World Transfer Q&A

[Vyvyanne]

Starting a fresh thread as the old one had gotten quite long to skim through.

Please see this thread for official updates and FAQs: https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...date-8-26-2015

And this Article has the details on the consolidation itself and the new features of the transfer process: https://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/world-transfers

I will be reading this thread for questions and feedback and updating the Updates thread with pertinent information, for those who want just one place to get all the facts.

Thank you!
Athena "Vyvyanne" Peters
Executive Producer

[Meihan2]

Thank you Vyvyanne

[Galadhloth]

Thank you so much! The World Transfer Status Update thread is especially useful and I'll pass it along to kinnies as soon as possible.

(One minor request - can a forum mod change the name of that thread to just World Transfer Status Update without the August date appended? It might mislead some people to assume that the thread is not being updated, which it very helpfully is)

[maartena]

Thank you Vyvyanne!

My questions, I will consolidate as many I can think of in this post:

On: "Free Remaining World Transfers post consolidation"

- With the planned 1 month "free transfer events", does this mean you will open up only ONE server at a time to transfer off of? In other words, does this mean that if you are on the "unlucky 5th" server, whichever this may be, you may have to wait till April 2016 to get a chance to move off of that server if you made a wrong choice?
- Would you consider STARTING with a shorter time span for those who already know and don't want to wait that long, e.g. 1 week per world from Thanksgiving into the last week of December, and THEN doing the 1 month transfers?
- If it is e.g. "Server A"'s turn to transfer off of, and a player chooses to go to "Server B". When it is "Server B"'s turn, is a player allowed to move BACK to "Server A"?

On: "World Transfer Status Update 10-14-2015"

- Is there a chance that the remaining worlds will be slightly accelerated now that the transfers are going well? Example: 1 EU server on Monday, 1 US server on Tuesday, 1 more EU server on Wednesday and 1 more US server on Thursday?
- There is been some concern on housing availability. With a good many people having "one-man-kins" getting kin houses, the amount of kinship houses seems to go down at a much faster rate than regular housing. Will more housing zones be added before the servers close in January?
- Also regarding housing, some people are reporting that they have 60 storage on a closing server (30 purchased with in-game gold), and 60 storage on a destination server (30 purchased with in-game gold), and that these storage amounts aren't merging. They way the announcement reads is you should be getting the 30 storage that comes with the house on the destination server + the 30 you already purchased there + the 30 you purchased on the closing server = 90 in total, but they are ending up with 60 in total. Is this a known issue, or working as intended?

On: "New hardware and datacenter move"

- Will there be any DNS changes that need to replicate worldwide when these servers are migrated to the new datacenter that could mean clients can't connect for what COULD be up to 48 hours depending on their ISP's DNS servers, or are there plans in place (with loadbalancers or other technology) to prevent this? (Feel free to answer this much later if you don't know this and need to pass it on to network techs).

Other questions:

- Is there a current "preferred server"? What is it? Will the "preferred server" be changed on a regular basis if it is? Will there be a "preferred server" for EU and US or just one at a time?



Thank you so much for your hard work once again Vyvyanne!

[Castorix]

- Is there a current "preferred server"? What is it? Will the "preferred server" be changed on a regular basis if it is? Will there be a "preferred server" for EU and US or just one at a time?

If you're talking about the "recommended" server, it is actually Arkenstone.
The recommended server has order number = 0 in the server list.
It is displayed in the Launcher after the last played server and the locale servers sorted by their order number.

[maartena]

If you're talking about the "recommended" server, it is actually Arkenstone.
The recommended server has order number = 0 in the server list.
It is displayed in the Launcher after the last played servers and the locale servers sorted by their order number.

Yes. The numbers on this site here seem to match that exactly, only the order number for the recommended server is actually 1, not 0.

Server sequence: http://lotrostats.gefallenehelden.de...der-1-week.png

It changed on October 8th by the looks of it.

[ShireDweller]

Starting a fresh thread as the old one had gotten quite long to skim through.

Please see this thread for official updates and FAQs: https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...date-8-26-2015

And this Article has the details on the consolidation itself and the new features of the transfer process: https://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/world-transfers

I will be reading this thread for questions and feedback and updating the Updates thread with pertinent information, for those who want just one place to get all the facts.

Thank you!
Athena "Vyvyanne" Peters
Executive Producer

Excellent! Thank you, Vyvyanne!

[EB64]

A question pertaining to what was discussed on the previous thread a bit before this one...

I moved my character and all storage from Nimrodel to Arkenstone.
On Nim, I had bought an extra 45 housing storage space.
On Ark, I previously bought 30 housing storage.

Are these 2 spaces supposed to be combined(ie: 45+30=75 extra housing storage now available)? Or does the higher number just override the lower(ie: I now have 45 extra housing storage only)?

There seems to be some confusion as to how storage space is combined.
I guess this would also apply to Wardrobe/Shared Storage as well, really.

[Louvalinor]

Thank you, Vyvanne.

1) On the destination server, do I have to use the same toon to buy my personal house in order for housing items to transfer successfully?

2) If any toon on the account can buy my new house, what issues with escrow should I be aware of?

Cheers!

[Ogmios]

On: "New hardware and datacenter move"

- Will there be any DNS changes that need to replicate worldwide when these servers are migrated to the new datacenter that could mean clients can't connect for what COULD be up to 48 hours depending on their ISP's DNS servers, or are there plans in place (with loadbalancers or other technology) to prevent this? (Feel free to answer this much later if you don't know this and need to pass it on to network techs).

As a network director for (some company) I have some thoughts on this that may help.

1) It's almost a certainty that DNS changes will occur if they are moving physically to another datacenter. Almost - there are ways around this but they are more complicated and would prevent certain server migration (not account) scenarios. Scenarios that would make the move to newer hardware much easier, faster, and with a better chance for a graceful rollback in case of failure. My guess is that DNS will change.

2) If DNS changes, and you are concerned that your ISP won't pickup the change in a reasonable time (48 hours is the disclaimer for all DNS changes, but it's unusual for propagation to take near that long) then you could consider changing the DNS forwarding on your LAN to one of the free public DNS services. Below are two organizations and their DNS addresses that I have typically seen take DNS change propagations near instantly in real time (seconds to minutes, not hours.)

Google DNS:
Primary = 8.8.8.8
Secondary = 8.8.4.4

OpenDNS: (See the OpenDNS website for other addresses depending on location, device type and account type.)
Free General Personal Primary = 208.67.222.123
Free General Personal Secondary = 208.67.220.123


Important Note to Turbine: I highly suggest that you check your TTL (Time To Live) settings on any DNS Zone records you anticipate changing in the near future related to the hardware upgrade NOW and if they are more than 3600 change them NOW to 3600 or less. This will allow the TTL to propagate for your addresses well in advance of the change in IP address, and then when you do need to change the IP's the change will be picked up in MUCH less time by most if not all ISP's around the world -- within that TTL. This professional advice is given to you freely by me.





.

[Vyvyanne]

Thank you Vyvyanne!

My questions, I will consolidate as many I can think of in this post:

On: "Free Remaining World Transfers post consolidation"

- With the planned 1 month "free transfer events", does this mean you will open up only ONE server at a time to transfer off of? In other words, does this mean that if you are on the "unlucky 5th" server, whichever this may be, you may have to wait till April 2016 to get a chance to move off of that server if you made a wrong choice?
- Would you consider STARTING with a shorter time span for those who already know and don't want to wait that long, e.g. 1 week per world from Thanksgiving into the last week of December, and THEN doing the 1 month transfers?
- If it is e.g. "Server A"'s turn to transfer off of, and a player chooses to go to "Server B". When it is "Server B"'s turn, is a player allowed to move BACK to "Server A"?

One US and one EU will be open at a time to the other 4 of the corresponding region. We could consider doing it in one week cycles and then a month. Thoughts on that? I was just afraid people would say 1 week was not enough time to react. And there would be no restrictions to moving back again (with the exception of a 2 week restriction on moving account data back to the same server it came from). Just know the Free periods will not last forever, so once this pass is done make sure you are happy with your choice.

On: "World Transfer Status Update 10-14-2015"

- Is there a chance that the remaining worlds will be slightly accelerated now that the transfers are going well? Example: 1 EU server on Monday, 1 US server on Tuesday, 1 more EU server on Wednesday and 1 more US server on Thursday?
- There is been some concern on housing availability. With a good many people having "one-man-kins" getting kin houses, the amount of kinship houses seems to go down at a much faster rate than regular housing. Will more housing zones be added before the servers close in January?
- Also regarding housing, some people are reporting that they have 60 storage on a closing server (30 purchased with in-game gold), and 60 storage on a destination server (30 purchased with in-game gold), and that these storage amounts aren't merging. They way the announcement reads is you should be getting the 30 storage that comes with the house on the destination server + the 30 you already purchased there + the 30 you purchased on the closing server = 90 in total, but they are ending up with 60 in total. Is this a known issue, or working as intended?

On acceleration, not likely, in fact just the opposite until we are up on the new hardware. Many have noted that Evernight is now as large as Brandywine and we do not want to damage performance on that sever before moving to the hardware that can handle the higher populations. I feel we may have to put a small delay after opening the servers next week. Once we are up on the new hardware though, we will accelerate through any closing worlds remaining.

On houses, we have the ability to add neighborhoods should we run out of housing.

On storage. What you describe sounds like it is as expected. The way our storage Upgrades work is account wide you go from Upgrade 1, Upgrade 2, etc. When you merge worlds, the game checks for the highest level upgrade and maintains that, it does not add them together. So if you had Upgrade 1 on World A and Upgrade 2 on World B, and you merged account data/ houses, you will be at Upgrade 2.

On: "New hardware and datacenter move"

- Will there be any DNS changes that need to replicate worldwide when these servers are migrated to the new datacenter that could mean clients can't connect for what COULD be up to 48 hours depending on their ISP's DNS servers, or are there plans in place (with loadbalancers or other technology) to prevent this? (Feel free to answer this much later if you don't know this and need to pass it on to network techs).

Yes, but we are looking into ways to mitigate this if we can

Other questions:

- Is there a current "preferred server"? What is it? Will the "preferred server" be changed on a regular basis if it is? Will there be a "preferred server" for EU and US or just one at a time?
Thank you so much for your hard work once again Vyvyanne!

Yes. It is currently Arkenstone. We are changing it as needed to balance population loads. It was previously Evernight I believe.

[Vyvyanne]

Thank you, Vyvanne.

1) On the destination server, do I have to use the same toon to buy my personal house in order for housing items to transfer successfully?

2) If any toon on the account can buy my new house, what issues with escrow should I be aware of?

Cheers!

Housing is an account wide item, so it does not matter which character you use to purchase a house. The only issues you might run into is if you had character bound items in the house, those will be returned to the bound character's personal inventory and not escrow or house storage.

[Valgalad]

I know i shouldn't doubt about it...

But, anyway, Vyvyanne, could you please confirm European servers will be in Europe again (ping matters) ?

I know Maartena said 'YES' but there's a long long time you didn't mention it officially...

Please ?

Thanks ;-)

[maartena]

One US and one EU will be open at a time to the other 4 of the corresponding region. We could consider doing it in one week cycles and then a month. Thoughts on that? I was just afraid people would say 1 week was not enough time to react. And there would be no restrictions to moving back again (with the exception of a 2 week restriction on moving account data back to the same server it came from). Just know the Free periods will not last forever, so once this pass is done make sure you are happy with your choice.

There is a chance that people will say 1 week is enough. Obviously, since Brandywine is open for transfers NOW, I would expect that transferring OFF of Brandywine again would be at the end of the schedule. Perhaps 2 weeks is a more "meet in the middle" approach. Not that I am negotiating here, mind you, I am already set in Arkenstone and will not move anywhere else.

Also, is there any technical reasons to do not do 2 servers at a time? I know about the shared items not being able to transfer back and forth, but is there a reason for that? Is Turbine afraid people will keep hopping back and forth until they get "Catch-22" or something like that? If 2 servers are possible, you could do: First two weeks of December: Arkenstone, Crickhollow. Second two weeks of December: Gladden, Landroval: First two weeks of January: Brandywine once more. And then call it a day, and let the rest use their tokens if they still need to do transfers later.

On acceleration, not likely, in fact just the opposite until we are up on the new hardware. Many have noted that Evernight is now as large as Brandywine and we do not want to damage performance on that sever before moving to the hardware that can handle the higher populations. I feel we may have to put a small delay after opening the servers next week. Once we are up on the new hardware though, we will accelerate through any closing worlds remaining.

Ouch, Meneldor people aren't going to be happy to hear that..... It looks like the current 2-per-week schedule is ending right at Thanksgiving. If some of that is going to be delayed till after the new hardware is in place, will that extend into December possibly? I still have toons on Meneldor!

On storage. What you describe sounds like it is as expected. The way our storage Upgrades work is account wide you go from Upgrade 1, Upgrade 2, etc. When you merge worlds, the game checks for the highest level upgrade and maintains that, it does not add them together. So if you had Upgrade 1 on World A and Upgrade 2 on World B, and you merged account data/ houses, you will be at Upgrade 2.

So if you e.g. spend 30 gold + 500 TP (random numbers grabbed, I don't know exact costs) on one server, and when you move that to another server where you also purchased 30 gold + 500 TP on housing storage, you do NOT get 60 gold + 1000 TP worth of storage, but only 30 gold + 500 TP?

[HellsGateTT]

One US and one EU will be open at a time to the other 4 of the corresponding region. We could consider doing it in one week cycles and then a month. Thoughts on that? I was just afraid people would say 1 week was not enough time to react.

1 week cycles for remaining servers sounds great. A lot of people (including me) are stuck on one of those servers bcoz they transferred there, didn't like it and never thought they'd have to wait 2 months for another chance. I wouldn't even move if I new I had to wait for so long. I simply wouldn't risk it. Please, make it happen...

[EB64]

So if you e.g. spend 30 gold + 500 TP (random numbers grabbed, I don't know exact costs) on one server, and when you move that to another server where you also purchased 30 gold + 500 TP on housing storage, you do NOT get 60 gold + 1000 TP worth of storage, but only 30 gold + 500 TP?

That's a great point.
At the very least, if you spent TP/Mithril Coins to increase storage on each server, the one that had less spent should get a refund of the TP/MC.
Hadn't actually thought of that until you mentioned it.

[maartena]

I know i shouldn't doubt about it...

But, anyway, Vyvyanne, could you please confirm European servers will be in Europe again (ping matters) ?

I know Maartena said 'YES' but there's a long long time you didn't mention it officially...

Please ?

Thanks ;-)

It's in both of the Producers Letters that were released this year, here is a link to the latest one:

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...%80%99s-Letter

[HairyKrishna]

Evernight is becoming super crowded already and we are not even halfway done with transfers. I am getting a lot of disconnects and lag, and PVP is as laggy as on Brandywine now.

My question is, is there any chance you will revisit the idea of keeping the Snowbourne server open as well? We could really use a NON RP Alternative to Laurelin, Evernight is growing way faster than anticipated, worsened by the fact that many people are now afraid to move to Laurelin. If this is not in the cards can we at least stop incoming transfers to Evernight until we are on the new hardware in the new datacenter in Europe? It has been getting steadily worse day by day, and I really do not want to relive my Brandywine experience, it was memorable enough!

[spelunker]

One US and one EU will be open at a time to the other 4 of the corresponding region. We could consider doing it in one week cycles and then a month. Thoughts on that? I was just afraid people would say 1 week was not enough time to react. And there would be no restrictions to moving back again (with the exception of a 2 week restriction on moving account data back to the same server it came from). Just know the Free periods will not last forever, so once this pass is done make sure you are happy with your choice.

A month per server seems too long. especially since that would mean the servers last in line wouldn't see themselves being opened up to free moves for 5 months (april, assuming the first server is up in December).

My personal suggestion, would be 2 sets of weekly openings. Something like
1st week of December: Ark + Belegaer
2nd Week of December: Crick + Gwaihir
3rd Week of December: Landy + Sirannon
4th Week of December: Gladden + Laurelin
last week of Dec/First week of January: Brandywine + Evernight
2nd week of January: Ark + Belegaer
3rd week of January: Crick + Gwaihir
4th week of January: Landy + Sirannon
5th week of January: Gladden + Laurelin
First week of February: Brandywine + Evernight

This would get things done by early February, rather than dragging the process through the end of April, people would be able to have a second chance at picking a server if their first attempt didn't work out (where if their server was last on a single month or 2 week long system, they would be stuck), and people who might be away from the game for holidays/vacation/work would have a better chance to be present during one of the 2 weeklong events.

P.S. How long are you planning to leave Brandy and Evernight open to leaving right now?

[DKenny]

....On storage. What you describe sounds like it is as expected. The way our storage Upgrades work is account wide you go from Upgrade 1, Upgrade 2, etc. When you merge worlds, the game checks for the highest level upgrade and maintains that, it does not add them together. So if you had Upgrade 1 on World A and Upgrade 2 on World B, and you merged account data/ houses, you will be at Upgrade 2.....

Ouch, so in effect we're actually losing paid for storage slots. Is there anyway to recover slots, by transferring a former house owner back off of the server? Or once one house owner is transferred to a server with an existing house owner, are the purchased storage slots lost for good?

[Vovo]

Why wasn't the account/character transfer process started after all of the new hardware was in place, loaded with data, and operating efficiently?

[EB64]

If they delayed the consolidation, then people would be grumping about having to wait to do it.
Turbine just can't win in that regard. Someone ALWAYS complains no matter what they do and when they do it.

[Vovo]

If they delayed the consolidation, then people would be grumping about having to wait to do it.
Turbine just can't win in that regard. Someone ALWAYS complains no matter what they do and when they do it.

Unsatisfactory answer.

[Jurny]

One US and one EU will be open at a time to the other 4 of the corresponding region. We could consider doing it in one week cycles and then a month. Thoughts on that? I was just afraid people would say 1 week was not enough time to react. And there would be no restrictions to moving back again (with the exception of a 2 week restriction on moving account data back to the same server it came from). Just know the Free periods will not last forever, so once this pass is done make sure you are happy with your choice.

The time frame in which you are referring to in the above comment, is this something that is planned for when all the servers are on the new hardware? If so, then I don't understand why all the remaining 10 servers can't be open to transfer at the same time, unless you are expecting to see a mass exodus off of any given server?

If we are all going to be on new hardware at the time you plan on opening up transfers for the remaining servers, then the new hardware should be able to handle transfers with ease, no matter how many that might be, no?

I don't like the idea of making a schedule as to which server gets to move first and then second etc, etc, etc, we already have that now and you see how outraged some people are about it. Understandably.

I think the best way to handle this, would be to open them all at once for say maybe 2 weeks (if that)...and after that it goes back to paid transfers.

People have been warned long in advance of this migration, and if they haven't decided where to move to and where they feel fits them best, then they aren't doing thier own homework and they have only themselves to blame. Make a character on the remaining servers and spend some time on them NOW and see for yourself, then decide what fits you best.

[spelunker]

People have been warned long in advance of this migration, and if they haven't decided where to move to and where they feel fits them best, then they aren't doing thier own homework and they have only themselves to blame. Make a character on the remaining servers and spend some time on them NOW and see for yourself, then decide what fits you best.

Hard to see what PvMP or end-game activities are like on a given server by simply rolling a fresh character.