[Vyvyanne] Server Move Question I would like a comment on from the EP

[Coeprandua]

Vyvyanne,

I posted this ticket in game. A GM showed up very quickly but they were unable to help.

"I have an unusual, but I hope not unreasonable request. I played on Dwarrowdelf for years, but when I heared about the new DC in Amsterdam I made a very big decision and I left behind everything I had (most importantly my friends) to start over on Evernight. I gave away all my belongings and currencies. I regret my decision very much and now that Amsterdam is not happening, all the more so. Transfers between EU and NA are not possible. Instead, would it be possible for a kind GM to remove my 6 major currencies (gold, marks, medallions, seals, stars of merit, shards) on Evernight and give them back to me on Gladden, where my old kinship moved? This way I could go back to my old kin and bring my old toons up to speed with the currencies I earned on Evernight. If you need to log into my account for this, you have my full consent. Please, don't close this ticket if I'm offline. Thank you in advance."

Basically, what I'm asking for is for a GM to remove all my marks, medalions, seals, stars of merit, shards and gold on Evernight. Then I log over to one of my Gladden toons on the same account, wait for the GM to contact me again and they add these 6 currencies back in for use on Gladden. The way I see it, this should be a matter of maybe typing 6 console commands on their part so why is this not possible? Gold might work a bit differently, but I can just send them the gold in mail on Evernight and they send me the same amount of gold on Gladden.

To elaborate on why this is so important too me. I left behind 9 level-capped, fully-geared characters and all my friends and kinnies when I started over on Evernight over a year ago, due to the announcement that new and improved hardware would be deployed in Amsterdam, promising much better performance for EU players. I gave away everything I had on my old server, including all my essences and currencies in the form of bartered items, so it's not possible for me to just go back and continue now. after this, I built up an entirely new existence on Evernight that includes 4 capped and geared characters and the result of thousands of gameplay hours and farming in currencies. Now, I have no intention to continue on Evernight due to Amsterdam not happening and I would like to move back to my friends that I still miss every day. I am very interested in coming back to play lotro with my old kinnies on Gladden, but I would not continue on Evernight. It seems to me that it would take very little effort for your GM to make right the enormous inconvenience this whole situation has caused me. I do not request an EU -> NA transfer, you've stated it's not possible. I only request a "transfer" of my 6 account-wide, but server-specific currencies in a way that seems to be just a matter of executing some remove and add commands independent of each other on 2 separate servers.

I would like an EP comment on this, please.

[Harla]

I can understand why this would be important to you, but I can also vaguely see why such a request would be hard to green-light for GMs. I hope that you can sort something out - get a hold of a senior GM in game and talk it through with them, maybe get a positive result, but the reality is that your chances are slim. I suspect it's less about ability to execute the actions, and more about permission and sufficient verification to do so, between the GMs and their own internal rules and limitations.

What I'd recommend you do is return to your old capped out characters, and transfer them to the server that your friends and kin-mates moved to, along with all remaining account currencies and shared storage, etc., and then hook up with your friends again. It sounds like you're a dedicated player, and they'd be just as glad to have you back as you say you've missed playing with them. Yes, you'll be effectively broke and without equipment, however as someone who has raised and geared so many characters already, you'll know that actually sitting down and kitting out a character with the current top tier equipment (not necessarily the best of the best, but within the best grade, good enough for doing everything), doesn't take very long if you have a group of friends to play with regularly. I'm sure your friends and kin mates will be more than happy to help you get back on your feet and up to scratch again - that's what friends are for after all. (By the way, as someone who is very uncomfortable receiving charity of any kind myself, I can understand how difficult putting that kind of reliance on your mates might be... but I also like helping out my friends, and there have been a lot of time that I've wanted to assist a friend who lost out, and felt a bit bad because they didn't want to let me - so let them, if they want to.)

[Coeprandua]

I can understand why this would be important to you, but I can also vaguely see why such a request would be hard to green-light for GMs. I hope that you can sort something out - get a hold of a senior GM in game and talk it through with them, maybe get a positive result, but the reality is that your chances are slim. I suspect it's less about ability to execute the actions, and more about permission and sufficient verification to do so, between the GMs and their own internal rules and limitations.

What I'd recommend you do is return to your old capped out characters, and transfer them to the server that your friends and kin-mates moved to, along with all remaining account currencies and shared storage, etc., and then hook up with your friends again. It sounds like you're a dedicated player, and they'd be just as glad to have you back as you say you've missed playing with them. Yes, you'll be effectively broke and without equipment, however as someone who has raised and geared so many characters already, you'll know that actually sitting down and kitting out a character with the current top tier equipment (not necessarily the best of the best, but within the best grade, good enough for doing everything), doesn't take very long if you have a group of friends to play with regularly. I'm sure your friends and kin mates will be more than happy to help you get back on your feet and up to scratch again - that's what friends are for after all. (By the way, as someone who is very uncomfortable receiving charity of any kind myself, I can understand how difficult putting that kind of reliance on your mates might be... but I also like helping out my friends, and there have been a lot of time that I've wanted to assist a friend who lost out, and felt a bit bad because they didn't want to let me - so let them, if they want to.)

This is exactly the reason why I'm trying to get a response from the EP here. Maybe she can authorize a GM to do this.

I've already talked to my old kinship leader and he said they'd be happy to have me back.

As far as abandoning everything I built starting from scratch for the second time, I will not do this. I would go from 20k gold, 2 million marks, etc to nothing and I would have 9 characters to catch up that were abandoned before the release of imbued LIs. The big thing is imbued LIs here. It may sound like I have a lot of marks but I would need every last bit of it for my toons.

When they first made the announcement about Amsterdam at the beginning of last year iirc, I thought it was set in stone and it was going to happen no matter what or else they wouldn't be making an anouncement that literally starts an exodus of players from NA to EU. Their responsibility towards these players is tremendous because they made us abandon everything we had, which was often a result of years of playing in hopes that there is a better future for us where we can raid without lag.

A lot of us stayed because leveling again would've been an effort they weren't ready to make and so most of my friends and kinmates stayed even tho they are Europeans. But some of us felt, we could do this. I was one such player, but I no longer am. I can't do this again and so the choice is between asking for their assistance and somehow getting it or leaving altogether, which is more than possible right now as I'm already playing a toon in Black Desert that launched yesterday. But I'd like to be clear that I would still prefer Lotro if and only if I can play with the people I love the most.

[Harla]

I've already talked to my old kinship leader and he said they'd be happy to have me back.

As far as abandoning everything I built starting from scratch for the second time, I will not do this. I would go from 20k gold, 2 million marks, etc to nothing and I would have 9 characters to catch up that were abandoned before the release of imbued LIs. The big thing is imbued LIs here. It may sound like I have a lot of marks but I would need every last bit of it for my toons.

You wouldn't be starting from scratch, and I'll be honest, the concept of accruing all of that in the time frame between the Amsterdam announcement and now, boggles my mind... so whatever you do, you're far and away more efficient than me (or have far more time to spend in game, whichever). I mean, you're saying that you started from blank-account-scratch at around the Amsterdam announcement, and by this point now have four capped out, geared up and raid-ready characters. I can't even comprehend doing that in that amount of time. That aside, you won't be alone or doing it yourself either; you'll be with your friends, and a burden shared amongst six or seven friends, let alone a whole kinship, is barely any burden at all. If you gave away all of your stuff when you left previously, well, there's nothing wrong with asking for help from your mates in your own time of need.

What I'm saying is that I hope you can get the answer you want here, but I don't believe you will, and if not, well, the reality is that it sounds like you're going back to a community of friends and companions, and in the end what you feel like you'll be losing isn't really very much at all... especially if the big thing for you is the emotional ties you have to friends you've made, and will now be able to rejoin.


Here's the bit where I feel I've got to be a bit harder:

Their responsibility towards these players is tremendous because they made us abandon everything we had, which was often a result of years of playing in hopes that there is a better future for us where we can raid without lag.

No. They didn't. Take some responsibility for yourself. You made that choice, and no-one made you do it but you. You regretted it, but it was still your own choice, and no-one is responsible for it but you.

Turbine announced their plans, and we are all well aware that plans can change. You made a choice based on those plans, and took the gamble of acting on them before they actually happened. The plan altered, and your prospective outcome isn't what you'd hoped it would be, currently, but you are still the one responsible for your choices, not Turbine. A more cautious person might have waited until the move was done, and the kinks ironed out, before giving away all of their things and uprooting themselves. You choose to jump early and get a head start on your restart, relying on the assumption that the plan would go forward unchanged - your gamble did not pan out, but that was the risk you decided to take, and no-one made you do it.

A lot of us stayed because leveling again would've been an effort they weren't ready to make and so most of my friends and kinmates stayed even tho they are Europeans. But some of us felt, we could do this. I was one such player, but I no longer am. I can't do this again and so the choice is between asking for their assistance and somehow getting it or leaving altogether

If the emotional investment you have and the ties you have forged with your kinmates and friends is as heartfelt as you say it is, then I'm sure most of them would much rather help get some of your existing capped toons back up to speed, than to see you go. If it's as heartfelt as you say, then I'm quite sure you would as well.

But I'd like to be clear that I would still prefer Lotro if and only if I can play with the people I love the most.

You still can. There is absolutely, literally, nothing stopping you from doing this, right now. Transfer those toons, tell your friends you're back in town, and let them know you'll need a bit of help getting them back up to speed since you left. It'll take virtually no time at all, and by the sounds of things you'll all be much happier.

I'm still hoping that you can get an answer, of course - and I hope that it's the answer you'd like to hear, but the tone of your post makes it sound as though you're valuing those marks and shards more highly than the companionship of "The people [You] love the most.", and that just makes me want to suggest that you pick yourself up, shake it off, take some responsibility for your own actions and decisions, accept it, and go be with your friends.

By the by, as far as I'm aware, they haven't said that Amsterdam is not happening. What they've said is that their priority right now is to sort out all the other routing and server issues, and that that will provide more of a benefit, even for the EU players, than going ahead with the move with things as-is... and given the issues that have been present, I fully believe that. That doesn't mean the move isn't happening. It doesn't mean that it is either.

For the record, can I ask you... as an EU player, what was your ping, on average? I ask only because I've heard a lot of people complain about the game being unplayable, or un-raidable, with their latency.. and then the number they report is a rather small fraction of what we, over here in Australia, experience...

[Coeprandua]

You wouldn't be starting from scratch, and I'll be honest, the concept of accruing all of that in the time frame between the Amsterdam announcement and now, boggles my mind... so whatever you do, you're far and away more efficient than me (or have far more time to spend in game, whichever). I mean, you're saying that you started from blank-account-scratch at around the Amsterdam announcement, and by this point now have four capped out, geared up and raid-ready characters. I can't even comprehend doing that in that amount of time. That aside, you won't be alone or doing it yourself either; you'll be with your friends, and a burden shared amongst six or seven friends, let alone a whole kinship, is barely any burden at all. If you gave away all of your stuff when you left previously, well, there's nothing wrong with asking for help from your mates in your own time of need.

What I'm saying is that I hope you can get the answer you want here, but I don't believe you will, and if not, well, the reality is that it sounds like you're going back to a community of friends and companions, and in the end what you feel like you'll be losing isn't really very much at all... especially if the big thing for you is the emotional ties you have to friends you've made, and will now be able to rejoin.


Here's the bit where I feel I've got to be a bit harder:



No. They didn't. Take some responsibility for yourself. You made that choice, and no-one made you do it but you. You regretted it, but it was still your own choice, and no-one is responsible for it but you.

Turbine announced their plans, and we are all well aware that plans can change. You made a choice based on those plans, and took the gamble of acting on them before they actually happened. The plan altered, and your prospective outcome isn't what you'd hoped it would be, currently, but you are still the one responsible for your choices, not Turbine. A more cautious person might have waited until the move was done, and the kinks ironed out, before giving away all of their things and uprooting themselves. You choose to jump early and get a head start on your restart, relying on the assumption that the plan would go forward unchanged - your gamble did not pan out, but that was the risk you decided to take, and no-one made you do it.



If the emotional investment you have and the ties you have forged with your kinmates and friends is as heartfelt as you say it is, then I'm sure most of them would much rather help get some of your existing capped toons back up to speed, than to see you go. If it's as heartfelt as you say, then I'm quite sure you would as well.




You still can. There is absolutely, literally, nothing stopping you from doing this, right now. Transfer those toons, tell your friends you're back in town, and let them know you'll need a bit of help getting them back up to speed since you left. It'll take virtually no time at all, and by the sounds of things you'll all be much happier.

I'm still hoping that you can get an answer, of course - and I hope that it's the answer you'd like to hear, but the tone of your post makes it sound as though you're valuing those marks and shards more highly than the companionship of "The people [You] love the most.", and that just makes me want to suggest that you pick yourself up, shake it off, take some responsibility for your own actions and decisions, accept it, and go be with your friends.

By the by, as far as I'm aware, they haven't said that Amsterdam is not happening. What they've said is that their priority right now is to sort out all the other routing and server issues, and that that will provide more of a benefit, even for the EU players, than going ahead with the move with things as-is... and given the issues that have been present, I fully believe that. That doesn't mean the move isn't happening. It doesn't mean that it is either.

For the record, can I ask you... as an EU player, what was your ping, on average? I ask only because I've heard a lot of people complain about the game being unplayable, or un-raidable, with their latency.. and then the number they report is a rather small fraction of what we, over here in Australia, experience...

the reality is that your whole post is based on speculation and its completely untrue
i dont have time to respond to every outrageous assumption you make, i can only give a few pointers
1. my toons were leveled on gotv and botv
2. i farmed thorog 2h a day for months
3. im not playing lotro, im playing another game that i very much enjoy so far, but im looking for a way to return for u18
4. i can only play a few hours a day, it has been like this since u16 and i symply have no time to do what you suggest
5. i only need 10m of a gms time to allow me to return to lotro and enjoy u18
6. i could go on but i gotta go.

[Macdui]

Jan 7 2015

The Server moves will be started with a listing of preferred servers, their new locations and an opening of free transfers to the servers. None of this will be limited by EU or NA. You can play on whichever server you like on the preferred server list regardless of where you might physically be located.

We are working on some tech that will make transfers smoother and more beneficial which is why this has not yet begun. More info as we get closer to that.

Jan 8 2015

My apologies on some incorrect information I posted yesterday. We may still be limited in our ability to transfer EU characters to NA servers and vice versa due to some data discrepancies. We are looking to see if that is something we can resolve in this transition, but it does not look likely. However you can always start new characters on any server. This is only a problem with transfers.

It wasn't a lie it was just total ignorance of the difficulties. To the OP I think this is a perfectly reasonable request given that Vyvyanne suggested that starting again was a reasonable option if you wanted a geographically local datacentre.

But the whole premise of the new datacentres was a fail the day it was announced because of the well-known database conflict and the dropping of EU/US tags on server selection. If the person in charge is there to do this one thing and after a couple of days it turns out it can't be done, yeah why not drag it out for a year?

[Frelorn]

If we did this for one person, we would need to do this for everyone. Given how the game works, this would be a labor intensive process for our GM's and mean that they could be potentially flooded with these requests making it difficult for them to do other things or the process could take weeks if not longer depending on the number of people requesting something like this. Given how busy our GM's already are, I find it highly unlikely that we would ever offer something like this.

[UwS-Harledir]

If we did this for one person, we would need to do this for everyone. Given how the game works, this would be a labor intensive process for our GM's and mean that they could be potentially flooded with these requests making it difficult for them to do other things or the process could take weeks if not longer depending on the number of people requesting something like this. Given how busy our GM's already are, I find it highly unlikely that we would ever offer something like this.

...and exactly that kind of "customer support" is what will be the downfall of Turbine.

Sad enough you can´t figure out a migration interface between EU and US DBs (or more probable don´t want to), but then just not even bothering to help paying customers is plain disrespectful to those indirectly paying your salary and keeping this game alive.

[Arnenna]

5. i only need 10m of a gms time to allow me to return to lotro and enjoy u18

I feel for you, the thought of leaving behind all your hard work must be very daunting. It would be for me.

But, when you couple these two comments together, you can see where the issue may pop up.

"I thought it was set in stone and it was going to happen no matter what or else they wouldn't be making an anouncement that literally starts an exodus of players from NA to EU. "
"i only need 10m of a gms time to allow me to return to lotro and enjoy u18"

Exodus of players x 10 minutes GM time = a lot of time overall.

If they do this for you, they must do it for everyone that requests it, and I think that could cause the answer to sway against your favour.

Edit. I now see Frelorn has already stated what I suspected further up the thread.

I'm sorry it didn't go as you hoped, but I do hope you will stay in LOTRO.

[EB64]

...and exactly that kind of "customer support" is what will be the downfall of Turbine.

Sad enough you can´t figure out a migration interface between EU and US DBs (or more probable don´t want to), but then just not even bothering to help paying customers is plain disrespectful to those indirectly paying your salary and keeping this game alive.

If EU to US conversion were feasible, you can bet your behind they'd have put it in the store LONG ago.
You can thank Codemasters for this problem.

I fail to see why denying a specific request such as the OP's is so terrible.
If Turbine had a gigantic tech support team, something like this would be no problem. As things are, though, their team is very small.
I'd much rather they help people with real issues, not help people who made rash decisions get special treatment because of it.
Heck, tell ya what. Turbine should let the OP do this, but charge something like $50+ to do so. :P

To the OP:
It's your own fault this happened.
There was NO reason for you to give all your stuff away and delete your characters like you did.
You can, however, transfer your "shared storage" from Dwarrowdelf to Gladden, and any marks/medallions/shared wardrobe/etc that you had there should transfer over. Basically anything in your wallet that wasn't character bound should transfer over.

[Pfeifenkraut]

...and exactly that kind of "customer support" is what will be the downfall of Turbine.

Sad enough you can´t figure out a migration interface between EU and US DBs (or more probable don´t want to), but then just not even bothering to help paying customers is plain disrespectful to those indirectly paying your salary and keeping this game alive.

That's a pretty ignorant response. There are rules against making public posts demanding that a specific Turbine employee respond. And since he made this public, the response definitely had to be "no", because a "yes" would have made it a precedent. Like Frelorn said, they would have had to do it for anyone else asking, and I expect that would have been thousands of people. What Frelorn didn't add, is how difficult it would be for the GM to tell in the moment if the person was being honest or trying to exploit.

If Coeprandua had instead sent a private request to Vyvyanne, she probably would have responded, and may have honoured his request as long as it was kept private. Maybe not, but at least there was a chance.

[lugbur]

...and exactly that kind of "customer support" is what will be the downfall of Turbine.

Sad enough you can´t figure out a migration interface between EU and US DBs (or more probable don´t want to), but then just not even bothering to help paying customers is plain disrespectful to those indirectly paying your salary and keeping this game alive.

maybe you should try readin his post again. Now, ive had bad experiences with their customer support too, but i can 100% understand why he responded the way he did. he could have completely ignored this thread, but he took his time to read, and respond.

As he said, their GM's are already very busy, and this would add work onto that. People already complain about waits for ticket times, could you imagine the anger and impatience over something like that? there are only so many GM's, and only so much time in the day. while i understand the OP's request, i also understand why its something that may not be possible, especially if its very time intensive.

[Bedalin]

If we did this for one person, we would need to do this for everyone. Given how the game works, this would be a labor intensive process for our GM's and mean that they could be potentially flooded with these requests making it difficult for them to do other things or the process could take weeks if not longer depending on the number of people requesting something like this. Given how busy our GM's already are, I find it highly unlikely that we would ever offer something like this.

That is the sad result after announcing new Servers in Amsterdam and finally dismiss those new servers with a pretty vague letter. Pretty much a slap in the face of those players,which trust turbine over a year. At least you should make a crystal clear Announcement about the servers in Amtserdam. Are they completely canceled or only shift back until the problems in NJ are solved? Everything else would be very unprofessional in the eyes of the a decend part of the europeen community. Even if you try to rescue the rest of trust in you,for the most player here, is your slogan "Powered by our fans" only a bad joke anymore...

[Coeprandua]

If we did this for one person, we would need to do this for everyone. Given how the game works, this would be a labor intensive process for our GM's and mean that they could be potentially flooded with these requests making it difficult for them to do other things or the process could take weeks if not longer depending on the number of people requesting something like this. Given how busy our GM's already are, I find it highly unlikely that we would ever offer something like this.

You're acknowledging that a lot of people are affected by this issue that is the direct consequence of your communication. Is it not worth considering, then, to find a solution to a problem that affects so many?

People are getting fast responses from GMs in-game. +Geneva+ responded to me within approx. 5 minutes of my submitting the ticket. GMs are seen talking to people in world chat. They magically flood the House of Coin with Northern Squirrels. And yet they are so busy they can't take 10 minutes to help with a situation like this?

Sorry, Frelorn, but it seems you took the easiest way out coming up with the most obvious excuse. Even if more people decided to request this service, it would definitely not be a mad rush.

I could say more words, but instead I just respectully urge you to reconsider. 8^)

[Firgrim]

That is the sad result after announcing new Servers in Amsterdam and finally dismiss those new servers with a pretty vague letter. Pretty much a slap in the face of those players,which trust turbine over a year. At least you should make a crystal clear Announcement about the servers in Amtserdam. Are they completely canceled or only shift back until the problems in NJ are solved? Everything else would be very unprofessional in the eyes of the a decend part of the europeen community. Even if you try to rescue the rest of trust in you,for the most player here, is your slogan "Powered by our fans" only a bad joke anymore...

*IF* they can get the NJ Datacenter problems fixed, I'm not sure there would be any clear gameplay advantage to having servers in Amsterdam. Sure, everyone assumes that the problems the EU community has experienced since Codemasters went away are partly because of the location of Turbine's servers. But what if that's not the cause at all? What if the real problem has all along been the unoptimized network code, graphics bloat, etc.?

The reason I bring this up is because there are plenty of people having problems in the USA as well. My ping to Turbine from the southeastern US has and always was fine (with a couple of isolated issues a few weeks ago). And yet, I still see massive problems when grouping. These problems didn't exist 4 months ago. I also see problems in newer areas like Minas Tirith with huge framerate dropoffs that DID exist before the move.

So let's suppose you get servers in their current state in Amsterdam. Wouldn't it follow you'd still have large chunks of annoying gameplay?

On the other side of that argument, if they can figure out and fix the issues *everyone* is having (those who are seeing problems, that is), perhaps those fixes will work for all players regardless of continent. Or at least vastly improve the experience.

I'm not defending the silence from Turbine on the issue, past and otherwise. It does look like there are lots of variables in play, though, and I can see value in getting some of the core issues resolved as a top priority, and shelving or cancelling the Amsterdam plan. If these variables can be fixed (things like graphics optimization on their side, route efficiencies) can we at least allow that it might help all players, regardless of geography? Or at least give it a look after they've declared these problems resolved?

I'm with you guys; the change in plans should have been more transparent. But given the hand we've all been dealt and the fact that these problems have basically been acknowledged to be out of our control but Turbine's responsibility, maybe see what happens.

[siipperi]

You're acknowledging that a lot of people are affected by this issue that is the direct consequence of your communication. Is it not worth considering, then, to find a solution to a problem that affects so many?

People are getting fast responses from GMs in-game. +Geneva+ responded to me within approx. 5 minutes of my submitting the ticket. GMs are seen talking to people in world chat. They magically flood the House of Coin with Northern Squirrels. And yet they are so busy they can't take 10 minutes to help with a situation like this?

Sorry, Frelorn, but it seems you took the easiest way out coming up with the most obvious excuse. Even if more people decided to request this service, it would definitely not be a mad rush.

I could say more words, but instead I just respectully urge you to reconsider. 8^)

Dude if you don't realize if they do this favor for you they need to do exactly same service for 1000s of others. You can't be special snowflake even if you so much wish for it. Calling turbine out for your own foolishness and selfishness is silly. What Frelorn said is totally reasonable.

[Coeprandua]

To the OP:
There was NO reason for you to give all your stuff away and delete your characters like you did.
You can, however, transfer your "shared storage" from Dwarrowdelf to Gladden, and any marks/medallions/shared wardrobe/etc that you had there should transfer over. Basically anything in your wallet that wasn't character bound should transfer over.

I gave away my stuff because real life circumstances didn't allow me to lay LOTRO any more. It was only 6 months later that I returned and started on Evernight. However, it has very little to do with the stuff I gave away. It has everything to do with imbued LIs.

It's your own fault this happened.

It was not my fault this happened. It is 100% Turbine's fault. This single sentence is the rudest and most inconsiderate response I've ever received on these forums.

[Coeprandua]

That's a pretty ignorant response. There are rules against making public posts demanding that a specific Turbine employee respond. And since he made this public, the response definitely had to be "no", because a "yes" would have made it a precedent. Like Frelorn said, they would have had to do it for anyone else asking, and I expect that would have been thousands of people. What Frelorn didn't add, is how difficult it would be for the GM to tell in the moment if the person was being honest or trying to exploit.

If Coeprandua had instead sent a private request to Vyvyanne, she probably would have responded, and may have honoured his request as long as it was kept private. Maybe not, but at least there was a chance.

1. I didn't know about any such rules.
2. I didn't demand anything. I asked for a comment.

[Coeprandua]

Dude if you don't realize if they do this favor for you they need to do exactly same service for 1000s of others. You can't be special snowflake even if you so much wish for it. Calling turbine out for your own foolishness and selfishness is silly. What Frelorn said is totally reasonable.

And how do you know this about 1000s of people, exactly?

[Warmutkan]

It was your choice to move servers as you did, but as you've said, you didn't just do it for funsies. You took Turbine at their word that they would be able to deliver on Amsterdam. It didn't turn out that way, which sucks. It also sucks that Frelorn has said No. But he has a point: they don't have the resources to do this for large chunks of the player base. There probably aren't "thousands" of people who did what you did, but it's a resource/time commitment Frelorn thinks is too high of an ask for the team they have left. Especially if they would have trouble telling the difference between people in your specific situation, and people wanting, essentially, a manual NA-EU transfer.

My suggestion? Keep reaching out to the people who A) make the decisions about what staff do/don't spend their time on, and B) who would actually process the request.

It was good of Frelorn to respond (No is better than Silence), but he doesn't fit the bill for either of those, and his "highly unlikely" might not be the final word for your ask. Good luck.

[Arnenna]

You're acknowledging that a lot of people are affected by this issue that is the direct consequence of your communication. Is it not worth considering, then, to find a solution to a problem that affects so many?

People are getting fast responses from GMs in-game. +Geneva+ responded to me within approx. 5 minutes of my submitting the ticket. GMs are seen talking to people in world chat. They magically flood the House of Coin with Northern Squirrels. And yet they are so busy they can't take 10 minutes to help with a situation like this?

Sorry, Frelorn, but it seems you took the easiest way out coming up with the most obvious excuse. Even if more people decided to request this service, it would definitely not be a mad rush.

I could say more words, but instead I just respectully urge you to reconsider. 8^)

It's not 10 minutes though. It's 10 minutes to sort yours out, but to cover everyone its 1000's x 10 minutes. Do the math on this. It's a lot of time.

I'm guessing it would be a mad rush, word travels fast around LOTRO, and once it gets out that turbine are transferring currencies and items across servers for a player, everyone and their dog is going to request it. There will be all the players that were actually affected along with hundreds more that weren't, but just want to move. The only way a GM can know the difference between the two is investigate the background of the player - that's your 10 minutes gone up tenfold or more - per player.

I'm really sorry that this happened to you. I really wanted the Amsterdam move too. But I pay to play this game as well, and I really don't want that much money poured into managing this kind of request because it is likely to snowball to huge proportions that will equate to a lot of time. A single transaction would be fine, but you know deep down just like everyone else here - it wouldn't stop there.

[Arnenna]

And how do you know this about 1000s of people, exactly?

Nobody knows. we're guessing, based on your own statement "exodus of players". You said it yourself.

Personally, if this were me, and I were Turbine, I'd give you what you want and put you under strict NDA to prevent snowballing, but that's me.

[Macdui]

Well we have had many man hours of development of the transfer code in order to do this server merge, what about half a day of coding a currency transfer tool and let these duped players do the work themselves, just like rest of us are expected to do the work detailing your performance issues?

And did I miss the apology from the EP about hiding the status of the EU datacentre from us for months? In December she tells students of this big move 2 states away with zero intention of telling us prior to NJ going Live! Then has the #### to tell us how "best we are served".

At least Paiz didn't kill the game.

[BangoTwinkletoes]

...

At least Paiz didn't kill the game.

Bit like who killed the Witch King. Was it Merry or Eowyn. Merry dealt the mortal wound but Eowyn made the final blow. Which EP will be Eowyn.

[maartena]

...and exactly that kind of "customer support" is what will be the downfall of Turbine.

Sad enough you can´t figure out a migration interface between EU and US DBs (or more probable don´t want to), but then just not even bothering to help paying customers is plain disrespectful to those indirectly paying your salary and keeping this game alive.

Turbine still needs to be profitable to keep the game alive as well. Players are the ones directly paying for their salaries, yes.... but the level of service will greatly depend on the amount of money that comes in. They can't just hire more GM's and spend more money than comes in.

When paid transfers were a thing (and they will be a thing again), they could have made a lot of money of transfers between EU and US worlds. It's simply a technical problem. It's one thing to do a count of currency on one server, and manually add that currency to another, but even that is a time consuming process. Since there is no migration possible, I would imagine someone has to manually type in the currency on the other server. And Frelorn is right, if they did that for one customer, they would be flooded with requests.

On the other hand, I started a new character on another server 6 weeks ago. He is now level 78. A few more weeks and I will probably get it to 100. And that is with only about 1-2 hours a night to spend on playing, I have seen Beornings go to level 100 in as little as 5 days, but that was by a mad-man who was playing 18 hours a day and used dozens of exp tomes.

But at the end of the day it's a mathematical question: Lotro needs to continue to make money. Would you pay $100 per character for instance for someone to painstakingly re-create a character on a US server and give it the entire history it had on the EU server - or at least as best as possible in the current game? It may take many hours to do this, and the person doing it needs to be paid. - And I don't even know if that's possible.