Is 30 dollars for a faction change/server change just too much?

[TITAN308]

But I don't expect a massive blizzard circlejerker to understand logic, fanboyism is a disease after all.

Oh the irony.

[Deleted]

I have already spent too much money on this game so I don't even think about it xD

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I think you are vastly overestimating the effect of server transfers on Blizzard's profit margins. The paywall doesn't exist because of greed, it exists because it's the kind of decision which needs to merit a significant weight, lest we end up with realm populations in total freefall and the sense of server community completely destroyed.

I know either of us zero clue on that. So your guess on my guess sounds like a guess. So I guess we won't ever know.

[Relapses]

I know either of us zero clue on that. So your guess on my guess sounds like a guess. So I guess we won't ever know.

I can make an educated guess that the number of people who are actively seeking to purchase realm transferring services likely is dwarfed by the number of people who literally have to pay just for the right to play the game. (Every single player needs to pay $15/mo to play the game. Conversely, very, very few players need to spend $25 to move a character.) And based off of that educated guess, I can draw the conclusion that Blizzard's bread and butter is still recurring subscription fees and the reason server transfer fees have remained at the same price likely has more to do with Blizzard's decision to make the decision feel as if it has an impact further than just the price tag. There's other evidence to support this: If Blizzard was keeping the cost high purely for profit margins, why haven't they ever had a sale on the service? Dropping the service's price tag would surely encourage more people to use the service (even if only temporarily) yet I can't recall any point in the last decade where Blizzard has done this. To me, this seems to be a far more likely explanation of their position than just the plain "gg Blizz r greedy y u no make free server transfer?????" nonsense many people in this thread are putting forth.

I do think they could improve the service by offering a discount bundle for mass transit of multiple toons but that will be slightly alleviated by the introduction of alternative payment methods in the coming patches.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I can make an educated guess that the number of people who are actively seeking to purchase realm transferring services likely is dwarfed by the number of people who literally have to pay just for the right to play the game. (Every single player needs to pay $15/mo to play the game. Conversely, very, very few players need to spend $25 to move a character.) And based off of that educated guess, I can draw the conclusion that Blizzard's bread and butter is still recurring subscription fees and the reason server transfer fees have remained at the same price likely has more to do with Blizzard's decision to make the decision feel as if it has an impact further than just the price tag. There's other evidence to support this: If Blizzard was keeping the cost high purely for profit margins, why haven't they ever had a sale on the service? Dropping the service's price tag would surely encourage more people to use the service (even if only temporarily) yet I can't recall any point in the last decade where Blizzard has done this. To me, this seems to be a far more likely explanation of their position than just the plain "gg Blizz r greedy y u no make free server transfer?????" nonsense many people in this thread are putting forth.

I do think they could improve the service by offering a discount bundle for mass transit of multiple toons but that will be slightly alleviated by the introduction of alternative payment methods in the coming patches.

Roger. You guessed.

[Relapses]

Roger. You guessed.

If you want to live in a fantasy world where you think the amount of money Blizzard makes from server transfers is anywhere close to what they make from recurring subscriptions, go right ahead.

[Deleted]

5 Dollars for a server transfer, 10 dollars for a faction change. 1 Month transfer cooldown for that character. If you want to bypass the cooldown the price rises to 30 dollars. All problems solved.

[Relapses]

5 Dollars for a server transfer, 10 dollars for a faction change. 1 Month transfer cooldown for that character. If you want to bypass the cooldown the price rises to 30 dollars. All problems solved.

If the $30 price tag subtracts the $5/10 fee, I could see it possibly working but the 1 month cooldown seems more like punishing people for either failing a trial or simply disliking the realm to which they move.

[Lane]

The main issue I have with the $30 faction change is it's usually $55. Anecdotal, but I don't know of anyone who's paid to faction change to stay on the same server. I'd love to see the metrics on that but, regardless, I do believe there should be some sort of bundle option for faction change + server transfer.

Also, I think it's ridiculous that a race change is $25, should be $15 at best. I was going to race change my mage until I found out it's $25 and for $5 more I could just make her opposing faction. I was planning to transfer her anyway (see below).

2. No mass transfer discount. Just punishing people who like to play alts and want to move to a different server because their friends play somewhere else or the server became dead over the years. While doing nothing to repel 1-char serial server jumpers because for them it's a chump change. If they didn't want people transferring a lot they would never have lifted the transfer cooldown that was several months long at start, now it's like... 3 days. Just the price stays.

Happened to me. Discovered everyone I knew had transferred to a different server. Couldn't afford to transfer all my alts, had to do a couple and gradually transfer more as finances allowed (still not done). Very frustrating there's no mass transfer option.

[Sansnom]

I disagree. Their objective has never been to sell as many of these services as possible, or making money out of them, it has always been about trying to find a good compromise between keeping players happy without breaking the game environment.

Never said it was. It was their policy to provide a service and attached a charge to the said service. That may worked 10 years ago. But whether that same services would work today is the question. As I mentioned originally, Blizzard has not felt the need to change because of the position they are in.

Services needs to adapt as customers expectation changes. Before, it was pay as you go on many things, now, it is a flat rate. That happens because of competitions drives the need for a company to improve their services to their customers.

Blizzard has no competitions. WOW still retain many legacy features that today people would not touch if they were to design an MMO.

It's called pragmatism. Better to allow someone to change factions than see them quit altogether. That's the purpose of the pricetag: To allow those for whom it is a big deal to do so without opening the floodgates for all.

The reverse can also apply that the transfer charge can mount up to such a point those players could just quit the game. If you have just one or two characters, that may apply. But for some players would may have 4 or more characters and multiple accounts, that adds up very quickly.

If I were required to pay over $200 of additional fees to play this game in a manner which I would find enjoyable, I would just quit the game for good. Of course I could remain on my current server, unable to play with the people I want or on a dead server, then why should I continue to play the game in this manner, I would quit in this scenario also.

[Relapses]

Never said it was. It was their policy to provide a service and attached a charge to the said service. That may worked 10 years ago. But whether that same services would work today is the question. As I mentioned originally, Blizzard has not felt the need to change because of the position they are in.

Services needs to adapt as customers expectation changes. Before, it was pay as you go on many things, now, it is a flat rate. That happens because of competitions drives the need for a company to improve their services to their customers.

Blizzard has no competitions. WOW still retain many legacy features that today people would not touch if they were to design an MMO.



The reverse can also apply that the transfer charge can mount up to such a point those players could just quit the game. If you have just one or two characters, that may apply. But for some players would may have 4 or more characters and multiple accounts, that adds up very quickly.

If I were required to pay over $200 of additional fees to play this game in a manner which I would find enjoyable, I would just quit the game for good. Of course I could remain on my current server, unable to play with the people I want or on a dead server, then why should I continue to play the game in this manner, I would quit in this scenario also.

Interesting that you replied to two of the points @Raelbo brought up by literally reiterating what you said in your original post; yet, you completely ignored the third thing written which actually specifically acknowledges exactly what you mentioned:

While I would agree with this, I suspect that doing so would create a bunch of other problems. Clearly Blizzard have not found an elegant solution to their predicament, but that doesn't mean they haven't put thought into finding a solution, it could simply mean that there is no good solution to be had.

Believe it or not, this is the most likely answer. There is no "easy" solution. We can sit here on this forum and pretend like we know the game better than Blizzard but we're missing a lot of analytical data which would heavily influence their decision on this matter. And I'm almost positive Blizzard has this data but doesn't share it with the public because there's no need for us to know it. (ie, key demographics like: How many people transfer in a given time frame or how many people cancel their subscription because they felt the paywall for server transferring was too high.) All we can do is offer our best guesses. For all of the reasons I've mentioned in the last few pages, I personally do not see the price of server transfers being changed anytime soon.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

If you want to live in a fantasy world where you think the amount of money Blizzard makes from server transfers is anywhere close to what they make from recurring subscriptions, go right ahead.

I never said it was an exact equal. You pulled that from my statement to pointless deflect from your equally blind guess. The difference here is I am not in fantasy. Several times I say I am guessing here. You seem he'll bent on being right. Whatever. You still just guess.

[Relapses]

I never said it was an exact equal. You pulled that from my statement to pointless deflect from your equally blind guess. The difference here is I am not in fantasy. Several times I say I am guessing here. You seem he'll bent on being right. Whatever. You still just guess.

At least I provided evidence to support my opinion on this subject. Here's your original quote: "{Server transfer fee} is that high because people pay it. I wouldn't doubt if it's one of the reasons why WoW is still such a cash cow without the sub numbers of the past." I refuted this by mentioning that server transfers are likely a very small portion of WoW's revenue when compared to recurring subscription fees. Now, if you want to simply dismiss my argumentation simply because it's based on information neither of us will ever know (since Blizzard will never release this data to its players), that's fine. (IMO) It's a fairly flimsy cop-out but obviously I cannot change your perspective so I won't bother wasting any more of your time.

[MoanaLisa]

If people are willing to pay for it then it's not too much. The price also constrains server jumping as others have mentioned. It's not supposed to be cheap. There are other considerations at work here than how difficult or the amount of work required at Blizzard to make it happen. Makes no sense that people don't understand that.

[Bapestar]

How much you been paying for your tennis shoes Bapestar?

Yea I went there.

Usually around 100$ a pair. But I don't feel like it's a ripoff. Also I prefer jordans, only bought one pair of bapes lol.

[Count Zero]

It's only pocket change if you're doing it with one character. Last time I faction/server changed ($55.00) I did it with 9 of my characters and 8 of my wives characters. That on the other hand was a little expensive.

It would be nice if there was a bulk rate.

... so you spent nearly a thousand dollars to switch over those characters ? I would at most transfer my main and maybe a primary alt, and re-roll the rest.

[yetgdhfgh]

Just wait till you can do that shit for gold!

- - - Updated - - -

... so you spent nearly a thousand dollars to switch over those characters ? I would at most transfer my main and maybe a primary alt, and re-roll the rest.

This is why Chris Metzen has a tennis machine that shoots diamonds into a lake 24/7 cause thats how rich he is LOL

[Evangeliste]

If its worth the investment its not stupid, otherwise it is.

At the end you still pay subscription so they aren't forcing you to pay for the difference, heck it's much easier now with a lot of cross account features unlike ages ago so in fairness they've hurt themselves with that one but let's face it they know that people can't be asked to spend a day making a new one alt even when now you can virtually do it all with new proffs and everything from scratch unlike before going to every zone just to find a fucking Sungrass to level Herbalism just to feed your main, so whose the fool?
"Time is money, friend".

[Relapses]

... so you spent nearly a thousand dollars to switch over those characters ? I would at most transfer my main and maybe a primary alt, and re-roll the rest.

Different strokes for different folks.

[Varaben]

Honestly should be about 10 dollars or less. Why is a virtual change so important and why is it 85% of the price of a current expansion pack? Makes no sense.

Think of it this way. You go to the zoo and it's about $10 bucks to go in. But what the hell, the food is like $10 for a hot dog? Shirt for $30, WTF Zoo?

What they are doing is shifting the cost of running the Zoo to the optional purchases, to subsidize the entry costs. A zoo can't stay open on $10 admission fees. So instead of doubling that and reducing attendance, they shift the costs to optional items that people buy. It's win/win as more people get to go to the Zoo (they can bring their own food or whatever) and the other folks who don't mind paying the extra money get conveniences like food there, behind the scenes tours or whatever.

See what I mean? The subscription hasn't moved an inch in the US in 12 years. If it kept up with inflation. $15 in 2005 is worth about $18.50 today. So instead of charging us $18.5/month, they make money through other, optional purchases like pets, mounts, and server changes. It costs more than ever to run a game like WoW. They have way less subscribers than they've had in the past (speculation of course), so they are getting way less revenue from subs. So of course they release new pets and mounts and such.

The reality is that server changes are becoming less and less meaningful as more activities are cross-server. Anyone can play with their friends on almost ANY group content through BNET. If Blizz really wanted a cash grab, they wouldn't have combined servers or done cross-realm raids and such.

You're looking at the trees and forgetting the forest.