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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