WoW Finally Has Server/Faction Sale
In a move that I have been suggesting literally forever, Blizzard is slashing all character services by 50%… for one week.
Still has a 50,000g transfer cap, unfortunately.
The prices break down as follows:
- Server Transfer = $12.50
- Faction Transfer = $15.00
- Server + Faction Transfer = $27.50
- Name/Appearance Change = $7.50
- Race Change = $12.50
If there is not a clearer sign that Blizzard believes WoW still exists as luxury entertainment on a level all to its own, I don’t know what it is. Well, you know, beyond the fact that as absurd as these prices appear to be, given the proper distance from the game, they are normally 50% higher.
I mean… Christ. Is this the same MMO that lost 1.3 million subscribers last quarter? That’s a rhetorical question because of course it is. Otherwise Blizzard would have no cause to not still charge people $25/$55 to move off dead realms Blizzard kills with extreme negligence.
In other news, I just bought EVE Online for $4.98 on Steam. You know, for a rainy day.
Posted on June 6, 2013, in WoW and tagged 50% Off, Blizzard, EVE, Faction Transfer, No-Pop Realms, Server Transfer, Steam, WoW. Bookmark the permalink. 22 Comments.
In An Age 
As far as I know you can transfer 1 million gold in a guild bank of a level 2 guild. You just have to pay for the guild transfer too.
Besides that, normally you put things on sale before they get obsolete. I’m wondering if they will go away with the outdated realm model with the next add-on and merge everything in battlegroup-CRZs.
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With how conservative Blizzard is with even incredibly obvious things like auto-grouping, I would be shocked and amazed if they went with a server-less solution even if the population continued sinking by 1 million per quarter until the end. There is simply too much tied into “server firsts” and such.
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Someone still cares about “server firsts”? For progression all which matters is found on wowprogress…..
And they are already heading serverless, if I’m not mistaken the challenge mode dungeons have a global ladder in addition to a server one.
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> Besides that, normally you put things on sale before they get obsolete.
Patch 5.4 adds Virtual Realms, which will essentially merge lower population realms. This will allow you to keep playing on your current realm, but do arenas, raids, and dungeons with people in your realm group, as well as use a merged Auction House and trade with other players in your realm group.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/3274-Patch-5-4-PTR-Build-17056
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Ouch I never saw that it was so expensive. They really DON’T want you to do it…. which is strange, because it potentially means lost customers. At the same time, if they do it they clearly know that it’s not that many lost customers.
It’s true that if you want to move to a new realm to join friends you can level up very very fast, and now with the inter-server grouping it’s slowly getting irrelevant, but still.
The 50k gold cap is very easy to circumvent: buy some expensive stuff and bring it with you, even if it will probably take some research on the undermine journal to make sure you don’t bring something which is worthless on the destination realm.
Me, I’m still waiting for the “death of the server”, it seems like we’re slowly getting there.
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If you’re liking Planetside 2, EVE is probably going to be for you. The pics you post of the squadrons of planes bombing someone? That’s a small fleet action in eve.
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Right, but I’ve been playing Ps2 for over 200+ hours now… by myself. As far as I’m aware, the solo EVE game experience is, well, obviously not ideal. But I’ll jump off that bridge when I get to it, which won’t be for a while.
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For what it’s worth, my current EVE bender has inspired a bunch of friends from past games to also give it a shot so we have a little (uber casual) corporation going. I find the game works much better with people, for the knowledge transfer if nothing else. When/If you decide to try it, give me a buzz!
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Speaking of Planetside 2, I’d be interested to know how you feel about the current Vanu pop situation on Mattherson.
‘Cause I play TR and it’s pretty much killed my interest in the game this past week since I don’t get to play at eastern prime time on the weekdays.
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There’s a number of high profile EVE bloggers who are in the various larger organizations of the game. Might be a good way to get involved.
Get hooked up with faction warfare (Poetic Stanzel is in fweddit fighting for the Gallente militia, for example)
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@Attic Lion
I’ll probably talk about the whole “4th Faction” deal sometime next week.
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Hadn’t you already tried EVE before? Maybe that was someone else.
IMO the bigger problem with WoW transfer costs is that it is additive per character. IMO they can keep it 25 dollars but allow you to transfer all characters off a server at once to a single destination server. Then just make server transfers off dead servers free for 3 months, at the end of which time the dead server will be shut down.
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You might be thinking of my Dust 514 experience, which is a sub-set of EVE in a manner of speaking.
But, yes, the additive costs is what kills this for me. I have a big stack of alts all with max professions that I would be 100% unwilling to allow to languish on a dead server. And it isn’t even really about their professions so much as it is about my ability to hop on an alt and get a different gameplay experience. Bored with warlock PvP? Hop on the rogue! My motivation to keep multiple charactes geared enough to be functional is dependant on my ability to pool my resources.
Given how dead Auchindoun-US is as a server (among others), it is a double-slap in the face to both do nothing to support these servers plus charge out the ass to leave them. When you’re into WoW though, you are a captive audience that Blizzard has by the short hairs.
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I have a post queued about this tomorrow. My first reaction to the sale was “darn, my sub just expired before this started”. But then I took a step back and realised, why should they get away with charging such stupid money for an automated process? In 5+ years of playing WoW I did one faction change and that was that. I do know people still playing today that have lost count of the number of server transfers and faction/race changes they’ve done – so Blizz will keep charging while they can get away with it I guess. Is this literally the first time they’ve discounted such services though or is it just very rare…?
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I always felt the same about the prices…even on sale they are ridiculous. On sale they are basically on par with other games, but still…they want $10 for having a computer facilitate the player changing a few database entries, or effectively copy/pasting them to a different one.
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Those prices might have been justified back in the day, when it looked like they had actual CustServ employees facilitate the transfer process, e.g. back when it took 1-2 days. Of course, nowadays the process is 100% automated given how you can transfer with no delay at 3am.
Man, it’s amazing the kind of bullshit you can come to accept as reasonable when you are knee-deep in the game. I mean, I used to buy into the argument that transfers needed to be expensive to discourage people from “abusing” the service. As if all the people still loyal to WoW but stuck on dead servers were acceptable sacrifices to combat some illusionary harm. “We wouldn’t want people just transferring left and right!” Because…?
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I’m pretty sure this is the first time it’s ever been discounted, unless they ran a deal prior to Patch 2.3 or so, which is when I started playing hardcore.
I too have only used the service once, which was when I transferred the Priest toon I was using to RAF my Rogue up to 60 over to my main account.
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When did you buy EVE Online? Steam is showing me $19.95.
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Sorry, it was the Mid-Week Madness deal, which appears to have ended at some point this morning. Apparently Green Man Gaming still has it up for 75% off though.
P.S. If you haven’t used GMG before and are outside the UK, I recommend paying via PayPal. The first time I used my credit card info to pay, my bank froze my account without telling me, due to a “foreign transaction,” aka they thought someone stole my card. Paying via Paypal gets around that nonsense.
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Is there a way to sign up for a midweek madness notification email? I took a quick look around the steam client and web site without success?
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If you add a game to your Wishlist, Steam will send you an email when it goes on sale.
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Well, one week later and they are actually announcing server merges! Except they’ll be called “virtual realms” – still, sounds like interesting stuff for you…
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