World Transfers

[CoconuttRum]

There is no way you can level a character to L15 in that amount of time. I know. I've tried. I have twelve housing alts (personal and kinship), all of which took 5-6 hours to level. If you want to reserve more than one house, like I would, you can multiply that time by the number of houses. Quite frankly, it is simply not worth the time and effort until the server names are released, if then.

It's very easy to do it. I just did it with 2 accounts in 90 minutes. Just take a high level and drag your other accounts and kill everything. Easy peasy.

[Shanbwa]

so since the shared storage and other account based stuff will be transferrable, do we have to transfer all our characters at once or 1 by 1?
i would go to 1 and the same server, but in case of others, i ask this

but to be sure: the character storage IS bound on the character, right? so if the character has been transferred, so will its storage, right?

[zolander]

lets say i.e BW / Landy / glad / crick / whatever server will remain. I am at Landroval server and want to xferr to Crick, so I am at crick now and didnt like it, do I have the option to xferr back to landy for free? Thanks

[Christian.S]

Friends list only have day/month. How will I know if a player is inactive from this years date or another past year?

Example: I Added a players name to my friends list. A name I have always wanted since starting. My friends list shows they last played in January. How do I know its this January or another past January?

[maartena]

Friends list only have day/month. How will I know if a player is inactive from this years date or another past year?

Example: I Added a players name to my friends list. A name I have always wanted since starting. My friends list shows they last played in January. How do I know its this January or another past January?

Short answer: You don't. It's a gamble.

You can do a little detective work in some cases: One of my character names is taken on the target server, but after adding this person to friends list it shows level 85 and location Snowbourn. Since that was the top level in Rohan, it wouldn't be unfair to deduct the person hasn't logged on for around 2 years, and that he left the character in what was then the top level hub. (Helms Deep was released in October 2013).

[Arya79]

In the case of a conflict of Kinship name, the transferring Kinship will have a -1 added to their name and will need to open a ticket with Customer Support to choose a new name. We know this is not ideal, but this situation was one we did not have a good solution for in the time we had.

Would it be possible that in the event of a Kin name conflict the incoming kin be named kinname of old server? So for example The White Council moving off of Silverlode to another server with the name the white council already taken they would become The White council of Silverlode

[Scirocco]

It's very easy to do it. I just did it with 2 accounts in 90 minutes. Just take a high level and drag your other accounts and kill everything. Easy peasy.

But that's not possible in the situation of concern. You have someone creating a first, new character on the server, and trying to get to the point to "reserve" their house. If they already have a high level character on the server, there's no need to do this...the high level character can reserve the house directly.

Perhaps they can pay a high level on the server to level them, but what with?

In the rare instance they already have a high level friend on the server, then it's a different matter, including the way in which to go about reserving their house space.

[Scirocco]

lets say i.e BW / Landy / glad / crick / whatever server will remain. I am at Landroval server and want to xferr to Crick, so I am at crick now and didnt like it, do I have the option to xferr back to landy for free? Thanks

It appears so, but be aware that regardless of whether you have to pay or not, there's a risk of losing your name(s) on the server you move from.

[maartena]

Hi there! I'd like to ask this on behalf of all Kin Leaders.
In recapping, Please open more neighborhoods for us and do what you can with the mail system so kin members aren't abandoned after the worlds close.

1) Vyvyanne has stated that currently there is more than enough capacity in current neighborhoods. The "forclosure" system introduced about a year or so ago that closes houses when they haven't been paid for 6 months has cleaned up a lot of old, stale, inactive houses. They will be looking in to adding more neighborhoods if capacity is needed, but not until after the transfers are completed.

2) On Monday's patch (August 3d) the mail length will be set to 6 months (on "doomed" servers only!), so any mails sent after Monday will remain in the inbox of returning players for 6 months. This will cover them for the rest of the year and until the server actually closes at the end yeah mark.

[Vyvyanne]

A question was raised in another thread Vyvyanne, and you've been doing such a great job cluing us in, I thought I'd bring it to your attention here.

It's a matter of escrow for kin houses that are transferred, and regular houses, as this person has multiple houses with more stuff than they can contain in bags/storage.

Given escrow currently holds your items for 30 days if you abandon your house, and forever if foreclosed, what is the circumstance with items returned and items in escrow due to transfer?

The transfer is treated like a foreclosure. The items will be placed in escrow on your destination server until you are able to retrieve them.

[maartena]

Would it be possible that in the event of a Kin name conflict the incoming kin be named kinname of old server? So for example The White Council moving off of Silverlode to another server with the name the white council already taken they would become The White council of Silverlode

There is no code in place to do this automatically right now, but if you get the -1 on your kin name, you can open up a ticket with Turbine and a GM can help you rename the kinship into whatever you want, including adding the "of Server" addition if you want.

[Vyvyanne]

I asked this back on page 11, so either no one really knows and it will be wait and see what happens...
or maybe the question was missed.

If the fix is occurring with transfers currently it will still apply with these transfers.

[maartena]

so since the shared storage and other account based stuff will be transferrable, do we have to transfer all our characters at once or 1 by 1?
i would go to 1 and the same server, but in case of others, i ask this

but to be sure: the character storage IS bound on the character, right? so if the character has been transferred, so will its storage, right?

From what I understand you will have 2 options:

- Transfer all characters on server at once.
- Transfer one character at a time.

Everything that is bound to YOU personally will come with. Anything you purchased as well, such as extra housing storage, vault storage etc.

There will also be an option to transfer all of the "server bound" stuff, such as everything that is marked green in the wallet, your shared storage content, and your wardrobe content.

The amount of bag-slots, character slots, shared storage slots, wardrobe slots, etc, is already account wide and is the same on all servers.

[Forestwyn]

My apologies I'm sure this has been answered multiple times and I've tried to keep up. So to be clear; I live in the U.S. and have characters on Laurelin. That means they are gone right? No transfer and no ability to log on after the change is in full effect correct? If this is the case the best thing will be to liquidate everything and gift someone in EU. Thanks ahead of time for any answers

[Scirocco]

Vyvyanne has answered that question already as far as I'm concerned. For characters that have just been created the character creation date is taken as a measure of inactivity.

The concern is not about characters that were just created, but characters that were created 6 or 7 years ago, but never made it to the Intro, or through it.

My take on what Vyvyanne said is that such characters will have a last-played date essentially equal to their character creation.

In any event, if you want to protect a character name by making it active within the last year, get it through the Intro, at a minimum, to be safe.

[maartena]

Oh fun! We're going to play the statistics fudging game now? Here we go!
http://lotroaltfinder.net/statistics.html
http://www.surugi.com/lotrostats/

The data found on these two sources dates back to 2013 and 2012. They stopped publishing particular details in those years, also making kinship rosters on guild sites more or less unusable. I still hope they will come up with a solution for that at one point.

In any case, any population data and PVMP data you posted can pretty much be disregarded. The list I posted is based on logins of the last week alone, and it seems data can be retrieved from the site I mentioned for a much longer period, if you wanted to see logons this year, etc.

Also: I don't think PVMP is considered to be a factor in choosing servers.

[Galadhloth]

My apologies I'm sure this has been answered multiple times and I've tried to keep up. So to be clear; I live in the U.S. and have characters on Laurelin. That means they are gone right? No transfer and no ability to log on after the change is in full effect correct? If this is the case the best thing will be to liquidate everything and gift someone in EU. Thanks ahead of time for any answers

I am pretty sure you'll still be able to play your characters on Laurelin. If Laurelin is an EU server that survives, you can log on and play normally. If Laurelin is an EU server that is being shut down, you can transfer your Laurelin characters to any of the surviving EU servers the same way you could transfer NA characters to NA servers. The change in server location should, at the very most, involve a tiny increase in lag.

[maartena]

In any event, if you want to protect a character name by making it active within the last year, get it through the Intro, at a minimum, to be safe.

Vyvyanne has also stated that it can't distinguish between done-intro and not-done-intro. All you need to do is actually log on, don't do the tutorial, and if you want to be really sure accept the first quest. There, you are done.

[Scirocco]

My apologies I'm sure this has been answered multiple times and I've tried to keep up. So to be clear; I live in the U.S. and have characters on Laurelin. That means they are gone right? No transfer and no ability to log on after the change is in full effect correct? If this is the case the best thing will be to liquidate everything and gift someone in EU. Thanks ahead of time for any answers

No, they are still there, and you can still log into Laurelin, which we assume will be a surviving server. It's just the physical location of the server hardware that will be moving.

It will be just like an EU based player currently logging into Laurelin, where the player is located in Europe and the servers are in Boston. After the hardware move, you will be in the US, and logging into a server in the Netherlands. It probably won't have a significant impact on your connection.

[Forestwyn]

That is a relief, this is a lot to understand. I'm going to just relax and play and take it one step at a time. *runs off to Landroval*

[maartena]

It's just the physical location of the server hardware that will be moving.

Actually, no hardware will actually move. New hardware will be purchased in Amsterdam, installed on-site, hypervisors will be installed on each node (such as VMWare), and then the "servers" which are a large collection of individual virtual machines will be replicated between Boston and Amsterdam so they are virtually identical. Then at one point the servers will go "offline" for maintenance, in the back-end they will make sure the sync between the copy here and the copy there is 100%, and bring the servers in the Amsterdam data center "online".

In theory, if we are talking about e.g. Windows and Linux servers, this could be done in mere minutes, if the sync of virtual servers had been running continuesly. In practice however, things like IP addresses will change, and it may take up to 24 hours for your ISP's DNS server to even be aware of the change. This would also be the case for Boston to New Jersey. And of course there is a lot more to it than that, because although the servers are largely static (does not change much) content, the database with all the back end information needs to be especially tested to ensure the replica in Amsterdam is 100%. With all the networking changes that will have to be done as well, I would expect a maintenance of around 12 hours, even if they announce only 9.

In both the cases of server migrations it is very likely that the 5 US servers will go to New Jersey, and the 5 EU servers will go to Amsterdam, and that all the remaining servers will remain in Boston till the end of the year till they get shut down.

Rest assured: they aren't going to be putting physical boxes on ships to Amsterdam and have everyone be offline for a week. It's all virtualized and synced, and migrated over the internet to new hardware there.

[Scirocco]

The data found on these two sources dates back to 2013 and 2012. They stopped publishing particular details in those years, also making kinship rosters on guild sites more or less unusable. I still hope they will come up with a solution for that at one point.

In any case, any population data and PVMP data you posted can pretty much be disregarded. The list I posted is based on logins of the last week alone, and it seems data can be retrieved from the site I mentioned for a much longer period, if you wanted to see logons this year, etc.

Also: I don't think PVMP is considered to be a factor in choosing servers.

I also take the recent login info with a grain of salt. I agree that there's a rough correlation to population, and thus accept it as a gross measure, but the actual number of logins for the mid-range servers is too small and too close for simple login data to be accurate. For example, a single person alone can log in and out rapidly 100 times a day in short order, and this actually would have a visible impact on login data for the midrange servers (which is sort of a sad commentary in itself).

I also am aware that there is an artificial boost in logins across many of the servers thought to be surviving, as players create characters there for name checking, etc.

Turbine has stated before that the login rankings are inaccurate. I trust that they are reviewing actual server population figures, character levels and activity, time-in game, revenue generated, and the like, in making their decisions. And, in any event, we'll soon see what their decision is.

[Vyvyanne]

Greetings Citizens of Middle-Earth!

We are finally ready to reveal the details on the new World Transfer process, the consolidation of LOTRO's worlds, and their movement to a brand new data center. We appreciate your patience as we have worked to make the new transfer process as well-rounded, simple, and effortless as possible. The first part of this article will discuss our timeline and the second part will go over the details of the new transfer features themselves. So grab a goblet of Elvish Wine and kick back, because this will be a long one. Read more.

Please note I found an error in the original article, which we are working to correct, but I will state here:
“The new Transfer Service will become available with this patch. You will be able to access it through the launcher at the World Selection screen after logging into your account. There will be a button that says “Transfer” underneath the “Play” button. Beginning August 3rd the service will be available for copying characters to the Bullroarer Test World and for free moves between the ten worlds (5 US and 5 EU) that will be remaining available after the end of this year. This is just the beginning of the process.”

The paragraph has incorrect information. Free moves between the main worlds will not start Monday, only Bullroarer copies will be available that day. Transfers between the remaining worlds will probably be a week or two later after we spend some time with the copies to Bullroarer and make sure there are no issues.

I am sorry for any stress this error may have caused.

[Coolhandlukeboy]

There is no way you can level a character to L15 in that amount of time. I know. I've tried. I have twelve housing alts (personal and kinship), all of which took 5-6 hours to level. If you want to reserve more than one house, like I would, you can multiply that time by the number of houses. Quite frankly, it is simply not worth the time and effort until the server names are released, if then.

It takes me roughly 2 hours to level up to 15. If I use the experience boost that I get from one of my many startup bonuses (can't remember which), it takes about 1:45 minutes. Perhaps you are referring to a few years back when leveling took much longer? Right now, it's super quick and easy to level to 15.

[Scirocco]

Actually, no hardware will actually move. New hardware will be purchased in Amsterdam, installed on-site, hypervisors will be installed on each node (such as VMWare), and then the "servers" which are a large collection of individual virtual machines will be replicated between Boston and Amsterdam so they are virtually identical. Then at one point the servers will go "offline" for maintenance, in the back-end they will make sure the sync between the copy here and the copy there is 100%, and bring the servers in the Amsterdam data center "online".

In theory, if we are talking about e.g. Windows and Linux servers, this could be done in mere minutes, if the sync of virtual servers had been running continuesly. In practice however, things like IP addresses will change, and it may take up to 24 hours for your ISP's DNS server to even be aware of the change. This would also be the case for Boston to New Jersey. And of course there is a lot more to it than that, because although the servers are largely static (does not change much) content, the database with all the back end information needs to be especially tested to ensure the replica in Amsterdam is 100%. With all the networking changes that will have to be done as well, I would expect a maintenance of around 12 hours, even if they announce only 9.

In both the cases of server migrations it is very likely that the 5 US servers will go to New Jersey, and the 5 EU servers will go to Amsterdam, and that all the remaining servers will remain in Boston till the end of the year till they get shut down.

Rest assured: they aren't going to be putting physical boxes on ships to Amsterdam and have everyone be offline for a week. It's all virtualized and synced, and migrated over the internet to new hardware there.

Well, of course not. No one would think that the servers are being physically moved. It wouldn't make any sense, especially since the current physical components are inadequate for the job.

Chalk this up to the inherent ambiguities in colloquial English...