forward to those promises made in this post and for us to continue to play the game that we all in enjoy. Yes there are still issues that need to be resolved and perhaps not everything will be resolved the way we like it but at least this has been a good step forward in solving this current issue. Because really how many of you believe that this level 20 armour is going to destroy your life and enjoyment in Middle-Earth? Yes it has raised issues with crafting low level gear, yes it has raised issues with tp to gold on a small scale. But in the end I don't believe any of those are game changing nor large issues which can't be resolved should they become an issue. The largest issue was whether or not this will continue until end-game and that has now been addressed.

Each issue must be resolved one step at a time otherwise everything is rushed and people get angrier. So step back and just enjoy the game. And if you can't enjoy it any more then simply leave in a dignified manner and allow new people to inhabit middle earth. Complaining on this thread won't solve any issues in my opinion. Turbine is after all a company run by people, just like we are people, and stuff can only be done a bit at a time.

So in the end I suppose we should be grateful, pack up our placards and protest banners and move onto Middle Earth in an orderly manner to once more enjoy ourselves.

Sorry. To me its just empty words (aka PR talk) that don't fix anything. Better luck to your next MMO.

You have utterly disregarded the muffin question.

So far all we Wargies have got has been a new scent-mark tree and a bird that isn't even tasty.

If we just get a token change in the moors again, can it least be muffins?

Or can we please, please have someone read the literally hundreds of Moors posts and pay the PvP community some much needed attention?

Failing that, and I have no high hopes - I'll take the muffins.

Love & Hugs

Fluffy Hithy