More on WoW Paid Transfers
You guys sent me some very thoughtful e-mail on the new WoW character transfer policy. They’re so good that I’m just going to run them unedited and let you see how divided people are over this issue.First off, from Paul Costello of Groovalicious Games, commenting on the previous existence of free transfers from overcrowded servers:
From what I've seen, Blizzard has occasionally done free transfers, but they control which server you transfer to - you have no choice in the matter. In other words, if you have a character on overcrowded Realm 17 and are desperate to escape the sign-on queue and laggy gameplay, you might get a chance to move, but only to Realm 22 (for example). So unless your buddies just happen to be on that realm, which is highly unlikely, you're out of luck.
Furthermore, the availability of these transfers is pretty sporadic - if you miss one opportunity to move, you may be waiting quite a while for it to come back around (assuming it ever does). For example, there are currently no free transfer options available.
I think the free transfer option is as much about Blizzard trying to even out their population as anything else. It's not necessarily designed as a big favor to the player.
So “free” transfers have been available, but you don’t get a say in where you go. Not very useful, particularly if you’re playing with friends and all want to wind up on the same server again.
Here’s an issue I really hadn’t considered, which is the play balance effect on servers due to transferred characters. Here’s an e-mail from Jersoc:
These new server transfers allow players to transfer to a server 90 days or older. I'm on a server now that just reached that 90 days and guilds are starting to run the high end instances trying to beat each other. But now we are seeing guilds coming over in tier 2 gear and up and we've just started on tier 1. This is destroying the fun in growing a server and it’s tearing our small community apart. This is not an isolated issue either. From scanning other server's forums that opened up at or around the same time, I know that other people are expressing this same concern. Clearly Blizzard dropped the ball on this big time. They should've opened up fresh new servers just for transfers, not allow transfers to existing ones. I know you like to hear our view on things and this one really touches home. I started over to avoid all the stupid big guilds and now I'm watching a server that we were growing up with come crumbling down for a mere 25 bucks.
Here's more on this issue from Mike MacKinnon:
What's really incensed many of us about the paid transfers isn't the fact that Blizzard is essentially forcing people to pay to load balance their servers (free server -> server transfers are pretty rare) but rather how they've destroyed any sense of realm community.
Up until the transfers, a realm was its own little entity. Everyone starts from scratch and we all progress as a community. Villains and heroes emerge, people are known in the community, hard working guilds make progress and a name for themselves. Resources are gathered, rare crafting recipes are found and an economy develops. In PvP people are reasonably well matched as even the most avid player can't have gear and weapons that are significantly superior.
Now enter the transfers. Someone with a level 60 on a 2yr old server can transfer as many items as they can possibly carry and up to 5000 gold to a realm that's as young as 90 days old. On my particular young realm (~3.5months old) the most advanced hardcore players have a mix of epic quality gear from the Molten Core and Blackwing Lair dungeon instances. Enter a mature hardcore guild from an established server with advanced gear that's not even available on our realm since the world event to open up the Ahn'Qiraj dungeon instances hasn't been completed.
So now you have PvP where people are playing with gear that's not even available to people who started from scratch on the realm. It's a bit like having high school seniors play against the grade 6 softball team. People who have worked hard to establish a ranking in PvP are suddenly left in the dust. The competition between the high end guilds to complete dungeon content is now meaningless since you could easily recruit a heavily geared player from another realm.
Realms are communities, people like being a part of some community and the process of it maturing. Many people enjoy being the first person or group to accomplish some task or find some item/recipe/etc in their particular community... it's no longer possible (or meaningful) and that aspect of the game has been erased for $25. Normally Blizzard seems to think things through--sometimes changes aren't immediately welcomed but turn out to be positive, or at least not too bad. This one blows my mind, it seems to be fantastic for Blizzard (load balancing + millions in new revenue) but hurts the community.
<< Home