What do you guys think, will it happen at all, and if so, would it be a good or a bad thing?

Discuss paid character transfer, its ups and downs and your feelings about it.

I think they'll only do character transfers to address full or dead realms, as they have been doing thus far with Classic. I could be wrong.

I think they may add it and it could definitely help with some of the imbalance issues on realms. If a realm is too populated, offer free transfers off TO the faction that is overpopulated until the faction balance gets closer to a balanced state. If a realm is dying, offer free transfers to a healthy realm regardless of faction but limit the realms that can be transferred to by faction. If you are an alliance on the dying realm, only open server xfers to realms that need more alliance, etc etc etc. Paid transfers would work the same but could be open to any realm with the same restrictions on moving characters to realms that need that specific faction.

I think if they started to spend more time regulating where people could transfer in an effort to balance realms, the outcome could be really positive - even if they added paid realm transfers. Of course there is always the opportunity for people to ninja and server transfer, but lets be honest, with how populated these realms have been there is a huge shift in the social dynamic of these realms. Actions and behaviors that would have hurt your reputation irreparably in retail vanilla dont really impact you in Classic so I dont think adding realm transfers would make this worse.

People often talk about world PvP and how wonderful it is or how they despise xrealm BG's, but any of these player interactions only function well if both factions are balanced +/- 10%. We have seen this in retail and we have seen this on private. Realms that can maintain a ~50/50 population retain players longer and the PvP is more engaging. Faction balance doesnt get discussed often enough and is really one of the foundational pieces that many PvP oriented systems hinge on. Blizz was never able to fix this issue so they acknowledged its importance and introduced sharding to ensure players were in full zones. This introduced a whole host of new issues but this was how they solved the imbalance. I think that there are ways to solve faction imbalance without crossrealm/phasing/sharding but those solutions take more effort and thus more money. Money that could be generated by paid transfers.

This is one of the many reasons that the informed crowd shook their had at layering. It didnt "solve" anything. We will always need some form of transfers. We will always need some form of merges. Realms will inevitably be merged and players will inevitably be able to transfer realms.

rijndael wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I think they'll only do character transfers to address full or dead realms, as they have been doing thus far with Classic. I could be wrong.

I would like to see them extend this to realms with faction imbalances.

I think it probably will be allowed, however, I think some barriers should be put in place.

For instance, I don't think a PvE realm character should be allowed to transfer to a PvP realm, simply because it is much easier to level on a PvE server than it is a PvP server.

Justbe wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I think it probably will be allowed, however, I think some barriers should be put in place.

For instance, I don't think a PvE realm character should be allowed to transfer to a PvP realm, simply because it is much easier to level on a PvE server than it is a PvP server.

Yeah this would be authentic to vanilla - where transfers were rare and this convention was in place.

Stfuppercut wrote: ↑

5 years ago

This is one of the many reasons that the informed crowd shook their had at layering. It didnt "solve" anything. We will always need some form of transfers. We will always need some form of merges. Realms will inevitably be merged and players will inevitably be able to transfer realms.

Yeah but this is mainly about paid transfers with which you can transfer to any realm.

With Activision involved, then its almost a guarantee, but Classic still seems to be a bit of a Blizzard pet project, so they might keep it severely limited (e.g. no pve to pvp, no faction changes etc)

Justbe wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I think it probably will be allowed, however, I think some barriers should be put in place.

For instance, I don't think a PvE realm character should be allowed to transfer to a PvP realm, simply because it is much easier to level on a PvE server than it is a PvP server.

I think the difference is overrated. I leveled a warrior on a pvp server on the less populated faction. On paper thats as bad as it gets. And yet I dont feel like it was a hustle.
I also think that the realm population and time schedule has way more impact on leveling progression than the server type. Especially if you look at login queues. Disallowing pve to pvp transfers for that sole reason seems incredibly arbitrary to me.

Xcellers wrote: ↑

5 years ago

With Activision involved, then its almost a guarantee, but Classic still seems to be a bit of a Blizzard pet project, so they might keep it severely limited (e.g. no pve to pvp, no faction changes etc)

Oh yeah, I forgot thoese are also a thing, was only talking about good old server transfer as you said.

 Blizzard Entertainment

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We're considering integrating a character transfer service once players have reached higher levels. This was available in the original WoW. We'll look at the rules we imposed at that time and also discuss the implications of players moving to a new realm. We believe realm identity is an important aspect of Classic so any guidelines around transfers should support this belief.

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/com ... h=1540fb12

TeamRemix wrote: ↑

5 years ago

 Blizzard Entertainment

---

We're considering integrating a character transfer service once players have reached higher levels. This was available in the original WoW. We'll look at the rules we imposed at that time and also discuss the implications of players moving to a new realm. We believe realm identity is an important aspect of Classic so any guidelines around transfers should support this belief.

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/com ... h=1540fb12

Thanks, haven't seen this yet!