Paid region change

[Stormspark]

I know you can transfer between regions for FF14, it just locks your account so if you buy a game card for a US account, you need to use a US game card, but your character can be anywhere, so I doubt laws are the main reason for this.

Because Squeenix set up the TOS for FFXIV to permit this, from when the game first launched. Blizzard didn't, and changing it after the fact would be a legal nightmare. You could say lack of foresight, but MMO's were a VERY niche thing when WOW launched so the need for it simply wasn't anticipated.

I'm not saying this because I want to defend Blizzard - in fact they are one of the companies I have on complete boycott for the forseeable future. If doing paid region changes were really that easy for them to do they would've done it already, because it would be free money for them.

[Gref]

after playing for like 13 years the same main warrior on EU, creating a new once in OCE servers was too much pain emotionally. You somehow get connected you know. All the effort is wasted. GM told me I have to buy a new acc and start over. God damn...

[MrLachyG]

I reckon they could easily add such a service. I would also like to see a "mass character server transfer" option; if you are moving multiple characters from a server to the next

[Veox89]

I live in Scotland, I started the game in wrath on EU and moved to NA servers in MoP to play with some friends online.

I dont care about my gold or even my characters (in fact I logged in during that free
weekend we had a few months ago and gave it away). I just want my mounts and achievements, especially the stuff that's now unobtainable.

I could never go back to EU because I've amassed so much since then, including some cutting edge FoS.

If they were able to "link" the two and give me just my achievements and mounts I'd be over the moon

[LanToaster]

Why blizz don't allow the region change?
I am playing on US server for 14 years, and now I am living in Europe. Found a lot of friends who play wow, But i cant play with them.

It's just a copy and paste of chars... Can't be that hard!

If you have the same issue than me, just repost and let's make blizzard see this!

Did you actually Contact Customer Support for that? I can see why its not Service (Because the demand for that is probably almost zero), but maybe they might do it for you.

[kranur]

Why blizz don't allow the region change?
I am playing on US server for 14 years, and now I am living in Europe. Found a lot of friends who play wow, But i cant play with them.

It's just a copy and paste of chars... Can't be that hard!

If you have the same issue than me, just repost and let's make blizzard see this!

Technically it shouldn't be more complicated than a regular realm or account transfer. Highly doubt that they have different DB structures just so they have to do the same work twice.

The actual problem seems to be a legal one. And when it comes to getting legal things done, it's an absolute nightmare. So simply they just don't want to go through the headache to allow a few hundred transfers. I wish they would so I can make use my 2 realm first titles. Alas .. since they haven't done it until now, I doubt this will ever happen for existing titles.

- - - Updated - - -

How can the laws have any impact? it's a freaking video game char that is exactly the same as in the US?

The terms signed, and their responsibilities are most likely not.

[kranur]

how would that be any different? it's 100% the same game.

In move freely between US and EU in OW.

If I knew what exactly was stopping them from doing it, I'd be suggesting a solution for it.

[Hajiro]

All I want is my achievements! I don't mind to play a different char from zero. But I want those things that I conquer!
All they have to do is to set all achievements to Battle net account instead of Region account.
There is a few achievements that are like this, the blizzcon one for example.

[Lucetia]

All I want is my achievements! I don't mind to play a different char from zero. But I want those things that I conquer!
All they have to do is to set all achievements to Battle net account instead of Region account.
There is a few achievements that are like this, the blizzcon one for example.

I explained why above. The problem is you and most in this thread don't want to accept it and think something will change.

[ymn]

Regarding the laws, there are not many laws prohibiting the use of your own product under your own name. The problem that Blizzard face is the actual database migration. This can be done literally by anyone, it's more-or-less a "copy/paste" thing inside of a table in the database. The real issue is where the databases are located and what information is being transferred where, that is the only legal problem Blizzard can face (since your "Johnny Lastname" is being shooed from the US to wherever else).

But even then, there are not that many legal issues Blizzard can face, as YOU must accept "yes, I want my account transferred to this region - yes, the account belongs to my name" etc.

This most likely can't be done with their Customer Support, this is more of a Tier 2 or Tier 3 thing (Tier 1 is Customer Support), since you need "Write" database access.


Here is my advice: be a pest for Customer Support, I hate to say this (and I've worked in Customer Support), but eventually you will run into a Customer Support Rep that will genuinely want to help you.

My story: I started playing WoW on a friend's account, and I've reached max level and all that, then the friend decided he wants to play again. So, in order to transfer a character from one account to another, I'd have to have the same last name so I made an account with my real first name and my friend's last name to complete the transfer.
Long story short, my account was hacked and Blizzard wanted proof to see if this is truly me. After almost 200 Euros up in Phone Bill costs (calling Belgium almost every day and being on hold for an hour at times is costly), I knew if I'd get help from a CS Representative or not, there was:
- a really non-energetic dude, who didn't want to help whatsoever
- a guy who would ALWAYS put me on hold since I'm trying to get an account back
- a lady saying she can't help
- another guy saying she can't help

AND FINALLY
FINALLY

A new voice picks up the phone, I tell them my story, he tells me to hold on and tells me that I can get my account back, he'll forward me to a guy who will set up my new secret question etc (turns out, their Team Lead or Supervisor picked up that phone call, since he sent me an email afterwards). And the non-energetic guy was doing the secret question thing, but I was way too hyped.

Moral of the story: ask nicely and accept refusal from them, eventually, one of them will make it happen for you (since they can).

[liberaet]

Why blizz don't allow the region change?
I am playing on US server for 14 years, and now I am living in Europe. Found a lot of friends who play wow, But i cant play with them.

It's just a copy and paste of chars... Can't be that hard!

If you have the same issue than me, just repost and let's make blizzard see this!

I have the same issue as you do, but the other way round - I have moved to Canada after 14 years of playing in Europe.

I am still playing on my EU account though, thankfully the latency is not that high, although it's already night server time by the time I am able to log in on the weekdays.

[TwoMana]

Why blizz don't allow the region change?
I am playing on US server for 14 years, and now I am living in Europe. Found a lot of friends who play wow, But i cant play with them.

It's just a copy and paste of chars... Can't be that hard!

If you have the same issue than me, just repost and let's make blizzard see this!

Legal and organizational issues aside, how often have you "copy&pasted" into 15 year old production DB's containing petabytes of data?

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Imagine we live in a world where nations exchange weapons but not characters in a video game. Odds are it probably would have to be the whole account I would imagine. Or else you probably end up ripping one toon from an account and onto a new one which probably makes things messy and could be used to abuse character sales and shit like that. All that with any technical difficulties that may apply.

It should have a LONG cooldown. 6 months to a year if they did decide to make something like this. Would have been amazing when I was in the military and stationed in Germany for a few years. The good thing is WoW isn't exactly a high APM pixel perfect game.

[therealstegblob]

That's not what I said at all. I said the infrastructure between the two are different and don't share anything in common. Just because the external (the product we use) doesn't mean anything can't be different under the internal hood. Your comparing the usable client rather than what is behind the scenes that they run. Just because everything looks similar on the outside doesn't mean it is. They've explained this in the past on why they can't do it.

Dude what are you even talking about.

There's nothing stopping them from just making a dupe of a character on another server. They won't do it because they don't want people abusing it for currency transferring.

[Lucetia]

Dude what are you even talking about.

There's nothing stopping them from just making a dupe of a character on another server. They won't do it because they don't want people abusing it for currency transferring.

What am I saying? Stop and read what I wrote. Their internal infrastructure does not allow characters or accounts to transfer. It's not like how we can do realm to realm at all. Stop assuming you how you want it to work and believe that is how it works. It's not. It's been discussed by Blizzard before.

[Ophenia]

What am I saying? Stop and read what I wrote. Their internal infrastructure does not allow characters or accounts to transfer. It's not like how we can do realm to realm at all. Stop assuming you how you want it to work and believe that is how it works. It's not. It's been discussed by Blizzard before.

I guess it's impossible to transfer a huge list of 0s and 1s (most of what defines your character is like that) from somewhere to somewhere else

Especially for a multi-billion dollar company. If they said they "can't", they lied. They can, but they either don't want to bother with that, or that's financially not interesting for them.

[therealstegblob]

What am I saying? Stop and read what I wrote. Their internal infrastructure does not allow characters or accounts to transfer. It's not like how we can do realm to realm at all. Stop assuming you how you want it to work and believe that is how it works. It's not. It's been discussed by Blizzard before.

You've spoken absolute fucking unfounded nonsense and then cry that people simply "read what you wrote". Just stop.

[Hyoss]

I reckon they could easily add such a service. I would also like to see a "mass character server transfer" option; if you are moving multiple characters from a server to the next

You are just making assumptions on the "easy" part.
a) WoW accounts in NA and EU are separate, so you are transferring accounts and need an account in the new region
b) new account cannot come for free as you can play both at once (effectively you would have to pay for expansions in the new region)
c) Characters, items etc have numeric IDs in the database. You cannot just copy and paste, you need to make sure that those are not duplicated when added to the new region or errors will happen. There might be hundred of IDs of that kind on a character. Ensuring that this does not happen is far from impossible, but might be costly if you want to ensure a high degree of quality of the transfer and characters not bugging out.

All of that is development effort that makes it not "easy", you have to pay software engineers to implement that and then recoup the cost by enough people using the service.

[Lucetia]

You've spoken absolute fucking unfounded nonsense and then cry that people simply "read what you wrote". Just stop.

Except I haven't. You are the one taking what someone has written and not able to comprehend it. What exactly is unfounded? It's been stated before by Blizzard. There isn't going to be more to the story. Stop the wishful thinking as it isn't going to happen anytime soon. If you are going to go on about how it's unfounded start by explaining why rather than rambling on with nothing that further develops anything.

You are just making assumptions on the "easy" part.
a) WoW accounts in NA and EU are separate, so you are transferring accounts and need an account in the new region
b) new account cannot come for free as you can play both at once (effectively you would have to pay for expansions in the new region)
c) Characters, items etc have numeric IDs in the database. You cannot just copy and paste, you need to make sure that those are not duplicated when added to the new region or errors will happen. There might be hundred of IDs of that kind on a character. Ensuring that this does not happen is far from impossible, but might be costly if you want to ensure a high degree of quality of the transfer and characters not bugging out.

All of that is development effort that makes it not "easy", you have to pay software engineers to implement that and then recoup the cost by enough people using the service.

Here is a good breakdown on the beginning parts on why it hasn't been implemented.

[therealstegblob]

Except I haven't. You are the one taking what someone has written and not able to comprehend it. What exactly is unfounded? It's been stated before by Blizzard. There isn't going to be more to the story. Stop the wishful thinking as it isn't going to happen anytime soon. If you are going to go on about how it's unfounded start by explaining why rather than rambling on with nothing that further develops anything.

Dude I comprehend your posts just fine, fuck off. How long are you going to keep retreading the same non-argument?

At this point it's pretty clear you're just arguing to argue and you have no actual argument other than "BLIZZ SAID IT BEFORE", which I don't even think is necessarily true. I wish I could ignore moderators on this forum, good grief.