Welcome to Forgotten LOTRO Lore, where each fortnight I’ll be taking a look at an aspect of LOTRO which new players might not be aware of, and which old players may have forgotten about. This week we look at the Fashion Maven event, where Turbine would reward the best (and worst) dressed players throughout Middle-earth.
The Fashion Maven event looks to have first appeared in February 2009, and was active in November 2011 and most recently in February 2012.(1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)
Players would dress in their chosen outfit and hang out in major hubs throughout Middle-earth, hoping to catch the eye of a GM controlled character. Those lucky enough to be selected would receive a scroll in the mail which could be turned in to an Outfitter for one of three titles – Fashionable, Unfashionable, or Eye-Sore – based on their appearance. A number of Hauberks were also rewarded, along with a ‘Hat of Shame’ if you were deemed an Eye-Sore.(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)
While the event sounds simple enough, there are conflicting reports about how to earn the rewards. The GM controlled character was spotted hanging out in Bree, Rivendell, Moria and Galtrev, with some players finding that they were more likely to be rewarded after waving or interacting with them. Other players believed the event was more sinister, with invisible GM characters ‘silently judging’ those around them. Either way, a lot of people complained that they did not personally see the GM and accursed Turbine of favouring certain servers and timezones.(13)(14)
Since their last visit, the Fashion Maven has gone into hiding. It’s not hard to see why: while the event was organised with the intent of uniting the LOTRO community and bringing new life to Middle-earth, the negative player backlash was impossible to ignore. It’s sad to see the number of prominent LOTRO fashion blogs who scorned the event publicly, believing themselves to be obvious winners of the event, and deeming it a failure when they weren’t given rewards. Future incarnations of the event will need to take onboard this undue negative reaction and devise ways to best manage it.
While the event has not been active since early 2012, Sapience – the former Community Manager – stated recently that he was trying to find a way to bring the titles back, possibly as a reward for a screenshot competition.(15)
What are your memories of the Fashion Maven? Were you lucky enough to earn a reward? And do you have any suggestions for how Turbine could improve the event?
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The biggest problem and point of contention was how vague the requirements were to get the titles. Not only did you have to have a good looking outfit (maybe? some speculate it really was just random) – you never knew where and when the Fashion Maven would be, even when Turbine announced they would be out and about during a certain weekend. I know of some people who stood around in Bree and other populous areas for hours on end waiting to see any GM or sign of the Fashion Maven at all. And at one point they announced the Fashion Maven would be out for a certain weekend only to announce at the end of the weekend that they couldn’t make it and the Fashion Maven had not made the rounds at all.
While on the Player Council last year I brought up the Fashion Maven and asked for clarification on how that process works but Sapience never responded.
I think if Turbine could find a way to get rid of the mystery and vague requirements to get those three fashion-related titles, a lot of the bad feelings around the titles would subside. Rare titles are fine and I would be fine seeing them remain rare – but at least set up some more straightforward requirements, not just “a person may or may not show up on your server for some short amount of time in a random location and it might just be when you’re asleep anyway.”
Interestingly, this somewhat parallels the First Age Symbols in Ost Dunhoth as well. Should there be ‘rare’ items, titles and such, and what should be required to get them? How do you make them ‘rare’ without upsetting people who wish to get them?
These are tough issues to figure out!
Some very good points. I think in the end it boils down to two things:
1. Logistics: how do you have an event like this in a game played by people around the world? I wouldn’t expect Turbine staff to be up at 3am giving out titles, but being in Australia, I find it very hard to make it to most LOTRO events as they’re organised by those based in the US or Europe. Geography or your work hours shouldn’t decide if you can enter or not. There’s also the question of phasing and layering, and if an entire server poured into Bree at once, would the GM be able to see them all?
2. Aesthetics: by definition, fashion is subjective. Your own views on your outfit and those of the GM might be vastly different. Beauty is, after all, in the eyes on the beholder.
I don’t have the answers to either of these issues, hopefully someone much smarter can figure them out 😉
This is an awesome idea for a new series!
Cithryth couldn’t have said it better. I was going to write something substantial here, but she’s nailed every point I was going to make. The last weekend this event was held, I stayed logged in nearly the entire weekend on Gladden, but there wasn’t a peep at all regarding the sighting of the Maven in any of the early zones or over GLFF. And, like Cithryth, I do remember that one time the event cancellation message went out after the weekend it was supposed to occur.
If this event were to happen again, there should be, presumably, several Mavens/GMs covering multiple servers at once, and not just the one. I think that’s where the greatest problem resides. One person, too many servers. That’s probably why players started accusing Turbine of favoring certain servers. Personally, I would have loved to at least see the Maven running around, even if I didn’t get a title. Here’s hoping this community event will make a return 🙂
Wasn’t there a specific member of the community team that supposedly was the Fashion Maven? I think it was Clover, who was let go from Turbine a few years back, and that pretty much spelled doom for the FM event.
No, I don’t think it was clover because the Fashion Maven has come out after Clover left. I thought it was Aubergine but not sure. Although apparently Deviled Egg is now in charge of cosmetics (or at least in charge of what outfits go on the mannequins).
It sounds like waiting for the ups man or cable guy, and that never makes anyone happy. I don’t know why they didn’t have a straighforward fashion show or at the very least tell players we will be here between these hours, on these days. That solves a lot of issues. If this is an issue where entire servers were ignored or simply not included in the event then it begs another question. If you can’t handle the amount of servers you have now, why do you have them?