Paid region change

[Hajiro]

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!

[Throwme]

Can't be that hard!

In theory, no. But I'm assuming there are some legal mumbo jumbo that makes companies not want to transfer stuff between regions. If they had made a single region to begin, a lot of issues could have been avoided. But they didn't.

[Djdizzy]

Different laws. Different regions.

[Shinrael]

This so much. I plan to eventually live in Japan and I'd be good to have an option to transfer to US realms for better latency.

[Luxeley]

I wanted to do this back in MOP. The fact it's still not available is kind of pathetic.

[letssee]

In theory, no. But I'm assuming there are some legal mumbo jumbo that makes companies not want to transfer stuff between regions. If they had made a single region to begin, a lot of issues could have been avoided. But they didn't.

league of legends allows it easily i think

[Dakhath]

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.

[FluFF]

I wanted to do this back in MOP. The fact it's still not available is kind of pathetic.

Especially since League of Legends had region changing for years, you can easily swap your account from NA to EU or from EU to OCE or from OCE to North EU, and that is your whole account, not even just characters.

So I don't see how ''legal mumbo jumbo'' stops Blizzard from offering paid transfers to other accounts, probably has more to do with how they view accounts as a whole, like that stupid rule back in the day where 2 accounts had to have the same last name in order to transfer characters from 1 WoW account to the other.
Or they would just prefer that you buy WoW again and restart from scratch.

[Ryken]

Legal aspects aside, there would have to be huge restrictions on how often you can do it. Between different economy fluctuations IRL and different token fluctuations in game, there would be some serious gold abuse. Or inversely Blizzard balance abuse.

[Cæli]

this would impact token prices big time. people would transfer items from a region to the other, gold has less value in EU, and even less in asia. if it happens probably you wouldn't be able to transfer any boe items or more than like 10k gold, and have a big cooldown on top. might not even be possible since it would make some items accessible more easily if you go from eu to us for instance.

[Shakana]

Same. I have friends that play on US and i can't even have them on bnet.

[Lucetia]

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!

It is that hard. They've said in the past it's essentially two different games internally infrastructure wise. Think of it as NA being WoW and EU being Overwatch and that's how they'd have to transfer the characters and why it isn't possible. They'd have to do a lot of infrastructure work to get it to work and it isn't worth the time or money to do so.

You think transfer costs now are high, just imagine the cost for region transfer in order to recoup the money they wasted on making it available.

Games that allow it now had it in from the start, where WoW didn't.

[FluFF]

this would impact token prices big time. people would transfer items from a region to the other, gold has less value in EU, and even less in asia. if it happens probably you wouldn't be able to transfer any boe items or more than like 10k gold, and have a big cooldown on top. might not even be possible since it would make some items accessible more easily if you go from eu to us for instance.

No one would really care if it has a huge cooldown, you only move once ( in theory ) so you only need to swap your account from NA to EU once ( or from EU to NA ), so even with a 1 year cooldown on it then it wouldn't matter for people who want to use it in a legit way.

If you move between continents every few months or 6 months or so for whatever reason then that's tough luck but I would assume those people are in a really big minority, I never knew anyone who moves between EU and NA irl every 6 months.

[Zyky]

league of legends allows it easily i think

The difference is League is a free game. There's a lot more logistics when it comes to a paid game vs a free game in terms of international laws.

[EyeOculus]

It is that hard. They've said in the past it's essentially two different games internally infrastructure wise. Think of it as NA being WoW and EU being Overwatch and that's how they'd have to transfer the characters and why it isn't possible. They'd have to do a lot of infrastructure work to get it to work and it isn't worth the time or money to do so.

You think transfer costs now are high, just imagine the cost for region transfer in order to recoup the money they wasted on making it available.

The Europe game client is 1 to 1 the same as the US one. There are 0 differences other than the language settings, which does not stop you from playing. What you are saying is untrue in every way.
Otherwise Addons wouldn't work cross regions or half of Earth couldn't access Betas and Testrealms. The PTR runs in the US, and i can copy my EU character in seconds over to the PTR.

The only special client out there is the chinese one, due to the massive censoring going on.

[Miow]

I don't understand why they don't do it.

I've wished it for years, for my current location I'm playing on the wrong Region.
I can't just start over, I've so many unobtainable items that you simply can't get anymore.
I'd be desperate enough to pay 100$ just to transfer.

Right on this part Blizzard seems lazy on the costumer support, other games allows it.

[Throwme]

league of legends allows it easily

This is a statement.

league of legends allows it easily i think

This is an assumption.

Which one do you think is best posted, when quoting someone that writes "I'm assuming"?

[Lucetia]

The Europe game client is 1 to 1 the same as the US one. There are 0 differences other than the language settings, which does not stop you from playing. What you are saying is untrue in every way.
Otherwise Addons wouldn't work cross regions or half of Earth couldn't access Betas and Testrealms. The PTR runs in the US, and i can copy my EU character in seconds over to the PTR.

The only special client out there is the chinese one, due to the massive censoring going on.

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.

[EyeOculus]

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.

I searched it up and did found players stating they have been told from GMs or Support Staff that the internals are different. That still leaves the questions how they do it with the ptr.

Sorry though, you made it sound like the game client and its infrastructure, not the storage internals of the servers itself.

[Byleth]

You can move around countries within a region, I moved from New Zealand to US, but to move to other regions, like China or Europe is not possible as far as I'm aware.