Free Transfers, once a month; why isn't it a thing yet?

[Polarthief]

Yes, but making every player happy will cause profits to drop like a rock to the bottom. Gotta balance player happiness with profit income.

Also, a point nobody is mentioning: nearly every has THAT kind of player. The player whose sole purpose of being in game is to troll their own faction, ninja item drops from dungeons and pugs, and is an all-around ass to everyone. Once he's blacklisted by nearly every guild and player in a given server, free server transfer would allow him to hop to a different server, get a new race and/or faction and/or name, and presto! New beginning to troll and disrupt everyone's enjoyment of the game.

Hello Ielenia, you're late to the party.

[Ferocity]

So... Don't bother buying the crafted BoEs when you could probably just raid to get an even better piece, like tier? (And if you don't raid, AGAIN, WHY DO YOU NEED CRAFTED BoE 522s?!)

We have it easy on my server currently. 54k for crafted 522? Haha, we don't have a single 522 craft on AH at all. We also don't have any haunting spirits on AH. People stopped bothering. And I keep denying the fact that my realm is near death

[klaps_05]

i dont see what the issue is now - you want to move, you pay for it. the only problem would be someone with lots of alts and will have to pay for each. if anything is to be changed with this, i would only suggest maybe offer a "bundle" deal - instead of paying 25 for each of say 5, you pay $100 and move 5 instead of just 4.

[Ferocity]

i dont see what the issue is now - you want to move, you pay for it. the only problem would be someone with lots of alts and will have to pay for each. if anything is to be changed with this, i would only suggest maybe offer a "bundle" deal - instead of paying 25 for each of say 5, you pay $100 and move 5 instead of just 4.

Move 5 alts for the price of 3 expansions! Lol no thanks.

[metatation]

i dont see what the issue is now - you want to move, you pay for it. the only problem would be someone with lots of alts and will have to pay for each. if anything is to be changed with this, i would only suggest maybe offer a "bundle" deal - instead of paying 25 for each of say 5, you pay $100 and move 5 instead of just 4.

Yes, yes you bought our game and you pay our monthly fee, but still not having much enjoyment with our product? Your server died with which you have absolutely no control over? Well I tell you what pay us more money to tx your guy off a dead realm and hey everything is fixed. Its almost as bad as a used car salesman.

[Sandrox]

They could easily make current raids cross realm able, and have several servers link the AH to help solve some of these problems without server transfers. This doesnt make them money, which is why they dont do it.

[Deleted]

i dont see what the issue is now - you want to move, you pay for it. the only problem would be someone with lots of alts and will have to pay for each. if anything is to be changed with this, i would only suggest maybe offer a "bundle" deal - instead of paying 25 for each of say 5, you pay $100 and move 5 instead of just 4.

No I think it's time for this effin company to man up and pay some respect to its costumers.
Maybe they can stick their profit up their ass for once?Why not.I don't think they're going to die for this one measly thing that allows players that actually pay a sub each month to play the game like it's supposed to be played.

You can go all ''it's a company profit blabla'' on me but players aren't asking them to start giving out free everythings,just one,ONE service that might even bring players back and stop players from leaving on dead servers.They'll still make millions at the end of the month no worries.

[Deleted]

I like how unhappy people should stay for people who are stubborn over their charnames / community they have (or had in the past). Later ones are the reason nothing changes atm and ppl unsub. If they are happy with their names and guild and friends then great. BUT either they accept that their guilds and friends are leaving as soon as they can 4 free and telling "lol me not care sry" or they really should hold themself back for only want to hold others back because it affects their game experience (AH, pugs etc.) since there is nothing social in it...

[Vankrys]

Everyone knows what Blizzard has said. This isn't a discussion about what is, this is a discussion about what should be. No one is debating what the current situation is.

"Shut up or leave" isn't really a good business plan for a company.

that's PR, not business plan
here is a business plan

X is the money made with transfer and/or faction change (not even including race and name change)
Y is the money they could potentially make (people coming back) if transfer are free
as long as X>Y, free transfer is not going to happen

The logic behind is that they know they have a solid product, and built up tons of consumer good will, they know player will put up with this and either pay or reroll.
fact is, they certainly have metrics, they have the reasons why people quit. They knew about this 1.3 millions leaving for 2 month now (ending march 31st)

Like i said, if free transfer hasn't happen by now to re up the subs, it's not going to happens anytime soon.

Someone in these forums once said
"investors care more about actual income than number of subs"

[kushlol]

If we're going to wishlist solutions to the transfer/dead server issue, I'd rather see the idea of characters being tied to a particular server go out the window. I think it would be desirable to have something where guilds are the things linking a player to a specific server rather than their character. You should get a 50 character list, and you should be able to log into any server in your region you want provided you're not currently a member of a guild. If your guild dies or you want to move to a new server, it's simply a process of leaving your guild, logging into a different server, and joining a guild there.

I think Blizzard needs to do something to solve the issue of server transfers soon, at least in the form of transfer multi-character package deals, but I really think it would be a good step to abandon the rigidity of servers in the first place. I realise this would have a lot of social and economic impact, but I think once the dust settled, it would be more beneficial to players and to Blizzard financially because although they'd lose the money made from transfers, they'd probably stablise or even regain subscriptions from the players stuck on dead realms, the players established on servers away from friends, etc etc. It's a lot more enticing for players to stick around if their ability to play with a friend doesn't require rerolling or transfer fees. And they could still make money from faction changes and re-customisation.

It's a controversial idea so I don't expect it to ever happen, but it's a pleasant thought.

Amazing idea! imo

[Onomatopoeia]

Money issue aside, I believe this will cause more issues then it fixes.

First off it'll make dead realms worse off for those that stay for some reason. Not everyone reads news and such outside the game. It'll make the dead realm issue far worse.

There is also realms that aren't quite dead, but getting close. I would say my realm fits that mold. Free xfers are likey to kill a few of though and turn them into dead realms, once again making the dead realm issue worse.

It will wreck the games economy. People will take the buy low sell high on AH to a new level. Buy low on one realm, xfer a mule, xfer him back in a month. This will mainly affect dead realms.

A better idea would be to allow a paid xfer to take all your characters from one realm to another realm. Maybe limit it once a quarter or something, and/or a slight higher fee. It can only be from one ream to another, and you can choose to leave some behind (to keep with friends who want to stay). This would be better and should stop realm issues free xfers will cause.

Also I didn'tt read past the first page, so sorry if this has been brought up and talked about already.

[Deleted]

that's PR, not business plan
here is a business plan

X is the money made with transfer and/or faction change (not even including race and name change)
Y is the money they could potentially make (people coming back) if transfer are free
as long as X>Y, free transfer is not going to happen

The logic behind is that they know they have a solid product, and built up tons of consumer good will, they know player will put up with this and either pay or reroll.
fact is, they certainly have metrics, they have the reasons why people quit. They knew about this 1.3 millions leaving for 2 month now (ending march 31st)

Like i said, if free transfer hasn't happen by now to re up the subs, it's not going to happens anytime soon.

Someone in these forums once said
"investors care more about actual income than number of subs"

Why can't investors just be patient and sit on a chair and think for once?
Instead of leeching the most profit possible out of a game like some old school vampire what about about having some vision?
Investing in the quality of the game and the game experience and who knows the investors might end up with shares of the greatest mmo ever?
How hard is it to see that if your product is top quality it will end up making the goddamn profit?

[Vankrys]

Why can't investors just be patient and sit on a chair and think for once?
Instead of leeching the most profit possible out of a game like some old school vampire what about about having some vision?
Investing in the quality of the game and the game experience and who knows the investors might end up with shares of the greatest mmo ever?
How hard is it to see that if your product is top quality it will end up making the goddamn profit?

well, i guess blizzard is first and foremost a business. Having shares of the greatest MMOs on earth is nice, but buying a new ferrari for their sons on christmas is nice too. It's entirely possible that the business people and investors at blizzard aren't even gamers at heart.

money dictating games design is bad. It's partially the problem we face with EA (but let's not go there, don't want to derail the thread)

[Boricha]

Honestly I just want them to offer a package deal so I can server transfer all my characters at once for a discounted price. $275 is a bit insane.

[Astrizia]

What I'm proposing (or WOULD propose if I could post on official...) is something that is logical and might even bring back some of the subs.

- Once a month per account (or character if Blizzard was feeling super generous), a character may be moved to a new server.
IN ADDITION to the above, players also receive the following privilege
--- [Edit] Players may only (freely) move to servers not labeled as "Full" player population. You may move to High, or anything below it. To move to a server with "Full" population, you must pay for it.

- Once a month per account (or again, character), a character may race or faction change. (Name/Appearance change is fully included, just like buying a Race/Faction change)

I think this is a good idea, however once a month feels very often.
I would rather see like a 90 day "cooldown" on free transfers, just to stop to much server hopping (and everything that comes with it)

[Tomana]

On a side and unrelated note, remove CRZ completely and make LFR and LFD based off of, if not realm only, a small group of say 2-3 realms. At least that way, you'll be playing with more of the same people every time instead of just completely random people that really don't care about you in any way, shape, or form.

So that the already long 5-man queues become even longer? Bad idea.

On Topic: Free transfers will have as a direct effect player going to a dozen (speaking EU English here) "High Pop" realms, leading to possible queues and general overpopulation problems. Mergers, on the other hand, will result in extremely damaging publicity to investors and players. Which is why I think that more cross-realm stuff (starting with x-realm AH) would be a good start.

[Deleted]

I think this is a good idea, however once a month feels very often.
I would rather see like a 90 day "cooldown" on free transfers, just to stop to much server hopping (and everything that comes with it)

Once a player from a dead server transfers to a healthy server I'm pretty sure he's not gonnna need another transfer for a couple of months,servers don't die over a few months.So a 4 to ? months cooldown or something should be enough.

[Tomana]

Once a player from a dead server transfers to a healthy server I'm pretty sure he's not gonnna need another transfer for a couple of months,servers don't die over a few months.So a 4 to ? months cooldown or something should be enough.

But he may need to move alts around.

[Polarthief]

i dont see what the issue is now - you want to move, you pay for it. the only problem would be someone with lots of alts and will have to pay for each. if anything is to be changed with this, i would only suggest maybe offer a "bundle" deal - instead of paying 25 for each of say 5, you pay $100 and move 5 instead of just 4.

Costs me $275 to transfer atm. Not a fan of starting over, even for alts.

Also lol. Save ONE transfer for buying 5? no thanks. That's a horrible ratio.

Once a player from a dead server transfers to a healthy server I'm pretty sure he's not gonnna need another transfer for a couple of months,servers don't die over a few months.So a 4 to ? months cooldown or something should be enough.

If you want, let me propose a new thing

- Once every FOUR-SIX months, free realm transfer
- Once every month, free Race or Faction transfer

[Deleted]

I'm not sure that blizzard will find it viable to offer free transfers.

However I do wish that they offered a discount when moving multiple characters. If it's $25 to move 1 toon, it should be $50 to move any number of toons from 1 server to another at the same time. They need some kind of bundle for alts.