Hey, you know what kind of slipped under the radar Lord of the Rings Online this week — at least unless you were reading the forums? The MMO just got a new producer, who moved over from working on mobile games at a different studio.
Oleg “Raninia” Brodskiy posted an introduction while clarifying that he’s not replacing Rob Ciccolini as executive producer: “I firmly believe that MMOs in general, and LOTRO in particular, have a lot of awesome opportunities that’ll keep players engaged for decades to come. Now, it’s my privilege to help make that happen.”
In other news, the announcement that LOTRO is shutting down its Ithil progression server certainly has stirred the pot over in Middle-earth. While SSG scrambles to answer a lot of additional questions regarding this move, the studio also bent to player pressure to finally allow paid character transfers off of the other progression server, Anor.
“We are happy to announce that world character and shared item transfers are now available from Anor to any of the non-Legendary game worlds,” SSG posted. “Please note that once characters or shared items are transferred from Anor it is NOT possible to transfer those characters or shared items back to Anor. Additionally, players can transfer from Anor to either the U.S. or European game worlds without issue.”
In other follow-up news to the Ithil closure:
- SSG said that it’s refunding premium housing writs for that shard’s population.
- There’s no worry of running out of character slots for transfers.
- Because Anor is not closing, SSG doesn’t feel that it deserves free transfers.
- The Anor server is not closing down.
