Lord of the Rings Online’s lead explains how the new 64-bit servers are going to work

After sparking some unintended (but predictable) drama over a half-formed announcement of new 64-bit servers coming this year to Lord of the Rings Online, Standing Stone Games’ Executive Producer Rob Ciccolini jumped onto a livestream today to explain how all of this is going to go down — and how LOTRO is cruising toward becoming a four-server MMORPG.

• LOTRO is preparing to launch four new 64-bit servers with vastly improved performance “early in the first quarter.” It sounds like this is happening before March, but there is no specific date yet. “We’re on a pretty accelerated timeline.”
• SSG is calling these “megaservers” as they can host many more players than existing servers.
• The normal ruleset servers are Glamdring (NA) and Orcrist (EU).
• The roleplay ruleset servers are Meriadoc (EU) and Peregrin (NA). Character names on these will not have to be lore-appropriate.
• EU servers may have language-specific chat channels (such as for German or French) within each one.
• All current servers, including legendary worlds (Angmar and Mordor), will continue to stay up. However, SSG wants to “gently encourage” players to migrate over to the newer performance servers.
• SSG will revisit potential server moves, merges, even possible closures in the fall and then the spring after that. The studio is concerned that Windows will stop supporting 32-bit architecture in the future.
• Treebeard’s population is “very low” and SSG expects to encourage those players to come over to the new servers. It looks likely that Treebeard will be shut down in the fall.
• Daybreak has been investing into LOTRO, and the new servers are the culmination of 2.5 years of work to improve performance. “There’s a lot of technology we’ve redone.”
• However, there’s no budget to throw this kind of new hardware into every existing server.
• “We want everyone to be playing together” versus spread-out servers that feel dead.
• New fresh servers can be controlled how people come into these servers, can be fair in giving players and kinships what names they want.
• Because of clashing data IDs, there can’t be transfers from NA to EU and vice-versa (although it’s something SSG would like to address that in the future).
• All character transfers onto these new servers will be free, and eventually players will be able to do as many transfers as they want. You’ll simply be limited by the number of character slots available on the new server.
• For a period of time, SSG will let people swap characters between normal and roleplay rulesets.
• The first step of the transfer process will be to give a day for VIP players to create (but not play) up to three characters. Those characters can be played or used to reserve names for incoming transfers.
• SSG feared that opening up name reservations for free accounts would result in “tons” of new accounts would be created.
• The second step will be a day to transfer (but not play) characters and allow the transfer service to handle all of this.
• The third step will be to open the servers for play and keep the servers going. During this time, the character transfer service will be “babysat.”
• SSG will make sure there will be enough housing neighborhoods open but can’t assure players to give them their exact same address. Players will be given all of their housing items and refunded housing writs during the transfer process.
• SSG will be guarding against people creating names to troll or grief others. If players suspect this is happening, they can petition customer service to claim those names.
• Once the transfer craziness calms down, SSG will open up the “dark worlds” (i.e., long-shut down servers from back in 2015) for transfers. Eventually, those dark worlds will go away, so players should “jump on that opportunity.”
• The studio will post a web page with all of this information including dates in the near future.
• Kinships and kinship housing can be transferred in the same way as they are now with the transfer system.
• Renames will be free for several months after the server launch.
• You will have the option to transfer over your shared storage with your characters.
• There was no answer on whether or not Creeps can transfer.
• If the queues got out of control, SSG is not against opening up additional servers. “That would be a good problem to have.”
• You’ll have to transfer your characters one at a time. There will be no “click here to move everything” button.
• The studio expects this will free up “millions” of names from long-dormant characters.