Scott Johnson and Randy Jordan of The Instance podcast struck some geek gold when they had a chance to digitally sit down with Tom Chilton of Blizzard Entertainment! You can find the interview in their latest episode, downloadable at their website.
Although most of the conversation revolved around the new Blizzard Pet Store, and it eventually evolved into Blizzard’s pay services. Right now, we have Name Change, Faction Change, Race Change, and Server Transfer. Chilton then began to put his two cents in about a possible future service. This is where my ears perked up:
“…as far as other services that we’d like to see in the future, there’s not a whole lot that we’ve really talked about at this point. The one that I think that’s kind of obvious, that stands out, is that it’s a real pain right now to move your guild from one server to another. So, I think we’d like in the future to develop a way to do, like, a guild transfer from one server to another. So that you can move your guild bank and all that kind of stuff at the same time. And I think that’s going to become more important in Cataclysm, because, in Cataclysm, we’re introducing the concept of guild leveling, and all that kind of stuff. And, that would present an even bigger barrier to moving your guild from one server to another, if suddenly you lost all your levels and all that, because you had to disband and re-form your guild. So, to me, that one kind of makes sense, although it’s not something that we, you know,…actively have people working on right now. This is something that I think is a likely candidate for the future.”
Now, I’m a HUGE fan of the guild leveling process. As I’ve stated before, I’m a huge fan of a family-style guild and the aspect of raiding as a team sport. I think it’ll be a huge benefit to the cohesiveness of guilds in the game. It definitely discourages “guild hoppers”, since the speculation is that you’ll be able to have guild-only crafting patterns that you can only wear if you’re in the guild that crafts it. If you leave that guild while wearing a full set of guild-only regalia, it goes into the guild bank for another guild member to wear.
The idea of a Guild Transfer service takes the stress off any established guild to stay on its server. You, as a guild, can put all your effort into tweaking your guild. If you decide it’s time to move to greener pastures, you’re not penalized for it.
A couple questions come to mind:
- Does cost depend on guild size?
- What about a guild with a lot of alts?
- Will the charge be per account, per character, or just one lump sum?
- Can there be “half-transfers”? Say only half want to move, is one side penalized?
Now, if only I could get Unpossible and Team Sport on the same server. Then again, Zul’jin is a PvE server and Nazjatar is a PvP server, and both guilds like where they are. =(
How do you feel about the speculation of a Guild Transfer Service? Is it something you would look into doing?
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I guess the cost may as well depend on number of characters transferring because let’s face it, Blizz ain’t giving out such thing for free. I would presume having some “master xfer ID” that members would put into the form while initiating the tranfer so it is sorted who moves and who stays.
The ideal way is that there will be cost of something like, let’s say, 10xtransfer fee for guild of any size, and it would be probably divided amongst all guilded characters per account to pay. That’d mean you have to kick out all who won’t move.
The partial move question brings one important question – will it be solely GMs initiative, or would at least say 50% of guild have to agree? While I guess this concern is unreal to come true, it may eventually lead to one individual moving away with full guildbank, name changing and whoa, here we go. And we know Blizz never deals with “bank ninjaing”.
So, apart from the fee and technical issues – what are the checks to ensure this won’t happen?
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I would think it would apply to the GM and the guild bank/levels/spec? only and not all the toons/accounts associated. I would think it would be up to the individual player to then also pay their own transfer fee and under their own initiative to transfer and rejoin the guild again once moved. I don’t see how Blizz could give the control to the GM or 50% of the players to decide for the bunch but, I can see Blizz saying the guild belongs to the GM so the bank & levels are theirs to do with as they wise.
In the end, the GM already has sole power to disband the guild regardless of their players’ wants. I would think Blizz would go along the same ideals and say it’s solely up to the GM whether they transfer the guild (as in the structure) or not.
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I agree that a guild transfer service would likely only transfer the GM and the guild as a structure. It would then be up to the members of the guild transfer over on their own and be re-invited.
That said, I would love an option where you could tranfer a guild including the members to a new server for one price. On my main server I uses all 10 player slots. Of those 10, I play 6, and the other 4 are bank alts with a lot of stuff. Transfering it all to a new server would be a big headache. If I could assign them all to a single guild and transfer them in mass that would be awesome.
The other thing I wonder about is the gold restriction on transfers. Currently you can only transfer 20,000 gold with a max level toon. If you have over that you have to buy random high value objects and sell them when you get to the other side. This probably wouldn’t be an issue most of the time, but most of the more successful raiding guilds have Hundreds of thousands of gold. Putting a cap on those would be a big issue.
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Bring it on. I’m a man of many options. Whether I plan to make use of them or not (at this point I don’t) I still like to know it’s there if I ever do have a need.
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