ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

As every reader of this blog surely knows, twenty long days have passed since F2P was due to launch in Europe, and we still seem no closer to a resolution. Codemasters is maintaining the kind of total, sweaty silence characteristic of a wounded WWII submarine lying in shallow waters with a couple of destroyers cutting capers just above it on the surface. Meanwhile, the forums are staggering under the weight of concerned, miserable or frantic players pleading, screaming, roaring, threatening or just plain doing their best to start a reasonable, sophisticated man-to-corporate-entity-type dialogue. That last gambit doesn't work, and I suspect it never will.

Why not? Well, I believe it's pretty clear by this time that there is no insurmountable technical problem stopping the launch. The basic code is obviously reasonably solid (OK, OK, I said reasonably, not perfectly), or otherwise the stateside servers would have collapsed. I also no longer think it can be a specifically Turbine-to-Codemasters transfer problem such as different accounting systems and their interface with the in-game shop, because that would have been fixed by now (unless the entire technical staff of CM is permanently on drugs, which I beg leave to doubt). Also, CM representatives, on their increasingly rare appearances on the forums, are limiting themselves to making gagging noises and jerking their heads back at the front office; translation, "I can't say a word about this or my employment prospects will do a China Syndrome".

What all this spells to my experienced and cynical mind is one word only: lawyers! I have no shred of evidence, of course, but the only reasonable explanation I can think of for this ongoing and open-ended delay, a delay with inevitably serious (maybe even disastrous) financial consequences over time for both CM and Turbine,  is serious legal problems of some kind. Maybe it's between the two companies, or perhaps it's something to do with some unsuspected pitfall of European law; perhaps the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg has decided it wants to levy purchase tax on in-game transactions, or else F2P contravenes some article of the European Union legislation on the free movement of goods and services. Perhaps. All I can say is that if this supposition is true, it could be bad news. Because geological time and the slow shifting of tectonic plates are as sheet lightning compared to the average speed of corporate lawyers...

I TAPE-WORM MANY FRIENDS

In a lighter vein than some recent posts, I couldn't resist passing on the following wonderful communication gleaned from the Codemasters forum:

"Hello escrivo to expose what happens to me I am in the server evernight go 2 years in etten am rank 10 with my guardian a hobbit always I went to all the raid and tape-worm many friends until a few months ago I come a very big clan descendants of andurin, and one of his(her,your) members arcane harasses me non-stop(steadily) expels me without motive says lies of my and the last thing that it(he,she) made arcane is to get about myself tell to scare saying things like that Arcaned: I wish to KILL FRODO AND EAT HIS EYEBALLS Arcaned: Devils Arcane> arcane Cucuracha Rodin . he(she) hates me for that he(she) hates Frodo and Samsagaz and says that every deve of burning in the flames of sauron arcane it looks like to me a sick player and already not that to do before this harassment pardon for my bad(wrong) Englishman".

The exchange which followed had something to do with feuding and bad blood in the Ettenmoors (yawn), but the debate was of minor interest compared to the original glorious piece of prose - which may owe some of its surrealist splendour to the intervention of an online translator. The last word remained with Satine, CM director of community relations, who sensibly concluded "[Thread] closed before anyone hurts themselves" last Tuesday.

TALK TO THE COMMUNITY TEAM

I suspect that not many players are aware of the fact that the Codemasters forum recently started running a section in which players are invited to respond to questions about the game and its design. Since these questions are usually quite specific, and presumably correspond to things the designers actually want to know more about, I would hazard a guess that somebody actually reads and takes note of the responses posted here - which is not necessarily the case with unsolicited suggestions and complaints.

The questions seem to change every couple of weeks or so; this is the current set:
Question 1: A friend who does not play MMOs asks you why you play them. What 3 reasons would you give them?
Question 2: Currently a hot topic among forum posters is play styles, so how would you describe your play style? Casual, Hardcore, or something in between?
Question 3: You're given the opportunity to pitch one new feature to the dev team. Go! (please be brief).

As you can see, some are probably of greater interest to players than others. Among the more relevant questions from recent weeks I would include "If you could change 3 things about LOTRO's User Interface, what would they be?" and "What three(3) features would you add to the Kinship system?".

In any case, if you have constructive views about the future design of LOTRO (as opposed to merely strongly-held views), it's worth your while contributing to this little feature.

HICCUPS ON THE WAY TO MORIA

Poor old Codemasters! It really does look as though they need somebody new in charge of sales and distribution (or perhaps, just somebody in charge?)...

With the LOTRO community in a feeding frenzy over the coming of Mines of Moria, rather more than the usual distribution problems are cropping up - yet again. For instance, as of today, it looks as though anybody who pre-ordered from Amazon, and particularly from Amazon.uk, will have cancelled their orders. Why? According to the official Amazon response one anxious purchaser posted on the forums, "Sometimes unexpected fluctuations in supply can add time to our original availability estimate. We have learned that "The Lord of the Rings: Mines of Moria - Compendium" is now back-ordered and we now hope that your order will be delivered by early December 2008". December? You have got to be joking - this is a client base which develops acute anxiety attacks if its update is more than twelve hours late, and you expect it to wait patiently for two to three weeks for the game's first major expansion? Get real, Amazon... and by the way, Codemasters, why doesn't a major distributor like Amazon have sufficient stocks on hand, eh?

More serious, if only because failure here is utterly inexplicable, is the whole question of downloading the game (or rather, just the game key) online. This would be fast, practical, cheap and far more environmentally efficient than posting large cardboard boxes full of assorted land-fill fodder around the globe. It could also be implemented by a twelve-year old with an internet site, access to a decent server and a PayPal account. Online availability becomes particularly important when retail purchase is not an option - and according to forum posters, most games retail outlets across Europe are not and will not be stocking Mines of Moria (why they won't is another issue entirely - incentives, anyone?).

So it was a relief to find that on Codemaster's own e-commerce site, MoM could in fact be purchased for download - as it says, above, "ALSO AVAILABLE ON PC DOWNLOAD". Except that it isn't, because clicking on that little promise takes you to the second screen image above - the one that says "No Results". Yes, you can't get there from here, and we don't do that sort of thing in this company, no sir!

Maybe, just maybe, it's time for Codemasters to hire a marketing manager? I can recommend a smart, savvy twelve-year old who lives just down the street from here...

BOOK 13, NOT...

As every LOTRO player in the world not actually in hibernation knows by now, Book 13 has been released in the USA in time for the game's first anniversary - but not in Europe. The results on the Codemasters forum have been explosive: by just before midnight (server time) on Thursday, the day on which most people expected the patch to be released, a thread on the subject had attracted a record 27,387 views as well as 425 responses - also an absolute record. More than a few people were pretty clearly upset.

At 7.30 pm, Satine came up with Codemasters' excuse: "... we will not be getting Book 13 tomorrow. And no, it's not because the localisation isn't done! We haven't yet received the "Release candidate" for testing therefore at the very earliest we'll get Book 13 onto the live servers will be late next week some time, but if we find anything wrong with it during testing, it'll be later still... Up until now we've prided ourselves in getting almost every update to you just one or two days after the US however on this occasion we haven't been able to do so".

Responses in the forum tended to divide between those calling down divine retribution on Codemasters and/or Turbine for not delivering at the (implied) time, and those who pointed out that there may even be advantages to showing a bit of patience; as "hitchhiker 54" remarked, "Think of it this way... The US get the patches first. They have since beta, which may seem unfair.... BUT (and this is my favorite bit) the US players find all those little bugs that get past test server! By the time we see the patch Turbine are already working on any issues. So... before another 'it's not fair' post goes up, please consider. Would you rather we did final beta test or have a couple of million Americans do it for us?"

Others were devastated, and didn't care who was to blame: "This really, really, really, really sucks!! I just have holiday, and hoped we'd get book 13 during my holiday, but it seems not...". By and large, however Turbine came in for heavy flack for treating Europe as as second-rate market, while for their part Codemasters got a fair bit of stick for, if nothing else, failing to keep their customers informed. "Buttercup", for instance, commented that "It looks like the blame is being placed firmly in Turbine's court for ignoring their European base in order to please the US market. Unsurprising, of course, but disappointed (in Turbine .. ) Nothing Codemasters can do with all the best will in the world if they aren't supported by Turbine...".

A PR disaster? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, memories are notoriously short, and if Book 13 fulfills expectations when it finally reaches these shores, all or or nearly all will be forgiven. And on the other, there is surely something in the sight of thousands of frustrated consumers screaming for their product which must make the hearts of profit-oriented business executives go pit-a-pat.