While I think LOTRO is gaining popularity in general some servers are having serious problems that need fixed to ensure a happy player base on all servers.
Over the past year in LOTRO I have been part of several kinships on Imladris. I had not realized the reason till the end of looking but we will get to that in a minute. The first kinship I was a part of on Imladris was dead before I joined it. It was the largest kinship on Imladris but as far as active players it was really the smallest and was dull and boring with nothing ever going on in the kin. I decided to leave because who wants to be part of an inactive kin right?
The next kin I joined was a raiding kin and had several of the best players on Imladris on it and was great for about 2 weeks. This is when they decided they would switch to another kinship on a different server. At this time literally around 100 of the top players on Imladris left the server which started a terrible series of events. Within a week of this happening 4 of the top raiding kins on Imladris had key members transfer away to the other servers. With the top 5 raiding kinships all but dead, the situation looked very dire on Imladris.
I was silly enough to try to combat this by creating my own raiding kinship with several of my friends I had made from PvMP and the raiding kinship to try to create a unified raiding kinship out of the fires of the five. While we had an amazing core group we didn’t have enough members to do a 12 man by ourselves because the 5 dead raiding kinships were all fighting to get all the raiders in their kinship which divided the server even more and prevented it from getting any raiding done at all.
I even tried to join a skirmish kinship since they were the only ones still active on GLFF. The leader of the kinship had already decided he was leaving though and took many more players with him.
PvMP held out the longest out of all the MMO features of LOTRO. They too however eventually stoped going to the moors. There are still a few who get on PvMP but it is such a small number that it is not really worth continuing to play on. This is why I started a new Creep on Landroval since they have a very active PvMP server.
Over the next month more and more players transferred from Imladris or stopped playing all together. As you have seen the server had quickly transferred in only around 5 weeks from an everything server to just a solo server. With few interactive events but really no sign of the server being an MMO, I considered the server dead and decided to leave for good.
Character transfers are expensive ventures at $24.95 or 3,000TP they are serious things to consider but I had my mind made up since I had scouted Landroval and knew it was a much more active server. While it was hard to leave the friends I had made on the server it was worth every penny to be on an active server. While I have not been on Imladris since I have left, according to my friends on it even more people have left the server since my departure and they are considering leaving as well.
I am sure Imladris is not the only server which has less than satisfying numbers and I think this is a real problem that needs to be addressed.
So how could Turbine help the players on dying servers?
I think there are several things Turbine could do…
1. Turbine could offer free character transfers to leave the dying servers which could allow for players to have the option to get to a better server which could encourage them to stay playing LOTRO. I know a few players stopped playing LOTRO because they didn’t want to pay for a transfer which is sad because this is a really great game and so giving players the option to change could fix this problem.
2.Turbine could offer free character transfers to the dying servers to try to give them a new rush in player numbers and maybe save the servers.
3.Turbine could close down the dying servers and offer free transfers to other servers which could save Turbine operating costs and allow for players to be on more populated servers for free but could upset players who did not want to move.
Turbine has a real problem on their hands because Imladris is a dying server and needs help. I am sure it is not the only dying server as well because I have heard that some of the other servers created during Free to Play have also been in severely under populated numbers recently. LOTRO is an MMO and players deserve to have an interactive community and it is really just sad what has happened on Imladris. I hope one day Imladris returns to its former glory but for now it is all but dead.
So what do you think Turbine should do?
July 4, 2012 at 8:17 am
Up until a couple of weeks ago Withywindle was suffering from an exodus of players. Most reasons given seemed to revolve around a lack of end game raid progress, which is odd as raid prgress is down to what you and your fellow raiders can do just as much as it is down to getting fresh blood to join your raiding kin.
If you look at the withy forums you’ll see a marked change happened a couple of weeks ago when turbine shifted us onto the recommended server status shortly after the steam release. The only hiccup might have been a server issue which some ignorant types were blaming on the influx rather than the actual problem.
Certainly we went from zones being pretty empty to having them with 100+ players. And I think the majority of people are very happy to see more players and there have been a good number of welcoming events and recruitment by the bigger guilds.
The change of status could have been done much sooner but at the same time when it did happen worked very well. Now it’s just down to the people of withy to not scare them off.
July 4, 2012 at 8:36 am
It is also the last few months before the expansion releases – it seems to me like the population always dwindles a bit as people wait for new content.
July 4, 2012 at 4:10 pm
This actually started back in Feb. and continued through the end of May (when I finally transfered). This started just a couple of months after the instance cluster was released and continued through Great River and sadly was not just simply a lack of people loging on.
July 4, 2012 at 9:27 am
I’ve played on Gilrain for almost 5 years now, it has always been a low-pop server but nowwhere near dying, just max-level heavy. And to be honest, I prefer it that way.
In my opinion Turbine should just keep doing what they do now, rotate the low-pop server so they become recommended from time to time.
I think some players should be a little less selfish and realise that there are other players on the servers. You don’t get everything handed to you on a plate, you have to work for it.
In regards to raiding, getting a group of max-level players together and make a kin rarely works, have patience and get low-levels in instead, then you can help them learn the game. Then you can build a group you can trust and have fun with.
If you take matters into your own hand, then you can help your server get better. But it takes a LOT of patience…
August 3, 2012 at 8:24 am
I think you must have a different definition of dead, Gilrain is the second lowest pop server, the fact it is top-heavy is irrelvant, it still has less than half the number of level 65-75 than servers liek Snowbourne, let alone the biggest US servers.
There are weekday morning/afternoon times I can log into Gilrain now and find there are approximately the same number of people in the global chat channel as there were a couple of years ago at 2 or 3 AM, the server is dead.
July 4, 2012 at 9:41 am
I’m on Imladris now, and whilst I like the community, it really is dying. A bit of help would be nice, but I don’t really support the idea of shutting it down. Polish should work. Everything improves with polish.
July 4, 2012 at 10:43 am
Also, can I ask, what kinship were you with?
July 4, 2012 at 4:13 pm
I was part of Unexpected Kinship, Mathor en’ Coia, Leaders of Middle Earth, The God Slayers, Aragorn’s Rangers and another one which seems to have slipped my mind.
July 4, 2012 at 6:22 pm
Wow, that’s a lot. I’ve only really encountered 3 of them. Unexpected Kinship is one of the biggest on the server.
Thanks for the reply
July 6, 2012 at 3:24 am
You should have named this article “How to Exaggerate”. You’re blowing it all out of proportion. None of these numbers are statistically true whatsoever. You also said that you joined a “raiding” kin when you actually joined a kin that only prides itself on numbers.(Unexpected Kinship) Most of those kinships you’ve joined are very small, non-raiding centric. There was no way 100 people left the server. Maybe 24 people left, or 2 raiding kinships’ groups. There are still 3-4 raiding kinships with some very skilled players. Also in almost every server you can see about 150-300 people on average in glff at one time. Which is the norm on imladris. Although it may be in the low-range its far from dead. Had you stayed longer and known what you were talking about, this article may have been worthwhile. You’re promoting the “dying” by writing this.
July 5, 2012 at 3:21 am
I Very Much Agree.
I am an officer of the Guards Of the Citadel, a small roleplaying kinship.
We have been trying to recruit lately but there is nearly no one wishing I join.
I still see a few people running arround the place from time to time and while I think we need more people I like the laid back community of Imladris.
I would just like to see maybe te second option implemented or maybe a system where it is a reduced price to transfer from a high pop server to a low one. Or even just make Imladris the recommended server for a few months.
July 5, 2012 at 1:10 pm
Yea, seems to be seeing less and less people in Imladris, tho i don’t really do much raiding…
July 4, 2012 at 9:42 am
I think it’s not a good idea to use your own, personal experience as a basis to look at an entire server, or to use it to generalize about a group of servers.
I have played on Imladris for a year now, it’s pretty much my only server (I have a few characters on Belegaer I don’t intend to play again, and one on Landroval I created just to attend Weatherstock), and I’m very happy with the situation on Imladris.
I heard that there was some hardcore raiding kin that split up some time ago, but, but that’s not something that affects me or most of the other players in any way. Maybe Imladris is not the best server if you are into hardcore raiding, yet in my experience, the people who want to raid (and aren’t terrible at it) usually end up finding a raiding kin.
I am an RPer, and while the community on Imladris is small compared to Landroval, I actually like it that way. There are a couple kins who all know each other, and I like the feeling of knowing most other RPers and recognizing them immediately on a stroll through Bree or at a festival.
People don’t usually have trouble finding PUGs either for instances or skirms. As to PvMP, I have no interest in that and your assessment of that may be true.
But… are you sure that you don’t let your own personal feelings about a failed kin color this article?
There is pretty much no day that I do not log into Imladris for at least a couple of hours, and neither I nor my friends ever heard about the “hundred top players” leaving or the supposed mass exodus of other players that followed.
All I heard about was a bit of drama about one kin changing server, apart from that, nothing at all changed in my – and probably most other players – experience of Imladris.
PS: For this month’s Turbine sponnsored Summer Fun event line, Imladris has two lined up…
July 4, 2012 at 4:15 pm
I actually waited several months to write this article so that I would not be biased. I litterally went a month looking for a pug of more than 3 people and it never happened and that was finally the last straw.
I am glad you see the server in a different light and I hope one day it does return to its former glory.
Also I was glad to see that there are events being held on Imladris and I hope people go to them.
July 4, 2012 at 10:01 am
I’d be interested to hear about the EU servers that were shut down. This was back when the EU servers were codemasters, but I believe 4 servers were shut down, but I can find few details beyond their names ([DE] Elfstone, [EN] Entwash, [FR] Celduin, [FR] Maethor). If turbine does decide they need to reduce the server numbers, it would make sense to see how this was handled, and how people reacted.
July 4, 2012 at 10:27 am
They were never up in the first place, I think they were being held in reserve in case the current servers couldn’t handle the influx of f2p, but Withywindle and Anduin were enough.
July 4, 2012 at 10:31 am
Ahh that would explain it.
July 4, 2012 at 10:20 am
LOTRO always goes somewhat dead every summer on every server. Even the monster that is Brandywine slows down.
July 4, 2012 at 4:17 pm
Again these events started to happen back in Feb. and continued through May. I wish they were just people not logging in because of lack of content but Great River was released during this time with nearly no change in population.
July 4, 2012 at 10:29 am
I know there are servers out there with dwindling numbers. Another reason (I’m sure not the only reason) could be that it is summertime and people are actually out doing things instead of spending hours and hours playing a game. I know I have only been on maybe 8 or 10 hours in the last 2 months. I have said forever that Turbine or any MMORPG for that matter should give free character transfers to low population servers. I don’t expect it to happen though.
July 4, 2012 at 4:18 pm
I play less in the summer too. Sadly though this started back in Feb. and continued on through May (even though Great River was released).
July 4, 2012 at 10:34 am
I’m in the Withywindle server playing in the kin Khazad Union, a kin mainly for end-game raids, but with lots of lower levels too. Withywindle was a dead server for a couple of months (yes, MONTHS) untill it appeared as the “recommanded” server. Within weeks a whole horde of new players came in, and now with the steamapplication & the many advertisements on Facebook & Youtube, it’s becoming one of the most full servers there are.
That’s why I think it’s a way to get new players into dead server, giving it a boost to the player base. New players to MMORPG will probably pick the recommanded server, so the servers with a good player base shouldn’t be recommanded. I know it’s kinda lieing, as it’s pretty much a dead server, but it should do the job after a couple of weeks. The player base will get it’s boost and there will be a chance that the server will get back to a good, regular player base.
July 4, 2012 at 4:19 pm
I am glad your server is alive and well!
July 4, 2012 at 11:14 am
I, and maybe few more with me, were/are not aware that the top listed servers are rotated, but this seems good as there seems to be testimonials of the benefit of getting a high listning on your server, pehaps that is enough, perhaps not. I am residing on one of the old EU servers, Eldar, and I can only tell what others do, there is an population issue and we have experienced it, and still are, since the merge of the EU and US servers. Whatever Turbine is able to do to prevent this, for any server ofc, is really good, but there is another force that should be triggered as well. The force of the players, especially the ones managing kins on different servers. Advertise, reach out, find players outside their own corner of Middle Earth (their server) and show them what they can offer! I have played for over 3 years and cant remember I seen any kin, on any server advertising for their cause. On a weird side note, I myself is a kin leader, and Im as bad as this as anyone else, but this has come to my mind lately and I do realize I just cornered myself with a task to perform, but it is my believe also kin can help their corner of Middle Earth grow
July 4, 2012 at 4:21 pm
I think Lonely Mountian band does a great job keeping Landroval alive with their leader being a founder of Middle Earth Network they clearly have a pation for the game and for Lord of the Rings as a whole.
July 6, 2012 at 8:12 am
And CSTM helps Landroval in a big way, too. I transferred all my toons from Windfola to Landroval much because of the social activities and sense of server-culture I learned about thru CSTM.
July 4, 2012 at 11:40 am
Really my server is a DYING server!!! All hope is lost, I must despair and die now! This is sooo uncool…
My play style is more solo/small fellowship, but it does stink that there are few if any options for raiding as I am slowly approaching end game. Booo hooo
-Torbsie
(A sad Imladris player)
July 4, 2012 at 4:22 pm
I hope the server comes back so that you can have a great end-game experience.
July 4, 2012 at 4:29 pm
Don’t worry, there’s always enough endgame fun going on on Imladris – join glff and you’ll see groups forming there.
July 4, 2012 at 4:34 pm
I hope GLFF is alive now because I was on it for a month and never got more than a 3 man. Even when I tried to do more nobody would ever join. They used to but it seemed like people stopped caring about the group stuff so I left.
I hope that it is a different situation now…
July 5, 2012 at 7:37 am
That’s funny you mentioned joining glff, as recently I had to make it not visible. Too much chatter when I was trying to see what loot was dropping from certain monsters. That means there is something going on there, just a matter of how much is chatting and how much is raiding.
I guess I need to adjust my tabs again so I can have one with glff running and another where I watch loot drops. I have auto loot all turned on, so I don’t have to look at what drops all the time. I figure its more a kill ‘em all and then sort out the details later thing.
July 4, 2012 at 12:18 pm
A good solution would be to connect servers via the instance finder, and introduce the raid finder. People would be less frustrated about the population and be more happy because of the more instance content they can reach.
July 4, 2012 at 1:23 pm
The downside of cross server instance finders is that you risk reducing the social interaction between players on any given server. Why bother talking to people and asking about runs when you can pug cross server was the mentality of a lot of wow players. While it’s beneficial to the individual player its not always best for the population as a whole.
For those curious about dying servers it’s maybe better to check out SWTOR where the eu started with 80+ servers at launch and are now down to 11 after thinkly disguised mergers dressed as transfers. Lotro is thankfully light years away from that situation.
July 4, 2012 at 4:22 pm
I am with you on this Andy.
July 4, 2012 at 1:19 pm
Oh and an interesting site is: http://lux-hdro.de/hdro-live.php
It’s in German but pretty self explanatory, it gives log in statistics for all the servers.
July 4, 2012 at 4:27 pm
I had found an English version and thought about adding it to the article. A year ago Imladris was almost on top but now it is next to last as far as logins go.
July 4, 2012 at 1:33 pm
I almost quit Lotro a few weeks after starting to play because I first joined the Meneldor server and didn’t find what I was looking for. I gave a shot to Landroval, making a toon just to check it out: I was quite surprised by the number of players in the Shire, just chilling, roleplying or farming and decided to officially start over there. I never regretted my decision!
July 4, 2012 at 4:28 pm
I am glad I made the switch as well but I do miss some of the people that went to other servers because I can’t find them now.
July 4, 2012 at 1:43 pm
I’m on Laurelin and while I don’t know how the situation on the server is in general, we had an amazing influx of new players in our kin the last month. This might have to do with active recruitment on the forums but to be honest I never expected this many responses given that its summer!
July 4, 2012 at 4:28 pm
Awesome!
July 5, 2012 at 5:18 am
Server is active, there are various raid alliances which are open to new members. globallff (our GLFF) is busy, although full orthanc runs are rare, you’ll see individual wings being run. The only thing that seems to have trouble are Helegrod-Dragon wing runs.
July 4, 2012 at 2:26 pm
IF they were going to shut down a dying server,
Handle it like the Codemasters shut down.
Warning emails with Migration offers.
If not migrated before deadline, the character is gone.
Culls the inactive and provides fuel for the forums
July 4, 2012 at 2:28 pm
Something similar happened on Vilya some months back, but to a lesser degree. Not long before ROI came out, there was a massive drama-fueled exit of a large PVP kin to Bwine or Landy or some such. The endgame scene faltered a bit. But Vilya is one of the old guard and always populated, and we have a new generation of engamers, so things are looking up.
July 4, 2012 at 4:30 pm
Glad to hear…I hope Imladris does the same
July 4, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Turbine should have merged servers before the game went F2P.
July 4, 2012 at 4:24 pm
Honestly, I think some of the population decrease has a lot to do with the influx of new MMOs we’ve seen this year (and other MMOs going F2P). SWTOR, TSW, DCOU, just to name a few. I expect GW2 will also eat into LOTROs numbers a bit.
July 4, 2012 at 4:32 pm
I think LOTRO is actually gaining players because of things like F2P and the being on Steam. I think just being on steam is great for free advirtising when your friends see that you are on LOTRO they ask what is that and then you can get them started on what is in my opinion the best MMO on the market.
July 4, 2012 at 7:00 pm
Without a doubt it is. It’s mainly players that have been here for a while that are going to other games. Even with that, LOTRO will probably gain back most of those. It’s the same cycle we see every year.
July 4, 2012 at 4:49 pm
I think LOTRO is dying, the only thing it has going for it is the lore.. If it wasn’t for the lore, no one would come back. I’m on Gladden server and I haven’t played in 2 weeks, and this is while I have a 3 month sub going. PVMP is a boring grind with this stupid audacity system and new content won’t be here for another 2-3 months or so.
With all the lag and crashing in PvMP raids, I’m done for now, I might come back for RoR, only to see the story all the way thru.
July 4, 2012 at 5:07 pm
I’ve found the opposite to be true. My server was always a lower pop server (Nimrodel) but it seems to be doing good. Since I’ve started playing SWTOR, I noticed that LOTRO players tend to be more active and community-oriented. I run into tons more players, and I swear my server’s only picked up lately. GLFF is active all hours of the day.
I think what you might be running into is that most players are quite casual. I used to raid, but the stress of it was getting to me. I’ve since become a casual player and I enjoy my time in Middle Earth much more now.
As a free MMO (and pay to win), I don’t see Turbine offering free transfers or merging servers. Especially since they have no problem getting people to pay for transfers now. And server mergers should only be done in extreme cases, no one likes losing their toon names or housing hood.
July 4, 2012 at 6:27 pm
Silverlode is deader than a doornail and has been for a long time. Just created a new char on Landroval and am constantly amazed by all the people running around. Too bad it costs too much to transfer just a single character let alone a hard earned acct.
I really believe there should be an option for acct wide transfers, especially for servers that dont fit a person needs, ie, raiding, rp, whatever. Its only good business after all. Make it a one time deal to slow down server hopping but it should be an available option.
We’re not talking about breaking turbines game, just giving paying customers what they want. I dont know about you but when I created my initial acct I had no idea what server to go to or what the various letter codes meant. I just ended up on a random server.
Which would they prefer, people quitting the game totally or allowing the disaffected to go somewhere and continue to pay them moolah?
July 4, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Let’s bring up another thing, I found this in WOW and I find it in LOTRO, There is money in the dissatisfaction of players. Every time that there is an exodus of players Turbine makes money. I know this sounds cynical, but why would anyone want to fix this need to jump around?
I would have laughed at the idiots who mass transferred. These are the same players who whine about how expensive VIP is.
All changes are cyclical. One server does well for a while and one gets dull, this is a complex game and I think there is always something you can enjoy for a while.
July 4, 2012 at 7:36 pm
Ok, so I’m the leader of what I think is the only active raiding kin on Imladris, certainly the only one currently doing T2, and I’ve been on the server since about a week after it opened so I’m somewhat qualified to talk here. For the record I might just jot down my recollections of the history of raiding kins on the server.
The server has always had a unique character. As a new server in an established game, its initial player base was almost all new to lotro, and a very large proportion were new to MMOs, on a server with no or at least very little established community to try to mentor them. This fundamental issue has made raiding on the server very hard from the start, because you are jumping into a well established game with a VERY green player base. it takes a lot of learning and work to recruit or train people to the point where they’re in a position to be useful raiders, and to this day thereis a significant portion of the end game player base that has absolutely no clue (eg. the 75 hunter in might and block gear asking in LFF for an invite to a ToO raid that I ran into the other week).
Anyway, at the start of the server a few really big levelling kinships started which spammed /regional in the starter zones for members (forbidden few being the biggest) but very few of these kinships sucessfully managed the transition to end game raiding kinships, due in part to the huge (natural) attrition as F2P players got further into the game and didn’t want to pay, but also because they tended to stay stuck in levelling/spam recruiting mode. There were one or two of these early kinships, There and Back Again most notably, that had some vet players from older servers that lead them into raiding but the server essentially didn’t have any raiding kins for its first 5 months of operation (I don’t think the server first watcher happened until about Feb 2011).
From these initial groups, a number of more dedicated raiding groups eventually split off (usually in fairly acrimonious circumstances). Eg. there was one big defection from Forbidden Few (into, iirc, Council of Eriador, or CoE may have been an established kin that a bunch of the defectors went to, I forget) but CoE eventually had another split a few months later due to loot drama and their leader being insane (ahhh, Kalum), the kins that formed out of it were iirc Relentless, Nameless and Mount Doom Camping trip (some bad blood between them there). Nameless never really got off the ground as far as serious raiding went, but MDCT quickly became the premiere raiding kin on the server – ultimately these players basically instigated the recent mass defection of players to Elendimir (where they’ve formed a new kinship made up of mostly ex-Imla players). Other raiding groups in the early days were Crownless/Prism, which was a cross kin group formed out of the wreckage of TABA, Rohirrim (Russian language group which starter their progression with BG instead of OD, and did really well for a while), Valacirca (which had some links to TABA at the start, but went out on their own and have been on-again, off-again the longest lasting raiding kin on the server) and Aussieplayers which was the cross kin group I was leading. By the time we got to isengard, there were a few new kids on the block including Dude where’s my Goat, Unexpected Kinship and The Carbon Blade. Also aussieplayers eventually all rolled into the Strength in Numbers (SiN) kinship.
Anwyay, that brings us to mass defection described in this post, which I think was in reality much less than 100 people (may have been 100 characters though, because of alts). The people that left were basically all the members of MDCT that were still playing the game, about half a dozen people from SiN and a smattering of people from other kins. Since that time, SiN has rebuilt itself with all available aussie time zone raiders and we’re making our way through T2 ToO at a leisurly pace fairly well. Valacirca has gone through some drama and I’m not sure that they’re currently raiding. I’ve never really been able to keep a track of Rohirrim because they’re all russians so I don’t know what they’re up to, and my understanding is that basically no one else is raiding other than some sporadic pug groups which tend to spend an awful lot of time in various T1 wings (there was one T1 shadow attempt that was going on, with obviously a very shifting roster, for more than TWENTY FOUR HOURS a couple of weeks ago!!).
What’s the point of my post? idk really lol. Mainly that end game raiding on this server has always been a tenuous thing due to the nature of the player base. Getting good recruits is HARD and the server has always had a dearth of people willing to put in the effort to leading and nurturing groups. No group on this server ever made it past T2 Ivar in OD at 65 and no one’s made further than F&F T2 in ToO, and right now I don’t believe there’s any serious raiding going on at US time. I’m personally quite happy here, I’ve got a good kin and we’ve got upwards of 15 people who are capable of T2 raiding in the kin, and a decent network of friends outside the kin who can also help out if needed. But outside of our time zone, things are a lot more dicey if you’re interested in raiding. One thing to note though is that there are actually quite a lot of people around who are interested in raiding, it’s just that this server (like it always has) is lacking in people capable or willing to lead them into a serious group. But there’s also lots of people on ths server who simply don’t care at the lack of “serious” raiding, and that’s totally cool too. From my personal perspective, this server doesn’t need any drastic action, but that could just be me.
Oh, and if there is anyone on this server who does play at australian times and is looking for an active end game kinship (usally 10+ online of an evening), then feel free to check out our website – http://sin-lotro.guildlaunch.com/
. Our regular ToO raid slots are mostly full but you’ll certainly get opportunities to fill on or do T1 ToO/draigoch raids, and also lots of smaller group options.
July 5, 2012 at 8:38 am
at this stage, vc is dead. people stopped playing then more people stopped playing/transferred to other servers. i’ve barely logged on over the past 2 months and don’t see that changing.
more in general, imladris lost a bunch of players before roi went live and has fairly steadily lost more since then. the endgame community is a fraction of what it once was (it wasn’t anywhere near as bad during the od period before isen launched). pvpwise the moors were on/off from the beginning of the server’s life, but changes seemed to have a negative effect on the pvp population on both sides.
July 5, 2012 at 2:04 pm
Wow, this explains so much. Thanks for the history lesson, seriously.
There are probably 30-40 kinships on Imladris that are down to 4-6 active members now, and they are always trying to form alliances or even restart kinships – but nobody ever wants to give up their house, their successorship, etc. Legion of the Silent River and Fornost Lords have been in talks lately; a couple of months ago I know God Slayers was trying to build a meta-kinship where everybody had access to everybody else’s kin houses and they would coordinate what got stored where. Nobody can ever agree on who should run it, though (except that usually everybody agrees that the God Slayers’ leader should not *smiles*).
Nobody seems to know how to make it fun and keep it fun, and it all comes down to population. Once you get desperate you’re in trouble.
July 10, 2012 at 4:05 pm
I really appreciate your insight into the status of Imladris’s raiding community. I’d like to think I have a similar view into the community of Riddermark. I’m somewhat amused by the 24h+ T1 Shadow, our server’s pug capped out at a 17hr Lightning (There was at least 1 player who was there the entire time, and a couple who left and came back multiple times.) I generally refuse to join runs past the 3hr mark because at that point, most players are at a loosing battle to general fatigue. I’ll advise but I’ll no longer hop into the run with my character to do what I can from there.
I want to highlight what you’ve said about leadership. Players need people who are willing to teach those who are eager to learn, and patient enough to know that its not an overnight process to bring players up to that performance level. Thank you for taking an active role in encouraging more players to raid.
Some players on Riddermark might think I’m petty for insisting that if you aren’t trying T2 you’re not hardcore (an admittedly relative term), but the reality is, we have lots of groups doing tier 1, what distinguishes you from the rest of the pack and encourages Turbine to continue challenging us is regular forays into Tier 2. I want to have more groups eager to take on that challenge so that I’m struggling to find enough locks to donate in support of those attempts like I was back when Tier 1 pugs were incredibly popular.
July 12, 2012 at 5:42 am
Not all of the MDCT members transferred out, but many did. Others took a break and some of those breaks seem permanent. I also want to add that you are not alone in T2 raiding on the server. I joined Relentless after MDCT split and they have been raiding quite successfully. Really good leadership and cooperation over there.
July 4, 2012 at 8:49 pm
Personally I’d like to see Option 4 used;
Turbine announce the shut-down of any low-pop server(s) (As dictated by Turbine, not the community). Free Transfer’s are offered as away from the server to other Low/Med-Pop server’s (I.e. the non-dictated one’s). Paid Transfer’s can be to Hi-Pop server’s but are discounted otherwise Free Transfers are the only way off.
Allow at least a one month period for transfer’s before closing the server to allow player’s who have not logged in awhile a chance to move along side firing a mail shot to inform player’s in general.
Reasons:
1) Operating cost’s are lowered slightly by the closing of the server.
2) Player’s will move to other low/med-pop server’s which increases those server’s chance of surviving plus giving those server’s extra people to play/raid with.
3) Still offering Paid Transfers (Discounted) to High Server’s for those that really want to move to a high, rather then a low/med. This allows for freedom of choice to any server (albeit at a cost).
I’ve not really seen to much of an issue on Snowbourne myself when it concern’s player population but I honestly believe that the above option is the best option for player’s.
July 4, 2012 at 11:14 pm
I started out on Imladris on the day LOTRO went F2P (it was the recommended server at the time due to it being new, as I later found out). Over that time I think I’ve seen most of the high’s and lows that a server and player can go through.
While it’s taken a bit of time (which could have otherwise been spent on doing Orthanc T2, had a bunch of people not left), the Australian raiding group has rebuilt and I think is now in a fairly good position for RoR raiding.
In addition, while raiding in other time zones maybe a little patchy, I think the server is in better shape then now then it has been for sometime. I remember around this time before RoI released, that GLFF didn’t peak much over 100 and during my local peak time, it was under 50. When RoI launched GLFF hit 300, but didn’t stay there for long and around the time that those all jumped ship, numbers were down pretty low once again.
Currently, a GLFF of around 200+ at peak times happens a fair bit and that will of course jump when RoR is launched.
Sure, some people as always still need a bit of a reality check when it comes to just being viable in an Orthanc raid, but in general I still see a fair number of people running around, while at the same time, Imladris isn’t so overpopulated that 5 people at once are trying to mine the same resource node.
Outside of that, while waiting to write an article like this is fine Andang, I really think you should have gone back to Imladris to see it’s current state, before telling everyone that it’s dying and they should either get off it now and no one should start there. That, more then anything is what will help to kill a server.
As for what options Turbine could do in relation to a dying server, which Imladris isn’t, I don’t think option 1 is a good idea, as all that will do is kill a server off faster.
As such only options 2 and 3 are really a possible idea. Allowing free transfers to a ‘lower population’ server I think would be good. It’s not so much about trying to save a dying server, it would more be about giving an OK one a bit of a boost and if it brought in a number of more experienced players to the younger servers, then that would be a good thing.
Only if a server was truely dying, which like I said, Imladris isn’t, then a complete server shut down with a free character wide transfer to any server of your choice, could be the go. But even that has huge issues and problems given that any server now is almost atleast 2 years old.
July 4, 2012 at 11:40 pm
I started on another server as I am old lifetime player, I came to Imladris day it opened to find a good community -Imladris is just that. Those that left took all the drama with them. My kin The Carbon Blade is one of the oldest surviving kins on the server and raiding strong. All the lotro server”s suffer from summer decline(as iv seen since soa days) but fall will come with folks will return as they always do. Now as for saying imladris is dieing server – that starts getting folks to move for no reason at all, I remenber back long while ago bunch started that on silverlode and alot left to “E” because of rumours.
July 5, 2012 at 3:04 am
I reside on Gladden and I’d say it’s a pretty medium-low active population server. There’s a few big kins that are pretty active and a couple of new players now and then, but some places are completely barren. Every time I go to the Trollshaws it seems nearly empty; just a guy at Barachen’s Camp and maybe three people riding around in Rivendell. I tend to come back to Bree often, as I like the feel of coming out of the wilderness that you saw one person riding on the road the whole few hours you were running around, to return to a pretty heavily populated town. The only time I’ve ever seen it do the ‘multiple layers’ thing has been at festivals. You also tend to see a sudden influx of 75s running around then, so I’m assuming Gladden is pretty cap-level heavy
I actually logged into Esteldin’s crafting hall a few days ago and found a huge swarm of people around me! I panicked a little ’cause I was very much not used to crowds ;;
Though most of this might be moot as I’m still only a few months into the game and have only been on this server XD
And about the summer thing… Really? I go on much more in the summer ’cause I actually have time to. This might be me just being a college student without a job, though lol
July 5, 2012 at 6:49 am
Transfers off an apparently dead or dying server could actually produce an exodus away from the game which could be why they’re loathe to do it and instead go for the rotation of recommended servers. Possibly why bioware held out for too long before deciding to do so in swtor, by which point they should have just admitted they wanted server merges. To me the email about that combined with the email reminder of a sub being due said to me it was time to move on as I wasnt finding myself wanting to play.
Rotation will be possibly greater now that turbine hold the keys to all but it would make some sense to have a rotation for certain global timezones. I login under an eu account so they could in theory recommend to me a more eu centric server whereas if I were to login via a us account then I’d be pointed more that way.
However at the same time being an online game that doesnt match the realworld day/night cycle they could point people towards servers that are maybe quieter at certain times of the day to build up the population to a more constant level, reducing the “primetime” aspect to finding groups.
One thing that struck me playing TSW beta was that because of the single server thing they have going if you pulled a 24hr marathon then you could, potentially, cover most nationalities. That to my mind is a good thing, gamers may be a small snapshot of a population but most are usually easy going and enjoyable playing companions.
Downside of expansive timezones of course is finding a suitable raid time if your kin does raid. My wow guild covered most of the eu so ending at 11pm uktime would be into the wee hours of the morning for others.
Summer playtime does tend to be reduced but that all depends on the weather, currently I can see more poeple in the uk playing as the weather has been somewhat wet over the past couple of weeks, as usually happens around wimbledon.
Rambled enough for now, just some thoughts.
July 5, 2012 at 7:51 am
I wonder, is there a list somewhere where you can see the amount of accounts/active users on each server ? Would be interested in having a look at that, comparing them.
July 5, 2012 at 8:14 am
This is as good as I’ve found: http://lux-hdro.de/hdro-live-us.php
July 5, 2012 at 10:05 am
Sorry to burst your bubble, but … as long as there is a PAID service, turbine will NEVER consider free transfers.
The statement that “merging servers isn’t possible” because some people share the same name is also not true. You’ll keep your name, but you’ll have to live with a “-1″ added to it *if* there is already someone with that name on the server you’ve transfered too.
What should turbine do? Well the question is: “What should the players do?”
I think a player survey regarding the server population would be a good start.
Everyone introduces their home server and gives a rating like:
- PvMP activity (freeps, creeps)
- Raiding (old content, new content etc.)
- Instances/Skirmishes in general
- Kinship activity
- Social events
- Glff
- Find people on quests (low/higher levels)
- Crafters
- Auction house (availability of certain items)
- …
July 5, 2012 at 8:24 pm
I’m sure Turbine will never offer free transfers, unless it is a whole server shutdown. However, just having the same character name when merging servers is the least of the issues involved.
Your taking about the transfer of the whole database of one server and combining it with another. Just look at it from a single player point of view. on top of having 7 characters, I have a deluxe house, my own kin house, all the stuff in those storage vaults, all the items on the walls and in the garden, both general and character specific bound. I have shared storage, wardrobe space a premium wallet and no doubt other details I’m not even aware of.
Just think about premium wallet to start with, if you transfer a character from one server to another, all of the contents of the premium wallet stays on the initial server, Turbine have no transfer processs to take that across with a character and no process to transfer ALL characters on a single server to another.
Then, just imagine the forums if something went wrong and a portion of the players then can’t even log in.
So no, at the end of the day, I’ll be very surprised to see any server mergers or shutdowns.
August 3, 2012 at 8:28 am
They fact they have no process to transfer eveerything is either incompetence or laziness, in programming terms it is not a big issue (especially for a single player).
July 6, 2012 at 7:40 am
I agree that there has been a slowdown in raiding activity in the last 3 months. The current raids are starting to get old and unless you’re interested in doing T2’s most people already have all the rewards they can get from the T1’s. But I think now could be a great time to build a foundation to get a larger number of members interested in group content on any server if you’re willing to do the work. This morning I logged onto Riddermark and there were 65 people on GLFF. You would think with that few people it would be hard to get a t2 group going but the first thing I saw as I logged in was an ad for a T2 Roots of Fangorn group forming. They quickly finished up the group and a second group started forming. Right now less than 15 mins from when I logged in that group is at 5/6.
Riddermark Glff tends to sit at around 135 to 150 people during prime time and much lower the rest of the day but groups are forming quickly all day long. Why is that, I think it’s because there are a number of kinships and individuals that made a concerted effort to get people comfortable with doing pugs. One kinship ran something they called the “open raiding program”. If you were interested in running raids you could sign up with them without being part of the kinship. They would give you advice on what you needed to improve in your build and when they had open slots they were filled by these non-members. Typical raid runs were 8 kin members, 2 regular non members and 2 newer non-members from the open raiding program. This gave people a chance to raid without leaving the kinship they liked. A very active member of our community, Crell, also ran t1 pug raids a few times a week. He was very willing to take the time to explain how to do the raid and willing to spend 4 hours to complete it with an in experienced group. He developed a reputation for being able to complete all the wings with pugs that included a less than ideal make up. This lead to more people being willing to join his pugs and other people willing to lead their own.
The thing is that if you want to raid for most cases it takes more effort than just joining a raiding kinship and raiding. Building up the number of players that feel comfortable raiding on your server is the best way to ensure that you can find people to raid with. And I see that now that I finished writing up this reply the 2nd group that was forming is complete and doing their run and GA group is forming.
I know Crell is an active user of this site. I would like to suggest that he be encouraged to do a write up or two on how to run successful PUG raids. I think its information that many people would find helpful.
September 26, 2012 at 6:14 am
It all depends on what criteria you use to measure the health of a server. I’m not convinced that end-game raiding, etc, is necessarily the best, or even a reliable metric.
I think one thing that some people forget is that LotRo is a famously solo-friendly game. From the perspective of raiding kin oriented players, the soloist moves almost invisibly through the world. They do not join pugs, they may not join kins, and they may not pvp.
Turbine knows the numbers of acrtive players on each server. Their information is absolute, and not filtered through our own individual perceptions and playstyles. How we perceive things on a server is highly depondent on how we interact with other players. This tends to make our perceptions self-reinforcing because we naturally tend to mix, if we mix at all, with others who have the same play-style and outlook. What we perceive as a trend, may in fact be limited to our own subsection of the community, which human nature automatically tends to assume is “normal” and thus typical of the community as a whole.
We should all face up to the fact that we are reaching concusions based on inadequate data, and that inevitably such conclusions are flawed.