A popular water cooler of virtual discussion over Lord of the Rings Online is now no longer affable toward fans of the MMO. According to a contentious forum post, the owner of the unofficial LOTRO fan Discord decided to change the channel to exclude discussion of the game, tell everyone that it was never about the MMO, and shove in a bunch of crass advertising.
“The owner has decided upon himself that it is no longer a LOTRO Discord, even after staff/mod/admin disapproval,” the original poster explained. “With that change came him trying to personally profit from the community we created.”
“The owner went crazy yesterday and set his eye upon shaping the Discord from LOTRO into a LOTR discord. Except it seemed more about cramming in affiliate marketing links to every possible channel than it did about building a community,” another chipped in.
Fans found themselves befuddled at the abrupt change. One asked, “Couldn’t you have made a new server for that instead of completely overhauling the LOTRO server and making it just an LOTR server? Or at least made a new LOTRO server so that we could go there as you made your server for all things LOTR?”
Standing Stone Games’ CM locked this thread, saying, “Issues people are having with a private Discord are not up for discussion on these forums; we can’t allow outside drama to be adjudicated on the forums here. We do not have an official Discord for The Lord of the Rings Online and although the idea of it would be good, the ongoing management needs of it has made the idea not-doable for now.”
