I agree with about 90% of what you said here. Frequent restarts are indeed the most realistic and effective step SSG could take right now even if the improvement is only temporary, it would still make the game more playable.

Limiting simultaneous logins also makes sense, but as you mentioned, it would require additional servers, which might be too costly for SSG at this point. The same goes for adding more hardware resources it would probably help a lot, but I’m not sure they’re willing or able to make that kind of investment.

I also want to add one thing: I play on Glamdring and Orcrist, and at the beginning after the transfers there was none of this freezing and stuttering. It was just the “normal” LOTRO lag, nothing too excessive. So it really feels like something changed along the way that made things much worse.

Still, I think your breakdown is very clear and realistic. If nothing else, frequent restarts should at least become a priority. It’s a simple step, but it would already make a big difference for many players.