Thread: And the winner is.. Opening Envelopes for The Lost Invivations Quest

Originally Posted by Majic

I despise having to say it, but that's what seems to be happening. At this point I'm afraid I'll get in trouble for even talking about it, or submitting tickets about it.

Tickets get closed, exploiters keep exploiting, even bragging about it on OOC while they do, and nothing changes.

It casts a dark pall over an otherwise enjoyable festival.

Agreed. It's cast a pall over lotro for me. I've had to ask friends to 'please just don't tell me if you cheat', but they can't seem to help bragging about all their alts having the steeds or think I should just 'let them help me get the horse'... If people didn't talk about it so much, it wouldn't be so disappointing, but I find myself thinking about joining friends in other games, some that are coming out soon that I had no interest in prior to this event.

I've reached the point where I'm tired of trying flavors of the month MMOs, but seriously, if people, including friends, have to cheat what is supposed to be a festival event, then maybe I do need to keep looking.

Originally Posted by Catburg

Hidden code? I've got to say that sounds a bit far fetched, why would such a thing exist and who would be the fortunate few with the better code?

That may have been referring to my Paranoid Theory of Steed Acquisition -- after 19 tries each my mains on Riddermark and Landroval still don't have a new pony. I (jocularly) conjectured that mains have a lower chance at a win than do alts without the riding skill, and I drew a connection to the Wi-flag bug in Asheron's Call (related recently by Yula), which caused people with a low database number to pull much more aggro than their more fortunate colleagues. The database number effect was an accidental side-effect of some dev design decisions.

I don't really believe that's what's happening here... but all the alts have fast flagless horses! But random number generators are random, and annoyingly often I get a run of bad luck -- e.g. 6 tries to crit when the crit probability is 70% on each try.

Ah, well - six more tries coming, with (according to my personal stats) an 8% chance of getting one or the other steed on each try. That should give me a 40% chance of getting one in the remaining time. If I'd been checking my odds with that 8% from the beginning, I think I would have predicted a 79% chance of getting at least one on 19 runs. With 7 out of 9 of my characters on Ridder getting at least one after 17-19 runs, that comes out to 77.7%... even though hitting the target that close is clearly luck, I'm disinclined to believe the Wi-flag theory and go with "random numbers are random".

Originally Posted by Kylani

Agreed. It's cast a pall over lotro for me. I've had to ask friends to 'please just don't tell me if you cheat', but they can't seem to help bragging about all their alts having the steeds or think I should just 'let them help me get the horse'... If people didn't talk about it so much, it wouldn't be so disappointing, but I find myself thinking about joining friends in other games, some that are coming out soon that I had no interest in prior to this event.

I've reached the point where I'm tired of trying flavors of the month MMOs, but seriously, if people, including friends, have to cheat what is supposed to be a festival event, then maybe I do need to keep looking.

Taking short cuts, legitimately or otherwise, has become a major feature of the game since we've been able to buy boosts and bonuses etc from the store. I think this helps people to turn a blind eye and shrug their shoulders more re this exploit if not actually participate in it.

Re legitimate advantages I have friends who buy tomes and virtues etc from the store where I can't afford to quite as much. I've just learned to let them get on with it and not be phased. I just accept I have to do deeds the traditional way and look to the bonuses of it like making extra coin in the process. I really find it helps to blinker oneself and focus on one's own achievements and let others do things their way. I'm not as troubled by the hollow way people gain the quest rewards from exploiting as I am by the fact that some people are financially gaining hugely by the exploit to the point that it skews the ingame economy and allows the "entrepreneurs" to buy the big stuff via their dodgy dealings.

26 Steeds drop?!?!

Unless that concludes steeds that I have already acquired from meta-deeds and reputation, I am EXTREMELY unlucky, as I have only acquired one steed: The Dusk Watch.

Originally Posted by zalladi

26 Steeds drop?!?!

Unless that concludes steeds that I have already acquired from meta-deeds and reputation, I am EXTREMELY unlucky, as I have only acquired one steed: The Dusk Watch.

Who got 26 steeds?

Well count your self lucky mate I have 3 characters, been trying night and day every day and got nothing but a few tokens a toast emote. My friend on the other hand has 9 characters and has nearly got a steed for every one, on of them only lvl 7 seven actually won 2!

Originally Posted by Boomthor

Who got 26 steeds?

Well count your self lucky mate I have 3 characters, been trying night and day every day and got nothing but a few tokens a toast emote. My friend on the other hand has 9 characters and has nearly got a steed for every one, on of them only lvl 7 seven actually won 2!

LOL You want unlucky... 28 characters = 1 Lossoth, 1 Dusk-Watch, & 3 emotes. Both steeds on level 10 riding-skilless characters one of which is the only character on a server I never play on (not even sure why I created him). Logged on with him to collect lottery winnings and decided, what-the-hey, and ran the envelopes for the heck of it. In the 2 runs (it was 3am) got the steed and an emote. Couldn't happen while on a main.

Originally Posted by Adder

LOL You want unlucky... 28 characters = 1 Lossoth, 1 Dusk-Watch, & 3 emotes. Both steeds on level 10 riding-skilless characters one of which is the only character on a server I never play on (not even sure why I created him). Logged on with him to collect lottery winnings and decided, what-the-hey, and ran the envelopes for the heck of it. In the 2 runs (it was 3am) got the steed and an emote. Couldn't happen while on a main.

This is why you don't run the quest on "why do I have that character" alts. It is not wise to taunt the gods of random.

Originally Posted by Adder

Both steeds on level 10 riding-skilless characters one of which is the only character on a server I never play on

My two random steed wins on 9 characters were also on unused, riding-less alts rather than my main characters. Oh well.

Originally Posted by Catburg

Hidden code? I've got to say that sounds a bit far fetched, why would such a thing exist and who would be the fortunate few with the better code?

Logic would say to me that the loot table is the same for every person, for every envelope at any time of day. Presumably this would not only be the fairest but the simplest way of doing things. Open envelope, trigger RNG, pick up contents. That said somebody mentioned somewhere that they thought (anecdotally) that time of day ie number of players online played a part in as much as the more players participating in the quest at any one time meant less chance of a big prize for each player. Anecdotally I have to agree with this but the sample size of my alts is small and the spread of prizes still falls within reasonable probablity. I often play the letter quest around 5am EST at which time I seem to get more wins than when I play later, say around 4pm EST.

Does your logic also dictate that in the event that an average of say 10 players on your server, during any given hour of the day/night, are using the exploit and opening literally thousands of letters that they shouldn't be able to, would also skew the odds should you be unlucky enough to have been trying whilst they were doing so? Mine does, which is why I don't understand why nothing seems to have been done to stop it.... I'm just glad I didn't waste any TP buying extra chances while so many seem to be getting thousands of extra chances for free.

Originally Posted by Newtoo

Does your logic also dictate that in the event that an average of say 10 players on your server, during any given hour of the day/night, are using the exploit and opening literally thousands of letters that they shouldn't be able to, would also skew the odds should you be unlucky enough to have been trying whilst they were doing so? Mine does, which is why I don't understand why nothing seems to have been done to stop it.... I'm just glad I didn't waste any TP buying extra chances while so many seem to be getting thousands of extra chances for free.

While the cheaters of course increase their own chances of winning, I doubt very much that they decrease mine. Someone conjectured that the envelope quest is like the treasure hunt: that there's one primo prize out there in an envelope, and the next one doesn't get placed until that envelope is read. The envelope quest is significantly different from the treasure hunt, though: you can't store up treasure sites and open them all at once, or save them for the next round. Since I've been doing this quest with literally dozens of characters, I've tried to get it as fast as possible (not counting spending some time each round interfering with the cheaters). For me that means gathering enough envelopes that I have a good chance of not needing to gather more, open them all, and close out the quest. This means I usually have left-over envelopes on each character. Probably many others do also. If one of those contained a unique horse and I don't get on for a week, that would lock down the quest. This seems patently absurd to me.

It's also been suggested that particular envelopes (floaters, the four (that I know of) exploit envelopes, the one in the watcher's cabinet by the south gate) have a better chance of dropping something good. This also seems unlikely to me, because the envelopes stack, and at that point they lose their identity.

So I think if you buy another token you have just as good a chance of getting a horse as if you were on your own private server with no cheaters. I could be wrong... but I doubt it.

Can I suggest to Turbine, that if you are not going to bother punishing the exploiters, can you ask the developers for future quests to award the chance of a special reward on quest completion or hand in.

Originally Posted by Ronigard

All I get is invitations and unwanted invitations :-(

Even spent 300TP on badges, even though that's against my better judgement.

I guess I'm just unlucky.

Don't feel bad. I've done it once a day on each of my 10 characters since the thing began and I've got a Toast emote (that I will never EVER use because of how flipping silly it looks).

Originally Posted by JimhadaUK

Can I suggest to Turbine, that if you are not going to bother punishing the exploiters, can you ask the developers for future quests to award the chance of a special reward on quest completion or hand in.

+rep

Good solution.

There's always going to be those odd occasions where some quest or other banana skins. I suspect that with this quest it's a matter of damage limitation and a bigger furore and discontentment would arise if all the exploiters got punished especially this close to a new release from a "new competitor" in the games market. I suppose the 3year box issue was much simpler to fix than this letter one plus the festival is only a temporary thing.

Originally Posted by Tuco

It's also been suggested that particular envelopes (floaters, the four (that I know of) exploit envelopes, the one in the watcher's cabinet by the south gate) have a better chance of dropping something good. This also seems unlikely to me, because the envelopes stack, and at that point they lose their identity.

I would think the prize is only decided when the envelope is opened, certainly if I was programming it that would be the way I'd do it - it would be a waste of resources to keep track of every single envelope's contents. So I don't believe it makes any difference where you pick up the envelope from or whether they're floating or stuck.

One run I got 2 Dusk steeds and 1 toast emote from 4 envelopes all gathered from the ground in the same area - but this was on my one character that already had them. I've failed to get Dusk steeds on any other character and have seen no sign of the Lossoth steed.

I'm guessing random or my toons that got the Lossoth once wouldn't be getting it two or three times.

9 of 13 oft-played toons with fast horses now (well, okay, 12, but I will start playing that horse-lucky guardian more), which is way more than I expected. If I can just get one on my captain I'll have one of each class with a fast horse + two champs with them.

I'd like to have them for all the toons, but I'm amazed at how much I've lucked out on this one - usually I win things like pipeweed and beer.

I've just been harangued by some exploiters, who were sending me tells and posting regionally about how it's not an exploit and how evil Turbine are for daring to charge TP for extra badges (it's not as though it was pay-only though, right? Everyone gets a chance and may the luck be with us all!). Well done, exploiters, you've ruined this event for me by your aggressive behaviour and personal attacks. I guess you don't want any lily-livered fair players in the game, eh? All we do is get in your way during your rowdy stampede to virtual glory

Originally Posted by Teslana

I've just been harangued by some exploiters, who were sending me tells and posting regionally about how it's not an exploit and how evil Turbine are for daring to charge TP for extra badges (it's not as though it was pay-only though, right? Everyone gets a chance and may the luck be with us all!). Well done, exploiters, you've ruined this event for me by your aggressive behaviour and personal attacks. I guess you don't want any lily-livered fair players in the game, eh? All we do is get in your way during your rowdy stampede to virtual glory

I got that from one exploiter who didn't like me taking "his" stationary stationery that he'd been working on. I gave him a couple of disingenous leading remarks to draw him out further, then reported him for harassment - the conversation evidently automatically goes into the report. Cheers, dude.

Originally Posted by Teslana

I've just been harangued by some exploiters, who were sending me tells and posting regionally about how it's not an exploit and how evil Turbine are for daring to charge TP for extra badges (it's not as though it was pay-only though, right? Everyone gets a chance and may the luck be with us all!). Well done, exploiters, you've ruined this event for me by your aggressive behaviour and personal attacks. I guess you don't want any lily-livered fair players in the game, eh? All we do is get in your way during your rowdy stampede to virtual glory

Pre TP and store this quest would have been once/24hrs per alt. If you didn't win then hard luck, try again tomorrow (until festival end). Believe it or not we CAN still play it this way eh? and infact the original white skele steed from the first haunted burrow was exactly this. Once per 24hra seems fair enough to me as a basis, if you want more you're going to have to pay and that seems fair enough too although my personal choice is to spend my TP on other things.

Quite how the exploiters can justify their actions by passing the blame to somebody else is a joke, the best advertisement for the game is people riding around on the prize steeds and performing the emotes. More advertising more badge sales. If they REALLY feel that strongly then boycott the game altogether or DONT buy the badges. People's sense of entitlement is mindboggling at times ITS A GAME. It might be nice though if they include a badge as a rare drop from an envelope or let you barter for one with anniversary tokens (probably lots) as an alternative.

Tes I'm not sure what you did to illicit this kind of response from those people but personally I'd just go about my business playing my game (even if it is picking up "their" envelope, what cause have they to complain? it will regen) and avoid joining in the slanging match.

Yesterday I got my first 2 prizes from the lost invitation quest. Sadly, both were +1 tokens =(

So far, no more than that =(

Originally Posted by Newtoo

Does your logic also dictate that in the event that an average of say 10 players on your server, during any given hour of the day/night, are using the exploit and opening literally thousands of letters that they shouldn't be able to, would also skew the odds should you be unlucky enough to have been trying whilst they were doing so? Mine does, which is why I don't understand why nothing seems to have been done to stop it.... I'm just glad I didn't waste any TP buying extra chances while so many seem to be getting thousands of extra chances for free.

As a couple others already explained, that makes very little sense.

If I figure out a way to load my dice so that double 6s always come up, that doesn't decrease the chances of your dice showing double 6s.

Tuco's assessment seems spot on to me - each envelope has a percentage chance for each item, and the check isn't made until the envelope is opened. The items within the envelopes are not determined when the envelope spawns.

Curiously, I have noticed that the last two days there seemed to be a lot less exploiter groups on brandywine at the times I play. I will be curious to see if that holds true over the weekend.

Originally Posted by Silchas

Curiously, I have noticed that the last two days there seemed to be a lot less exploiter groups on brandywine at the times I play. I will be curious to see if that holds true over the weekend.

Same on Riddermark today. They could be more subtle about it, they make have gotten all they want, or they may have misunderstood the closing date.

Originally Posted by Tuco

Same on Riddermark today. They could be more subtle about it, they make have gotten all they want, or they may have misunderstood the closing date.

Or if there is actually some sort of warning going on? The corner by the AH has been occupied for days with a group and it wasn't there either time I logged in.

Originally Posted by Lestache

As a couple others already explained, that makes very little sense.

If I figure out a way to load my dice so that double 6s always come up, that doesn't decrease the chances of your dice showing double 6s.

Tuco's assessment seems spot on to me - each envelope has a percentage chance for each item, and the check isn't made until the envelope is opened. The items within the envelopes are not determined when the envelope spawns.

You both seem to be missing what I was alluding to, the simple fact that by them opening so many more envelopes than what was intended it's like the layer they are playing on has many, many more players than what the devs have allowed for, regardless of how the loot roll is determined.

As others have noted, and I personally have noticed, out of all the servers I play on, only Brandywine which is the busiest of them all, is the one where not only were the exploiters some of the most obvious and numerous(probably because it is one of the busiest), but also my least successful in terms of envelope loot. Too bad as that's also my main server so the characters I play there are now the worst equipped in terms of mounts since all of the paid for ones that came with pre-ordering expansions are only 62/100 compared to the 68/250.:/

Originally Posted by Newtoo

You both seem to be missing what I was alluding to, the simple fact that by them opening so many more envelopes than what was intended it's like the layer they are playing on has many, many more players than what the devs have allowed for, regardless of how the loot roll is determined.

As others have noted, and I personally have noticed, out of all the servers I play on, only Brandywine which is the busiest of them all, is the one where not only were the exploiters some of the most obvious and numerous(probably because it is one of the busiest), but also my least successful in terms of envelope loot. Too bad as that's also my main server so the characters I play there are now the worst equipped in terms of mounts since all of the paid for ones that came with pre-ordering expansions are only 62/100 compared to the 68/250.:/

That's not how random works. At all.

If you play the (RL) lottery, and you're the only person playing, your chances of winning are precisely the same as if everyone in the country plays 15 times. What mechanism do you think keeps track of people's success rate and adjusts the "randomness" accordingly? It just doesn't make sense, it's possible to code something like that into a game, but it would be pointless complication of an otherwise functional system of just allowing these things to happen randomly.

Assuming that Turbine's loot generation is based on a RNG, which there's no reason to believe it wouldn't be, you have just as much chance at winning regardless of how many other people are doing it.

Originally Posted by Newtoo

You both seem to be missing what I was alluding to, the simple fact that by them opening so many more envelopes than what was intended it's like the layer they are playing on has many, many more players than what the devs have allowed for, regardless of how the loot roll is determined.

As others have noted, and I personally have noticed, out of all the servers I play on, only Brandywine which is the busiest of them all, is the one where not only were the exploiters some of the most obvious and numerous(probably because it is one of the busiest), but also my least successful in terms of envelope loot.

Let me trot out my own stats (I haven't looked at it on a per-server basis yet, so I'm prepared to be as surprised as you at what I'm about to write):

Overall: 430 quests, all 6-invitation ones as god intended. 13.7% chance of prime loot (/toast or pony), 7.7% some pony (broken down into 4.2% Dusk-watch/Warden's and 3.5% Lossoth).
Brandywine: two characters, 35 quests (19 and 16), 6 primo rewards, 5 ponies (two each D-w and one Lossoth). That's 17% chance of prime loot, 14.3% chance of some pony.

Obviously this is too small a sample to make general pronouncements on, but enough for me to say that I'm not seeing the same dearth of rewards on Brandywine compared to other servers that you're seeing. It's also perhaps skewed a little because I stopped running one of those characters as soon as I got all the stuff I wanted on him.

And I still haven't gotten an envelope steed on my mains on Riddermark and Landroval after 20 runs... but my alts are doing excellently on each of these servers.

Now, I skipped ahead to the end so I may have missed some salient points. But how is opening unlimited envelopes forever in any way a good thing? Why bother getting the quest more than once, or even buying badges, when you can just stand at a stationary spawn all day long and get thousands of envelopes and then open all of them without a care in the world?

Originally Posted by Teslana

and how evil Turbine are for daring to charge TP for extra badges

Not defending anything anyone is doing but that's a pretty valid complaint. At least with the chest in the Haunted Burrow, everyone was equal. Now those with more expendable income can try to pay their way to special stuff. When I saw them offering extra badges for TP, that cast a negative feeling about the quest for me. At least with the treasure hunt, you can try again every 15 minutes.

Originally Posted by Lothirieth

Not defending anything anyone is doing but that's a pretty valid complaint. At least with the chest in the Haunted Burrow, everyone was equal. Now those with more expendable income can try to pay their way to special stuff. When I saw them offering extra badges for TP, that cast a negative feeling about the quest for me. At least with the treasure hunt, you can try again every 15 minutes.

Wait, though -- in the Treasure Hunt you could also buy more chances if you didn't want to wait it out. With the envelope quest, you can run it for free daily... as I have 21 times on my unlucky mains. In the Treasure Hunt, did you get the good horses and goats on all your characters? If not, were you so offended that you would have exploited if you'd been invited to one?

I didn't, I wasn't, and I wouldn't have.

With the envelope quest, I've gotten enough chances at it legitimately that I now have good envelope mounts on seven of my nine characters on each of Riddermark and Landroval, and toasts on all of them... though on my "real" Riddermark main I bought the toast from another player before I realized he may have been exploiting to get it. In that sense the longer time frame for envelopes has given me a better shot than the treasure hunt -- on that I had time to get two treasure ponies, two treasure goats, and one cave claw pony... five total, compared to the 34 that I've gotten on 22 of 32 characters over 447 6-invitation quests.

BTW, I still think the Anniversary Festival is the best festival ever.

I think the fact that people want to exploit in the first place points to bad design. It says that they don't want to go about doing it the legitimate way because it's simply not enjoyable, exciting, interesting, engaging, skillful or any of the other reasons they play games for. It's purely down to luck and unlike enjoyable games of chance it doesn't even provide the illusion of control. As such it doesn't come as a surprise to me that people don't want to participate in it just as it didn't when people didn't want to participate in the moria grind. As a game Turbine should be aiming to create fun content and unfortunately this is just another example of where they missed the mark due to resorting to lazy and sloppy design.

Originally Posted by GB-Esty

I think the fact that people want to exploit in the first place points to bad design. It says that they don't want to go about doing it the legitimate way because it's simply not enjoyable, exciting, interesting, engaging, skillful or any of the other reasons they play games for. It's purely down to luck and unlike enjoyable games of chance it doesn't even provide the illusion of control. As such it doesn't come as a surprise to me that people don't want to participate in it just as it didn't when people didn't want to participate in the moria grind. As a game Turbine should be aiming to create fun content and unfortunately this is just another example of where they missed the mark due to resorting to lazy and sloppy design.

That's bull. The reason why people exploit is because of a design flaw: people suck. It never matters how interesting, engaging, exciting or enjoyable something is, people will take shortcuts around it if they can.

Stop trying to justify cheating.

Originally Posted by Sardonyx

That's bull. The reason why people exploit is because of a design flaw: people suck. It never matters how interesting, engaging, exciting or enjoyable something is, people will take shortcuts around it if they can.

Stop trying to justify cheating.

If they enjoyed the content they would play it. The only fun part of this content is the reward so why would you not go about attaining it in the most efficient way possible?

Because most people have honor, exploiters don't have a honorable bone in their body, thats simple and true.

Originally Posted by GB-Esty

If they enjoyed the content they would play it. The only fun part of this content is the reward so why would you not go about attaining it in the most efficient way possible?

I guess you've never played an MMO before? There's no content so enjoyable that people won't exploit around it, because for many people, the only thing they're interested in is the reward.

Originally Posted by Shinir

Because most people have honor, exploiters don't have a honorable bone in their body, thats simple and true.

Honour? For one thing it's a game, for another it's a situation where them having a pretty horse for their own has zero effect on you. Honour has nothing to do with it.

Originally Posted by Sardonyx

I guess you've never played an MMO before? There's no content so enjoyable that people won't exploit around it, because for many people, the only thing they're interested in is the reward.

Played quite a few actually. Played this one for near enough 6 years. What I know is that people are happy to play the rift, cd, uru etc for no reason other than enjoyment. True there will always be some who will exploit but it's far less likely to occur if the content is enjoyable and it wouldn't happen on this scale.

Originally Posted by GB-Esty

If they enjoyed the content they would play it. The only fun part of this content is the reward so why would you not go about attaining it in the most efficient way possible?

It's not a matter of them not enjoying content, there is a certain subset of the MMO crowd that has to have everything first. No reward is worth working for if it can be gotten ASAP by any means necessary to these people. It's this crowd that ruins a gaming community, and it's because of companies catering to these people that nearly every modern MMO goes to ruin after several months. If you're fine with that, so be it, apparently a lot of us aren't.

I guess in this instance, it's just unfortunate that Turbine doesn't seem to give a damn either. It's one thing to have these sorts of children running around unable to cope with working for *anything*, but it's even more damaging to have those that are supposed to enforce the rules just sit on their hands and watch.

Originally Posted by GB-Esty

I think the fact that people want to exploit in the first place points to bad design. It says that they don't want to go about doing it the legitimate way because it's simply not enjoyable, exciting, interesting, engaging, skillful or any of the other reasons they play games for. It's purely down to luck and unlike enjoyable games of chance it doesn't even provide the illusion of control. As such it doesn't come as a surprise to me that people don't want to participate in it just as it didn't when people didn't want to participate in the moria grind. As a game Turbine should be aiming to create fun content and unfortunately this is just another example of where they missed the mark due to resorting to lazy and sloppy design.

To some people if there is an exploit they will use it just because they can. It doesn't matter to them how enjoyable a quest is or not.

Let's be honest the letter quest is neither long nor difficult so it can't be considered a grind on a per alt basis. Yes, it can be frustrating if you get no or little return after several days re the big prizes but given you are guaranteed a prize every time of 2 anniversary tokens for not a lot of effort it's a fair return.

With the treasure hunt I played quite a bit and didn't get any of the steeds from the chests. Was I bitter about those people who got several steeds? No. Would I have exploited to get those steeds? No. This time around I must confess to having had a fair amount of luck in the letter quest and obviously some other people have not. Maybe they had more success in the treasure hunt but anyway that's randomness for you and if you elect to play in a game of chance you have to accept the runs of bad luck along with the runs of good. Why can't some people play with good grace not have a tantrum and feel some sense of entitlement?

I am not so sure people exploiting isn't keeping people who aren't from getting the item. I've had <string table error; tableDID messages more and more lately when I open some of the envelopes (not cheating). I have to wonder if a large group of people getting the item does somehow take it out of the table briefly.

Turbine really should address this. If nothing else they should go ahead and say, join one of the groups if you want to get the item because the quest may be broken when it's being exploited. But I guess they probably want to still try to get people who don't cheat to pay. I won't do either, but it's certainly bringing down my appreciation of lotro.

Originally Posted by Kylani

I am not so sure people exploiting isn't keeping people who aren't from getting the item. I've had <string table error; tableDID messages more and more lately when I open some of the envelopes (not cheating). I have to wonder if a large group of people getting the item does somehow take it out of the table briefly.

Turbine really should address this. If nothing else they should go ahead and say, join one of the groups if you want to get the item because the quest may be broken when it's being exploited. But I guess they probably want to still try to get people who don't cheat to pay. I won't do either, but it's certainly bringing down my appreciation of lotro.

I'm pretty sure Turbine doesn't really care or they would have done something about it by now. It appears they're just waiting for the event to end so they can dangle a new sparklie under our noses to forget all about it..... As for arguing with those who see nothing wrong with cheating, save your breath, they don't seem to understand, or do and don't care, that using an exploit(aka cheating) damages the game environment.

Originally Posted by Newtoo

I'm pretty sure Turbine doesn't really care or they would have done something about it by now. It appears they're just waiting for the event to end so they can dangle a new sparklie under our noses to forget all about it..... As for arguing with those who see nothing wrong with cheating, save your breath, they don't seem to understand, or do and don't care, that using an exploit(aka cheating) damages the game environment.

I've submitted dozens of tickets on this, each of them closed within 5-10 seconds and the people concerned remained logged in, exploiting, and the next day, and the next, etc. I sent a PM to Sapience as well, either ignored, or not answered at any rate. At this point I'd simply be happy with them saying "yeah we're aware, but we're not really doing anything about it because 'X'". Without that, the only thing I can assume is that they don't care, and if Turbine doesn't care about their own game, why should we? There are other games coming out in the near future that I have my eyes on. I love LOTRO but if this is going to be the way of things, I'd rather give my money to a company that actually gives a damn.

Maybe the next update will include a LOTRO Store item where you can pay to have exploiters investigated.