LOTRO NDA has been lifted.

[Falconeer]

Its' getting two more servers over the 10 8 already existing and packed ones. And this is just for Europe (no idea on how many NA servers there are and if they'd need more too). And this is based on pre-orders only.

Sounds like things are going well for Turbine. I am happy for them.

More servers coming online for full retail launch!
Following an overwhelming and fantastic Early Access launch success, we will be bringing extra servers online for full retail launch. The names and configurations of those servers are as follows:


English Language-preferred/International Server

Eldar – Normal server
Meaning - An Elven people whose name literally means "People of the Stars". Oromë gave them this name when he found them and later summoned them to make the Great Journey.


German Language-preferred Server

Vanyar – Normal server
Meaning - The Vanyar are the highest of the High Elves and were the first Elves to make the Great Journey from Cuiviénen to Valinor, where they remained.

[Falconeer]

Uh-ho. On the other hand Codemasters did their best to screw it up.
Apparently they announced lots of stuff for the collector edition that wasn't actually in.

Their explanations and apologies are pretty funny. What are they trying to do? Become the British SOE?

Official response CE/SE contents
Dear LOTRO community,

Recently there has been a great deal of discussion with regards to contents in the Collectors Edition and the Special Edition. This is a serious issue and deserves a serious answer.

The short of it is that mistakes were made. There was miscommunication; there were changes to the contents which were unavoidable. These changes should have been clearly and promptly communicated, they were not and for that we are sorry.

The Lord of the Rings Online project is extremely complicated, we have made mistakes, we will no doubt make further mistakes, we are all only human. However, we do all we can to learn from mistakes and minimize their impact on you the consumer as you are the most important concern we have. We would never intentionally upset you or try to cheat you, it's simply not in our interests and that's something we believe very strongly. The long-term success of the game is what counts and it would be foolish to risk that for the sake of a few items.

There have and will be further repercussions within Codemasters Online Gaming as a result of this issue.

Until today I have been very impressed with the great spirit and positive feeling on the boards. I particularly appreciated the patient and understanding attitude during our recent unplanned downtime.

I am very disappointed by the recent negativity on the forums, however this is completely understandable.

I want to apologise on behalf of Codemasters Online Gaming unreservedly for this situation. What has happened is unacceptable and some hard lessons have been learned.

To attempt to rectify the map disappointment, should any of our Special Edition or Collectors Edition customers wish to get a cloth map we will be announcing a system shortly where we will send one to you. However, I would like to say now that the reason we exchanged the cloth map for a parchment one was because we felt the quality of the cloth was not right. "Get one that’s the right quality", I hear you say, Unfortunately the only change possible in the timeframe was to parchment, not cloth. In hindsight it's evident that we should have nevertheless stuck with the original plan. We unfortunately took the wrong decision. Our key mistake overall we recognise is in the lack of communication of these changes.

Further information regarding the other issues with the contents were covered in the following post from the marketing team:

http://community.codemasters.com/fo...04&page=1&pp=10

This post is accurate, there are no lies. This unfortunately is the situation. Should this have been handled better? Of course it should.

Everyone at Codemasters Online Gaming is dedicated to delivering a quality product and service to you and we will strive harder to provide this going forwards.

I hope this message goes some way towards communicating our regret for this situation.

I hope to see you all in Middle-earth.

Yours sincerely,

David Solari
Vice President and General Manager
Codemasters Online Gaming

and more

Collectors and Special Edition Contents Explanation
Official response from the Vice President and General Manager of COG can also be found here.
__________________________________________________ ____

Hi All

We’ve been reading the many posts about some of the disappointment you are feeling from the Collectors Edition. As previously mentioned the Leather Wristband and Prima guide couldn’t make it into the pack due to time constraints and manufacturing issues, but customers will be able to redeem these items via a special page on the official LOTRO website come April 24th. With regards to the other items that have been mentioned we can only apologies for any misunderstanding, though we should at least explain why and how these things came about.

The Cloth Map changed to a Parchment Map very late on in the production , again due to some manufacturing and quality issues; we had a choice of either not including the map at all or giving you something that would still look great but be on slightly different material. We feel we made the correct choice in giving you a great high quality item.

The Letter from Jeff Anderson changed to a Letter from Jeffrey Steefel for the simple reason that Jeffrey is the closest person to LOTRO and knows more about the game than anyone else in the world – we felt that a letter from Jeffrey would be an amazing keepsake for any diehard LOTRO fan. The wax seal was missing as our heath and safety bods wouldn’t allow us to use hot wax.

The Golden Ring competition is still going ahead, albeit under a slightly different guise – we were blown away with the amount of orders we had from all over Europe and our legal guys just couldn’t find a way for us to run the competition in all territories legally. To this end we had to rework the way the competition runs and details on this will be announced shortly. The winners will still get the Gold and Silver rings along with the trip to Turbine and the Zunes so please bear with us.

We are truly sorry for any disappointment caused and have worked tirelessly to bring you a Collectors Edition we are immensely proud of.

Many thanks

The LOTRO Marketing Team

Well props to Turbine poops to Codemasters.

[Endie]

Codemasters are, generally, utterly and incredibly crap.  Their website for subs maintenance buckles under any load and will sometimes force me to re-enter login details five or six times before allowing a given action to succeed.  They sent me six different pre-order codes, of which four have turned out to be post-launch codes.  I suppose that I have, at least, four spare sub codes now.  They billed me for DDO for three months after I cancelled, and getting that cash back required me to sic Amex onto them.  I mean, Operation Flashpoint was good, but my goodwill based on that will run out eventually...

The comparisons to SOE are fairly to-the-point.

On another note, if anyone is interested, one of the UK PC magazines, this month, has an item code on the CD inlay that gives you a free earing with some minor benefits (they've already made the jokes about being Middle Earth's first metrosexual etc).  I believe that it is PC Gamer, but don't have my copy here.  It's advertised on the front of the wrapping, in any case.

[Falconeer]

Fraud?


(And that one on SOE was cheap, I'll take it back. SOE never did anything like that).

[Hound]

 I have had a hard on for Codemasters since they canceled Dragon Empires. Alchemic Dream does not thrill me any either. I feel sorry for the Europeans, and they will probably be better off with a N America box.

[palmer_eldritch]

Got home from work tonight and, on the EU game, the login servers are down. That is, you enter your username and password and it hangs there. Codemasters say the issue is that "the amount of login attempts has increased so much" since last week. I guess this means the game is a bigger success in Europe than expected, so good for them in a way, but you would have thought they would organise their servers so there was a reasonable element of redudancy just in case something like this happened. I mean, they can't have sold that many boxes more then expected surely?

In other news, I'm still enjoying it. At least I *want* to log in.

[bhodi]

Got home from work tonight and, on the EU game, the login servers are down. That is, you enter your username and password and it hangs there. Codemasters say the issue is that "the amount of login attempts has increased so much" since last week. I guess this means the game is a bigger success in Europe than expected, so good for them in a way, but you would have thought they would organise their servers so there was a reasonable element of redudancy just in case something like this happened. I mean, they can't have sold that many boxes more then expected surely?

How soon we forget... Followed closely by "Authenticating... Authenticating... Authenticating... timed out."

[Endie]

As I asked in the super-specialist Euro lotro thread, this doesn't happen on the US servers, does it?  I mean, the three huge downtimes adding up to about 36 hours in ten days?  It's not Turbine, really, just Codemasters, isn't it?

[Big Gulp]

Speaking of innovation, SimBeru, lifetime account, and twitch combat, why is no one playing Roma Victor (hint: you can't say "because it sucks")?

I'm a Roman history fanatic, but even with that going for me I won't touch Roma Victor.  One reason: I'm an eye candy whore, and RV is at least 5 years behind the times.  Shallow, but true.

[Endie]

Speaking of innovation, SimBeru, lifetime account, and twitch combat, why is no one playing Roma Victor (hint: you can't say "because it sucks")?

I'm a Roman history fanatic, but even with that going for me I won't touch Roma Victor.  One reason: I'm an eye candy whore, and RV is at least 5 years behind the times.  Shallow, but true.

Absolute agreement here: I'm a sufficiently-far-gone Roman history geek that I'm partway through a part-time degree in Roman History (admittedly currently on hiatus since my work is paying for me to do another masters).  I followed RV from early on, aching for it to be any good at all.  But the interface is soooo amateurish (and indeed, I have seen Multiverse stuff that looks better) that I simply cannot bring myself to try it.  I actually think that an enhanced isometric viewpoint like the new UO one would have been a better move than their descent into the deepest uncanny valley ever.

[HaemishM]

Not playing Roma Victor because while it may be innovative, it's borken.

[Xanthippe]

As I asked in the super-specialist Euro lotro thread, this doesn't happen on the US servers, does it?  I mean, the three huge downtimes adding up to about 36 hours in ten days?  It's not Turbine, really, just Codemasters, isn't it?

Correct.

With regard to the Special Edition, why Turbine didn't take a page from WoW and give people in-game pets I'll never know.

They don't do anything, but they are so cool.

My spouse bought the SE for me.  What a rip; the map is utter crap.

[Numtini]

Yeah, the special edition was a huge disappointment. I figured the map would either be functional or it would be attractive enough to stick in my cubicle (it IS middle earth). But no

[Ixxit]

Yeah, the special edition was a huge disappointment. I figured the map would either be functional or it would be attractive enough to stick in my cubicle (it IS middle earth). But no

The map is pathetic.  The font is so small and blurry that it is completely illegible.  Next time I go to Taco Smell I think I'm going to have to wipe my ass with it as it seems to have been printed on some high end toilet paper.

The soundtrack is good though, and I did enjoy the making of documentary on DvD.

[Endie]

They also claim that it's made of parchment now.  I take it that this, too, is misleading, and that it's not actually printed on sheep- or goatskin but rather something which, to a partially-sighted person cursed with the inability to feel textures due to massive scarring all over their body, might pass for parchment?

Edit: spelink

[Numtini]

Actually Ixxit is not exagerating. The paper most like what the map is printed on is that harsh sort of paperish toilet paper you find sold in bulk to business customers. (No, not a joke.)