Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
The latest patch 5.2 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsConclusions from the WoW.com faction transfer survey
by Mike Schramm 
Sep 10th 2009 at 9:00AM
The other questions were a little hairier -- I tried to ask people not to answer if they didn't fit the criteria for each question, and there's no way to tell for sure that's what happened. Also, lots of people wanted to see the answers without voting, and unfortunately, our voting system doesn't allow a clear way to do that (I have since checked with our tech guys, who say that the solution we came up with, voting without choosing an answer, did not affect the poll). But after the break, we can try to suss some conclusions out of the data anyway.
Similarly, this question's answers don't add up -- 3210 people answered the first question, and 2735 answered the second, and clearly both of those numbers are higher than the amount of people who said they transferred factions at the beginning, not to mention higher than the number of people who said they transferred to each corresponding side (though it is interesting to note that the two numbers of total answers in these two questions show a similar ratio to the question above -- the ratio here is about 54/46, still in favor of Horde).
But there is still something interesting going on here: Blood Elves and Humans are the highest choice, and from what we've heard anecdotally, those are in fact the two classes that the majority of people have transferred to in both factions. Even if people were just voting for the faction they liked the best, the results here are pretty interesting. We can't call these conclusive numbers at all, obviously, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Blood Elves and Humans were really the most popular races being transferred to on either side.
But there is still something interesting going on here: Blood Elves and Humans are the highest choice, and from what we've heard anecdotally, those are in fact the two classes that the majority of people have transferred to in both factions. Even if people were just voting for the faction they liked the best, the results here are pretty interesting. We can't call these conclusive numbers at all, obviously, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Blood Elves and Humans were really the most popular races being transferred to on either side.
Finally, this question is a little more legit -- the total answers of 7027 lines up much closer (relatively, of course -- I wouldn't trust my life on it) to the 7993 people above who said that they hadn't transferred yet. And perhaps most interesting, the number here is actually higher than the percentage of people who have transferred. It's probably a fair conclusion, keeping in mind that this is a completely unofficial and unscientific poll, to say that we'll see another, even larger round of transfers when players are allowed to transfer to the new Cataclysm races. It still won't be a majority of the player base by any means, but from these numbers, we can expect it to be slightly larger than the transfer totals we saw last week.
Then again, people are projecting into the future here -- by the time Cataclysm actually comes around, people will probably want to roll the new classes anyway, and if they've leveled a Worgen or Goblin up before Blizzard lets them transfer, they'll probably be less likely to actually transfer another character. So many people who say now that they will transfer probably won't anyway.
At any rate, no matter what the numbers, we can make a few solid conclusions:
Then again, people are projecting into the future here -- by the time Cataclysm actually comes around, people will probably want to roll the new classes anyway, and if they've leveled a Worgen or Goblin up before Blizzard lets them transfer, they'll probably be less likely to actually transfer another character. So many people who say now that they will transfer probably won't anyway.
At any rate, no matter what the numbers, we can make a few solid conclusions:
- Blizzard made a truckload of money off of the faction transfer service last week, and the service has definitely justified its existence.
- While the majority of players isn't interested in using the service, there is a nice chunk of the playerbase that's already jumped ship, and I think we can reasonably put that percentage at over 10%, if not higher.
- As for where players are transferring, the exact numbers are still unclear, but it's pretty reasonable to assume that Alliance to Horde is winning out, even if it's just by a few percentage points.
- And we haven't heard the last of this faction transfer service -- Blizzard can expect another burst of transfers, possibly bigger than the last, when they open up the new races after the expansion.
Filed under: Horde, Alliance, Polls, Realm Status, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
L33T15T Sep 10th 2009 2:01PM
After mainly playing Horde now for years and recently have been leveling Alliance, I find this poll interesting.
For one, it makes sense more Alliance would make the transfer over to Horde for one reason only. And it's NOT because Horde is better; it's because there are more people playing Alliance than Horde. At least, there are more according to warcraftrealms.com which attempts to keep a Census and has 53 percent Allied compared to 47 percent Horde. I'm sure that Alts are included in those number, however, so it's almost impossible to determine a players' main character faction.
No, the skewed numbers tell an interesting story. The difference between the amount of people who say they made the faction change and the number of total people that answered the side-to-side change is 2,255. With the number of horde to alliance being 1,529 (less than the amount of faction changes) and the number of alliance to horde being 2,557 (more than the amount of faction changes), what this means from my POV is that there are Horde players pretending Alliance is switching over to their faction.
Like I said, I do believe there are more Alliance going to Horde because the Alliance has a larger player base. But it's a shame the Horde faction has people who feel they have to lie about it to skew those numbers, and it almost makes me think there are actually more Horde going to Alliance, which appears could be true based upon the difference.
Lemons Sep 10th 2009 2:17PM
And...also...the horde are just better.
Morreant Sep 10th 2009 2:03PM
Might transfer my 80 Draenai Shaman once Goblins are available. And if Cataclysm is awesome. Until then I might just cancel my subscription for a while.
Pookster Sep 10th 2009 2:27PM
Just as a side note, I happened to check the WoW census (http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php) just before the transfer service was released and the overall ratios for each faction were 40% horde, 60% alliance. According to the site now, it stands at 47% and 53%, respectively. Assuming the current Total Characters number is roughly the same, that 7% change (which is alliance to horde) is about 443,000 characters, which would be $13,290,000. Then considering those that went from horde to alliance, that figure would likely be close to that $17.1.
So yeah, just another way to reach the same conclusion I guess. :)
doofman Sep 10th 2009 3:03PM
"Unfortunately, the answer isn't necessarily to be trusted, as clearly there are more people who answered than have actually made the faction transfer -- 1831 people said they transferred factions, and 4086 actually answered the second question. That means that 2255 people who answered that question may not have transferred, which is enough to rule this poll inconclusive"
Couldn't this be interpreted to mean that the 1831 people transferred an average of just over 2 characters each?
junling_cheng Sep 10th 2009 7:01PM
Why not buying gold and power leveling from dgamesky. They can help us much when playing games.
alpha5099 Sep 10th 2009 4:44PM
I think the result that surprises me the most is just how popular Draenei are. I quite like them, but I've always felt like I was in the minority on that front. Of course, if you're a Horde transferring to Alliance, there's a probably a lot of Shaman stuck with Draenei as they're only choice. Same for Blood Elf; although they're obvious a popular race (for some reason I'll never quite understand) the results might be skewed by the large Paladin player-base.
Poor Trolls. So frickin' awesome, and yet so unloved.
Frank Sep 10th 2009 5:10PM
All my characters wherw Horde side but two. One was for Alliance Auction house and I leveld a Nelf Druid to 80 to see what questing was like on the other side. After playing a druid for the first time to the level cap it became my favorite character. I got my reps and skill all up on this character, the problem was all my friends, and cohorts where on the Hordes side. Needless to say I was happy to be able to take a character I spent so much time on and switch it over to a side where I will be able to play more. The down side is thunderstomp sucks compared to shadowmeld. Most things tansfered over pretty smoothly but quest are really FUBAR. A lot of quest chains have to be redone and a lot of quest do not give you credit towads LOREMASTER after the switch. I would highly recommand getting LOREMASTER before switching, it's damned confusing afterwards.
Sleutel Sep 10th 2009 7:22PM
"The most conclusive data there is the answer above: about 18.6% of our reader polled said that yes, they had made a faction transfer already. That sounds high to me"
It sounds high because the respondents are self-selecting out of a group that already does not represent a random sampling of the WoW community. The numbers are INTERESTING, and they probably correlate at least somewhat to what WoW players as a whole are doing, but they're almost certainly not an accurate depiction of faction transfers thus far.
StopQQ Sep 10th 2009 9:06PM
BTW the new race change service blizz annouced, as been said to be coming soon after faction change, not after the x-pack, they will surely add-it really soon i say 2 months max. :D
Baruti Sep 11th 2009 1:46AM
Quote from post:"about 18.6% of our reader polled said that yes, they had made a faction transfer already. That sounds high to me -- maybe it's because WoW.com readers know about the faction transfer service that more of them may have taken advantage of it."
I think it is more likely to asume that the percentage is this high since the title of the original post reads:"Survey: Figuring out the faction transfer numbers"
And I think people who (recently) transfered are more likely to read the post, and after that participate in the polls.
I find it very unlikely to see over 10% of the players jump ship to the other faction.
I know it's not very reliable to say "Do 1 out of 10 player you know switch faction" as people who do not have many friends on a faction are more likely to transfer. but it still seems rather unlikely in my humble opinion.
I guess there will not be any solid numbers from Blizzard on this? (Especially if the numbers do turn out to be that high! XD)
Eitherway, I enjoyed taking part in the polls and seeing the results worked out like this and hope to see similair post in the future regarding other topics!
Zanathos Sep 12th 2009 2:50PM
I think this poll demonstrates that people like voting to see the answers to polls and skewing results.
Winterheart Sep 13th 2009 2:55AM
I'd do the change if it was available in europe... ><
Don't understand blizzard's policy in this, are americans somehow better customers than europeans?