World Transfers

[Trixie_Me]

Thank you, Maarteena for your response. However, I would still like to see Vyvyanne give us an official response to this issue. I would like to know from her what the intended behavior is and to see if it is working as intended.

[MasterOfNothing]

To add to what Maartena said:

I think that during the active testing phase for transfers between remaining worlds, they discovered that the (at that time) unlimited number of moves between the remaining servers can create all sorts of problems.

Not just increased stress on the data-side for multiple transfers back and forth, just to get characters with -22 or higher, but also unintended side effects and actual abuse of the entire transfer system, that is difficult to forsee and control.

Therefore they are working on a scheme to limit the number of moves between the remaining servers.

The problem with unlimited transfers between remaining servers is, that character creation cannot be turned off on the remaining servers, which can lead to a myriad of problems.

Therefore I think it is a VERY GOOD IDEA, to develop a scheme to limit the number of moves, without invalidating the whole idea of giving people a choice to move off the highly populated servers or to move off from servers that will change dramatically due to the transfers. Id rather wait some time to let them develop such a system of limited moves, than to turn transfers between the remaining worlds on again, which might even create problems that nobody has even foreseen.

[Vyvyanne]

Vyvyanne 26-8-15:


Actually, no, they close your ticket and tell you to wait for the next round of remaining-world transfers.



Vyvyanne please would you explain why remaining-world transfers aren't being turned back on for those whose attempted transfers failed, before proceeding to move the closing world populations? If it's because new hardware needs to be in place for remaining-world transfers to proceed smoothly, then surely new hardware needs to be in place before closing-world transfers too? Having the priorities switch without warning and being shunted to the end of Fall feels like a kick in the teeth. The rest of my fellowship moved smoothly and our gaming's been stalled for weeks now.

On the CS ticket issue there was a miscommunication between departments and we are looking into these tickets now.

For the remaining world transfers, they were only intended to be on for free for a short time. However after turning on the service we found some potential exploits and data error potential in that way of allowing free transfers, so we have to go back to the drawing board to determine another way of granting limited free transfers between those worlds. The closing worlds are a one way transfer service so we do not encounter the same issues. We have started the process with only the closing worlds, because they are the ones we are doing this consolidation for as they are in need of a more active server population to have a better play experience.

As for naming policies: the naming priority code is working as intended, there are no changes planned.

[Macroscian]

Thank you, Maarteena for your response. However, I would still like to see Vyvyanne give us an official response to this issue. I would like to know from her what the intended behavior is and to see if it is working as intended.

I had three instances of attempting to add a name to friends and getting the message back that the name can't be added.
All three times I got the name when moving my name onto the server. There was no problem with 'cannot be added'.

[maartena]

Thank you, Maarteena for your response. However, I would still like to see Vyvyanne give us an official response to this issue. I would like to know from her what the intended behavior is and to see if it is working as intended.

I don't understand. Several users reported here being able to take over names from characters that have not logged on at all, and therefore are older than 1 year. Thus, it works as intended: Characters inactive more than 1 year lose their name, regardless of whether they have actually logged on or not. You just can't SEE the last logon date of a character that cannot be added to friends lists.

I don't quite understand what brought forth this discussion, is there someone that was not able to take over a name from a toon that was not logged on? And how was determined that it was older than 1 year? Anyways, Vyvyanne confirmed everything is working as intended, and that no changes are planned. So take that for what it is worth I guess....

[Telvrandir]

On the CS ticket issue there was a miscommunication between departments and we are looking into these tickets now.

Thank you for looking into this and for the assurance, Vyvyanne.

For the remaining world transfers, they were only intended to be on for free for a short time. However after turning on the service we found some potential exploits and data error potential in that way of allowing free transfers, so we have to go back to the drawing board to determine another way of granting limited free transfers between those worlds. The closing worlds are a one way transfer service so we do not encounter the same issues. We have started the process with only the closing worlds, because they are the ones we are doing this consolidation for as they are in need of a more active server population to have a better play experience.

Thank you again. I can see the issue. I hope that with the re-opening of our tickets, those of us who only ever intended to make a one-way free transfer from remaining world to remaining world will be able to do so very soon.

[Silmelin]

As for naming policies: the naming priority code is working as intended, there are no changes planned.

Vyvyanne, what will happen when the transfers are over? Will the new naming priority code be changed back to the way it were?

I'm worried because if it stays in place, people who care about their name will have to always keep a scedule to make sure they log in on all their characters regularly since there can be someone with the same name on a closed server who at any time (even after 10 years!) might come back and bump your name on a character you are on a break from. Many people have lots of alts but they can't all be leveled at the same time, and some of us prefer to play the same character for a while and then switch to another one, and then another one, and then back to the first one, etc.
It's more fun if we can play whatever character we feel like playing instead of having to keep track of login dates.

There will also be a problem for new players since they won't be able to check if their name is free on all the closed servers as well, so if they create a character on a server and then have to be away a year for health reasons or military, and then come back and find themselves renamed since someone from a closed server came back and chose the same server to move their character to.

I'm fine with the way the naming priorities work now during the transfer period. I feel it's the fairest you could have chosen since there is no way to make everyone happy, but to have it work like this forever would be very frustrating for those of us who care deeply about our character names.

If names need to be freed up, please look at "inactive players" and not "inactive characters". I normally spend about 10+ hours in LOTRO every day and I'll be here until the game closes. I consider that very active and not inactive at all. I just hope that I'll get to spend my time playing the game instead of having to set off a few days here and there where I do nothing but login all my characters.

If you want to free up names, maybe instead rename the characters of those who created an account and spent a day or three playing when the game was new and then never touched that account again?

Won't be very fun to create a new character after the servers are locked completely because then there will be no way of knowing if there's a hidden character with the same name hiding somewhere, who might at any time swoop in and take the name you chose because it was free on all 10 of the still open servers

Please give this some thought to lessen the stress of people like me

[MasterOfNothing]

I'm fine with the way the naming priorities work now during the transfer period. I feel it's the fairest you could have chosen since there is no way to make everyone happy, but to have it work like this forever would be very frustrating for those of us who care deeply about our character names.

I don't really see, why changing the policy after "the transfer period" should be fairer?
If you do not even log in once into your character for over a year, why would it be fairer to have precedence over a player who wants to play his toon just now?
I would think that if someone is really concerned having his character's "name snapped away" from an incoming toon from one of the closed servers,
it should not be that hard an effort to log into that character once a year.

EDIT: typos

[Christian.S]

I don't really see, why changing the policy after "the transfer period" should be fairer?
If you do not even log in once into your character for over a year, why would it be fairer to have precedence over a player who wants to play his toon just now?
I would think that if someone is really concerned having his character's "name snapped away" from an incoming toon from one of the closed servers,
it should not be that hard an effort to log into that character once a year.

EDIT: typos

I disagree with this. The naming policy should return to what it was,say 90 days after the consolidation is completed. There are numerous reasons why a person might not play in any one given year. Players name's weren't going any where before consolidation. If for some reason,I go one year without LotRo game time in to log on later and find my name taken,well... see ya LotRo. Changing the naming policy during consolidation had to happen. There is no need to keep it permanently.

[slayer7800]

I disagree with this. The naming policy should return to what it was,say 90 days after the consolidation is completed. There are numerous reasons why a person might not play in any one given year. Players name's weren't going any where before consolidation. If for some reason,I go one year without LotRo game time in to log on later and find my name taken,well... see ya LotRo. Changing the naming policy during consolidation had to happen. There is no need to keep it permanently.

Having the naming policy return for the most part is fine, but there are probably thousands of names taken by players at or around launch of this game by accounts that have been inactive for years including character names that have never actually logged into the game. If those names could be reclaimed, there would be a lot of great names that people could have that would help alleviate the upcoming excess of -1 players after the transfers. The most fair way to do this would be to free up those names after all the transfers complete to allow everyone equal access to them.

From my viewpoint if you created a character and after a year never bothered to login or get out of the intro, that name should be freed up for others to use.

[ShireDweller]

The 48 hours of transfers between the worlds were for testing purposes only, and I believe it was announced as such. If your kin considered it as "in production" and decided to move, the risk on anything going wrong was on you.

maartena, I appreciate that you want to be helpful and informative. However, I think that you should limit your posts on the transfer topic to providing simple answers and links to official blue-name posts, because with remarks like this you are overstepping your presumed authority as a source of information.

As seen by Vyvyanne's response below, "For the remaining world transfers, they were only intended to be on for free for a short time. However after turning on the service we found some potential exploits and data error potential in that way of allowing free transfers, so we have to go back to the drawing board to determine another way of granting limited free transfers between those worlds. ", there is more to the situation than your answer would imply. Trying to shame someone who used the free transfer as originally described isn't cool.

[Vilan]

Vyvyanne, thanks for the updates! I just had a semi-unrelated question.

Elendilmir is the first US server to start moving, yet the (unofficial) server data I've seen indicates that it's in the middle of the pack population-wise. Does Turbine's information show that E is actually the smallest server of all, or was there some other reason it was picked to go first?

[Marancil]

Something just struck me.... what about War-Steed names? And I mean the War-Steeds, not the regular mounts or Steed of the [Class].

[Solstyce]

Vyvyanne, what will happen when the transfers are over? Will the new naming priority code be changed back to the way it were?

I'm worried because if it stays in place, people who care about their name will have to always keep a scedule to make sure they log in on all their characters regularly since there can be someone with the same name on a closed server who at any time (even after 10 years!) might come back and bump your name on a character you are on a break from. Many people have lots of alts but they can't all be leveled at the same time, and some of us prefer to play the same character for a while and then switch to another one, and then another one, and then back to the first one, etc.
It's more fun if we can play whatever character we feel like playing instead of having to keep track of login dates.

There will also be a problem for new players since they won't be able to check if their name is free on all the closed servers as well, so if they create a character on a server and then have to be away a year for health reasons or military, and then come back and find themselves renamed since someone from a closed server came back and chose the same server to move their character to.

I'm fine with the way the naming priorities work now during the transfer period. I feel it's the fairest you could have chosen since there is no way to make everyone happy, but to have it work like this forever would be very frustrating for those of us who care deeply about our character names.

If names need to be freed up, please look at "inactive players" and not "inactive characters". I normally spend about 10+ hours in LOTRO every day and I'll be here until the game closes. I consider that very active and not inactive at all. I just hope that I'll get to spend my time playing the game instead of having to set off a few days here and there where I do nothing but login all my characters.

If you want to free up names, maybe instead rename the characters of those who created an account and spent a day or three playing when the game was new and then never touched that account again?

Won't be very fun to create a new character after the servers are locked completely because then there will be no way of knowing if there's a hidden character with the same name hiding somewhere, who might at any time swoop in and take the name you chose because it was free on all 10 of the still open servers

Please give this some thought to lessen the stress of people like me

Personally, I don't understand why they don't do what SWTOR does. Any names that have not been active for 3 months get removed. This way it allows others to have the name they want with no problem. I have logged into many servers recently and it appears each name I try for it either says "character cannot be added" or the name is already in use. For people trying to get a name that's been in-active for over a year is fine, but what about the ones that cannot be added because it's just planted there. How is that fair exactly to the ones wanting it yet can't have it because the world is closing. If I was running this I would remove the one year bases thing and allow anyone moving a first come first server bases. True, you cannot make everyone happy, but only doing 1-1 server merges at a time is going to make people quite frustrated. Why not do 3 US servers and 3 EU? that way everyone gets a chance at the name they want.

[Solstyce]

On the CS ticket issue there was a miscommunication between departments and we are looking into these tickets now.

For the remaining world transfers, they were only intended to be on for free for a short time. However after turning on the service we found some potential exploits and data error potential in that way of allowing free transfers, so we have to go back to the drawing board to determine another way of granting limited free transfers between those worlds. The closing worlds are a one way transfer service so we do not encounter the same issues. We have started the process with only the closing worlds, because they are the ones we are doing this consolidation for as they are in need of a more active server population to have a better play experience.

As for naming policies: the naming priority code is working as intended, there are no changes planned.

So you guys are only going to do one world at a time? why do people have to wait weeks on end if it goes right you guys should make it days between each transfer.

[Jurny]

The 48 hours of transfers between the worlds were for testing purposes only, and I believe it was announced as such. If your kin considered it as "in production" and decided to move, the risk on anything going wrong was on you.

You might want to lose the condescending tone and show more compassion, things are stressful enough as it is for some people, the last thing they need is unnecessary comments such as this one.

[MasterOfNothing]

You might want to lose the condescending tone and show more compassion, things are stressful enough as it is for some people, the last thing they need is unnecessary comments such as this one.

Maybe the comment was a little bit harsh, but I would expect from someone who demands a less "condescending tone" and "more compassion" the same.
For the vast majority of posts I would rate Maartena's comments neither as lacking compassion, nor condescending, nor uninformative.
Even if things are perceived as stressful, it might be a good idea to calm down a bit ...

[Kaztiel]

Let me put it this way. I paid a gross amount of money to transfer my family's accounts to another server. We did this to get away from a certain group of players. Now, the server we transferred to is going to get those people transferring to it for free because their server is going away. I know they are coming to this server because people that I still talk to have confirmed it for me. Awesome!!! That aside, you guys are giving us very limited opportunity to get our stuff together by only allowing for a short window for "Free" transfers. You guys are then going to charge us again!!!

When you guys first started talking about this you made it sound like you would open the transfers in August for the worlds remaining and then the closing worlds at a later date would JOIN the open transfer process which would be COMPLETELY FREE THE ENTIRE TIME, right up to October 1st. Now you guys have dragged your feet and it looks as though we will have maybe days to choose a new server and be done with that. That is just flat out ridiculous. How do you guys sleep at night with the way you are treating your customers?

This doesn't even cover it for me. You guys are now going to give certain servers priority over the naming process. Congrats. You just alienated all the servers at the bottom of the list and essentially told them they can go take a long walk off a short pier. Nothing but love for the customer here huh? I am not mad, I am angry. Because it seems to me that no matter how much time or money I have spent on this game, it isn't as good as the next drop of blood you can squeeze from my nearly dead corpse.

Someone said that naming should be handled like SWTOR and I COMPLETELY agree. If the name has not been used for three months, rename the character automatically to the name plus a number and give them a rename token. I mean it is nice you guys are making abandoned names available for reuse now, but it doesn't permanently solve this issue. Frankly, the biggest problem I have seen are vengeful players parking their enemies names on various servers to prevent them from having it. These characters are sometimes just logged into the intro and logged out. Or brought out of intro and never played again. I've had this happen to me and I know plenty of others that have had it happen to them. You guys basically made it so all those people have to do is log back into those parked names and then they keep them locked out from being used.

Your system is broken, much like the game in many aspects. I am beyond angry because I used to love this game and you guys have ruined it for me.

You could fix this by extending your timelines. Open transfers up to EVERYONE at the same time. Make it a queue. First come, first served. Period. It is as simple as the "Take a number" system. Even a caveman could do it.

[Kaztiel]

The 48 hours of transfers between the worlds were for testing purposes only, and I believe it was announced as such. If your kin considered it as "in production" and decided to move, the risk on anything going wrong was on you.

Well I for one logged in during that period and saw the transfer button was available, so used it for a few toons to test it out. When I went back to do the rest IT WAS GONE. Having read the initial stuff about the transfers, I have no idea they would pull this. Not everyone dives into the forums every time something different happens. I also do not recall there being notice on the launcher that the transfers were only available for a short time. The communication has been a huge fail by these people. I don't even know if they have a plan or are just randomly implementing whatever they thought of while taking their morning constitutional.

[maartena]

So you guys are only going to do one world at a time? why do people have to wait weeks on end if it goes right you guys should make it days between each transfer.

The will start with 2 worlds per week, 1 US and 1 EU, and see how it goes. If it goes well and the systems isn't taxed too much, they may very well open it up for more servers at the same time. It is also possible that they will halt the transfers altogether if it turns out to be troublesome, and wait till the new hardware is in place to resume the transfers.

[maartena]

Not everyone dives into the forums every time something different happens.

Perhaps not, and perhaps they should use other mediums (such as facebook, twitter) to post the updates regarding the transfers. That said however, they have used the forums for over 8 years as their first line of communication when it comes to informing people about changes, bugs, fixes, patches, testing, etc, etc, etc.... so one would think that most players by now are aware of that.

I do think there was a launcher message, by the way, but since they don't keep every message (only the store sales ones) I can't find it now.

[slayer7800]

Personally, I don't understand why they don't do what SWTOR does. Any names that have not been active for 3 months get removed. This way it allows others to have the name they want with no problem. I have logged into many servers recently and it appears each name I try for it either says "character cannot be added" or the name is already in use. For people trying to get a name that's been in-active for over a year is fine, but what about the ones that cannot be added because it's just planted there. How is that fair exactly to the ones wanting it yet can't have it because the world is closing. If I was running this I would remove the one year bases thing and allow anyone moving a first come first server bases. True, you cannot make everyone happy, but only doing 1-1 server merges at a time is going to make people quite frustrated. Why not do 3 US servers and 3 EU? that way everyone gets a chance at the name they want.

SWTOR also allows extended characters in names which would also help alleviate the name issue if implemented here. When their first merges happened, I lost the name of my main character and so changed the name. I realized I didn't like it and at some point figured out I could do extended characters so I created a new character same class with my original name with an accent on one of the vowels and have been happy with it since. The current solution in lotro is going to cause a lot of frustration. I am lucky since I get to transfer Monday. My main and 3 other names are taken on my destination server by "character cannot be added" meaning they never logged in and of the 23 characters that I will be transferring only 5 are not taken. I'll report back after the transfers how many of those 18 names I was able to get.

[maartena]

Something just struck me.... what about War-Steed names? And I mean the War-Steeds, not the regular mounts or Steed of the [Class].

They are not unique, they are only visible to the person themselves. Half my kin named their horse "Amazing" after a popular meme from years ago. You can have double horse names as well as double pet names and cosmetic pet names.

[maartena]

You might want to lose the condescending tone and show more compassion, things are stressful enough as it is for some people, the last thing they need is unnecessary comments such as this one.

I'm sorry if it sounded condescending.... or not compassionate enough. However, I think we do all need to step back a little and realize this is a game we are talking about. A game. Not your own house. Not your retirement funds. Not the school your kids are going to. Just a game. At the end of the day, all your characters are owned by Turbine, not by you, and they have all rights to do whatever they want with them. They could have just forced us to merge on to certain servers without having any choice. They could have not even issued rename credits and just left "Name-1" wherever they may apply without any option to rename. Other games have done that in the past. Lotro has given us a choice at the very least in being able to choose which servers we are going to. Turbine has also documented every step of the way on this forum, often via official announcements on Facebook and Twitter, and in the game launcher. If people chose to ignore all those and not take about 10-15 minutes to do their own research, they may find themselves in a lot more stress than they really needed to be in.

The forum has been the premier spot for information for over 8 years. This hasn't changed. Facebook and Twitter were added over time. But at the end of the day, it is a person's own responsibility to find out the right information. You don't just go and grab the first nozzle from the pump and put it in your car before reading what fuel comes out of it, and what fuel your car actually needs. (Although I have seen people dumb enough to fill up their gasoline car with Diesel...) You don't go upgrade your Windows 7 to Windows 10 without at least Googling at least ONCE what that would mean for your computer. And you don't go into Home Depot to buy tools, without actually knowing what you need your tool to actually DO for you.

I understand people just want to play and "can't be bothered" to read the forums, but this is no different. If you want to know a little, just a LITTLE more... it may take no more than 15 minutes of reading through some forum posts to put you at ease. The Dev Tracker is a handy tool that may help get the job done. If someone would have used the Dev Tracker in the 48 hours the transfers were open, they would have found out immediately these transfers were for testing purposes, and that they would close at 12 PM EST on Friday the 28th.

I'm sorry, but the "I didn't know because I don't read the forums" excuse is 8 years too late.

[Beaniemooch]

I'm sorry if it sounded condescending....
I'm sorry, but the "I didn't know because I don't read the forums" excuse is 8 years too late.

Yet the "not everybody reads the forums" is the EXACT reason why the blue names have for years told us forum opinions are in the minority because "most players don't read or post on the forum". Therefore those of us who do were labeled vocal minority whenever we disagreed with Turbine because the vast majority of players never visited... they just played.

You can't have it both ways.