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Wow offers free character transfer service. Why doesn't SOE
the_lizard
Member Posts: 120
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.
forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html
Oh, because they are $OE........but it certainly would solve their population problems. Instead of Nge fanbois coming over here in the futile attempt to bring vets back.
Comments
SOE also provide a free server transfer when they desire it, to lighten a server which is overpopulated...
If SOE doesn't desire it, they don't offer it. Same with Blizzard.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
I'm assuming this is a joke thread right? Wouldn't SOE have to have a server with a high population first before there was any need to offer free transfers? While WOW suffers from this problem, I'm not aware of any other game that is in any danger of having overcrowded servers right now.
Blizzard charges people for voluntary transfers in most cases except to alleviate overpopulation.
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Bliz often offers free character migration, in order to balance the population of two (or more) servers. Usually, the migration will be from an old (overpopulated) server to a new one.
Does SOE’s MMOs face the same problem of overpopulation? If yes, there should definitely be offered free character migration.
$$$
SOE won't offer free transfers as long as there are people willing to pay for the service. The same applies to increasing the number of characters per server. As long as people are willing to pay for additional accounts, SOE will never see a need to increase the number of characters you can have on each server. Severely limiting the number of characters per server made sense in the pre-NGE days when the economy was 100% player driven. However, in today's game, the two character limit is just another weakness players can point to when comparing SWG to games such as WoW, City of Heroes/Villains, etc. One would think SOE would be trying to eliminate these weaknesses but that's just not going to happen until people stop paying them for the services.
Well let's see...WoW has 10,000,000 players. SWG has something like 12.
SOE doesn't do stuff like that. It's just not their way. Their whole managment team treats the customer like the enemy.
SOE has absolutely offered free character transfers for the exact same reasons that WoW is doing it right now. Get your facts straight.
Before WoW, there was this game called Everquest, and they moved people for free multiple times, my toons included.
I Moved from Povar to Legends for free
I Moved from Legends back to Povar for free
I Moved from Povar to Morden Rasp for free
I Moved from Morden Rasp to Stromm for free
- oh yeah-
In Vanguard free moves offered to any server during the merge
Nice try though. Too bad you expose yourself as a blind hater when you assume SOE does the worst, when in fact, they have done the exact thing you praise Blizzard for and for the same reasons.
Except those times they did.
They don't do stuff like that....except for those times they did.
Except those times they did.
Odd. I have played this game since August 2003 and do not remember them ever offering free server transfers. Of course the service wasn't even available back in those early days so it would have been difficult for them to offer it for free back then. In any event, I am not sure what you're experience has been but I recall having to pay out the ass to move two of my characters from one account to another the one and only time I ever used their service a couple of months after the NGE went live. Perhaps they've recently offered this service for free but I know they never once offered it for free when I played the game.
What does that have to do with the price of tea in china or SWG?
Does your rant about Everquest or Vanguard have much to do with the subject of SWG? No, not really.
Once upon a time... when Bria was overpopulated, SOE offered free transfer from Bria.
Bria was so full of players that it crashed almost every day.
But again, that was Pre-cu. I guess there are less subscriptions today in the entire game,
than it was players on Bria in the old days.
The only time I think SOE should offer free transfer is when they come up with a way to merge servers, and at the current state of transfers is right now I don't see that going too well. I've heard of guilds shelling out hundreds of dollars to transfer all their chars to another galaxy because the server they were on was dead, at $50 with items a pop with high risk of losing items and datapad items (and no help from GM to recover), I think the price needs to come down alot.
What does that have to do with the price of tea in china or SWG?
Does your rant about Everquest or Vanguard have much to do with the subject of SWG? No, not really.
And does your rant about my post have anything to do with the OP's question? Sure this is the SWG forum, but he decided to broaden his hatred beyond SWG, in fact not even mention that game and make a false blanket statement about SOE.
Look man, I didn't rant. I have misgivings about SOE just like everyone else here. But I am intelligent enough to be skeptical for the right reasons and not made up reasons like 'SOE is evil because they don't allow free transfers' - which is simply not true. The OP ranted, I responded with the facts, I am labelled the 'ranter'....again, all you do is expose your predjudice. Hate SOE for real reasons, don't start making stuff up.
ummm.....the OP needs to be more precise, he specifically said 'SOE has never allowed merges', not 'SOE has never for Star Wars'.......sorry for addressing what he actually said.
I guess if the OP hadn't made such a broad statement, my response would have been, 'there has never been a need for free merges in that game, pre-CU/pre-NGE there was a dismal population in the game, not necessary - post pre-CU/post-NGE there was an even more dismal population really not necessary -like many others have said.
Blizzard has a need for free merges in WoW, SOE doesn't - there's your answer.
Except those times they did.
Odd. I have played this game since August 2003 and do not remember them ever offering free server transfers. Of course the service wasn't even available back in those early days so it would have been difficult for them to offer it for free back then. In any event, I am not sure what you're experience has been but I recall having to pay out the ass to move two of my characters from one account to another the one and only time I ever used their service a couple of months after the NGE went live. Perhaps they've recently offered this service for free but I know they never once offered it for free when I played the game.
I played from 1999 to 2005, maybe it happened before your time? But I don't think so. You should have been there at least for the server merges, where they offered free character moves. Were the servers already expanded when you started playing, or had they already been merged? Because I can't remember what year they added all of them, but at that time merges were allowed also.
edit: thinking about it, I know the service for character transfers was up by 2002 because, introducing a friend in that year, he wanted to play on a pvp server, and I transfered toons (naked was all they allowed at the time) to Tallon Zek. So the service was available in your time. The free transfers happened after 2002, because I remember being pissed at paying 50$ for a transfer and then getting a free transfer a few months later. That would have been when they added servers like Morden Rasp, and then again when they remerged servers after WoW/EQ2 came out.
The only reason I remember this is because my guild kept taking advantage of the free transfers trying to find a low populated server where we wouldn't have to fight for raids (pre-instanced Time). Perhaps you and your guild never felt a need for a transfer and so that nugget passed you by.
The free transfers off of Bria, offered because it was crashing on a daily basis, were couched in terms that meant that established players were basically better off rolling a new toon somewhere eles. Force Sensitive, by chance? No transfer for you! Of course, an established crafter with resources wasn't eligible, either, and if you're a CH, forget about it...can't take your pets with you.
So why even bother?
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
SOE offered free character transfers on Everquest to the server of your choice when they merged the servers.
During the 6 months I played Warcraft, Blizzard never offered a free transfers on the server I played. They did offer free transfers from certain crowded servers. Apparently, the 1 to 2 hour login queue at peak time on my server was not considered crowded.
I would say that SOE and Blizzard are on a par with their transfer service.
The only time SOE ever offered free transfers was from Bria to another server.
This was back in Summer 2005, when Bria was crashing all the time due to overpopulation.
Funny that they've not had that problem ever again since... November 2005.
SOE wont offer free char transfers because the servers are almost devoid of any sentient beings playing it ,free server transfers have the purpose of giving the ability for people to transfer to a less populated server to free up bandwidth on the other server and to help build up a decent population on the target server.
Soe started the transfer system because people wanted to be able to start new toons on there favourite server when the nge hit, but charging there costumers for the privelage was a bad idea, now because of this they will never merge the servers and if there as insane as most people think and they do the cries of the "current" player base will match that of the cries of when the nge hit, sony will get a lot of flack and a hell of a lot of server transfer refund requests
it's only selective highly crowded servers whom are giving these services, it's an old service that's been around for long but else it costs if you want to transfer your chars to or from another server that's not on the free transfer list.
These free services are also created more often, ever since blizzard got the paid transfer into the game, people transferring to a high pop server, which ends with it giving people queues, where blizzard then have to make these free transfers to the servers.
this might happen to SWG aswell then, a nice cycle that might end in a very crowded server.
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$OE is to cheap to lol they need all the cash they can get
For SWG? because of an amazing lack of players on on most servers? $ would be the sign your looking for.and the fact after everyone transfered to full servers they would need to pull the plug on the rest, that would look bad.
Agreed..Blizz do charge if you want to move server on your own..though free if the servers over populated
I also played on Bloodfin pre-cu when it was so populated that it crashed. SWG definitely does not have the overpopulation problem now that they used to, and they certainly don't have the problem that WoW does. Once a couple weeks ago when I tried to login to a heavy server on WoW, I was number 104 on the waiting list lol.
As for why this is a hot button topic now, people have asked for free transfers TO a server with people on it because there server is empty. Smedley told players at the last round of summits that he'd fast track server mergers. SOE hasn't done mergers, and they haven't offered free transfers. In fact what they have done to address this problem is sweet diddley squat (i.e. Bubkus). In light of the long-standing UNDER-population, and Smeds promise to fast track a solution, players have good reason (again) to be pissed off.
This isn't "blind-hate" as someone said in an earlier post. This is once again SOE not fixing a longstanding issue (about 2 years this past November), even after inviting people to Las Vegas etc. and promising them that they would address it. SOE now has a long history of wining and dining players, telling them what they want to hear, and then either doing whatever the hell they want, or doing nothing. People are sick and tired of it, and they're not so stupid that they fail to notice the pattern.