It's Time For Free Server Transfers and Faction Changes.

[Robert3620]

I think it's time Blizzard gave out free server transfers and faction changes as part of it's subscription. I think the service should be one free faction change or server transfer per toon per year. If you wished to do either more often then you would pay.

Here's the main reasons I think this should be done:

1. The game is almost ten years old. People should not be expected to be stuck on the same servers forever unless they pay or re roll. Things change and people should be able to move to other servers more freely.

2. Dead servers. There is many many dead servers, there is no way a player could know or expect a server they play on would go dead. It's not there fault it has done so and this would give them the chance to escape the dead server. World of Warcraft is a mmo and on many of it's servers it's feeling less and less like that and more and more like a bad single player game.

3. Broken factions. There is servers where you have a near 100 to 1 faction balance. No one should be expected to pay to leave that. It's not a lot of fun to play on a server where your faction is out numbered in a huge manner.

4. People would come back to play. There is a decent amount of people that have left the game due to the fact either the server they play on is dead or the faction they belong to is dead. If you gave those people a chance to come back and play on a server that was better suited to them, they would take it and subs would increase.

I know people will point out that this would cause servers to go further dead or for the mega servers to grow even more beyond where they are, let me address both.

For the servers going more dead, yes that's true but if you were to do this, the only people that would remain on them would be the people that wanted to play on such a server.

Blizzard could limit the options of servers people could transfer to, to prevent more problems with the mega servers and to help prevent any other server from becoming to large as well.

[Deleted]

Have you heard of the connected realms coming soon? This makes most of your points invalid.

[Schmilblick]

But people still keep paying them, so why would they give it for free ?

[Etrigan]

I agree, but they are making way too much money from server transfers & faction changes. It's like pocket money for them, but it's still a huge amount.

I bet a days worth of paid character services paid for Hearthstone :P

[Robert3620]

Have you heard of the connected realms coming soon? This makes most of your points invalid.

No it does not.

1. It takes no account of faction balance. Zero. Broken factions remain broken.

2. It's my belief that the connected realms will fail. Dead and broken servers connected with other dead realms will not work out the way that is hoped for imo.

3. People may want to play with old friends that are now on a different server and may not be connected.

[Gimlix]

No it does not.

1. It takes no account of faction balance. Zero. Broken factions remain broken.

2. It's my belief that the connected realms will fail. Dead and broken servers connected with other dead realms will not work out the way that is hoped for imo.

3. People may want to play with old friends that are now on a different server and may not be connected.

It already failed before it came out?
Who said they link dead realms with dead realms, U can expect activity again.
They will just increase the amount of servers linked if its needed.

[Zantos]

No it does not.

1. It takes no account of faction balance. Zero. Broken factions remain broken.

2. It's my belief that the connected realms will fail. Dead and broken servers connected with other dead realms will not work out the way that is hoped for imo.

3. People may want to play with old friends that are now on a different server and may not be connected.

1. They say they are taking that into account. Faction balance only matters on a PvP server anyway

2. Your belief is wrong. Putting two dead realms together increases the population both see. Thus, helping to bring much needed life to them.

3. That's the way the game goes. I have friends who are on different realms. If you want to play with them so bad, transfer.

[Gimlix]

1. They say they are taking that into account. Faction balance only matters on a PvP server anyway

2. Your belief is wrong. Putting two dead realms together increases the population both see. Thus, helping to bring much needed life to them.

3. That's the way the game goes. I have friends who are on different realms. If you want to play with them so bad, transfer.

Also RealID? just invite your friend over and u can play with them, Raids/PvP/rated bgs/arena everything.

[Deleted]

No it does not.

1. It takes no account of faction balance. Zero. Broken factions remain broken.

2. It's my belief that the connected realms will fail. Dead and broken servers connected with other dead realms will not work out the way that is hoped for imo.

3. People may want to play with old friends that are now on a different server and may not be connected.

Okay, let's sum this up

1. Why would free server transfers help to improve the server imbalances? It would make the gap bigger. You would go to a full server of your faction. Those server become more unbalanced, the server you leave become more unbalanced. And the connected realms care for that, as I quote, "we look out for the server faction balance"

2. Why shouldn't it? You have a low amount of people playing on a server. Merge 4. Now you have 4 low populated servers that grew to one normal/high populated server. You think the people would quit from this server again and it's becoming a failure? Illogical.

3. You knew you would not be able to transfer to any server when they are free. You would have the chance to leave a Full server to a low population server. Otherwise the low population servers would be even worse. Also, as mentioned above, Real-ID/Battletag. Works fine for me. No problems. Don't have to raid with those though.

Please use logic an rethink your opinion.

[smokii]

No it does not.

1. It takes no account of faction balance. Zero. Broken factions remain broken.

2. It's my belief that the connected realms will fail. Dead and broken servers connected with other dead realms will not work out the way that is hoped for imo.

3. People may want to play with old friends that are now on a different server and may not be connected.

1. blizz said they will take faction balance into account when connecting realms together
2. it's your belief, they've barely started doing it, give it a chance
3. you can play with friends on other servers already. a buddy of mine is on a different server, he transferred to do 25 man heroics when our guild broke down, yet i can invite him via realID or gamertag to a group and he gets ported onto my server, we can then do dailies, raids, dungeons, etc together. he's been doing flex raids with me the last 2 weeks, he plays on the sha'tar, i play on doomhammer. this tech is already in the game.

[Deleted]

offering a free transfer will not fix the faction imbalance nor will it fix any of the things you said.

If you have left the game for 3 months, your friend or someone you know can res your account granting you a free transfer to that server and a level 80 instant boost.


I don't understand your request.

[Notos]

Damn, the OPs argument got destroyed before I could even say anything. Just wait for connected realms, they will certainly help with things like faction balance and population.

[Deleted]

1. It takes no account of faction balance. Zero. Broken factions remain broken.

From an interview with Tom Chilton posted on this very site:

Connected Realms will be used to help out lower population realms, not balance the factions on very high population realms. However, in the process of grouping low population realms, faction balance will be taken into account as much as possible.

That's not really "zero" is it.

2. It's my belief that the connected realms will fail. Dead and broken servers connected with other dead realms will not work out the way that is hoped for imo.

Well thankfully this is your opinion which while you're allowed to have one is worth nothing, no offence but it's not, neithers mine by the way.

As for the assumption they'll link dead to dead...that's just pretty stupid, unless it's lots and lots of dead to make one super server, but we don't know how they're doing this yet and trying to proclaim something that doesn't really exist yet as a failure seems silly.

3. People may want to play with old friends that are now on a different server and may not be connected.

What's this now? Why are these friends suddenly on a different servers? Why do you believe this will change the normal "invite and see each other" thing that's going on right now?

It seems to me, from the type of questions being asked that you haven't really looked into this at all....

[Hypro]

Also RealID? just invite your friend over and u can play with them, Raids/PvP/rated bgs/arena everything.

To the people saying that i can just invite said friend to my server so we can play. Yes you are right we can play together. We cant raid together. Ah but yes the connceted realms will allow us to do this. But what if our realms arent connected? Then what? we still cant raid together can we

[Ausr]

So you want people to flock from some low servers to make them empty, possibly make faction imbalance more so because you're a cheapskate and just can't re-roll?

[Robert3620]

They have said they would try but we can look at the two realms they have done so far and what do you see? One faction that is outnumbered by a lot and it was two dead realms to each other. Yes they could expand it and yes it could work but I have little faith in Blizzard's ability to do that. I believe it would be better to just allow players free server transfers, other games do this. There is no reason that Blizzard could not do so as well and I think they should.

[Bigbazz]

No it isn't time for that.

[starkey]

Make it free with heavy restrictions or else people will take the piss.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

"I want something for freeeeeee!" Uhh, okay. Why not eat less McDonalds, and use the money you'll save on a server transfer?

[Luxeley]

Have you heard of the connected realms coming soon? This makes most of your points invalid.

Been 3 weeks since patch 5.4 and connected realms are still not a reality. Blizz said in either 5.1 or 5.2 - no more cueing in bgs with groups of more than 5, ever play a regular bg - every horde team is premade - <5 per cue is not a reality. Blizz said in patch 5.3 - healers will be equal in bgs with the new cue a role of a bg system yet another Blizz feature that doesn't work. Connected realms will be a reality, but it may not occuer until the next xpac.