Yesterday, the developers from Standing Stone Games took to Twitch and Youtube to finally let their Lord of the Rings Online playerbase off the tenterhooks we’ve been on since the Letter to the Players they released back in December, which announced new 64-bit servers were coming. LotRO’s Executive Producer Rob Ciccolini (Severlin) joined Community Manager Jerry Snook (Cordovan) for a livestream chock full of details and Q&A regarding the biggest news in Middle-earth of the new year.
First, let’s get down to brass buttons here. SSG will be opening two new servers in their Las Vegas data center for North American and Oceanic players, and two new servers in the EU datacenter. Their names are:
NA:
- Glamdring – regular gameplay
- Peregrin – RP-encouraged
EU:
- Orcrist – regular gameplay
- Meriadoc – RP-encouraged
I find it amusing that the two regular gameplay servers are named after swords, and the ‘lighter’ RP-encouraged servers are named after hobbits. Functionally, they will act the same way as the current regular or RP-encouraged 32-bit servers.
The biggest question was, of course, when? Ciccolini noted that they were in the process of procuring and setup, but that he would be surprised if these worlds weren’t open before March, aiming for as soon as possible in Q1 2025. They will be publishing a FAQ and other sundries on their official website closer to the finalized dates.
Moving on to other important details, Ciccolini said a couple of times in the discussion that ‘the company’ - presumably SSG’s parent companies Daybreak and/or Enad Global 7 - were investing in the games, especially in a time when many other companies were cutting back in the gaming industry. He added that it made him excited for the future of both LotRO and by extension Dungeons and Dragons Online. This will give them more opportunities with the games in the future and allow them to do more things they can’t do now.
This news is particularly relevant considering that Enad Global 7 announced layoffs and the ‘winding down’ of Toadman Interactive the day before and layoffs at Piranha Games the day of this livestream, calling into question the futures of PlanetSide2 and planned DLCs for MechWarrior 5.
Ciccolini discussed four major constraints or plans they were using as they approach this new server setup. The first was budgetary, acknowledging that while the company was investing more, he didn’t describe it as a carte blanche. The second was that even if they had the money to go to one new server for each of the old servers, they wanted players to be able to play together, rather than feeling like they were on a dead server.
So, eventually, there will be fewer servers to consolidate some of the communities on, but they also wanted to be as fair as possible to the players. They added that these new servers would have the megaserver tech currently in place on the two VIP 64-bit servers, allowing for significantly more players per server.
Of course, players wanted to know more about transfers. The biggest point is that these initial transfers will be free to these new servers. One of the other most important questions that players wanted to know: would LotRO finally be able to break the data ID conflict that has long prevented people from transferring from an EU server to an NA one and vice versa? This is a problem that has persisted since Turbine took over the old Codemasters servers in the EU and brought them to the current main NA datacenter in New Jersey. In short, no.
Players on the current NA servers will only be able to transfer to the new NA servers and EU to EU. Ciccolini pointed out this fourth constraint that they could have spent the engineering time solving that problem but didn’t want to hold up the new 64-bit servers over that one thing. He held out a small hope that they would still look into the matter, remarking a few times during the stream about his disappointment they couldn’t make it happen at this time.
There is one tiny caveat to region transfers, and that is the Treebeard VIP slow-XP server. Players from Treebeard, since it was set up in a completely different data ID environment, will have the option to transfer to either an EU or NA 64-bit server, but once that character is on one of the new servers, it won’t be able to bounce to the other region’s servers.
Also, in the early days, players who transfer from a 32-bit world to one of these new 64-bit worlds will be able to hop to the other 64-bit world in their region. So if someone transferred from Laurelin to Orcist by mistake but wanted to be on Meriadoc, there will have a window to freely transfer to Meriadoc. Eventually, the intra-region transfers on the 64-bit worlds will no longer be free, but no timeframe beyond “a couple of months” was given as to when that will change.
During the course of the stream, SSG noted that there will be a multi-stage transfer process. It will start with a single-day or so VIP window to claim names, fulfilling the ‘name reservation’ comment that SSG’s Allan Maki (Orion) had made on the forums after his Letter to the players last year.
VIPs will be able to log into the new servers on that day and have three character slots to claim their top three favorite names. They won’t be able to log in to play, just reserve the names. Ciccolini noted the reason it’s for VIP accounts only was to prevent people from creating tons of free accounts and reserving names that way. The three-names per account limit seems much fairer than the opening of Angmar and Mordor in 2024, when players could claim their whole number of character slots on the first day, and many common names are still sitting there, unused.
After the VIP reservation window is over, transfers will begin for one day for all accounts while the server is still closed for play, and players should expect lengthy turnaround times for the transfer wizard to complete its work. Ciccolini said they didn’t want that transfer window to remain open more than a day because they didn’t want players to feel like their character was in limbo since they can’t play the character on the old server while it’s being transferred to a new one. After that, the server will open for play and transfers will continue normally.
After the main influx of transfers dies down, then they will open up transfers from the long-closed servers from the 2015 server consolidation, such as Vanyar, Eldar, Silverlode, and Imladris. They currently plan to open up those transfers in something of an alphabetical order, but they did caution that transfers off the dark servers would not remain indefinitely.
At some point in the future, they will be going away permanently, and those characters will no longer be able to recover at all. However, it was added later in the stream that the previously closed legendary worlds of Anor and Ithil are not part of this process since they had been closed through a different process. We had always been told the data and characters from those servers would no longer be available after their closures in previous years, and we also presume while they didn’t mention the fast-XP server Shadowfax by name, it will likewise not be part of this dark world transfer process.
Ciccolini also noted that he has authorized his Customer Service team to work with tickets submitted for specific name conflicts where someone might try to log in and squat on a well-known community member’s name to troll. He mentioned streamers, kin leaders, community leaders, long-time players who have high-level characters at endgame, etc. as examples of ones where the rightful player would be able to get their name back. Both Snook and Ciccolini elaborated on regular name conflicts, in that the first person to create with the name will get it, but anyone else transferring a character in with the same name later will get the -1, -2 after their name and get a free rename token, the same that happens now. Other than trolling situations, players will simply have to find a new name if they get the -1 or whatever. After a couple of months, date to be determined, renames and intra-region transfers will no longer be free.
Next up, the developers discussed the fate of the two current legendary VIP servers of Angmar and Mordor. They said that nothing is changing for them right now, and confirmed that only Angmar and Mordor will have the Veil of the Nine event. Ciccolini remarked that some players didn’t want that experience during their regular gameplay, so the new 64-bit servers will not feature it.
He did try to allay many player concerns in the livestream chat about whether the current regular worlds would be promptly shut down or whether the three VIP legendary worlds would be sunsetted. Ciccolini said a couple of times that they would revisit server populations in the fall, possibly August, and make decisions then.
This means, for players on Treebeard, after that review, it was likely going to see an early departure unless it got a massive influx of players. He did briefly mention that they were exploring a means to allow players from Treebeard to be able to retain their slow XP on new servers but didn’t elaborate on what that might be, referring in passing to the already-existing Stone of the Tortoise that halts XP entirely. However, the main takeaway is that there are no plans in the works to close any server until they revisit the population question in the fall. Ciccolini did mention the possibility that some of the current 32-bit worlds might go into ‘dark’ status and be unavailable to log in to play if their populations fall too far, thus forcing the issue of transferring off.
The developers went on to answer another question: there will not be language-specific servers, like today’s one French and two German servers. Ciccolini added that they will be looking at creating language-specific global channels on the two EU servers, presumably only for the two supported languages of French and German.
In the midpoint of their stream, Ciccolini went on a tech deep dive discussing why a 64-bit server is better, and for those interested in that, definitely check out his comments on server memory, how 64-bit servers allows them to be more efficient on use of their hardware, and how they can have more players on a specific server. Later on, he also mentioned the possibility that if they see constant login queues on any one of the new servers due to population going beyond their current megaserver capacity, they hold out the option to spin up another 64-bit server in that region.
The next big detail was about kinship transfers. Snook pointed out that kin transfers would be the same way as they happen now. There was a little confusion on the stream, but the way it currently works for LotRO is that the kin leader has to sell or abandon their kin house before they can go, then they can transfer themselves and the kinship and its rank to their destination world and use the proceeds of selling the kin house to immediately buy a new one if available. Everyone else in the kinship, when they transfer their character(s) later to the same server, will wind up reattached to the kinship with their officer/kin rank still intact.
There was a brief discussion of character slots once the transfer window opens. Players have big concerns regarding the fact that they may have more characters scattered across all five servers in their region than they will have character slots to accommodate on the two new servers for that region. Currently, if you transfer a character in and you don’t have a slot for it, you will have to pick which characters to remain active on your account until you delete enough to get under the limit. Ciccolini touched on this briefly, saying he would ask the team but he wasn’t sure if they had the tech to be able to increase the maximum number of character slots per server that is currently in force.
One of the players in chat asked about Player versus Monster Player, and Ciccolini said he’d have to check about players transferring their Monster Player ‘creep’ characters in. It’s something that is currently available in the LotRO transfer wizard, so if they don’t change it, it should still be possible. They also noted that PvMP will be available on day one on these four new servers the same as the regular 32-bit worlds because their level cap will be the same.
Other small and off-topic details addressed in lightning round toward the end:
- Nothing about the music system will change as part of this process. 64-bit does not fix the known 64-sound limit that currently exists.
- These new servers will have the same weekly restart as all the rest.
- They aren’t considering relocating Evernight physically back to the EU ‘because it would be unfair regarding name reservations’.
- They expect a ton of years-idle names to become available.
- Due to name conflicts, they expect the CS turnaround time on tickets to increase on the short term.
- An updated Deed Log is coming, as we knew from the roadmap previously published.
- Kinship updates are coming, and a kinship calendar was revealed as part of those plans.
- They’re still investigating on resizing tech for the UI for 4K, but no other details were forthcoming.
- The High Elf update and more updates to regular Elves are coming with Update 43, tentatively set for early to mid-February.
- U43 is tentatively slated to arrive on the Bullroarer public test server next week.
The final big detail was not fully answered on the stream, and that would be what about housing? They clarified that housing will work like it does now. For those not familiar, housing does not transfer from server to server, and placed decorations will go into the decoration owner’s escrow when the owner of the property transfers. Currently, when players transfer servers, they have to abandon their premium housing and receive 90% of the original purchase in housing writs for a voluntary transfer but 100% for an involuntary transfer (i.e., SSG closes a world entirely and players have no choice but move).
What we don’t know yet is which of these two percentages it will be. Classic housing, purchased with in-game gold, does not give any refunds. Upkeep paid in advance for either housing set does not currently get refunded, either.
The devs fully expect there to be a land rush and Ciccolini said it’s entirely possible that some players will not be able to reclaim the exact same addresses they currently have. Lead Worldbuilding Designer Matt Elliott (Scenario) answered a question in Twitch chat, noting that the housing system automatically adds new neighborhoods based on the percentage of how much is owned in each current one but that they can manually override it if the system is not keeping up with demand. However, the implication was that if you have one of the special locations, such as the Erebor geode house, the Lyndelby waterfall hobbit hole, or a kin house, you may be waiting awhile until a new neighborhood opens up.
At the end of the show, Ciccolini closed with a heartfelt remark about how this was all happening because the playerbase has been so good to them and that they had the opportunity to make these improvements after spending the past couple of years fighting lag in both of SSG’s games.
There are definitely still a lot of player concerns that need to be addressed with concrete answers, but for those of us who went through the server consolidations back in 2015, this is still a better deal. In my experience, having played the 64-bit servers for both of SSG’s games since their launch, the performance after the initial settling-in process has been exceedingly better than that of the 32-bit servers.
However, we’ll probably have to wait to see how a ton of 17-year-old characters and their warsteeds careening across the landscape will affect things before we have a real judge of how it will go.
Take a Timely Tour Through the Turbulent Timeways
Arthas Lorewalking HOR?
