[UPDATED] Lord of the Rings Online Devs Confirm That Some Transfers Have Failed As Players Grow More Anxious Ahead of Tomorrow's 64-Bit Server Launch

[UPDATE 2:48pm PT] LotRO's executive producer Rob Ciccolini has confirmed that transfer won't be reopening today, instead the team is aiming to open them tomorrow morning at an undefined time. The full message on Discord, which also talks about Kinship naming issues (which won't be solved as of tomorrow but will be worked on "longer term") and more. 

"Greetings. I apologize, but we aren't going to open transfer tonight, but instead aim for tomorrow morning as soon as we can. It won't be as early - we will give a better time when we can.

The new servers will open tomorrow as planned so the people who have successfully tranferred will have a place to play and so people can log on and make characters to reserve names.

In the future we also plan to have some way to rename Kinships so people who end up with "Cool Kinship-01" can make better choices, but that is something we need to work on longer term."

Original Story Below...

As the transfer process continues into its third day, players were informed that many of those in the transfer queue have failed. As the problems drag on, players, especially Kin leaders, have started to grow anxious. 

To recap the week thus far, name reservations for VIP players kicked off rather smoothly on Monday, while transfers to the 64-bit worlds started on Tuesday, with those servers slated to open Wednesday. However, it became quite apparent on Tuesday that demand greatly exceeded Standing Stone Games' expectations, and transfers were disabled for a time to allow the queue to catch up. As a result, the opening of the new 64-bit worlds was pushed back to Thursday.

On Wednesday those problems persisted, with the new server rollout time pushed to Friday. Many players in the official Discord have expressed concern over housing, transfer progress, and Kinship transfer timing, especially scine the Kinship leader needs to be the first to actually log in on a server for the Kinship and its historical data to be preserved. 

Today the dev team confirmed that many players who had initiated a transfer yesterday but hadn't received confirmation it was completed that their transfers have very likely failed. 

"Okay some answers: As of this morning when we enabled the button the transfer queue was clear," executive producer Rob Ciccolini explained in Discord. He continued, "That means that old pending transfers failed."

The land rush has been cited as a major reason for the "exceptional demand" the transfer process is experiencing, and so the team confirmed that both classic and premium housing will be disabled once the new servers open. This, as community manager Jerry "Cordovan" Snook, should "cool things down" regarding the anxiety over the transfer process. 

However, one huge point of anxiety isn't simply about prime real estate - it's Kinships transferring. Many Kinships in The Lord of the Rings Online have been around for years (in my case, as long as the MMO has been out). That is a lot of historical data being transferred with it, not to mention the name reservation aspect of things. As of right now there doesn't seem to be much communication for Kinships where transfers might have failed and Kinships were disbanded as a result. I know for myself the loss of historical join data across the nearly 18 years my Kinship has been around would be devastating,  let alone what happens if something goes wrong with the transfer and my Kinship has to start from square one altogether. 

Related:

Interview: Talking 64-bit Servers, Legacy MMOs and More With LotRO's EP Rob Ciccolini

Regardless of whether transfers are still struggling, the new 64-bit worlds will open tomorrow while the SSG team works to smooth out the transfer process in the future. This will allow those who were lucky enough to initiate their transfer and have it completed to start the process of setting things up on the new worlds, as well as allow new players to join and play as well, and even let non-VIP players in to reserve names for the time being. Meanwhile, many of us will still be waiting for that Transfer button, hoping beyond hope to join the 64-bit fun sooner than later, with everything intact.