World Transfers

[Marancil]

Well, I guess there are really two different definitions of "crowding".

• One is related to having so much people on the server we fear the hardware can not cope well with it, causing lag and such. According to what has been said by Vyvyanne, this will not be the case once the hardware migration is done. So forget about it, hopefully.
  
  
• The other is probably just a lot of people on the same server, competing for quests and resources and what not. Crowded in the sense of many people on the same place all the time. That is different from the one above and we will of course see a lot more people running around on the remaining servers, so yes, for some that may be a concern. In my opinion this will have to be dealt with somehow, since you can't very well have a queue of 15 Toons on each Ore resource, as a exaggerated example. Even if they experience no lag.

[maartena]

In my kin, there are concerns that maybe some of the remaining servers might be 'closed for transfers' after the first worlds have transferred because of 'overcrowding' , just like Brandy is at the moment. Which would mean that we might not be able to transfer to the server of our choice.

At least, not immediately and with no idea about when we will be able to transfer.
I would like to tell the kinnies who have these concerns that there is nothing to worry about, but... can I?

Does anyone have any information about this 'possible issue'?

I would not worry about it too much. ALL servers will be allowed to transfer to eventually, including Brandywine. Worst case, you have to wait longer until the new hardware is in place, which is now scheduled for "late fall" I believe, so late November/early December. That does suck if you are still waiting to transfer, but I don't think they will close more servers. Your current server will most certainly be still running when the new hardware is placed, so IF a server were to close for transfers before then, they would be opened up again when the new hardware is in place. I understand NO servers will be closed permanently till people have at least have had a chance to transfer to Brandywine for a full 30 days, and again, IF that were to happen to another server, you can be assured you will get the same 30 days as well.

Brandywine had around 4 times more players then the amount of players on the next server, and it had more players then the 4 other remaining servers combined. I can't be quite sure, but I think that even if everyone moved off of the 10 closing servers on the US side and spread over the remaining 4 servers, each server would still not reach Brandywine capacities. Gladden is the only one that might come near.

Also: I believe that should enable Brandywine for off-world transfers only NOW, so people that want to move off can do so and alleviate the stress on that server's population. (But only Brandywine, not the other 4).



I came up with a potential, suggestive, unofficial, made-up, speculative (am I clear enough) schedule, based on 1 week per world on each geographical side:

Sep. 14th 2015: Elendilmir (US), Estel (EU)
Sep. 21st 2015: Riddermark (US), Gilrain (EU)
Sep. 28th 2015: Firefoot (US), Eldar (EU)
Oct. 5th 2015: Nimrodel (US), Anduin (EU)
Oct. 12th 2015: Windfola (US), Morthond (EU)
Oct. 17th 2015: Imladris (US), Maiar (EU)
Oct. 26th 2015: Dwarrowdelf (US), Vanyar (EU)
Nov. 2nd 2015: Silverlode (US), Withywindle (EU)
Nov. 9th 2015: Vilya (US), Snowbourn (EU)
Nov. 16th 2015: Meneldor (US).

That would mean we would be complete before Thanksgiving.

[maartena]

I understand hw it works and why they do it this way but it kind of sucks when people have to compete for their names on the new world.

You can try and make the names on the target server now, and if they already exist or can't be added, try making them on Riddermark (US) or Gilrain (EU), and try to transfer them to your target world to see if you can take over an inactive name. I've done this successfully when the 48 hour transfers were happening by creating my main name on Crickhollow, and transferring it to Arkenstone where it was taken by an inactive level 5.

[Marancil]

I came up with a potential, suggestive, unofficial, made-up, speculative (am I clear enough) schedule, based on 1 week per world on each geographical side:

Sep. 14th 2015: Elendilmir (US), Estel (EU)
Sep. 21st 2015: Riddermark (US), Gilrain (EU)
Sep. 28th 2015: Firefoot (US), Eldar (EU)
Oct. 5th 2015: Nimrodel (US), Anduin (EU)
Oct. 12th 2015: Windfola (US), Morthond (EU)
Oct. 17th 2015: Imladris (US), Maiar (EU)
Oct. 26th 2015: Dwarrowdelf (US), Vanyar (EU)
Nov. 2nd 2015: Silverlode (US), Withywindle (EU)
Nov. 9th 2015: Vilya (US), Snowbourn (EU)
Nov. 16th 2015: Meneldor (US).

That would mean we would be complete before Thanksgiving.

They (Turbine) have started with a pair of worlds, (Elendilmir/Estel), I think they may proceed with pairs (US/EU) from what we have seen so far.

[Aedelric2]

I'd like to be able to plan for my move from Riddermark to Arkenstone. I'm a kin leader, so I will select my kinship leader character first and by means of a level 1 character which I will delete as soon as i give the "go" (when the kin is formed on Arkenstone, and it is safe) I will tell the kin to go ahead and transfer.

What I would like to know is if Riddermark is indeed scheduled for Monday, and what the approximate "live" time is for the transfers. I will probably transfer my kinship leader in the morning, get that out of the way so others can do their transfers without me being there, and do the rest later.... but I would like to know when the scheduled time is, if at all possible.

Thank you!!

I agree. Having a tentative schedule (as opposed to just the order of server transfers) put out by Turbine would be great.

I was also wondering if the transfer function would only work during the designated time frame for a particular server. For example, would transfers off Estel still be available after transfers off the next world become available? Or will they be unavailable with some sort of free-for-all transfer period beforeTurbine permanently closes those worlds? The last thing I want is for half my kin to be on a new server while the other half is stuck on the old with no way to join the new until the dust settles.

[Marancil]

Turbine has stated that remaining accounts on closing worlds will be available indefinitely

Q. Will transfers be free? For how long?

A. Transfers to or between the worlds that will be kept will be free until October 1st. After that point all transfers off of closed worlds will continue to be free indefinitely. But transfers between the live worlds will go back to paid.

This implies there is no current schedule to permanently close the "closing" worlds. You wont be able to play on them, I guess, but only transfer from them.

[RJFerret]

Logically they'll wait to see how transfers go this weekend when the weekend crowd is here, then figure out what to do after that, whether to close all transfers and design a new system, whether to open up the next world to transfers, whether to post a schedule, whether to open up the next few worlds, whether to stop transfers of a previous while a next is doing their rush/overload, etc.

The process literally just began a few days ago, they'll need results before any extended plan can be made, or it's just a waste of time/energy/embarrassing when the plan has to be thrown out due to results/better plans.

[Harvain]

There's a reason they haven't released a schedule beyond just saying it's all taking place in September, October, November and beyond. If things go to Mordor, then they have all the time in the world to fix things and can point back saying, "We told you these months and everything, we made no promises beyond that." lol

[Thorvalin]

Logically they'll wait to see how transfers go this weekend when the weekend crowd is here, then figure out what to do after that, whether to close all transfers and design a new system, whether to open up the next world to transfers, whether to post a schedule, whether to open up the next few worlds, whether to stop transfers of a previous while a next is doing their rush/overload, etc.

The process literally just began a few days ago, they'll need results before any extended plan can be made, or it's just a waste of time/energy/embarrassing when the plan has to be thrown out due to results/better plans.

I really do not see turbine coming up with a new system, nor do i think they need to. If they can fix the problems causing the failed transfers and the remaining issue is just how long the process takes, we may just have to live with the delay. Hopefully this is just a one time problem. Maybe those of us who don' t particular care about housing and name issues can wait a few days once our server opens up to limit the mad rush at the beginning.

[Solstyce]

Well, to be fair, it is outside of office hours, so maybe we will get some more info tomorrow. I'm ready, I am just trying to plan this all in knowing the wait times maybe many hours..... Also, the Elendilmir announcement came on Thursday, so maybe it is fair to expect the next-week announcement tomorrow, on Thursday too.

Also, I don't know how many problems they encountered. Where the transfers between the 5 worlds were fast at all times, a few minutes at most, this is the first BIG stress test, where players have been waiting for many hours for their transfers to complete. If they encountered too many problems, they may have to fix some things first....

That said, yeah I am hoping for an announcement tomorrow.

Thank you for the reply. However, here it is Thursday and still no information on any of their threads or on FB and Twitter. This is one of the reasons I said their communication needs work :P. I do wish they would announce it, though. So many on Ridder are wondering the same and I would like to know so I know when the best time is to move myself to the server I want.

[maartena]

Thank you for the reply. However, here it is Thursday and still no information on any of their threads or on FB and Twitter. This is one of the reasons I said their communication needs work :P. I do wish they would announce it, though. So many on Ridder are wondering the same and I would like to know so I know when the best time is to move myself to the server I want.

Thursday isn't over yet. It's around 13:15 in Boston right now..... I'm hoping for an announcement on Riddermark soon!

[WillOTheWisp]

Assuming there have been no major problems with the world transfers, Turbine needs to step on the gas and set an expedited transfer schedule.

Doing only a pair a week is too slow, as it will drag out the transfer schedule into the end of November.
I suggest doing 2 pairs per week:

Monday Sep 21 - Riddermark / Gilrain
Thursday Sep 24 - Firefoot / Eldar
Monday Sep 28 - Nimrodel / Anduin
Thursday Oct 1 - Windfola / Morthond
Monday Oct 5 - Imladris / Maiar
Thursday Oct 8 - Dwarrowdelf / Vanyar
Monday Oct 12 - Silverlode / Withywindle
Thursday Oct 15 - Vilya / Snowbourn
Monday Oct 19 - Meneldor

[HairyKrishna]

What worries me most is that these are the 2 smallest population servers. It is now after noon on Thursday, so I am guessing it will take at the very least 1 full week to transfer the 2 SMALLEST servers. The larger servers will have a higher load of transfers, and a bigger amount of total transfers, so queue times and transfer windows will only increase from here on out

We do not have numbers for this, but if you would have to wager a guess, how much bigger do you think the 2 largest server populations are compared to the smallest ones? This server consolidation might well take until the end of the year before it is done

Edit: fixed some grammar, but I am sure there is still enough left for the grammar police

[cdq1958]

What worries me most is that these are the 2 smallest population servers. It is now after noon on Thursday, so I am guessing it will take at the very least 1 full week to transfer the 2 SMALLEST servers. The larger servers will have a higher load of transfers, and a bigger amount of total transfers, so queue times and transfer windows will only increase from now on.

We do not have numbers for this, but if you would have to wager a guess, how much bigger do you think the 2 largest server populations are compared to the smallest ones? This server consolidation might well take until the end of the year before it is done

If we are talking active accounts, I'd guess that Meneldor has about twice the numbers of Elendilmir, with all 10 coming to about the same numbers as Landy plus Ark and Crick. Think the 80:20 rule (fat tailed exponential distribution). What surprised me, somewhat, was that the early Elendilmir transfer load was at least one or two orders of magnitude larger than the live test load among the 5 remaining servers. That suggests to me that the initial every other week plan will stay, for now. I don't expect Riddermark to be opened next Monday, though we may yet see that announced as it is just before 2PM Eastern. It is also possible they'll announce Ridder tomorrow, if this afternoon's internal meetings done to discuss this week's findings and internal adjustments are deemed sufficient to allow it.

[Herwegur]

If I was an employee I would have a different color tag, now wouldn't I?

No I just pay attention to what happens on the forums, I participate in official testing phases, report bugs back to Turbine, have intensively tested transfers between servers, including accounts with houses and kinships. I have moved characters and Kinships between Palentir an Bullroarer when we could, as well as between the remaining five U.S. Servers, and I do have a very technical background that allows me to understand how databases, servers, and the migration of those actually work in a large variety of industries.

Unfortunately my efforts are not wanted by a few individuals. I may have been wrong a few times, but my information has been correct in the vast majority of my posts. Luckily, I have the freedom to post whatever I want as long as I stick to the rules, and will continue to answer questions if I can.

Those who don't appreciate that, know what to do.

Such martyr. What a shame Sapience isn't here to see this. *wipes tear*

[Tel'aran'rhiod]

I agree. Having a tentative schedule (as opposed to just the order of server transfers) put out by Turbine would be great.

I was also wondering if the transfer function would only work during the designated time frame for a particular server. For example, would transfers off Estel still be available after transfers off the next world become available? Or will they be unavailable with some sort of free-for-all transfer period beforeTurbine permanently closes those worlds? The last thing I want is for half my kin to be on a new server while the other half is stuck on the old with no way to join the new until the dust settles.

I bet they will leave it open on servers that have already gone. Estel is a ghost town; nearly everyone has transferred already (some are leaving alts around until the very end). I bet that trend continues with the others, so leaving it open won't add to traffic meaningfully as they open new servers. Just a guess though.

[Tel'aran'rhiod]

Assuming there have been no major problems with the world transfers, Turbine needs to step on the gas and set an expedited transfer schedule.

Doing only a pair a week is too slow, as it will drag out the transfer schedule into the end of November.
I suggest doing 2 pairs per week:

Monday Sep 21 - Riddermark / Gilrain
Thursday Sep 24 - Firefoot / Eldar
Monday Sep 28 - Nimrodel / Anduin
Thursday Oct 1 - Windfola / Morthond
Monday Oct 5 - Imladris / Maiar
Thursday Oct 8 - Dwarrowdelf / Vanyar
Monday Oct 12 - Silverlode / Withywindle
Thursday Oct 15 - Vilya / Snowbourn
Monday Oct 19 - Meneldor

it's not really just major problems - there are tickets outstanding as a result of the transfer on Estel, and I think they want to be sure they've got them under control before getting a flood of new tickets. People with a pretty fundamental problem are still waiting for a Turbine response (for ex people that had chars on server X, then moved them to Estel but now tried to move them back to server X with Estel closing seem to be having issues - at least a few I know of are).

I think it's still too early for Turbine to try to map out the rest of the schedule. Estel was eye-opening on a few fronts, and while my (and many others) has a smooth albeit unexpectedly long transfer, this was just the first closing world to move en masse (and move we did; it's a ghost town there already).

[RJFerret]

Vyvyanne has shown great caution during the entire process, the high stakes warrant it.

I imagine this weekend will be the final "see how things go" aspect. If they are happy with the circumstances and want to move forward, I imagine the schedule will accelerate. Remember each server other than the biggest three have nearly the same population/logins to each other, the variance is minimal. Therefore Monday could see the next set of servers opening to transfer, Tues. the next couple, Wed. the next, etc. The load would be heavy continuously instead of tapering off the day after. That assumes this weekend's load isn't horrific. If it is, they'll probably compare to the first day and budget how many servers they may open up to have the weekend load not worse than the initial onslaught.

Alternatively they'll do every other day next week (three sets total). The ramp up might be more linear though, two sets next week, three the week thereafter, then five sets if not overloading things.

tl;dr: I doubt it'll be one a week, but accelerate as they witness systems handling it acceptably.

[Tel'aran'rhiod]

Vyvyanne has shown great caution during the entire process, the high stakes warrant it.

I imagine this weekend will be the final "see how things go" aspect. If they are happy with the circumstances and want to move forward, I imagine the schedule will accelerate. Remember each server other than the biggest three have nearly the same population/logins to each other, the variance is minimal. Therefore Monday could see the next set of servers opening to transfer, Tues. the next couple, Wed. the next, etc. The load would be heavy continuously instead of tapering off the day after. That assumes this weekend's load isn't horrific. If it is, they'll probably compare to the first day and budget how many servers they may open up to have the weekend load not worse than the initial onslaught.

Alternatively they'll do every other day next week (three sets total). The ramp up might be more linear though, two sets next week, three the week thereafter, then five sets if not overloading things.

tl;dr: I doubt it'll be one a week, but accelerate as they witness systems handling it acceptably.

I tend to agree that at some point it will accelerate, but I'll be surprised if they don't give multiple days to every server. The crunch on Estel caused from 2 to 5 hour delays for over 24 hours and people got frustrated with that. I think they'll want each server to have 72 hours to work through the transfer. This assumes they feel comfortable with a LOT of tickets still being open; I'm not sure how they will decide to handle that (72 hours in there are still plenty waiting for answered to various questions). I like that they are being cautious still, even though I know others are frustrated to not blast ahead.

[maartena]

Vyvyanne & Frelorn, I think it's time for a small update, people are getting a bit anxious. Transfers from Elendilmir have cause many hours of waiting for transferrees, and there have been quite a few mentions on the forums of problems with the transfers. But is that really true? If it is less than 50 true problems on thousands of transfers, is that a indication that everything is working as expected and these are just some manual cases for which really no automated solution exists? Is the one-a-week schedule, with the amount of people on each server increasing with each week too bold? Right now it seems that if we indeed do one a week, we will be opening up the last server (Meneldor) 1 week before the week of Thanksgiving, which seems the best scenario, as you don't want to have to deal with too many transfer tickets and issues DURING the week of Thanksgiving, and I am sure that after thanksgiving the hardware upgrades will take the resources of everyone.

Perhaps it is time to update the community on how things are going, and what we can expect in the coming weeks... I would want to see an announcement from Turbine at least a number of days BEFORE the transfers happen for the next servers in line, and if Riddermark is indeed scheduled for next week, I think it's probably fair to let us know today whether that is indeed the plan.

So with this post, can you please update us before the end of your work day in Boston? - Very much appreciated

[Frelorn]

Overall the process has been going very well. Thousands of transfers have been completed without issue since Monday without issue. We did see the transfers taking longer than expected during peak traffic and the team is looking into ways we can optimize this further. The only other surprise was the longer than normal forum bans that came with the process. We are also looking at ways we can try to resolve this as well.

Beyond the above listed there were no other issues we did not know about from a technical standpoint. There were a small number of transfer failures, but we knew that in some rare cases this would occur and our CS team is working to help anyone who runs into an issue.

Once we get through the weekend and have a chance to analyze the data, we will have more information.

[Wirbel]

Vyvyanne & Frelorn, I think it's time for a small update...

Overall the process has been going very well. Thousands of transfers have been completed without issue since Monday without issue. We did see the transfers taking longer than expected during peak traffic and the team is looking into ways we can optimize this further. The only other surprise was the longer than normal forum bans that came with the process. We are also looking at ways we can try to resolve this as well.

Beyond the above listed there were no other issues we did not know about from a technical standpoint. There were a small number of transfer failures, but we knew that in some rare cases this would occur and our CS team is working to help anyone who runs into an issue.

Once we get through the weekend and have a chance to analyze the data, we will have more information.

What witchcraft is this?



Btw, thanks for the brief, Frelorn.

[maartena]

Once we get through the weekend and have a chance to analyze the data, we will have more information.

Well, that pretty much means no Riddermark transfers next week..... or at least not Monday.

[Wirbel]

Well, that pretty much means no Riddermark transfers next week..... or at least not Monday.

Not surprising with the still-early stages of an iterative process. Testing never stops.

[robbie1435]

Thousands of transfers have been completed without issue since Monday without issue.

From only two servers? WOW.