Well said, 55 bucks is steep for a simple reputation exchange program and copy. Wish Blizz had thrown us a bone when they added the faction transfers to include a realm transfer as well.

well, for give my cynicysm here, that is probably exactly the response Blizzard wants. They seem to want the faction change, name change, race change, etc. to be a big enough deal that players will not do it on a whim but consider it and only do it if they really want to. Then after you've done it they want you to not turn right around and go back.

Setting aside the obvious RP/lore issue of 'how does a human suddenly wake up as a tauren?' there are lots of other issues including the economy of the servers, etc. There is a big market for vanity pets for example where people will buy the 50 silver pets from the various vendors in the major towns then transfer them to the opposing faction through the neutral AH, and sell for a 1000% markup to the opposing faction.

I could extend the argument to gold farming as well but will stop there. The point is there is a lot more to this than some warlock on the Thrall server wanting to be a human on Frostwolf. This could have a significant negative impact on the game if they aren't careful.

I had been hoping for the faction change to include an optional server transfer as well. I have an alliance priest that's only level 65. My plan had been to either dump some stuff from my main to an alt big enough to make the cross (gold, heirlooms, profession mats), or bring the priest over and finish leveling it horde.

Only problem? My horde and alliance characters are on different servers, and while I was willing to fork over $30 (which is more after exchange rate and fees) I'm not willing to fork over $55.

Here's to hoping they change it and toss in server transfers!

There's nothing stopping people with multiple accounts or friends on the other faction doing this trading already, so I dont see any problem when they pay to do this?

Also, a 1000% mark up of 50 silver is only 5 gold 50 silver ;D

Vile Dr. H

"well, forgive my cynicism here, that is probably exactly the response Blizzard wants. They seem to want the faction change, name change, race change, etc. to be a big enough deal that players will not do it on a whim but consider it and only do it if they really want to. Then after you've done it they want you to not turn right around and go back."

That's not cynicism, that's a very realistic point of view. I changed my faction after MUCH consideration. I had to consider 1) the price; 2) the realm I was on and the balance issue; 3) the contacts and frequent PUG friends I made; 4) the faction titles and achievement penalties associated with the Argent Tournament, etc...It goes on. Any smart person who changed their factions took these among other things into consideration before actually doing it, adding that there's no turning back for at least two months. All this goes in line of what you were saying about how Blizzard probably wanted to control the number of transfers so there was a few pitfalls in doing so, so that the ones who truly wanted to do it would after much internal debate.