Sapience posted a word today addressing concerns from the EU players who currently reside on Codemaster role-play servers.
Currently, Codemasters have designated RP servers that adhere to specific naming, behavior and chat rules that Codemasters will enforce. There was concern for the players on these servers that they will lose this RP haven when Turbine migrates them over to the new Global Service. Turbine currently does not acknowledge any official RP servers and the players have created their own unofficial RP servers that are not enforced by any rules (other than the normal rules all servers follow) as a result.
Sapience said in his post:
Will Turbine support existing RP rules servers after the June 1 transition?
Turbine will continue to provide Role Play support on the existing RP designated servers at the same level currently provided by Codemasters.What does this mean for the existing US Role Play community, specifically Landroval?
We will not be enforcing role play rules or adding official role play support to any of the existing US servers. However, the Landroval server will be designated [EN-RE] – Role Play Encouraged.Role Play Supported and Role Play Encouraged servers after June 1, 2011
- [EN-RE] Landroval (Role Play Encouraged)
- [EN-RP] Laurelin (Role Play Supported)
- [DE-RP] Belegaer (Role Play Supported)
- [FR-RP] Estel (Role Play Supported)
Some players on Landroval may be upset as to why their server is only Role-Play Encouraged and not supported like our EU friends. The main issue would be converting a 4-year old server to suddenly a determination that some Landroval inhabitants didn’t sign up for. Enforcing new RP rules on those who did not join Landroval to RP.
We did seriously consider marking Landroval an official RP server, but as Elderban points out there were simply too many issues. Suddenly enforcing a rule set on an entire player base, many of whom never joined the server for RP, would simply have been unfair.
After the transition, US players will have something they have never had before; the ability to create a character on a world that officially supports Role Playing.
I personally am satisfied with this designation as resident of Landroval. We really have a great server already and like Sapience said, marking us as role-play encouraged may draw future role-players to our server where as right now they have no clue that Landroval has such a vibrant RP community.
May 5, 2011 at 6:28 pm
This leaves many of the other NA servers with smaller RP communities than Landy, like Crickhollow Windfola Elendilmir Vilya and others, out to dry. The reason I am so angry about this is because Turbine repeatedly refused to give the NA people a designated RP server because they said that all servers should be able to function as RP servers, and I bought into that ideology. I thought that was a brilliant idea. Now they have gone back on their policy and those of us in smaller RP communities will suffer.
May 5, 2011 at 10:42 pm
Agreed.
May 5, 2011 at 6:50 pm
It’s kind of tough when you don’t decide which servers are RP since the start. One thing I liked on my 10 days of WOW is that I could decide if I wanted to RP or not. Noiw there is only two options for Landroval: force all to take appropiate names, even those who don’t want to RP or just move all toons that don’t want to RP to other servers: time and money consuming.
I think the idea was elegant. It may be not perfect, but you can’t force people that entered the game with a certain idea to adopt another. But I would love top see one more server for America just for RP, or at least get more servers flagged witht he RP encouraged flag. For starters, we have Crickhollow…
May 5, 2011 at 6:56 pm
I can see both sides of the story here.
I think Turbine is giving us the best they can at this time. Is it perfect? no. Is there anything we can do about it? I don’t know but I think we should be given a server transfer freebie for our accounts so we can switch if we choose to either an RP or RE server. not going to happen but I can dream.
I would like to move a few more of my established characters to Landroval from Meneldor. They closed Landroval before I could get all of them over so I have some lvl 65s on both servers but I no longer visit Meneldor to play.
May 5, 2011 at 7:15 pm
*sigh of relief* I play on Laurelin and this is really great news. Was worried some at the lack of news about this, but now can look forward to an even bigger RP community as I expect a few of the ppl based in NA will be probably join when it becomes open.
May 5, 2011 at 7:18 pm
This is such great news for Landroval!
May 5, 2011 at 7:42 pm
This is horrible for a lot of North American players, RP’er or not. It’s sadly true that someone was going to have to suffer, but it’s a shame that Turbine’s current players are the ones having to pay for their own stupid intransigent shortsightedness. Communities are going to change because of this, and the current NA servers will lose current and future players because of it.
I’d like to at least see Turbine fully tag the servers, not only with language and RP-status (or lack thereof), but with a geographical designation of NA or EU as well. One of the poor little sops offered to people upset at the prospect of seeing their communities shrink is that the time zones of the incoming servers may not be compatible for NA players. Since that could indeed be an issue, I’d like to see the designation added. It might help retain NA players on traditionally NA servers. (Of course, if it doesn’t I have seen lovely posted on the current Laurelin forums where they say they think they can “gently train” NA players to role play properly. Oh, joy.
May 6, 2011 at 10:36 am
You don’t think things are going to change for EU players?
Current forums will be lost and servers seems to be moved physically to NA – giving EU players more lag issues..
May 5, 2011 at 8:08 pm
Sorry, that last bit was garbled in my first post. It should have properly read, “I have seen some lovely comments posted on the current [Codemasters] Laurelin forums where they say they think that can “gently train” NA players to role play properly.”
The comment stems from the fact that it’s both offensive and upsetting to be told by EU players that we should be happy that we’ll have an official English-speaking RP server at last, despite the fact that all the kins there are EU kins, with mostly EU players. Some NA players may make homes there in time, but as of right now, it’s an EU RP server, with their traditions, their kins, and their history, and nothing of “ours”. But, hey, they will train us!
May 5, 2011 at 10:15 pm
There is no “us” or “them”. I understand why you fell insulted by comments such as those because they are demeaning and insulting, but they are made by maybe one person and perhaps is best to ignore such things and not give them any attention.
Like it was stated in previous posts, the policy wasn’t set correctly on server designations from the outset and now they have to try to work it out as they bring it all together in one place. As I understand it the only difference is that on supported RP servers the players’ names will be watched, the rest is up to the players what kind of community is created, what kind of atmosphere is created.
May 6, 2011 at 1:53 am
The servers are separate now, so there really is an “us” and “them” as it stands. I know Turbine is going to embrace its usual policy of imposed unity to present the facade of one big happy family, but saying so doesn’t make it true.
I’m sure the groups will eventually merge and perhaps harmonize. It doesn’t change the fact that the existing U.S. servers, especially the ones with smaller RP communities, are very likely to suffer. It doesn’t change the fact that in able to experience the RP server long denied them, any player from a current NA server will have to give up their existing server communities, traditions, and ties and go somewhere where everything that is established is only of EU extraction, at least for the foreseeable future. It’s disingenuous of people to say that we should be happy because Laurelin will supposedly be the English RP server NA players wanted when in fact nothing there has been created by NA players.
Sapience posted again tonight, doing the usual cherry picking of quotes with which he agreed. He also stated that there will be no tagging of servers as NA or EU or recognizing different time zones, since we’ll officially be one happy Turbine community. And also typical of Turbine, there was no mention that the current problems presented to the NA players are a direct result of Turbine’s own stupidity, nor is there any mention of regret in harming any of the their players’ communities. It’s all for the greater good is their usual rationalization, which I’m sure is exactly the purpose for which most of us game anyway.
And yes, the comment was insulting. So was the one that suggested that we don’t have the same community spirit as the EU servers, and several others. It was an interesting way to be introduced to our soon to be neighbors.
May 6, 2011 at 3:18 am
Supposedly those comments originate from the same people, which yell any obvious newbie for violating the RP guidelines. We don’t like them either
May 6, 2011 at 7:26 am
@Jehanne, please don’t let an incredibly small part of a massive community put you off. The forums on the whole are not a great reflection of the EU community, and the negative vocal elements are an even more minor part of that.
It sure sucks to not have an official RP status, but I understand it is complex issue with this unification, and their different previous rules. There are always arrogant idiots wherever you go, so don’t let some patronising loudmouths put you off.
I for one and looking forward to rolling some characters on Landroval, and learning to see how you guys do things, and of course can’t wait to finally attend Weatherstock!
May 6, 2011 at 4:01 pm
Ignore comments like that. As has been said before, the forums are not a true representation of the player base – either the Codemasters ones or the Turbine ones. For goodness sake don’t get dragged into any “what makes good RP” discussions on the forums. Those sort of threads have been started over and over and over and – believe me – they never end well. Different people have different ideas about what is good RP and providing you are enjoying your RP and are not harming anyone else’s game, don’t worry about what anyone else says.
They say “the grass is always greener…” but, speaking as a Laurelin resident since the beta (and having played on Landroval) I can find little very difference between the two communities (beyond the different pop culture references). Both have RPers and non-RPers and they all seem to get along very well.
Some people posting on the Turbine forums give the impression that they think Laurelin is some RP utopia where everyone ALWAYS RPs and the community always adheres closely to creating an atmosphere straight off the pages of the books. It isn’t like that at all. It’s pretty much the same as Landroval. So anyone who thinks “I’m gonna roll an alt on Laurelin and get some REAL RP” is going to be rather disappointed.
The only things I’ve read that do annoy me somewhat are those few who are rabble rousing and trying to create some “us and them” atmosphere in the community. It’s not “us and them” at all. We’re all LOTRO players and we all have a lot more to gain by working together than by fighting with each other
(…unless of course you’re taking part in PvMP of course – in which case, just ignore my previous statement)
May 5, 2011 at 8:32 pm
So be it.
The only remaining question for me, then, is: Will incoming servers be open to transfers?
May 5, 2011 at 10:49 pm
Probably not at first. There are still difference in the clients to consider and no word yet, obviously, as to when a “unified client” will come, if it comes at all. If there is no unified client in the works, it would most likely require downloading/patching of the EU client for those wanting to move to Laurelin.
Just a note here, I recently downloaded the EU Enedwaith client, installed and patched it up. Took a lot longer than I thoughit would. Over 3 hours from install to being patched up to current.
May 5, 2011 at 10:50 pm
…that didn’t include the download time which was roughly 12-13 hours.
May 5, 2011 at 11:01 pm
As far as the news goes for Landroval, I guess, given the explanation, the news of the new designation is at least a cookie thrown in their direction. I agree though that this will not help other servers with a RP community, especially Crickhallow who seems to for the most part be trying to fashion themselves after Landroval. There is definately strong evidence of a growing RP community.
I think it only fair that, since Turbine is giving the EU crowd their way, that they should also designate Crickhallow since it is one of the newer servers with a younger and growing population with a strong effort being made to have a good RP community.
Also, if they intro duce timezone designations (not saying they will), then they should give Elindelmir it’s due as well.
May 5, 2011 at 11:11 pm
As far as the enforced ones go, is everyone expected to RP on those servers in every situation? I’ve not actually ever played on one of those.
I like Landroval though, honestly. It’s a nice mix. It’s fun to see people RPing and I love the events people do… but I’m not a RPer at all.
May 5, 2011 at 11:23 pm
You know what I notice more and more lately. Whiners. Not just this article but many others. Turbine is doing a lot and we are getting so much in game yet some are never satisfied. It’s like turbine could give you a bag of money and some of you would be upset and want to know why it wasn’t two bags of money…. For the love people, enjoy the game!
May 6, 2011 at 1:25 am
And I meant the replies and not the article’s themselves…
May 6, 2011 at 2:01 am
This feels like the concerns post-f2p all over again… in the end it was not as bad as a large group suspected it would be…
I think we will survive!
May 6, 2011 at 4:02 am
I’m choosing to focus on the fact that, if I’m lucky, I’ll create a character on Laurelin and discover it to be that magical place that I’ve always dreamed of, where people only have names for their ‘names’, where the majority of people put effort into their communication (Oh, random tells of ‘u cd?’)… where most players are the wavelength of adding to the setting instead of detracting from it! Mmmm… for that, I’ll say goodbye to four years of characters on other servers and look past all the other points that people are focusing on.
May 6, 2011 at 3:06 pm
You and me both. I will be coming back to this game after years away specifically for this.
May 6, 2011 at 4:58 am
I do have to confess that I don’t like RP at all (Though I did try to give every char I play a name that ‘fits’ into the LotR world)
There’s a RP channel and there are RP guilds on my home server and that’s enough in my opinion.
One or two times I’ve encountered ‘harassment’ in the Breeland chat since a player had a (what the other person considered as) ‘inappropriate name’ for his character. Omg … *drama on*
May 6, 2011 at 5:06 am
@Tony: As Laurelin player I can answer you: no, RP is not in any way enforced on RP servers. In fact you still have RP/no-RP flag, and you can easily play for your whole career not taking 5 minutes of RP. What is regulated though (either enforced by GMs or shunned by community) are RP-breaking activities: stupid names, talking about film you saw last night on “/say” and so on.
May 6, 2011 at 10:15 am
Got it. Thank you very much.
May 6, 2011 at 10:42 am
i am so, so happy with this decision. i understand that people on Landroval (and to a lesser extent Crickhollow) are less than pleased, becuase they’ve been demoted, essentially, from RP servers to RP-encouraged servers.
however, for EU players, who have been playing on proper RP servers, with reasonably well-enforced rules, this is a god-send. moving from RP-enforced to RP-encouraged status would have hurt these players far more than the move from RP-encouraged to, err, R-encouraged status will hurt Landy et al.
this was my *number 1* fear with the server transfer – far more than conerns over lag – that EU players would lose the servers that they had. i understand that Landy players might feel like they’re second-class now; but the EU players who have been playing on official RP servers shouldn’t have had to lose that protection just to allay the fears of Landy players.
i am *really* pleased by this decision.
May 7, 2011 at 6:18 pm
This was probably the best way to accommodate everybody’s needs, and insofar as that’s true, I support it…
That said, I do wish they had recognised Crickhollow as a “roleplay encouraged” server. It’s true that the RP community there isn’t as strongly established as Landroval’s… because, DUH, of course it isn’t, since it’s a newish server. But, it has the same status as Landroval as far as being a community-designated unofficial RP server, and therefore should now have the same official status as Landroval.
June 1, 2011 at 3:42 pm
Bait and switch. All players should have the free option to switch servers and choose for themselves. They always marketed Landrover as the “unofficial” rp server, pretty limp wristed that they didn’t go the extra yard. Weak sauce indeed.