Please Let us Have Free Server Transfers

I'm bringing this up because I have several friends who all bought the game. Some of us came from legacy servers and applied to have our characters transferred. At launch, only some of us made the transfer while some were stuck on the old servers.

Since then our other friends have been unable to join the new servers (with legacy friends). Now we're scattered across various servers and the only way for us to play together, is to pay to have our characters moved (when the server transfer service starts).

If you consider the amount of money we've all paid to play together, please allow us to transfer to the same server without having to fork over more money.

Bumping this thread... would be cool to hear if more people are having the same problem.

Though I would disagree with a permanent free transfer, I do agree due to the technical difficulties of making characters the last 2 weeks that once everything is working as intended people who were put in this position(as many of my friends were as well) should indeed have the option to move just one more time.

Overpopulated servers would just unbalance even more(pay to transfer does deter imbalances sometimes), especially if it was free. I think it's tricky to how that should work personally.

We are in 2013. Free transfers are becoming the norm.

And they are waaaaay easier to implement than cross-server partying... (which is becoming the norm too)

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Originally Posted by Nipa

We are in 2013. Free transfers are becoming the norm.

And they are waaaaay easier to implement than cross-server partying... (which is becoming the norm too)

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Each game engine is different, so you cannot say what is easier to implement. Norm yes, easy - TBD.

Free transfers have never been the norm. Only when fixing under populated servers. Not sure you're on this planet.

Maybe if it was limited to characters created before such and such date as a 1 time free transfer due to the server limitations, like have the creation cut off be the 1st of September (so mainly just early access/first week creations)

Not sure how unbalanced things will be, people will leave servers as people move into them, and as always with time in any mmo, population levels vary.

The free transfer should only be to select low population servers.

That way is win-win:
-Groups of friends/LSs/Free Companies can coordinate to move enmasse lowering population of overpopulated worlds and finally being together
-Individuals that have no attachments can move as well easing stress on overpopulated worlds as well and should clean up performance/login issues for them
-All worlds would have a better chance of a good middle ground population
-The largest LSs and Free Companies would likely stay in place, but with the smaller ones and some individuals leaving then the odds-and-ends members would at least finally be able to create a character on the world they want to be on

Yeah I don't expect it to be free forever - just free so my friends and I can sync up on the same server. I don't really care which server it is, as long as we can play together.

Yeah, this would be nice. I'm in roughly the same situation; myself and roughly 10-12 other people, but we're spread across 2-3 servers because of character creation locks (because Reddit has basically taken Gilgamesh for its own), and we'd like to be able to actually all play together on the same server without having to all start over. Heck, it doesn't even have to be free transfers, to be honest. Just info on when transfers are going to be available would be nice.

I think players should be given a single free transfer. I created my character is Beta Phase 4. When the game opened my server was shut down almost immediately and my friends who purchased the game could not join me.

I'm honestly just hoping for server transfers opening up this month...

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Originally Posted by Strychnine

Free transfers have never been the norm. Only when fixing under populated servers. Not sure you're on this planet.

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Every current MMO has either free transfers (Rift) or cross-server partying (WoW, GW 2, TSW).

i agree yoshi p ball is in your court

I don't mind paying either but some people feel as though it's not fair to ask for more money to just be able to play with friends you know?

The service fee should cover the users ability to get settled in. Anything above and beyond that, yeah, we should have to pay. There needs to be some sort of barrier to stop massive floods of people moving around constantly.

Even if they gave us the option to move to a brand new server for free similar to what WOW did for high population servers.

I've said from the get go, the only support for free transfers are to low population servers only. Anybody can apply for the free server transfer, but only have a list of low pop servers to transfer to. This allows for groups of people to go to the same server if they really want to play with each other. Allowing free transfers to high pop servers will not go well at all, as it will empty out low/med pop servers, and cause long line ups for people trying to get on the server everybody is moving to. If you and your friends want to play on a high pop server together, either roll new characters, or pay a fee to transfer there.

I for one do not want to be stuck on a low population because everybody wants to play on a high population server and there is nothing stopping them from moving there.

Something needs to be done about this. I have two friends who can't play with me after buying their boxed copies (and being excited to play after watching me play) and I'm not exactly in the mood to restart on a new server and start over just because SE can't seem to handle more character creations. Not to mention the server that my friends got in on are now also locked from character creation.

Maybe we can get a system similar to FFXI where I'd give a passcode to a friend of mine and he could use it to come to my server. Maybe one or two passcodes per person or something.

All I know is it's been kind of ridiculous not being able to play with my friends in a game that is supposed to support that above all else.

I think in light of recent server issues and upgrades, once they finish their server restructuring, that offering a free one-time server transfer per chr would be appropriate.

Yoshi addressed this today, server transfers will be up asap. #2 priority under adding more servers and strengthening current ones.

I agree completely that there should be a free transfer in light of what's happened since launch. With servers that filled up so quickly, it was hard for a lot of people to get on the same server as their friends. I think it's only right that a free transfer is offered when it finally becomes available.

The sad thing is that people would still pay more money to transfer, I know I would... but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be furious while clicking "submit payment", because at that point I would feel SE is a sleezy company, as all these issues with the servers and blocking character creation were not intended, nor announced ahead of people paying for the game in the first place. This is entirely on SE to make it right.

Yes please, free servers transfers! I've got friends on another server I'd like to play with and couldn't because of the character creation lock. It's not fair to make us pay for it just to play with our friends. We wouldn't even have to consider world transfers if we were able to create characters on the same worlds from the very beginning. I've paid for the CE and now you want more money from me to play with my friends?

Yeah, clever business ploy... I see what this is all about...

If you disagree with a companies decision and perpetuate it by giving them money you aren't helping the situation, you are in fact 100% encouraging them to continue this behavior.

I agree with the OP and I also think that server transfers should be governed by time, not money.

Rift, for example, offers free server transfers that are instant and you can do them directly inside the game. The restrictions placed on the transfers are mainly a capped amount of money that can be transferred and a time limit until you're able to transfer again after you do.

I think that in a free to play game, charging for server transfers is perfectly acceptable but considering we're paying a monthly subscription I think we should be able to play on whichever server we want and that it should be as easy to connect with friends as possible. Rift also allows cross-server play as well as cross-server chat so even if you are on separate servers you can play/chat with friends.

I'm not trying to turn this game into Rift, simply using it as an example, when these services were added Rift was still a subscription based game and that was why those services were implemented for free.

Part of the "problem" is there are too many people on the launch servers. Maybe after "the free month" the population will drop a little, but there are plenty more ready to play. Even just hours after increasing server capacity 50% Wednesday, SE said they had to put the character creation block back in place because so many new characters were being created so fast.

I can see free transfers to the newest worlds (the ones coming after Famfrit, Lich and Pandaemonium), but spots on the existing worlds are in very limited supply. Maybe SE could implement a World Pass program, where a friend generates a code so you can create a character or transfer to that nearly full world, but even those might have to be in limited supply. If not limited by money, then at least a long waiting list.

There are many groups and families now split across worlds. I hope SE considers the situation and can give some guidance and remedy. But there are also very large groups (like Reddit, or RPC) who may have little hope of ever getting "everyone" onto just one world (or even 2).

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Originally Posted by Moheeheeko

If you disagree with a companies decision and perpetuate it by giving them money you aren't helping the situation, you are in fact 100% encouraging them to continue this behavior.

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You are correct; however, the question people would ask themselves would be, "Is it worth more money to play with my friends?" And because this game is actually quite good (server issues aside) too many people will answer yes to this question. This would make it worth while for SE to charge for transfers even though it's morally wrong, and this is what I fear.

They should definitely make atleast the first transfer for free, and it give it a week time frame. I'm in the same boat--couldn't join my friends legacy server so I'm stuck playing alone until they bring the feature up.