Blizzard details WOW character transfers [update 1]
by Ross Miller 
{ Jun 23rd 2006 at 1:55PM }
World of Warcraft is a phenomenal success -- go ahead and look it up in an Encyclopedia, we will wait. That said, it can get a bit crowded on the popular servers. Blizzard has outlined a new service that allows players to transfer their characters from one realm to another for $25. Lead producer Shane Dabiri spoke with GameSpot and outlined the details:- A character can only be transferred once every six months; the process cannot be reversed.
- The character must be level 10 or higher.
- There are restrictions for the amount of gold you can bring: 300 for levels 10-30, 1,000 for levels 31-50, and 5,000 for levels 51 and up.
- You cannot move from a normal (player vs. environment) server to a PvP server.
- The player cannot already have a character of the opposing faction (e.g. Alliance, Horde) on the server.
[update 1: displayed my ignorance in MMO vernacular; PvE is player vs. environment]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
J B Cougar @ Jun 23rd 2006 2:09PM
I'm confused. Is this one of those gamer addiction stories? Are people allowed to transfer themselves out of WoW altogether and back into reality for $25, or is it just server to server?
Derbeste @ Jun 23rd 2006 2:12PM
VERY much looking forward to this. I have not played WoW in a while....mostly because my friends from FFXI are on another server and I just don't have the will power to start over.....AGAIN.
This and the expansion may just be what it takes to get me hooked on WoW again.
I think Blizzard will see another mini-surge of memberships after this is implimented.
noizbot @ Jun 23rd 2006 2:21PM
I often see comments such as "the price seems hefty enough to discourage abuse". That doesn't make any sense whatsoever, to me. The mechanisms in place to discourage abuse are:
1: six-month delay per character per transfer
2: gold transfer limit based on character level
3: account-to-account transfer limited to household
These mechanisms don't just discourage abuse, they prevent it. $25 .. that does nothing. $25 is a neglible amount and companies would just tack $25 onto their fee for a transaction, which is nothing for someone already dumping real cash on gold/characters.
Players that would.. hrm.. get into highend guilds, ninja super rare items, and then jump server (and repeat) would not be limited by a $25/month fee. They would be prevented by the six-month-wait thing. Gold farmers will be hampered by the gold-limit. Power levelers will be hindered by the account transfer mechanism.
$25 is cheap for businesses and affordable to more than enough jerky players to not prevent any sort of abuse in itself. $25 is actually cheap for a character transfer service in an MMORPG in general, to be honest. If Blizzard wanted to make a ton of cash and have a ton of abuse at the same time, they could just keep the $25 /transfer and remove the three devices I've been mentioning.
syco @ Jun 23rd 2006 2:30PM
$25? Are they absolutely out of their freaking minds? I was kinda looking forward to being able to move a charector but now that's definantly not happening. I was kinda upset when I heard they were going to be chargeing for it, but I thought it was going to be sort of a $3.99 kind of deal. This is totally unacceptable.
Zeromaru @ Jun 23rd 2006 2:40PM
I WAS looking forward to this feature, as my main was on a low-pop server, was gonna transfer to the server that my friends play on, but with a $25 fee? Frak no.
Eric @ Jun 23rd 2006 2:48PM
I think their requirements for the service are very reasonable. After all, the fee (which isn't bad as Everquests $50-$100 fees!) is meant to prevent people from constantly moving their characters around, but its also low enough that people with a genuine interest can move their characters.
Mullinator @ Jun 23rd 2006 2:51PM
It's also mean to discourage people from leaving a server just because they can. The 6 month delay prevents people from moving around too often but only the $25 can have an effect to prevent people from abandoning a server en-mass.
Felix Andrews @ Jun 23rd 2006 2:55PM
$25? For a character transfer? Excuse me? Not a cost I could ever justify shelling out on.
Userless @ Jun 23rd 2006 3:10PM
I'm definately shelling the $25 to move my character off the PVP server he's on and onto a PVE server with my friend's high end raiding guild. That character has been sitting there for MONTHS waiting for this! I know a lot of my friends are also going to do this.
Royale @ Jun 23rd 2006 3:20PM
What's gonna happen to the economy of the low pop servers when a bunch of epicd out lvl 60 chars transfer over?
Night Elve @ Jun 23rd 2006 3:23PM
I think the idea behind of the $25 as some people alread said, it is to prevent people from moving so often from one server to another server.
Which is a right thing to do.
Though for $25 you can buy a Platinum, Player Choice or Greatest Hits game =P
Matt Rix @ Jun 23rd 2006 3:29PM
"Though for $25 you can buy a Platinum, Player Choice or Greatest Hits game =P"
Which you won't play nearly as much as WoW :P
"I think the idea behind of the $25 as some people alread said, it is to prevent people from moving so often from one server to another server."
That's what the 6 month limit is for.
$25 is a fair and reasonable fee...
Cody @ Jun 23rd 2006 3:50PM
With Blizzard making a billion dollars selling character transfers, which couldn't take more than 5 man-minutes of labor per transfer to complete, I fully expect that the servers will never have problems again.
Mat @ Jun 23rd 2006 3:54PM
I'm pretty excited... though it doesn't say anything about whether or not you can transfer an opposing faction character to server if it's RP.
AoE @ Jun 23rd 2006 4:42PM
You all pay somewhere around $180 a year to play a game you spent around $50 to buy in the first place... and you're complaining about further fees? I would have thought WoW players would be used to Blizzard's hands in their wallets by now...
Jurgie @ Jun 23rd 2006 4:47PM
"You cannot move from a normal (player vs. enemy) server to a PvP server"
isn't it Player vs. Environment?
noizbot @ Jun 23rd 2006 5:25PM
I do agree that Blizzard does not need the $25 for a character transfer -- unlike the subscription cost, which is more than fair for the content you get. As I said above, the $25 does nothing to prevent abuse -- the limitations that Blizzard has implemented are what will prevent abuse.
It must be said that, in comparison to most other MMORPGs on the market today, $25 is in fact reasonable and the service is very much needed. People complain that high level players will invade new servers, to which I respond "big deal" .. I levelled all my characters on old PvP servers and yes, I got ganked, but it was nothing that prevented me from playing and enjoying the game, so I'm not sure what the big deal is..
All Your Lost Socks @ Jun 23rd 2006 6:20PM
To all the people who think that $25 is an exorbitant fee, I can simply say: you aren't Blizzard's market for this feature.
This service is intended to be made available to those with an -actual reasonable interest- in moving their characters. They will look at the price and provisions, look over their characters, and think "Huh. I have a friend x level, x side of the fence, who I would like to group with, but I've already put so much effort into this character." In such a case, $25 may be worth it to them, and will lend to people making careful decisions as to what characters they move where. I think it's the way to go, and am already considering which characters of mine I might move.
syco @ Jun 23rd 2006 7:17PM
I am (or, rather, was) in the market for this, because I have a charector, and I would like to move him. I also have the right to think that they are charging way way way too much and therefore not bother with it. But at $25 it would almost be better to just reroll the same charector on the new server and replay him, especially since most of the ones I want to move are about lvl 20. It would almost be worth it for someone who has actually reached level 60, but this is insane for casual players.
noizbot @ Jun 23rd 2006 8:57PM
For a level 20 character, yeah -- not worth $25. For my main which I might move, that has over 30 days played -- it's not even worth bothering to calculate how much better dropping the $25 is over repeating that amount of time. I can't and wouldn't if I could invest that much time again into WoW, so $25 is a very good deal.
Jecrell @ Jun 23rd 2006 9:37PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PvE
Jecrell @ Jun 23rd 2006 9:39PM
Argh, stupid comment system cut me off.
With that link I meant to say "it's Player vs. Environment," please don't start teaching the WoW kiddies it's player vs. enemy... please...
Pretty please?
l33tness @ Jun 23rd 2006 11:20PM
hmm, now my question is, could you transfer from a RP server to a PVP server (not an rppvp server but a regular pvp server?)
V1L3 @ Jun 24th 2006 12:51AM
#17: "To all the people who think that $25 is an exorbitant fee, I can simply say: you aren't Blizzard's market for this feature.
This service is intended to be made available to those with an -actual reasonable interest- in moving their characters."
You could very well use this same rationale for the high price of the PS3.
"To all the people who think that $600 is an exorbitant fee, I can simply say: you aren't Sony's market for this feature.
This console is intended to be made available to those with an -actual reasonable interest- in having a powerful console that can play Blu-Ray movies."
You could very well use the same logic for petrol prices.
"To all the people who think that $4 a gallon is an exorbitant fee, I can simply say: you aren't the oil company's market for this service.
This service is intended to be made available to those with an -actual reasonable interest- in having an operable motor vehicle."
Trae @ Jun 24th 2006 1:11AM
Except of course that some people don't have mass transit in their area and actually need car's to get to their jobs and to get to the grocery store. I think thats a wee bit more imporant than a videogame.
Kent Houseman @ Jun 24th 2006 1:44AM
I am pleased by the negative reaction towards the price. This will prevent servers from being deserted and other servers from getting more crowded than they already are.
This will still allow an elite guild on a server with equally strong guilds the chance to monopolize a more disorganized server. But I don't see it as a bad thing I guess.
If you want to move to a different realm you better put a lot of thought into it then. The gold cap based on the lower levels is great too. I think that could of been exploited a little bit but that should bottleneck the problem at least.
It is a great idea. I usually find out someone else I know or kind of know plays WoW and this will give everyone an opportunity to play on the same server if they already have committed to a character on a different server.
brendan @ Jun 24th 2006 1:24PM
I wonder if this will finally allow me to change the appearance of my character? I've been trying to get Blizzard to help me with that for months, they keep telling me at some point in the future it may be possible but for now it is not. I wonder if i can pay $25, stay on the same server, but change my character's appearance.
Dee @ Jun 26th 2006 11:24AM
I love how they say to prevent abuse we are going to charge half the cost of the intial game purchase itself...They just want to ding people for some cahs right off the bat. They have been dancing around transfer for well over a year, now we know why. If they would just fix all the issues some servers have, obviously they can not fix pop imbalance, most people would eb happy, but they couldn't get this at least extra 25 out of people. You know most wont want to transfer just one. And no one in their right mind is going to trust blizzard to transfer a decked out toon, at least until they make sure they actually have it sorted out. I mean ever patch day is a problem for alot of people, even a year and 8 months later =/