SolusN, can you please un-private this video? Currently it does not meet the requirements to be a Verified run since it is no longer view-able. I'll attempt a DM as well.

Just to add some feedback here from discussions that have been had on the discord. The current view is that a sub-category for with/without the tutorial will be added "soon", to support this type of run. Enough people are asking for it and it isn't a huge change to add the sub-category.

Likewise, there is enough support for keeping the existing run structure (and I don't want to mess with changing past runs or anything like that).

Always looking for more feedback if anyone has anything else to add.

Go ahead and resubmit them. When I did the migration I didn't see any runs attached to that category and we currently have no runs with an orphaned category, so not sure what to make of that. No runs were deleted.

It doesn't really matter to me, but I'd be curious how other games handle that type of thing. If you were doing a 1-50 run and happened to set a record on the 1 - 10 section, I wouldn't have a problem with that being included. Ideally for moderation sake it would be a separate edit of the clip to exclude the rest of the run though.

Good question, I migrated the FTP/VIP variable to global. I'll have to look if we are able to exclude a category from that or what our options would be. It would be a pain to manage that variable set as separate variables for every category individually.

Reorganization is completed I believe. The only other thing I would like to eventually do is break out the Intro% category to include not just Race, but also Class as a variable. This is on the backburner for now though, I can always go back and re-categorize runs.

I've updated the General Rules (some minor edits and additions to it for better formatting and a blurb about moderators and rule amendments). I'll get to the specific rulesets as time allows and I'm still working on re-categorizing things.

Let me know if there are more tweaks that are proposed or if I messed something up.

I've started the reorganization a bit. More to come, but it is starting to take shape.

These rule clarifications look all good to me. I do agree the Treebeard / Shadowfax question is a good one. I'd be fine with removing Legendary servers from runs. I'll let this sit for more feedback and assuming no negative feedback to discuss further I'll see about updating things this weekend. I'll work on collapsing and reorganizing the run categories this weekend as well. Most of the categories to be adjust don't have any runs so it should be straight forward.

As a note, with the clarifications on the pausing here, I'll update the Intro% runs with Pausing = Yes further. I flagged any with pausing of any kind for the moment and quite a few had only pausing on load screens so I'll mix those back in and see where the remaining runs lie.

Thanks for taking the time on this!

In an effort to simplify and make more clear. I suggest the following changes:

1. FreeRange%, MinasTirith%, and PieRunner be set as sub-categories of a "Chicken%" or "Passive%" parent category. They are all the same type of run around avoiding mobs type runs and I think we can merge them and make room for more types without cluttering the top level categories. (Some of the seasonal things can go in here as well)
2. EredLuin%, Bree%, and Shire% be set as sub-categories of a "Starter%" parent category. Similar to #1, I think we can de-clutter the top parent categories a bit. Additionally, a "Swanfleet%" category can be added since we have the new starter zone and it is available for FTP and VIP.

Once this decluttering has happened, we can look at discussing/adding some small fellowship, fellowship, and raid categories. Maybe even adding class subfilters to Levels 1 - 10 and Intro% as well.

Let me know if anyone disagrees or has comments to add on to this. My hope is with more people running stuff and the 64 bit servers revitalizing things a bit we might get a bit more interest and they old layouts were not really updated over time as things have evolved.

I've completed the reorganization and the rules have been updated with some clarity. Still not sure what should be done with the "pausing yes" runs yet. I went ahead and pulled a run I had done it on. If the players that submitted runs in there want their's pulled too then we can just clear it out. Otherwise I'll leave it up there for now and address it more at a later date.

Just a note, the re-organization of runs is in-progress. The Intro% category is going to be a bit borked until I've completed my pass on those. Hoping to have things wrapped up this weekend.

1 - 50 I think is a good idea, but here is one question. Should there be a Moria% run in addition or instead of 1 - 50? Unlocking the door to Moria could be a good end point for a run and is in the neighborhood of 1 - 50.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Here are the actions I'm going to take soon(tm). I'm going to update the rules to generally remove the "pausing" vagueness on all categories and be more clear.

However, for the Intro% category since we have a ton of runs that used pausing. I'm going to add a category modifier of "With Pausing" Yes/No and filter the runs out. Once we have a bit of data on how many runs were yes or no we can discuss if we want to continue with the modifier on that one category or archive those runs and drop the modifier. I want to take this in baby steps since that category has been the most active in general and it isn't clear exactly how deep it goes. This may take a bit of time to re-evaluate those runs so please be patient.

Also, it will be interesting to see if the 64 bit servers are performant enough to just remove the pausing rules all together. Especially since the EU folks have their own servers now and won't be going to lag city across the pond.

There has been a bit of confusion around the following rule:

"You can pause the timer if the game is loading or if you disconnect (character won't move)"

Generally from what I've seen over the past few months is most players interpret this as being able to pause "anytime character control is lost", but more recently some players have brought up some issues with pausing during cinematics. From my perspective I think this comes down to some imprecise English being used for this phrase. As such I'd like to propose a few different options and see what you guys think before making a change. (Feel free to suggest alternatives, but to me these seem like the easiest/fairest options as far as work on the site goes).

1. Update the rule language across the game to be "You can pause the timer if the game is loading, if you disconnect from the server (lag or crash to desktop), or if the game removes character control (minimap shows the eye of sauron)."

2. Update the rule language across the game to be "You can pause the timer if the game is loading or if you disconnect from the server (lag or crash to desktop)."

3. Update only the Intro% category to have a more specific rule of "You can pause the timer if the game is loading, if you disconnect from the server (lag or crash to desktop), or if the game removes character control (minimap shows the eye of sauron)." [Intro% tends to be the category most affected]

I'll check back in a week or two and see if we have any feedback before making any adjustments. If there are complaints on the wording for other rules that we could improve clarity on, please make a separate forum post.

I took a swing at reworking the "max level lol" category. It has been renamed to "Extended Edition" and sub-categories exist for Level 1 - 150 and Epic Story. If anyone has complaints or suggestions, please post about it here.

Sounds good. As far as splits go, most people have only used them as markers for subsequent runs to gauge how they are doing. These categories don't really require certain splits to be used. If it were me, I'm data heavy and would probably split each Book and/or Chapter. Split for each volume is probably plenty of data too. Volume 1 is a long boy though.

When I get some time I'll look at re-organizing the "max level lol" into a broader category with "1-150" and "Epic" sub-categories. Since some people are doing those runs it probably makes sense to make it into something more usable than "for the lulz nobody will do this".

Approving this. Run looked good, I had actually been following along a bit as it was happening during the Rohan / Gondor arcs. Congrats, you are a mad man!

I think this is an interesting idea. I will mention that a full run to max level (150) is currently under review. It's probably something where the max level runs need to be categorized by what the level cap was at the time. SSG is raising the level cap every 2 - 3 expansions so that should be plenty of time for max level.

The only issue I see with the Epic story pieces is you can hop on / off the story, so it would be a bit time consuming to verify each quest was completed unless the meta deeds are shown along the way. Also would there be sub categories like "level 1 -> End of Volume 1", "level 1 -> End of Volume 2", "level 1 -> End of Black Book of Mordor" etc.?

This might take a few days... bare with me....