Thread: Transfer character to different account service?

This gets asked every once in a while but I was wondering if Turbine has any plans of ever implementing a cross account character transfer service..? I have two accounts, one which I never use but would love to get my level 50 Guard onto my main account. I can't imagine that I'm the only one who wants to do that.

You aren't I had to re-roll my lvl 54 Hunter when I decided to transfer to a different one of my accounts.

I was not happy.

However I do understand that they want to prevent the whole character selling thing.

It has been asked for a lot. There are a lot of limitations with the character transfer tooling. One of the reasons for not offering this service is that I doubt their tooling is capable of performing this transfer. Expanding the capability of the tool is not a high priority. For example:

1) It took six months after Codemasters shut down before EU to EU servers became available.

2) It is not possible to transfer between EU and NA servers because the tooling does not support it.

3) Customers with character on the EU servers can not copy their characters to Bullroarer to test content. The character copy tool can't handle the EU data format.

4) It is not possible to return to a server you transfered off of.

Even if your request is something Turbine wanted to do, you got a long wait. Point 4 has been a limitation for two years. We have no clue as to when 3 or 2 become available. Maybe Turbine will get 2 and 3 resolved in 2012. There is little financial incentive for Turbine to allow it. The ability to combine accounts allows customers to minimize their purchases of content packs and expansions.

For example, I bought a second account years ago because the maximum number of slots per account was 5. I could not play all seven classes. If I were to strip the two high level characters off that second account, I would not need to buy two copies of the expansion packs going forward. In my case, both accounts are lifetime accounts. It does not make economic sense to give up the extra Turbine Points - 6,000 points per year. If it was a regular account that I was paying for game time or Premium account. It would make financial sense to get those characters off the second account.

Is there a way to copy the characters looks somehow, so if I want to reroll my char on a second account I can make him look exactly the same?

Muriell

Originally Posted by Muriell

Is there a way to copy the characters looks somehow, so if I want to reroll my char on a second account I can make him look exactly the same?

Muriell

When I create a new character I write down the numbers by the selection. For the color choices I make a partial diagram, just enough so I know where the setting is (relative to the top/bottom, and nearest letters in the title or edge). Same for the last setting (waist/chest whatever it's called). Also note down the origin (such as Mirkwood, Lothlorien, etc) as this affects the color selections. This gives me enough to make a very close copy of the look if I create the same character on another server (as close to an exact copy as what you can get having to eyeball some of the settings). This should work for you.

If you don't have the numbers for an existing character, take several screenshots: front, side, back, midway between front/back, etc. Enough to allow you to make a copy of the look. Will need to put LOTRO into windowed mode if you don't have two systems to use. Had to do this when I made a new character on Bullroarer and liked it so I recreated it on a live server. This was also before they had the numbers on the character creation screen.

You can also use a Barber in-game to get some of the values/settings (limited, but helps). Just use cancel after so you don't pay anything for looking.

This is another service I wish they would offer in the store. Perhaps someday they will but as Yula has indicated the financial gains may never out weigh the costs to implement it.

Welden

I also have two subscriptions (as a holdover from when the maximum number of character slots was less than the number of classes), so I can understand the desire for this. But transferring between accounts would both be technically very difficult (as Yula mentioned) and it would also bring up problems with character selling. Either of those reasons alone would likely prevent it happening.

I like Muriell's suggestion of being able to save appearance settings and assign them to a new character, though. That sounds much more feasible and quite useful.

Warcraft used to offer this service and may still do so. They restricted it to just between IDs owned by the same person.

Originally Posted by Yula_the_Mighty

There is little financial incentive for Turbine to allow it. The ability to combine accounts allows customers to minimize their purchases of content packs and expansions.

Actually there is. I have two accounts. One is mine (my main) and one is my wife's (my secondary). When I started playing in 2008 I let my son create a character on our secondary account to play LOTRO with me. Now that he's 15 going on 16, and his RK is lvl 54 he wants to be able to play with his dad AND mom instead of just dad. But if what is posted above is true, then there's no way for us to make a 3rd family account, that we own, and transfer his lvl 54 RK over to his own account because the lack of tooling and Turbine worried about character selling.

But here's what they are missing from me & my family: If I could create a 3rd account for my son and get his lvl 54 RK transferred to it then I would be buying a 3rd copy of Isengard, a 3rd copy of Rohan and whatever other new expansions come out plus have a 3rd VIP account. So they are missing out the $50 I paid for Isengard pre-order, the $70 I paid for Rohan pre-order, and the $120 a year I would pay for a 3rd subscription.

So they just missed out on an extra $200 from my household to allow my son to play his lvl 54 RK that he's worked all the way up by himself to his own account.

That's not enough financial incentive for Turbine?

Originally Posted by Anthronole

Actually there is. I have two accounts. One is mine (my main) and one is my wife's (my secondary). When I started playing in 2008 I let my son create a character on our secondary account to play LOTRO with me. Now that he's 15 going on 16, and his RK is lvl 54 he wants to be able to play with his dad AND mom instead of just dad. But if what is posted above is true, then there's no way for us to make a 3rd family account, that we own, and transfer his lvl 54 RK over to his own account because the lack of tooling and Turbine worried about character selling.

But here's what they are missing from me & my family: If I could create a 3rd account for my son and get his lvl 54 RK transferred to it then I would be buying a 3rd copy of Isengard, a 3rd copy of Rohan and whatever other new expansions come out plus have a 3rd VIP account. So they are missing out the $50 I paid for Isengard pre-order, the $70 I paid for Rohan pre-order, and the $120 a year I would pay for a 3rd subscription.

So they just missed out on an extra $200 from my household to allow my son to play his lvl 54 RK that he's worked all the way up by himself to his own account.

That's not enough financial incentive for Turbine?

I can completely relate to this.Im in the same boat with my 2 kids and we cannot play at the same time because of shared accounts...were all level 60 -75 .Which means no more buying of expansions for us..Its ironic because we love this game and have no worries what so ever about spending cash.on it. Weve been playing since 2007. But because we cant move one of our characters to a new account were finally calling it a day...no more cash from us.

Well, blatantly obvious as it will become, I fail to see whats so hard about taking one piece of data from one account and sticking it into another. What is this "tool" you refer to?

Perhaps Turbine should consider a service where you are granted the level of experience and deeds that the character had on the other account then when just deleting the other character permanently. With appropriate disclosure should it go wrong. (i.e. We warned you!!)

I would LOVE to see this service.