You know what's hurting this game? The $25 transfer fee

[Dakara]

I can't believe people actually argue in favor of it.

There are many people in this game who are in guilds or situations where they fall apart. And now they are stuck to choose pay $25 and take a chance with a new guild, or quit. And you guys feel like they should quit. God I'm lucky my guild is still running strong even with a few people leaving during heroic progression. Pathetic.

Yep, lots of us Oceanic players are in that situation. With guild raid times varying from GMT+8 to GMT +12(13) when one guild dies it's raiders are often forced to chose between Paying for a Transfer, Quitting or joining a guild not in your timezone. In the case of my Cata guild, most just quit.

There's a couple of long lasting stable Oceanic guilds (in my timezone or close enough) but would require a faction transfer also, so at $55 per character it's just not worth it.

[Vladimeir]

Oh please. I'm 14/16H my choices for a guild are limited right now and the ones that I would join similar progression would be on different servers. Sure if you're a casual player going to another guild on your server is fine, but for anyone who raids you know this is a very rare circumstance when you can join another guild on your server with similar progression.

---------- Post added 2013-01-18 at 06:52 PM ----------



It's called a "cool down" where you can only do it so many times a week/month.

What's that have to do with anything? Yes, there is a one month cooldown. It use to be 3 months. End of expansion/tier, I find a guild that has everything on farm. Next tier come in, they can't get through normal, I find a new guild thats better off until next tier. Cooldown is irrelevant and if you are using that as you're argument, you are saying that people are just stuck where they are in their current guild waiting for the cooldown to be up to leave. That doesn't really change anything, does it?

[Libertarian]

What's that have to do with anything? Yes, there is a one month cooldown. It use to be 3 months. End of expansion/tier, I find a guild that has everything on farm. Next tier come in, they can't get through normal, I find a new guild thats better off until next tier. Cooldown is irrelevant and if you are using that as you're argument, you are saying that people are just stuck where they are in their current guild waiting for the cooldown to be up to leave. That doesn't really change anything, does it?

Who cares? They are unhappy and if they don't like it they will quit the game, transfer or find a new guild on their server. So what's your point? And the cooldown argument is relevant to your post specifically because you seem to think that people decide to leave guilds every day and there would a mad circus of people swapping servers every second.

---------- Post added 2013-01-18 at 06:58 PM ----------

Transfers dont cost them anything near $25. Its a blatent rip off, they may be a business but its not like they are struggling to get by, theres no reason to charge $25 for a transfer when most games do it for free. A reduction on the price at the very least would be better.

Or one free transfer a month per character.

[Vorondil]

So you are complaining that Europe has to donate more money to charity to get a pet specifically designed for 100% proceeds to go to charity?

Yes, but not all pets are for charity. and after X time to profit goes to blizzard and no longer for the charity it was designed for.

[Djuntas]

Well unlike many other inn this thread, WHO CLEARLY HAVEN'T BEEN INN A SITUATION LIKE MYSELF, I agree with the OP. Since mid-TBC my old server (Kor'gall) has had lower, and lower alliance to hord ratio. By the end off 4.3 we had no alliance people left, and now even hord side is pretty much silent somewhat.

After 6 years on the same server I had to give up...Bye bye all the alts I lvl'd trough the years, all the memories, all the server-pride and so on. All gone...Could only find it fair to pay for my mage alt that I lvl'd up as my only 60 alt inn vanilla. Many off my alts are years old and got quit a hefty played on them. Its saddens me to know that I have all these good memeories from my alts, and now there stuck on a server that has like 1-3k auctions on the AH, and only like 40 people online prime-time alliance side any level 1-90.

Edit: Had a friend comment about not bothering with wow "cause then Id haft to pay for migrate and F that, cost already enough"

[Libertarian]

Well unlike many other inn this thread, WHO CLEARLY HAVEN'T BEEN INN A SITUATION LIKE MYSELF, I agree with the OP. Since mid-TBC my server has had lower, and lower alliance to hord ratio. By the end off 4.3 we had no alliance people left, and now even hord side is pretty much silent somewhat.

After 6 years on the same server I had to give up...Bye bye all the alts I lvl'd trough the years, all the memories, all the server-pride and so on. All gone...Could only find it fair to pay for my mage alt that I lvl'd up as my only 60 alt inn vanilla. Many off my alts are years old and got quit a hefty played on them.

Exactly. This isn't even just hardcore raiders. This is all types of people who have to experience this stupid system and blizzard is clearly losing players and money because they decide to milk people.

$25 for a database copy is ridiculous, especially when your end game revolves around playing with groups of people.

[Tziva]

I don't see anything wrong with them charging for the service. It would be nice if they offered it free, but I don't really fault them for not.

I do think they need to get on the ball and implement some kind of package deal for moving multiple characters. It gets kinda absurd for the people who want to move to a new server when you're paying a ton of money for every character you want to bring. I don't think rerolling is a valid suggestion for most people, who often have years of investment in their characters and want to keep them.

[Libertarian]

I don't see anything wrong with them charging for the service. It would be nice if they offered it free, but I don't really fault them for not.

I do think they need to get on the ball and implement some kind of package deal for moving multiple characters. It gets kinda absurd for the people who want to move to a new server when you're paying a ton of money for every character you want to bring. I don't think rerolling is a valid suggestion for most people, who often have years of investment in their characters and want to keep them.

Then I hope they start charging for the PTR character copies also. It must be really hard on their servers to copy all those characters for free. /sarcasm

[Grym]

Here's my situation: If my guild fell apart and I was not able to join another guild on my server, I would be quitting because I am not transferring my alts. Blizzard would lose out my $15 a month for many months for what.... one time of $25?

Yes.

Because the amount of people that would pay it, and people that would just stick with it, out weight the people that would just quit. The amount of money they would have lost would be quite large, so it will have to be a rather large number of quitters to make this move worth while, and obviously, Blizzard do not see it as worth while.

Most people think "if Blizzard do not do this they will lose my $15 a month", but without knowing they might lose more money trying to keep you, afterall your $15 a month is not the end of the world for them.

[Tenjen]

letting people do it for free or cheap will unbalance servers enormously concerning their populations and population balances. they provide free transfers to or from servers which need population shifts and balances to and fro.

[Libertarian]

Yes.

Because the amount of people that would pay it, and people that would just stick with it, out weight the people that would just quit. The amount of money they would have lost would be quite large, so it will have to be a rather large number of quitters to make this move worth while, and obviously, Blizzard do not see it as worth while.

Most people think "if Blizzard do not do this they will lose my $15 a month", but without knowing they might lose more money trying to keep you, afterall your $15 a month is not the end of the world for them.

How do you know? How does blizzard know? If I quit tomorrow because I didn't want to pay $25 there's no way they would know. They do know if I did pay $25, but there's no way to know if I did NOT pay $25. Does that make sense? I know for a fact, because I have seen it, people quit because they don't want to pay $15 + $25 just to play the game on a different server with a group around their skill level because their current realm no longer offers that.

[Palmatum]

It's ridiculous. When a game like Rift is able to do it for free, there's no reason there should be one in WoW. I'm sure blizzard has lost players because for some reason or another they could not afford the $25 fee to transfer on top of their $15. Blizzard should really look at how many are quitting the game and of those who could have transferred and maybe found a better environment on another server. Also, given how long the game has been out many people may be reluctant now to spend money. And if you have $25 to throw around to find another guild, great.

Rift has a tiny community compared to WoW. Hardly comparable. If it was free and 10 million players eligible to do it, it would cost Blizzard a lot.

[Libertarian]

Rift has a tiny community compared to WoW. Hardly comparable. If it was free and 10 million players eligible to do it, it would cost Blizzard a lot.

How do you know? I could make the same counter claim with no proof and say that the entire process could be regulated with a queue and use the same system as the PTR (which is free btw)

[xindykawai]

letting people do it for free or cheap will unbalance servers enormously concerning their populations and population balances. they provide free transfers to or from servers which need population shifts and balances to and fro.

i already see myself going server to server looking at the BMAH to see which one the item i want haha ( i know i know there a cd... it was hypothetical :x)

[Flalia4]

If it wasn't 25 bucks people would transfer from server to server every week buying stuff cheap then selling high on the next server.

[Libertarian]

If it wasn't 25 bucks people would transfer from server to server every week buying stuff cheap then selling high on the next server.

Oh so there's no other method out there that could prevent that from happening? Do you kids not even think anymore?

Let's see there's uh cooldown timers. Give 1 free transfer a month to all characters.

[Tziva]

Then I hope they start charging for the PTR character copies also. It must be really hard on their servers to copy all those characters for free. /sarcasm

I didn't say anything about it being hard on the servers.

It's an optional service, so I don't think it's totally crazy for a business to charge for it. Charging for extras is pretty standard practice in many industries, including the gaming. As I said, it would be nice if it was free, but I don't think we're entitled to it.

The PTR exists to help Blizzard test content before it goes live. It is in their interested to make it convenient for us to do so. Furthermore, no one would ever pay money for a temporary PTR character copy while people can and do may money for server transfers on live. To imply its an analogous situation is kinda absurd.

[Rendia]

My only Gripe is there isn't a "bulk" discount and the fact that when you server + faction transfer it's $55! To move one toon is expensive enough, to move more than 1 the cost just gets silly.

I agree. I feel that maybe they should discount it a little if you are getting both a faction and a server transfer. I have had to re-roll a couple times just because that is way too expensive. I have tons of gold on several different servers because of it, and every time I have to re-roll everything I just did became useless.

[RicardoZ]

Isn't this what CRZ was supposed to prevent? If there were no CRZ in the game, I'd say fine, the price of transfers is negotiable (and pre-CRZ I totally agreed with you, the price was/is ridiculous). But now...not so sure. You should be able to find people to hang with and stuff out in the world.

[Libertarian]

Isn't this what CRZ was supposed to prevent? If there were no CRZ in the game, I'd say fine, the price of transfers is negotiable (and pre-CRZ I totally agreed with you, the price was/is ridiculous). But now...not so sure. You should be able to find people to hang with and stuff out in the world.

Because CRZ will allow me to join a guild.... you know the reason people transfer in the first place. Do you even play this game, or do you sit in Org all day talking in trade? I bet you are one of those because your post makes no damn sense.