World Transfers

[Ebyl]

That's a good point especially as the current implementation allows others to play pranks on you. I could for example create characters with your character names on all servers just to piss you off when you have to transfer and you will have to rename all your characters because my dummies have been active this year...
A combination of character lifetime and activity would probably be better. So you would get:

1. older character A that hasn't been active for over a year vs. younger character B that has been active -> B wins (this allows active players to override old zombies)
2. older character A that has been active vs. younger character B that has been active -> A wins (this counters the prank described above as well as Gilean-EU's concern)

This is really how the name transfer should be done. Any system will leave some people feeling cheated, but this way feels the least unfair. I doubt the pranking thing will be much of an issue, but a longstanding criticism of Turbine has been their willingness to essentially ignore, or at least marginalize, many long time players. This will be another example added to that list if name transfers are done as currently described.

[Maerian]

Thanks very much for this information. I had a thought about the impact upon housing and neighborhoods. In my neighborhood our kinship house is right across the creek from my house and the kinship leader lives next door to the kinship house and there are several other kinnies in other nearby houses. Despite the fact that we rarely cross paths at the same time except at events...I like this feeling of living next to my kin. If the servers are reduced...will there be additional neighborhoods added? Will there be room for us to form up our neighborhoods again?

[Tuco]

I'm scared...

I guess the 5 NA servers sticking around will also be the 5 largest ones. That makes 4 servers pretty clear, but all the rest are mostly equal. I have a feeling that Vilya won't be sticking around...

I suggest not worrying in advance. I've played on a lot of the servers, and most players are nice people. A few (like Laurelin) are outstandingly nice, and there have been exceptions: Riddermark went sour a couple of years after it went live, but now it looks like everybody left. But even on crowded servers like Brandywine you can find a compatible group to survive with.

You might want to make a throwaway character (default-rolled name so as not to step on anybody's choice) on some of the obvious survivors to see the state of World chat and the Auction House... but realize those will change as everybody clumps on in, just as your current Vilya will if it's selected as the remaining "obvious" NA server.

[Vyvyanne]

My question is for players who already have characters on the Brandywine server and potentially have alts, account information (mithril coins, destiny points, marks, etc.) on other servers that are potentially being shut down.

Is there any way that I can consolidate all of that information on Brandywine beginning August 3 or will it have to wait after the hardware changes? I've barely played on my previous servers I've been on and would rather not pay to put everything in one place since it's become my permanent home at this point. Understandably it may be difficult to distinguish between long time players of the server and people who will just create a new character to then get a priority to move things over but I was curious if this was considered by Turbine or an incentive to get people to leave the server where they can combine everything elsewhere.

Account data transfer without characters will always be free.

So once Brandywine opened back up to paid transfers, you could choose just to move your shared account data there and move the characters to another world. Also once we open Brandywine back up for transfers, if you are coming in off of a closed world, it will be free. It will never cost you money to move your character off of a closing world. I just realized that may have been unclear earlier. Brandywine's Open/ Closed to transfer status will be based on population and server stability, but when it is open it will only be a paid transfer from another Open world.

[Mar-Evayave]

I am so absurdly excited about this announcement that I almost feel like my lunch may be revisiting me. xD Thanks, Frelorn, Vyv, and co.! I can't wait until the transfer service goes live!

[Lolorndinfey]

Guessing by toon population;

Brandywine
Landroval -RP
Elendilmir
Vilya
Silverlode


Belegaer -DE (formerly DE-RP)
Windolfa
Snowbourn
Vanyar -FR
Laurelin -RP

Vanyar is a guess for french. Just going by population levels. Estel is the former FR-RP server.

I would've expected more NA servers due to the 2:1 current population levels. Go figure.

[XinaLotRO]

Thank you for the detailed information. The transfer procedure looks very thorough and well thought out.

[Vyvyanne]

If we are transferring, will our friend's list get wiped, with no way to tell where our friends went and what new name they might have?

Due to the way in which our friend's lists are created, these will not be transferable. The data is based on the name and not the ID of the character, so the new world would have no idea if a person of the same name is actually your friend or someone else. Same if your friend had to change their name for one reason or another.

[Vyvyanne]

I appreciate all the information you're giving us!

I am curious about the language used here: does this mean that there will be only 1 EU server flagged as RP, or 3 (one for each language)?

Also, when you say RP, does this mean that the EU server(s) will remain with full RP rules and the US server will remain with RP-Encouraged rules as they exist now, or will all worlds belong to one or the other ruleset going forward?

Servers will be announced in one week. This is as much info as I am willing to give at this time.

RP world rules will remain as they currently are for each region.

[CaerusDaemon]

Guessing by toon population;

Brandywine
Landroval -RP
Elendilmir
Vilya
Silverlode


Belegaer -DE (formerly DE-RP)
Windolfa
Snowbourn
Vanyar -FR
Laurelin -RP

Vanyar is a guess for french. Just going by population levels. Estel is the former FR-RP server.

I would've expected more NA servers due to the 2:1 current population levels. Go figure.

Evernight is the most active EU server to my knowledge, the fact you did not include this is the list is beyong me?

[Vampire83]

So it has come...the Apocalypse of Middle Earth,
the sundering of Middle Earth and the end of the 4th Age.

1 RP in Europe,
leaves us with

Server X being Gwaihir for Germany
Server Y for France
Server Z for English speakers?
Server ZZ for what? Which language? which pop? Russians?

And there it is! An endless battle with Russians and other players on all servers left!

This! Ladies and Gentlemen, is even far worse than what i would have expected! This...just means the endtimes of Lotro! Enjoy your staying memories. Take screenshots and videos! But begone before the Song of Eru changes the worlds for all times.
I think Morgoth has won this endless battle and will end this creation sooner than you can imagine!

OOC: No, and i think most of the sentient german players will agree, no player in his right mind would want to join servers with the Gwaihir folks. Those ######## 12 to 15 year olds that shouldn't even be allowed to play this game according to the EULA.
And yes, I now understand why only 5+5 was chosen. Because Turbine knows, that only a handfull of players will continue...mainly those from the servers left!

Bye Bye Lotro, fare well...the Havens are calling!

[Mar-Evayave]

Servers will be announced in one week. This is as much info as I am willing to give at this time.

RP world rules will remain as they currently are for each region.

Will we be told in which order they (the 19 closing servers) will be opened to the xfer system? Curious to know how long after Aug 3 I must wait before I can transfer off Riddermark.

[Vyvyanne]

Thanks very much for this information. I had a thought about the impact upon housing and neighborhoods. In my neighborhood our kinship house is right across the creek from my house and the kinship leader lives next door to the kinship house and there are several other kinnies in other nearby houses. Despite the fact that we rarely cross paths at the same time except at events...I like this feeling of living next to my kin. If the servers are reduced...will there be additional neighborhoods added? Will there be room for us to form up our neighborhoods again?

We have checked the neighborhood situation and there are still lots of unclaimed land on all of the worlds. We will monitor the situation though and can add more neighborhoods if they begin filling up.

[Shryakaw]

We are still resolving timelines on moving the worlds to new tech but it is looking like we should be moved over in the next 2-3 months. I will give a better timeline once I have it.

5 US and 5 EU is correct. In our selection we will have one RP per region (EU & US) and one world per language (DE, FR and ENG).

Will Landroval be kept up?

[Tirian-Hammerfist]

Guessing by toon population;

Brandywine
Landroval -RP
Elendilmir
Vilya
Silverlode


Belegaer -DE (formerly DE-RP)
Windolfa
Snowbourn
Vanyar -FR
Laurelin -RP

Vanyar is a guess for french. Just going by population levels. Estel is the former FR-RP server.

I would've expected more NA servers due to the 2:1 current population levels. Go figure.

Windfola? Not sure where you got that idea from...

[Vyvyanne]

Will we be told in which order they (the 19 closing servers) will be opened to the xfer system? Curious to know how long after Aug 3 I must wait before I can transfer off Riddermark.

Yes, in part. There will be a 1-2week notice of which servers will open for transfer next. Putting them in that order in the server announcement is a good idea (Thank You!). However the timeline will not be exact. If we run into issues, the service may need to be turned off for a bit as we correct and then resume.

[Marancil]

I am on Firefoot-US.

As I understand you text, Frelorn (and Vyvyanne) migration between US and EU will not be possible, is not possible and, will never be possible? When I started playing there was no distinction between EU or US in the Launcher, and there was nothing in the download or the installer to tell me anything about what to consider when picking server.

I guess many EU players may be in this situation, and perhaps also many US players, we would like to transfer to our "Region" but can't and this also may have an impact on interacting with other players, timezones being a constant issue. (Yes I have said many times I play solo, but that is also a result of a necessity being on a "low populated" server...also a bit of a lonewolf...).

I must admit I am more than reluctant to end up on a "high populated" US server.

[Familiarity]

Account data transfer without characters will always be free.

So once Brandywine opened back up to paid transfers, you could choose just to move your shared account data there and move the characters to another world. Also once we open Brandywine back up for transfers, if you are coming in off of a closed world, it will be free. It will never cost you money to move your character off of a closing world. I just realized that may have been unclear earlier. Brandywine's Open/ Closed to transfer status will be based on population and server stability, but when it is open it will only be a paid transfer from another Open world.

Thank you for the clarification!

Next question in regards to names:

For players who have already come to the remaining worlds prior to mergers and were given a rename because of the name being taken by an inactive/trial account years ago, will there be an opportunity for them to reclaim their original name if they've kept the -1 all this time? Is Turbine planning to do a name purge for already present members since incoming transfers will be given an opportunity to take priority of a name if they were the more active account?

[Starstorm01]

It's 5am and I am tired so maybe I missed something.

Regarding the name change i just want to confirm something. I have 6 months plus playtime on my rk level 100, my server is closing. I choice server A to go to, someone with the same name has a level 6 storage toon with the same name, who might log in once a week. As I am the incoming player and we r both active the level 6 gets to keep there name and I have to rename?

My other question is if I move my toon off the closingworld find that I am not enjoying the world I pick, will I be able to for free move to another of the remaining worlds, is there a grace period? If not will the current cost for transfers remain the same?

Thanks
Star

[Lordthebruce]

I have 5 characters on brandywine and i want to move those off to my new server home where i will be moving 6 characters (i am assuming my current home server will be closed). Will the move off Brandy be free or cost?

Thanks

[Deorwyn]

Only one server per language? Really?
I was looking forward to the server merges, but this is bad news to me.

[Almagnus1]

Frankly, E needs to be put down, as it's now a very pale shadow of it's former glory thanks to Turbine having driven off the raiders, and the PvMPers jumping ship to BW.

[beorf]

And if both were active before the merge?

(Ooops, this was answered while I was writing it... This thread moves fast!)
This. Will it be a contest between who stays more active in the days before the transfer? Do I need to constantly log into my characters to hope they're not "less active"?
It seems better to give priority to existing characters on the surviving realms if both are active (e.g. logged on in the last couple weeks). Or have some other deterministic solution that doesn't require us to constantly log in.



It might be good to make the Rename token tradeable, so the loser can negotiate with the winner for their name.

[darthhager]

Thank you so much Vyvyanne, Frelorn, and all game developers. This is a great deal of information to take in and I just hope, as I'm sure you do as well, that it all goes according to plan. As a VIP with a founder's membership and someone who has been

playing Lotro since day 1 way back in 2007, I would say this is a great sign that this game has new life and it is only a natural progression to the game. My only question is this - after reading the message from Frelorn about the transfer features and the

"button" that I will press to transfer from my low populated server - how long can I expect this process to take? Will my toons be available instantly or will there be some sort of data "transfer" needed to populate me to the new world?

Keep up the great job with getting information out as soon as you can reveal it and I will keep my fingers crossed that everything works according to plan.

[Shryakaw]

Yes, in part. There will be a 1-2week notice of which servers will open for transfer next. Putting them in that order in the server announcement is a good idea (Thank You!). However the timeline will not be exact. If we run into issues, the service may need to be turned off for a bit as we correct and then resume.

Will the servers kept open be the more active servers?