LOTRO: Over a Week of Downtime

July 23, 2020 / Roger Edwards

The MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online has been plagued by technical problems for over a week now, resulting in multiple servers being offline. The game’s official forums have also been intermittently affected by these ongoing issues, as has Standing Stone Games other MMO, Dungeon and Dragons Online. The problems initially started on Wednesday the 15th of July with severe lag, rubberbanding and random client disconnections. LOTRO has had ongoing issues with all of these problems in the past and developers SSG have attempted to address them numerous times. It was hoped that the release of a 64 bit client last summer would improve matters and initially there were indications of performance improvements. However, the specific poor server performance that was identified last week has allegedly “cascaded” throughout SSG’s infrastructure.

At present the specific nature of the “problem” remains unknown and somewhat nebulous. Furthermore it is likely to remain that way as SSG and prior to them Turbine, have never felt the need to provide details of technical outages. Now that is not exactly an unusual position to take as most companies do not feel the need to discuss infrastructure failings with their customer base. The matter may well be complicated by SLAs with 3rd party vendors etc. Businesses also have to deal with a great deal or internal politics and legal obligations. In this case SSG may well be constrained by policies set by their publishers (and pay masters) Daybreak Games. However, what is customary in such situations is for the “problem” to be handled by whatever internal departments handle communications and community management. Difficult situations like this become a “PR opportunity”.

Sadly, community management, interacting with the player base and providing reassurance is not SSGs strong point. In the past nine days there have been a litany of Twitter and Facebook posts about servers going on and offline. There have also been a few short messages apologising for the inconvenience. This is certainly civil but it really does seem like the bare minimum. The LOTRO player community is both seasoned and loyal. They are also extremely forgiving of these sorts of technical issues because they endured them before on more than one occasion. To use an old British colloquialism SSG and Turbine before them, have “form”. But it is a mistake for the game’s developers to rely too heavily on players' good will. 2020 has not been a “good year” so far and gamers per se may not be as “affable” as they usually are. At this point a little more transparency and frankly credible customer relations would be useful.

Are players asking for rash promises regarding technical solutions? No. Are they asking SSG to breach rules regarding disclosure and confidentiality? No. They’re looking for a simple, concise explanation as to the broad nature of the “problem”. They’re also looking for a reason to get behind the technical staff who I’m sure are working extremely hard under pressured circumstances. We appreciate that a bullet proof ETA on a solution is not practical. But regular, sincere updates on progress would be very reassuring. Everyone knows what’s at stake. We know that downtime means no one is playing and if no one is playing, then no one is paying. A drop in revenues is not good for any MMO. But SSG need to realise that the immense goodwill of their players that they have benefitted from for the last decade is not an infinite commodity. They need to communicate and keep everyone onboard, rather than push players away due to perceived indifference.

I have often reiterated the point that the LOTRO community should not overlook that they are consumers, as well as ardent fans. They may not immediately see both DDO and LOTRO as services but ultimately they are, the same as gas, electricity or your cell phone. So its is reasonable to have consumer expectations. Another point to consider is that good will needs to be maintained on both sides. A loss of revenue seldom pleases those who control the purse strings but if community relations are good, then the bean counters may well feel positive about the community returning and spending. If community relations sour, then a gap in the balance sheet and concerns over players not investing in the game, could contribute to more detrimental decisions being made. I therefore hope that SSG improves its PR and that LOTRO players keep their heads. The downtime is a frustration for all. I wish SSG staff well with the “problem”. But sometimes it’s not just about solving a problem but also how you handle it.