Things aren't looking good for Middle-Earth as Turbine announced it's permanently closing down 19 out of its 29 servers for The Lord of the Rings Online.

Turbine recently issued a World Closure Announcement on its official website, revealing that it's closing down over 65 percent of the servers it had dedicated to running the 2007 MMORPG, The Lord of the Rings Online. The studio revealed that everyone's characters on these servers/worlds will be saved and have the can transfer to one of the remaining servers of their choice for free. There are no time limits on any of server transfers, as they're being indefinitely offered to anyone whose characters resided on one of these worlds.

In terms of US servers, here is a list of the following worlds getting the axe: Elendilmir, Riddermark, Firefoot, Nimrodel, Windfola, Imladris, Dwarrowdelf, Silverlode, Vilya and Meneldor. European servers closing down include Estel, Gilrain, Eldar, Anduin, Morthond, Maiar, Vanyar, Withywindle and Snowbourn.

This leaves 10 servers remaining total: Arkenstone, Crickhollow, Landroyal, Gladden and Brandywine for the United States; and Belegaer, Gwaihir, Sirannon, Laurelin and Evernight for Europe. Turbine notes that Brandywine is full for the time being, so online transfers will be temporarily halted.

While closing down over 65 percent of its online servers would normally be a red flag to its players, there's a silver lining to these closings. Narrowing everything down to 10 servers means that the in-game worlds are much more populated, as adventures on the less popular servers were likely getting tired of how desolate their worlds were starting to become, especially when questing outside of max level zones. Nevertheless, I just hope this isn't an early sign of the ring being tossed into Mount Doom.

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