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Attention Standing Stone Games: Your communications skills SUUUUUCK!
My wife and I started playing Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO). We enjoy it quite a bit. My wife is a minor Lord of the Rings scholar, and they have a free mode: you can play two characters per server with only minor restrictions. It's a pretty good game, all in all. One thing that I particularly like is that everybody is playing a good guy: there's no Horde vs Alliance in this game. You can duel other players, but I've never seen it.
And best of all, they have a Mac client, letting my wife and I play! Well, I could play anyway since Dave gave me that gaming laptop monster Windows machine. They also have a WINE client, so if you're running Linux on a beefy machine, you can also play it. Pretty cool!
They have one serious problem: they don't patch their code base. When you download their game, you're downloading nearly their 1.0 version, so you're going to spend a lot of hours downloading that beast, then you're going to spend another bunch of hours bringing it up to date with seemingly every frickin' patch ever released.
Early Tuesday morning was a patch day. No big deal, took about an hour to download and apply.
And all our Mac installs broke.
None of them could connect to any server. My Windows laptop: no problem. And I couldn't see any activity on the forums, nor did a Google search for the error turn up any screaming. So I sent in a ticket, updated this morning by a screen shot with a little more observational commentary.
This afternoon I got a response, pointing to a page posted mid-April, so about 50 days ago.
With the latest update they discontinued the Mac client and Mac users have to install the WINE client.
No notice in the little news box in the loader. No popup in the software if it detected it were running on a Mac, which is trivial to detect. No notice in the last three patch readme files.
Just this announcement on a web page, if you happen to dig in to the forums, three layers deep, in the basement, behind a locked door, in a file cabinet, in a disused lavatory, behind a sign that says Beware The Leopard.
What really pisses me off is it takes over 12 hours to install it on my new laptop, and probably 18 hours to install it on my iMac. AND I'VE INSTALLED IT ON BOTH IN THE LAST WEEK!
HAD I KNOWN I HAD TO INSTALL THAT WINE CLIENT, I COULD HAVE INSTALLED THAT AND ONLY DONE IT ONCE ON EACH INSTEAD OF HAVING TO REPEAT THE FIRK-DING-BLAST PROCESS!
Grrrrr..... Masters of communicating to their users they ain't.
If you play LOTRO, let me know: we're on Brandywine, Crickhollow, and Gladden. We created a Kinship on Gladden called Those That Abide, gotta get a Big Lebowski reference in there - then on another server I saw a guy named Duderino!
And best of all, they have a Mac client, letting my wife and I play! Well, I could play anyway since Dave gave me that gaming laptop monster Windows machine. They also have a WINE client, so if you're running Linux on a beefy machine, you can also play it. Pretty cool!
They have one serious problem: they don't patch their code base. When you download their game, you're downloading nearly their 1.0 version, so you're going to spend a lot of hours downloading that beast, then you're going to spend another bunch of hours bringing it up to date with seemingly every frickin' patch ever released.
Early Tuesday morning was a patch day. No big deal, took about an hour to download and apply.
And all our Mac installs broke.
None of them could connect to any server. My Windows laptop: no problem. And I couldn't see any activity on the forums, nor did a Google search for the error turn up any screaming. So I sent in a ticket, updated this morning by a screen shot with a little more observational commentary.
This afternoon I got a response, pointing to a page posted mid-April, so about 50 days ago.
With the latest update they discontinued the Mac client and Mac users have to install the WINE client.
No notice in the little news box in the loader. No popup in the software if it detected it were running on a Mac, which is trivial to detect. No notice in the last three patch readme files.
Just this announcement on a web page, if you happen to dig in to the forums, three layers deep, in the basement, behind a locked door, in a file cabinet, in a disused lavatory, behind a sign that says Beware The Leopard.
What really pisses me off is it takes over 12 hours to install it on my new laptop, and probably 18 hours to install it on my iMac. AND I'VE INSTALLED IT ON BOTH IN THE LAST WEEK!
HAD I KNOWN I HAD TO INSTALL THAT WINE CLIENT, I COULD HAVE INSTALLED THAT AND ONLY DONE IT ONCE ON EACH INSTEAD OF HAVING TO REPEAT THE FIRK-DING-BLAST PROCESS!
Grrrrr..... Masters of communicating to their users they ain't.
If you play LOTRO, let me know: we're on Brandywine, Crickhollow, and Gladden. We created a Kinship on Gladden called Those That Abide, gotta get a Big Lebowski reference in there - then on another server I saw a guy named Duderino!
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The bad news: there's a problem with the fonts on the launcher program. I can sign in, but I can only make an educated guess as to what server I'm signing on to as the server name is completely unreadable. I use three different servers since I'm limited to two characters per, but since it shows how long since I signed on to each server, it is, as I said, an educated guess and differentiate the servers that I have used from the ones that I don't have characters on.
The hopeful news: someone posted on the forum with the exact same problem with the exact same laptop hardware. I can't post on the forum since I don't have a paid account, but I can reply! And in Better News Land, my iMac loader fonts are perfectly legible.
When I sent in the ticket Tuesday mid-day, the first page of the Mac Help Me forum section was entirely old stuff. Today: 2/3rds to 3/4ths or more is all about the Wine loader and problems! Many of them are WTF is this switch to the Wine loader all about?, i.e. no communication, people getting caught unaware about the switch and suddenly their Mac client doesn't work.
To put a cherry on top of this shit show, the post that I was directed to was a lovely "click on this link and run the package". That was the sum of their instructions. Fortunately I had previous experience with Wine and virtual environments before, not to mention 35 years of installing Microsoft programs. Wine popped up several dialogs - including things like "You haven't installed the Windows 2000 Encryption Pack" - none of which were mentioned in LOTRO's nigh non-existent installation instructions.
What they need is a person with OCD to write installation instructions. I think they had a tech write instructions, someone who had previously worked with Wine because there were many assumptions made that a neophyte would get slaughtered by, or at least hopelessly confused. No mention of Mono, for example. Do I need to install Gecko? Do I do an Express install or a Custom, and what's the difference? No, they needed a person off the street installing it, and someone with OCD to write it up. You could then use a tech writer to pare down the OCD person's instructions, but "click here and then the installation will magically happen" is wishful thinking and not nearly good enough if you want me to give you $30 a month from Russet and me.
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My iMac finished its re-install and updates after I went to bed. This morning I signed on to all three accounts collecting my birthday presents, and was presented with yet more WINE dialogs asking questions.
*sigh*
Yeah, they really bollixed up this updated. It's like I said to DevilC above, they needed someone with OCD to write a FAQ on how to install it as WINE, as you said and I observed, is not a straight-forward thing.
It wouldn't surprise me if they lose some customers over this, and even non-subscription customers spend cash getting LOTRO points buying things from the store: expansion packs, more quests, mounts, etc. We're about to spend real money on some additional questing areas for me.