World Transfers

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Originally Posted by elderlygamer

The announcement about which servers will close is supposed to be sent in an in-game email. Some of us will be at work tomorrow. Can someone who will be in-game please post the list of servers and their statuses in this thread so those of us at work can either mope or do a happy dance? Thanks.

Also, is there a reason the message is only being sent in-game? People who left the game due to an empty server would probably want to know that servers were being merged. If they don't play any more they might never get the news.

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Many people never visits the forums, and for some reason many of us don't receive any mail from Turbine. Sadly I'm one of those, but I get my news on these forums :)

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Originally Posted by maartena

The announcement said patch notes will be available during the downtime.

Also realize it is Sunday August 2nd at Turbine. Although Turbine operates 24/7, 7 days a week, the regular office staff such as Frelorn and Vyvyanne generally do not, besides maybe doing the announcement that Frelorn did today (something he probably just forgot on Friday).

You will see the announcement some time during August 3d on Eastern Standard Time, which may already be August 4th in Australia. :D

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Frelorn was at the dentist's office last Thursday, I think. Depending on what was done, he may have only gotten over that sufficiently today ;P.

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Originally Posted by Ellyllon

When the transfers are complete & we're down to 5/5, I hope they come up with a way to switch servers *without* logging off & back on again. I'm just realizing, after server-testing, what a pain that is!

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If they do, I won't mind it; but I prefer to fully log out and restart the launcher when changing servers.

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Originally Posted by Silmelin

Many people never visits the forums, and for some reason many of us don't receive any mail from Turbine. Sadly I'm one of those, but I get my news on these forums :)

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I wasn't suggesting that it should only be sent via email. I was asking why it was only being sent in-game. Ideally Turbine should be using multiple methods of communication, not just one.

It's not the only mode of communication, it's one of the initial, they said (early in this thread iirc) that they will be sending email to all accounts later too.

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Originally Posted by Vyvyanne

Housing is still one house per account per world. I will need to look into the tech to see if it is even possible to make more available per world, but if it is it will be a few updates out. First we need to make sure there is enough housing to cover the one per account. It is a good idea though, as I know it would be nice to have a house for my elf in Rivendell, Human in Bree, etc....

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Thanks for the response. It's unfortunate news, but I appreciate your candor. It pretty much means that all of the time and resources she put into her houses is being flushed down the drain. Since we are neither raiders nor PvMPers, it's difficult to see anything positive in losing two-thirds of the LOTRO servers for us--especially considering that our most used servers, Firefoot, Windfola, and Silverlode, seem unlikely to make the cut (based on unofficial stats). We stand to lose a lot of what we have built up since launch--far more than just housing.

LOTRO is our main game and has been since alpha. While there have been specific decisions I've questioned over the years, we have always been ardent players and supporters. It's hard not to have a sinking feeling right now.

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Originally Posted by phaelan2

Thanks for the response. It's unfortunate news, but I appreciate your candor. It pretty much means that all of the time and resources she put into her houses is being flushed down the drain. Since we are neither raiders nor PvMPers, it's difficult to see anything positive in losing two-thirds of the LOTRO servers for us--especially considering that our most used servers, Firefoot, Windfola, and Silverlode, seem unlikely to make the cut (based on unofficial stats). We stand to lose a lot of what we have built up since launch--far more than just housing.

LOTRO is our main game and has been since alpha. While there have been specific decisions I've questioned over the years, we have always been ardent players and supporters. It's hard not to have a sinking feeling right now.

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Here is one solution:

1) create a free account, which allows you two character slots.
2) level two toons to level 15. Create a kin with each toon.
3) buy a house. (send money from main) Give your main characters from your main accounts full rights so they can decorate their bound items.
4) In three months, your one-person kins will have reached rank 7 and you can buy a kin house for each kin.

Result: 1 house, 2 kinhouses per free account.

Since you can create as many accounts as you can create gmail addresses, you pretty much have a unlimited supply of houses on the same server. You would need around 20 accounts to buy up an entire neighborhood for yourself. :D

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Originally Posted by elderlygamer

I wasn't suggesting that it should only be sent via email. I was asking why it was only being sent in-game. Ideally Turbine should be using multiple methods of communication, not just one.

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They are. Announcements about the server closures will also be sent to the registered email address of all accounts, so that players have a chance to come back and move their characters. (the downside to this is that old, inactive characters may log on, and "refresh" their name status.)

I am sure that they will also make announcements on Twitter and Facebook, they usually do with all patchnotes, so tomorrow's wouldn't be an exception.

They are actually pretty much using all possible communication methods, although I think smoke signals and old fashioned snail mail are currently not being considered. Nor are telegraphs in morse code. :D

From Vyvyanne:

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6. Can you grant more character slots? We are now looking into adding 2 free character slots to all Premium and VIP accounts. We will also have a sale on character slots.

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Thank you for looking into these to ease our pains... :)

When would these possible 2 free character slots per server, and the sale on additional character slots be available?

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Originally Posted by HeirOfNumenor

From Vyvyanne:



Thank you for looking into these to ease our pains... :)

When would these possible 2 free character slots per server, and the sale on additional character slots be available?

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Yay I paid for extra char slots so I could play those char on multi servers. I only got to 2 servers but One of them will certainly close. I have 8 lowbie char to play for times when I just wanna mess around. I have one open char slot on my regular server. 2 granted slots isn't going to cut it. I paid for 13 slots across all NA servers. Thats how many I want back for the money I paid. the $$. Even the ones that came with Moria. I pre ordered. I paid Turbine money up front for those slots. You can't tell me now, after the fact, that those purchases only include 5 servers.

VyV: Talk to legal.

the wording was across all servers, it did not say across 29 servers or any set figure, but all servers, all servers will soon be 10.

To be fair to turbine all aging mmo's eventually reduce servers be it due to lower numbers or better hardware,

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Originally Posted by Richardrobins1986

the wording was across all servers, it did not say across 29 servers or any set figure, but all servers, all servers will soon be 10.

To be fair to turbine all aging mmo's eventually reduce servers be it due to lower numbers or better hardware,

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and since there are ten servers left and he only uses two out of 29 at the moment, it is at best, a 'moot point'. ie it's made just to argue for the sake of it. But there are always bush lawyers on the forums.

Clearly he thinks he knows more about the ToS than the banks of highly paid corporate lawyers employed by one of the biggest, if not the biggest, corporation in the world. I am sure Times Warner will take his legal opinion and threats into account. Not.

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Originally Posted by phaelan2

One question my wife brought up is with regard to houses. She has individual houses on a number of servers, but currently you can only own a single house per server. With the mergers, will we be able to have more than one house on a server or is the one house per server rule still going to be in effect?

Note that storage is not her main concern. This is more of an RP thing; each house is personalized for her characters.

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Despite its shortcomings, housing here is something I feel strongly about, so I wanted to add further to maartena's excellent advice in the hopes it will help your wife realize she will have a bit more work ahead of her to maintain what she had, but it is possible.

I know you both feel this is one more nail in the coffin, yet depending on how many and what size of homes your wife will want to replace can make the replacement process take a while longer or cost more in time or real world cash depending on the choices made by going the householder F2P route. (More on this below.)

If she wants the names of the homes to reflect the owners those homes had before, she can try variations on names. If one home owner is named Pipthryth, she can try to name the F2P householder Pipthryths or try alternate spellings or possible nicknames. She could also decide to give the homes more formal names or such as well.

Depending on how many alts would also use these homes, though if the purpose is RP environs, this might not be as much an issue, there may be some who lose the convenient house travel skill they had by virtue of being on the same account. For the main accounts alts that will need the additional travel skill, each homestead has the milestone just outside the gate that an extra store bought milestone skill can be bound to--not optimal, but possible.

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Originally Posted by maartena

Here is one solution:

1) create a free account, which allows you two character slots.
2) level two toons to level 15. Create a kin with each toon.
3) buy a house. (send money from main) Give your main characters from your main accounts full rights so they can decorate their bound items.
4) In three months, your one-person kins will have reached rank 7 and you can buy a kin house for each kin.

Result: 1 house, 2 kinhouses per free account.

Since you can create as many accounts as you can create gmail addresses, you pretty much have a unlimited supply of houses on the same server. You would need around 20 accounts to buy up an entire neighborhood for yourself. :D

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From my experience with F2P housing alts as well as talks with others:
It doesn't seem like a whole neighborhood (16 standards, 10 deluxes, 4 kinship houses) is the target, but 26 accounts can (if one is entirely available) allow one to buy up an entire neighborhood. If that is the plan, it's always best to have all the 26 alts at the point where they have the cash in hand and are standing at the sign of the house you want them to buy for the quickest turn around between logins before you start buying. Otherwise some random folk will stumble upon your neighborhood before you're done and buy one house there which will be a bump you don't want. (And always plan your buying pattern as to the most popular addresses first to lessen the chance of the random buyer.)

They've also changed the kin rule where you can now have a "kin of one" that will never get disbanded. Kin houses should be bought by deluxe home owners when possible because of the gold cap lift. Otherwise, you can invite a main account alt into the kin, make them leader, have them buy the house, then have them go back to their old kin after transferring leadership back to the one member.

But about the process of F2P householders in general:
It's helpful to keep a small notebook or any type of electronic file to keep track of all the login information for both the e-mail accounts as well as the related turbine accounts info. Otherwise, down the road, you'll realize you had such and such main account character you didn't give the right key to at first, and now you have no idea how to log onto the actual house owner's account. There is a way to link new F2P accounts to your main account so that you have less logins to use at the launcher, and you instead just choose which account listed you want to enter. It's best to do so calling customer service. Given all the extra calls they might have to field right now, it might be best to wait on doing the link until, say, after Yule.

Always set your key for paying maintenance to allow anyone to do so. This way if you happen to be at that house with an alt who didn't get x permissions key you can still pay rent when you're thinking about it rather than forget and then that house gets locked and frustrates you when another folk who doesn't have the funds to unlock shows up later to use said house and can't get in the door. Remember that your main account will NOT get notices that these F2P houses have run out of prepaid maintenance fees. It's good to get into a monthly habit of just paying out to another month all your F2P homes so you don't lose track of whether it's paid or not, and then suddenly realize why everyone should be able to pay maintenance as mentioned above again.

Thanks to the not so new crafting XP, one can now get a new alt from 5-15 in an afternoon via afk crop sowing. So long as you have a main account to feed them coin to do so, and in a perfect world, craft them at least a bronze mutli tool to cut down on repair breaks. Of course, you can still level traditional ways if that is your preference, and I for one would agree that has its benefits on many levels, especially if that particular house alt will be buying a deluxe and you don't want to spend real world cash on the points for the gold cap raise.

Either method can still lead to repeat fatigue. Since you are a couple, splitting the work between the two of you makes things much easier, and if you decide to non farm level, you now have a buddy to quest and explore with which helps as well.

Concerning deluxe homes with F2P householder accounts:
She will need to decide if you want to grind the Turbine Points to raise the gold cap or just pay out of pocket cash instead. There are many, many guides on the web about how to more easily grind TP that can suit a variety of playstyles. Grinding TP will take longer by far than paying for the TP with real world money. Depending on the method chosen, the grind can really really get annoyingly repetitive especially if you are trying to grind more than one deluxe home owner in a short time window. [FWIW: If I ever have to grind the TP for a deluxe F2P home owners again, I will never again keep rerolling the second character slot to have to run them through Ered Luin's shorter intro (since you have to pay to unlock the Beornings even shorter intro, you might as well just buy the TP to lift the cap rather than paying even more to unlock Beornings), then hit all the free zone explorer deeds with my free 24 hour horse whistle, rinse, repeat--it might work for some but I had to stop doing it after two days just for the one alt (even trying to change things up going through Archet leads to nightmares--"Poor Amdir!" you'll hear it in your sleep.)]

I'm probably forgetting something about a shortcut or another at the moment, but those are the tips that spring to mind right now.

I hope all goes as smoothly as is possible for the bumpy ride ahead for you and yours, and I wish you many more happier memories in game ahead of you.

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Originally Posted by Tatharil

Well it's a quite hard decision. 3 EN-server would mean 200% more servers for 30% more logins. on the other hand 1 EN, 1 EN-RP, 1 DE, 1 DE-RP, 1 FR would mean DE getting same amount of servers for 25% less logins than EN.
No wonder they didn't decide what kind of server the 5th would be.

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Still dreaming on 1 EN, 1 DE, 1 FR, 1 RP, 1 Retro Server with SoA release version. I bet this would be the most populated server!
But think I hope for nothing :-)

The server list will be send as ingame massage, right?

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Originally Posted by Delador

The server list will be send as ingame massage, right?

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Who said that? AFAIK the server list will be published here on the page, and additionally an in-game message will be send to all chars with information about the world transfers, so to inform those players that don't read here on the forums.

Edit:
See here:

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Originally Posted by From the Dev Diary

On August 3rd we will announce the worlds that will be impacted and the entire game will be brought down for a small patch which will send out an in-game email to all characters notifying them of the beginning of the World Closures and what that will entail along with a link back to this article and others to be released in the coming weeks.

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Hi all

Surely they know by now which world's are closing. The suspense is killing me. Please please please let us know hehe :)

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Originally Posted by gameovrman

Hi all

Surely they know by now which world's are closing. The suspense is killing me. Please please please let us know hehe :)

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It's 07:45 AM in Boston. Frelorn and Vyvyanne are probably in the office, preparing for the patch. It will come soon, patch notes are usually sent out about half-way through the patch so a few more hours....

Thanks Marteena. I know whatever happens there are so many things to look forward to and lots and lots of new people to meet in Arda. :)

Oops I meant maartena.

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Originally Posted by Alianne_EU

As I understand it, your former Nimrodel characters will transfer in with the -1 and get a free rename token. You can then delete the unwanted characters and rename the ones you do want to play.

If you don't have any empty character slots on Landroval, another method would be to delete the characters on Landroval immediately before you transfer and hope no-one else nips in and grabs your name before your transfer is complete.

Personally, I'm going to do the process one character at a time rather than try to cope with multiple delete/renames in one go (being on Gilrain, I'm in the 'happy' position of having known from day one that my server would close and made preparations accordingly).

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Thanks for your help! :) A quick question: With those three characters made, I don't have any character slots free. But when I delete the placeholder character, will the other character become available?

Well, I've just decided to return to the game. Lucky me :D

I don't mind the renames. That's okay. I've got multiple accounts with names I don't mind loosing, but there were several names I really wanted to keep. Luckily I had empty slots on Landroval, so that wasn't a problem :)

Now I've gotta decide if I'm gonna spend TP on extra character slots (I assume the two extra slots Vyvyanna mentioned as a possible solution) won't be there yet right at the beginning of this process. I've got 2 funny character names I'd like to keep on another server than Nimrodel on the same account as the three I already wanted to keep. Not sure if that particular server is going to close, but it's something to think about :)

Knowing that my Upkeep prepayments are saved too, is a good thing, especially since I've paid up into the new year. I've got twoquestions left at the moment.

Kinship house buying costs & upkeep prepayments:
1. If I read it correctly the upkeep prepayments for your personal house are in some sort of escrow as in, when you buy the new personal house, the prepayments are deposited there (if I understood the letter correctly). Is this the same for the Kinship house?
2. I assume it's safe to transfer the kinship leadership to a character that actually has the gold cap removed so that the buying costs of the house will be accessible without a hitch on that particular. Am I correct with that assumption?

Thanks again for all the help!

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Originally Posted by Vyvyanne

Housing is still one house per account per world. I will need to look into the tech to see if it is even possible to make more available per world, but if it is it will be a few updates out. First we need to make sure there is enough housing to cover the one per account. It is a good idea though, as I know it would be nice to have a house for my elf in Rivendell, Human in Bree, etc....

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Please continue to look into this! Might make up for that housing update years ago that never came to be. I know of a lot of players who do the hurdle jump of creating alternate accounts just to have access to more than one house. For me, it would be a role-playing thing as well.

I have a few questions about the server transfer as well.
1. A friend of mine gave me full permissions of his house which I've been using for years now. But he however missed the transfer window when Turbine took Codemasters' servers. So his character is not really existing but his house is. If my server isn't closing, will I still be able to use his house?
2. I have lots of low-level alts which I log regularly, because they hold outfits and stuff. However, if someone from another server comes, is level capped and active, and finds their name taken because of one of those vault-alts, will I be able to rename it in favour of that incoming player? This was probably asked somewhere but couldn't find it, so sorry for repeating it.

Thanks

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Originally Posted by Delador

Still dreaming on 1 EN, 1 DE, 1 FR, 1 RP, 1 Retro Server with SoA release version. I bet this would be the most populated server!
But think I hope for nothing :-)

The server list will be send as ingame massage, right?

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Well I for one am really looking forward to my free in game massage, what ever happens :P

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Originally Posted by maartena

They are. Announcements about the server closures will also be sent to the registered email address of all accounts

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Originally Posted by RJFerret

It's not the only mode of communication, it's one of the initial, they said (early in this thread iirc) that they will be sending email to all accounts later too.

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Thanks, I hadn't remembered seeing anything in the avalanche of info and posts that said they were going to be sending emails about the merger. Logic says they would, but sometimes companies surprise me. I expect that most players who left the game long ago don't follow Turbine's social media presence or read the forums, so email might be the only way of reaching them.

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Originally Posted by Morneniel

I have a few questions about the server transfer as well.
1. A friend of mine gave me full permissions of his house which I've been using for years now. But he however missed the transfer window when Turbine took Codemasters' servers. So his character is not really existing but his house is. If my server isn't closing, will I still be able to use his house?

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Yes, as long as you pay upkeep and your server isn't closing, the house should remain active.

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2. I have lots of low-level alts which I log regularly, because they hold outfits and stuff. However, if someone from another server comes, is level capped and active, and finds their name taken because of one of those vault-alts, will I be able to rename it in favour of that incoming player? This was probably asked somewhere but couldn't find it, so sorry for repeating it.

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In theory, yes. However, HE will have a free rename token (because his name was already taken by your toon), but YOU will not. So you would either have to buy a rename token for 995TP, setup some kind of deal where he supplies you with TP by email code, or delete the character in question.