Devs: What happened to ddo Lottery?

[wemery73]

Devs: What happened to ddo Lottery?

Its been down for weeks

[Elyanna]

Devs: What happened to ddo Lottery?

Its been down for weeks

I believe there is a lottery listed today but you have to have level 20 characters to enter it.

[Krelar]

They do seem to be less frequent (maybe only one a day) recently and some of them are restricted to certain characters (usually lvl 20 or below lvl 5) So maybe your just missing them/not in the right level range.

Another possibility is that MyDDO has decided to break for your characters and that is preventing you from seeing any lotteries.

[Racalin]

Hiya

There have been lottery's over the last several days that I have been, though no winners.

[somenewnoob]

I think we need some more tasty test lottos to figure out what is wrong.

[AZgreentea]

I think we need some more tasty test lottos to figure out what is wrong.

I think we do too! I dont think the 1k + (literally, thats how many I won) was enough of a test. Seriously though, the lotteries have been getting thinner since the 5 Yarrs! event was last up. I know they tend to come and go, but I have been rerolling characters and I need more lottery hair dye.

oh! and thanks for the 5 AD's! Fallen Hero's is nearing lvl 55, and we will need them for the new airship.

[wemery73]

They do seem to be less frequent (maybe only one a day) recently and some of them are restricted to certain characters (usually lvl 20 or below lvl 5) So maybe your just missing them/not in the right level range.

Another possibility is that MyDDO has decided to break for your characters and that is preventing you from seeing any lotteries.

ya might be broke i have 31 toons lev 4 to 20

[Cordovan]

We'll get some new lotteries up in the coming days! Thanks for the feedback.

[wemery73]

We'll get some new lotteries up in the coming days! Thanks for the feedback.

thanks

[BronwynnBane]

I enter almost all of them and I haven't won in a while. Makes me think something is up or my luck is just awful now.

[sirgog]

I enter almost all of them and I haven't won in a while. Makes me think something is up or my luck is just awful now.

I won a few a couple of weeks ago.

[Teslana]

We'll get some new lotteries up in the coming days! Thanks for the feedback.

Is there any way of claiming prizes we've won but not received? I was winning lotteries absolutely fine - no probs at all - until the 5 Yarr lottery, which I won... and then the prize was never delivered to me

I've tried bug reporting, but even that is bugged and doesn't work for me now. I don't know the best thing to do - write a snail mail bug report and post it off?

[rocky0]

We'll get some new lotteries up in the coming days! Thanks for the feedback.

Ummmmm........how about getting MyDDO working so EVERYONE can take part in them or work it so MyDDO isnt used??? Would be nice to be part of it at least once

[Phoenix-daBard]

Is there any way of claiming prizes we've won but not received? I was winning lotteries absolutely fine - no probs at all - until the 5 Yarr lottery, which I won... and then the prize was never delivered to me

No chance. That one was seriously bugged. They scheduled multiple lotteries with the same name overlapping and it seemed to have confused myDDO to the point that if you won on at least one character you would have another character declared a winner each day until you ran out of characters.

[Teslana]

No chance. That one was seriously bugged. They scheduled multiple lotteries with the same name overlapping and it seemed to have confused myDDO to the point that if you won on at least one character you would have another character declared a winner each day until you ran out of characters.

Wait, so... in the end, *no one* actually won a prize in the 5 Yarr lottery? lol That's harsh.

Was there an official announcement that it was bugged that I missed? Freebies are nice and everything, but in the grand scheme of the game they're not vital in any way - worse for me was not knowing what was happening and having no way of reporting what I thought was a problem with just my account. To me, admitting things went a little wrong and having a redraw would be a much better way to handle this particular lottery going awry (especially because it was an extra-special, celebratory one!). But, as I say, maybe I just missed the announcement?

It's still good to know it wasn't just me - now I can stop minorly fretting about it. Cheers for that, Phoenix

[Jiirix]

I enter almost all of them and I haven't won in a while. Makes me think something is up or my luck is just awful now.

Haven't one anything since the test lotto either. And I subscribed to every lottery, I check daily. But not one win on any of my toons. I am on Orien, Sarlona, Thelanis and Canith.

[Phoenix-daBard]

Was there an official announcement that it was bugged that I missed?

No real announcement but you can read Tolero's comments here: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=303689

Also note that the winning lotteries do not sort in myDDO so you could have a winner buried somewhere in the middle. I wrote a little program to work around that bug.

[Teslana]

No real announcement but you can read Tolero's comments here: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=303689

Ahh, thanks for the link! This was the sort of thing I was after, just a shame it was buried in the middle of a thread:

"Cordovan
03-04-2011, 01:08 PM

That particular Five Yarrrs lottery appears to have had some problems. Unfortunately the folks who won that particular lottery had their prizes dropped into a Bag of Holding, and we've had difficulty reaching those prizes. While trying to get to the items, we unfortunately dropped that Bag of Holding into another Bag of Holding, which means you will never be able to receive those prizes. Sorry!"

So, the lottery was bugged and no one is getting any prizes. I'm totally fine with that, as they've 'fessed up and apologised for the confusion (as I said before, prizes are nice but they're in no way the reason I play the game).

What is a shame is that the DDO lottery system is so broken that many people can't even play - transfers, TR2s, etc. Surely the best thing to do would be to announce they're stopping all lotteries - lack of entering/winning is creating bad feeling in many players, it seems, and a negative attitude towards the company - and to sort the blinkin' thing out properly?

As it stands, lotteries are not a 'sticky' element to the game - no one is joining or staying to take part in lotteries - but some may be lost because of lack of delivery or exclusion from participation. To me, it seems sensible to suspend the thing until the tangle of bugs can be properly sorted out. I'm certainly happy to wait for as long as it takes and will dance a big jig of joy in the marketplace if and when it returns triumphantly!

Also note that the winning lotteries do not sort in myDDO so you could have a winner buried somewhere in the middle. I wrote a little program to work around that bug.

Yep, I'd noticed that they're not sorted by date in the past. I'll definitely take a look at your program. Thanks again, Phoenix, for your help on this one. I now have no problem in pretending that the 5 Yarr Lottery never happened - it was just a beautiful dream that was never meant to be, heh.

[Setin_Myways]

I have won several lotteries since the ham days. in fact, i won the epic token lottery from earlier this week... just hope this one works, though, because I was all excited about winning the '5 yaaars' lotto and, well, we all know how that went :}

[Geraldicus]

They make a point of saying that players whose characters don't update properly won't be able to win prizes in the lotteries even if My DDO has them listed as having won something. This happened to me a few times. The implication seems to be that it's the players who are at fault rather than kinks in MyDDO. I'm not a programmer so I have no idea how complicated the software is, but it seems to me that making MyDDO function as it's intended should be higher on Turbine's list of things to do. If I'm complaining it's because the lotteries are a really fun and even generous feature in this game and it's a shame it's often spoiled by not working as it's intended to do.