Russian players migration

[Wanderv]

It seems that russian version of Lotro (operated by Mail.ru) is in maintenance mode unfortunately. Servers are stuck with U13 update and there are no work on next updates. Community manager don't talk with community for nearly half a year. Lotro is no more in client MMOs advertising page on Mail.ru site. And some inside information shows that Mail.ru lost any interest in the project.

This situation again raises question about joining global servers. While servers itselves are property of Mail.ru (as far as i know), databases have to be owned by Turbine. As we know after U16 release Turbine will move and merge servers. Is it possible that Turbine also takes russian servers databases and place them (may be merging into one) on a released server resources?

While servers population is quite low right now because of lack of updates but many people will return to the game if they see the hope that project won't be dead soon. People is ready to pay with dollars or euros, as Turbine wishes, ready for monetization changes and for currencies differences, no worries. People that play and ready to return back are Lotr diehard fans and very loyal to the game. I think supporting russian version by Turbine itself should be profitable enough. At the very least there also 3 french servers and Turbine supports them, it should mean it's profitable. 2 of 3 russian servers (Fornost and Mirkwood) was highly populated last years and even now look like mediocre global servers (Landroval for example) counting with /who.

So Turbine, please consider taking over russian servers. You will gain tens of thousands dedicated players. We will have our beloved game developing again. Win-win! Please do not leave your loyal fans on a dying servers.

[Terrana]

Really good idea!
i`m russian player on Vilya server, almost 4 years. Main characters: Terrana and Vedmed.
Mail-ru is really a #### company, and I made a decision to play on USA server from the beginning!
Any new russian (or any international) feel free to join Vilya and find me there to have any help you need

[Silmelin]

I haven't met many people from Russia here and had been wondering why, but then I met one who told me that Russia had their own version of LOTRO. I've never liked when companies split a game between them so people from different countries never get to meet. The best part about MMOs is to meet people from all over the world!

Even though our German and French servers are separate, they're still only a login away, and there's no need for us to register with a different company and download a different client to meet each other. I can go visit their servers, and they can and do visit my servers

So please Turbine, if it's at all possible, please take over the Russian servers If there are too many servers, maybe you can merge them into one or two? Come on, let us all play and dance together!

[Zetsubousensei]

databases have to be owned by Turbine

Nope. The databases (by which I mean their contents too) are owned by whatever company is running the RU-localized game. Turbine has zero access to them, and if the licensing has been the same everywhere, they don't have the right to request access either. Remember during the EU to USA migration at the beginning of the F2P, players had to agree to have their data and personal information to be transferred, because Turbine did not own anything of the EU franchise.

So, if Turbine would want to transfer the Russian data, they'd have to work out a deal with the people who run the Russian version. And seeing you say they're stuck at U13, it doesn't sound like they're in talking terms with each other.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

At one time there were Chinese (never made it to live), European, Japanese, Korean, North American and Russian services and servers. The China operator never made it to live. If I recall correctly, there was some unpleasantness over the failure of the Chinese operator to meet their contract obligations.

Remember Turbine a huge amount of money trying to convert the EU databases into something compatible with Turbine NA core. Turbine never was successful because it was too complicated and expense. Hence there is no EU <--> NA character transfer feature. Still no plans for one.

Japan and Korean completely shut down. The databases were deleted. I suspect Turbine did not see enough potential revenue to cover the expense of buying the character databases, building servers, modifying the Japanese and Korean installations to work with Turbine's infrastructure such as their billing system and providing a Japanese and or Korean client.

Russia is going to be the same issues. Turbine going to have to buy the Russian character databases. Move them over here. Build an account migration tool like they did for Code Masters. Pay the Russian operator to keep the accounting database online for each month migration is under way. Modify the Russian Lotro software to work with Turbine's North American core. Turbine will have to decide whether to hire people to provide a Russian client going forward. Or is Turbine going to switch to English which is the most likely choice. Switching to English is going to cost Turbine Russian customers.

There is a financial and political problem. Obama and Putin are not exactly friends at the moment. There is some kicking of American companies like Turbine owned by Warner Brothers owned by Time Warner by the Russian Federal Government. My own USA Federal government likes to kick Russian companies and USA companies that deal with Russia. There is the currency instability. Difficulty in converting rubles into dollars. Difficulty in making payments. Turbine has to find a partner that is willing to import funds from Russia to the USA. Turbine already has the import funds problem with a number of countries because they are on the one or more banking hate lists. Several South American countries are in this situation.

My personal opinion. Turbine and Warner Brothers went after the EU servers because there were so many customers and servers involved. I do not see how three servers could be viable as a take over target. The other issue is that Warner Brothers - Turbine is dealing with a game whose customer base and revenue stream is shrinking. The focus appears to be on reducing costs for this product and service in order to keep the expenses under the decreasing revenue stream.

Hence the plan to close a number of Lotro servers this year. That is likely to be another expense for Turbine. The Russian service after the take over and move will not have active customers to justify three servers. Turbine will have to merge the three servers into one server. Turbine will probably have to live with three very small Russian servers until the migration period is over. Go thru the expense of closing two of the servers. There is expense for renting two servers for six months or whatever and giving them back. Or buying them. Selling them when they are a year old.

The final problem. What if the Russian operator does not want cooperate? Wants too much money? There is no way a USA company can pressure or force a non American company located in a different country to do anything. Especially when the company being prodded does not have any interest in future business dealings with the American company.

Earlier I mentioned legal trouble for the Chinese operator. Given they are located in China. I doubt Turbine - Warner Brothers got any satisfaction. It was more a. We have to do something even the success chance is near zero. It is corporate pride and something to put on their financial reports. We did try.

[Crimzonman]

I think the important question here is whether Turbine would be interested in "adopting" this community; where there's a will - there's a way. But I'm unsure there's a way to know if there is such an interest - do the decision-makers on Turbine side actually hear such pleas, has something like this worked before, can anyone tell? Or such issues are stuck on forum/CM level and are basically a no go?

[Crimzonman]

At one time there were Chinese (never made it to live), European, Japanese, Korean, North American and Russian services and servers. The China operator never made it to live. If I recall correctly, there was some unpleasantness over the failure of the Chinese operator to meet their contract obligations.

Remember Turbine a huge amount of money trying to convert the EU databases into something compatible with Turbine NA core. Turbine never was successful because it was too complicated and expense. Hence there is no EU <--> NA character transfer feature. Still no plans for one.

Japan and Korean completely shut down. The databases were deleted. I suspect Turbine did not see enough potential revenue to cover the expense of buying the character databases, building servers, modifying the Japanese and Korean installations to work with Turbine's infrastructure such as their billing system and providing a Japanese and or Korean client.

Russia is going to be the same issues. Turbine going to have to buy the Russian character databases. Move them over here. Build an account migration tool like they did for Code Masters. Pay the Russian operator to keep the accounting database online for each month migration is under way. Modify the Russian Lotro software to work with Turbine's North American core. Turbine will have to decide whether to hire people to provide a Russian client going forward. Or is Turbine going to switch to English which is the most likely choice. Switching to English is going to cost Turbine Russian customers.

There is a financial and political problem. Obama and Putin are not exactly friends at the moment. There is some kicking of American companies like Turbine owned by Warner Brothers owned by Time Warner by the Russian Federal Government. My own USA Federal government likes to kick Russian companies and USA companies that deal with Russia. There is the currency instability. Difficulty in converting rubles into dollars. Difficulty in making payments. Turbine has to find a partner that is willing to import funds from Russia to the USA. Turbine already has the import funds problem with a number of countries because they are on the one or more banking hate lists. Several South American countries are in this situation.

My personal opinion. Turbine and Warner Brothers went after the EU servers because there were so many customers and servers involved. I do not see how three servers could be viable as a take over target. The other issue is that Warner Brothers - Turbine is dealing with a game whose customer base and revenue stream is shrinking. The focus appears to be on reducing costs for this product and service in order to keep the expenses under the decreasing revenue stream.

Hence the plan to close a number of Lotro servers this year. That is likely to be another expense for Turbine. The Russian service after the take over and move will not have active customers to justify three servers. Turbine will have to merge the three servers into one server. Turbine will probably have to live with three very small Russian servers until the migration period is over. Go thru the expense of closing two of the servers. There is expense for renting two servers for six months or whatever and giving them back. Or buying them. Selling them when they are a year old.

The final problem. What if the Russian operator does not want cooperate? Wants too much money? There is no way a USA company can pressure or force a non American company located in a different country to do anything. Especially when the company being prodded does not have any interest in future business dealings with the American company.

Earlier I mentioned legal trouble for the Chinese operator. Given they are located in China. I doubt Turbine - Warner Brothers got any satisfaction. It was more a. We have to do something even the success chance is near zero. It is corporate pride and something to put on their financial reports. We did try.

That's very well put, thanks!
So the best thing that's likely to happen is that Turbine will create a new server as "a reservation" for the Russian-speaking community and the people would just have to migrate on their own and start from scratch there. Pretty much like immigrants, which makes sense.
Or is there anything to sweeten the pill that Turbine could also do (read: something we could ask/beg them to))?

[Xhiu]

I think the important question here is whether Turbine would be interested in "adopting" this community; where there's a will - there's a way. But I'm unsure there's a way to know if there is such an interest - do the decision-makers on Turbine side actually hear such pleas, has something like this worked before, can anyone tell? Or such issues are stuck on forum/CM level and are basically a no go?

I have a will to fly but there is no way thats going to happen...

I never thought about being a customs broker. Ever. Yet, I found myself unemployed one day and a week later got an opportunity to work for an int'l freight forwarder because they needed a temp to cover over the holidays. I had the will to become an employee of this company and it came to pass. I'd never have gotten that opportunity I did not know existed until I did. Well, we know the desire. There is a deff want here. It seems to me there needs to be a great outlay of capital to get this done. Is there THAT much interest? One person logging in to the forums is not enough to move the ball up the hill imo. I don't see the NA ppl running out and giving the RU people a hand atm. If they can get their player base to come up with $100USD each then they might listen.

Gentlemen, we are capitalists. I don't think anyone would disagree. If you want a capitalists attention you need a sufficient amt of money. Unlike when I was young, you have Kickstarter, Gofundme and Omaze iirc. That being said, there are countries that do no sit well with the US. For most of my adult life, which started in the 60's, we were not able to import anything from Cuba. We could not even import it from another country if its origin was Cuba. Old men with long memories run our country. They make laws that make it difficult to deal with anyone that pisses them off. I do not excuse this behaviour. I have just run into a lot of old men like this. The player base would love to see new customers.

Good luck.

[Silmelin]

That's very well put, thanks!
So the best thing that's likely to happen is that Turbine will create a new server as "a reservation" for the Russian-speaking community and the people would just have to migrate on their own and start from scratch there. Pretty much like immigrants, which makes sense.
Or is there anything to sweeten the pill that Turbine could also do (read: something we could ask/beg them to))?

This is true for most things in life: Even when it's not likely that you will get what you're hoping for, at least it's more likely if you ask for it than if you don't It never hurts to ask

[Leixy]

It would be nice if there was a way to add Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese... etc... servers. If Turbine thought it was profitable, they probably would have added staff at their offices to do the Russian version themselves. Just keep in mind, there might be legal reasons why Turbine couldn't host servers for Russian territories. Thinking outside the box, maybe Turbine could use the Russian servers as their test-bed for community driven hosting services. Obviously mail.ru has / had an agreement with turbine, and that's how they got the source code they could localize.

I know, in FFXIV, you pick your language when you log in, and you join servers with everyone of every language, but the game engine and chat engine only shows you chat channels in your language, and will join you with players that match your language for pug groups.

[Crimzonman]

I have a will to fly but there is no way thats going to happen...

I never thought about being a customs broker. Ever. Yet, I found myself unemployed one day and a week later got an opportunity to work for an int'l freight forwarder because they needed a temp to cover over the holidays. I had the will to become an employee of this company and it came to pass. I'd never have gotten that opportunity I did not know existed until I did. Well, we know the desire. There is a deff want here. It seems to me there needs to be a great outlay of capital to get this done. Is there THAT much interest? One person logging in to the forums is not enough to move the ball up the hill imo. I don't see the NA ppl running out and giving the RU people a hand atm. If they can get their player base to come up with $100USD each then they might listen.

Gentlemen, we are capitalists. I don't think anyone would disagree. If you want a capitalists attention you need a sufficient amt of money. Unlike when I was young, you have Kickstarter, Gofundme and Omaze iirc. That being said, there are countries that do no sit well with the US. For most of my adult life, which started in the 60's, we were not able to import anything from Cuba. We could not even import it from another country if its origin was Cuba. Old men with long memories run our country. They make laws that make it difficult to deal with anyone that pisses them off. I do not excuse this behaviour. I have just run into a lot of old men like this.

Thanks for your opinion. I happen to live in the States and I think I do understand what you're saying about capitalists and money

I think the options here would be, in order of decreasing simplicity (and likelihood):
- Turbine will not bother, and, time come, the Russian community would have to move to [STRIKE]NYC, Seattle, Portland[/STRIKE] Brandywine, Laurelin etc. on their own - independently, in small groups or entire guilds.
- Turbine would set up just one separate server for the Russian community. No localization, nothing like that - just a separate server where the community could feel comfortable. Personally I would welcome that, but it comes with increased operating costs, which I don't think Turbine would want to take on.
- Turbine takes over localization, migrates DB and other magical scenarios that will happen right after the Russian Federation joins, I don't know, the EU? )))

The player base would love to see new customers.

Good luck.

Well, you don't know what you're asking for, so I wouldn't be so sure )) As everywhere, there are nice people and not really. I'm not sure Americans would immediately welcome what the Russian community is bound to bring with it, nor that the Russian community would immediately understand how to behave in this society and culture. All will be in for a bit of a cultural shock ))) But I'm sure it'll be all right eventually, through a magical combination of a bit of tolerance, patience and massive banning

Russians overall are a generous, friendly, civilized people with a great culture and heart; Wanderv is right - the Russian players love the world of Middle-earth, they remained loyal to the game over the years of an ever increasing middle finger from the management of LOTRO Russia. And there are some really great skilled players there, too.

But there's also quite a bit of nasty things like racism, homophobia, anti-American sentiment (due to the current events), etc. There's a valid fear that the behaviour of a few idiots would impact the attitude towards the entire community, and Russians on the whole would be resented (I don't know if they already are. Are they? I don't think so.)

This is true for most things in life: Even when it's not likely that you will get what you're hoping for, at least it's more likely if you ask for it than if you don't It never hurts to ask

At the very least we've voiced our fear of what'll happen to our game, we voiced what we think could happen, and so let's see. My sad guts tell me nothing'll come out of it, so "I'll see you guys on Brandywine" ))

[Wanderv]

Remember Turbine a huge amount of money trying to convert the EU databases into something compatible with Turbine NA core. Turbine never was successful because it was too complicated and expense. Hence there is no EU <--> NA character transfer feature. Still no plans for one.

No transfer to other servers isn't a problem. We'll live with that.

Japan and Korean completely shut down. The databases were deleted. I suspect Turbine did not see enough potential revenue to cover the expense of buying the character databases, building servers, modifying the Japanese and Korean installations to work with Turbine's infrastructure such as their billing system and providing a Japanese and or Korean client.

Russia is going to be the same issues. Turbine going to have to buy the Russian character databases.

I doubt it very much. It'd be quite ridiculous to see one part of database as Turbine property and other parts as Mailru property. I imagine how they describe it in the contract . It's much more probable that Turbine has full ownership of database and Mailru just run the service and provide external functions.

Other points are valid (but i hope not much! ). Thx Yula.

[BangoTwinkletoes]

Remember Turbine a huge amount of money trying to convert the EU databases into something compatible with Turbine NA core. Turbine never was successful because it was too complicated and expense.

Don't want to take the thread off at a tangent, but each time I see this sort of statement I have to wonder, because Turbine seem more than capable of delivering working releases of the game for both client types. I don't believe it's that complicated because it's not stopped them putting out three expansions, four additional updates and other patches on top of that that work across both US and EA set ups. So they must know exactly what the issues are. Hence in my opinion it is an unwillingness on their part to invest the money rather than technical issues.

[BangoTwinkletoes]

I doubt it very much. It'd be quite ridiculous to see one part of database as Turbine property and other parts as Mailru property. I imagine how they describe it in the contract . It's much more probable that Turbine has full ownership of database and Mailru just run the service and provide external functions.

Well worth reading up on how the Codemaster's arrangement worked. The licencee did indeed own their implementation and were free to operate it within the overall terms of the contract. Codemasters did not "work" for Turbine and the codemasters systems were not Turbine property. What Turbine owned was the intellectual property of the codebase that they provided to Codemasters.

[Zetsubousensei]

I doubt it very much. It'd be quite ridiculous to see one part of database as Turbine property and other parts as Mailru property. I imagine how they describe it in the contract . It's much more probable that Turbine has full ownership of database and Mailru just run the service and provide external functions.

Nope again. Like I already said once, and apparently have to say again, Turbine doesn't own anything about those databases. Like I already said once, and apprarenly have to say again, and second what Bango said above, Codemasters owned the EU data. Turbine had to negotiate with them to bring the data to USA. Same thing with Asian companies that ran LotRO over there. There's no doubt the Russian arrangement was the same.

[Konko]

Ok. Firstly, you have to understand, that russian servers - is a great community, app. 2000 constantly playing members and much more others, annoyed with localisation delays, waiting for another day. A great part of this community can pay Turbine some money though.
So, I wish to listen to Turbine management about this statement. I suppose it is what to think about. Uniting some servers into less count of them is not showing good things about company development.

Secondly. This is has to be known - LotRO has large quest content. It is all about deeds, unique deeds, ranks etc. A lot of players are living their players - they have just given their... souls into the game. So, a lot of players will not go here and will not pay money to Turbine, if they have everything to start again.


It is all about business. It's all you have to think about.

[Leixy]

If it's only 2,000 active Russian players, that doesn't sound like enough income for mail.ru to spend human time localizing new content. Hence, probably why they stopped. Part of me wonders whether Russian mail.ru services were dependent on Expansion dollars to keep the localization staff paid. Now that LOTRO no longer builds expansions, quest pack money wasn't enough.

Looking at lotro.mail.ru the very first post says the Russian contract with Turbine is ended and not renewed as of today, April 22nd.

The Russian game servers will be turned off on June 1st, 2015.

https://lotro.mail.ru/news/poslednee_priklyuchenie/

[PulseDiver2]

And third, today russian gamers learned that ru-servers will be closed on 1th June' 2015

Ta-daaaa!!!

[Armaelor]

It was a long way through Middle-Earth for almost five years in RU servers... So much time spent, money invested, enemies killed, friends earned. Start from scratch? Loose all that you have earned through years? Dear Turbine, this is.... so hard, so much sorrow now in RU community, game chat, forums. Unbelievable. We dont want to finish our journey! Please, help us!

[Eruadarion]

I suggest Turbine should give out some free stuff (e.g. Gift of the Valar and Expansions) exclusively for Ex-Russian players who are willing to start from scratch on EU or US servers.

[Feoktist]

tens of thousands dedicated players

That's by a looong stretch of imagination. But then, even if you take a few hundred, maybe a thousand, eager players, it's far more attractive for Turbine to have them naked and donating. Prepare to relive the experience =)

[Gillirond]

Turbine must decide, is it better to lose lots of players, who can pay that counts of money at 1 time, but will be able to pay much more in the future, or give them some stuff or updates, any real help. It's all about money, but turbine may think about people too...

[Leixy]

We have a lot of Russian players starting accounts on Brandywine today, already over 50 in the Russia chat channel.

Welcome =)

[HavelRock]

Putin, Vodka, Balalaika.... Huesos

[PulseDiver2]

Dear Turbine.

Please, unlock Steam LOTRO for RU-region!