Today Vyvyanne, LOTRO’s Executive Producer, finally announced a clear list of character transfer features planned in preparation for the server closings later this year.
The features include:
“New Launcher service: We are changing our character and account transfer service to occur in the game launcher itself. No longer will you need to find a website to conduct a transfer. You just have to launch the game and go from there!
Account transfer: This new checkbox in the Server Transfer interface will allow the transfer of all account level items from one server to another. These items include the following:
o Account Shared Currency (Mithril Coins & Skirmish )
o Shared Storage
o Housing Storage
o Wardrobe
o Destiny”
Having character transfers between servers handled in the launcher makes perfect sense. This should encourage use of the system. As long as it doesn’t cause the launcher interface to feel crowded, I think this is a great move by Turbine.
The post continues by listing possible features the team hopes to make a reality.
“Kinship transfer: We are working on a system to transfer some of your kinship information data to the new server. More details as this feature develops.
Naming Priorities: One of the main concerns is of players keeping their names. We are looking into a change in the way name conflicts are handled to give priority to the active characters. More details as this feature develops.”
The forum post ends giving time frames to the planned testing period and to the release of the new transfer service.
“We aim to have this new service available in early spring this year with beta testing on Bullroarer before that time. We hope that you will join us to give feedback and stress tests to this all new and improved aspect of our service!”
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I think the name idea is a great Idea, but I do wonder what will count as active. The devil will be in the details , but I hope this will mean a lot less rage quits!
Looks good. I’m a little leery of the name thing based on activity. Mostly due to some complaints already in the forums by people who think that because they’ve played say six years, they should be able to poach the name from someone playing a shorter period of time.
If it’s simply ‘If you’ve not logged on for six months or a year or such, you lose the name’, that’s fine. If it gets down to who’s played longer or who is higher level or such, it could get really nasty.
I doubt it will, but it /could/, and something I’m concerned about.
When everquest 2 merged servers, the player with the most amount of playtime on that character got to keep their name
\o/ naming priority FTW!!! we’ll see how they plan to do it but at least they’re listening ;p
I’ve never understood the “unique” name problem anyway. Your toon identifier is certainly something that is hard-coded into your player and surely is not tied to your “name”. I can understand people ‘wanting’ to have unique names, but if they lose it…. so what? Why can’t 2 different toons have the same name? Is that really a problem in the long run?
Yes, it is a problem. I send a tell to someone. If two different characters have that identical name, who gets it? I send mail with an attachment. If there are two characters with that identical name, who gets it?