Posts with tag server-transfer

I've been known to wax poetic about the good old days of vanilla World of Warcraft from time to time. I have lots of crazy good memories about the early days of the game -- exploring the world, playing through quests that are now long gone, raiding old content when it was current, that sort of thing. And I've followed the story of Warcraft along the way, delighting the various ways its changed and shifted over the years. It's no secret that I loved the early days of WoW -- heck, I've been playing this game for seven years now. Something's kept me sticking around, right?

Every now and again, I'll have a conversation with a friend that starts with said friend asking, "Hey, Anne! You like vanilla WoW. If they ever released a server that was just vanilla WoW with nothing else on it, would you play it?" And then there's a moment where I think about that. I think about the first day I was presented with the character selection screen, going over my choices with wide-eyed delight. I think about the night elf druid I made, and the months spent exploring this shiny new world. I think of my Forsaken priest and the hours of fun I had raiding with 39 other people.

And then I say to my friend, "No. Oh, no no no. Heck no."

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. And be sure to catch the return of Basil and Fox's podcast, Call to Auction!

In the game world, just as in the real world, prices of even the most basic of materials fluctuates based on your location. A hamburger in Beverly Hills costs more than a hamburger in Milwaukee. Heck, just about everything costs more in Beverly Hills -- that's just the way it goes. Your dollar is simply worth less there.

But what if we were going to move from Milwaukee to Beverly Hills? We could just brace ourselves and accept that we're going to have to pay more for hamburgers. Or, we could load up our car with hamburgers and resell them for a profit when we arrive.

That concept is probably a bit disgusting -- I wouldn't recommend a cross-country trip with a car filled to the brim with ground meat. But when it comes to realm transfers, the idea's right on the money. On some realms, gold is worth more. On other realms, the stuff you buy with gold is worth more. Making the most out of a server transfer (or indeed, making a realm transfer with the goal of making in-game money from it) is a skill that could make you rich overnight -- literally.

As promised, Blizzard's been slowing rolling out its new guild services to new realms. It's now added the Whirlwind and Emberstorm battlegroups and will continue to add more realms in the coming weeks.

Guild services include realm transfer, name change, and faction change, among other things. You can read the complete FAQ at our original announcement post, and after the break, find a list of both the previously available realms and a list of the newly added realms.

A WoW forum-goer recently asked why Blizzard was charging for premium services like character server transfers, re-customizations, and the other multitude of options and services Blizzard provides players. Blizzard Community Manager Zarhym hit the thread to discuss the nature of Blizzard's premium services for players and let players know that really, premium services are for people who want them and feel they are worth the cost.

Zarhym first makes the point that these features and premium services are in no way made to be needed to play the game. In fact, I'd take things a step forward and say that so far, Blizzard has been exceptionally good at providing only cosmetic and quality-of-life premium services, where other games could have already cashed in on a playerbase like WoW's. These optional services can improve your own personal quality of life, be it race-changing to an obviously superior blood elf or transferring servers to be with a new guild, but they are not tied to the core gameplay experience.

Zarhym's full statement, after the break.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

These days, when you say "guild reputation," most people think of the guild rep grind that's required to buy items like the Armadillo Pup and the Dark Phoenix. Cataclysm didn't invent this concept -- the expansion simply turned what already exists into a specific number with some fun rewards attached. As long as there have been guilds, there have been players with an opinion about them, and vice versa. This kind of reputation plays a huge role in a guild's success or failure, particularly when it comes to recruiting. This week, an officer with a rep problem asks how to deal with a handful of former members who are sabotaging the guild's recruiting efforts.

Hey Scott,

So my guild is fairly new (about 3-4 months) we started at the beginning of cataclysm as a guild of friends who wanted to raid on the weekends together. We slowly built up and developed a raider base however it was very difficult to get new players as every other guild on the server was looking for people. We had around 6-7 devoted raiders but those last 3 or so raiding slots left it difficult for us to pug and find members in general who were willing to raid. We went through a variety of members in these slots but most of these people didn't understand the concept of a "raiding guild." Some misunderstandings occurred and over the course of our guilds existence we developed about 4-5 "haters."

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Home. It's where the heart is. It's where you can relax and be yourself. Sometimes, it is where you have been all your life. Other times, you have to move around several times to find the best place for you. The feeling of home in World of Warcraft is no different.

Because of a lack of guild activity, I've thought about moving my main to a new realm for several weeks now, but I have been hesitant to just do it. Part of it is the anxiety that comes with going to an unfamiliar realm. I've done research on several different realms and even rolled low-level characters on them to see what the environment is like, but the one thing I've learned is that you can't get a sense of what the raiding scene is like unless you are in it. The other part of my anxiety is getting to know everyone all over again. Sometimes, the hardest part of moving to a new town is introducing yourself to the neighbors. I thought about rerolling but have too much invested in my main to retire him.

So, fellow citizens of Azeroth, how did you find your WoW home? Is it the first realm you rolled on? Did you transfer somewhere else or reroll altogether?

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available this spring from No Starch Press.

When you're frustrated with your guild, it's tempting to jump ship. But sometimes it's also difficult to let go. This week, one officer asks, can you be an officer in one guild and a regular member in another?

Dear Scott,

I am Raid Officer in a casual raiding guild. I attend the most raids and am one of the highest output players on each raid on all my characters. I am one of the most active, hardest working Officers in the guild.

We have always been lenient with who is allowed to raid -- we have some healers who do less than 50% output of other healers who are similarly geared, we have DPS that do less than half of what they should be doing (with "casual" expectations, I don't expect everyone to do 10k DPS but 4-5k is low for a well geared player in ICC with the buff). Even members of our A-team have been slacking a bit. Many players don't pay attention to the leaders in Vent, don't react well to constructive criticism of their gear, spec etc. PUGs are further progressed than our guild is.

As I write this, I am dreading the week to come. After many months of going back and forth on the matter, I have decided to leave my guild for greener pastures. I'm reluctant to leave, though, since I do like my current guild; the people are nice, the raids are fun and we have a raiding philosophy of "work with what you've got" that I have always enjoyed. Still, for everything that I love, there are shortcomings and I am willing to risk losing what I have to see if my perfect guild exists somewhere out there.

So off I go to a new guild and server where I know no one. I'm scared -- scared I won't be good enough, scared they won't like me even if I am and scared I might be making a huge mistake in leaving my friends. You just have to swallow those kinds of thoughts, though. As a raider, I'm no stranger to moving around, and I've come up with many ways to deal with it.

One thing I do to cope is heading up to the spot you see in the picture before I transfer. This is my favorite hiding spot in the game, only accessible by players meticulous enough to complete the Higher Learning achievement. Up here, I will sit and eat some cake, then after I've had my fill, set out my little green rag doll on the bed and /sleep. The reason for this is so that when I log back in after my transfer has gone through, I know exactly where I'll be and I can pretend I'm waking up from a dream (or nightmare) to a new, promising day. I'm not sure why I do this; maybe the familiarity? It's really all quite silly, but I've been doing it for well over a year now and it seems natural.

Do you have any strange habits or rituals you do in game?

While writing a recent news post on Blizzard's decision to open free transfers to Drak'thul, I nosed around the server's forums to see what the inhabitants thought of the coming flood. As a server that was converted from a PvP to PvE realm, opened to transfers, and listed as a Recommend realm to boot, Drak'thul's undergone a fairly drastic set of changes, and all within a short period of time.

As you'd expect, player feelings on the subject were mixed, but there was one former Drak'thul player who really got my attention. Drak'thul, he/she claimed, had been home to some of "the most mean-spirited PvP (he'd) ever experienced on ANY realm." It sounded like a tall claim, but there are a lot of other threads on the forum with oblique confirmations; players recall Alliance towns and quest NPCs "being camped 24/7," and holiday events and Alliance leveling zones being swarmed by opportunistic Horde players. Drak'thul became a low-pop server with a murderous faction imbalance -- Warcraft Realms listed the server's active population as 94% Horde before transfers were opened -- and I wonder how much of that be traced to the relentless ganking and camping campaigns three years ago.

I look at realms like Cho'gall with equally crushing faction imbalances, some of which started out with fairly balanced faction ratios, and wonder -- how the hell does this happen? What spurs the departure of so many players from a specific faction? Is it really that simple as a relatively small number of players exercising such an impact on what happens to everyone on the server?

Blizzard poster Turrit announced yesterday that free realm transfers are being made available to address faction imbalance and overpopulation issues on the following PvE realms:

• Aggramar (Alliance only)
• Area 52 (Horde only)
• Blackhand
• Hellscream
• Stormrage (Alliance only)
• Thrall (Horde only)
• Undermine

Destination realm:

• Drak'thul

The free transfer period will run from Tuesday, May 25 (today) to Tuesday, June 1 at 11:00 a.m. PDT. However, Turrit did make a point of mentioning that Blizzard has a transfer goal in mind, and if it's reached, they may shut the free transfers down early. If you're on any of the affected realms and have been considering a transfer, this might be a good chance to save yourself $25.

To my surprise, it turns out Drak'thul was actually a PvP realm until very recently, and after a quick look at WoW Progress's list of U.S. realms, I have to agree it looks like the server needs some love. While it's possible the page hasn't been updated, it's apparent that the Drak'thul's raiders are struggling -- and there's some rather illuminating commentary in this thread (I'll grant I can't verify the accuracy) on how some of the server's troubles may have gotten their start. Two things come to mind: Blizzard's observations a year ago concerning only PvP realms being low-pop, and: what's happening on Cho'gall. Interesting.

The full announcement is past the cut.

The Art of War(craft) takes you through the paces of the myriad faces of World of Warcraft PvP. Zach, who writes this column, is tragically unfunny and has asshat blood running through his Asian veins. If you're looking for humor, head over to the musings of Christian or Allison. If you want some lore or news, Alex and Adam are your guys. If, however, you feel like bashing someone's face in and dropping The Flag of Ownership on their corpse, you, my friend, have come to the right place.

Season 7 started a while back, and we've now got Colby on the team to pick up on the Arena scene with Blood Sport. He covers all the basics of the latest Arena season in his debut column, so head on over and read up on everything you need to know. That's your primer. On today's The Art of War(craft), I'm going to discuss other things not quite covered by the basics.

First of all, what does a new Arena season mean to the Battleground enthusiast? I mean, who gives a shmoo? Arenas shmarenas, right? Well... not exactly. The sad fact is that Arena players are going to be playing the Battlegrounds, anyway, since the non-set pieces are purchasable with Honor points. While these items also drop off Koralon, the Flame Watcher, the fastest, most efficient way to obtain non-set Relentless Gladiator pieces is through Honor farming in the Battlegrounds.

That means successful Arena play, or at least the most conscientious preparation, requires Battleground participation. The converse isn't necessarily true. The gear disparity in the Battlegrounds is extreme, and it isn't uncommon to find players fresh from hitting Level 80 hitting the maps to grind Honor for gear upgrades. Gear isn't as critical, but it's a definite advantage. My view on the matter is that Arenas are a necessary, but fun, evil.

Eyonix has just announced that lockout time for paid character transfers has been reduced to 3 days from its previous 30. This means that you can now transfer your character to a new realm using the paid transfer service once every three days instead of once every thirty.

This is especially useful for raiders and PvPers who move to a new realm to join a guild, and then find out that the guild doesn't work for them. There are also tens of thousands of horror stories about people moving between servers only to find that their new guilds disbands a few days later. This will be a significant boon to people who find themselves in that situation.

The cost of the paid character transfers remain at $25 for a one way ticket.

Reader Tiago sent us an interesting idea I thought was worth sharing. He suggests that Blizzard create a "leveling server" -- a server that would be marked as specifically for new characters, so when you rolled a new toon on there, you'd be surrounded by a bunch of other people pre-80. And the key here would be that when you hit 80 on this server, then you would get a free server transfer off. In other words, Blizzard would have one server (completely optional, of course) designed for people to level on, with a realm full of people playing in the old world and leveling through the old quests.

Sounds good, right? Like most of our ideas, Blizzard probably won't go for it -- they've already knocked down the idea of vanilla realms, and while this isn't the same thing (you'd be able to level to 80, the idea is just that you'd leave the server when you got there), it does mean creating a different ruleset for a brand new type of server. Plus, to a much lesser extent, it could create an even more lonely existence on the normal servers. Not to mention that Blizzard has been focusing on speeding past the low levels, not emphasizing them.

But I like the idea anyway -- it doesn't seem too tough to do (mark one realm recommended, and provide free server transfers off of it), and it seems like an excellent way to get people who enjoy leveling up all together in the same place. And that's really what MMOs like this are all about, right?

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

Today's music comes from a viewing of Scrubs I was, at the time, forced to watch by the girlfriend Katie. They had this great band playing at the end called The Polyphonic Spree. Today's featured reading music is the aforementioned band performing Light & Day ("Reach for the Sun").

It really doesn't have anything to do with anything, but they're hippies and jump around a lot while making some rather cool and unique music. Plus they have this cultish vibe to them. The Leader is good, The Leader is great, we surrender our will as of this date.

Hey look! World of Warcraft related things coming up now...

Many people asked...

"The PTR you download from the official WoW site is still 3.1! How are people getting on the Patch 3.2 PTR?"

North American and Oceanic players, don't feel left out just because the last round of transfers were European-only. Here's some for us, and even with a little bit of that faction-specific flavor.

• Source A: Arthas, Bleeding Hollow, Bonechewer, Boulderfist, Burning Blade, Dragonmaw, Frostmane, Illidan, Kel'Thuzad, Laughing Skull, Lightning's Blade, Magtheridon, Mal'Ganis (Horde Only), Mannoroth, Sargeras, Shattered Hand, Skullcrusher, Tichondrius, Warsong
• Destination A: Drak'Thul, Hakkar
• Source B: Barthilas, Frostmourne, Thaurissan (Horde Only), Jubei'Thos
• Destination B: Gundrak (Oceanic)

There's also a note at the end of the post to the effect that although these are all for PvP realms, PvE transfers will be announced shortly, so stay tuned, carebears (don't get me wrong, I'm one of you).

Players on these realms, will you be transfering? Remember that if you want to, you should do it as soon as possible. These transfers are scheduled to stay open until Wednesday, January 21, at 6 PM PST, but they do close early if the transfer goals are met.