The ethics of charging for server transfers in a subscription-based game

[DistortionSleep]

Guys I'm paying 200$ for my cable. I went to the HBO channels, and it said I had to pay for them? WTF I PAY 200$ for cable. I should get all the channels. RAWRRRR GIVE ME MY CHANNELS VERIZON YOU'RE UNETHICAL. Get cucked OP

[Tenjen]

All those white knights defending blizzard is hilarous, their server managment is the worst shit i've seen.

Compared to what? bar a bear handful, who didnt even come close to WoW success wise, Most games i've seen that can be comparable are several metricFktons worse than blizzard, who actually manage their servers exceedingly well and have a host of services to go along with.

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Guys I'm paying 200$ for my cable. I went to the HBO channels, and it said I had to pay for them? WTF I PAY 200$ for cable. I should get all the channels. RAWRRRR GIVE ME MY CHANNELS VERIZON YOU'RE UNETHICAL. Get cucked OP

urgh man, please dont use that word. It makes no sense in context as a recently developed insult, let alone in the manner you used it.

[Deleted]

Touching story, however, Blizzard isn't forcing anything upon you. You are not obligated in any way, shape or form to transfer servers. That is a choice YOU are making. If you want to play on another server and dont want to pay to transfer. The solution is really incredibly simple, create and level a character over there. Yes, it really IS that simple.

Its not that simple
1st of all we invest alot of time in the alts on the server.Second i almost have reach the 50 characters cap in to account .Only good thing here is thast its easy as F to generate the gold needed for mountly subscription
I dint say that should be free but atleast they should drop the price or inser more 50% off weeks in the year and i`m prety sure that they will earn much more money

[NFA]

I think its long overdue that we get the ability to pay for character services with gold.

[Osmeric]

I think its long overdue that we get the ability to pay for character services with gold.

I can top that!

It's long overdue that we be able to pay for character services with gold, AND everyone should get a pony.

"Everyone should get a pony" always improves any plan, if we aren't concerned with details of whether the plan makes sense.

[Sanct]

I think its long overdue that we get the ability to pay for character services with gold.

I'd go gold-broke in a day.

[NFA]

I can top that!

It's long overdue that we be able to pay for character services with gold, AND everyone should get a pony.

"Everyone should get a pony" always improves any plan, if we aren't concerned with details of whether the plan makes sense.

Naww, did the prospect of not nickle and diming the subscribers as much as possible trigger the blizzard shill?

[Pua]

no one is forcing you to transfer, you could always just level a new character on a new server

I'm not trying to be rude, but this (the first comment, no less) was an entirely expected response; and completely irrelevant.

Why is it irrelevant?

There are no ethics here, just profits.

Exactly this.

Nobody is saying that you need to transfer; the question is entirely about whether or not it's ethical to charge people for what can become a necessary service if you happen to be on a dead server. And it's completely unethical, obviously. Blizzard should be looking to provide an optimal experience for the price of your subscription fee, and that "optimal" service includes other players that enable all of the game's content to be properly enjoyed.

The connected realms were a token effort, and went nowhere near far enough. With the game in decline, it's time to roll out the mega-server technology that other games have used so effectively and get people onto populated realms where they can play the game as intended.

But it won't happen. So long as there are dead realms, players will pay good money to get their characters off of them.

Activision Business 101: Monetize your Existing Players Better.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

10 years later people are just getting around to complaining about this lol...

[Mhyroth]

I understand your annoyance at the price tag of transfers and how Guilds basically lie, have preferences regarding friends above performance etc, but to call this an ethic's discussion as you made the title look like is not correct.
I do agree the character transfer fees are too high for the effort it takes on Blizzard's end to make them happen.
I do agree Blizzard are lazy regarding realm merges and "fixing" the unbalanced mess the servers are.
I do agree at a certain level of play performance should be above someone who's better at entertaining you on Teamspeak.

I do agree with the people in this thread too they're not obligated in any way to give you free services, to make sure you find a proper home etc.

On the other end I do think it's Blizzards responsibility to create a healthy playing environement for everyone who joins/comes back to World of Warcraft and that the current state of how servers look now is plain lazyness on their end. I should not have to pay to play with others or have a healthy economy. I should not have to pay to play competitive in the first place since the game should offer me this (in the form of healthy servers).
The server tech they have now to put you with others in the open world does fix some of these issues, but it won't solve empty servers to Raid the highest difficulty, an empty Auction House and empty cities (which are not Cross Realm).

[Acidbaron]

A free transfer should be given every so often, that they are still charging for a fully automated process is downright disgusting honestly. There's no human interaction involved anymore.

[Kakera]

To best represent my feelings on this matter, I'll tell a short story.

Last year, my girlfriend and myself were looking for a hardcore guild.

As a guild master of a top 100 guild I would have instantly declined you based on this comment alone.

The GM got upset over the notion of replacing some of his best friends (who were grey/green-percentile parsers), even though during the interview he promised he would actively replace the weakest links. So, we began our process again and found another guild promising the same things. Another $110. Within a few short weeks it became clear we were yet again lied to about the guild mentality and policies.

Percentiles aren't everything. Being a good guild isn't about having good players. It's about having a team oriented mindset. Skill is by far and away the least important thing in order to be successful. Not knowing this would have been an auto decline on my end as well. You seem like everything most good guilds would avoid. And you're complaining about not finding what you're looking for?

Legitimate tips: Stop caring about how well you play in raids and start focusing on team attitude. You and your girl need to raid in separate guilds if you want to be in any guild that is successful. 99% of any real guild will tell you no the instant you say that you want a package deal, let alone inviting drama llama girlfriend e-drama into the mix.

[Marrilaife]

Anyways I didn't actually read through your post I just skimmed through up to here because you just obviously don't know what you're talking about at all and I highly recommend that you listen more and say less.

Nice hypocrisy. "Listen more, say less" from a guy who admits skimming the posts because TL: DR.

If you claim it's enough to play on Illidan-US to be able to jump into US top 100 guild then it's just another case of MMO-champ e-peen shaking. Especially from a guy who links in sig 3 characters none of which stepped into mythic. Being recruited into "a guild that clears content" is completely different beast than being recruited into top ranked guilds.

And in the case of OP, if he wants to find a guild for both him and his GF it's an extremely limiting factor. Majority of guilds say unconditional no to joint apps and package deals. He will have to search far and wide for a guild that will fit his criteria and not insta decline a couple.

Us top 100 is around world rank 400, and those guilds are far from desperate to take new members on. They usually have steady flow of applications and can pick the most promising and least problematic out of those.

On a side note, this pretty much sums my opinion on the matter:

If you're joining a top 100 guild, you don't need to be hopping all around. Stay in the guild, get good parses, and join a top 20 guild, which you seem to think is where you belong. If you're incapable of being accepted into one of those guilds, maybe you're not as good as you think you are and shouldn't leave after 2 weeks. maybe that's where you belong

Having a solid, stable guild is better than hopping upwards 10 ranks. Guilds go through ups and downs often and a guild that is slightly less progressed but survived throughout the years can save you tons of money on transfers if you adapt instead of constantly chasing "the perfect guild".

If me and my husband were in the US (we're on EU servers), my husband's guild would be around rank US~115 and mine would be US~270, just comparing by the world rank. We decided to split because finding a guild that would fit us both proved to be a fool's endeavour and we tried since Cata. The money lost on transfers was atrocious. My husband has good enough logs to challenge people from higher ranked guilds, but that doesn't mean those guilds have open recruitment and are interested in replacing one of theirs for a newcomer.

Me myself I wouldn't want to jump upwards unless something happened to my current guild, there's so many things that fit me here that I would miss if another guild didn't have it and what guarantee I have they would provide me what I'm interested in. There are stuff I don't like but such is life, you always have to compromise. The sheer fact I can play the role I like, a class I like is worth a lot to me. There was a more progressed guild that was interested in me back in January but I knew I would be stuck there playing a class I don't enjoy, so I didn't proceed with them after initial talk.

I know for many MMO-champ posters my experience is too low to matter but I'm sure the higher you go it's exponentially harder to find a good fit among guilds.

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You and your girl need to raid in separate guilds if you want to be in any guild that is successful. 99% of any real guild will tell you no the instant you say that you want a package deal, let alone inviting drama llama girlfriend e-drama into the mix.

This is sadly true, no matter what quality of player the girl is, joint app insta rises suspicions she's just piggybacking on her more skilled BF. Even if that isn't the real case.

[Ahovv]

YOU said you were talking to top 100 US guilds. BY DEFINITION those aren't ultracasual. You're just a jackass. You know why guilds don't replace known raiders for people like you? Because of people like you? You don't like something and off you go.

I don't know how many times I have to state this in the thread. I wish people would actually read.

In these interviews I am referring to, the GMs blatantly lied about how things would be handled. I didn't go in, demand something, join the guild against the GMs will and then tell you guys on MMOChampion. That makes no fucking sense, so stop implying that is what happened. I went over explicit points with these GMs, they were 100% on board during the interview and it turned out to be complete bullshit a month later.

But it's actually hilarious that you guys are hyperfocusing on the guild aspects rather than the cost of transferring. You guys are so desperate to avoid a legitimate discussion about transfers costing $55 that you would look for any reason to blame me. Congratulations.

[Heladys]

Perfectly ethical. You know server transfers are not included when you sub.

[Relapses]

I can top that!

It's long overdue that we be able to pay for character services with gold, AND everyone should get a pony.

"Everyone should get a pony" always improves any plan, if we aren't concerned with details of whether the plan makes sense.

Why be intentionally hyperbolic over a completely valid suggestion? You can already buy WoW time with tokens, it's not a huge stretch to think that Blizzard may one day include server transfers with the same currency.

[Marrilaife]

You can already buy WoW time with tokens, it's not a huge stretch to think that Blizzard may one day include server transfers with the same currency.

I can imagine they want to artificially slow down the amount of transfers or faction changes due to population balance, but there's zero reason to not allow "wow token" type of payment for cosmetics like sex change, race change or store mounts. Some guy pays $$ to get gold another uses that $$ on any Blizzard service they want not just gametime. Would be convenient.

[Deleted]

I believe that players should be able to use the WOW token for paid services such as faction change and server. Blizzard would still get the £15, as someone will need to first buy the token for it to be usable, but it allows people to use their gold for paid services.

As a side note, I think things like full character customisation within you selected race and gender should be available at the barber; it's pretty funny playing as a DH being able to customise everything except skin.

Why are you paying $110 for a server transfer? Just move you mains and make new alts.

[Relapses]

I can imagine they want to artificially slow down the amount of transfers or faction changes due to population balance, but there's zero reason to not allow "wow token" type of payment for cosmetics like sex change, race change or store mounts. Some guy pays $$ to get gold another uses that $$ on any Blizzard service they want not just gametime. Would be convenient.

It's up to Blizzard's discretion how far they take the tokens but I don't think it's fair to completely discount the possibility. A blue post recently mentioned they've considered it but were cautious due to the "Pay2Win" stigma which is associated.

[Fang7986]

The bottom line is Blizzard is really in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Every idiot on WoW has populated on a few distinct servers. Now everyone wants to transfer to those servers. If they make transfers free, with no restrictions, then everyone transfers to those servers and makes the problem worse. If blizzard puts restrictions on those servers, then people complain that they can't go where they want to.

This is it exactly. People don't remember what it was like before Blizz allowed server transfers. Forums were filled with whining and screaming that it wasn't fair and that all the games problems would be solved if Blizz would let them pay money to transfer to another realm. Anyone with an once of common sense predicted everyone who became mildly unhappy would get "grass is greener" syndrome and think switching realms would magically solve all the problems they had in-game. Yet people begged and begged Blizz to allow paid server transfers and Blizzard finally caved and we ended up with a few mega-servers and low pop ones everywhere else.