Let’s just mention this up front: No, we still don’t have new dates for the opening of the Lord of the Rings Online dark worlds, which were supposed to have begun over a month ago. And no, support still isn’t finished cleaning up all the lost items and bugs from the botched transfers last month. But we are getting some compensation for putting up with the whole ordeal.
“We want to thank you for your patience and support during our 64-bit server openings and character transfers,” Standing Stone Games’ Cordovan wrote just before noon today. “We still have some work to do, including opening transfers from previously-closed worlds to these new 64-bit servers, opening rotating weekly transfers between the various worlds, and opening a fourth 64-bit server based in the United States. However, we wanted to thank you for your patience so far by offering the following to all players.” [We think he meant sixth total server, or third in the US, unless he’s decided to count Angmar? That or he’s announcing yet another fourth US server before even getting Sting launched, which we doubt.]
The compensation bundle include 50 mithril coins, 2500 virtue XP, a pick-a-mount box, 20 universal ingredient packs, and 5 lockbox keys. Which bits of those are juicy and which are womp-womp are going to depend on your account, I think. The mithril (worth around $5) is actually pretty nice, as you can use it to buy the Bree teleport, save it for festival gear, or even apply it toward writs for a premium house (cheapest premium house is around 150 mithril). The mount box will be nice for newer players who haven’t gotten these boxes before, and I never turn my nose up at free virtue XP or free lockbox keys, though maybe wait to use them until there are good cosmetics available.
Do note that you’ve got only until May 18th to claim the compensation, and you’ll have to actually input the code to make it happen:
“Players can claim this free gift through May 18th 2025. To claim your gift, use the Coupon Code THANKYOU2025 in the Redeem Code field of the LOTRO Store inside of the game. This Coupon Code can be used once per account (1/Account). Please make sure to redeem this gift on the character you wish to receive the gifts.”
Worth noting here is that things like mithril and ingredient packs are server-wide, the mount box has always been moveable between toons on the same server until opened, and most of the goodies in lockboxes are also account-shared, so as long as you have shared storage to move stuff around, worry more that you’re on the right server than the right character.
