With Turbines servers being down for over 50 hours and with no idea when players like myself will once again be able to click the enter Middle Earth button. I begin to ask myself what if the servers don’t come up. What will that mean?
Well for someone like me it will mean that I should have left LOTRO when I said I was going to leave, which for those of you who don’t know was just after I bought the Riders of Rohan. That would have meant that I would not have gotten to level 85, grinding Hybolt and the crafting instances. But then again even though I feel as if I should have left the game back then, I actually did play the expansion and do everything. I maybe didn’t quite get my monies worth but I still play the game today.
With updates every few hours which basically say “We are working on it, the game will be with you as soon as it’s ready.” Does Turbine need to do better? With conspiracy theories spreading like wildfire around the forums (to which I myself participated blaming the dwarves for digging too deep because sorry it’s always a dwarf) does Turbine need to step back and explain why it is taking so long? My answer is yes! The players will respect you for keeping them in the picture and it saves the play based getting angry.
Turbine should have learned by now. With it being almost six years since LOTRO launched. With changes impacting us all and Turbine continue to make the same mistakes. Maybe we are the silly ones for putting up with their complete lack of good customer service, but while I play other games and see the distinct comparison I begin to wonder how I put up with it. From being afraid to say anything on the official forums about lag before the delete button gets pressed I wonder how this community, including myself is enjoying being trampled on.
I do wish that this game was run by any other company; even Blizzard is looking appealing to me at the moment. I am beginning to remember why I wanted to leave LOTRO and Turbine behind i.e. the complete lack of communication as well as the communistic ruling on the forums. What can I do but sit here shaking my head. Should I give up a game and a main character I love just because it is run by the worst gaming company I have ever encountered? I just checked the Facebook page of The Lord of The Rings Online for any update and what I saw was again another message saying the same thing they have been since 8am (GMT) yesterday.
I do not want to just seem hateful in this post and I know a lot of people are working hard to fix the problem. But old memories come back to me such as;
- The free to play denial.
- Leaving Codemasters behind but denying it.
- The lag. This was all the I.P’s fault.
- The deletion of anything on the forums relating to someone asking for information on when the game is going to be fixed.
So what would happen if Turbine decided it wasn’t worth the manpower to fix it and LOTRO, DDO and Asheron’s Call all got deleted? Well nothing, as you would not have a legal leg to stand on. All thanks to the terms and conditions. So it could be “Au revoir Middle Earth” with not so much as an explanation.
Now isn’t that itself just something to freak out over?
Written by Emma McHugh
For The Win Online 