Turbine assuming full control of LotRO in Europe

Very nice, Turbine. Your service in Europe will be much appreciated, I'm sure.

-Birk

Kudo's to Turbine on this one, hopefully the transition is smooth. I know the EU players have been eating dirt pretty much since LoTRO launched over there in terms of updates and down times and all matter of MMO crummyness.

I could see this coming when Codemasters dragged their heels over the F2P change to their contract and it's fair play to them as a subscription only service could allow them to plan operation costs and know how much is coming in and going out, they are a smart bunch of guys and like every little detail planned out. So it's fair enough Turbine are taking over F2P completely and I'm sure there won't be any sour grapes as it allows Codemasters released resources to concentrate on other projects.

No alarm bells going off as yet but will be keeping a close eye or two on this as it is certainly an interesting turn of events.

I always found the whole concept of "split operation" thing somewhat confusing.

Although I play on the US side, I have heard about all the problems that the European players were having. I think waiting months for the F2P option was probably the last straw. Turbine now has the resources to do this right, and I think the European playerbase will appreciate this move in the end.

This is good news. I had hoped there would be free server transfer available.

Oh god, it turns out Turbine were the Reapers this whole time! Where's Shepherd?!

MIxed news in my view.

Yes, the European version has had its share of problems and delays, but that has usually been as a result of delays in Turbine getting their version of updates or expansions etc to Codemasters who have then had to produce localised versions including French and German translations without Turbine holding back the US version. It'll be interesting to see how Turbine manage the whole thing in that respect as they're committed to maintaining the French and German language versions.

I hope they'll manage to retain Tolkien's English rather than allow this as an opportunity to introduce American English - I really couldn't bear to hear the Fellowship told "Hey ya'll, this dude's gotten the ring"!

I agree that this move was inevitable once DDO went from CM to Turbine, and it was also clearly in everyone's thinking when the F2P contract was being negotiated. I'm a bit surprised it has taken this long.

I'm hoping I won't be affected latency-wise by the server relocations, but raiders and PvMP'ers may be.

The change in maintenance times will actually suit me as currently it's on a day off, whereas Turbine run theirs when I'm working.

All that said, I've a lot of respect for all at CM and Satine in particular, so I'll be sorry to be leaving them. I just hope the account transfers go smoothly and that my two lifetime memberships aren't mucked around with by Turbine!

A miracle ! Now maybe the french client of the game will be playable !

I guess the people in australia, new zealand and across the oceanic areas would be well suited to comment on lag issues - They are certainly further away from turbine servers than Europe. Heck, LA is almost the same distance from the servers as London.

I'm wondering, will they actually change the geographical server locations? Wouldn't it make more sense to leave half in the States and half in Europe somewhere, and allow anyone to log in to any server?

I almost guessed that something like that would happen sooner or later, I wish all the best for the community to continue their journey through this wonderful world that is lord of the rings. I will continue
until June to share this experience but definitely not going to create
an account with turbine, enough of my bad experience with DDO
and their customer service not to mention the grief that I had in the transition / acquisition / merger or what the hell you want to call it
from Mythic Entertainment. I love and respect very much CM, here
is a special thanks to Satine, Dnote, Faya and the wider community that allowed me to have a wonderful experience that I cannot find anywhere else.

OMG does that mean that I will be able to server transfer my chars from EU server to NA server? :O