Most populated US LOTRO server (not legendary)

d_20

I mean best in terms of population and trade via the auction house. Presently, I'm on Crickhollow. There are people about in the leveling zones, but when I went to buy some stuff in the auction house, I only found pair of boots for my level 35 char. No other armour pieces, weapons, anything else. 

What's the most populated US server?

Panther2103

The most populated is Brandywine from what I remember. But Landroval when I played there had a great community, and seemed populated enough.

d_20

I'm not sure how things have changed over the years. I think there have been some server consolidations, but I don't know how that affected populations and what the recent situation is. When was the last time you played @Panther2103 ?

Po_gg

d_20 said:

I think there have been some server consolidations, but I don't know how that affected populations and what the recent situation is.

Server transfers boosted the population on all the remaining servers (to the brim for some), while the legendaries diverted some of the load in the first month (and now it is on the rebound stage, at least until those get Moria).

Most populated original servers, I'd say Brandywine and Crickhollow on the NA, and Evernight on the Eu. Probably it is just your metrics...

d_20 said:

There are people about in the leveling zones, but when I went to buy some stuff in the auction house, I only found pair of boots for my level 35 char.

The leveling range was the most affected by the legendaries, players who was in the mood for leveling up a new character mostly did that on the new servers. There are still players around your range, just not as many as it were without the legendaries.

On top of that, AH is not a good metric, simply because leveling has a pretty fast pace. That was one of the reasons they've put an xp debuff on the legendaries... and on top of even that, quest and reputation rewards (and by a lucky roll the hobbit gifts too) give all the gear you need during the journey...

Those two (and a half) reasons, fast leveling and decent gear available all the time; pretty much made the lowbie gear AH irrelevant. Even if you have a nice piece to put up for sale, almost nobody buys it. It was still used for the critted crafting pieces, but then processing arrived and now you can raise your crafting without producing hundreds of gear pieces... so that source is gone as well.

Currently on the lower level ranges the only gear pieces you can find in the AH (which are still worth the time to put up for sale) are the lootbox gear pieces, and the dropped purple set pieces (for their cosmetic looks). And even those are rarely sold... it has nothing to do with population.

(tl;dr version: don't spend money on the "best available" gear for a given level, you will outlevel it in days even if you use "Smell the roses" - that is an actual skill in game  )

d_20

@Po_gg Thank you so much! Awesome answer!

Po_gg

Forgot to add, around level 35, and if you are questing in Evendim, you can barter a whole gear set for your class, with appropriate set bonuses. That set is well enough until you start to get level 40ish pieces (or until you chase the pieces of the Fém set in Angmar).

Since all quests in Evendim rewards you with Arnorian coins, you can barter the set without any extra effort. With some classes it is even for keeps, due to the cosmetic looks of the set, the minstrel's chest piece used to be popular for example. https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Heartmender%27s_Raiments

gervaise1

I usually say that there is no real need to start thinking about gear till early 40s but that is easy to say if you know what you are doing.

Several quests start to reward good purple items once you hit 40 as well and before that quests in the epic story line give excellent rewards.

As far as Crickhollow goes it has been a lot quieter since the legendary servers kicked in; still populated but quieter - just the way it.

If you do feel the need for crafted gear however let me know and I will log in and make you some ( I have every profession covered.)

sosaria417

Your answer is this:
http://lux-hdro.de/hdro-live.php

Click on any of the US based servers during the time you'll be playing and it will show exactly how many people are logged in on each server.

Then decide whether that server is right for you, in terms of population.

For example, a lot of Australians think Crickhollow or Arkenstone is their populated server, but the majority of Aussies play during 7pm onwards, which means if they wanted to play with the most people possible during that time they should roll on EU Evernight.

It doesn't matter if a server is populated or not if you log into said server during it's quiet time. You want to log into a server when everyone is logged in to maximize your chances of groups.

d_20

Thank you for the offer, @gervaise1 !

@sosaria417 Usually I do play with Australians (I at GMT+9), but from Asia to the EU, ping is always worse for me than to NA.

gervaise1

d_20 said:

Thank you for the offer, @gervaise1 !

@sosaria417 Usually I do play with Australians (I at GMT+9), but from Asia to the EU, ping is always worse for me than to NA.

No problem. I have been logging on to alts periodically of late, on and off, so rather than saying "send a message to X" in game that I might not pick up for days even weeks just let me know "here" and I will get back to you.

Po_gg

d_20 said:

Usually I do play with Australians (I at GMT+9), but from Asia to the EU, ping is always worse for me than to NA.

That is up to the ISPs, sometimes I got really weird pings too to Asia (from the Eu), as if half the packages were sent across the globe... but that was years ago, haven't tried east-only games in a while.

Fortunately in LotRO's case the ping, more precisely the ping difference is not an issue, since all the servers are sitting in the same datacentre at the east coast of NA.

The server difference lays more in the location of the playerbase and the peak times / busy hours (and in 3 servers' case the language), not in their pings which is the same since 2010 when Turbine moved the Eu servers from Codies to the States.

Their tags should be "former NA" and "former Eu" servers, just that looks silly

ed:

sosaria417 said:

For example, a lot of Australians think Crickhollow or Arkenstone is their populated server,

That is more like a tradition, and not because of the NA peak hours. There was an "unofficial" oceanic server where most Aussies and players from east/southern Asia played, but that was one of the victims of the server transfers.

At the transfers they decided to move to Arkenstone and makes that the new "unofficial" home server.

That's why it is said to new players from that region to pick Arkenstone, a lot of players and kinships are there from the same time zone and peak hours.