Transfer Restrictions and Roleplayers

[Oaken]

Restricting transfers to high population servers will not alleviate congestion during the SB launch. Hundreds, if not thousands, of inactive players are likely to return for SB. Restricting another 500-1000 individuals willing to pay $18 to play with friends on high population servers will not alleviate this problem. It will only divide friends and potentially damage long-running player communities.

It is extremely amusing how many PVEers have not considered that SE could have resolved the alleged population woes (which are actually signs of a vibrant, healthy, and active server) on high-population servers by implementing a variety of other measures that don't divide friends and harm established communities.

For example, SE could: (1) assess a higher server transfer fee for transfer to high-population servers and make transfers from those servers free; (2) provide additional in-game incentives to encourage players to transfer from high-population servers; (3) devote additional resources to banning bots and RMT schemes; (4) raise monthly subscription rates to compensate for the cost of maintaining high population servers; (5) designate official roleplay, hardcore raiding, and special interest servers to encourage player groups to transfer from over-populated worlds; (6) implement anti-idling features that disconnect players who idle for extended amounts of time; and/or (7) reallocate server resources to concentrate players on fewer servers, and divert resources previously used to sustain small, dead servers to supporting high population servers.

Instead, SE took the easy way out and implemented an overly broad and ineffective "remedy." Please take this into consideration before you hop on the "restrictions are the only way to solve the problem" hive-mind bandwagon. Thanks.