backseatdev

It seems like many people I know are unhappy with their current server and attempts to move to a different server are all receiving the same response from customer server, “unsubscribe for 3 months and you will be granted a free transfer to any server”. They then incorrectly lash out at the service/support people who are just enforcing the policy. Everyone has a reason why they should be the exception to the rule, but it even one person gets around the policies in place, you can easily imagine the chaos that would come of that.

Obviously a company having a policy where people need to stop paying them for a period of time in order to solve their problem is mind boggling, but there is a reason for it and it does solve potential problems that can arise, I just think it solves it in a crude way that could have improvements or additional options.

If character transfers were allowed for everyone that wanted them, Bioware-Mythic would have no control over server populations and would not even be able to “attempt” to monitor and regulate the gaming experience they want to provide on their servers. Even if it was time restricted, you would still immediately have a lot of high end guilds decide to pile on one server, which snowballs to include alliance/following guilds as well. Even if they detect at some point that people are piling onto a particular server, how can they stop it or cut it off? They would ophan people from their friends/guilds and that would be even worse of a situation.

Any solution to transfers that could be considered by Bioware-Mythic would have to include something that shows a serious comittment by the player that they are not just server bouncing. The demand for a solution to this is definately out there so I hope that ideas and options are being explored.

A few ideas I would kick around:

Allow players to purchase ($$) an unlock for their account for 24hrs, allowing them to move characters between servers in that timeframe.

Pros: -You do not lose a sub for 3 months, and with people dead set on transfering you would end up making what amounts to more then a full boxed product in revenue.
-Most people would happily pay a fee to transfer to get back with friends etc..

Cons:-You lose some control, because assuming you have a lot of players with a bunch of extra money, they could immediately start moving around. The fee amount would need to be carefully chosen.
-You also have an issue with how some players would perceive this. In times like now, where many players feel their servers are unplayable, announcing a transfering fee just seems like the server issues were not solved so that they could grab at money for transfers. I honestly feel for them for this situation, as it would be an amazing solution, but only once servers do another round of population balancing.

Require a player to level a character up to level 25? 40? on their intended destination server and side, which would unlock 1 – single use transfer to that server. Possibly even overwrite/replace the character they leveled up?

Pros:
-You dont lose a sub for 3 months.
-You have the player show a commitment to their intended server.
-Population stats for servers -may- remain more reliable/predictable due to having to roll and level up a character on that server.

Cons:
-None really at this point. It would seem a bit meaningless to some players, but I think most players set on transfering would choose this before unsubbing for 3 months.