World Transfers

[Leixy]

I played a lot this weekend (deeding Moria instances) and only saw a couple people complain about log-in problems in public channels.

Even at peak Sunday hours on Brandy, not many complaints.

[Nenuial]

Vyvyanne and Frelorn have actually been working their collective asses off, and they have been more then willing to provide updates throughout the week, and they have been much more communicative then previous staff. They have continued to update us on the transfers throughout last week, and now you are telling me they don't deserve a weekend without having to think about the game because you can't wait till after the weekend to hear about an update regarding your virtual characters inside a game? Shame on you. They are NOT 24/7 server operators to keep the game running. They are NOT the people who man the support phone who answer basic billing and support questions. They are the EXECUTIVE PRODUCER and the COMMUNITY MANAGER, and although they have been posting outside of working hours (especially when there unplanned outages), it is not part of their job description. So please, get with the real world and give them their weekend like you and me.

Exactly. And personally, I would prefer the relative "radio silence" that we've had over the past few days than bringing in a few extra Community Managers whose only job is to serve as a middle man between upset gamers and the company. That solution REALLY didn't work too well when Bioware tried it during the ME3 uproar, and it definitely won't work with LOTRO.

I'm as anxious as anyone to get this server consolidation going, but I'd rather have the transfer process be as close to perfect as possible, as opposed to having to suffer through a bug-infested nightmare just to "get it over with."

[Saintjoan]

I am working on a longer update now to include estimated time frames, etc but all of that needs translation after I am done writing it, so it might be a day or two before it can go up.

In the meantime our Operations team is still looking into login issues to assure we dont see more of what we encountered last week before we turn transfer services back on. We are also working on another patch to resolve a few edge case issues in transfers that we found in the time it was on last week.

Like I noted in my original post about this transfer process. It will be a slow and steady process as there are a lot of moving parts involved.

If you are still seeing odd disconnect or login issues on the live services, please start a new thread on the subject so we can track it and look into it appropriately and post which server you are on when seeing it.

Thank you so much, for your updates. Thank you for taking the time to make sure everything is working right. Kudos to you and the team Vyvyanne. :-)

[janlyn]

I am working on a longer update now to include estimated time frames, etc but all of that needs translation after I am done writing it, so it might be a day or two before it can go up.

In the meantime our Operations team is still looking into login issues to assure we dont see more of what we encountered last week before we turn transfer services back on. We are also working on another patch to resolve a few edge case issues in transfers that we found in the time it was on last week.

Like I noted in my original post about this transfer process. It will be a slow and steady process as there are a lot of moving parts involved.

If you are still seeing odd disconnect or login issues on the live services, please start a new thread on the subject so we can track it and look into it appropriately and post which server you are on when seeing it.

Thank you so much for the update! Sometimes, that's all we need.
Your hard work is much appreciated.

[Amendoa]

...Vyvyanne and Frelorn have actually been working their collective asses off...

+1 maartena

Not only viv and frelorn. As a software developer myself, I can only imagine how this consolidating operation is stressing for everyone. We are a very small company and I can barely sleep when we have big updates...

[Raithe_Drelside]

Anyone know when we can transfer characters from firefoot?

[Vyvyanne]

Thank you so much for the update, this is much appreciated.

I have been logging in to the game all weekend on and off without any issues.

I have one question: In the bullroarer patch of early last week (when it was up for a few days), it was mentioned that you could transfer your shared account items from server A to server B, but you could not move them BACK from server B to server A for at least two weeks. However, you could transfer the shared items on to server C if you wanted to. For the short time transfers were live with the European servers, someone reported this exact behavior transferring between Evernight and Laurelin servers. Can you confirm the 2-week policy is part of the official roll-out?

(And is that done so people can't transfer shared items back and forth on a whim so they essentially "share" all of the "shared" items, and use them on different servers as they see fit, and just decide in the morning where they should be then? E.g. you want to dress up a toon on server B, so you transfer your shared items to B, then use the wardrobe, and when all done, you transfer it back to A. - Makes sense as to why you would want to impose a 2-week delay to prevent that kind of abuse).

Yes the 2 week restriction on moving back to a previous world will remain in live roll-out. This is to prevent duplicate information from occurring on both servers as there are some actions your account can make that stick around in the world even without you there and the 2 weeks is to make sure all of that clears through.

[Boskone08]

Yes the 2 week restriction on moving back to a previous world will remain in live roll-out. This is to prevent duplicate information from occurring on both servers as there are some actions your account can make that stick around in the world even without you there and the 2 weeks is to make sure all of that clears through.

Thank you for this clarification!

[Oelle]

so, there have to be 2 weeks between transfers... that makes it a bit less easy to get a free rename with transfering somewhere and back
i just wondered, if i should do that, because i dont like the name of one of my toons anymore... but as long as the transfers are open for more than 2 weaks, it should still be no problem.

[maartena]

Yes the 2 week restriction on moving back to a previous world will remain in live roll-out. This is to prevent duplicate information from occurring on both servers as there are some actions your account can make that stick around in the world even without you there and the 2 weeks is to make sure all of that clears through.

Thank you for clarifying, that helps!

I'm not going to need to transfer back anyways, and I have made plan for my own testing since I have toons on Gladden and Crickhollow which will both move to Arkenstone BEFORE my main set of characters on Riddermark get to transfer.

Good luck with the upcoming patch, hopefully you will get things sorted soon. I would rather wait another week then to find out stuff didn't work right.

[maartena]

so, there have to be 2 weeks between transfers... that makes it a bit less easy to get a free rename with transfering somewhere and back
i just wondered, if i should do that, because i dont like the name of one of my toons anymore... but as long as the transfers are open for more than 2 weaks, it should still be no problem.

I believe the 2-week delay applies only to SHARED items (such as shared currency, shared vault, wardrobe, and such things), not to individual Characters. Vyvyanne can certainly confirm that if I am wrong.

[Ogmios]

I can see by this post that this person has never had to hold down a real job.

@ Daeranoth -- I feel fairly strongly that your perceived expectations for a *game* are being unfairly compared to a standard designed for real life mission critical services at a very different price point and priority level.

In my mind they are not the same thing - not even close.




.

[lambowolf]

Maartena,

I don't know about your line of work, but even though the game runs 24/7, that does not mean everyone works 24/7. Turbine is not a hospital or police force, they run a game, not a critical service. A game. And just like most companies in the United States, Turbine employees get time off as what we generally refer to as "weekend". Vyvyanne and Frelorn are probably relaxing right now and will be back at work tomorrow.

Their weekend support staff keeps the servers running but they are not part of the team that communicates on the forums. Can you please let them enjoy their weekend, and wait till tomorrow? The game is running just fine right now...

I am glad they have their weekends off, and guess what, I am in a job that doesn't get every weekend off. How special! I have NEVER suggested they lose days off. What I am saying it wouldn't hurt to keep the public updated. Before today. VyVyanne's last post was Thursday and it didn't detail a bloody thing.

If they knew that transfers would not be up on Friday (thus the weekend as well) it would have taken, what.. 10 seconds of their time to post such a statement! I am sure that wouldn't hurt their weekend leisure time!

What I am suggesting is on last Friday, Vyvyanne to post something like the following:

"Because of the recent login issues which we are still monitoring, we are going to keep the transfers turned off today and through the weekend. We will revaluate the situation on Monday and I will post a new update then. Sorry for any inconvenience, and thanks for your patience."

This would have avoided a lot of confusion on last Friday and other issues as well.

This is am that I am asking for, which in no way would have impeded into their weekend, Maartena. IT took me like 10 seconds to type that out. I don't see how that could have impacted their weekends too much or their leisure time that you are are so concerned about.

[Fratonia]

What's so hard to understand about:

Due to the issues we have been seeing over the last couple days with logins, we have decided to turn the new transfer service off for the time being so that we can focus on correcting those issues before bringing the service back online and not risk errors.

We apologize for the delay and are doing all we can to remedy the situation ASAP.

Do you really think that they have to tell you every day that the status has not changed? Get a grip!

[Marshmellowulf]

Everyone needs to be patient while the bugs are worked out.

Turbine said from the beginning it will be a slow process to make sure things are working as planned.

Let's be thankful they're doing this carefully and show some appreciation.

Good things come to those who wait!

Not All Who Wander Are Lost from Firefoot will be moving to Crickhollow when transfers open.

[Zoraine]

Thank you Vyvyanne for keeping us posted, and glad you all are taking care to make sure this all works out well. careful is good

[maartena]

Maartena,




I am glad they have their weekends off, and guess what, I am in a job that doesn't get every weekend off. How special! I have NEVER suggested they lose days off. What I am saying it wouldn't hurt to keep the public updated. Before today. VyVyanne's last post was Thursday and it didn't detail a bloody thing.

If they knew that transfers would not be up on Friday (thus the weekend as well) it would have taken, what.. 10 seconds of their time to post such a statement! I am sure that wouldn't hurt their weekend leisure time!

What I am suggesting is on last Friday, Vyvyanne to post something like the following:

"Because of the recent login issues which we are still monitoring, we are going to keep the transfers turned off today and through the weekend. We will revaluate the situation on Monday and I will post a new update then. Sorry for any inconvenience, and thanks for your patience."

This would have avoided a lot of confusion on last Friday and other issues as well.

This is am that I am asking for, which in no way would have impeded into their weekend, Maartena. IT took me like 10 seconds to type that out. I don't see how that could have impacted their weekends too much or their leisure time that you are are so concerned about.

What makes you think you are entitled to daily updates? If nothing has changed since Thursday, do they really need to post about it every day?

Vyvyanne posted this on Thursday:

"Due to the issues we have been seeing over the last couple days with logins, we have decided to turn the new transfer service off for the time being so that we can focus on correcting those issues before bringing the service back online and not risk errors.

We apologize for the delay and are doing all we can to remedy the situation ASAP."

What is so unclear about that? They turned off updates for the time being. They are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. If there was nothing more to update, why do they need to repeat themselves on Friday, Saturday and/or Sunday? The message above was crystal clear, and was followed up on today, Monday.

Do you really need the English sentence "for the time being" explained in better detail?

Well just in case English isn't your first language (it is not my first language either), here is a definition:

for the time being
phrase of time
1.
for the present; until some other arrangement is made.

Until some other arrangement is made. That tells everyone that speaks some level of English that transfers have been halted, and they won't be coming back up until the issues listed above are fixed. And that is all you need to know. You don't need to have your hand held every day with updates that confirm that, yes, the same statement issued on Thursday.... is still true, and you can sleep safely without being worried.

It probably took Vyvyanne 10 seconds to type that out on Thursday. But she really didn't need to type it again on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, for there were NO NEW UPDATES, and "for the time being" still was the right English definition for the announcement made.

[Marancil]

You don't know what you are talking about. I am an infrastructure specialist for a large multinational company with resources and data centers in all economic zones, and I work over 60 hours a week. Don't judge me based on a forum post, because you have absolutely NO idea what my job is, and how "real" my job is.

I get it. I support systems that are critical. I support systems that when they are down, my company is losing $100,000 an hour while they are down, so I am WELL AWARE how critical around the clock support is, and because of that we have fully staffed support teams in all time zones that can jump in to a problem immediately, and resolve it before the next time zone even wakes up. Turbine has this kind of 24/7 support, and when servers fail, a whole lot of cell phones start ringing. But you have to realize it isn't the kind of support system a multi-billion dollar company like AT&T and Apple have in place.

And all this has NOTHING to do with the Executive producer of this game, and the Community manager, both of whom have been tasked to do the communication with the players. They are NOT a 24/7 critical staff, they are NOT required to answer questions 24/7 a day, and they do NOT run the servers.

Vyvyanne and Frelorn have actually been working their collective asses off, and they have been more then willing to provide updates throughout the week, and they have been much more communicative then previous staff. They have continued to update us on the transfers throughout last week, and now you are telling me they don't deserve a weekend without having to think about the game because you can't wait till after the weekend to hear about an update regarding your virtual characters inside a game? Shame on you. They are NOT 24/7 server operators to keep the game running. They are NOT the people who man the support phone who answer basic billing and support questions. They are the EXECUTIVE PRODUCER and the COMMUNITY MANAGER, and although they have been posting outside of working hours (especially when there unplanned outages), it is not part of their job description. So please, get with the real world and give them their weekend like you and me.

On thing you need to realize is that this is still a GAME we are talking about. A GAME. Not a police force. Not a 24/7 ambulance post. Not a wallstreet trading company that needs 24/7 access to markets world wide. Not a cable news station that covers the globe 24/7.... No, we are talking about a GAME. Something purely pleasurable, something that no one is hurt by if it doesn't work for a few hours. The companies you mention above are the kind of companies that are poised to lose $100,000 an hour or even MILLIONS an hour when systems are down, and if you think that a game like LOTRO, which has been having to consolidate servers because there are fewer and fewer players are withing the SAME ball park as Staples, AT&T and Apple, you have no idea about the size of the company, the game, and what makes financial sense as to how to allocate support.

When something happens to turbine servers in the middle of the night, they will fix it. Will they have to call someone out of bed? Maybe. Does that person has to drive to drive through Boston in the middle of the night to reset a hardware piece? Possible, if remote access isn't working right. But Turbine doesn't have the budget to man a 24/7 call center, because they are NOT the size of AT&T, Apple, or Staples. And your $14.99 a month price point is no where near high enough to guarantee that. They have 24/7 back-end support that watch the servers closely, and if they need to allocate some more personnel, they will start calling people. But do they owe you a detailed explanation right there, right then as to what happened? Negative. You do not have that kind of SLA with Turbine.

Finally, my message to you is this. If you think that a GAME should have a Service Level Agreement that rivals AT&T or Apple, and needs a similar budget as AT&T or Apple, feel free to leave this game and play that game. You won't find one. And keep in mind you probably pay at least $75 a month for your AT&T powered Apple iPhone.....

I have a similar job (for a major German car manufacturer) and I support Maartena's statement 100%. Some guys just think they know ... something...

[Elmagor]

From all russian players - big thanks for Turbine because of titles like "from Mirkwood", "from Aglarond" and "from Fornost"!

[HeirOfNumenor]

Even though I have disagreed with you in the past over re-naming priorities....you rock here

You don't know what you are talking about. I am an infrastructure specialist for a large multinational company with resources and data centers in all economic zones, and I work over 60 hours a week. Don't judge me based on a forum post, because you have absolutely NO idea what my job is, and how "real" my job is.

I get it. I support systems that are critical. I support systems that when they are down, my company is losing $100,000 an hour while they are down, so I am WELL AWARE how critical around the clock support is, and because of that we have fully staffed support teams in all time zones that can jump in to a problem immediately, and resolve it before the next time zone even wakes up. Turbine has this kind of 24/7 support, and when servers fail, a whole lot of cell phones start ringing. But you have to realize it isn't the kind of support system a multi-billion dollar company like AT&T and Apple have in place.

And all this has NOTHING to do with the Executive producer of this game, and the Community manager, both of whom have been tasked to do the communication with the players. They are NOT a 24/7 critical staff, they are NOT required to answer questions 24/7 a day, and they do NOT run the servers.

Vyvyanne and Frelorn have actually been working their collective asses off, and they have been more then willing to provide updates throughout the week, and they have been much more communicative then previous staff. They have continued to update us on the transfers throughout last week, and now you are telling me they don't deserve a weekend without having to think about the game because you can't wait till after the weekend to hear about an update regarding your virtual characters inside a game? Shame on you. They are NOT 24/7 server operators to keep the game running. They are NOT the people who man the support phone who answer basic billing and support questions. They are the EXECUTIVE PRODUCER and the COMMUNITY MANAGER, and although they have been posting outside of working hours (especially when there unplanned outages), it is not part of their job description. So please, get with the real world and give them their weekend like you and me.

On thing you need to realize is that this is still a GAME we are talking about. A GAME. Not a police force. Not a 24/7 ambulance post. Not a wallstreet trading company that needs 24/7 access to markets world wide. Not a cable news station that covers the globe 24/7.... No, we are talking about a GAME. Something purely pleasurable, something that no one is hurt by if it doesn't work for a few hours. The companies you mention above are the kind of companies that are poised to lose $100,000 an hour or even MILLIONS an hour when systems are down, and if you think that a game like LOTRO, which has been having to consolidate servers because there are fewer and fewer players are withing the SAME ball park as Staples, AT&T and Apple, you have no idea about the size of the company, the game, and what makes financial sense as to how to allocate support.

When something happens to turbine servers in the middle of the night, they will fix it. Will they have to call someone out of bed? Maybe. Does that person has to drive to drive through Boston in the middle of the night to reset a hardware piece? Possible, if remote access isn't working right. But Turbine doesn't have the budget to man a 24/7 call center, because they are NOT the size of AT&T, Apple, or Staples. And your $14.99 a month price point is no where near high enough to guarantee that. They have 24/7 back-end support that watch the servers closely, and if they need to allocate some more personnel, they will start calling people. But do they owe you a detailed explanation right there, right then as to what happened? Negative. You do not have that kind of SLA with Turbine.

Finally, my message to you is this. If you think that a GAME should have a Service Level Agreement that rivals AT&T or Apple, and needs a similar budget as AT&T or Apple, feel free to leave this game and play that game. You won't find one. And keep in mind you probably pay at least $75 a month for your AT&T powered Apple iPhone.....

[Meihan2]

Anyone who has played LOTRO or any other game for ANY amount of time knows that no matter how small a patch is it is going to have bugs. This is NO small patch. It is MAJOR. So give them a break. Many of us can wait and understand.

[HeirOfNumenor]

Thank you Vyvyanne (and Frelorn, and the rest of the blue names) for your updates, and all your hard work to make sure this consolidation and datacenter migration go smoothly....

I am working on a longer update now to include estimated time frames, etc but all of that needs translation after I am done writing it, so it might be a day or two before it can go up.

In the meantime our Operations team is still looking into login issues to assure we dont see more of what we encountered last week before we turn transfer services back on. We are also working on another patch to resolve a few edge case issues in transfers that we found in the time it was on last week.

Like I noted in my original post about this transfer process. It will be a slow and steady process as there are a lot of moving parts involved.

If you are still seeing odd disconnect or login issues on the live services, please start a new thread on the subject so we can track it and look into it appropriately and post which server you are on when seeing it.

[RJFerret]

Vyvyanne and Frelorn have actually been working their collective asses off, and they have been more then willing to provide updates throughout the week, and they have been much more communicative then previous staff. They have continued to update us on the transfers throughout last week, and now you are telling me they don't deserve a weekend without having to think about the game because you can't wait till after the weekend to hear about an update regarding your virtual characters inside a game? Shame on you.

Hear, hear.

I've said it before and shall say it again, the turnaround in communication and improvements that have come with the current executive producer and community manager have been wonderful, much appreciation from me for them, this entire community has improved drastically and Vyvyanne's penchant for informing customers has been fabulous. Thank you.

From all russian players - big thanks for Turbine because of titles like "from Mirkwood", "from Aglarond" and "from Fornost"!

A great example of the new stewardship's care, a reasonable forum request that could have easily been overlooked or lost was embraced.

(Now if only they could fix the capitalization so it was "of Server" rather than the current improper "Of Server", all the other "of..." titles are proper lower-case "of".)

[Caunthol]

Yes the 2 week restriction on moving back to a previous world will remain in live roll-out. This is to prevent duplicate information from occurring on both servers as there are some actions your account can make that stick around in the world even without you there and the 2 weeks is to make sure all of that clears through.

Just for clarification, is this only meant for account transfer or is character transfer influenced aswell?

And another question I got in from a player: Would it be possible without a restriction if I e.g. transfered from Laurelin to Gwaihir, then to Belegaer and then back to Laurelin. I cannot imagine that this will work, but a short offical sentence is always better than just telling others what might be true...

Thank you in advance

[RJFerret]

Just for clarification, is this only meant for account transfer or is character transfer influenced aswell?

In the beta testing/on Bullroarer the two week restriction only applied to shared account items. IE, everyone transferred characters from BR to Palantir and back to BR no problem, account stuff could presumably go to Palantir, but it would not return from whence it came per the blue name responsible for testing there.

Would it be possible without a restriction if I e.g. transfered from Laurelin to Gwaihir, then to Belegaer and then back to Laurelin.

A character could go from Laurelin to Gwaihir then to either Belegaer or Laurelin, and from there to any of the others. Shared account items (storage/marks/meds/seal/morgul crests) would not be able to return to Laurelin or Gwaihir until two weeks had passed, then could transfer to either, but not back to Belegaer for another two weeks.