The Queue: Hat Trick
by Mathew McCurley 
Mar 9th 2012 at 11:00AM
This is my third Queue in a row. I wanted to say "Three-peat," but I think that's trademarked.
Sidvicious asked:
I didn't know you can transfer a LvL 80 character form one account to another. I have 2 accounts that I'm playing with the same credit card can I transfer a lvl 85 for one to another?
If both accounts are under the same name (personal name -- your name, not the account name), you can pay to transfer characters between accounts. Thanks to Cephas from the comments, who made my life easier and did the copy and pasting for me:
Character Transfers Between Accounts
"Characters may be eligible for transfer between accounts which are registered to the same user. To conduct an account-to-account transfer, you will have to answer the 'secret question' for the account you are transferring the character from (the source account), and the last name on both accounts must match. We do not support the transfer of characters between friends, guild mates, or family members."
Jason asked:
Where do you go to grind Steamwheedle Cartel rep now? Is it just endless farming low level mobs?
I've been asking this question myself, since those factions are some of the last that I have to really grind out. My first instinct was to go to Wowpedia and look up a list of mobs and quests that gave me Steamwheedle Cartel reputation. Check out this list, and get to grinding. I'm sure there will be plenty of answers and tips in the comments, because I'd love to know the answer as well.
uncletouchy asked:
Any guesses as to how "stat normalization" will work for challenge modes? Nerfing primary stats seems relatively straightforward, just reduce/increase by a percentage or to a given value. However, secondary stats seem more complicated since people gear to hit caps, haste plateaus, etc. If the the same percent nerf/buff rule is applied to these, we'll end up above/below caps.
I do not know how the exact mechanics work, but currently in game, there is a mechanic to bring relative power levels in line with one another and scale down people's gear. You probably saw the buff (or debuff, in our case) on the test realms, especially during our epic fail Queen Azshara run during testing when she was nigh impossible to kill. Our characters had vastly overgeared the fight, but because of the zone-wide debuff to our item levels and stats, things were at a controlled difficulty.
Challenge modes will most likely work the same way. If you're overgeared for the content, the game will apply a debuff to you much like the one on the public test realm. If you are appropriately geared, nothing should happen. This is all theory, however. We have no idea how these challenge mode dungeons will work yet.
Batleth responded to my answer yesterday:
"I think there will be massive server migrations and merges in the future, but we won't see it. It will all happen behind the scenes."
Maybe I'm not fully understanding this sentence...
Do you mean that one day, in an attempt to balance or populate a server, Blizzard will move toons around without the consent of the paying customer? Please tell me I'm crazy and I'm not understanding.
What I am saying is that I believe the radical move Blizzard will make is that you won't ever leave your realm, but other realms will merge into yours. For example, let's say that three realms, A, B, and C, are all experiencing population problems. My theory is that you would still log in to server A but share the same virtual space with people from realms B and C. Towns would feel fuller, Auction Houses could be merged for low-pop realms, yet you would never know that you actually moved -- because you technically didn't. Does that make a bit more sense? It's a long shot, but it's the least invasive idea I could think of, and it really cuts down on the "WoW is dying, look at all these realms that are closing" rhetoric.
matt responded to my answer yesterday:
Mat said: "Personally, the last thing that I want is to have the old instances and raids to be challenging again in any fathomable way. In fact, I like those places because of how easy and fun it is to farm at my heart's content"
then why do you support the notion of an item level squish? Are you not aware that the impact of that will be to reduce your relative power compared to older raids? From the graph posted in the blue on the topic:
Post-squish @ 85 in DS epics your comparative power vs. Kara would be comparable to a lvl 70 in sunwell gear zoning in today, good luck solo farming that mount.
While I understand that post-squish my relative power will decrease significantly, Blizzard has said that the rest of the game would follow suit. We would have comparable power against level 60 or 70 bosses to we have now, since everything is getting squished, bosses included. I am hopeful that Blizzard can act on an item level and stat revamp successfully with minimal turbulence.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!
Filed under: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 6)
Jamie Mar 9th 2012 11:05AM
Actually, a while back I'm not sure if it's now still the same. But back when new Battle.net was still kicking around you could transfer characters between players who had the same surname.
I unwittingly managed to transfer my brother hunter to my account. The only similarity is that we have the same surname of course. Odd stuff indeed.
I'll probably transfer it back to see if it still applies.
Luotian Mar 9th 2012 11:24AM
Yeah, see, when I first started my account I had been playing on my Dad's for months, and I had no problem transferring my character off of his and on to my own back then-- but this was BC or early Wrath (I think BC).
alzeer Mar 9th 2012 11:26AM
just making sure, you cant transfer characters between US & EU accounts right?
Luotian Mar 9th 2012 11:43AM
@alzeer: I believe that is correct. I'm not sure why, but I'm pretty sure it has to be the same version of the game.
AltairAntares Mar 9th 2012 11:47AM
Nope, you must stay with in the same geographical "union" of servers.
Chetti Mar 9th 2012 12:11PM
I'm pretty sure the reason you can't transfer between US and EU has to do with them not existing in the same server space. (I know thats not a good explaination). I once bought I pet from the EU store by accident for a friend, I was trying to be quick about it and rather than just go to battle.net and store and whatever, I went to google and typed somethin like "blizzard store" and clicked the first link. I didn't look, or pay attention to the currency. 10 euros, 10 dollars.. yeah, it was a dumb move on my part. In talking to blizzard support US, there wasn't anything they could do to fix the code to make it work. I had to email Blizzard EU to find out what they could do, which was only refund the money. Which they did with no issues. Character transfers probably work the same way, US and EU aren't interchangable.
DarkWalker Mar 9th 2012 1:57PM
Regarding transfers in the family, there is at least one situation where, AFAIK, Blizzard supports it: when a child that was playing on an account belonging to his parents (or legal guardian) comes of age and gets his own account. Given that an exception to the rule regarding no transfers between accounts of different owners exists, Blizzard might have set their automated services a bit too lenient.
Arrohon Mar 9th 2012 3:29PM
@Darkwalker Man, I wish I had known that! I played on my step-dad's account from Vanilla to early Wrath, and rerolled my main once I got my own account. Arrohon v1 was level 42 which was the highest that I'd ever been at that point (yes, it pained me enough that I remember the exact level years later). It took most of Wrath for me to NOT suck ;)
johnrichling Mar 9th 2012 8:45PM
My stepson played on my account for a few years before I eventually got him his own account. We put it in his name, he's 16, on my credit card. Eventually the ps3 took over so we let his account lapse and I just continued to pay for mine and he would play his toons there again. when he went to move with his father out of state I was gonna restart his account on my card again and transferr his mains to his account but blizz said no. Although my name was on the account as the payee we have different last names and since his is the registered owner it doesn't matter that he was a minor.
Sorro Mar 9th 2012 11:08AM
If the hypothetical server merges worked like that, it would fix the problem of people wanting more characters per server. Just log into the "other" server and create a new character.
ahsanali Mar 9th 2012 11:24AM
The first question that comes to mind is what happens with toon names that are in use on both realms? My prot warrior is thunderspank. If my realm merges with another where a thunderspank already exists, you can now have two thunderspanks standing in Valley of Strength.
They're have to add a realm suffix to names to do this I guess. So you'd have thunderspank-thrall and thunderspank-illidan be distinguishable.
PS. I don't think Thrall or Illidan are at any risk of becoming ghost towns! :D
Puntable Mar 9th 2012 11:58AM
If they merged every high-pop server with a low-pop server, then you could have 20 characters per server. You would just have 2 seperate login screens for one server. They could create new "servers" to merge with the highest pop ones, because they would not be new servers at all, just a second login screen for that server. For the name problem, it would be the perfect opportunity to add surnames. All your characters would just need to pick a last name.
evoxpisces Mar 9th 2012 11:59AM
@ahsanali I was wondering the same thing. I put a lot of thought into the names I give my characters so I'd be pretty bummed out if they forcibly merged servers and I was forced to change my toons' names.
styopa Mar 9th 2012 12:23PM
You'd think there would be some fairly simple tech way to keep them sorted, presumably characters have unique identifier ID's within Blizz's systems anyway.
So you get a tell from Thunderspank (invisibly, his ID is 12345), and you /r, it auto-assumes you mean Thunderspank 12345.
Later you see a comment in /world from Thunderspank but her ID is 98765. You click on their name to open chat tell them to stop being a n00b, it might even offer you a selection between the two Thunderspanks you're aware of.
Jestin Mar 9th 2012 12:49PM
"Beer hand"... I love your user icon.
Noyou Mar 9th 2012 1:15PM
I think it could work like that but I think they would just make a new server name and say, X is your new server name. I also think this will happen after they already open up the character limit. I don't know the technical side of things, but having 3 servers be able to log into one just doesn't sound right. It would also be different because all of the servers involved might be on different time zones.
Drakkenfyre Mar 9th 2012 7:32PM
Styopa, and what happens when you just type the name?
What you (everyone guessing on this) may not know is the Battle.net BattleTag currently in the Diablo 3 beta is being ported to all current Blizzard games eventually. It works similiar to that guess. You are Name#3456. So if your name is ThroggtheOrc, you would be ThroggtheOrc#3456, with a random number on the end. The numbers are not sequential to the name, so if you are BobthePaladin, and the 15th person to use that name, you won't be BobthePaladin15.
This system will be used across all current Blizzard games. You can currently set up a BattleTag if you like, just login to Battle.net and go to your account settings. However, the name is currently PERMANENT, and the ability to change it has only been discussed as being possible after Diablo 3 ships. So if you make one now, choose carefully. There's already some dumb names on the Diablo 3 beta forums, and I don't think these people realize the names are permanent ("Rawbaconpinkfuzzysocks", as a made-up example.)
Hounds Mar 9th 2012 11:10AM
I sort of had a sense that for the challenge modes, you'd zone in, you'd "lose" your gear, and everyone would have all gray/white gear with minimal graphics. You'd have your skills, a stick for a sword, and you'd be in rags. The rags would give all classes the same stats. At least, that's what I think would be cool.
razion Mar 9th 2012 11:19AM
I'm also kind of curious as to how they're going to deal with things like procs off weapons. Reduce the chance they occur? Reduce the damage they do? Take them off weapons entirely? It'll certainly be interesting going into Mists to see how such scaling with change on-chance items, at least to me anyway.
Minstrel Mar 9th 2012 11:46AM
This makes the most sense, IMO. Not the grays/whites, of course;) but rather than they'll simply replace your real gear with pre-made gear that they've balanced for the dungeon (presumably with dungeon boss hit caps and such where appropriate). That way it's a completely controlled environment and they know exactly what you're using...no concerns about whether a particular weapon or trinket proc "beats the system" etc.
Of course, it means you won't be able to gear how you want, secondary stats-wise. Unless they toss in a reforger at the start of the dungeon to allow you to rejigger your stats if you want (and competitive leaderboard min-maxers would want).