World Transfers
Turbine has released news about the upcoming world transfer process. You may read Frelorn's entire letter on the official website and take a look at the forums thread, but I've highlighted the most important details below:
- The worlds that will close will be announced on August 3rd
- 5 US worlds and 5 EU worlds will remain open while 19 other servers will close
- Transfers will remain free from August 3rd through September 30th
- Brandywine will not be available for transfer until the server is moved to new hardware
- Transfers between US and EU servers will not be possible
- After October 1st transfers will be free from closing servers, but paid between open servers
- Old worlds will no longer be available after the start of next year, but characters may still be transferred
- Shared currency, shared storage, housing storage, wardrobe and destiny points will transfer over
- Items that exist in shared storage on your existing world will merge and new items will go into overflow if you hit the storage limit
- You may move your shared storage to a different world than your characters
- Items that have not been moved out of a pre-2014 housing storage system will be lost
- Rent paid in the old world will be reimbursed in the new world
- The number of character slots will double
- Kin leaders will have the option to move their kin to a new world and any members will automatically be added to that kin upon transfer to the chosen world. If the kin name already exists on that new world the kin will receive a -1 at the end of the name. It is only possible to change a name with the assistance of a GM (in fact, I have done this once in the past)
- If you share a name with an existing character on that new world, the database will check to see if the other character has been active in the last year. If the answer is no, you keep your name. If yes, you receive a -1 at the end of the name and a free name change token.
I'd like to add my theories about which servers that will be closing. The list of servers on the launcher dovetails with the server population numbers from the Lux Aeterna website. Crickhollow is listed 4th among all US servers in both locations. That does not mean we are safe, but if I was a betting hobbit I'd put my money on Crickhollow's survival. Brandywine will remain open, and the other servers I would deem safe are Gladden, Landroval, Brandywine, Evernight, Laurelin, Sirannon, and Gwaihir. I believe that Meneldor will also remain open on the US side as well as Snowbourn or perhaps Belegaer (if they decide to go for two German servers) on the EU side. We'll see where we stand on August 3rd and if the news is bad I can assure you that Second Breakfast will transfer as a group.
Last edited by Rosalie Rumble on Wed Aug 05, 2015 9:06 am; edited 2 times in total
Oh I sure hope Crick stays open, but I'm totally willing to work with LOTRO to help their servers work better. I've been having some following issues. All in all, I'll still be hanging around trying to be helpful.
Laaleth
Active Crickhollow toons: Laaleth, Drouchyfixer, Blackening, Sacredheart, and sometimes Amornir in a vision
Non-active toons at Crickhollow: Schothach, Sheffi, Thorhil, Eriac, Odlak, ELestiol.....these toons mostly hold houses and mats
Landroval: Laaleth, Sacredheart, Blackening, Drouchy
Lauralin: Laaleth, Sacredheart, Blackening, Greybird
Oofta. IF Crickhollow goes away, I'm not sure I can put the Crafting warehouse back together again. Finding 30 available houses in 1 neighborhood was not fun. Not to mention the amount of toon transfers.
I must agree with you there on the cosmetic warehouse, though I would likely follow the same method I used the first time--wait for a new neighbourhood to open up and then pounce. I still believe this will not be a concern, but we'll have to be more vigilant in case any of the remaining houses in our neighbourhoods open up. I still need 3 to complete the collection.
Just let me vent off some steam, rant, I got to get it off my shoulders to relieve this stress. I'm not looking to be put down, I'm just stating my side of the story, even if nobody else is experiencing these issues or thoughts.
This definitely has my nerves in a fix, even though I knew it was coming later this year, it's finally here. I also noticed the 4th place in server population & considering Crick is a newer server, I'm hoping they take those two accounts into consideration. Although LoTRO forum participation is quite low compared to some other US servers and Crick wasn't high on the list for server participation for the Bounder Bounty event either compared to other US servers. Not to mention the Auction House on Crick is all but dead and finding mats I need for my toons to level their professions or make them gear is frustrating in itself. Feeding 10 toons around the same level with weapons, armor, jewelry, and other various buffs without adequate supplies to make isn't easy. Makes me wish I'd bought this stuff up when it was in big supply on AH or at least moved toward storing more in my vaults for later usage. My failure to plan ahead I guess.
If Crick does get announced as closing it's doors, does this effect the Shirefest 2015 coming up in a few weeks? How soon will we be moving with October 1st being the cut-off date for FREE transfers for existing 10 servers remaining online, if Circk is closing.
I also have to agree with having to move will be a pain, considering the amount of alts I have on Crick & the amount of kin vaults & houses to store all my stuff. Plus where will my band move? I already have a band setup on Landy & Laurelin and wondering whether they'll be staying or moving as well if servers remain open or closed or if we end up moving there. Considering they will add double the character slots of the servers, but I think I read in the fineprint, "You'll have to pay for them". Which means they aren't given to us free of charge, if that's the case.
I'm sure this will all work out in the end for the better of LoTRO & it's players, but at the same time, I can't help but wonder with bringing 29 servers into 10, are they really ready for that many players on one server. On Brandywine, during it's primetime hours, getting 2,000+ players online makes it laggy for all. I know they say it's being upgraded, so I wonder what capacity the new hardware will be able to handle in player load before it starts to break between the seams. Landy this past weekend with 700+ players online at Weathertop brought the server to it's knees on several occasions and people not even a part of the event were feeling it's effects. Also, anyone running a 32-bit client couldn't stay on Weathertop, their game would crash from running out of memory. (That happened on my 32-bit lappy, but my 64-bit lappy had no issues). Imagine having 700 players in Bree during the fireworks festival once they repopulate those 10 servers, 32-bit client machines will be crashing a lot more in LoTRO in heavy populated areas from memory issues. Since 32-bit is a thing of the past, I don't see LoTRO fixing that issue and just recommending it's players upgrade to a 64-bit platform instead.
Ah well, enough rambling from me and my concerns. I'll have more later to get off my shoulders and hope you don't mind me expressing my concerns & fears here to chat about. I promise I'll behave. :)
Star.....
Last edited by Starchild8 on Tue Jul 28, 2015 2:31 pm; edited 1 time in total
Star, I think your concerns are indeed valid from where you sit and how things run today. I would have to think though that given the breadth of knowledge that Turbine (and Warners) have at their disposal, they know what a server can and should handle. So I think we may see a better product in the end as they only need to look after 10 servers not 29. But that is my thought, I know we went thru the same thing recently at work and low and behold performance increased because we didn't have to maintain as much hardware. That is my hope :) And yes thanks for posting it here - excellent choice :)
It's good to vent, but it's best not to worry until we hear more news next week. Shirefest will go on rain or shine. If our server survives, it will be a grand celebration and an advertisement for visitors to join our wonderful server. If Crickhollow is on its way out, it will be one last big party.
From my understanding, free transfers from a closing server to an open server will always be free. It is only transfers from an open server to another open server that will carry a price after October 1st. We may log into closing servers through the end of the year.
We received some more information today:
- When asked if the most active servers would remain, the executive producer said: "in some cases, yes. The intention is to move the least amount of players while maintaining some of the more specialized environments."
- Kins will be disbanded once the kin leader moves
- Bound items will not move with the kinhouse, but instead go into the escrow of owners who remain on the server
- There is no limit on the number of transfers and you may decide to transfer any character to any open world
- They might add 2 extra free character slots for premium and VIP accounts and there will be a sale on character slots, so don't spend your TP on it now
That first bit of news might not be good for Crickhollow. I would argue that ours is a special environment, but they may not see it the same way. This may mean that Elendimir remains because of their old status as the unofficial Oceanic server, despite their current population. Or it could just mean that Landroval and Laurelin are being kept around because they are official RP servers (they are also in the top five for population, but that would be considered a secondary consideration). We'll have to wait and see, but I still like our chances and believe this will just effect the choice of fifth US and EU servers. We're solidly #4, but the next tier of servers is tightly bunched in terms of population.
The dev tracker will remain your friend while the executive producer continues to provide answers to our speculation. The best advice is to just sit tight until we find out our status on Monday. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Hmmm, I guess we'd all better track down our strays, at the very least. I've got characters floating around on Gladden, Laurelin, etc. Ultimately, this is something we have no control over and so worrying won't do any good. It won't hurt to be prepared, though.
Do drop in. The doors are always open!
Willowing, Grimbear, Rosewynda, Marewyng, Ingrid, Hollydell, Laurelberry,
Merieloran, Gadrian, Linhaewen, Berangar, Athdan, Faerstar (4 Twinfall Path, Tund Faroth, Falathlorn),
Olangrim (1 Waterbank Road, Tund Faroth, Falathlorn), Gwencara (1 Brookbank Street, Greyheight, Shire),
Mossley (of the Frogmorton Middleworths), and Larksong of Crickhollow
Larkfeather, Faerstar and Olangrim of Landroval
Breakfast: the best meals of the day.
Well, first it was "double th' character slots", an now it's "mebbe 2 additional slots fer VIP an premium"... So is that one or th' other, or both? Or double th' standard allotment (so 10) plus mebbe two more? If y' had 5 characters on each o' 7 closin servers, how will y' be able t' hang on t' all of 'em? (Not that I do, but it wouldn't surprise me if'n some folks did...
Don't really expect a answer, just wonderin out loud...
I am sorry for the confusion. The number of available slots will be doubled for everyone, but VIPs and premium players may receive two of those slots for free.
This means 34 slots will be available per server. Some may have more than 170 characters on a single account, but I imagine it is a very small minority.
I imagine, though, like Lark and (I'm guessing) Vethlo and many others, the characters on other servers are clones created for social purposes. It's hard to think about someone being heavily invested in a Captain on Silverlode, a Burglar on Arkenstone, and a Champion on Riddermark. I know--there are always plenty of exceptions! But I personally don't want to manage any more characters at this point. I don't know what to do with those "other" Larksongs, but I can't be overly fussed about them. They're all on my VIP account, but don't have much in the way of valuables.
This whole thing makes my brain hurt: 29 servers becoming 10 seems pretty extreme. My main concern would be my Crickhollow family and how--golly, I hope not!!--to get them safely to another world. I visited my characters' Crickhollow homes last night and took screenshots of the chests' contents. I also need to go back and do pictures of the stuff on display with floaty names on. Even if nothing happens to us it's not a bad idea to help keep track of all those mathoms . . . collectibles . . . prized possessions. You might wish to do the same.
Haz, I understand completely about not being able to rebuild the crafting warehouses. We will discuss that if the need arises.
Rosalie, thanks for the continuing updates!
Do drop in. The doors are always open!
Willowing, Grimbear, Rosewynda, Marewyng, Ingrid, Hollydell, Laurelberry,
Merieloran, Gadrian, Linhaewen, Berangar, Athdan, Faerstar (4 Twinfall Path, Tund Faroth, Falathlorn),
Olangrim (1 Waterbank Road, Tund Faroth, Falathlorn), Gwencara (1 Brookbank Street, Greyheight, Shire),
Mossley (of the Frogmorton Middleworths), and Larksong of Crickhollow
Larkfeather, Faerstar and Olangrim of Landroval
Breakfast: the best meals of the day.
We've had a few more bits of information trickle out since my last update. Here's what's new, as well as a little loophole I just figured out:
- Transfers will not start on Monday. You may copy a character to Bullroarer that day, but otherwise transfers will not open up until a week or two later so that they may first test Bullroarer copies to make certain there are no issues. Transfer will now be done through the launcher and testing internally is a very different beast from a live test. ((This is very good news, because as a former beta tester I can assure you that we saw plenty of bugs that popped up on live after we saw no issues in testing.))
- They will start with allowing players to transfer from one open world to another
- Transfers from closing worlds will start next, with the smallest opening up first so that they may keep an eye on populations and provide the more taxed servers with more resources or fixes as needed
- No server will be permanently closed to transfers, but it seems that temporary closures like the one they will have in place for Brandywine are possible
- The new hardware will be able to handle these larger populations, but it is still a process
- We are encouraged to reserve names on the open servers in case we are worried about someone else who will be transferring later grabbing the name of our character or kinship. If the name is taken on your preferred server now, I'd recommend making a character with that name on Riddermark or Dwarrowdelf (my guess is that Riddermark may be in the first group with Dwarrowdelf to come later). They will likely be one of the first to get transfers, so you'll have the opportunity to claim that name and grab it from the now inactive player on your destination server (provided that the person by that name has not played in the last year). Those two were also two of the servers that opened later and usually among the least popular, so you have a great chance of getting the name you desire. Just delete that character or disband that kin when you're ready to transfer or rename. Some of the most popular names will be taken of course, but you'll have a much better chance of figuring out a good name there than you will on Brandywine. I believe that renames will not use the same rule with allowing us to claim the names of those who have been absent for a year or more, so take advantage of this renaming loophole while you can.
Rosalie beat me to it.
Do drop in. The doors are always open!
Willowing, Grimbear, Rosewynda, Marewyng, Ingrid, Hollydell, Laurelberry,
Merieloran, Gadrian, Linhaewen, Berangar, Athdan, Faerstar (4 Twinfall Path, Tund Faroth, Falathlorn),
Olangrim (1 Waterbank Road, Tund Faroth, Falathlorn), Gwencara (1 Brookbank Street, Greyheight, Shire),
Mossley (of the Frogmorton Middleworths), and Larksong of Crickhollow
Larkfeather, Faerstar and Olangrim of Landroval
Breakfast: the best meals of the day.