Free faction transfer?

[tss]

Free realms transfers have been used for years in attempts to balance populations between over- and under-populated realms, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. Many times these free migrations have resulted in huge swings in population balance in the servers involved, and regardless of that fact, most servers are pretty polarized to differing degrees faction-wise.

The question I'm obviously leading to is, why not offer limited free one-way faction changes in a similar model ? I can't imagine it having more or even as many caveats as a one-way realm transfer, even (or especially) for guild transfers. I'd even say leave it open for each server until a balance (within thresholds) is reached.

Am I missing an obvious reason this would be an awful idea? Because I can't fathom one. Obviously this has more impact on PVP realms, both positive and potentially negative that may have to be worked around. Hell, best case I think maybe it could help revitalize world PVP over a length of time.

I'd like to post this on the bnet forums, but I haven't been able to pay for a sub for several months.

[wildemu]

So you are suggesting for example, that people on illidan horde are given an option to go illidan alliance?

If so, then nobody will do that so why offer the option.

[Ethernity4ever]

+1 for the idea, but don't leave it open, people need a time limit for something or they just thing toomuch about it.

This would pretty much help out in balancing out the servers, but what would help more acctualy is to lower the cost of the services so more people can afford it

[tss]

So you are suggesting for example, that people on illidan horde are given an option to go illidan alliance?

If so, then nobody will do that so why offer the option.

Yeah, it is. I don't think that absolutely no one would, but you have a point. Maybe most PVPers would stick to the dominant side.

What about faction and realm swaps with servers with opposing balance? Sure, PVE and PVP players tend to their respective types of servers to a degree, but there are plenty of PVEers on PVP servers and PVPers on PVE servers/connected realms. Maybe if individual realm balancing didn't work then one-way cross-faction server transfers could be offered, ie Alliance from Alliance-heavy server <--> Horde from Horde-heavy server, and even further mixing server types, considering that PVP realms tend Horde and PVE realms tend Alliance.