Is milking money from server transfers bad business by blizzard?

[Kisho]

You're not really meant to be server transferring. So the high price is a deterrent, so that only those who REALLY want it can use the service.

By doing this, server populations are kept stable, which is healthy for the game. The issue of low pop/high pop servers is a separate one, and is being constantly looked at by Blizzard (see: free transfer periods between specific servers).

[Deleted]

I think the server transfers price might be justified, however the sex change price? Like 10quid just for something thats pretty simple and in the game anyway

[Deleted]

I remeber the last time I did a realm transfer and faction change and laugh at the offer I got.

Realm transfer 20euro
Faction Change 25euro

offer

Buy both at the same time, pay 45euro, lol

[Alixie]

Server reputation means nothing anymore. Ive seen single players to whole guilds do ninja runs, brag about it, and everyone goes about their business as usual. The only time Ive seen people transfer because they ninja'd something was if they took something super rare like Mirimon's head. Nobody cares if eventually replaceable gear gets ninja'd.

Free or a more reasonable priced transfer will not hurt the economy/server/whatever. FRACTION TRANSFERS actually harmed server balance, but hardly anyone complains about that, and the price did not deter anything, there were massive shifts in fraction balance.

[Tzalix]

No, it's not bad business. If fact, there's several good reasons why it should cost you that much.

1. Prevents unbalanced servers from getting even worse. If the transfers were free, as soon as a PvP server becomes dominated by one faction, the other faction would transfer right away, simply making the problem worse.
2. Transferring one particular character with a set of a particular items among millions of characters and millions of items is precision work and most likely takes more time than you'd think.
3. Prevents transfer abusing, I.E. moving to a dead server to get your hands on a rare item or something similar, and then moving back.

[Elvisp]

So i have done 25 move´s and 18 faction Change and a couple of race change´s to, but i couldent se them, with my 4 or 5 main toons, so yes its a shit load of money.
If you wanna move 1 main tooon, you often wanna take your toons with you, becouse of profs and so on.

So yes make a package deal, more toons less of the cost..

[kenshinag]

Seriously? Seriously? So if your cable bill doubled that's not greedy behavior on behalf of the cable company?

Your WoW bill did not double. It's still $15 a month.

This is like saying that the Cable company is greedy for charging an extra $10 a month for HBO and Showtime. You don't need any of those channels to watch "cable", it's OPTIONAL. Now if you want to use your option to watch HBO and Showtime, then you gotta pay the extra $10. Hope that makes sense.

[Saphyron]

price is a bit too high. i world prefer if they put in a special offer.

cause take me example if i were to switch server and faction it would cost me 11*45.00 €

which is alot of money.

[Eliot123]

As long as people are willing to pay, I guess it is good for them. I do wish they had some bulk-transfer-discounts though.

[Obamatheone]

How is a Publicly Traded company doing something that makes money for themselves and shareholders considered greedy? Do you expect them to say "na, if it makes money, we shouldn't do it." There are far worst companies when it comes to greedy (outsourcing to third world countries to cut costs).

Its a corp, therefore greed doesn't exist? LOL seriously?

[Djuntas]

Greedy as hell, but what can you do. Its just another way of income for Blizzard.

The people who voted that it wasen't greedy obviously havent been inn a situation like my own, where I had to migrate off my completely dead vanilla server, fuss leaving behind alot of my "wow-history", sure I might not play thoes alts, but I still wanted them with me.

...The worst part is still that they allow dead servers trough.

[stumpy]

According to the economic trends followed by pretty much everything else out there, the size of all fees, including your subscription fee, should be going up.

Yet it isn't. I'll take it.

[Seifa]

The price is quite high. I was thinking to return playing WoW with my former guildmates, that joined another guild on another server, but i made some calculations.
35e for cd key, 13e for sub and 20e for transfer my main (i don't need alts). If it wasn't for the transfer, i would have resubbed, but those 20e more on top of the key and sub is way overkill for me now.

[TJ]

Well it's a Blizzard game where Blizzard holds the monopoly status. It's a service with
high demand. High demand + monopoly status = High prices.

It's basically good business. Taking as much money for as low costs as possible.

This, people will pay the price and Blizzard are a business interested in making money, they'd be stupid not to. You might say "GREEDY GREEDY" but if you were in the same position you would do it.

[Deleted]

This, people will pay the price and Blizzard are a business interested in making money, they'd be stupid not to. You might say "GREEDY GREEDY" but if you were in the same position you would do it.

Some people will pay, some won't. And while they've probably done the sums, the ones that won't pay and quit are a recurring loss. IMO, when your play experience is diminished because of the state of your server, Blizz should be encouraging you to keep playing and slapping a huge (when it's 10+ characters to transfer) is quite the opposite. It's their loss not yours when you move on.

[Deleted]

The price is quite high. I was thinking to return playing WoW with my former guildmates, that joined another guild on another server, but i made some calculations.
35e for cd key, 13e for sub and 20e for transfer my main (i don't need alts). If it wasn't for the transfer, i would have resubbed, but those 20e more on top of the key and sub is way overkill for me now.

you should level another toon on their server, you will have all your titles and mounts - all you will miss is the hierlooms and gold, im sure your friends could help you out though

[Hodenkrieg]

stopped reading at "before WOW dies."

Yea, the game has issues I don't like too, but at least understand the MMO industry before you start making more claims at the death of WoW.

PS. not happening any time soon

[TJ]

Some people will pay, some won't. And while they've probably done the sums, the ones that won't pay and quit are a recurring loss. IMO, when your play experience is diminished because of the state of your server, Blizz should be encouraging you to keep playing and slapping a huge (when it's 10+ characters to transfer) is quite the opposite. It's their loss not yours when you move on.

Should be yeah, but they're a business and not stupid (that's not to say your idea is stupid it's to say they know what they're doing). As you said I'm sure they've done the sums/calculations and would lose a lot of money from the people not transferring, I doubt the people who quit and don't pay are that big of a deal since there is hundreds of thousands of people who pay for stuff like that weekly. Just my opinion.

[Hodenkrieg]

The price is quite high. I was thinking to return playing WoW with my former guildmates, that joined another guild on another server, but i made some calculations.
35e for cd key, 13e for sub and 20e for transfer my main (i don't need alts). If it wasn't for the transfer, i would have resubbed, but those 20e more on top of the key and sub is way overkill for me now.

Have one send you a scroll of resurrection. you will be able to xfer 1 character to their realm/race for free.

[Seifa]

Have one send you a scroll of resurrection. you will be able to xfer 1 character to their realm/race for free.

My account is not eligible, unfortunately. I quit in April 2012, so scroll isn't avaiable for me :S