Make it available to transfer from an EX-EU server to US.

[Viko95]

Hey Turbine! I think I speak for many of the free people of middle earth in this sugesstion, PLEASE PLEASE Make it available to transfer from an EX-EU server to US.. Today there is no specifik EU/NA servers and then many of our friends maybe play on a EU and many on a NA server and we can't play together and vise versa. I personally want to transfer my level 85 Champion who I have played with since release in 2007 from Eldar to Brandywine. MAKE IT HAPPEND!
You had saved my life, because I realy LOVE THIS GAME.

[djheydt]

Hey Turbine! I think I speak for many of the free people of middle earth in this sugesstion, PLEASE PLEASE Make it available to transfer from an EX-EU server to US.. Today there is no specifik EU/NA servers and then many of our friends maybe play on a EU and many on a NA server and we can't play together and vise versa. I personally want to transfer my level 85 Champion who I have played with since release in 2007 from Eldar to Brandywine. MAKE IT HAPPEND!
You had saved my life, because I realy LOVE THIS GAME.

I'm sorry; this can't be done. Codemasters, which originally ran the
EU servers, had some difference in its code structures from Turbine's
structure for the NA servers. It is impossible to transfer characters
from EU to NA, or the other way around.

You have the choice of remaining on your EU-coded server, or starting
all over again on an NA server, one where your friends are. This would
mean working your new character up from level 1, but I think you'd be
pleasantly surprised at (a) how quickly you can level when you know
what you're doing and (b) how enjoyable going through the low-level
regions is, when you're low-level yourself.

Indeed, you could keep your old character and play with your friends
on the EU server, and play with your other friends on the NA server
with your new character.

[Viko95]

I'm sorry; this can't be done. Codemasters, which originally ran the
EU servers, had some difference in its code structures from Turbine's
structure for the NA servers. It is impossible to transfer characters
from EU to NA, or the other way around.

You have the choice of remaining on your EU-coded server, or starting
all over again on an NA server, one where your friends are. This would
mean working your new character up from level 1, but I think you'd be
pleasantly surprised at (a) how quickly you can level when you know
what you're doing and (b) how enjoyable going through the low-level
regions is, when you're low-level yourself.

Indeed, you could keep your old character and play with your friends
on the EU server, and play with your other friends on the NA server
with your new character.

Okey that's to bad. So there is no chanse they can change the code structures from the old Codemasters had to the same Turbine uses? It has to be a way?
Yeah level a new char is fun maybe, but my character on Eldar is so much more then just a character. I have spend som much years (7!!!) and so much time with that character, titles, mounts etc etc..

[Yula_the_Mighty]

Okey that's to bad. So there is no chanse they can change the code structures from the old Codemasters had to the same Turbine uses? It has to be a way?
Yeah level a new char is fun maybe, but my character on Eldar is so much more then just a character. I have spend som much years (7!!!) and so much time with that character, titles, mounts etc etc..

It certainly is doable. My personal opinion. The issues most likely are:

1) There is always a risk of damage to a character.

2) There are going to be some characters that can't be transferred due to unique aspects of the character. See point 1.

Turbine decided that the time required and cost to implement this functionality is too high given the small amount of dollars to be earned. Another problem is that Lotro is suffering from declining revenues and low profit margins hence the two reductions in the number of people working on Lotro in an attempt to get expenses under control.

Whenever you are adding functionality to an older product that is in the decline phase headed toward end of life cycle management has to spend what few dollars they got wisely on things that generate as much revenue as possible.

Turbine turned off the old manual transfer program leaving us with nothing. That must of occurred because the automated tool was almost there. It had teething issues. Turbine could not get it to live. Eventually Turbine turned the manual tool back on. It must have been another 6+ months before they finally got the automated tool to live. I believe Turbine had 1-2 months of teething issues in live.

It is huge expense when companies combine themselves to merge their systems. When Wells Fargo bought my bank - First Union, Wells Fargo must have spent 100s of millions of dollars converting all those First Union accounts to Wells Fargo accounts. It took them a couple of years. When Well Fargo did it, it was done in bite sized chunks. They would convert all the Kentucky accounts. Wait a month or two them convert another state.

In summary, Turbine did a partial conversion and merge. We got a common client. We got the ability to copy some EU and NA data format characters to Bullroarer - not all. Turbine is stuck with two server loads - one for EU servers - one for NA servers. I am sure Turbine would love to get rid of the EU data format. It is not feasible.

[Viko95]

It certainly is doable. My personal opinion. The issues most likely are:

1) There is always a risk of damage to a character.

2) There are going to be some characters that can't be transferred due to unique aspects of the character. See point 1.

Turbine decided that the time required and cost to implement this functionality is too high given the small amount of dollars to be earned. Another problem is that Lotro is suffering from declining revenues and low profit margins hence the two reductions in the number of people working on Lotro in an attempt to get expenses under control.

Whenever you are adding functionality to an older product that is in the decline phase headed toward end of life cycle management has to spend what few dollars they got wisely on things that generate as much revenue as possible.

Turbine turned off the old manual transfer program leaving us with nothing. That must of occurred because the automated tool was almost there. It had teething issues. Turbine could not get it to live. Eventually Turbine turned the manual tool back on. It must have been another 6+ months before they finally got the automated tool to live. I believe Turbine had 1-2 months of teething issues in live.

It is huge expense when companies combine themselves to merge their systems. When Wells Fargo bought my bank - First Union, Wells Fargo must have spent 100s of millions of dollars converting all those First Union accounts to Wells Fargo accounts. It took them a couple of years. When Well Fargo did it, it was done in bite sized chunks. They would convert all the Kentucky accounts. Wait a month or two them convert another state.

In summary, Turbine did a partial conversion and merge. We got a common client. We got the ability to copy some EU and NA data format characters to Bullroarer - not all. Turbine is stuck with two server loads - one for EU servers - one for NA servers. I am sure Turbine would love to get rid of the EU data format. It is not feasible.

Thanks for the awesome answer.... BUT IT MADE ME CRY !!

[Viko95]

It certainly is doable. My personal opinion. The issues most likely are:

1) There is always a risk of damage to a character.

2) There are going to be some characters that can't be transferred due to unique aspects of the character. See point 1.

Turbine decided that the time required and cost to implement this functionality is too high given the small amount of dollars to be earned. Another problem is that Lotro is suffering from declining revenues and low profit margins hence the two reductions in the number of people working on Lotro in an attempt to get expenses under control.

Whenever you are adding functionality to an older product that is in the decline phase headed toward end of life cycle management has to spend what few dollars they got wisely on things that generate as much revenue as possible.

Turbine turned off the old manual transfer program leaving us with nothing. That must of occurred because the automated tool was almost there. It had teething issues. Turbine could not get it to live. Eventually Turbine turned the manual tool back on. It must have been another 6+ months before they finally got the automated tool to live. I believe Turbine had 1-2 months of teething issues in live.

It is huge expense when companies combine themselves to merge their systems. When Wells Fargo bought my bank - First Union, Wells Fargo must have spent 100s of millions of dollars converting all those First Union accounts to Wells Fargo accounts. It took them a couple of years. When Well Fargo did it, it was done in bite sized chunks. They would convert all the Kentucky accounts. Wait a month or two them convert another state.

In summary, Turbine did a partial conversion and merge. We got a common client. We got the ability to copy some EU and NA data format characters to Bullroarer - not all. Turbine is stuck with two server loads - one for EU servers - one for NA servers. I am sure Turbine would love to get rid of the EU data format. It is not feasible.

PS. I have hope for this to become reality ! Characters can be transferred between all servers, with the following exception:

Transfers between North American and European servers are currently unavailable. They say currently )))

[Sapience]

There are significant technical challenges associated with this that prevent us from doing it. We do take a look from time to time to see if there are new ways to handle data and other things that might allow it, but at the moment it's simply not possible.

[mjk47]

PS. I have hope for this to become reality ! Characters can be transferred between all servers, with the following exception:

Transfers between North American and European servers are currently unavailable. They say currently )))

Don't hold your breath. I think you will only be wasting your time and increasing your frustration if you keep hoping. Safer to assume it will never happen and plan accordingly.

[Octaviane]

Don't hold your breath. I think you will only be wasting your time and increasing your frustration if you keep hoping. Safer to assume it will never happen and plan accordingly.

Agreed. "currently" unavailable has been the word for better than 2 years. I wanted to transfer from NA to EU 2 years ago and that was the word used then, so, I started over. Even if possible, at $25 PER character? No way I would pay that. The high cost is there to discourage transfers because too much could potentially go wrong transferring a character and all its pieces parts. Turbine would have a revolution on it's hands if that happened.

[Viko95]

Agreed. "currently" unavailable has been the word for better than 2 years. I wanted to transfer from NA to EU 2 years ago and that was the word used then, so, I started over. Even if possible, at $25 PER character? No way I would pay that. The high cost is there to discourage transfers because too much could potentially go wrong transferring a character and all its pieces parts. Turbine would have a revolution on it's hands if that happened.

Okey, then I have to play at Eldar or anyother EU server who is dead

[djheydt]

Okey, then I have to play at Eldar or anyother EU server who is dead

Or, as I suggested upthread, make a new character on an NA
server that is still relatively lively: Brandywine or Elendilmir
are good choices.

[RicardoFurriel]

Or, as I suggested upthread, make a new character on an NA
server that is still relatively lively: Brandywine or Elendilmir
are good choices.

When I log in Elendilmir there are between 50 and 70 ppl in glff. I'm sure some are already thinking "glff is not a good measuring tool". Oh well.

I suspect those aren't the numbers the poster considers lively. But I might be wrong.

[Tirian-Hammerfist]

Its rather an over-exaggeration to say that EU servers are dead - its just the end game regions (so the hubs like Helm's Deep and Aldburg) that are relatively quiet because there isn't much to do. However, especially with the current festival, I've seen a lot of people in the shrew cave near Duillond and at the Hedge Maze. Bree tends to be rather busy most of the time, with people levelling or hanging around near the South Gate. Additionally, the Ettenmoors community on Evernight (my server) is still pretty active (and from what I've heard, Snowbourn is equally active).

[Aedfrith]

Its rather an over-exaggeration to say that EU servers are dead - its just the end game regions (so the hubs like Helm's Deep and Aldburg) that are relatively quiet because there isn't much to do. However, especially with the current festival, I've seen a lot of people in the shrew cave near Duillond and at the Hedge Maze. Bree tends to be rather busy most of the time, with people levelling or hanging around near the South Gate. Additionally, the Ettenmoors community on Evernight (my server) is still pretty active (and from what I've heard, Snowbourn is equally active).

Snowy is fairly active but, again, suffering from the lack of endgame aside from moors.

[Viko95]

Snowy is fairly active but, again, suffering from the lack of endgame aside from moors.

Sounds like Eldar, I think it would have been great if Turbine merged multiple EU servers, so they become more active.

[Aelonaith]

When I log in Elendilmir there are between 50 and 70 ppl in glff. I'm sure some are already thinking "glff is not a good measuring tool". Oh well.

I suspect those aren't the numbers the poster considers lively. But I might be wrong.

The point is, people are tired of the usual glff trolling, because of this you cant count it as a server population. Last night at Landroval Bree had more than 100 players showing at the social panel (it only counts who dont have annonimous), while there were people running stuff, at HD, at Entwood, festival at Celodim, Rohan (i didnt even count all the other regions and the creeps online at the time), and glff only had around 192 players. So i'm sad to confirm this for you, glff is far to be a secure server activity tool. For example, i usually play with my gf and sometimes with my brother, both of them dont use glff, i just use it at a different tab, so when i want to run instances i use it, but for the most part i use the tab for another thing so i just leave glff, a great number of players dont even know glff exist, imo you glff numbers are at least 3 times lesser than the actual numbers.

Sounds like Eldar, I think it would have been great if Turbine merged multiple EU servers, so they become more active.

I think Turbine should work on things same for the minnority, they like to say only a small part of the playerbase do PvP or endgame, but if they worked on both at least a little, at least a real challenging raid per year, with expansion or not, numbers would be higher. And when this minnoritys leave, it looks empty not because is real empty, but because the people and the part of community you used to play with is not playing anymore, so the normal thing is that who stayed will leave too. The great mistake of any company or government is to turn their back to the minnority, it's usually what make them fall.


*sorry for my english, not native or studied on it

[Bagluk]

It's possible, but i guess Turbine coders are not qualified to do it. And probably scared it will screw up your character.

In Beta it's possible to transfer your US character to the Beta server, and then the other week they make it possible to transfer your EU character to the Beta server. Same technology, but probably too much of a hassle to enable/disable it all the time.

But if something happens to your char in Beta it doesn't matter, but not on live. They could also just simply COPY the character, but i guess that could be abused somehow.

[Dernudan]

The point is, people are tired of the usual glff trolling, because of this you cant count it as a server population. Last night at Landroval Bree had more than 100 players showing at the social panel (it only counts who dont have annonimous), while there were people running stuff, at HD, at Entwood, festival at Celodim, Rohan (i didnt even count all the other regions and the creeps online at the time), and glff only had around 192 players. So i'm sad to confirm this for you, glff is far to be a secure server activity tool. For example, i usually play with my gf and sometimes with my brother, both of them dont use glff, i just use it at a different tab, so when i want to run instances i use it, but for the most part i use the tab for another thing so i just leave glff, a great number of players dont even know glff exist, imo you glff numbers are at least 3 times lesser than the actual numbers.

*sorry for my english, not native or studied on it

I agree, there were 213 non anonymous on Withywindle, US hightime yesterday and only 14 in GLFF.

[Wilkens]

It's possible, but i guess Turbine coders are not qualified to do it. And probably scared it will screw up your character.

In Beta it's possible to transfer your US character to the Beta server, and then the other week they make it possible to transfer your EU character to the Beta server. Same technology, but probably too much of a hassle to enable/disable it all the time.

But if something happens to your char in Beta it doesn't matter, but not on live. They could also just simply COPY the character, but i guess that could be abused somehow.

The reason, and its been explained in better detail before, is that each character is basically a walking database of all the activies (quests, crafting, deeds, virtues, store purchases, etc) that they have ever done. The structure of that file is very different between NA and EU servers. Since the game engine doesn't particularly care most of the time so long as it can access what it wants this isn't an issue for coding gameplay however if two characters interact that have differing file structures (say one crafts an item and sells it via AH) then you can run in to conflicts which would start breaking items and quests.

As you noted in Beta the character database is gonna get wiped every month or so...this means fewer chances for issues and also zero serious consequences if there are any...conversely on live it has the potential not just to break one character but every character they interact with. The only way to avoid this upon transfer would be to hand create the entirety of the character's previous existence (including deeds that are now dead, past crafting runs, AH interactions, the works). So instead of simply moving a file from one server to another you are talking about multiple hours of hand coding, think about the salary cost for even an entry level developer and then imagine paying for that time and you can quickly see where doing this would be cost prohibitive.

[Nosdracir]

The reason, and its been explained in better detail before, is that each character is basically a walking database of all the activies (quests, crafting, deeds, virtues, store purchases, etc) that they have ever done. The structure of that file is very different between NA and EU servers. Since the game engine doesn't particularly care most of the time so long as it can access what it wants this isn't an issue for coding gameplay however if two characters interact that have differing file structures (say one crafts an item and sells it via AH) then you can run in to conflicts which would start breaking items and quests.

As you noted in Beta the character database is gonna get wiped every month or so...this means fewer chances for issues and also zero serious consequences if there are any...conversely on live it has the potential not just to break one character but every character they interact with. The only way to avoid this upon transfer would be to hand create the entirety of the character's previous existence (including deeds that are now dead, past crafting runs, AH interactions, the works). So instead of simply moving a file from one server to another you are talking about multiple hours of hand coding, think about the salary cost for even an entry level developer and then imagine paying for that time and you can quickly see where doing this would be cost prohibitive.

This, plus my guess is that Codemasters did not load basic data in the exact same order that Turbine did. I think that the load procedure generated ID numbers for each item, NPC, etc. as they were loaded. As a result, EU items have different ID numbers than Turbine Items. In order to move an EU character to an NA server, all the ID numbers would have to be changed from EU values to NA values. Make a mistake there, and the player will get a 1st Age LI changed to a piece of vendor trash, or vice versa, or the LI is fine but the relic IDs are the IDs of random items rather than relics. Weirdness occurs. Perhaps the client crashes. Perhaps you end up with an uber LI with stats from 1-2 pieces of end cap armor, but you are not max level so you suddenly can't use your LI.

It's technically possible to create mapping tables for converting ID numbers, but it's a huge amount of work to create, double check, and test these mappings. I'm also guessing that the cost of the work exceeds predicted revenue. Can't get it approved, so it doesn't happen.

[Viko95]

It's possible, but i guess Turbine coders are not qualified to do it. And probably scared it will screw up your character.

In Beta it's possible to transfer your US character to the Beta server, and then the other week they make it possible to transfer your EU character to the Beta server. Same technology, but probably too much of a hassle to enable/disable it all the time.

But if something happens to your char in Beta it doesn't matter, but not on live. They could also just simply COPY the character, but i guess that could be abused somehow.

Also thought about this! I realy want to change and have no will to make a alt becouse I have played with the same Char since 2007. Then If they cant transfer from EU to NA, just COPY the char!

[cdq1958]

Also thought about this! I realy want to change and have no will to make a alt becouse I have played with the same Char since 2007. Then If they cant transfer from EU to NA, just COPY the char!

The automated process does copy data, but it is a shallow copy. Anything in the equivalent of joined and/or calculated tables does not copy (the wardrobe, the enhanced barter wallet, shared housing storage, shared vault storage, etc). On BR, NA and EU can copy at that same time now; but that process still fails from time to time (and more often for the EU players, I think). On BR, that's fine; for a failed copy can be mostly recreated from scratch in the E&G. Live, that's a big recipe for disaster. On live, you'd have to ensure that no copied character breaks and no transferable data gets lost (remember, shared items *do not* copy).

To do this like banks do when merging, basically means running three database systems. Your old one, the one you bought, and the new one that'll map old data onto the new system. When banks merge, they take years of side-by-side operations while creating the mapping scripts and the final merged scripts. It is a costly process and banks do it because they must do it on mergers. They don't merge that often. For a game database system I simply don't see it happening economically unless they find a very cheap and highly effective method. If they do find it, I'd be really surprised that they wouldn't implement it. There's way too much money left on the table otherwise.

Oh yeah, the character is more than just its name and stats. A character is also all of the quests, deeds and items it owns plus the state (which is different for every one) data associated with the quests and deeds.

[Grimsin'sRiders]

Sapience mentioned that we will be getting a "World" channel for chat in update 14. I wonder if it will better represent population numbers than say GLFF ...or the infamous GlobalChat (which I sure hope the advertisements for die out with update 14)

[cdq1958]

Sapience mentioned that we will be getting a "World" channel for chat in update 14. I wonder if it will better represent population numbers than say GLFF ...or the infamous GlobalChat (which I sure hope the advertisements for die out with update 14)

I would not expect the new official global channel to report population. The current regional official channels don't, so why would the new one do so. To the extent that I'd use it, why would I care how many people are in it, so long as it serves its purpose effectively. The ./who function will tell you how many non-anonymous players are in a specified area and for the whole world if you put in an empty zone search filter.

I would love to know the relative proportion of anonymous to public visible players and how that changes from hour-to-hour, day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, and year-to-year. I know that I will never find that out, so I won't sweat it.