How long does it take for the confirmation email to arrive? 14+ hours...

[Ardineck]

I've been told that once I select characters to transfer that I should wait to login until I get an email confirming that the process has been completed successfully. It's been more than 12 hours since I selected characters to transfer and I still haven't gotten an email. I tried a second account to see if transferring just one or two characters would cut down on time but I haven't received an email there either. Have confirmation emails been turned off? Does it only come when transferring during the week? I haven't been able to play since last night and I was hoping to get time this weekend to set myself up on my new server. The one thing I don't want to do is log in and cause even longer delays for playtime. What can I do? I've tried going through Twitter and I haven't gotten a response. The phone only works from 2 to 6 or something like that during the week if I've read it correctly. Has anyone gone this long without getting the confirmation email after transfer? Am I waiting for something that will never come?

[Mar-Evayave]

I've been told that once I select characters to transfer that I should wait to login until I get an email confirming that the process has been completed successfully. It's been more than 12 hours since I selected characters to transfer and I still haven't gotten an email. I tried a second account to see if transferring just one or two characters would cut down on time but I haven't received an email there either. Have confirmation emails been turned off? Does it only come when transferring during the week? I haven't been able to play since last night and I was hoping to get time this weekend to set myself up on my new server. The one thing I don't want to do is log in and cause even longer delays for playtime. What can I do? I've tried going through Twitter and I haven't gotten a response. The phone only works from 2 to 6 or something like that during the week if I've read it correctly. Has anyone gone this long without getting the confirmation email after transfer? Am I waiting for something that will never come?

I'm going to hazard a guess and say that the email was simply lost in the process. You are able to log into the forums, and your in-game account is linked to your forum account. If the in-game part of your account was still tied up, then theoretically your forum account would be too. I'm betting your account is ready and waiting for you.

That being said, I do share your concern. If I were in your shoes, I also would not want to log in and possibly cause further delays.

I'm interested to see if anyone else here has any advice on the matter. Perhaps some others had the same situation and can help guide you.

[Ardineck]

I certainly don't want to log in and then be told "you should have waited...we told you not to do that until you got the e-mail". I also don't want to wait for one that never comes. Two accounts of different sizes tied to different e-mails were tried. Neither has received an e-mail, the larger nor the smaller.

Everyone else I know had it done within a few hours. Some almost immediately received an e-mail.

I know that I shouldn't be able to use the forums if the ban worked correctly, but I have also heard that it hasn't. In fact, I never had a ban when transfers were practiced between the 5 remaining worlds a few weeks back. I could instantly log in and there didn't appear to be a problem.

There needs to be some way to check on progress other than an e-mail. There HAS to be. I am basically being held hostage by fear. I've done everything I possibly can to minimize my risk. No one else had issues like this, so I felt like I was being overly careful for nothing. I see I was right to have concern. No e-mails, junk folder or otherwise. I did submit a ticket and have sent Tweets, but so far the only help has been empathy from other players.

[Mar-Evayave]

I certainly don't want to log in and then be told "you should have waited...we told you not to do that until you got the e-mail". I also don't want to wait for one that never comes. Two accounts of different sizes tied to different e-mails were tried. Neither has received an e-mail, the larger nor the smaller.

Everyone else I know had it done within a few hours. Some almost immediately received an e-mail.

I know that I shouldn't be able to use the forums if the ban worked correctly, but I have also heard that it hasn't. In fact, I never had a ban when transfers were practiced between the 5 remaining worlds a few weeks back. I could instantly log in and there didn't appear to be a problem.

There needs to be some way to check on progress other than an e-mail. There HAS to be. I am basically being held hostage by fear. I've done everything I possibly can to minimize my risk. No one else had issues like this, so I felt like I was being overly careful for nothing. I see I was right to have concern. No e-mails, junk folder or otherwise. I did submit a ticket and have sent Tweets, but so far the only help has been empathy from other players.

For the transfers of a few weeks ago, the transfers and associated bans were so quick that it went unnoticed by pretty much everyone. Because transfers are taking longer, with so many more people doing them, the bans are getting noticed by a lot of people. So they were there, it just wasn't as drawn out.

I totally get what you are saying, though. You are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Primarily because, even if there is a way for Turbine to tell you if the transfers are over, it's unfortunately the weekend so you have no way to ask them.

At this point, I really only see two choices, as much a drag as it will be. Wait for Monday and contact them (ideally by phone; they should be able to give you answers that way), or attempt to log into the game.

One final guess of my own. It really does make sense, but it is still just a guess. They probably have some safety measure in place to prevent players from logging in. The wizard says the account will be inaccessible. Meaning that any attempts to access will fail, but not that the attempts would mess up any transfers in progress. It would dumb to have it any other way because, inevitably, there will be someone (and probably lots of someones) who try to log in before they get their email, or don't even bother to read the instructions at all. To keep their account and characters from irreparable harm, Turbine would have to put in place some safety mechanism to prevent them from logging in without actually harming their account. Which means, in theory, that you should be safe to try.

[RJFerret]

During testing on Bullroarer plenty of folks didn't get the email, just try logging in. You can't hurt anything, they lock out your account while the transfer is happening to insure against issues like that. Either you'll be able to play with your characters on the destination, or you'll find nothing happened yet (unlikely). Emails aren't like phone calls or certified mail, they aren't reliable forms of communication, only slightly better than text messages. Many people logged in before the email arrived happily.

[Ardineck]

Thanks all for the advice. I'm going to give it 24 hours. If nothing comes by then I'm going to go ahead and try logging in. I think something needs to be cleared up on their side. Like it has been said, I just should not be able to log in at all until it is complete. That way I know without a doubt that I can't screw anything up. Maybe even letting you log in to the launcher and having a green or red check mark available in the transfer menu or something. Waiting for confirmation like this is worrisome. Thanks for trying to set my mind at ease.

[Mar-Evayave]

Thanks all for the advice. I'm going to give it 24 hours. If nothing comes by then I'm going to go ahead and try logging in. I think something needs to be cleared up on their side. Like it has been said, I just should not be able to log in at all until it is complete. That way I know without a doubt that I can't screw anything up. Maybe even letting you log in to the launcher and having a green or red check mark available in the transfer menu or something. Waiting for confirmation like this is worrisome. Thanks for trying to set my mind at ease.

I'm guessing there is something like that in place already. For example, when I received a forum perma-ban a while back, I was not able to access the forums at all while logged in. When I attempted to log in, I'd be given the ban error. It took two weeks for them to investigate, realize I had been mistakenly banned, and lift the ban.

Similarly, if a player gets a ban on their in-game account too (mine had been for the forums only), they will attempt to log into the launcher and get an error (at least this is how I assume the ban would work).

Because they put a temporary ban on your account during the transfer, quite literally locking your account out, any attempts to log in would be rebuffed. As such, the fact that you are posting here on the forums seems to be a very strong indicator that your account is already ready to go.

I agree that the lack of an email definitely gives one a measure of worry, but my personal guess is that it's far more likely the emails simply got lost en route to you.

[Ardineck]

I'd agree that it seems likely if I'm able to post here that the process should be complete, but my impression (possible false) was from what I was hearing that people were attempting to log in and that was the cause of some of the transfer problems earlier.

I'm hoping that I'm just worrying for nothing. It's almost 24 hours now. I think I'm just going to wait until Monday. If anything happened, I would pretty much be done with the game. I think it's been established that it's unlikely that anything is wrong, but man...that's a chance I have to seriously think about taking.

EDIT: One point of concern to me is that a kin member has tried to transfer as well and can't. So, something is wrong for him and that might mean something is wrong with the service. I just tried with another account and I can say that NOTHING was available to transfer. No worlds. Now I don't know if I made it under the wire (whatever that may mean) before the service went down or if mine is caught in the middle or what is wrong.

I was hoping it would be all hands on deck for something like this until they got it running smoothly.

[Nosdracir]

I'd agree that it seems likely if I'm able to post here that the process should be complete, but my impression (possible false) was from what I was hearing that people were attempting to log in and that was the cause of some of the transfer problems earlier.

I'm hoping that I'm just worrying for nothing. It's almost 24 hours now. I think I'm just going to wait until Monday. If anything happened, I would pretty much be done with the game. I think it's been established that it's unlikely that anything is wrong, but man...that's a chance I have to seriously think about taking.

EDIT: One point of concern to me is that a kin member has tried to transfer as well and can't. So, something is wrong for him and that might mean something is wrong with the service. I just tried with another account and I can say that NOTHING was available to transfer. No worlds. Now I don't know if I made it under the wire (whatever that may mean) before the service went down or if mine is caught in the middle or what is wrong.

I was hoping it would be all hands on deck for something like this until they got it running smoothly.

Just log in, select the target server, and check the character selection screen. If you see your transferred characters, you should be good to go. Pick one and enter Middle Earth.

I transferred about a dozen characters fro two accounts, including one kin leader and two homeowners on the initial Monday. They took about two hours to show up in the character selection screen. Once they did, I logged in competely and bought houses etc. I still haven't gotten any emails, but then I've not received an email from Turbine for years,

[Mar-Evayave]

I'd agree that it seems likely if I'm able to post here that the process should be complete, but my impression (possible false) was from what I was hearing that people were attempting to log in and that was the cause of some of the transfer problems earlier.

I'm hoping that I'm just worrying for nothing. It's almost 24 hours now. I think I'm just going to wait until Monday. If anything happened, I would pretty much be done with the game. I think it's been established that it's unlikely that anything is wrong, but man...that's a chance I have to seriously think about taking.

EDIT: One point of concern to me is that a kin member has tried to transfer as well and can't. So, something is wrong for him and that might mean something is wrong with the service. I just tried with another account and I can say that NOTHING was available to transfer. No worlds. Now I don't know if I made it under the wire (whatever that may mean) before the service went down or if mine is caught in the middle or what is wrong.

I was hoping it would be all hands on deck for something like this until they got it running smoothly.

Oh, I'm sure if you wait for Monday they will be able to get everything sorted out. Transfers are down right now. While they didn't make an announcement it is assumed they are down because of testing with the Palantir server (which you should see at stage 3 in the transfer wizard). But that won't effect your transfer. If it started successfully then you should be fine.

There are a small number of transfers that, for one reason or another, fail. But the character data is not corrupted in the process. I think when they fail you just gotta either try again or contact Turbine for them to put the transfer through manually, so that's what I'd suggest for your kinmate.

On Monday, if you still don't have an email, go ahead and call their support line when it is open and they should be able to help you out.

[RJFerret]

Oh, I'm sure if you wait for Monday they will be able to get everything sorted out. Transfers are down right now.

No they are not, transfers from the smallest servers are up. There was a brief time that got sorted when they weren't.

On Monday, if you still don't have an email, go ahead and call their support line when it is open and they should be able to help you out.

There's no need to do this, there's no need to wait, just log in and play the game! Calling support would just be wasting their time and money and your time when you could simply be playing. There is nothing wrong, an email simply didn't arrive, nothing is affected by trying to log in, as during the process you are prohibited from doing so. This is making much ado about literally nothing. If nobody had suggested there'd be an email, logging in on the new world and playing would have already been done!

[Mar-Evayave]

No they are not, transfers from the smallest servers are up. There was a brief time that got sorted when they weren't.

Estel and Elendilmir have been restored? The whole weekend thus far they were mysteriously down. Good news if they are up again.

There's no need to do this, there's no need to wait, just log in and play the game! Calling support would just be wasting their time and money and your time when you could simply be playing. There is nothing wrong, an email simply didn't arrive, nothing is affected by trying to log in, as during the process you are prohibited from doing so. This is making much ado about literally nothing. If nobody had suggested there'd be an email, logging in on the new world and playing would have already been done!

Better safe than sorry, and customer support is there for any customer need. If the OP would feel more reassured, then they should call. Sometimes customer peace of mind is more important.

[cdq1958]

Estel and Elendilmir have been restored? The whole weekend thus far they were mysteriously down. Good news if they are up again.



Better safe than sorry, and customer support is there for any customer need. If the OP would feel more reassured, then they should call. Sometimes customer peace of mind is more important.

Frelorn checked in late Saturday to confirm that they were aware of problems with Elendilmir's listing in the Transfer Wizard. He didn't specifically mention Estel. Anyway, late Saturday evening, Central (Daylight) Time US, Elendilmir's transfers were re-enabled. I confirmed that myself. The transfer took a minute or two to complete for me.

[Mar-Evayave]

Frelorn checked in late Saturday to confirm that they were aware of problems with Elendilmir's listing in the Transfer Wizard. He didn't specifically mention Estel. Anyway, late Saturday evening, Central (Daylight) Time US, Elendilmir's transfers were re-enabled. I confirmed that myself. The transfer took a minute or two to complete for me.

That is excellent news! I didn't see he'd poked his head in here last night. I'm not sure Estel is working properly yet (I went and read the World Transfers thread via the dev tracker) though, but at least there is progress. Hopefully tomorrow the rest will be sorted out.

Also, for the OP's friend who had a failed transfer, here's what Frelorn said.

Beyond the above listed there were no other issues we did not know about from a technical standpoint. There were a small number of transfer failures, but we knew that in some rare cases this would occur and our CS team is working to help anyone who runs into an issue.

So tomorrow (or as soon as possible during their support hours) I'd have your friend give them a call and ask them what the next step is to manually put a failed transfer through. That should hopefully take care of that particular issue.

[SerowLOTRO]

Definitely less than 5minutes for my Elendilmir to Arkenstone transfer.

[Rohan1240]

Idk how long mine took, I put mine in at 3pm the day transfers opened, I know i couldn't log into Ark to delete the toons I had saving names there after I had started the process, eventually around 10pm est after not having receieved an e-mail i decided to log in and everything was where it should have been on the new server. Idk that there are actually any e-mails going out.

[cdq1958]

Idk how long mine took, I put mine in at 3pm the day transfers opened, I know i couldn't log into Ark to delete the toons I had saving names there after I had started the process, eventually around 10pm est after not having receieved an e-mail i decided to log in and everything was where it should have been on the new server. Idk that there are actually any e-mails going out.

There are emails going out, for I've gotten every one that I should have. Email, like the US Postal Service mail, may fail to get delivered for a number of reasons.

[Ardineck]

Almost everyone is reporting getting the e-mails, though some are logging in before they check to see if it's there.

I absolutely didn't receive one for either transfer I initiated, my VIP or F2P accounts, sent to different e-mail addresses (and not in inbox or junk folders). Monday is tomorrow so I'll be calling as soon as the lines are supposed to be open. All I want to know is if not getting the e-mail means something went wrong or if the e-mail should have gone out because it says my transfer went through fine.

I've gone this long playing SWtoR and tESO this weekend, I might as well wait it out.

[Nosdracir]

Almost everyone is reporting getting the e-mails, though some are logging in before they check to see if it's there.

I absolutely didn't receive one for either transfer I initiated, my VIP or F2P accounts, sent to different e-mail addresses (and not in inbox or junk folders). Monday is tomorrow so I'll be calling as soon as the lines are supposed to be open. All I want to know is if not getting the e-mail means something went wrong or if the e-mail should have gone out because it says my transfer went through fine.

I've gone this long playing SWtoR and tESO this weekend, I might as well wait it out.

Not getting the email means nothing, especially after so much time has passed. I successfully transferred characters a few hours after transfers became available. I never received an email.

[RJFerret]

Monday is tomorrow so I'll be calling as soon as the lines are supposed to be open. All I want to know is if not getting the e-mail means something went wrong or if the e-mail should have gone out because it says my transfer went through fine.

There are three common conditions that came up in testing, no email, email saying it failed, and email saying it was successful. The purpose of the email isn't to let you know where your character's currently are, as you can log in to see that, it's to let you know the process has concluded, so you know you should be able to log in. Just log in, if your characters are at the destination, your email said "successful", if they are at the originating world, your email didn't. If you can't log in, the process is ongoing or there's a separate issue (not the case so long later). In the time it takes you to call, you could have found out the info already.

[Ardineck]

That's the kind of information I was hoping would be clearly stated by Turbine from the outset. I say by Turbine because I have heard different from other players. 95/100 times players wouldn't be able to log in if the process wasn't complete. What was causing issues was times that players were able to log in when they shouldn't have been able to, from the rumors I had heard. Rumor...because I haven't heard straight from Turbine either way. At any rate, I'm on the phone waiting for TCS right now and have been for some time. I will be sure to ask exactly what the procedure should be to clear up my confusion and post here to share. Perhaps someone at Turbine is taking notes and preparing a better idea of what to expect in all eventualities, whether they would like to admit errors do happen or not. It would be nice to be aware one way or the other.

[Frelorn]

If after 6 hours you have not received an email, it is safe to log in and the transfer will either be completed or failed. If it did fail you can contact CS and they will be able to help get the transfer through. The forum ban is a side effect of the process as we are "banning" your account to prevent any issues from arising. What we did find was that in the cases of heavy traffic the transfers were taking longer than the ban and it was causing some confusion.

Before we open the next round of transfers, we will update the FAQ and post a note to the launcher explaining the forum ban and the time it is safe to login if you do not get an email.

[Ardineck]

Thank you for the official note, Frelorn!

I do appreciate it!

Because I said I would, I'll discuss the general questions and answers I just received on the phone with a very nice CS agent.

I notified CS that I was concerned because I performed the transfer Friday night and as most of my kin members had done so and almost immediately received an e-mail confirmation, I was concerned that I did not after about an hour. At that time I performed a second transfer with a different account (F2P) with just two characters and meager shared storage and account wide items. I didn't receive an e-mail for that account either. Both accounts were signed up under different e-mail addresses...the second dedicated just for that purpose. No spam, no junk mail folder, no inbox overlook...no e-mail.

It appeared to the CS agent that everything was okay. I asked what I should do if I was to do this again. He said basically what Frelorn said. The e-mail SHOULD go out in all cases, whether it failed or completed. If it doesn't it could be because the process has not yet been completed, but that 24 hours would be beyond the reasonable time frame. He said that just logging into the character select screen would NOT break the process, but logging into a character that hadn't finished might, for some reason. In some rare cases, the ban may have been lifted before the process was complete, but by checking to see if the characters made it over, you could get an idea after 24 hours if the e-mail was just not sent properly or if there was a problem because your characters weren't there/still on the old server. In that case, calling CS would be the correct thing to do.

So, waiting as long as I did, I now know wasn't necessary, but it also wasn't crazy.

I'm in the process of logging into characters now to check and see if anything happened. I took very detailed notes because I was so worried.

Bottom line - wait for an e-mail. If one doesn't come after 6 hours (per Frelorn), check by logging in to the transfer selection screen. If it looks okay there, try logging into the server itself. If everyone appears correctly, you can try logging in and seeing if everything looks fine. It shouldn't break anything that already isn't broken after that time, but an e-mail SHOULD be sent when the process is complete. It looks like I got caught in that time period where transfers went down, but at this point, my characters seem to be on the correct (new) server.

[maartena]

The forum ban is a side effect of the process as we are "banning" your account to prevent any issues from arising. What we did find was that in the cases of heavy traffic the transfers were taking longer than the ban and it was causing some confusion.

I found a picture of Frelorn!!

[Mar-Evayave]

Thank you for the official note, Frelorn!

I do appreciate it!

Because I said I would, I'll discuss the general questions and answers I just received on the phone with a very nice CS agent.

I notified CS that I was concerned because I performed the transfer Friday night and as most of my kin members had done so and almost immediately received an e-mail confirmation, I was concerned that I did not after about an hour. At that time I performed a second transfer with a different account (F2P) with just two characters and meager shared storage and account wide items. I didn't receive an e-mail for that account either. Both accounts were signed up under different e-mail addresses...the second dedicated just for that purpose. No spam, no junk mail folder, no inbox overlook...no e-mail.

It appeared to the CS agent that everything was okay. I asked what I should do if I was to do this again. He said basically what Frelorn said. The e-mail SHOULD go out in all cases, whether it failed or completed. If it doesn't it could be because the process has not yet been completed, but that 24 hours would be beyond the reasonable time frame. He said that just logging into the character select screen would NOT break the process, but logging into a character that hadn't finished might, for some reason. In some rare cases, the ban may have been lifted before the process was complete, but by checking to see if the characters made it over, you could get an idea after 24 hours if the e-mail was just not sent properly or if there was a problem because your characters weren't there/still on the old server. In that case, calling CS would be the correct thing to do.

So, waiting as long as I did, I now know wasn't necessary, but it also wasn't crazy.

I'm in the process of logging into characters now to check and see if anything happened. I took very detailed notes because I was so worried.

Bottom line - wait for an e-mail. If one doesn't come after 6 hours (per Frelorn), check by logging in to the transfer selection screen. If it looks okay there, try logging into the server itself. If everyone appears correctly, you can try logging in and seeing if everything looks fine. It shouldn't break anything that already isn't broken after that time, but an e-mail SHOULD be sent when the process is complete. It looks like I got caught in that time period where transfers went down, but at this point, my characters seem to be on the correct (new) server.

This is excellent news! I'm so glad everything seems to have worked out for you, and I don't blame you at all for exercising great caution. Some might say, "it's just pixels" but for a lot of us there are characters that we really have grown attached to. I certainly wouldn't want to jeopardize that either.

Until the FAQ comes out (and perhaps even after), I'm gonna have to remember this thread in case others encounter the same problem and aren't sure how to proceed.