At present many of Turbine’s web resources are offline and players cannot log into LOTRO. The game client currently shows that none of the remote servers are available. This can be further verified by such services as LOTRO Server Checker (Alternative site here). I have checked the following domains and they are all currently inaccessible.
The outage appeared to have happened around 06:00 GMT (01:00 EST) today. As far as I am aware there was no scheduled maintenance for this time. So far thanks to the helpful members of the LOTRO Twitter community I have managed to ascertain the following:
@Arsenette: There’s a few posts noting a huge lag spike for about 5 minutes. Those who were able to survive it stayed in game. Those kicked during the spike or logged out couldn’t get back in. Around half hour later all the sites went down.
@JJDiggs: Just logged out not 5 minutes ago. Had been seeing some issues with crafting, movement, Draigoch raid, but was never kicked.
@melliellie: I was IG when they went down, I was kicked a little after 1am CST.
@TzofiBen: Everyone lost connection in my raid & kinship but we were not booted. I continued playing normally for a while. As far as I know, if you were already in game when it happened (if client didn’t shut down) you could keep playing.
@Amrundir: It looks like a network/routing problem at pnap.net (traceroute ends at border1.te8-1-bbnet2.bsn003.pnap.net)
However http://rohan.lotro.com/ is still available, so at least you can still purchase the expansion while the game is down.
So far there has been no official communication from Turbine via Twitter or their Facebook page. I will update this page accordingly as information becomes available. (Revised 10:20 GMT)
***Update***
Turbine allegedly use Internap.com for the provision of some of their hosting requirements. I have checked this companies official twitter feed and blog and at present I can find nothing regarding an “outage”.
It would also appear that some servers are still up, despite being shown as being offline. Some players are still logged in and playing:
@stoneytoker: well im playing the game right now but i have bin logged in the server scine last night and there are 3 others online its kinda nice. The game servers are still up its the log in servers that are down
NB. Once Turbines account management service comes back online, just as a security precaution users may want to change password details etc. Until we know the exact reasons for this outage it is prudent to consider the worst case scenario.
Please read the comments below as they contain a lot of interesting information.
Servers back online: As of 11:20 GMT, it would appear that the game servers are back online as well as the respective websites. We await a answers but I don’t know if one will be forthcoming
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I remembering this happening once before a year ago or so, when a major power outage struck the location where the servers are.
If that’s true, it makes sense that Turbine hasn’t commented on it yet: they wouldn’t have access to the internet themselves either.
Are you SERIOUS??? A company running several global MMPORPGs and they have no mobile internet connections? Or did they just forget to charge the batteries? There is absolutely no reasonable explanation for Turbine failing to communicate something to its paying customers. I can access their Twitter and FB pages. They simply haven’t got round to it. I understand that things could be pretty frantic at the moment, but if they haven’t got “Communicate with the people who pay our wages” as part of their disaster recovery plans, they are even more inept than even I gave them credit for.
Last year the main site AND the backup location went down at the same time.
And if your internet is down you communicate, that’s a very reasonable explanation. Of course their Twitter and Facebook won’t be affected since they are hosting it themselves, but you need to have access to the internet before being able to post there.
Turbine itself wasn’t responsible for last year’s outage, their internet/datacenter provider was. They use 3rd party companies to do the internet for them.
So, please stay reasonable if you can.
Hmm…just done a quick count round the house. 1x laptop and 2x3G web-enabled phones, all of which are capable of twitter and FB posts. I didn’t go to the extreme of turning my mains power off, but I’m sure you get the point. Lack of communication in this situation is a decision, not an impossibility.
Who cares Alan. Go outside and get some fresh air.
So lets see… they have no access to ANY 3G/4G network, no GPRS/EDGE, no Mobile phones with these enabled? Are you serious?
A company running an MMO without access to even the basic mobile communication… lol
Warathor, they just forgot to charge the batteries I guess.
Did you ever consider that the communications people might simply be asleep? It’s barely 6 a.m. their time, the servers went down in the middle of the night. I can’t see how an online game (even a global one) needs to have their communications team staffed 24/7.
All companies have at least a skeleton crew overnight. I know I have friends who work that shift
Of course I considered that it is/was the middle of the night, but I quickly discounted that as a reason. Surely their disaster recovery plan should include at least a fairly immediate “We are aware of the current probelm and are attending to it” message. If it doesn’t I’m now stuck between viewing them as arrogantly dismissive of their customers or merely incompetent.
No, that’s not an excuse. When I had a server co-located before, it was with a company that had fiber coming into the building from 3 different companies, from at least two different sides of the building, as well as electricity from two different circuits, from two sides of the building on top of UPSs and tons of backup generators. That way, an outage is also prevented due to a local accident. So servers like this should *never* go down short of something catastrophic or a very long power outage where gasoline for the backup generators is depleted and the operators can’t replenish it.
If there’s power outage, what do you think happens in the area? Has it ever occurred to you that cell phone towers require power as well?
What good do you think will the mobile phones in your house be when the towers around you have no power? Hmm?
I was online at the time and in a raid & most of us weren’t disconnected. Just hit with 1-2 minutes of game-stopping lag. I stayed on for a couple hours afterwards til my client crashed.
Thank you for the clarification. I have amended the text accordingly.
Yeah that sounds similar to what happened with a few people online. If they managed to survive the lag spike they stayed in for a while. Although around 1:30-2:00 all of the websites were down. I was trying to log in around 1:15 and managed to get to the load screen of characters but was promptly booted. Then got the screen you have up top for the rest of the night. I then switched to twitter to see what was going on and noticed others with similar problems. Weather is fine in Boston overnight (won’t be later today) so this just feels unusual.
It seems some game servers stayed up, and some didn’t. Turbine’s two mail servers are down, yet only one of their three nameservers is down (74.201.102.8 which is also a mail server). rohan.lotro.com is up because it is in Texas, while the other servers all seems to be in Massachusetts
If I had to guess I’d say they have maybe two racks of servers, and one rack is down to either power or networking problems.
Lotro have confirmed many times that there servers are not all in 1 location, therefore a power failer should not stop all Lotro services
DDO is also down
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By the description you’re giving, it almost sounds like their server was attacked by some sort of DOS assault.
Honestly am suspecting that may be a part of it. Especially since some people were able to stay in game even a couple hours. Unsure how we can figure that out though. I’m more perplexed at the non-reaction from Turbine though. There’s no power issues going on in Boston that I’m aware of just looking at the national radar (though storms are expected later today) so.. I’m confused why nothing for 4+ hours and counting.
People reported a HUGE lag spike just before it went down, that makes me very suspicious.
If something brought down Internet access for both servers and turbine offices, I’m not surprised there’s no response.
I think something happened there that paralysed Turbine so they cannot communicate even if they wanted to.
Heck some people are STILL in game now (as is when I write this – heck someone tweeted they are still in game).. this is why I’m utterly confused.
I have a spare 56k modem I can lend them to get online again
Possible reasons for no Communication:
1. Dwarf Infestation in the offices
2. One of the warhorses escaped
3. Sapience’s horsehead got stuck in the server fan
4. Alien invasion
5. Gandalf said “You shall not pass” and closed the server
6. Someone dropped the ring onto the server and now no one can find it
7. Hobbits ate too much thus causing a redistribution of the weight in middle earth and in the process created a black hole in the shire
8. Murphy’s law
9. Piña colada time
10. Rage Quit
Are you seriously saying that no one in Turbine communications has mobile internet access? So their only internet access (all of Turbine staff) is from their office and because they do not have access from there, they cannot tell the people who pay their wages what is going on?
everyone needs to cancel their credit cards or put hold on them.
I see people on Twitter reporting they are in the game and currently playing, yet all servers seem to be down.
Still believe there is any justification for no comment from Turbine?
I still believe it’s no use getting totally worked up something when nobody knows what happened.
Normally they use Twitter and Facebook to communicate, also it’s 6am in Boston.
My point is that it is useless to start making accusations while it’s still unclear what happened where.
I think the frustration is that most companies have a skeleton crew overnight and would put out something even if they have no idea wtf is going on with the servers. It’s unusual for no communication for this long especially since they have international player on different time zones that area affected. No communication can only mean they don’t have anyone monitoring overnight servers. That’s.. bad.
It is unfortunate that us the international players are the ones who are severely affected by this. I am sure Turbine has graveyard shift staff keeping an eye on things and from this I can only assume two things, firstly that the problem is so severe that this crew has no power to carry out the necessary actions or secondly, sloppy and incompetent staff is on duty today.
the point is Turbine are a global company and as such should have a global communication facility. I find it hard to believe they cannot do this.
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Not only endless maintenances, huges amounts of server lags, a 10 hour maintenance recently, the summer festival posponed for having issues they can’t fix, a beta rohan test that didn’t even look like an alpha, and now a crash for 5 hours in total silent by Turbine.
This is totally unacceptable.
I don’t know if this is the final straw for me with Lotro, but it really is getting close to it. They have a global player base, saying its early morning in Boston so we aren’t bothered with communicating why the servers have been down for 5 hours, is like spitting in the face of your players outside US.
GW 2 looks nice.
The same old rant we hear year in year out with every MMO out there. GW2 will look nice for about 2 months then like the rest of us come crawling back to the best MMO… Lotro.
What to do? No service no money- stop paying for it, I´ll do so. Eventually they will learn that way.
I have to assume that there’s only one person with access to the social media accounts or something, and he’s asleep. Is there no overseas team, no late night support in Boston? I’ll submit my resume for the job — US-based insomniac available, certified in technical support, knows nothing about game programming but is at least capable of sending a tweet out to the interwebs letting them know that somebody’s on the case, which clearly makes me several times more qualified than whoever’s doing the job right now.
omg! i just connected!
Same…. Suddenly this thread dies…
At least the DDO login screen is back up.
Google Search of Turbine.com returns thier motto “powered by our Fans” should be updated to “Powered by drunken asthmatic hamsters on a wheel”
Its back up. Still no explanation.
Lotro game and forums are back up.
Got in then lost connection, did turbine read my drunken asthmatic hamsters comment, whoops!
Alan, You are just the biggest idiot in the world. Honestly? They do not have to tell you a damned thing. I could care less if they said anything. If you watch the damn news you know Boston was without power. With that being said, and true, we can assume they had nothing. Without power you DO NOT have Internet/Cell towers. Back East? Yeah they got cell towers. Get over it and just wait for a response from them. And yes, I do believe there is a justification. They don’t have to say a damn things to me or you. Get over it and keep waiting!