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.