World Transfers

[Mar-Evayave]

The flags are a common way of games to indicate which languages their games are translated into. The common visual way of representing this is by listing the flags that match the names of those languages.

You don't see a Spanish, Japanese, or Chinese flag because Turbine does not provide a Spanish client, or a Japanese one, or a Chinese one.

The flags indicate which languages the client has been translated into. You are the one who brought up flags in the EULA as meaning specific countries, not specific languages.

I'm not getting into your twisted games of nitpicking what "support" means.

Click the EULAs. Read the mention of "France" and "Germany". They used those flags because they go with those countries.

If they merely meant the language, they would have said French- or German-speaking peoples from any country.

I doubt you read the EULAs for those two. If you had, you'd see that the EULA is about the countries, not the languages.

Turbine is more than welcoming of people who are from other countries. They simply cannot provide support (in regards to contests, language packs, etc) for them all. There are a lot of Spanish-speaking people too.

In fact, if Turbine was supporting the languages of French and German based on the language itself and not the country, it would seem a bit illogical. Why? Well, because neither language even reaches the top ten in regards to how many people speak them (as a first/native language)! The top language spoken is Chinese. Second most-used language is Spanish. English is 3rd. German is 11th and French is 18th. I don't think the language spoken is the driving force behind the support given. The only thing that can be granted here is that some countries may be big but might not have access to MMOs. However, I don't think China or Spain are those countries.

[maartena]

to those replying to me: sorry for having a mind of my own, but since we have pvp servers, i thought we'd keep 1
rather than complaining about wanting an RP server, you should THINK about whats possible, what they COULD do

i see that as a nice change, as many do pvp, and we have a RP server, plus all 3 languages have a normal server

i guess RPers take it a little too seriously, but they can create RP kinships and RP with them

so if we'd have 1 EN, 1 DE, 1 FR, 1 RP and 1 pvp server, we have 5, we have all languages and we hve RP and pvp servers

you may disagree, but i think its a good idea (WARNING: OPINION ALERT)

All servers are already PVP servers. Are you suggesting that we should remove PVP zones from other servers and only keep them on one server? What about those people who like to play freep, and also really want to stay in the kin that they are in?

[Curuer_Bauglir]

The flags are a common way of games to indicate which languages their games are translated into. The common visual way of representing this is by listing the flags that match the names of those languages.

You don't see a Spanish, Japanese, or Chinese flag because Turbine does not provide a Spanish client, or a Japanese one, or a Chinese one.

The flags indicate which languages the client has been translated into. You are the one who brought up flags in the EULA as meaning specific countries, not specific languages.

I'm not getting into your twisted games of nitpicking what "support" means.

As evident by my post count, I'm not usually one to step into arguments online, but I had to jump in and support ShireDweller here. I'll even provide a real-life example. On a recent trip to Disneyworld, my son collected a park map in each language they provided cause that's what 6 year olds do. What was on the very top of the German language map? A German flag. French map? French flag. Japanese map? Japanese flag. I think you get the idea. I didn't stop and ask any Disney employees, but I'm fairly certain those flags indicated the language each map supported, not the native country to which they were restricted to.

[LordKernigit]

Just recently returned to the game but cant remember if i will need to reinstall the game for server transfers its been a while since the codemaster transfers and just needed a reminder if anyone can help sorry if its a dumb question but just wanted to make sure.

Thanks for any help given


Eng

[ShireDweller]

As evident by my post count, I'm not usually one to step into arguments online, but I had to jump in and support ShireDweller here. I'll even provide a real-life example. On a recent trip to Disneyworld, my son collected a park map in each language they provided cause that's what 6 year olds do. What was on the very top of the German language map? A German flag. French map? French flag. Japanese map? Japanese flag. I think you get the idea. I didn't stop and ask any Disney employees, but I'm fairly certain those flags indicated the language each map supported, not the native country to which they were restricted to.

Thank you!

[camenecium]

I suggest giving each world multiple preconfigured /world channels, one for each language that has its own client: /world, /monde, /welt. ...This might make it easier for RPers from various countries to get together and organize where their own RP channels are located.

I go back and forth on multiple world channels. World channel now as notification and advertising works best when everybody sees it--including ads for kinships and fellowships in "unsupported" languages like Greek. As actual chat, it works best with a common language. Maybe world as it is now morphs into a separate /announce, although like glff it will probably end up with chat as well. Then thinking about the limited number of user channels and chat tabs versus the proliferation of more filters and output channels...will it be too cumbersome?

One interesting point that's come up in this thread is how people who can converse casually in English can't RP in English; it takes much more skill and experience with the common language to basically write fiction on the fly and as part of a dialog. Beyond the world channel, you'd almost need to expose somewhere like on the player tooltip "I RP in EN and ES", otherwise ad hoc RP becomes problematic for a large part of the RPers merged onto a server of a different language.

[Trixie_Me]

Rename tokens do not work the same way as transfers when it comes to overwriting another name. We can look at making a change to this later down the line after the majority of transfers are completed, but for this time frame we feel it is better to give the players who are transferring the priority to claim their name from an in-active account, over giving that to a any player using a rename token.

This is truly disheartening and I hope that the process is re-evaluated before Monday. It is far, far better to extend the time and implement the transfers in a fair manner than to get it done quickly and leave a large segment of the player base at a severe disadvantage.

Please consider postponing the transfers until:

1) Transfers are open to ALL characters on servers that are closing down and not rolled out in stages.
2) Rename tokens will allow people to claim the name of an inactive character.
3) Both 1 & 2.

Really, without one of these 3 solutions, you are putting people who are in wave 2 or 3 of the transfers at a real disadvantage. It is almost assuring them that if they can't get their name on transfer, they can't have a decent chance at a 2nd choice.

[Mar-Evayave]

As evident by my post count, I'm not usually one to step into arguments online, but I had to jump in and support ShireDweller here. I'll even provide a real-life example. On a recent trip to Disneyworld, my son collected a park map in each language they provided cause that's what 6 year olds do. What was on the very top of the German language map? A German flag. French map? French flag. Japanese map? Japanese flag. I think you get the idea. I didn't stop and ask any Disney employees, but I'm fairly certain those flags indicated the language each map supported, not the native country to which they were restricted to.

I never said that they don't use flags to represent languages. I said that in this case, they use the flags because they go with the countries. If you go and read the EULAs, they specifically identify the countries of France and Germany. Not the languages, but the countries themselves.

Just because flags are commonly used to represent languages, they are not in this case. When Disneyworld gives out a park map for many languages, they aren't necessarily concerned with legality. It's more about accessibility for them.

For Turbine, it's about legality. Turbine could get in serious legal hot water if they provided certain features for just any country. Turbine has said this main times when they hold contests. They can't provide legal support to everyone. The only countries they routinely support (as evidenced by the EULAs) is the US, UK, France and Germany.

[Yuffie67]

Question...

If my House isn't able to go with me, (do to no open slots etc, or Doesn't Happen. )
Will next House I buy have my chest unlocked where it was at.
Not so much INSANE gold costs they are now. BUT, I have Mith Coins spent on mine, I would be rather frustrated to have to spend more TP/Mith Coins to get that back. =/

Specially since that batch of TP was bought with real money, and turned into Mith Coins.

[ladysherlockian]

I wonder if this is a good place to ask the question which has been bugging me since the server mergers have been announced. I am currently playing as a free player and unfortunately cannot afford to pay for the game in any foreseeable future. There is a limit of two character per server for f2p players. I have already used the two slots on the server where I play my main characters. If this server stays, and others where I have some alts will be closed, then I would not be able to transfer the alts to the new server without paying for additional character slots, am I right? And the only free option would be to delete these additional characters from the servers which are closed down? Will I have a choice which characters to keep and which ones I would have to abandon together with their servers?

[Etnograf]

I have a question about Title Picker Box. Tell me, please, will you make Russian names of servers (Mirkwood, Fornost, Aglarond) be able to be chosen as a title?

[daneyul]

1. It was answered early on that you may transfer again freely up until Oct. 10th, so if you get -1 and a free rename token, but wish to transfer to a server your original name is available on instead, feel free to do so.

2. More robust hardware and better pipes means no, your warhorse lag will be unaffected, and those who have no lag on warsteeds shouldn't see a difference either. Since rubber-banding is the server being out of sync with your system, it is possible if your net connection was better than theirs, better pipes on their end will change it for you, but I wouldn't expect that at all.

Thanks for the reply. Never get rubber banding, just a slight (but immersion breaking) hitch ever 10-20 seconds when riding over landscape with a war steed. Probably texture loading (though I'm on an ssd) but there's been some speculation it could still be server side related, and I was hoping it might increase the games ability to download textures faster as I enter new sections, though those are already likely downloaded and it's just bad client optimization.

So, the question becomes--what WILL we see from new server side hardware? If the big improvement is bigger pipes and faster server processing, yet... at the same time... all the servers are increasing their population, it sounds like it's likely to be a wash in terms of game play, except maybe to smooth out some slow zone times here and there.

[Milarien]

I agree. I'm not super happy at the prospect I need to spend a ton of cash just to move my characters. I think it should be included as part of the parcel Turbine has to deal with for merging servers, but I can deal with meeting half way and share the expense, but it shouldn't be put entirely on the player. Turbine is asking a lot of their players here.

I don't think it should be a store purchase either. I think we should be able to make any character created before this announcement, but I'm also willing to give a little. But I agree, Turbine should suck up the character slots.

I'm puzzled why Turbine is closing servers and putting the entire burden on their customer base. They want consolidation and I'm willing to put up with the hassle, even the name loss, but they should take on a larger part of that burden and the larger part they could shoulder are the character slots.

When I made characters on other servers, it was a long time ago in another time and the game was very different. I don't want characters on separate servers anymore with split Mithril Coin resources and perks.

If they're not going to offer free slots, then please provide 1 slot per 2 purchased and put new slots on deep discount in the store.

I would love to see a free token for whatever you get by default. For example, if you have 5 free character slots and you have to move, you get 5 character slot tokens (in addition to any you have purchased). If you have free shared vault space, you get a token for that. Etc. Things that stack only stack up to a certain amount, so I won't really save that much room due to stacking when I merge servers (assuming that's what I'm going to do, I may have to choose to have toons on multiple servers going forward to avoid losing space or having to buy more).

[Milarien]

I don't think this is a good idea... It will create economic problems with people trying to extort high prices from people willing to pay for a name, and those who are not caring about names but have 20 toons getting filthy rich.

Or those who would run out and create toons with names they know will conflict just to get tokens to sell...

[Halgoreth]

I wonder if this is a good place to ask the question which has been bugging me since the server mergers have been announced. I am currently playing as a free player and unfortunately cannot afford to pay for the game in any foreseeable future. There is a limit of two character per server for f2p players. I have already used the two slots on the server where I play my main characters. If this server stays, and others where I have some alts will be closed, then I would not be able to transfer the alts to the new server without paying for additional character slots, am I right?

You cannot move them to servers where there are not enough slots. Same as before.

Unless you have more than 10 characters total (or 8, rather, if they're on all on US servers and two of them aren't already on Brandywine), you should be able to find homes for all of them when the number of servers drops to 5. There is nothing forcing you to combine server accounts.

If you want a different character to be co-located with your main, just move the second one out before moving the new one in. It sounds to me like we will have that ability.

[cdq1958]

Thanks for the reply. Never get rubber banding, just a slight (but immersion breaking) hitch ever 10-20 seconds when riding over landscape with a war steed. Probably texture loading (though I'm on an ssd) but there's been some speculation it could still be server side related, and I was hoping it might increase the games ability to download textures faster as I enter new sections, though those are already likely downloaded and it's just bad client optimization.

So, the question becomes--what WILL we see from new server side hardware? If the big improvement is bigger pipes and faster server processing, yet... at the same time... all the servers are increasing their population, it sounds like it's likely to be a wash in terms of game play, except maybe to smooth out some slow zone times here and there.

Textures cached on the SSD or fast read USB flash drive will load faster into memory than those on an old-fashioned spinning magnetic media disk, but that's still slower than having the textures cached in RAM. This is one of the things that cause hitching and if the client-server mismatch is too bad, cause rubber-banding, for the server's data overrides what the client has started rendering. The server has to tell the client which land block assets are going to be needed based on a prediction. If that prediction is incorrect, the whole cache may have to be flushed, and if that happens, you might get a swap file hit as well. Another thing that causes the hitching is having the collision detection system tell the server that a collision occurred when the client begins rendering as if a collision didn't happen. Again, the server data will override what the client starts rendering.

[maartena]

Among my friends I've seen many disappear for a long time due to RL stuff like having to focus completely on their education or health issues and such, and when they finally can play again they'd be very upset to suddenly have lost their name. And I'm sure that some who return will leave again when they see that someone else took their name And that their old friends won't recognize them anymore.

If they are GOOD friends, you could contact them, ask them for their user id and password, and perform any moves for them, or reserve their name for them. I already know I will probably lose someone from my kin, who had SAID to keep him in kin while he serves on some ship in the pacific in the Navy, and I do not have contact details for him. He left in January, literary like a week before the transfers, and he said he would be back some time in 2016 as he would be stationed in Japan for a year.

LOTRO is a special type of game, I have often seen people on my main server who comes back after being gone a couple of years, lured into the green grass of a new game, and then they got tired of it and they remember all the fun they had in LOTRO so they pop back in again. Don't chase them away, please!

No one is being chased away. In addition to in-game email, Turbine will send out mails to their registered account email, so they will know that their server is closing. Of course they won't know where everyone has gone, but that isn't something we can do anything about. In-game email will be kept for 6 months (basically, till the time the server REALLY closes at the end of the year), so if they log on before that, they can follow the kinship.

[Iris_Piperylie]

As suggested by Leixy in a different thread, taking screenshots is a good way to remember characters that you may have to delete for these server changes.

I would add to take screenshots of your wallet, vault and bag inventories before you transfer over to make sure everything is in place once you get there. (thank you paintpixie for the recommendation! )

Another suggestion, but this is not meant to stir up trouble or cause issue for a particular server or group of players, this is just a thought for those who might be interested in this. The title gift boxes for the closed-down servers will be a nice way to remember them, and I would say that for elf characters, it would be especially nice to have "of Imladris" to use instead of the title "of Rivendell" for your characters...if Imladris is going to be one of the servers that is shut down.

[Ellyllon]

Other games have freed up names successfully. I think Blizzard just did it? (I haven't played that in awhile, but I believe I saw that announcement.)

When I've left a game, let subscriptions lapse (mine here is Lifetime), etc, I still keep some track of how the game is doing. I think it was SWTOR that released names, & I went back specifically to save mine. I'm sure some people will lose the names, but odds are, anyone who cares will see announcements about it & protect what they want to protect.

Even if we have to buy a name change, they really should consider freeing old names once the transfers are complete. I do feel people who currently play, have active subscriptions, should take precedence, especially since we're losing names/houses/kin, & servers.

[Gwanwyn]

This is truly disheartening and I hope that the process is re-evaluated before Monday. It is far, far better to extend the time and implement the transfers in a fair manner than to get it done quickly and leave a large segment of the player base at a severe disadvantage.

Please consider postponing the transfers until:

1) Transfers are open to ALL characters on servers that are closing down and not rolled out in stages.
2) Rename tokens will allow people to claim the name of an inactive character.
3) Both 1 & 2.

Really, without one of these 3 solutions, you are putting people who are in wave 2 or 3 of the transfers at a real disadvantage. It is almost assuring them that if they can't get their name on transfer, they can't have a decent chance at a 2nd choice.

I can't say how much I agree with this! The suggestions you made seem like the most fair and balanced.

[Milarien]

We will see next week, but everyone keeps stating that the currently most populated servers will survive.

What if, just saying for arguments sake, what if Turbine does the opposite?

List low population servers as the "survivors" and have the high pop server accounts transfer to those? Maybe there are some advantages to that, like ensuring as many active accounts as possible. One might argue that if they force a big population to take action the resulting number of active accounts would be greater than if they force a smaller population to take action, if you have an account on a highly populated server that you are not using much, and that server is a survivor, you don't have to do anything, thus remaining a passive account, is that a good thing for Turbine?

Or what if they base their survival list on pure technical parameters like the most recently installed and updated server?

Again, we do not know yet, I just throw that in for you guys to discuss. I am sure you can handle both scenarios.

We already know this won't happen, because they stated Brandywine would survive.

[maartena]

This is truly disheartening and I hope that the process is re-evaluated before Monday. It is far, far better to extend the time and implement the transfers in a fair manner than to get it done quickly and leave a large segment of the player base at a severe disadvantage.

Please consider postponing the transfers until:

1) Transfers are open to ALL characters on servers that are closing down and not rolled out in stages.
2) Rename tokens will allow people to claim the name of an inactive character.
3) Both 1 & 2.

Really, without one of these 3 solutions, you are putting people who are in wave 2 or 3 of the transfers at a real disadvantage. It is almost assuring them that if they can't get their name on transfer, they can't have a decent chance at a 2nd choice.

I think we are at the point of no return with this one.... Also, there is something I didn't consider: People with rename tokens NOW could claim an inactive name before you are able to. Changing the name a rename token works is something that probably requires some recoding, and to postpone everything after this week's announcement is probably not going to happen. That ship has sailed I think.

That said, you can KEEP the rename token, not use it for months, and maybe eventually they will allow just that, and you can use it then. No reason to stop the transfers now.

I'm actually of the "Lets get it over with" crowd. Bring it on, do the transfers. I will deal with the pain of name changes later.

[Shanbwa]

All servers are already PVP servers. Are you suggesting that we should remove PVP zones from other servers and only keep them on one server? What about those people who like to play freep, and also really want to stay in the kin that they are in?

can you point me to the part where i said sopmething along the lines "and 1 must-pvp-there-only server" ?

i was just thinking about having 1 server especially made for pvp
i dont pvp (in any MMO), so its not for myself

you can pve in it, and you can still pvp in all other servers...... clear now?

its kinda late here (nighttime) so i didnt see you actually ASKING when i typed most of this post so: no, i'm NOT suggesting that

can i be any more clear?

question to 1 of turbine's devs/moderators/admins:
- can we transfer characters 1 by 1? and, can we at least first delete all other characters on the server we like to move to, before transferring?

i'm gonna delete all chars on the server i'll join, but just wanna know for sure in case something would happen, and i, for some reason, wouldnt be able to do it as i want it
plus asking for all other people in lotro

also, i could've sworn i saw pvp servers before
and, please dont give the DE an RP server, as then frenchies would feel left out, as they wouldn't have one (EN + EN RP + DE + FR + DE RP = 5 servers)
i'm not french, but i'd imagine feeling bad because of that

(again, just my opinion/thoughts)

[Rognomli]

To the people who are afraid they might be trolled or are nervous about their name being taken,take a bit of time out from your schedule and go to the 2-3 servers everybody agrees that will remain open and create toons with names you have on the server you are playing!That way you can learn whether or not the name is taken already and also protect yourself from potentially being trolled.Then if the time comes to transfer you are certain about what server has which names.

[Ellyllon]

To the people who are afraid they might be trolled or are nervous about their name being taken,take a bit of time out from your schedule and go to the 2-3 servers everybody agrees that will remain open and create toons with names you have on the server you are playing!That way you can learn whether or not the name is taken already and also protect yourself from potentially being trolled.Then if the time comes to transfer you are certain about what server has which names.

I've saved what I could, as I'm sure others have, but the real issue concerns those servers which get to move last. Since we can only get a name from an inactive character, we have to wait for our transfer to make an attempt. If our server is last to move, our chances dwindle. THAT is the problem, imo.

Also, 7 years ago, I wasn't able to get the names I wanted. They were taken - they could very well have been inactive since before that time. That is another problem. Free up the names, let us save them, & people may be happier. (I certainly will.)

eta: I personally care more about the housing issue. I waited for so long to get the one I wanted - it's going to be heartbreaking to lose that. The names issue seems incredibly *avoidable,* though. Free them up, & let people, at the same starting point, have at it.