Players had trouble logging into the game since around the middle of Sunday. Since then the entire website went offline. The LOTRO Facebook page hasn't been very people, relaying the standard IT response of they know about the problem and there is no ETA when the game will be back up.
What is known is that their vendor (Pando Media Booster) who supports downloading and updating the game, went out of business Aug 31, as seen on the Wikipedia page. This is also supported by Turbine on the LOTRO Facebook page saying they were having problems with their vendor. Who knows when the game will go back online.
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Currently playing: Elder Scrolls Online
MMORPG experiences:EQ2, AoC(pre f2p), Lotro,GW1,DDO, Aion,WoW( stop with wotlk),Allods, GW2
Eu,War, Secret World
Waiting On: WoD Sometime Maybe: Elder Scrolls MMO, Might and Magic
It was fine yesterday, but since this morning the launcher stuck right after the startup.
However I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with Pando (on a sidenote, finally one resource-stealing, shady, spyware-ish stuff is gone I hope Akamai will be the next one...). Pando wasn't their "vendor", and had no part in the update process, it was used only to distribute the install pack. If you install the game from the discs, you didn't needed Pando at all.
Edit: servers are unreachable, and the forum is down as well, both are unrelated to Pando, so it's almost certain it wasn't caused by that piece of... s**tware
It's rather interesting from a currently vicarious and uninvolved point of view. Some of those Tweets sound sort of irritable. I always liked many features of LOTRO and hoped it would continue to do well but this is a bad situation that needs resolution today and they can't even provide an update yet. Holiday weekend being NO excuse... I am not sure what has happened with them over the past couple of years as they don't seem to be the same company I remember.
PS: I am not sure what they mean by problems with their "vendor" here. That sounds like something to do with license and sales. That's a whole different ball game than IT stuff...
Turbine did get bought out by Warner Brothers. So that probably makes a difference. But Turbine has had login issues as far back as I can remember. I remember when AC2 was released. The problems they had doomed the game from the start. LOTRO and DDO both almost shut down until they went F2P. Ironically they still have one of the oldest MMO games still going in AC. Isn't it almost 15 years now?
Good riddance to Pando!
God i hate that crap in Aion it made networking unstable and made a already horrid server connection worse. If indeed Pandos closing took LOTRO offline let it be a lesson to keep networking inhouse.
Pando is (or was) just a torrent server. They would just seed the LOTRO clients (and for other games) but mostly pando would use people's own computers to send files.
It had nothing to do with the game's servers. The problem Turbine has been having is with their own ISP. This is like the 3rd (or maybe 4th) time it's happened this summer.
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
Good riddance indeed! Maybe I'll give LOTRO an actual trial if these guys are out of the picture.
It was unfortunate the game went blank on the holiday weekend. It was offline for less than 24 hours. Its now back in action with the Farmers Festival just starting its full swing.
This stuff is going to happen once and a while.