Free Transfers, once a month; why isn't it a thing yet?

[Polarthief]

Because right now Blizzard is still making more money on paid transfers than they are losing on people quitting because of dead realms. Until the ratio flips the other direction, you will not see free transfers.

Short-term, yes, they are.

Long-term, no, they aren't.

---------- Post added 2013-05-10 at 04:29 PM ----------

The problem is obviously the gigantic amount of people who do. There are so many people that would quit over this in an instant.

If I couldn't keep Pewpewblast, I know I'd be done with the game in an instant.

It's just been my stupid, unoriginal, name since 2.4.3. I refuse to give it up. (@Anyone from Suramar during Ulduar-ToC days: Shut up. That didn't happen)

[NatePsy]

If they want to take the greedy way to fix this by merging realms instead of my idea, then the only way I can think of how to fix the issue is giving all players on realm X a free transfer to anywhere that isn't a full pop realm, and them being given 2 months notice that their realm will be PERMANENTLY shut down after those 2 months. Any characters still on the realm after 2 months will be forced to choose (at will) a new, non-full, realm, before they can play.

I'd say offer transfers to any realm that isn't constantly High/Full, then after all that is sorted with more and more servers becoming booming population, we'd then take a look at realms that are suffering imbalance issues and give players that are on the dominant faction for certain servers a free realm transfer flag beside their character at the character screen.

It might just slightly dwindle the numbers a bit, but it's better than nothing. Another thing would be to lock out anyone from creating Horde on a Horde dominated server that's High/Full unless they've already been on that server with a character above 80+ before the change took place.

[-Superman-]

What's worth more? Two of five people paying $25 to move to a new server, while the other three quit, or five people paying nothing but all five retaining their sub because now they feel like they have an increased positive experience in the game?

Depends. Do they transfer, play til they are bored and then unsub til the next expac? They know people will pay to play so they are confident people will pay to continue to play. Not saying it will stay like that forever, but I don't see them removing it until the game drops to a much lower playerbase and becomes F2P. Or, they may just be priming their audience and making them beg for Titan and then allowing everything in Titan they never allowed in WoW. Then you get those players, plus all those who have quit. Only Blizz knows for sure. So far, they are still making money, so they must have some idea of what they are doing.

---------- Post added 2013-05-10 at 01:34 PM ----------

All companies are 'for-profit' otherwise they would be charities.

Precisely. Since Blizz is not a charity with a F2P model, then why give away something they can obviously still milk for profit?

[Ferocity]

If you think that realm population is an issue, wait until it is free to transfer and marvel at how your low pop and medium pop realms suddenly become 0 population realms as everyone struggles to get onto one of the top servers or other.

But that's when Blizzard could use CRZ beneficially? To split server in several smaller chunks? And leave low-pop realms for rares' hunters to get their TLPDs, Aeonaxxes, hunter pets, or simply level in silence?

You'd be surprised but there are already close to 0 population realms. Which are plagued by same CRZ, know why? It is not even about that you can't raid there, lol that's obvious. I know some servers where it is infinitely harder than impossible to raise profs. There is no (absolute zero) low-medium materials on AH, and if you go try farm them yourself - they are all being taken away by other servers. Poor players who by some mistake or by being naive decided to roll on such server, or if server happened to decay to such condition. They are doomed to no end.

So why not remove malignant factors of CRZ and use it beneficially? Turn it off as realm-merger and use it as realm-splitter? Several global servers, auto-splitting on demand with possibility of instanced sessions for world zones like I described in post before? It all sounds like a dream though, I know -.-

[Eviscero]

Please read the edited OP, my original "why Mergers are bad" on page 1, or, LITERALLY, three posts above yours.

You seem like the kind of person who needs to sit in their thread and defend their solution as the be-all-end-all-greatest-hire-me-now-blizzard-i'll-solve-all-your-problems idea so I am sure replying to you will be fruitless but here it goes:

You (may) forcibly give up your name; one you may have had for years (one of the biggest reasons Blizzard won't do it)

Names being unique to a server is moronic and should be done away with, easily fixes forced name changes.


Forces you upon a higher pop realm (possibly even too high) from a dead realm

Managed correctly this is a non-issue. I would be shocked if they couldn't manage to bring all populations to med/high without causing queues in any realm.


It's forced upon you

You have some trauma related to this? You can't honestly tell me that if one day you log in and your dead realm was suddenly teeming with life that you would know or care that the mrege was "forced upon you."

[Tziva]

Depends. Do they transfer, play til they are bored and then unsub til the next expac?

They don't have to. They only have to play for two additional months longer than they would have without the transfer to make it a profit.

[Anjerith]

Then you're forced between your server, or server X, which could be even worse.

Really? I guess that's why I'm still sticking with my guild on my shitty server. If you want to know my true motives, then I'll lay all my cards out on the table.

What I, the OP, actually want from this
- Let me change my race every so often for free, because I enjoy playing most of the races
- Our recruits could safely come to our realm without a $25-50 cost ($50 if they suck/leave us), because we've been recruiting off-realm due to shitters on our realm
- Should my guild ever realm hop, I can be happy knowing I can (eventually) bring all my characters there without having to pay $275 instead.

But you totally know me and think I want to realm-hop constantly. I guess that's why I've been on Suramar since Vanilla.

Dude, it's okay. Chill out Internet Man/Woman. Please take a moment and realize that I was referring to the Royal "You", not you personally.

[Rotted]

They'd lose a lot more cash than you think they would, and it would last longer than you think as well,

Additionally, its going to encourage people to hop on to other servers for farming areas, which is a kick in the bollocks to people on that server, either they go there gets the mats and take it back to another server where its worth more, or they pocket the gold on that server then change back the following month.

It would be ideal in the long term for people like me who want to start on a new server but can't afford to send my chars over, but it would be more hassle than its worth over all I think.

[metatation]

Why Mergers are a horrible idea
- It's forced upon you
- You (may) forcibly give up your name; one you may have had for years (one of the biggest reasons Blizzard won't do it)
- Forces you upon a higher pop realm (possibly even too high) from a dead realm
- [Edit] Forcing stuff upon people generally makes them angry, sad, or generally negative

I am all for server mergers and could careless overall about a name change for why would it matter in the end? To play with a bunch of people or not play with a bunch of people and keep my name? Its strange bc people want a fix but they want some unrealistic fix where they dont have to give up anything or move from their server lol.When I played it was on a superdead server and I would rather lose my name or have it tagged with my realm than play solo in an MMO. It seems to be the easiest and most efficient solution to a problem that is only going to get worse and I will be damned if I'm paying money to go somewhere else to possibly this happening again. What also makes people angry,sad and generally negative is playing on a lifeless server with no realistic resolution in sight except for server merges. Ok now what we need are "my server is so dead" jokes!

[Zogarth]

Blizzard are greedy, simple is that.

[Gimlix]

It's just time to merge the servers, i rather have luck a active server where you see everyone people and never ending wpvp, then 250 servers and 100-150 of those are just dead at alot of points :3

[Polarthief]

You seem like the kind of person who needs to sit in their thread and defend their solution as the be-all-end-all-greatest-hire-me-now-blizzard-i'll-solve-all-your-problems idea so I am sure replying to you will be fruitless but here it goes:

You (may) forcibly give up your name; one you may have had for years (one of the biggest reasons Blizzard won't do it)

Names being unique to a server is moronic and should be done away with, easily fixes forced name changes.


Forces you upon a higher pop realm (possibly even too high) from a dead realm

Managed correctly this is a non-issue. I would be shocked if they couldn't manage to bring all populations to med/high without causing queues in any realm.


It's forced upon you

You have some trauma related to this? You can't honestly tell me that if one day you log in and your dead realm was suddenly teeming with life that you would know or care that the mrege was "forced upon you."

I never said it was the best solution, as there probably isn't one, but okay.

- Fair enough. What exactly do you propose with all the other "Pewpewblasts" across WoW? Should they simply allow numbers and longer names so I can be XxPew0Pew0BlastxX?

- "Managed correctly"? Are we talking about the same company?

- You and I, not so much. The general masses? Much different opinion.

Dude, it's okay. Chill out Internet Man/Woman. Please take a moment and realize that I was referring to the Royal "You", not you personally.

Oh don't even try to defend what you said.

[chibichibiko]

Realm mergers is unlikly to happen until Blizzard number crunchers estimate they have more to gain in terms of player commitment than it will cost them by players being uprooted and possibly losing their beloved names.
Unrestricted free transfers won't happen for two primary reasons:
1. It allows players to abuse eachother with increased anonymity. As the cost to go into hiding falls, the perceived cost of being a jerk to other players goes down to (for those who are not committed to any particular guild). I would predict guild bank robbery, crafting theft, and other trade-related scams to increase in frequency.
2. It's going to exacerbate the problem for people on low and high pop realms. High pop players like being high pop, but they don't like being queue-high pop. Low pop servers have a lot of playerbase that would like to be on high pop, but not everyone would want to move to high pop servers and that's going to make ghost towns even ghostier for those who don't move.

I'd be pretty happy with a mass-character transfer...a purchasable service that moves every character from the same account on one server to another server, but to be honest, unless they merge servers when they get too small, the problem won't go away.

[melodramocracy]

I'm of the mind that there should be a limited time free transfer allowed. As many toons as you want, where ever you want, unless said server is locked. At the end of that timeframe, they can get a pretty accurate picture of where folks want to be, and perhaps merge some server accordingly.

Then again, if they expand on the whole CRZ thing, it might not matter much anyhow.

[Polarthief]

Realm mergers is unlikly to happen until Blizzard number crunchers estimate they have more to gain in terms of player commitment than it will cost them by players being uprooted and possibly losing their beloved names.
Unrestricted free transfers won't happen for two primary reasons:
1. It allows players to abuse eachother with increased anonymity. As the cost to go into hiding falls, the perceived cost of being a jerk to other players goes down to (for those who are not committed to any particular guild). I would predict guild bank robbery, crafting theft, and other trade-related scams to increase in frequency.
2. It's going to exacerbate the problem for people on low and high pop realms. High pop players like being high pop, but they don't like being queue-high pop. Low pop servers have a lot of playerbase that would like to be on high pop, but not everyone would want to move to high pop servers and that's going to make ghost towns even ghostier for those who don't move.

I'd be pretty happy with a mass-character transfer...a purchasable service that moves every character from the same account on one server to another server, but to be honest, unless they merge servers when they get too small, the problem won't go away.

1. Report them and move on; why would GMs be retarded enough to let randoms take stuff from the Guild Bank?; Crafting thefts is an immediate bannable offense if caught, same with trade-related scams.

2. For those that don't want to move, why are they bitching about low-pop in the first place? If they like staying on low pop, by all means, they can stay on one; the rules would incorporate keeping high-pop from becoming queue-high-pop.

---------- Post added 2013-05-10 at 04:48 PM ----------

Then again, if they expand on the whole CRZ thing, it might not matter much anyhow.

They should just allow cross-realm Arena and current-tier raiding since they already allow EVERYTHING ELSE at this point with CRZ.

[Vankrys]

if free transfer is something blizzard wanted to do, it already be done, so i don't see it happening in in the near future.
What i could see them doing is some kind of transfer plan, like transfer all char from one server to another for a single fee, like $50.

Blizzard is making so much dough with the transfer money, not happening, ever.

[Deleted]

what we really need is a centralized servers wide AH. With Blizzard supervision and semi-control.

something like Runescape Grand Exchange, that way, low pop realms wouldn't suffer that hard.

[Deleted]

guild wars 2 has weekly free transfers and the game isn't affected by it in any way...on the contrary,I had a friend playing the game on a low population server while I was on a high pop so I just had to explain to him what a bad choice that was and he could just immediately transfer to my server.

Also what's with the ''players don't want mergers because of their names'' bullshit?Only ignorant people who's server ain't dead say that.
Who the F cares about a character when you can't find a decent raiding guild on your server,a rbg group or you can't go out without getting ganked by the enemy faction that makes up more then 90% of your realm?
What kind of bullshit is that argument and why does it keep popping up?

[Hitei]

what we really need is a centralized servers wide AH. With Blizzard supervision and semi-control.

something like Runescape Grand Exchange, that way, low pop realms wouldn't suffer that hard.

I'd really rather not have to deal with thousands of people posting and buying auctions of crafting mats simultaneously.
Can you imagine trying to sell a stack of leather/cloth/ghost iron when a couple hundred other people are also listing them?

guild wars 2 has weekly free transfers and the game isn't affected by it in any way...on the contrary,I had a friend playing the game on a low population server while I was on a high pop so I just had to explain to him what a bad choice that was and he could just immediately transfer to my server.

Also what's with the ''players don't want mergers because of their names'' bullshit?Only ignorant people who's server aren't dead say that,who the F cares about a character when you can't find a decent raiding guild on your server,a rbg group or you can't go out without ganked by the enemy faction that makes up more then 90% of your realm?
What kind of bullshit is that argument and why does it keep popping up?

Just because it isn't your view doesn't mean it's a non existent argument.

[Deleted]

I'd really rather not have to deal with thousands of people posting and buying auctions of crafting mats simultaneously.
Can you imagine trying to sell a stack of leather/cloth/ghost iron when a couple hundred other people are also listing them?

well, if it is serverS wide, you will always have buyers + the price will be based on supply/demand calculations