MMOSide Chat: Standing Stone Games' Lack Of Communication During Downtime Is Unacceptable

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MMOSide Chat: Standing Stone Games' Lack Of Communication During Downtime Is Unacceptable

For the past week many Lord of the Rings Online players have been unable to log into their game as downtime goes into its eighth day. Curiuosly, and upsettingly, Standing Stone Games has relayed little to no info as to exactly what's going on, which is unacceptable.

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Panther2103

It's kind of crazy they were only updating one time a day regarding the downtime and people still can't play properly. I wanted to go back to LOTRO but my account had been perma banned due to buying an expansion from a site I thought was legit (standing stone offered to unban me if I paid for the expansion through them, I thought it was a bit odd they wouldn't just remove it from my account or something). But after seeing these issues I don't know that I would want to put more money into the game and have this lack of response from them.

xpsync

Panther2103 said:

It's kind of crazy they were only updating one time a day regarding the downtime and people still can't play properly. I wanted to go back to LOTRO but my account had been perma banned due to buying an expansion from a site I thought was legit (standing stone offered to unban me if I paid for the expansion through them, I thought it was a bit odd they wouldn't just remove it from my account or something). But after seeing these issues I don't know that I would want to put more money into the game and have this lack of response from them.

That is odd, maybe your toon(s) got intermixed too much with the expansion and was the only option?

Nebless

"Explain to users what is going on and why it’s not fixed at the moment."

-- As someone familiar with  electronic repairs; at this point I'm sure it's still in the realm of 'It's Broke and We're Trying to Find Out Why'.   Is it on SSG's end, the ISP's end, both, neither? 

We all know SSG doesn't have a PR or CS department so ask yourself, would you rather have the guys trying to fix it or taking time out to post an update.   Trouble shooting takes awhile and once you think it's pinned down, you have to fix that and see if that was really the problem.   

"Explain to eager fans just wanting to hop back into Middle-earth exactly what your plan is to compensate them for the downtime, "

-- Again, would you rather have them trying to fix the problem or sit around a table decided what freebie's to give to people.

xpsync

I'm still blown away by this. A week? not an hour, a day, a WEEK!!!

In this day in tech, and a high profile title, it's not reassuring for any current player, anyone thinking about coming back, or thinking about trying it out.

SWG:L run by a few fans has more up time and stability than it ever has since it launched, and far more than this one does. Yikes!

Pretty sure i've already wrote this one off, this stunt sealed the deal.

Jaguaratron1

Possibly a concerted DDOS attack, the silence is indicative of that and can go on for weeks.

Panther2103

xpsync said:

Panther2103 said:

It's kind of crazy they were only updating one time a day regarding the downtime and people still can't play properly. I wanted to go back to LOTRO but my account had been perma banned due to buying an expansion from a site I thought was legit (standing stone offered to unban me if I paid for the expansion through them, I thought it was a bit odd they wouldn't just remove it from my account or something). But after seeing these issues I don't know that I would want to put more money into the game and have this lack of response from them.

That is odd, maybe your toon(s) got intermixed too much with the expansion and was the only option?

Yeah potentially. It was just pretty frustrating at the time not knowing why I got banned and having to wait for them to tell me pay them. I still wouldn't mind going back, just the entry cost of the expansions / content is quite high on a fresh account. 

Wizardry

Tried a few connects and nothing "cannot connect to server"but the main page and Store pages loaded fast.However upon loading the first 2 tries i did see the can't connect page popup for a second".Then i tried a 4th time and no connect at all.

I thought of something from days of old.So i check the server status page which also has the IP addresses.The page says ALL servers are up.So then i thought of a ping test to US and EU servers.Well i am not sure exactly if a ping test can be blocked,like you know some sort of anti DDOS protection even though a ping test only sends 32 bytes.Anyhow both US and EU server pings were 4 packets sent 4 lost,so i think there are likely Firewalls blocking my ping test.

So then i tried a tracert and a few hops after leaving my area i get non stop fails,so yeah there must be firewalls blocking any ping tests.

However i find that dumb because what is the purpose of posting ip's for players to check where they might like to connect the best if we can't actually ping test them.Also how good is a "server status "page if people can't actually connect?
Tried once more on the main site and again i couldn't connect.So yeah something is whacked but wouldn't SSG say anything?So it is almost like nobody within SSG even knows what is going on?

Is this a simple case of a few people are off on vacation so nobody realizes their servers are messed up ..lol.

Kelverde

All college degrees involving game design should include a semester long class studying Turbine/SSG‘s sheer ineptitude as a case study in how not to run a game studio. They’ve got two really great games that will never get anywhere close to seeing their true potential thanks to poor management and even poorer coding. Instead of taking time to fix their spaghetti code, they plow forward on updates that negatively impact gameplay further in hopes of selling the next OP race/class/enhancement tree, while nerfing viability on other builds. Meanwhile, their customer service is arguably the worst in the industry.

The Better Business Bureau may be pay to play, but SSG flat-out earned their F rating.

Kelverde

Jaguaratron1 said:

Possibly a concerted DDOS attack, the silence is indicative of that and can go on for weeks.

Since they’re pretty quick to assign blame to others during outages, I’m pretty certain that if SSG could come out and say this wasn’t their fault, they would. Judging from their history, I’m relatively certain they’re either still completely clueless to what’s happening, or one of their previous business decisions came back to bite them in the behind, and they’re trying to undo that damage.

Mendel

SSG has officially brought all servers down at 3:00 pm EST on Wed 22, will be back sometime.  From LotRO launcher.

Amathe

Found the culprit.

Albatroes

Will they extend their free coupons or w/e?

Nebless

Panther2103 said:

I still wouldn't mind going back, just the entry cost of the expansions / content is quite high on a fresh account. 

Well good news then; until Aug 31st every quest, instance and raid in the game is 100% totally free to play.

AND there's a coupon code LotROFreeQuests that gifts to you every region pack out from oldest to newest.

AND there's a 99 store point sale on the first 5 expansions and the 2 instance packs that go with 2 of those expansions that didn't have them already a part of the expansion.

So for less than $20 bucks you can have everything up to the last 2 expansions that came out; Mordor & Minas Morgul, plus the region packs that came out after those 2 expansion.

Nebless

Delete dupe post.

SinistralBassist

If you've been around for any length of time, the lack of communication isn't baffling at all. It's how they've always handled things, especially the multi-day downtimes. They're notorious for this, and they'll still have people blindly defending them anyway

Kyleran

SinistralBassist said:

If you've been around for any length of time, the lack of communication isn't baffling at all. It's how they've always handled things, especially the multi-day downtimes. They're notorious for this, and they'll still have people blindly defending them anyway

Welcome to the forums, keep coming back

Ednircs

Ok, I have been waiting on an Explanation myself as a Long time Player of LOTRO. I came to LOTRO during the Hardware Shut Down Of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean in 2011. I have had Issues over the past 3 years that have caused me to rage quit and try other games, none of which were as enjoyable as the years on LOTRO before the Years prior to the Change when Turbine Left and SSG took over. Since 2019 My Play on the game has Slowed down Considerably and I am more or less only Playing because of the Community. Many other Players and I have a Lot in common and that is why I stick with the game. In recent Months I have tried EVE, Starborne, Tale in the Desert. and a few others and None have been satisfying enough to draw me away from LOTRO completely. A game I saw a Demo of on MMORPG has caught my Eye and I would like to try but for some reason it is not available and I keep getting nowhere in my Efforts to Find out why. the Game is Called New Frontier. At this Point I am concerned that LOTRO may go the way of POTC and this would be a huge Blow to me as I would lose Contact with so many of the people I have grown to know and get close to. I could Accept if LOTRO would say we are going to Revamp the Game and anyone who has an Account will be able to rejoin with their old account once we reopen, that is if the Revamp were to Include new Graphics and better interface as well as removal of those old quest lines that have been abandoned and really have nothing to do with Current Content or like the one in Great River that just ends up stopping in mid quest and goes nowhere. Well All for Now and Cordovan You should Prepare a Statement Soon and Let us Players Know what is going on so we can stick it out or Move on.
Ednircs Lindenwood

zasd

Wizardry said:

I thought of something from days of old.So i check the server status page which also has the IP addresses.The page says ALL servers are up.So then i thought of a ping test to US and EU servers.Well i am not sure exactly if a ping test can be blocked,like you know some sort of anti DDOS protection even though a ping test only sends 32 bytes.Anyhow both US and EU server pings were 4 packets sent 4 lost,so i think there are likely Firewalls blocking my ping test.

You can set WAN ports to not respond to ping requests, it a crude form of security and does prevent ping flood, a form of DOS attack, though most ISP's now do filter this out...

MD24

SinistralBassist said:

If you've been around for any length of time, the lack of communication isn't baffling at all. It's how they've always handled things, especially the multi-day downtimes. They're notorious for this, and they'll still have people blindly defending them anyway

Totally agree with you, those 'blindly defending' or warshipping SSG are killing this game they and we love. Those devs are adults, not babies who need to be spoiled.

Scot

For legal reasons or for simply being unable to be sure how long it will take to fix the issue they are saying little. Every time they open their mouths to say anything the players will immediately criticise them, so this makes sense to me.

If the game is not up and running in another week I would expect something more substantial from them to tide them over, but the media's demand for day by day announcements from everything from government to gaming companies only entrenches issues. Look at your life, your job, could you always do this: Tell friends/customers exactly what the problem is, why it’s taking so long to fix, and before it even is fixed what your plan is to compensate friends/customers.

MMORPG.com might want to think about the perennial issues we have here with adbots. What exactly is the problem, how long will it take to fix, what sort of compensation will we be offered for us flagging adbots every day? Sort that out and then come back and make more demands of gaming companies.

Ungood

Nebless said:

We all know SSG doesn't have a PR or CS department so ask yourself, would you rather have the guys trying to fix it or taking time out to post an update.

Just FYI,. yes they do have a CS/PR department, headed by Cordvan (aka: Jerry Snook) who has been with the Company since the Turbine days.

MD24 said:
Those devs are adults, not babies who need to be spoiled.

If you have ever witnessed FlimsyFirewood having a meltdown on the forums.. you would not be so fast to say these are Adults we are dealing with.

But to be fair.. they all do come across as your typical "Gamer".. so everyone that was looking for a passion project by a small team.. this is that game.

Enjoy! 

or.. you know.. given the current situation.. Don't.

Slapshot1188

Unconfirmed rumor:

They hired Jeromy Walsh as a backend engineer. He had a better way to run the servers that would save them money and time.

k61977

Just curious didn't the parent company get bought out recently. I thought I read somewhere that Tencent bought them out. Might be wrong, couldn't find the article. Was just curious if there was some type of fallout with the parent company and that is why there is no real communication as to what is going on.

olepi

It could be something like an intermittent hardware problem, with a network switch, router, database, or something. It works most of the time, and then fails and corrupts the database. It takes time to fix the database, and they can't debug the hardware failure since it only fails intermittently.

I had this happen to me once, we were getting intermittent packet data corruption. It took me a month to figure out what it was. I ran all kinds of packet sniffers, added debug statements to the kernel, removed hardware that was unnecessary.

It turned out to be a bad fluorescent light bulb. When the bulb flickered, the ballast transformer spiked and corrupted our packet data. Our network cable in the ceiling just happened to be next to the transformer.

Nebless

k61977 said:

Just curious didn't the parent company get bought out recently. I thought I read somewhere that Tencent bought them out. Might be wrong, couldn't find the article. Was just curious if there was some type of fallout with the parent company and that is why there is no real communication as to what is going on.

You're thinking of Funcom which runs Age of Conan, Conan Exiles, Anarchy Online etc....

Tencent bought the / a majority stock shares in Funcom.