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Blizzard news - Server Transfers are ready

March 17,2005 0:35 - Rollie

 
Blizzard has been diligently working on implementing some sort of character transfer option. It appears they have completed their testing on the procedure and are ready to start offering character transfers from certain high population servers to designated lower pop servers. You can read more about it here.

I have to be honest. I have been playing on Bloodscalp pretty much since release. Bloodscalp is and always has been a 'Low' population server. Early on, it was a bit too low, but I think the population now has a nice mix of folks and I have been very pleased with our player population.

The thought of this popuation being disrupted by masses of unknown character transfers bothered me. I was really worried that this would taint our server with who knows what.

Don't get me wrong, I do empathize with those who are playing on high pop servers and have to deal with queues, but that's their problem, not mine, right? =)

Anyway, I am happy with what Blizzard has chosen to do at this point. I like that they are only allowing specific server to server transfers instead of allowing open transfers. While this may not be as flexible as some high pop residents would like, I have to admit that I think this would bring the least impact to existing server populations and communities. At the very least it will minimize impact to certain server/server combos.

Anyway, you can read more about it here:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/faq/charactermove-list.html

I would be interested in hearing what other low popuation server residents think about the character transfers and their thoughts on the impact to existing communities/populations. Feel free to discuss!
Anonymous says:
March 18,2005 at 9:56
Personally I think that this is mostly cosmetic, giving people a one way trip to one specific server. The queues may make some people actually move, as far as I understand that's the reason for their existance to begin with.

As for impact on realms I would expect the high population realms to be glad to get rid of these people in the short term and the low population realms to get them not to be very appreciative since many of the people moving will most likely be prone to whine quite a bit and many will be moving not because of the queues really but rather because they already destroyed their characters reputation on their old server.

In the long term the effect will be negligible on the high population servers, people will trade accounts to come back and such things (yes it happens, quite a lot in fact among established power gamer/pvp guilds).

I *hope* the long term effect on low population servers will be a slight increase in population but to be honest I expect a certain feeling of getting the leftovers/whiners... I hope I'm wrong.

I play mainly on Bleeding Hollow and some on Sargeras so I don't expect to see any effect of this at all really... Except for fanbois to scream "MOVE!" every time a legitimate complaint about Blizzards poor server management is posted.

//Alanthus
Rollie says:
March 18,2005 at 10:35
Honestly, the most favorable option in my opinion would have been for Blizzard to have brought 2 - 3 more servers online and funneled all the server transfers to those new servers. Hell, what's another 2 - 3 servers when you are running 93?
znog says:
March 19,2005 at 6:16
server transfer is fine, and has to be free of charge, especially for the euro servers, blizz made a big mistake launching a ridiculeously lox nomber of servers at release : not only they knew how many boxes had been sold, but they had the experience of the US release. I wonder if they did not do this on purpose, actually, to get some media coverage...

Now having to wait 20-30 min to relog when you deco in the middle of an instance is a real pain....


now my preocuupation is to evaluate how warcraftrealms is going to deal with the issue and keep track of server population. Having blizz pubish a list of character moving would be useful indeed. What do you say?
heartless_ says:
March 19,2005 at 8:40
Doesn't help that Europes internet infastructure is serverly lacking except for modernized cities.
Anonymous says:
March 20,2005 at 19:13
That's pretty selfish there bud, "that's their problem not mine." I actually wanted full transfers, but that's that.
I believe this the biggest step in the right direction that Blizzard has yet taken with this game. This will utterly make World of Warcraft a much better game for thousands of people. Lag will decrease, and ques will die out.
Anonymous says:
March 21,2005 at 0:49
i am on crushridge.. and we are victims of a transfer.. i don't know many people that are happy with it, because it adds even more lvl 60's with the high gear ganking lowbies, they have no manners and our economy is totally screwed up now.
Rollie says:
March 21,2005 at 9:10
[quote:7a18369b2a="Roadwarrior"]That's pretty selfish there bud, "that's their problem not mine." I actually wanted full transfers, but that's that.
I believe this the biggest step in the right direction that Blizzard has yet taken with this game. This will utterly make World of Warcraft a much better game for thousands of people. Lag will decrease, and ques will die out.[/quote:7a18369b2a]

That comment was said in jest. There are ways to reduce the populations without impacting already existing communities as I noted above. Blizzard didn't take the optimal approach (only transferring to brand new servers), but they did at least take an approach that would seemingly impact the fewest folks possible.
Anonymous says:
March 21,2005 at 17:10
I chose a low pop server and couldn't understand why others would choose to join high-pop servers with all their commensurate problems. I can certainly understand people wanting to change, especially with 30min queues. I knew that our server would not stay low pop forever & expected it to fill up. However this sudden change was not good for Bonechewer. Whole high-level guilds have moved across en masse. I had the pleasure of getting ganked repeatedly by lvl 60's this weekend. I'm guessing that at any time there will be regious where questing is no longer an option. I hope that things settle down & that a lot of lower level players came across as well. I would be interested in seeing the stats.
Anonymous says:
March 22,2005 at 6:58
It will be interesting seeing the stats but from what I hear on BH the majority moving are either well established guilds moving together (=most or all 60's) or solo players moving on their own (people that have little time to play and just level along on their own). If that holds true for others you'll definately see a lot more lowbie ganking, I wouldn't expect it to settle down rather it will get more organized as the guilds migrating get existing 60's on the server to join them.?

I am very curious as to the number of concurrent players, how both high and low population servers are affected on that score and the number of 60's moving to low population servers. If the number of 60's is close to or even exceed the numbers already on the server then I expect the "culture" of the high population server to dominate on the low population server as well.

//Alanthus
Anonymous says:
March 22,2005 at 10:27
I personally am mad at the recent choice of server-character changability, i am originally from the server Alleria, i started playing thier since release of WoW, my server was tainted by the foul hand of over population and uneven side ratios, me and my real life friends where becoming very displeased at the amount of lag, the 2-3 server crashes DAILY and the horrible gameplay we all experienced, we decided to move and start anew. I did some research to find a lower pop. server, with even side ratios (alliance vs. horde). After quite a bit of searching i decided Stormscale server was our new home. We started NEW characters, and a NEW guild. And i have recently foundout that the Stormreaver server characters are able to move to our new Stormscale home server, and i can only hope that Stormscale server doesn't screwed up like Alleria or Stormreaver servers are. Me and my Friends made a HUGE sacrafice by leaveing our old server so that we could be on a better server, and i find it highly unfair if Stormscale server is screwed up becuase of the character switching just becuase Blizzard forgot to put in some sort of tool that would of keep the server from over population in the first place.
Anonymous says:
March 22,2005 at 10:40
I posted my opinion before, and now im posting some replies to whats been said on this thread. Sorry, but the people who have been playing on the servers since the launch (High pop. servers) shouldn't have to wait in ques, they were there first and shouldn't be forced to wait, just becuase some idiot's server is down for a day and goes on thier server just to make an alt and run him to oggrimar to die on the mail box. from day one there should of been a tool to limit over population.

I also think Blizzard should of made NEW fresh untouched servers to funnel the switching characters to instead of SCREWING up the existing servers, which have set economies, guilds, people, and traditions of thier own. I aggre with who posted this before, what 3 more server with 93 already running.

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