LOTRO Outages and Compensation Wilhelm Arcturus While I haven’t been playing the game for a while now, I have been reading lately that the game has been having problems. Starting around July 15the the servers were sometimes down, often for long stretches during prime play hours. When the servers were up, chat functions were limited and reliability and connectivity wasn’t stable. The company, Standing Stone Games… or Daybreak, depending on who you think owns them… has been reluctant to offer anything much beyond “we’re working on it” sort of answers. It seems that something happened in their data center. They at least confirmed that much. It stands as another reminder that software isn’t a “solved” problem but a constantly shifting scenario where updates are pretty much regularly required for security, compatibility, and support reasons. And updates often make new problems as they fix old ones. This certainly wasn’t the longest outage in MMORPG history. CCP has had their issues now and again with EVE Online. And then there was SOE, which had its great hacking issue back in 2011 when all of their games were completely offline for almost two weeks and the PlayStation Network was down for more than three. It was a bad time for them. And other MMOs have broken and never recovered. I seem to recall that being the fate for the now aptly named Fallen Earth. But the problems seem to have been somewhat addressed over the weekend. Chat channels are still limited, but the servers were up. I don’t know how well they were doing, but I didn’t see any further “everything is down” reports. So now comes the time when they work out some way to give the players some compensation. This can be kind of a big deal. Sony and SOE faced a class action lawsuit over their outage even after their “make good” plan. Granted, there was more in play than just the outage, but it ended up costing Sony quite a bit, even if the players affected pretty much got squat. (In class action suits, the lawyers are generally the only winners.) The LOTRO offer, posted in the forums, is available between now and August 31s by using the code THANKYOUGIFT in the LOTRO Store. The code can be used once per account, so choose wisely where you redeem it. That will get you the following. Skill and Slayer Deed Boost x5 Enhanced XP Supply x5 +5000 Enhanced Reputation Supply +2000 Virtue Acceleration Tome All players can use the code, but there is still some pending compensation planned for VIP players, which means subscribers. The information is supposed to appear in the thread linked above. If you want the play by play coverage of the outages, Massively OP’s post about the compensation has links to the story so far. https://ift.tt/334ODyQ

While I haven’t been playing the game for a while now, I have been reading lately that the game has been having problems.

Starting around July 15the the servers were sometimes down, often for long stretches during prime play hours.  When the servers were up, chat functions were limited and reliability and connectivity wasn’t stable.  The company, Standing Stone Games… or Daybreak, depending on who you think owns them… has been reluctant to offer anything much beyond “we’re working on it” sort of answers.

It seems that something happened in their data center.  They at least confirmed that much.  It stands as another reminder that software isn’t a “solved” problem but a constantly shifting scenario where updates are pretty much regularly required for security, compatibility, and support reasons.  And updates often make new problems as they fix old ones.

This certainly wasn’t the longest outage in MMORPG history.  CCP has had their issues now and again with EVE Online.  And then there was SOE, which had its great hacking issue back in 2011 when all of their games were completely offline for almost two weeks and the PlayStation Network was down for more than three.  It was a bad time for them.  And other MMOs have broken and never recovered.  I seem to recall that being the fate for the now aptly named Fallen Earth.

But the problems seem to have been somewhat addressed over the weekend.  Chat channels are still limited, but the servers were up.  I don’t know how well they were doing, but I didn’t see any further “everything is down” reports.

So now comes the time when they work out some way to give the players some compensation.

This can be kind of a big deal.  Sony and SOE faced a class action lawsuit over their outage even after their “make good” plan.  Granted, there was more in play than just the outage, but it ended up costing Sony quite a bit, even if the players affected pretty much got squat. (In class action suits, the lawyers are generally the only winners.)

The LOTRO offer, posted in the forums, is available between now and August 31s by using the code THANKYOUGIFT in the LOTRO Store.  The code can be used once per account, so choose wisely where you redeem it.  That will get you the following.

• Skill and Slayer Deed Boost x5
• Enhanced XP Supply x5
• +5000 Enhanced Reputation Supply
• +2000 Virtue Acceleration Tome

All players can use the code, but there is still some pending compensation planned for VIP players, which means subscribers.  The information is supposed to appear in the thread linked above.

If you want the play by play coverage of the outages, Massively OP’s post about the compensation has links to the story so far.

from The Ancient Gaming Noob https://ift.tt/2CNuJhq