bringing 25 players with me. support and advisement.

[The Vagrant]

I am a professor and am taking my online English class into LOTRO for class meetings. We are exploring community-driven narratives as the text of emergent media.

1) I am setting up on Brandywine right now. Is that the most active server?
2) When my students seek to set up events, what is the best way to encourage community involvement?
3) Where are the instances to meet? We will use Mad Badger Inn during the introduction. What about in the Shire and onward?
4) Is it worth lvl'ing to 17 so I can buy a house for class?

[Axitra]

Hello and welcome to LOTRO! Really nice to see such initiatives!

1) In terms of American servers yes, this is the one with the highest population. The most active European server is currently Evernight.

2) Unfortunately there is no ingame way of setting up events in LOTRO. What they can do, is post on the official forums in Player Event's section
( https://www.lotro.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?144-Player-Events )

3) If by instances yu mean private places, then there are no non-combat instances you can enter as far as I know (see answer 3 below). Places to meet are various inns and taverns in the world of LOTRO, just like the one you suggested. In the Shire there is the Bird and Baby Inn, a reference to the pub Tolkien used to frequent in Oxford (The Eagle and the Child), in Michel Delving. In Bree you can find the famous Prancing Pony.

4) A house can be used as your private instance, if you only give permission to certain people (i.e. your class) to enter it, so it might be of use.

In Bree you can find a whole bunch of players (at least in Evernight where I play) of all levels and experiences. Another suggestion would be to form a kinship (you can do that from early levels) for your class, to help with organising!

Wish you best of luck!

[Running-Target]

you might do better class meetings in Secondlife than in LOTRO. Brandywine is also the most laggyest server and not accepting newly created players currently, as it is waiting to be upgraded. Now if you class is need community involvement, then i guess LOTRO is good as any other MMORPG. Might wanna pick another server.

[Battleshadow]

Brandywine for a class thing? *gives you a nervous smile* Good luck with that!

[76561198077869228]

I would strongly recommend AGAINST Brandwine. Yes, it is the most populted server -- however that causes problem by itself. (They may be aleviated once the game moves to new Hardware around Thanksgiving.) However, Brandwine has a reputation for being an UNFRIENDLY server.

As for "places to meet" -- there are very few. There is a space in Bree used by various music festievals. It is a "hall," not one of the Inns. Its by the Boar statue, off hand I forget the name.
Basically there are a couple of stages which are also available -- by available, I mean they are areas where yahoos cannot appear and force emotes on everybody present.

LOTRO is not built in such a way that external groups can meet and "chat". While there is an in-game audio chat, it is limited to only six players in the same Fellowship. There are up to 4 User defined Chat Channels, but they are not really private other than by "obscurity." While you can put a password on them for access, that has its own issues. Amongst other things, the channel goes away when the creator logs out.

The idea that you might have a "class room" type setting somewhere in LOTRO is foreign to the game design. People can gather together for "Performance Events" and do quite frequently -- the festival Weathertop is fameous on Landroval. Ales and Tales is another musical presentation series which wanders around between various inns, mostly in the "Starter Areas" -- The Shire, Bree, and Ered Luin.

While you can pack 25 people into a Delux House (or a Kin House) they still cannot communicate with each other.

The Coursea Course on MMORPGs from Vanderbuilt U plays primarily on Gladden, but they have a Kinship and the players meet in the Coursea framework independent of what they do in-game. {LINK REMOVED}https://www.coursera.org/course/onlinegames

And, as Running Target pointed out -- Brandywine is now closed to new players.

There is also lots of useful information about the game (Including LORE items) on the WIKI -
{LINK REMOVED}http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

[The Vagrant]

Thank you all for your advice and concerns about Brandywine. What is the next best server after Brandywine? After the server upgrade, Brandywine will be fine for new players? I'm planning far ahead on this so that I'm ready when the class starts at the end of December.

Rhodope and Valamar, thanks for the player event information and locations. I appreciate that heads up so I don't have to commit a lot of time figuring out what you wrote in less than 100 words. Thanks.

Valamar, you raise a lot of communication problems I didn't expect. I was thinking of setting up a kinship but you suggest that channel cannot support 25 players talking together at once? In regards to the house, I figured anyone in the house could hear the "say" chat channel. I found http://support.turbine.com/link/portal/24001/24001/Article/3116/LOTRO-Chat-FAQs but can you point me to a better resource?

[Axitra]

You're very welcome! Happy to hepl!

Kinship chat supports way over 25 people, it actually supports as many people as can be online at any given moment in a kinship (the number is in thousands I think). Valamar must've meant sometihng else.

Also, if you form a raid you can have in-game voice chat to up to 24 people. But the quality of ingame voice chat is really bad and doesn't offer many options, so you could use an external program for that.

Every channel in LOTRO supports over 25 people, except the Fellowship channel (because you can only have up to 6 people in a fellowship) and the Raid channel (because you can only have up to 24 people in a Raid).

A normal house can be used as a type of virtual "classroom" (though your students would have to sit on the floor!" and is much cheaper than a deluxe or kinship house. Also in order for your kinship to be able to acquire a kinship house, it must exist for a specific amount of time (which is quite long and I can't remember how much).

[Ape-tier Buffoonery]

7 months in order for a Kin to be eligible to purchase a kinship house if I'm not mistaken.
I think Valamar was thinking a voice chat which would only be possible in Fellowship which maxes at 6 or Raid at 24, but you'd be better off using a VOIP like TS or something.
Otherwise as Rhodope has said Kinship chat will hold as many people as your kin is able.

I too would advise against holding anything community based that isn't simply raiding or instances on Brandywine, you will also most likely run into some language barriers if trying to question random groups of players or ask community questions due to the influx of Russian and Eastern European players they (Brandywine) recieved quite some months ago.

I would suggest Landroval due to the servers more receptiveness to community run events.

You can buy a house at 15 and as other's pointed out it makes a nice private classroom, the smaller houses will usually cost <2g so it's not too much. But even without a house no one really frequents the neighbourhoods the houses are in, which allows you to have class "Outdoors" on an empty lot or in the neighbourhood centre etc.

[The Vagrant]

Landroval. Thanks for the recommendation as a place humming with community events.

[76561198077869228]

Yes, Kinchat is pretty "unlimited" -- as of Saturday night the most concurrent players on any server was on Bullroarer for that stress-test roughly 3,000 simultaneous players -- all on the new hardware! Balrogs in Bree were quite an event.

I was referring to the in-game audio chat as limited to 6 people. My kin - the Old Timers Guild on Gladden uses Mumble -- an Open source voice chat solution. Other Kins use Ventrillo or TeamSpeak that I know of. The OTG was formed on DDO, a long time ago and we have chapters for most all games. Right now I think the LOTRO chapter is areound 750, but I haven't seen the head count for a while. We were one of the larges and had to split into two kins to accomidate Turbine! {LINK REMOVED}http://www.oldtimersguild.com/vb/content.php

Brandwine has, especially recently, become the "kliddie" server. It is heavily PvP, or in LOTRO terms, PVmP oriented. Consequently theere are a LOT of inmature players on the server and they can be pretty offensive in "World" chat.

The chat system is described on the Wiki - {LINK REMOVED}https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Chat_channels
The Kinship is described: {LINK REMOVED}https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Kinship

[76561198077869228]

Turbine's goal with the server upgrade is to even-out the player load on all servers. There are 5 NA (North American) servers and 5 EU (European) servers which refers to the physical location of the servers -- the NA servers are in the new data Center in Norht Jersey and the EU servers are in a simiilar facility in Amsterdam. "Obviously" those two locations are what are known as "co-location" facilities, and not owned by either Warner Brothers or Turbine. They just rent spece. And possibly hardware or other services. IN general both locations are served by the maximum available bandwidth today, and are expected to remain "state of the art." Are they "Cloud Servers?" Yes, but no. Or at least I don't think WE/Turbine has purchased specific cloud computing services, but who knows. I have not been following the trade press on such stuff since I retired.

[Elllll]

if you want community driven narratives, guild wars 2 is now free and the best example you oculd find. Its also far easier to get everyone into the same place, and its kind of the same genre as lotro.
BUT
in lotro you can form a kinship and use the text chat on the kin channel. Theres really no point having a private meeting point, just get far away from and main player hubs, where all the quest are handed out like in bree.

About foriming community events - the best way to encourage people is to hold a lottery or something, as it takes alot of effort to travel far in lotro and people will probably want the effort to pay off.
If you are friends with any high level hunter class player, they can teleport people to major areas, too.
Also, dont put anything into the World chat unless neccesary, because there are alot of flamers who just start arguements for the sake of it.

And finally, play on evernight.

[Running-Target]

Maybe pick the remaining Roleplaying server, that way you and your class can study the roleplaying chat.

[Baranor]

If you are not afraid of Europe, I would reccommend Laurelin, the RP-enforced European server. The only problem you might have is that most events take place in the morning for your timezone, instead of late at night.

[Ape-tier Buffoonery]

Wouldn't they have to make lore correct names on Laurelin or else be reported? I may be wrong but also posting non-lore themed messages and events may or may not raise ire in some players.

Also there is a sizable community of NA players there (On Laurelin) I believe, just like there's a large population of EU players on Landroval. Either because some NA players want a full fledged RP experience with very little OOC on Laurelin or EU players want some casual/non-RP enjoyment as well on Landroval.

[Baranor]

If its just for class I doubt the names will be an issue, just hit the Random Generator.