As part of our continued efforts to balance the World of Warcraft player population across all realms, we will be converting one of our lower-population PvP realms – Darrowmere -- to a Normal PvE realm. For players on Darrowmere, we will be offering Free Character Moves to alternate PvP realms both before and for several weeks after the conversion takes place. This will allow us to continue to support healthy communities on the realms and help new players transition easily into the community.

The conversion will take place on Tuesday, March 9, with the Character Moves opening on March 3 and lasting until April 6. Upon being converted to Normal PvE, Darrowmere will be given the “New Players” flag to ensure an influx of players over the coming weeks.

The following are the destination realms for Free Character Moves off of Darrowmere:
Alterac Mountains of the Nightfall battlegroup is an Eastern time zone realm
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?sid=1&forumId=68891

Auchindoun of the Retaliation battlegroup is an Eastern time zone realm
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=75725&sid=1

Malorne of the Vengeance battlegroup is a Central time zone realm
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=11378&sid=1

Vashj of the Whirlwind battlegroup is a Pacific time zone realm
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=36015&sid=1

Just answering a couple questions that have come up:

-There are no level restrictions for Free Character Moves, that only applies to Paid Character Transfers.
-Here is the Free Character Move FAQ: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=20530

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Q u o t e:
Will there be more realm options for the free character transfer?

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Edit: I stand to correct... myself. The following realm has been added to the list so there is a Pacific to Pacific transfer option:

Vashj of the Whirlwind battlegroup is a Pacific time zone realm
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=36015&sid=1

There are no plans to add any more... for reals this time.

Kind of repeating myself to ensure visibility, this realm has been added as a destination:

Vashj of the Whirlwind battlegroup is a Pacific time zone realm
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=36015&sid=1

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Q u o t e:
I have a really old computer. I can't afford to buy another one. I LOVE this low population server. I get horrible lag when I do WG as it is, why would I want a higher pop server?

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I just want to point out that none (reads: zero) of the destination realms are high population realms. They are still quite spacious but yes, you may see someone from time to time now.

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Q u o t e:
So instead of allowing high pop/full pvp servers to transfer free to this one you turn it into a pve server and kick the pvpers out?

Wow, Blizzard, just wow.

Poorly played, sirs.

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We have been doing what you mentioned for quite some time and, as you can tell, it hasn't really done the trick. Players on their high population PvP servers tend to stick to them pretty well and for the people who are willing to transfer, it's not enough to go around.

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Q u o t e:
They should be allowed to transfer to the PvP server of their choice IMO....

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One of the goals in the original post says to "balance the World of Warcraft player population across all realms" - not send players to realms that are already in good shape, so that is the reason for the destination realms that are available.

We appreciate the feedback on having more pacific timezone realms available, it's interesting that very few people are choosing the one that is available despite it being fairly even.

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Q u o t e:
More questions for blue:

1. Will guild bank slots be able to transfer over with entire guilds that will be making an xfer?
2. Is there anyway to bypass the server first flag due to some people being very close to obtaining them on this current realm?
3. Gold, people can only xfer with 20k gold; if that person has no alts on this server are they going to just have to toss the gold (same with guild bank gold)?
4. After all the xfers are done will darrowmere be a dead server?
5. Will this happen again to any of the realms that are available for xfer atm ( conversion of a realm we just xfered to to pve)?

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1. No, the bank slots would need to be repurchased.
2. I can't give a definitely yes or no as this would have to be looked into on a case by case basis.
3. I don't believe there are any restrictions for gold amounts when using Free Character Moves.
4. Darrowmere will be a very low population server but we will be monitoring it, adding the "new players" tag, and the realm we did this for in Europe is doing well so far.
5. We do not currently plan to convert any of the destination realms being used for Darrowmere.