LOTRO and Community Management
Hanlon’s Razor asserts “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”. Therefore it is a useful tool when applied to politics, business management and public discourse. All of which are rife with contention and rancour. However, this is often due to human incompetence rather than premeditated malevolence. So with this maxim in mind, let us consider the conundrum that is the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online, its developer Standing Stone Games and their ongoing propensity for bad community relations and poor business decisions. Last year, there were major server outages which kept the game offline for a substantial amount of time. Despite SSG enjoying a community that is broadly sympathetic to their cause, they handled the problem appallingly. The community manager at times gives the impression that doing his job is positively distasteful to him. However, the recent acquisition of SSG by Enad Global 7, gave the community hope that 2021 would be a better year. Sadly, nearly a month into the New Year and SSG have managed to upset their customers yet again.
Earlier in January, SSG tested Update 28.3 on the Bullroarer server. Among the various changes to the game were several restrictions made upon Scrolls of Empowerment which are an essential item for levelling your Legendary Weapon in the game. The proposed changes effectively limited player access to this resource within existing content and increased the availability in the latest “mini expansion”. Effectively the player base were potentially being coerced into buying War of Three Peaks to access SoEs and having to work harder. To say there was a public outcry is an understatement. The LOTRO community and the gaming press were scathing of this crass proposal. So SSG dialed backed the changes but not in any meaningful fashion and posted their revised proposal on the official forums. The playerbase again pointed out that acquisition of SoEs is still far from equitable but SSG remained deaf to their requests and intransigent to the last. Today, Update 28.3 was formerly released on the live servers and the changes became official, multiplying the grind for SoEs by approximately five times.
This incident needs to be considered within a wider context, as SSG have “form” for making decisions that fly in the face of good community relations. In fact Community Management has been a hot potato for both Turbine and now Standing Stone Games since 2009 when the game brought out the lacklustre Siege of Mirkwood expansion and was beginning to transition (behind the scenes) into a free to play game. Information has always been slow in coming and problems are all too often dealt with with an air of annoyance, rather than empathy. Now no one thinks that being a CM is an easy position and most adult gamers understand that business decisions are made at a senior level. Therefore community management is mainly about PR and pouring oil on troubled waters, rather than hands on change. However, SSG seems to fail to understand this and their current incumbent CM for LOTRO, Cordovan (AKA Jerry Snook), certainly comes across like a square peg in a round hole. His responses to player criticism and concerns often appear indifferent and implicitly passive-aggressive. One wonders if he even enjoys or wants the position he holds.
LOTRO has endured bad community relations for over a decade now and one has to ponder how and why a company such as Turbine/SSG so consistently manages to get things wrong. It may be down to the fact that it is a relatively small company which has key members of staff that have remained in position throughout the company's lifecycle. It could be possible that there simply isn’t the talent in-house to provide someone who is sufficiently au fait with the requirements of modern community management. Perhaps the company is so focused upon keeping the gaming running and their staff employed that dealing with their customer base is simply a priority that is much further down the list. However, many players were hoping that the EG 7 acquisition would potentially fix this perennial problem, as they have implied that they will be investing in the game.
LOTRO is a unique game with a correspondingly unique community. There is a strong core of mature and thoroughly invested players who hold the game in a great deal of affection. They are understanding and forgiving with regard to the games business and development decisions, possibly too much so I would argue. But at present, LOTRO is the only virtual Middle-earth in town and so in some respects the player base has nowhere else to go. However, I do believe that even their stoic patience is beginning to run thin. A cursory look at the official forums will show lifetime account holders and LOTRO aficionados one step away from throwing in the towel. Certainly, there could at least be a drop in subscriptions. Some have surmised that EG 7 may have arrived too late and that SSG are flailing around as the business slowly fails. There’s certainly more going on than meets the eye and eventually the truth will out. In the meantime if SSG wants to do anything positive to help the current situation then they need to focus on their community relations and management. Because at present it is an active impediment to the well being of LOTRO.
