Today’s shock press release:
Turbine announced today that it will be expanding its global operations and will assume full control of The Lord of the Rings Online™ (LOTRO) in Europe beginning June 1, 2011. As part of this transition, Codemasters Online will continue to operate the European LOTRO service until June 1st when the existing European players will begin the migration to Turbine’s global service. For more information on the transition, please visit http://www.lotro.com/news/latestnews/1157.
“We are working very closely with our partner Codemasters Online to facilitate a smooth transition to our new global service. We will be providing free account transfers to our new global service and players will be notified when the transfer utility is available,†said Kate Paiz, Executive Producer of The Lord of the Rings Online. “We thank Codemasters for the outstanding job they have done publishing and operating LOTRO and we look forward to continuing to deliver one of the world’s best online entertainment experiences to the gamers of Europe.â€
“After 4 years of successful publishing and operations we are proud to be handing over a vibrant and healthy service to Turbine,†said David Solari, Vice President and General Manager of Codemasters Online. â€I’d like to thank our many customers over the years for their commitment and look forward to bringing more service-based entertainment to them in the future.â€
It’s a shock because when the DDO server merger announcement was made, LotRO players were understandably concerned the same might be happening to them. The impression that we got was that this was not going to be happening any time soon, if ever, and that Codemaster’s contract still had many years yet to run. Perhaps both parties came to an agreement to cut it short.
Lifetime accounts and any subscription time will be honoured, and the servers will be staying intact and unmerged, so it sounds like Turbine have learned something from DDOs pretty terrible merging experience. That being the case, I don’t think European players have too much to worry about in the long-term. Let us hope it does not take months after Codemaster switching their servers off for them to be remade by Turbine this time.
You can find more information as to what steps you need to take to transfer your characters in the FAQ.
Well…I can’t say I didn’t see this coming about…the same time DDO happened..
Least they have indeed learnt about it…just now get the same shitty service from turbine as were used to from CM :D