SSG, did you guys not enable the Year+ name "overtaking" feature of World Transfers?

[sapienze]

The early ticket raisers can get things resolved but when a flood follows they can't handle those numbers without a poorer service in the rest of the game. No one can think that is good given the last few weeks.

In this case and other bugs or errors in the recent past have become known to the community via these forums. In each case the poster has their issue resolved by a GM in game and then comes to these forums to expose the bug/error. By bringing this bug/error to the forefront incites a reaction by SSG to deny any one after the exposure of the bug/error from the same resolve the initial player approached the GM about.


"I got mine and will post publicly knowing the result will be an essential blacklist to the community."

"Thanks for all the fishes"

[ChromiteSwiftpaw]

In this case and other bugs or errors in the recent past have become known to the community via these forums. In each case the poster has their issue resolved by a GM in game and then comes to these forums to expose the bug/error. By bringing this bug/error to the forefront incites a reaction by SSG to deny any one after the exposure of the bug/error from the same resolve the initial player approached the GM about.


"I got mine and will post publicly knowing the result will be an essential blacklist to the community."

"Thanks for all the fishes"

Except in this case I posted the thread before a GM responded to my ticket.

[Braer]

You are probably right about this..... people doing the transfer early may get their name with a ticket, and then they got flooded....

It probably went down like this:

Player: My toon transfer did not get the name right, I should have bumped a toon that has not logged in for years, please fix. It is in your FAQ that it is supposed to work this way.
SSG Support: You are right let me fix this.

(Later that day)
SSG Support to SSG Devs: Uh guys, we're getting an awful lot of tickets here about the renaming of characters with Bombadil. FAQ says it is supposed to work, but it doesn't.
SSG Devs to SSG Support: Yeah....about that. We didn't put that back in when we re-enabled transfers...
SSG Management: Hold off on doing renames manually, or you will get flooded with tickets, just close them, it takes too much time.
SSG Devs to Cordovan: I guess you should tell the crowd something..... It's on the to do list but who knows when we'll get to it.
Cordovan: Why do I always have to bring the bad news?

And that is where we are...

I'd dispute the accuracy of the evening's discourse. The date the code was last checked in would tell much ironically.

[Thurallor]

Why should an active player not be able to "usurp" the name of an inactive player?

I never said they shouldn't. Only that making it a free service increases the likelihood of using it for trolling purposes.

[Sovereign50]

I submitted my tickets through website support (last week), since i've found that I have more success there than ingame with these sorts of matters. In saying this though, where I have had success, it's usually reasonably timely. I would've expected some sort of response by now if it was forthcoming. I've been around long enough to know the song that this particular tune is reminiscent of, and it seems like these tickets are just going to get ignored.

[MegaUnspecified]

In my case I submitted an in-game ticket the day transfers opened up and I just got a response from a GM today who kindly cleared the bugged inactive names for me. Hopefully everyone else can get theirs too

[Sovereign50]

In my case I submitted an in-game ticket the day transfers opened up and I just got a response from a GM today who kindly cleared the bugged inactive names for me. Hopefully everyone else can get theirs too

That's promising. Glad you were sorted Mega.

[Sovereign50]

As my final post here on LOTRO, i'll update on my laughable situation.

After reading MegaUnspecified's post yesterday, I decided to supplement my unanswered, week-long website ticket with an in-game one. I received an in-game response from a GM that seemed rather positive about freeing up the names... until I actually tried to redeem the names. Out of the five names allegedly released (for five accounts), NOT ONE of the names was actually available (removing and readding to the friends list showed no changes). I mean, GM says one thing, but from my perspective nothing has changed. I did provide an explicit request to rename my characters, which would have avoided this. So... what??

Anyway, i'm done. I'm tired of chasing petitions to fix petitions to fix problems that shouldn't exist in the first place (I also had to petition for my subscription compensation for the VIP subs that expired during week+ downtime, followed by further petitions when the subscription compensation was four days when it was supposed to be five).

Edit: Wasn't my final post it seems. I'm intrigued by the dumpster fire this has become.

[Laurelinarien]

It's extremely frustrating not to arrive to a solution for something that should've worked in the first place. But at least people reporting naming issues are getting support responses. Many of us with other transfer issues (me included) have been waiting for a first sign of life for several days.

So, at this point, all I can think of is how the money they're receiving from us via subs and store hasn't translated into more support staff.

[Macroscian]

It's extremely frustrating not to arrive to a solution for something that should've worked in the first place. But at least people reporting naming issues are getting support responses. Many of us with other transfer issues (me included) have been waiting for a first sign of life for several days.

So, at this point, all I can think of is how the money they're receiving from us via subs and store hasn't translated into more support staff.

When I create a ticket via F7, I'm told expceted response time approximately 5 hours. Is that simply when people are at the office?
Raise a new ticket.

[Elhiril]

I had one GM kindly free up a name for me last week, while another told me today it wasn't possible to free up names. There's no consistency. It was the exact same situation with the transfer creating a bugged duplicate of my character too.

[Gruff]

Has anyone actually successfully transferred to a server (or heard of someone that has), that got their name without submitting a ticket? An announcement said all transfers were currently giving name priority to the original character on server, but someone's ticket said it was granting priority based on overall account activity (presumably logged in during a year period). If the latter is true, then surely there would be still be many examples of people who were able to successfully transfer without tickets. Having said that, I guess people generally come to forums to complain about what's wrong rather than what worked, so just interested if anyone had heard of any kin mate etc.. who managed to transfer with success. Better yet, some clarification on exactly how transfers are currently working from SSG would be nice.

I really hope that this issue is resolved with haste going forward, as this is a massive disincentive to play on Bombadil in the future. Why would people bother to waste their time on these events if they have zero chance of retaining their names afterwards?

Names can be a touchy issue. I know was pissed when I lost a name I had since beta when the Legacy servers opened, and the server queues were bugged out for hours right out of the gate at launch and it was luck of the draw on who could actually login . 13 years is a long time though and it's a rare occasion that I run into a name I recognise from back then. A few original players I still talk to outside of the game were happy to let their characters RIP on Elendilmir.

I don't think using account activity for a naming priority policy would necessarily be a bad thing if it was based on 1 year (or even two). Beyond that, if someone can't be bothered logging into their account for 2 years they probably wouldn't care too much about potentially losing names. Some transparency on the issue would be good though, if only to end the speculation.

[ChromiteSwiftpaw]

I had one GM kindly free up a name for me last week, while another told me today it wasn't possible to free up names. There's no consistency. It was the exact same situation with the transfer creating a bugged duplicate of my character too.

This is my worry right now. You have to play the "Nice GM Lottery" to get something done that should have been done automatically. It's a shame that some GMs choose to say they can't do it. If there are indeed GMs that don't have the power to do it then those that cannot should pass the ticket along to someone who can.

So now it's a waiting game to see if they fix it before they wipe the server or whether or not we will 100% get the proper naming treatment of our characters per SSG's own transfer guidelines.

[Thurallor]

This is my worry right now. You have to play the "Nice GM Lottery" to get something done that should have been done automatically. It's a shame that some GMs choose to say they can't do it. If there are indeed GMs that don't have the power to do it then those that cannot should pass the ticket along to someone who can.

It may also be that VIPs get preferential treatment. And/or especially high-profile users, such as yourself. But we don't know what the actual policy is; the official policy is that no one gets assisted, which obviously isn't the case.

[Braer]

It may also be that VIPs get preferential treatment. And/or especially high-profile users, such as yourself. But we don't know what the actual policy is; the official policy is that no one gets assisted, which obviously isn't the case.

So those of us that don't have such an obvious link between our account name and our Forum or Character name would have to play the "do you KNOW who I am?" card. Hmmm.... I better not then.

Will the closed servers have all characters deemed as dormant for several years or a recent login for transfer purposes? Has anyone coded for a situation of conflicted names both having logins of over a year? Those seeking to use the transfer could argue they would be active if given the chance. But most will be happy just getting access to them after so long and we don't know if the mechanic uses transfer time/date as the base for comparison.

I hope CS have a handle on how to test this. Switching it on with fingers crossed or BR filled with our live chars and our >year un-played ones.

[Thurallor]

Will the closed servers have all characters deemed as dormant for several years or a recent login for transfer purposes? Has anyone coded for a situation of conflicted names both having logins of over a year? Those seeking to use the transfer could argue they would be active if given the chance. But most will be happy just getting access to them after so long and we don't know if the mechanic uses transfer time/date as the base for comparison.

There is no comparison made between your character's last login time and that of the inactive character. The comparison is between the inactive character's last login and 1 year ago. The fact that you're doing a transfer makes your character "active".

When it's working, anyway.

[Braer]

It's telling that the naming conflict confirmation wasn't enough for them to take transfers down.

Seven days later they come down after seeing how bad the code is? Join some dots for Lotro's sake.

[Zavad]

Adahrel, thank you. I haven't been this elated with the Game in a long time. Sometimes it's the smallest things that mean the most.

[Tubalcain]

Back when they restored transfers after the months-long removal, I transferred one alt from Crick to Landy and a second alt from Ark to Landy... and I'd added the original Landy characters to my friends' list, which you can sort by last login and use relative dating principles to figure out whether the name is more than a year idle. I took screenshots of that friends list before and after... and my characters got the -1 despite proof that I should have gotten the name without the -1 both times. I had to put in a ticket to get it fixed. I tried both in-game and website tickets. The in-game ticket was for the Ark character and simply gave me the name. The website ticket was 'we unlocked your names, go get 'em!'... which meant ANYONE could have ganked the names until I quickly logged in and reclaimed the name on the Crick character since the Ark character was already forced to be the right name. To this day, I still keep getting a 'rename your character' alert on the character originally from Ark, which I cheerfully ignore.

All I can recommend is putting in a ticket, and picking whichever one you feel will work better for you. Both times, I made sure to cite the CURRENT transfer policy (I believe Cord removed the old/out-of-date transfer pages dating back to the 2014/2015 consolidations) - which specifically details what is SUPPOSED to happen during naming conflicts. If you have proof that the name you're transferring in from Bombadil is >1 year idle, then the policy is clear in that you should get that name.

Good luck!

I got the dreaded "ghost" of my toon that kept me from getting the name. Put in a ticket and was basically told "Sucks, sorry nothing we can do"