World Transfers

[Jillymala]

Could we please have a massively-discounted store sale on character slots and new shared storage slots?

If this can be put on the planning table, I'd love to see it stay available through a lot of the transfer period.

Thanks for all the hard work the team has been putting in on this. It's clearly a huge job, and it's encouraging to see you getting it together.

This shouldn't be a store purchase, in my opinion. If people are being forced to move to another server where they will need to purchase something to play something they've already purchased, that's terrible. The best way to circumvent it is to give people 'x' amount of extra char slots for free and call it a casualty of business operation.

[cdq1958]

Yes it is and I have say 30 slots on meneldor but if I am forced to transfer to lets say Landroval where I have a few toons and my shared is maxed there I will basically have 60/30 slots and be forced to buy more even though I am being forced to transfer. I get that I can access those items but until I drop it to under 30 or pay more I can add anything

It was more a visceral gut reaction and just hope they can throw a discount or something out there for people with tons and tons of toons

Kick,

I just saw another reply to this. I'm getting confused, for I thought that you were talking about shared vault space slots. If I'm mistaken, I apologize.

[Tuco]

Thank you for this info. This is the first time I've read about the reason behind this since that big EU/US merge. The reason makes perfectly sense to me, I just don't understand why it had to be a big secret. But that's just me, I might have missed previous explanations.

I've heard it before - both from Vyvyanne when she was explaining earlier what the problem was, and from Sapience and the QA group during some of the betas when there were issues about whether EU or NA players could join the beta testing while the other group rolled and advanced fresh characters. In addition, we were told that different items could share the same ID across EU/NA servers, and that this could also lead to fatal errors.

[Decaran]

To be honest Tirian, this scares the hell out of me. My guess is Snowy and Evernight are going to have to take the whole of the overflow.. That's a heck of a lot of people on 2 nonrp/language servers.

This also scares me. I love the atmosphere on Laurelin, and would gladly transfer there, but that would mean leaving a lot of my kinnies behind who have no desire to play on Laurelin (they're rather attached to their non-lore-friendly names). I would think that EU servers having one RP, one DE and one FR server would be grounds to add a sixth server for the EU (to facilitate spread of EN, non-RP players), but perhaps Vyv can shed some light on the thought process here?

[the-jen]

Thanks for the reply. I was hoping, the "age" of the account would be the crucial factor.

I think so as well.

[Tirian-Hammerfist]

To be honest Tirian, this scares the hell out of me. My guess is Snowy and Evernight are going to have to take the whole of the overflow.. That's a heck of a lot of people on 2 nonrp/language servers.

Yup, this was my feeling too - Evernight, as the long term recommended server, is likely to stay, and Snowbourn's population is also rather sizeable already - but having to take on all of those from the other servers, even with the move to Amsterdam, is going to make things rather laggy, particularly in the tiny Osgiliath PvMP map.

[StinkyGreene]

This will be devastating news for many. I assume Turbine is planning on a good 50% attrition with this massive cut.

Of course they figured best guess attrition rates into this plan. It would be silly to think that losing some 65% of the servers wouldn't have an effect of that magnitude, but they also figured into the equation monthly operating costs going down tremendously (even if they do buy reputable bandwidth finally). I am sure the number squirrels can justify the reduced revenues during this pre-maintenance mode move.

I am looking forward to the moves, unfortunately I will have no choice of servers, as I am character slot full on Landy and cannot move as per the discussion to Brandywine. That leaves 3 servers, of which I will need all three to move the remaining characters so as not to go over the character slot limit anywhere. But it will be fun to be a part of the hustle and bustle again.

[StarofLs]

Yup, this was my feeling too - Evernight, as the long term recommended server, is likely to stay, and Snowbourn's population is also rather sizeable already - but having to take on all of those from the other servers, even with the move to Amsterdam, is going to make things rather laggy, particularly in the tiny Osgiliath PvMP map.

I am surprised it’s 3 ENG + 2 Language specific for EU, for some reason I thought it would be more of a 5+2 for EU and 5 for NA. I am indeed a little bit scared of the merge (in my case I am scared to lose a rather relaxed RP friendly Landy atmosphere)

[Dithrillion]

If I missed it I'm sorry but, what is the big secret when it comes to the 10 servers that will be staying? I can see some boo-hoo's coming on here and complaining but, why not let us in, so kins and people that need to prepare or organize things can do such that?

[Roufneck]

I've heard it before - both from Vyvyanne when she was explaining earlier what the problem was, and from Sapience and the QA group during some of the betas when there were issues about whether EU or NA players could join the beta testing while the other group rolled and advanced fresh characters. In addition, we were told that different items could share the same ID across EU/NA servers, and that this could also lead to fatal errors.

Thanx for the info. I completely missed those posts

[Mar-Evayave]

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.

Awesome, thanks! With the current projections, then, would you expect the closing servers to start opening (2 at a time) for transfers towards the end of August and the final server at the end of December, so that all 19 will be done by the start of 2016?

Is anyone else reminded of the arrival of Bilbo and co. at Beorn's? 2 at a time, until the end when 3 came all at once because (IIRC) Bombur didn't want to wait for last?

To be honest Tirian, this scares the hell out of me. My guess is Snowy and Evernight are going to have to take the whole of the overflow.. That's a heck of a lot of people on 2 nonrp/language servers.

I don't know what it is like on Laurelin, but I do know that players of all playstyles are welcome on Landroval. RPing is optional. Even on Laurelin, I think the only thing required is that names be appropriate (no Ipwnu type stuff). So I would encourage players to not immediately discount Laurelin/Landroval as their destination servers simply due to the RP element.

Along a similar line, though, can any blue-name (Frelorn/Vyv?) give any reassurances to the RPing communities (and others) regarding harassment? While it is against the rules, griefing does occur. And while our GMs are typically quite prompt and effective at dealing with the situation, the massive influx of players will make the surviving servers much busier. The announcement mentioned an increase in GM interaction/events. With only 10 servers to manage, does this mean we can be reasonably assured that griefing is addressed swiftly? Each server has its trolls,. but now we're gonna end up with fewer servers to contain those trolls, meaning more trolls per server. Which could lead to more griefing, particularly in the chat channels and of the RP communities (which are common targets).

[kickman77]

I'm puzzled why you need to put all your toons on 1 server when you are split across multiple servers now. Is it that you really do actively play all characters on all the NA servers and are unwilling to toss a few?

I have a few toons scattered about different servers, none high level, and they'll be going to other servers than where my maxed toons will end up; if I need to make room and drop a few, I will (after stripping them of gold and other goodies).

You are right but but I am looking at tit fro my perspective

I have 14 toons on Meneldor
I have a few on other servers

If One of those goes down I can transfer to another no biggue because I wont be over the limit, but, if multiple servers that I have toons on are clsing I am forced to move and or consoidate down to 5 servers there may be an overage at one point or another. At that point where there may be an overage thats why I am asking these questions. I kniw I will try and split my toons up (other than the ones from Meneldor) but if Meneldor closes and I am forced to move I am minited because I have to figure out where toons from 3 servers need to go or pay to unlock extra slots

There are also players with maxed slots on multiple servers that are being forced to consolidate.. what about them?

[StarofLs]

Awesome, thanks! With the current projections, then, would you expect the closing servers to start opening (2 at a time) for transfers towards the end of August and the final server at the end of December, so that all 19 will be done by the start of 2016?

Is anyone else reminded of the arrival of Bilbo and co. at Beorn's? 2 at a time, until the end when 3 came all at once because (IIRC) Bombur didn't want to wait for last?



I don't know what it is like on Laurelin, but I do know that players of all playstyles are welcome on Landroval. RPing is optional. Even on Laurelin, I think the only thing required is that names be appropriate (no Ipwnu type stuff). So I would encourage players to not immediately discount Laurelin/Landroval as their destination servers simply due to the RP element.

As long as said non-RP players are friendly and polite I am all of more of them on Landy. Hopefully with new hardware and all we will be able to welcome them to Weatherstock (without lag and crashes that is )next year

[Joylil]

Thank you for the news.

I understand why friendslist can not be transfered, which makes me dream of an updated friendlist system, where you can add one players toon and alts under one name (a group for that player) instead of having to use maybe 9 slots on one player. After so many years of playing this game - it is really hard to keep track of who is who - and this would be a great gift for a big part of the social bunch.

I hope it all will work out smoothly.

[Mar-Evayave]

As long as said non-RP players are friendly and polite I am all of more of them on Landy. Hopefully with new hardware and all we will be able to welcome them to Weatherstock (without lag and crashes that is )next year

Fair point. I've edited my prior post to query this. Fewer servers means that the number of trolls per server is likely to increase (not a fault of non-RPers; a simple side-effect of the consolidation). While non-RPers are more than welcome on Landroval (and I assume Laurelin as well), I do hope any potential griefing remains high on the list of priorities for the GMs.

[Gardiaah]

If I missed it I'm sorry but, what is the big secret when it comes to the 10 servers that will be staying? I can see some boo-hoo's coming on here and complaining but, why not let us in, so kins and people that need to prepare or organize things can do such that?

I have to agree with this at least people would have something to go do while waiting on the transfers, organizing their transfer landings lol. =) Less complaining going on at least if they did, but I understand as well though the anticipation is there.

I do think Kickman77 has some good points too.. I assumed that bank slots n such, things you already spent tp for would just transfer with the toons? I understand about the character slot thing and am glad that I don't think I have that problem but a whole lot of people do and will.. who probably paid a lot to the game to, having spent that much time as well.

Hopefully it will all be for the better in the end =)

[Lagadelphia]

You are right but but I am looking at tit fro my perspective

I have 14 toons on Meneldor
I have a few on other servers

If One of those goes down I can transfer to another no biggue because I wont be over the limit, but, if multiple servers that I have toons on are clsing I am forced to move and or consoidate down to 5 servers there may be an overage at one point or another. At that point where there may be an overage thats why I am asking these questions. I kniw I will try and split my toons up (other than the ones from Meneldor) but if Meneldor closes and I am forced to move I am minited because I have to figure out where toons from 3 servers need to go or pay to unlock extra slots

There are also players with maxed slots on multiple servers that are being forced to consolidate.. what about them?

I would think that folks with maxed slots on multiple servers are outliers. You can't plan something like this around outliers. You have to plan around what makes up the bulk of your population. Someone on here has posted that they have maxed out the slots on every single server. You cannot make that person whole.

[Gwinthilnel]

A question I have is how will my lag scenario look once the EU servers move to Amsterdam? I am one of the ones in the US who just picked the suggested server, not knowing it was an EU server. Where is it located now and how will the far distance impact people like me? I'm on Evernight which I think has a good chance of sticking around.

[whatever76543]

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.

Will seniority for these names be taken into account whatsoever? So far this seems to heavily favor existing characters no matter how new. Obviously inactive accounts can be discounted (I assume you will be sending out emails to everyone of break right now). But what about kinships which have rich histories compared to others? My kinship on firefoot still has members that participated in the first ever lieutenant of dol guldor kill. Or how about griefers who would find out where old characters are planning to transfer and would set up characters or kinships in order to force changes on them. That seems extreme since trolls are an endangered species on lotro, but they absolutely still exist.

[Jillymala]

A quick question about EU servers...

You've mentioned that there will be at least one roleplay server staying up, and one from each language - so that makes 3, with presumably 2 EN additional non-RP servers staying. This means that EN players (and all those in the EU that choose to go for an English language server, as they prefer it to French or German servers) that don't want to roleplay are going to be constricted to two servers?

Looking at the servers again, perhaps it might not be that bad in the best case scenario.
So in short:
DE RP = Belegaer
FR RP = Estel
EN RP = Laurelin


If the DE speaking crowd all moves to the DE/RP server.. that's like 5 extra server pops on Belegaer.. holy cow..
If the FR speaking crowd all moves to the FR/RP server.. that's only 1 extra server taking the load. Feasible.

2 servers staying open (we'll use Snowy and Evernight as the example) now have to absorb the other 4 servers, which after looking at the login numbers (whether accurate or not) doesn't seem to be so very bad for us unless all of the other servers decide to dump their language servers and come to the 2 EN servers.

[Gardiaah]

A question I have is how will my lag scenario look once the EU servers move to Amsterdam? I am one of the ones in the US who just picked the suggested server, not knowing it was an EU server. Where is it located now and how will the far distance impact people like me? I'm on Evernight which I think has a good chance of sticking around.

I wondered this too and thought of whether or not to just stick with na servers now.. which yeah i know all the work on actually mainly Evernight too.. is pretty much gone, but I was guessing that .. if they lag since it's over here and it's moving back there.. won't we be lagging then? sorta the same thought in mind on that...

hugs n comforts thru this time =)

[Mar-Evayave]

A question I have is how will my lag scenario look once the EU servers move to Amsterdam? I am one of the ones in the US who just picked the suggested server, not knowing it was an EU server. Where is it located now and how will the far distance impact people like me?

I think it would be hard for anyone in the US to accurately say how it will work out, but your best bet would probably be to ask any EU friends you might have. They've been dealing with this exact situation ever since Codemasters returned control of the EU servers to Turbine.

As an example, I have a number of friends from the EU (as well as Asia, Australia, South America, etc). I don't really know what their latency is, but at the same time they seem able to play the game as well as I can. My guess would be that your connection strength won't take a huge hit unless you already have a slow internet connection (the way I do -- I get about 3 megs per second).

[cagedrage]

Will seniority for these names be taken into account whatsoever? So far this seems to heavily favor existing characters no matter how new. Obviously inactive accounts can be discounted (I assume you will be sending out emails to everyone of break right now). But what about kinships which have rich histories compared to others? My kinship on firefoot still has members that participated in the first ever lieutenant of dol guldor kill. Or how about griefers who would find out where old characters are planning to transfer and would set up characters or kinships in order to force changes on them. That seems extreme since trolls are an endangered species on lotro, but they absolutely still exist.

I totally agree with you here, this will be a golden opportunity for bitter ex-kinmembers to get back at their former kinships. We are looking at kinships with hundreds of members being forced to change their name because that name already exists on the new server with a grand total of one member...

[BangoTwinkletoes]

It's not necessarily the case that all three EU RP servers will continue. Look at the statement below:

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).

That means one RP server per region and at least one DE and FR servers, not one EN, DE and FR RP servers. So there is the potential, given the well known size of the German lotro player base, for TWO DE servers to continue, resulting in just two EN servers. So I don't see Laurelin's safety being certain.

[Annariel]

Simple solution would be make /world default to whatever language the server is intended for (EN-US for the NA servers), then have something like /world-ru, /world-fr, and /world-de as other channels that players can opt in to. This also helps keep the /world chat usuable for the majority of the population as speech in other languages without translation is basically white noise at best.

You do realize that some of us speak multiple languages? Besides English, there are three languages in which I could answer most questions, and then there's the languages that I can at least read and answer in English. (Reading is usually easier than writing, so this kind of bilingual communication can work pretty well.)

Sure, it might be white noise to some, even most, but for some of us, it's quite delightful to recognize languages from our own or nearby countries.