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Lord of the Rings Online - Incompatibility w/ Soundblaster X-fi. No refunds given.

G

Googleplx

n00b
Joined
Feb 10, 2005
Messages
6
Hello Everyone,

Sorry that my first post is a negative one, but you know that saying about mistreated customers...

Like most [H] users I pride myself on being an informed and critical computer user. I recently acquired a new rig, and I was excited to try a game that was more graphically demanding than WOW. To these ends I purchased Lord of the Rings: Online. I enjoyed the game, but to my dismay I found that I experienced a reproducible BSOD in the Great Barrows instance. Being the critical user that I am I thought system instability was to blame, and I spent the better part of two weeks exhaustively testing every part of my box. After a fruitless search, I began Googleing in desperation and eventually found a number of forum posts describing my very issue. It appears that LORTO does not like the drivers for my Creative X-fi XtremeMusic sound card. I am unable to find the original thread, but here are a few new ones a 30 second search of the LORTO forums uncovered:

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=120834
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=123364

To be clear, it appears that not everyone is having issues but there are a large number of confirmed cases. Unfortunately, Turbine does not appear to care very much that they sold me a broken game (check out the bit below where they insinuate that they are doing me a favor by refunding ANY of my money). Below is the complete transcript (w/o personal information) of my conversation with the Turbine "support" staff. Due to my partial refund and account inactivation I am unable to post to the LORTO forums, but should anyone wish to post this there feel free to do so.

Cheers,

Glen


Email: xxx@hotmail.com Name: Glen xxxx

For security purposes, only inquiries made subsequent to registering are displayed
Question 4/7/2008 via Website

Lotro Account Management Inquiry
email : xxx@hotmail.com
firstname : Glen
lastname : xxx
username : xxx
CCHolderName : xx
Last4DigitsOfCC : xx
description : To Whom It May Concern,

I purchased LORO and a three month subscription
package several months ago.
Unfortunately, within the first game instance
(Great Barrows) I regularly experience a complete
system crash (BSOD).
After two months of system testing and
troubleshooting I have found that the game is
incompatible with my sound card (Creative X-Fi
XtremeMusic). According to forum members this bug
has existed since the Beta version of this game,
and while a work-around was discovered, it no
longer functions effectively.
I am disappointed that this game will not run on
my hardware, and it seems clear that a fix is not
eminent.
This puts me in the awkward position of owning a
game and subscription package that I cannot use.
Therefore, I would like a full refund for the game
itself and a refund for half of the current
3-month subscription package. I would also like
for my subscription to be canceled.

Please let me know if you need any additional
information.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Glen


Answer 4/12/2008 via Website (Date Originally Viewed: 4/12/2008 1:51:35 PM)

Greetings Glen,

Thank you for your inquiry. We apologize for any frustration in dealing with this technical issue. Per your request,
we have issued a full refund in the amount of $29.97 and the account is now in a suspended state. If you would like
to continue playing at any point, please give us a call and we'll be happy to reinstate the account for you. We're
available at 781-407-4020, M-F between 12pm and 9pm.

Thank you,
The Turbine Customer Service Team

Did you know, Turbine has many great Premium Services available to their members? Check them out by visiting
http://support.turbine.com and clicking on the "Premium Services" logo.


Question 4/12/2008 via Website

To Whom It May Concern,

Thank you for your understanding in the matter, and
for refunding my subscription. However, I had a
second request which was not addressed in your
response. I would like to be refunded the purchase
price of the game as well, seeing as I was sold a
"defective" product.

Thank you,

Glen


Answer 4/12/2008 via Website (Date Originally Viewed: 4/12/2008 2:12:05 PM)

Greetings Glen,

Thank you for your response. As the retail product key was used, and there is substantial play time on the account for
over a month, we are not able to assist with a refund for the purchase price of the game. The refund for the
subscription fee was extended as a courtesy.

If you have any further questions, please respond via the link at the bottom of this email.

Thank you,
The Turbine Customer Service Team

Did you know, Turbine has many great Premium Services available to their members? Check them out by visiting
http://support.turbine.com and clicking on the "Premium Services" logo.


Question 4/12/2008 via Website

Hello,

That is an unfortunate way to treat your customers.
From my point of view this situation is analogous to
your company selling me a car which lacks an
advertised 5th gear; I didn't notice it was broken
until I tried to get on the highway.
The fact of the matter is, I was unaware of the
defect until I attempted play in the aforementioned
instance. Therefore, I had to put considerable play
time on the account before i could discover this bug.
In a way this was worse for me than not having the
game function at all; I invested significant time
and energy, and just when the game was getting good I
found I could not play it.
If you are unwilling or unable to understand my point
of view on this matter then you will create a very
dissatisfied customer.

Regards,

Glen


Answer 4/12/2008 via Website

Greetings Glen,

Thank you for your inquiry. We definitely understand the frustration, but as previously stated, we can not assist with
a refund on the purchase price of the game. Subscription fees are non-refundable per the Terms of Service, but we
issued a refund as a courtesy to you. We are not going to be able to issue further refunds. Again, we apologize for
any frustration.

Thank you,
The Turbine Customer Service Team

Did you know, Turbine has many great Premium Services available to their members? Check them out by visiting
http://support.turbine.com and clicking on the "Premium Services" logo.
 
I quit LOTRO too because of these reasons.

If you read any of my posts under the name of Terynadin in LOTRO forums, you will see that people will point fingers at hardware problems instead of the game itself. Pisses me off, they know crap all. In my case, they blame OVERHEATING an issue, WOW. Simply amazing.
 
Refraxion,

Yep, checking the forums showed a lot of blame is placed on overheating...

I monitor all my temps with Speedfan (CPU, GPU, MCP, etc.) and with the correct stress-testing tools I can thermally load my system WELL in excess of the temps I see while playing LORTO....

Did you attempt to get a refund from them as well?
 
Seriously....but the funny thing is I've never had problems in any of the other games that I play. If other developers can get it right why can't Turbine?
 
So use the software sound setting. WOW did this last year.

Don't see what the big deal is.
 
I played the beta, and release of lotro, and I had no issues whatsoever with my xtrememusic
 
I played the full version myself (with an X-Fi XtremeMusic) and never had any problems. (..and yes, I spent time in the Great Barrows with all my characters when they were in the teens and early 20s)
 
Googleplx said:
Refraxion,

Yep, checking the forums showed a lot of blame is placed on overheating...

I monitor all my temps with Speedfan (CPU, GPU, MCP, etc.) and with the correct stress-testing tools I can thermally load my system WELL in excess of the temps I see while playing LORTO....

Did you attempt to get a refund from them as well?
Click to expand...

Nah i didn't get a refund, though I should have.. damn. Oh well, I'm probably not going back to that game, what a disappointment, bsod after bsod after bsod, it was a fun game but had problems.
 
Glyphic said:
I played the beta, and release of lotro, and I had no issues whatsoever with my xtrememusic
Click to expand...

I'm using an XtremeGamer, but same thing - no issues.

I'm certainly not dismissing this as a Creative problem - gods know their cards are FIDDLY. Have you tried running it in 'Entertainment' or 'Audio Creation' mode instead of 'Game Mode' and see if that makes a difference?

Also - if you have a relatively modern system, you probably have HD onboard audio. No, it's not as nice as the Creative cards for quality, but try removing your Creative card ENTIRELY (first uninstalling all Creative software, running Driver Cleaner on it - and yes, the new version costs money, but it's worth it for all the headaches it solves). Switch on the onboard audio in your BIOS, and pick up the latest drivers from the MFG (Realtek's are here).

See if you can still dup the problem that way. If so, then you know for sure it's not the X-Fi. If you can no longer dup the problem (and definitely try quite hard to), then you'd want to look at X-Fi issues.

I'd suggest:
  • Make sure you are running the latest drivers. Note Driver Cleaner referenced above - if you went through all the steps, and ran this in safe mode, to DEFINITELY wipe out anything Creative when testing the onboard audio, then reinstalling the latest drivers 'clean' may just do the trick
  • Swap the PCI slot the X-Fi is in (if you can). Creative cards are notorious for being picky about what slot they are in on certain mobos - causing just as you observe. 90% perfectly fine, with just bizarre one-of cases where it chokes.
  • Make sure EVERYTHING is disabled in your BIOS you don't need. COM ports? Disable them. Parallel ports? Disable them. Using PS/2 keyboard/mouse? No? Then disable those. Onboard audio/video? Disable. Bank of USB ports not used? etc. This also helps Creative cards a lot by reducing noise/traffic on the PCI bus (which is what they are so sensitive to).
  • Make sure NOTHING is overclocked on your mobo. Again, Creative cards are REALLY sensitive to PCI bus issues. On some mobos, it's worse for their cards then others.

While their cards are DEFINITELY finicky - most of us have no problems with them, and they are worth it for the quality audio they have. No reason you shouldn't be one of us!
 
dderidex -

Thanks for the very helpful comments. I tried most of what you detailed in your post, but since I have gone back to WOW and canceled my LORTO account I am unable to try some of the fixes you describe. However, for the greater good I will detail what I did try and my system specifics:

  • I did try Entertainment mode, but not audio creation mode
  • I did not switch the card's PCI slot
  • I did not remove my sound card (and honestly, the game was not THAT good...)
  • The Creative drivers used were older, but I tried the latest ones (using DC etc.) and the problem remained. Drivers I'm using: 5.12.2.1143 - the reason for this is if I update them the speaker position settings in the THX dialog become 'broken' (whole other story)
  • BIOS is locked down tight
  • Nothing is overclocked

There are some very insightful fixes in your post and I hope others who are experiencing this problem find that information and put it to use. As for me...it is too late...I took two years off from WOW, and after coming back I am now throughly hooked on trying to level to 70. Also, after experiencing a moderate amount of LORTO, I feel like WOW is still a much better game overall. I miss the graphics of LORTO but in my opinion WOW has better game mechanics. This is merely my opinion...I'm not soliciting rebuttals or asking for a flame-war, I am just explaining my reason for not continuing to troubleshoot my LORTO BSOD problem.

My major system components:

(my apologies for the formating...this is a cut-and-paste from my newegg order)

Creative Labs X-Fi XtremeMusic
EVGA 122-CK-NF68-T1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80557E6600
2x Patriot Extreme Performance 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model PDC22G6400LLK
EVGA 768-P2-N831-AR GeForce 8800GTX 768MB
OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W
Windows XP Pro
 
also using X-Fi in LOTRO and no problems at all. I love the game....my favorite MMORPG I've ever played.
 
Just be happy that they gave you the money back for the subscription. As stated by their tech support, they are not "supposed" to give you the money back no matter what. Buying software, like anywhere else, is contingent on opening the package and loading the software. Granted you did not know of the problem and seeing as it is a "spotty" one they do not see a need to fix it.
 
devman said:
Driver problems, Creative Labs, no say it ain't so. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

In recent years they actually haven't been too bad. Yes, the original Vista driver was pretty rough, but it's been pretty much bulletproof for the last year. Ditto for the last few XP drivers. CL's got a bad reputation for drivers which was certainly earned...but I think they've done a decent job with the X-Fi drivers. Too bad they've pretty much neglected any previous cards in making the X-Fi's better.
 
MrGuvernment said:
So if it was the cards fault wouldnt EVERYONE get this problem?
Click to expand...
That does not seem to be the case (search the LORTO forums...). In fact there is an OpenAL update that used to fix this bug. Unfortunately, the latest "book" update broke the OpenAL work-around.
I have no clue why some folks are having problems and some are not, and judging by the responses in this thread the majority of people can play the game fine.
If you read through some of the other posts, it seems that the problems are hardware-specific, and by hardware I mean components OTHER than the sound card (see above).
For the record, I am somewhat pleased that Turbine refunded my subscription price. However, I must still be pissed, or I wouldn't have started this thread. I don't care what their Terms of Service says...they sold me a lemon and they should make things right.
 
Personally IMO, I think that they reached a reasonable compromise. Yes, I understand your frustration with the bugs encountered, but it also appears that there is no consistency with other X-fi users. A refund of the monthly subscription fees is a lot more than most other MMORG would have done given the terms and conditions.... And given the amount of time probably invested to get to the GB quests they may have assumed that you have gotten your money's worth of your initial investment.... If everyone that quits playing at some point demands a refund under the guise of a technical bug (I"m not saying this is your case) than this becomes a money loosing proposition for them.
 
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