Free Character Moves & New Realm – 1/31

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by Bornakk | 31/01/2008 10:23:41
Bornakk

We will be offering free character moves from selected high population realms to lower populated realms, assisting in population dispersal. The ability to move a character on the selected source realms will become available on Thursday, January 31 at 3:00 PM PST, and are scheduled to run until Thursday, February 7 at 3:00 PM PST.

In the event that a realm meets our transfer goals before the scheduled end date, the transfers to that realm will be disabled. We highly recommend that if you are planning to transfer that you do so at your earliest convenience. No characters will be eligible for these free moves once the transfers have been closed.

Once the transfers open you can begin your transfer by visiting the Character Move page located here: https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/character-move.html

The realms chosen consist of source realms with the highest sustained queues, and destination realms with the lowest population. The numbers gathered are directly from our data, and depict the realms in most need of these transfers. We will be continuing to monitor all realms and open additional free transfers in the future where necessary.


Source A (PvP)
Arthas
Burning Blade
Illidan
Skullcrusher
Warsong

Destination A (PvP)
Balnazzar

Source B (PvP)
Mal'Ganis
Mug’thol
Sargeras
Tichondrius
Twisting Nether

Destination B (PvP)
Onyxia

Source C (PvP)
Gorefiend
Kel'Thuzad
Mannoroth
Shattered Hand
Smolderthorn

Destination C (PvP)
Malorne

Source D (PvE)
Aerie Peak
Aggramar
Alexstrasza
Alleria
Argent Dawn
Blackhand
Cenarius
Doomhammer
Hellscream
Whisperwind

Desination
D (PvE)
Ghostlands*

Ghostlands* is a new realm. Character creation for this realm will be turned off for the duration of the transfers.

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by Drysc | 31/01/2008 12:32:43
Drysc

Q u o t e:
I'm on Area 52, i would like to move to ghostland, when i go into account management, character transfer it says i have no characters eligible for transfer. Are they open yet ?


Area 52 is not available for free character transfer to Ghostlands.
Brace yourselves, gentlemen. According to the gas chromatograph, the secret ingredient is... Love!? Who's been screwing with this thing!

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by Drysc | 04/02/2008 14:18:01
Drysc

Q u o t e:
1. Looking at the realm list screen, i am amazed to see the quantity of realms that have a low population.

The population indicators in the realm selection list are relative to the population of other realms in their battlegroup. "Low population" doesn't necessarily mean it's below a specific threshold, only that it's of lower population than other realms.
Q u o t e:
2. The new realm is going to add to that list.

The transfers we've seen thus far have actually been extremely encouraging. Also, all of the "low population" realms are PvP, this is a PvE realm, of which there are no realms that could actually be considered to have a low population.
Q u o t e:
3. You are giving free transfers so people will transfer, realize it was a mistake and then pay you 25$ to transfer back.

We're giving free transfers so that someone may, if they choose, move away from the realm queues they may be seeing. Queues can be aggrivating, and we want to try to keep people happy.
Q u o t e:
4. You are adding to the problem and not solving it at all.

Do you mean a problem of low population realms? There are no low population PvE realms, so this new realm really only adds to a positive solution to overcrowded realms.
Q u o t e:
5. Plenty of low population realms can be combined and made medium population realms, though reducing the problems, and the amount of realms you have doing nothing.

That's not true, combining the two lowest population PvP realms (of which this new PvE realm doesn't affect whatsoever) would create a queing realm. We're still seeing people join the game, and the the techniques we've been using have been extremely successful.
Q u o t e:
6. Although blizzard ultimately has the final word, maybe the person in charge of this should be exonerated immediately.

I'll pass your suggestion along.
Q u o t e:
7. You are trying to fix a queue problem, but aggravating the time it takes to get a pug to do anything, sometimes in excess of 4 hours.

If you mean by allowing transfers off we only want to avoid queues, and the people in the queues aren't in the game filling your pug anyway, so...
Q u o t e:
8. Its your fault blizzard, that we have queue problems on some realms, and its your fault, we have almost dead realms, not ours.

I'm not sure there's any specific blame that we could take on people liking to play with their friends and overcrowding realms. Regardless, we're helping resolve the issues by opening free transfers.
Q u o t e:
9. Why do we have to transfer? why don't you join some realms together into a new one? I am sure database import is something your highly paid nerds can come up with.

This was asked in number 5. You don't have to transfer if you don't want to.
Q u o t e:
10. You kill a realm before it actually comes into existence. What good is it transferring a couple people onto a new server? Do you transfer enough people to that server so it becomes a medium pop realm? Because no person in their right mind is going to start a character from level 1 there.

Peak concurrency Sunday night was about medium population, so it's looking very good. I've said it a few times now but it bears repeating, this is a new PvE realm. We simply needed another PvE realm to help with some queues, the rest of them are high population-to-full.
Q u o t e:
11. You KNOW which realms are low population, thats why you come up with a complete broken and lacking system of transfers, free or otherwise. I think you can afford the database imports. Just announce the merges and the time of the merge and do it, balance the realms.

Third time's the charm I suppose.
Q u o t e:
12. As a paying costumer, i demand to know the name and have the contact of the person that is in charge of this decisions, in fact, the person i am paying their salary to, so i can make a formal complain.

We won't provide personal contact information, but you can say anything about me you like by e-mailing wowcmfeedback@blizzard.com
Q u o t e:
13. You do have bad luck blizzard, because it might seem you are doing a great job with 9 or 10 m subscriptions, but in fact, every day i hear about people quiting the game, not because its a bad game but because of how you deal with your customers, its nothing if you lose one customer, but if you lose a million?. One of this days you will have to start listening to your paying customers. Remember something, we are players to each other in the game, but to you, i am a customer, and expect to be served as such. Don´t address me as a player, i am not your player, i am your customer. Start listening.

We do our best to keep people happy and enjoying the game, and that includes through customer service. But, that doesn't mean that our actions are to be dictated at every turn by our customers. Regardless of what you believe realm mergers might attain, we don't believe they're in the best interest of the players. Our current techniques have worked since the launch of the game and they continue to work. As new players join they're routed to low population realms, and as some realm populations become too high we allow them to transfer off, free of charge, to a realm without a queue. If at some point these techniques stop working then we'll try something else.

We listen to our customers quite a bit actually, that includes offering new services, altering old ones, as well as making actual game changes. Listening doesn't mean everything we hear is appropriate, sound, or even noteworthy, but we do listen. Realm mergers are extremely complex, extremely disruptive to the players who lose their character and guild names, require days of down time, and would only be used in very extreme situations. We just aren't in an extreme situation.

[ Post edited by Drysc ]

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by Drysc | 05/02/2008 11:57:49
Drysc

Q u o t e:
I can't understand how blizzard can just look past the 1000+ posts against this idea. Why not open free transfers to currently existing "dying" realms, such as Anub'arak.


The largest issue here really is that everyone thinks their realm is the worst off. We have transfers open to Balnazzar, Onyxia, and Malorne. These were the lowest active population realms when we opened the transfers, yours was not. Neither was anyone else's asking for transfers. The original post explains how we choose the realms we do.

Once these transfers have concluded we'll look and see if we can open more transfers, and then we'll pick the lowest population realms again. Yours may not be the lowest population.

We'll also pick the highest population realms we can, those with the highest queues. Yours may not be the highest population.

Q u o t e:
I would like to address this quote of Drysc by saying - Surely you are not assuming that every single player on theses realms are active.


We're not looking at total characters, we look at actual concurrency numbers, that means active players signed in and playing. So we don't have to assume, we track actual people playing.

[ Post edited by Drysc ]

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