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Returning Player. Server and Instance questions.
MagicMush
Member Posts: 65
Hi all,
I recently returned to LOTRO after about a 3-4 year break and am looking forward to continuing with my Level 42 characters. The thing is, I want to experience the early-game again with a few new characters. I live in London, UK and am currently on the Evernight server but have heard this server is quiet.
1. Shall I start them up on a new server or stick with Evernight? I've heard Snowbourne or Landrovel are pretty good. Does it really matter?
2. Is it easy to form a fellowship and get in the instances from the early game and onwards? I don't want to play for many hours and resent not being able to play in all those old instances again with a group.
Thanks in advance for the help.
Comments
Snowbourn is among the most populated Eu servers (former Eu ones since the transfer, but still, the load is following Eu timezone), while Landroval is a fairly active server, but it's a (former) US one, and also it's a roleplay server. If you're interested in roleplay, Laurelin is the Eu one and it's nicely populated too.
On the populated servers you can find a pug for low instances: -pretty quickly if you only want to finish the quests
-or more slowly, if you want to gather an on-level group
most players below 50 are now beornings. I leveled a character lately to 50 just for the fun, and could do only GA with an on-level group, GB and Fornost was with an extra high-level in the group.
edit: but of course a high-level in the group is only an issue if you're a tank
(because then you can't play your role, the high-level will pull everything anyways)
I wouldn't worry too much about whether it's EU/NA originally, though it does affect character transfers.
The current busiest servers are Brandywine (which is pretty much always busy), Gladden and Crickhollow. New players are directed to Crickhollow, so that's got the largest intake by far.
True, for some extent. After the server transfer there was an instant mixing on the roleplay servers, players rolled onto the other side too for the events. But still, most events and the most activity is still happen according to the server's former timezone, for example there's a cool event now on Landy (with the prof.) which I can't attend since it's 3am Eu time.
For the non-roleplay servers it's even more the case, there are just a few players from the other side, mostly out of curiousity or for the better fit (I know a few US players who like to play on the early afternoons, so they rolled by us, our heavy-hours in the evening is afternoon in the US). So I think if you want to play at the time when most folks on the server play too, it's good to be aware of the server's origin.
OR
Or not
good news, Athena's first letter as producer is out (https://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/2015-producers-letter).
"Also we will be moving our European servers back to the EU! More details on this coming soon!" Less ping! Woot!
(maybe even Codies are back in the picture too?
)
Pick Brandywine. I am from London and I know it's a US server but have 0 troubles with time zones. It's always very busy around UK prime time. There are a lot of UK people on Brandywine
Also it being a US server, I've never come across anyone who doesn't speak English. On EU servers you sometimes get a lot of people who don't speak English which can be a pain.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I'm on UK time and I play on Gladden mostly (US origin), but it's busy all evening. That's likely to do with it being the previous recommended server.
The producer's letter sounds very much like some server merges are coming. I wondered about this when they made Crickhollow the new recommended server, since its population was already ok.
I'm a bit puzzled by this - they're upgrading the hardware, improving connectivity and moving the EU servers to Amsterdam. This is surprising, given how we've seen nothing but cuts in the past year.
True, I missed to mention the recommended servers, that's a good method for smoothening the bumps and make an even workload through the day. But so far (as I remember) only US servers were recommended ones, so they practically syphoned our players
(I too have a couple characters on Brandy...)
Agree, the re-transfer is a bit puzzling, hard to believe WB suddenly found some money to put in the game... but it's like the gift horse and the mouth, still a nice move. Less ping, maybe no more downtimes in the afternoon, even... so many possibilities
Nah, Evernight was recommended a while back. I'm not sure for how long, it was when I started playing.
Certainly a hardware upgrade and relocation is a good thing, just unexpected. Re-reading the letter, it's almost certainly going to mean some merges. I guess they'll get rid of a couple of the least populated servers.
Yup, many read it the same way on the forum, there are already concerns raised... as it was stated numerous times, there are players and kins who like the quieter servers.
+ a reply was already posted to my previous line above, the downtimes will stay at the current period after the transfer too. Damn. Anyhow, still a good news, we're getting our servers back
The new producer just posted,
The Server moves will be started with a listing of preferred servers, their new locations and an opening of free transfers to the servers. None of this will be limited by EU or NA. You can play on whichever server you like on the preferred server list regardless of where you might physically be located.
Thanks for replies. Top priority for me is to be able to join fellowships relatively easily and to go play the instance dungeons. With this in mind (after false starts on Snowbourne and Laurelin) I've gone with Brandywine as it's often referred to as being one of the most highly populated servers. I've kept my four Level 42 characters on Evernight and I'm going to go with creating four characters on Brandywine and levelling them up through the early game again.
For the record, this is my kick-ass set up:
Evernight (Level 42 characters)
Man-Lore-Master (Historian)
Dwarf-Guardian (Armourer)
Hobbit-Minstrel (Tinker)
Elf-Hunter (Woodsman)
Brandywine (New Start)
Man-Captain (Historian)
Dwarf-RuneKeeper (Tinker)
Hobbit-Burglar or Minstrel (Woodsman)
Elf-Warden (Armourer)
This allows all vocations and starting areas to be explored (barring Boerning Land) and to level a healer and a tank with two support classes for variety. I tried the Boerning class but early indications showed combat may be a tad dull and I don't want another Guardian-type class all over again. (I prefer ranged and spelllcasters over melee classes anyway.) The champion seems too similar to a captain so I'm left with chosing a burglar or going with another minstrel (my favourite) with my new batch.
I don't know... Burglar or Minstrel?
Good pick, Brandy is one of the most populated server among all, a close tie with Crickhollow which is now the recommended one so received a lot of newcomers lately.
The setup is nice and covers all the crafts and gatherings, though you will need to skip 3 later since you can join 1 crafting guild at once.
Champ is very far from the Captain actually
Champ is a melee aoe-dps machine with the option for off-tanking (and even main tanking if you're good) while Captain is a jack-of-all-trades pet / support class, can tank, can heal, a great buffer, etc. They differ gameplay-wise too, champs are fast killers, while captains are slower, with DoTs, a pet, cries, etc.
Burg or mini: if mini is your favourite, then it's all about how big is your curiousity towards burg
especially since you wrote "I prefer ranged and spelllcasters over melee classes anyway." well, burg is quite the opposite, close-ranged non-spellcaster. It's a fun class, sneaky, backstabbing, throwing marbles under the feet -kinda bugger. Operates with stealth and burst damage, also very useful in fellowships, there was even a short book (and a way too long movie series) about this aspect of burglars 
(as a poster on the game's forum states in his signature:
As a level 1 burglar, Bilbo got a pony when he joined the Smaug The Dragon raid. Then he asked for leadership, looted the chest, assigned himself the 1st age Arkenstone and mailed it to an alt (Bilbo's a VIP so can mail from anywhere). They did some PvMP and an Epic Battle, then he apologized and gave the Arkenstone back. He kept the pony.
Lol)
I think it's great how varied the classes are. I'd never played warden before, thinking it was just some weird variation on guardian, but rolled one over Christmas and was surprised at how unusual it was. I've never played burglar, but it sounds like fun. And I've never played runekeeper, but that sounds like fun too.
I've mostly played hunter (very easy, stupidly high dps, but quite squishy) and captain (good at everything, as above). I find champion a little bit dull, as melee classes above all for me seem to be standing waiting for the global cooldown in most MMOs.
With the upcoming server changes I expect the performance issues to disappear, and all of the 'big' servers (Brandywine, Crickhollow, Gladden, Landroval) to rise in population.