World Transfers

[misner24]

If a kinship is only 8 characters, and a few of them don't play anymore, what happens when/if I move the kin to another server? Do I have any specific period of time in which to recruit or replace those missing characters that is longer than the usual 'disband' window of time?

[cdq1958]

If a kinship is only 8 characters, and a few of them don't play anymore, what happens when/if I move the kin to another server? Do I have any specific period of time in which to recruit or replace those missing characters that is longer than the usual 'disband' window of time?

The automatic disbanding of kinships as a consequence of having small membership lists was removed some time ago. You can have a kinship of one, if you want to.

[Shriya]

Hi,

I read somewhere in this thread you could have placeholder houses/characters. How does this work exactly? I'd like to transfer to Landroval from Nimrodel (if that login list is any indication of the amount of active players on Nimrodel...). I've got three characters on Landroval (only logged in with, haven't done anything with them yet) with exactly the same names as on Nimrodel.

Would the Nimrodel characters get the -1 in the name? Or can I choose to replace my "placeholder" characters with the characters I actually want to transfer (and play with) on Landroval?
Thanks for the help!

[Alianne_EU]

Hi,

I read somewhere in this thread you could have placeholder houses/characters. How does this work exactly? I'd like to transfer to Landroval from Nimrodel (if that login list is any indication of the amount of active players on Nimrodel...). I've got three characters on Landroval (only logged in with, haven't done anything with them yet) with exactly the same names as on Nimrodel.

Would the Nimrodel characters get the -1 in the name? Or can I choose to replace my "placeholder" characters with the characters I actually want to transfer (and play with) on Landroval?
Thanks for the help!

As I understand it, your former Nimrodel characters will transfer in with the -1 and get a free rename token. You can then delete the unwanted characters and rename the ones you do want to play.

If you don't have any empty character slots on Landroval, another method would be to delete the characters on Landroval immediately before you transfer and hope no-one else nips in and grabs your name before your transfer is complete.

Personally, I'm going to do the process one character at a time rather than try to cope with multiple delete/renames in one go (being on Gilrain, I'm in the 'happy' position of having known from day one that my server would close and made preparations accordingly).

[Ellyllon]

I think everyone should get a free naming token irrespective of naming conflicts.

If they also freed up long unused names from inactive accounts, this would be a great idea, especially!

[hati]

I like Arya's idea of kinships that are moving to another server which already has the same name, having "Of (servername they are transferring from) put at the end of their name rather than actually having to file a request to change their name. This would keep the group's identity intact, so that folks transferring can easily identify their old kinship.

[Ellyllon]

I like Arya's idea of kinships that are moving to another server which already has the same name, having "Of (servername they are transferring from) put at the end of their name rather than actually having to file a request to change their name. This would keep the group's identity intact, so that folks transferring can easily identify their old kinship.

I'd be very happy with that solution. I hope they consider it.


I went ahead & saved our kinship name on the server we've chosen. I assume that works as with saving a character name? I'd somehow delete this one? (If not, I've made a horrible, horrible mistake!) Obviously, we'd want to keep the old one, being maxed & all.

[camenecium]

I like Arya's idea of kinships that are moving to another server which already has the same name, having "Of (servername they are transferring from) put at the end of their name rather than actually having to file a request to change their name. This would keep the group's identity intact, so that folks transferring can easily identify their old kinship.

While I don't like this idea for character renames, especially on RP Supported servers, I think it makes enormous sense for Kinships that have more leeway in their names than characters. +1.

[Mar-Evayave]

I KNOW the new transfer system is not active yet.
Of course I used a paid transfer.
I don’t want a -#. I don’t want a new name.
The person who has my name on Landroval hasn’t been active in over a year.
If I transferred off of Landy, then transferred back, can I get my name without the -1, since the peron with my name isn’t active?

Once free xfers start, in THEORY, you should be able to create a character named exactly the way your current one is on a non-Landroval server. That includes the -1. So for example, if you want your character to be Wiga, but is currently Wiga-1 on Landroval, create a Wiga-1 on another server. Then transfer your real Wiga-1 to the same server. Because both Wiga-1's will be active, your real Wiga will lose the priority for the name and be granted a different name with a rename token. Use the rename token to change the name to Wiga. Then transfer back to Landroval. Now that your name matches the name of the inactive person on Landroval, you should win the name priority.

Remember, that's all in theory. I can't guarantee it will work. But it's the only thing I can think of that could help you claim the name you want from the inactive character. It depends upon both Wiga and Wiga-1 being available on a non-Landroval server. This method allows you to get a rename token for free, instead of paying for it.

[Guhrasoh]

Once free xfers start, in THEORY, you should be able to create a character named exactly the way your current one is on a non-Landroval server. That includes the -1.

The last time I checked you couldn't use numbers and special characters (like - ) while naming your char.

[Coolhandlukeboy]

I have taken long breaks as well. And I think it's a reasonable expectation that your characters and your progress remains intact. After all, maintaining that information has no impact on the active player base.

Having said that, I emphatically believe a name wipe of all characters not logged into for a year is both fair and in the best interest of the game. Names are not a big deal early in the life cycle of a game, but become a big issue as games age. It is simply unfair to those actively playing and paying (read: keeping the lights on so you have a game to come back to!), to allow inactive, non-paying people to take up such a precious and limited resource.

For me, it is a simple question of fairness. Freeing up the names for everyone (including those who choose to return and contribute) seems reasonable and equitable.

Yeah, I still don't see it that way. Names are a big deal early on for many players, let alone later on. It would be more fair if this was a known issues: log on every year, or risk your name being wiped. However, that is not how the game is. Many players feel assured that their name is pretty safe in LOTRO. Yes, it would be nice to run around with a more original name. This is more to do with the restrictions on creating names in LOTRO, than by people not deserving to keep their name if they are inactive a year or more. It would seem fair to wipe names from people who haven't logged on since Free to Play. But every year... no, I don't see that as emphatically as you do.

As far as keeping the lights on, I am an active player when I am "back in the game" and have paid in waaaay more money than your average joe. The game was in a sorry state two years ago (almost to date) with instances/raids being scornfully tossed aside, PvMP in a really bad place and many active kins losing interest. My server - Riddermark - is practically dead and was dying then. There were poor decisions on Turbine's part then and I am happy with what is happening right now.

Mind you, I'm not disagreeing with the name wipe. It seems that it is an unavoidable issue. I disagree with it being called fair and something that should be done every year. Sure, the name thing has to happen, but that should be a rare event (like this server merger), or listed in the TOS. You are going beyond this server issue and making it a general idea. Right now, it seems like the most equitable solution to an unfortunate byproduct of the server mergers.

[Yuffie67]

Yeah, I still don't see it that way. Names are a big deal early on for many players, let alone later on. It would be more fair if this was a known issues: log on every year, or risk your name being wiped. However, that is not how the game is. Many players feel assured that their name is pretty safe in LOTRO. Yes, it would be nice to run around with a more original name. This is more to do with the restrictions on creating names in LOTRO, than by people not deserving to keep their name if they are inactive a year or more. It would seem fair to wipe names from people who haven't logged on since Free to Play. But every year... no, I don't see that as emphatically as you do.

As far as keeping the lights on, I am an active player when I am "back in the game" and have paid in waaaay more money than your average joe. The game was in a sorry state two years ago (almost to date) with instances/raids being scornfully tossed aside, PvMP in a really bad place and many active kins losing interest. My server - Riddermark - is practically dead and was dying then. There were poor decisions on Turbine's part then and I am happy with what is happening right now.

Mind you, I'm not disagreeing with the name wipe. It seems that it is an unavoidable issue. I disagree with it being called fair and something that should be done every year. Sure, the name thing has to happen, but that should be a rare event (like this server merger), or listed in the TOS. You are going beyond this server issue and making it a general idea. Right now, it seems like the most equitable solution to an unfortunate byproduct of the server mergers.

1 year is to short honestly. I know way to many players who come back after year. Anything Past 2 year mark should be just name wiped.
Even if they set it to 5 years back wipe, we would get a good chunk of names.



BUMP to question about Losing house thats got Mith Coins invested in it. Repaying the insane Gold Cost to increase chest is one thing, repaying Mith Coins is... Ummm NO, your giving me that back kinda thing.

[Olgomil]

BUMP to question about Losing house thats got Mith Coins invested in it. Repaying the insane Gold Cost to increase chest is one thing, repaying Mith Coins is... Ummm NO, your giving me that back kinda thing.

If you have a house with XXX chest slots right now, when moving to the new server and purchase a house, your chest in the new house will have XXX slots (same number as in the old house).

Sergio :-)

[elderlygamer]

...because they've already announced that there will be unlimited transfers among each set of five surviving servers while they see how the transfers are going.

I know it was mentioned the transfers would be free between the 5 servers whenever the transfers are first made available, but can you please link the post where they said it will be unlimited? I've searched but can't find it, and I was wondering about multiple transfers for one character. Thanks.

[tickertape]

Will there be a refund on silver pre-paid for housing upkeep for closing worlds?
Myself, I have houses on every server I currently play. They all have different amounts of time left on rent.

cheers

[Tuco]

I know it was mentioned the transfers would be free between the 5 servers whenever the transfers are first made available, but can you please link the post where they said it will be unlimited? I've searched but can't find it, and I was wondering about multiple transfers for one character. Thanks.

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...79#post7410979

Answer #5.

[Olgomil]

Will there be a refund on silver pre-paid for housing upkeep for closing worlds?
Myself, I have houses on every server I currently play. They all have different amounts of time left on rent.

"When transferring a character who owns a house on a world, the belongings and the history of the ownership of that house will go with that character to its new world. This means storage capacity, Upkeep Prepayments, Ownership time and Grace period time will all be remembered and applied to the house you might purchase on your destination world. When you log into the new world with your Home owner, you will find an email that will inform you of your previous address and will contain an attachment of currency equal to the purchase cost of the house. All of your deco is now in Escrow Housing storage, and character bound items are returned to the appropriate characters. If you already own a house on the destination world the upkeep, storage capacity and items will be granted to the existing house on the account."

https://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/world-transfers

Sergio :-)

[elderlygamer]

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...79#post7410979

Answer #5.

You are awesome. Thanks!

[can0peas]

If you have a house with XXX chest slots right now, when moving to the new server and purchase a house, your chest in the new house will have XXX slots (same number as in the old house).

Sergio :-)

Also, if you have a house on Server 'Survivor 1' with XXX slots and a house on Server 'Departing 1' with YYY slots on the same subscription and choose to move the House Owning Character from 'Departing 1' to Server Survivor 1, the house on that server will have XXX + YYY slots, or be capped at the 120 slot maximum. Depending on the specifics of your house(s) on the surviving and departing servers, you might choose to move a House-owning character between two surviving servers to 'liquidate' (for silver) a Standard House on a surviving server in order to buy a Deluxe House to replace a Deluxe House you had on a departing server (or to upgrade) - you can still only have 1 non-Kin house per subscription per server. There are some factors to consider regarding housing and The Closures, and some special steps may be appropriate.

[Scirocco]

Once free xfers start, in THEORY, you should be able to create a character named exactly the way your current one is on a non-Landroval server. That includes the -1. So for example, if you want your character to be Wiga, but is currently Wiga-1 on Landroval, create a Wiga-1 on another server. Then transfer your real Wiga-1 to the same server. Because both Wiga-1's will be active, your real Wiga will lose the priority for the name and be granted a different name with a rename token. Use the rename token to change the name to Wiga. Then transfer back to Landroval. Now that your name matches the name of the inactive person on Landroval, you should win the name priority.

Remember, that's all in theory. I can't guarantee it will work. But it's the only thing I can think of that could help you claim the name you want from the inactive character. It depends upon both Wiga and Wiga-1 being available on a non-Landroval server. This method allows you to get a rename token for free, instead of paying for it.

Well, last I checked, you couldn't create a name with a hyphen.

But the solution is even easier. Make a Wiga character on a surviving server and transfer it over to Landy. That should cause the transferee charcacter to peempt the inactive character. Then, delete the transferred Wiga and rename Wiga-1 to Wiga.

[tickertape]

"When transferring a character who owns a house on a world, the belongings and the history of the ownership of that house will go with that character to its new world. This means storage capacity, Upkeep Prepayments, Ownership time and Grace period time will all be remembered and applied to the house you might purchase on your destination world. When you log into the new world with your Home owner, you will find an email that will inform you of your previous address and will contain an attachment of currency equal to the purchase cost of the house. All of your deco is now in Escrow Housing storage, and character bound items are returned to the appropriate characters. If you already own a house on the destination world the upkeep, storage capacity and items will be granted to the existing house on the account."

https://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/world-transfers

Sergio :-)

Ah ty! It's seems so long ago that I read the original post. Guess I should have re-read it first.

I am excited about the moves. Even though it looks like I've lost my Kin leader name on all servers but the one he's on (Riddermark).

[maartena]

I don't want to be a pain but could someone please publish a list like this US one for the EU players? I would try and do one myself but have no idea how to go about it.

I simply typed the information I found on this site here: http://lotrostats.gefallenehelden.de/

Here are the latest stats for both realms - total number of logins since last restart of servers on July 27th 2015:

US-based Servers:

1 - Brandywine: 89843
2 - Gladden: 47336
3 - Landroval: 40783
4 - Crickhollow: 24316
5 - Arkenstone: 18685
6 - Meneldor: 17695
7 - Silverlode: 15692
8 - Vilya: 15618
9 - Elendilmir: 15226
10 - Imladris: 15165
11 - Dwarrowdelf: 14496
12 - Nimrodel: 13153
13 - Windfola: 12791
14 - Firefoot: 12587
15 - Riddermark: 12472

Windfola climbed a spot, Firefoot fell a spot, Riddermark is still holding the bottom.


EU-based servers

1 - Evernight (EN): 69597
2 - Gwaihir (DE): 36342
3 - Laurelin (EN-RP): 34051
4 - Sirannon (FR): 26623
5 - Belegaer (DE-RP): 23753
6 - Snowbourn (EN): 22238
7 - Anduin (DE): 17294
8 - Vanyar (DE): 16231
9 - Estel (FR-RP): 14738
10 -Maiar (DE): 15111
11 - Eldar (EN): 14914
12 - Withywindle (EN): 14265
13 - Morthond (DE): 12701
14 - Gilrain (EN): 7854

Picking the surviving EU servers is slightly more complicated because of the three languages. It is said that all languages get at least 1 server each and there will be 1 role play server which is most likely English based. Picking the first four is easy. Whether the 5th will be an English or a German server is a bit more tricky, and if it is German, will it be role play?

Here are the logins per language:

English Total: 162919
German Total: 121432
French Total: 41361

Using that information, it is clear that among the 5 servers to survive, about 40000 more English language logins are needed than German ones, so one might surmise that the 5th surviving server will also be English, and therefore most likely Snowbourn. But that of course is just speculation.

In any case, there you have it.

[GULENDUR]

Current logins of all worlds as of 7/31 at 3PM PST / 6 PM PST (just before this post), measured from the last restart of the servers on 7/27.

1 - Brandywine: 71799
2 - Gladden: 37777
3 - Landroval: 32437
4 - Crickhollow: 19359
5 - Arkenstone: 14999
6 - Meneldor: 14107
7 - Silverlode: 12368
8 - Vilya: 12276
9 - Elendilmir: 12049 (swapped with #10)
10 - Imladris: 11987 (swapped with #9)
11 - Dwarrowdelf: 11507
12 - Nimrodel: 10399
13 - Firefoot: 10145
14 - Windfola: 10116
15 - Riddermark: 9997

#9 and #10 swapped spaces compared to my previous post.

The bottom 4 are only 400 apart between Riddermark (15) and Nimrodel (12)

GREEN = Servers almost certainly to stay.
YELLOW = Fate unknown, could go either way.
RED = Servers almost certainly to close.

I would take these numbers with a grain of salt. Servers like Gladden, Landroval, etc... are not correct because a large number of folks are rushing to them to reserve names. This makes the fringe servers close to the safe zone as potential candidates to sneak in.

[Ella]

While that is an interesting idea, auto-translation is really, really not as good as many (particularly people who are monolingual) make it out to be. Particularly with people typing informally or in chat-speak, as they do in chat channels, it's unlikely to be able to translate much of what is written at all, and it can have quite inoffensive things coming out as insults. I bet it would lead to reports that turn out to be nothing at all just because the machine can't handle colloquialisms.

People have in fact taken their own language channels into their own hands, for instance there is a Russian user-created channel on Laurelin. The main problem we had there were people aggressively claiming that languages other than English were forbidden and reportable, while Turbine had stated shortly before that this wasn't the case, and hounding people over the language they spoke was the actual reportable thing.

Most the non-native speakers on Laurelin, myself included, do in fact speak English in the channels. It's polite, and I get more people who understand me than if I were to speak German. But if someone comes in whose English isn't good and who's only looking for some people sharing their native language to talk to, perhaps a kin in their language, it really irritates me if people on World go off at them as if two phrases in Czech or Russian or German are crimes.

That shocked me. I played Asheron's Call before and our Allegiance was multi-national. We had some folks that only spoke German and some only spoke French and of course most of the US members only spoke english. Quite of few of the Euro people were multilingual though, and we all managed to get along just fine. We could even manage to do quests together. It kept things interesting.

[Mar-Evayave]

The last time I checked you couldn't use numbers and special characters (like - ) while naming your char.

I've honestly never tried (it's kinda tacky, IMO, and not at all lore-friendly). You could be right. It might still be potentially possible to get a free rename if somehow you could transfer your real character with the -1 at the end to another server that also has a character of the same name and a -1 at the end. It does get considerably more complex that way, though.

Well, last I checked, you couldn't create a name with a hyphen.

But the solution is even easier. Make a Wiga character on a surviving server and transfer it over to Landy. That should cause the transferee charcacter to peempt the inactive character. Then, delete the transferred Wiga and rename Wiga-1 to Wiga.

That definitely could work! You'd still have to pay for the rename token, but at least this way you can indeed push the inactive character out of the way.