10/02 Realms & free Character Moves

Previous thread: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=12424324058&sid=1

New Player realms
Normal/PvE: Vek'nilash
PvP: Haomarush

Free Character Moves (FCM)
The free Character Moves below are available until February 16th. To use a free Character Move, please login to your Account Management and select Character Move, or click on the following link:
https://www.wow-europe.com/character/character-move.html

Please note: FCMs are opened based on realm population tracking and analysis and not by request. If you're looking for a specific Character Move (from realm A to realm B), you are in most cases better off using Paid Character Transfer, or you could end up waiting for a very long time.

PvP Realms

Alliance only:
From: Burning Legion, Darksorrow, Frostmane, Grim Batol, Ravencrest, Sylvanas
To: Deathwing, Karazhan, Kor'gall, Lightning's Blade, Shattered Halls, Talnivarr

Horde only:
From: Al'Akir, Crushridge, Drak'thul, Kazzak, Outland, Magtheridon, Shattered Hand, Stormscale, Twilight's Hammer
To: Trollbane

RP Realms

From: Argent Dawn
To: Darkmoon Faire, Earthen Ring, Moonglade, Steamwheedle Cartel, The Sha'tar

PvP to PvE Realm Conversion FCM
The free Character Moves below are available until March 10th:

From: Vek'nilash
To: Haomarush, Trollbane, Zenedar
For more information on this Realm Conversion, please check this link:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=12304662580

Paid Character Transfers (PCT)
All English realms follow the regular PCT rules, found here:
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/faq/paidcharactertransfer.html

Q u o t e:
It says FCM is up from Shattered Hand but I'm afraid we can't chose from our charachters on the "available charachters screen". Any idea why?

We're investigating -- thanks for the notification.

Q u o t e:
Transfers from Darksorrow to Shattered halls are not working. please fix.

Thanks for letting us know. Seems we might have confused the server gnomes. We'll investigate. :-)

Update: Darksorrow was unfortunately not intended to be an source realm for Alliance FCM this week. We apologise for the inconvenience and we have updated the original post to reflect this.

Q u o t e:
Thanks for fast reply :)

No problem. Hopefully it is fixed now. Can you please retry?

Q u o t e:
Open Horde migration on Ravencrest..

"Please note: free Character Moves are opened based on realm population tracking and analysis and not by request. If you're looking for a specific Character Move (from realm A to realm B), you are in most cases better off using Paid Character Transfer, or you could end up waiting for a very long time. "

Q u o t e:

So we have to suffer the lag because of your imbalance problem whilst Alliance get to migrate off for FREE?

I've paid to play horde from Alliance on RC and I'm sick of it so why should I have to stay here whilst alliance get a free pass of the realm, don't see how that is fair.

We realise you might be frustrated by lag, but this thread is about realm population balancing and not about latency. Ravencrest has a dominance of Alliance that we are attempting to address. By far the majority of EU English PvP realms need more Alliance players, and they have to come from somewhere. I hope you can keep this in mind and keep the thread on topic. Thanks in advance.

Q u o t e:
Darksorrow transfer isnt working!

As replied above, we were investigating. We've now finished and it seems Darksorrow was incorrectly shown as a source realm for Alliance this week. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Q u o t e:
Emeriss next, how long do we have to suffer?

Please check our previous threads. No realm is forgotten and that includes Emeriss. Just because we aren't using FCM for a realm doesn't mean we don't still have it in mind.

Q u o t e:
5th time asking I think over 5 weeks :P

I want to roll on a RP or RP-PvP realm but I dont knwo what to choose and usually if I want to roll on a new realm i would choose a reccomended one, but now im finding myself scouting all the RP forums and realm forums trying to decided and I just cant im totally over-thinking it, How come you dont include RP realms in the new player list? When i do eventually roll on a RP realm will i be totally alone leveling meeting no one on my travels because you havent got any up for new players?

Already replied in a previous thread. Please check back at what was said.

Q u o t e:
any plans on having darksorrow to shattered halls xfers up any time soon ? some of our members went to shattered halls from darksorrow and now the rest are hanging around because they thought the transfer was going to be free :<

It's unfortunate that they didn't do so while the Character Move was open, and I really can't see a way around that. We review the free Character Moves weekly so they really can only be depended on being open between the dates we state. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, though.

Q u o t e:
If this is true, then it should be possible for our members to still transfer to another FCM. As you said yourself, " We review the free Character Moves weekly so they really can only be depended on being open between the dates we state." The date was stated as the 16th February, so people should still be able to move from one FCM server to another before that date. As Darksorrow was listed on the login screen to move to any other FCM server, then it still should be possible to move to the desired FCM server. Due to this problem with Blizzard, some of our members will have to pay to move server, which is unfair, as we all picked the free migration server, instead of paying to join any other server of our choice. This means that we are essentially paying for a free character migration.

What we were referring to was last week's FCM from Darksorrow which was clearly stated to close on the 9th. So please re-read my comments with that in mind, because if some people chose to use the FCM which was stated to close on the 9th and some did not, with the hope that it would be extended, then they are taking a risk that it might not be extended.

We don't want to make promises here, but we will consider the possibility of opening a new FCM from Darksorrow. But keep in mind if we do make a new FCM from Darksorrow, it would be ill advised to repeat the mistaken expectation from last week's FCM that it would be extended for longer than the date shown. We absolutely cannot guarantee that it would.

Q u o t e:
Missing the window is one thing, but it clearly stated on the annoucements that darksorrow would have free FCM to Shattered Halls until the 16th feb and did so for a good 24 hours.

That is you stating the availability of a service and failing to deliver.

Yes nobody is denying that the messaging clearly indicated the FCM was open when it definitely wasn't. Please read my above post -- as I said, we will consider opening a new FCM from Darksorrow.

Q u o t e:
I also want to point out that it stated in the login screen that the window would be open until the 16th of februari which was not the case, therefor this little "problem".

Actually it didn't. You're referring to last week's FCM to Sunstrider which ended on the 9th:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=12424324058&sid=1

We cannot make promises on future possible free Character Moves and we unfortunately are not able to do free Character Moves on request. We evaluate realm population constantly and each week we review potential free Character Moves based on realm population and faction ratios.

Trollbane is the attention for our Horde only free Character Moves this week; we are hoping for improved faction ratio on this realm and it has room for a larger community of active players. We will continue to review the options for Horde only destinations in future weeks, and this may of course include Sunstrider again.

The original post has been updated with the following detail:

PvP to PvE Realm Conversion FCM
The free Character Moves below are available until March 10th:

From: Vek'nilash
To: Haomarush, Trollbane, Zenedar
For more information on this Realm Conversion, please check this link:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=12304662580

Q u o t e:
Why is f from free not in caps??!!!??I find this quite offensive.

I've changed it in the thread subject; it irked me too. ;-) Other references to it will remain with a lowercase f, as the service is called "Character Moves" on the Account Management screen; this process we offer to help improve the state of our realms is simply that same account option but for free.

Regarding your query about Frostmane, I would need to reference data at the office to be able to comment. So I will see if I can take a look tomorrow.

The original post has now been updated to include Darksorrow as a source realm for Alliance only FCMs. These five new FCMs will be open until the 16th of February. This has been done to rectify the fact that we incorrectly stated they were open on the 10th when they were not.

Q u o t e:
when is blizzard going allow free transfers off nordrassil with the amount off insane lag their lately.
its kindy obvious that they need free transfer to lag free servers.
if cant least do that then least add a queue to nordrassil so we stop lagging.

Nordrassil is not at all a candidate for free Character Moves. It is one of our most faction balanced PvE realms (only slightly higher Alliance dominance than Draenor and Chamber of Aspects) and the population is very healthy. We do not consider a realm like this to be a concern for population or faction balance reasons, which are the main reasons we would ever consider free Character Moves. Latency/lag is a different issue and is something we are investigating for all affected realms right now. We realise latency is frustrating and that is why we are very actively investigating this issue with the aim of resolving it.

Q u o t e:
Why don't you try to transfer whole guilds? I think that's one of the bigger issues with Free Character Migrations, if you as a single person or guild wants to transfer, you will likely run into a variety of population issues. (Bad AH prices, bad instance/pvp queues, fewer pug raids, etc.)

As a guild you'll also lose your guildbank, and you'll probably have issues transferring it all due to transfer limits.

So if you approach some guilds, and transfer their guild in its entirety, then i think you'd have better luck getting the transfer quotas fixed.

This is actually quite an old suggestion and obviously something we've considered. However such a new service would require development time and I am currently not aware of any plans to implement such a service.

Just to correct your assertion though, we are not finding major issues in "meeting a quota" -- these FCMs are producing noticeable results. Thousands of characters are moved with them each week, alleviating either population or faction dominance issues on their source realms and improving it on the destination realms.

Q u o t e:
What about the Alliance situation on Spinebreaker?

We consider the faction balance on Spinebreaker to be very much the opposite of what we are trying to achieve. It is one of our most unbalanced realms.

Q u o t e:
<3 you saved our guild alot of money :D

I just want to take a moment to apologise firstly for the initial message which stated the FCMs were open and the ensuing confusion and frustration this caused, but also for taking a couple of days to decide to open those FCMs to help ease your concerns. I wish you, your guild mates and friends the best of luck on your new realm of choice. :-)

Q u o t e:
C) Are you guys sure the person who made the list didn't misspell "Burning Steppes", because for months that I don't see FCM to this unbalanced realm.

We consider Burning Steppes in much the same way as we consider Spinebreaker (in fact their situation is virtually identical), and my above comments on that realm hold true for this one too. Please take our word for it that even if we feel FCM is no longer the appropriate way to help those severely unbalanced realms, we have definitely not forgotten about them.

Q u o t e:
Do you have a plan to solve it?

Yes, that is always our plan.

Q u o t e:
Any plans for Alliance on Laughing Skull? Hordes farming our main citys like heroics and if we get WG once in a week its an achivment, 98% of the times its hordes :(

Though not quite as faction imbalanced as Spinebreaker or Burning Steppes (and a handful of other realms) it is still considered to be in a state we are not happy with.

Q u o t e:
How about Dentarg? This realm is seriously dead on the alliance side. People need to pay you so they can enjoy the game (migrating/changing faction) and it just brings you more money.
It has been like this for long. The pvp is just horrible, horde always holds WG. So many good PvPers have migrated away from dentarg just because of that. I hope you fix it.

We hope so too. Yes Dentarg is in the same kind of state, unfortunately.

Q u o t e:
tnx for the fast reply Wryxian. Working late again? :D

It's daytime here now. :-)

I just want to express again that really, even though it may seem like it, no realm is forgotten. We have made substantial progress with FCMs but when they no longer seem to be helping a realm, we do have other things in mind that we believe will bring about positive change eventually. They are just, unfortunately, not something that can be rushed or done over a short period. But while that may be the case, that does not mean that we aren't proceeding with our plans with as much Haste as we can equip.

Q u o t e:

You have the answer to our and your problems at hand:
- Free Faction Migration

I know for a fact that a lot of horde in Burning steppes are not happy with the current status quo and only the money factor stops them from changing faction.

We took a giant step by taking the free character migration from a server with awfull conditions, Grim Batol to Burning Steppes, knowing that we could end up alone but believing that blzzard would help us.

We are starting to feel that we are left alone!

Here's my last reply when this was asked:

This comes up as as suggestion a lot and obviously it is something that has crossed our minds too. Unfortunately though, developing this new system (and yes it is something that requires new development) is not currently something that I am aware we have any plans for. This of course does not mean it might never come.

Q u o t e:
Not wanting to start an argument exchange (it's not your style too), but one wonders how can a system work when money is involved and don't work when no money is involved...
Off course I can understand that some development would be needed but the core is already there and costs something like 15€ so no, it can't be that hard.

Blizz policy toward users has radically changed over the last years. We have a lot of interaction from you guys nowadays and we thank you all for it (Thanks for dropping the "working as intended" answer), but some things require more explaining then others, and in this case, where thousands of players have their game almost ruined, you sure could give us some comfort, by sharing plans or real ideas rather then intentions.
Show us a light please, don't stick to saying there will be a light.

I appreciate all your comments, especially about our efforts that have obviously not been unnoticed. All I can say in regard to the specific idea of free Faction Change is what I have done, that it is not something that I am aware we have plans for. I can't, unfortunately, expand this with detail I haven't got. Obviously with cases like faction and race change we don't really like saying anything like "No this will never come" but at the same time we have to be careful not to raise expectations, especially when we do so simply by replying to a question about something that we don't have any information about.

Basically there is an issue currently with our Character Move queue -- it is very busy and backlogged, and we're actively looking into it and trying to fix it. In the meantime we are advised to inform you to not cancel any Character Move that shows with a status of "Error" but instead to try and wait it out as the queue is handled by our servers. Because of high demand this may take a little while longer than it usually does.

This is a temporary problem which we're investigating and hope to locate and correct very soon.

We are hopeful that a fix we just implemented should help to relieve or remove the errors people have been experiencing with some free Charater Moves. It may still take a little while to continue processing through the queue, however. We thank you again for your patience, as we realise the wait time has been and is still frustrating. We are interested to hear if you see any changes in status or indeed any updates from your side. Thanks in advance.

Q u o t e:
Is there a chance that FCM from Magtheridon to Trollbane will be extended next reset? I'd like to see how things evolve before making any decisions.

There's a chance, but no promise. There's a lot of FCMs to Trollbane and though that realm can take on more Horde migrants, we might have to sharply cut FCMs to Trollbane if it starts looking like a lot of Horde have made the move. We'd prefer not to do that, because doing so might cause disappointment for some who were understandably hesitant, but it might be unavoidable.

Q u o t e:
This time it angers me and my guild because a few days ago I called billing support to help me and my guild out to transfer to Sunstrider from Stormscale since you closed down transfers between those servers before it was promised to be closed. Sunstrider WAS supposed to close 16th of February, there are several people outside of my guild on Stormscale that wanted to transfer but couldn't due to this error. Everyone were waiting for their mates to agree on the transfer, all of the sudden you close it. No it never said 9th, it said 16th no matter what you say, I have several people who can confirm it.

Based on your post we checked every single Breaking News update (yes, we keep an archive) regarding the FCM to Sunstrider, and every single one of them said "available until February 9th". Also, the previous Realms and Migration thread (http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=12424324058&sid=1) says the same and has never been edited (if it was it would say so at the bottom of the post). Regardless, you'll hopefully be happy to know that FCM starting today and lasting until February 23rd actually includes Stormscale to Sunstrider again. It's not set up yet, but it'll be incoming later today.

Q u o t e:
The same thing is happened with Darksorrow

The message we posted, both in the Breaking News and here in the forums clearly said Darksorrow's FCM was open for another week when it was not. This only occurred for Darksorrow and not for any other realm, and because of that we opened up the Darksorrow FCMs for the rest of that new week.

Q u o t e:
and the same thing is happening now even tho in the other direction, Trollbane migration is still open and its the 17th of February, it was supposed to close at 16th. I can still migrate my characters there, just tried and the message in the welcome login screen is obviously wrong... at 12am server time. I mean if I would login at 00.01 okay that would be pushing it. But I waited for you guys to start work and give you a few hours to correct it.. but still no change.

We state FCMs finish on the Tuesday, but yes sometimes they are still active until we replace them on the afternoon of the Wednesday. We deliberately state Tuesday though, because beyond that day we cannot guarantee they will remain open. So yes, the existing FCMs are active until we post up the new ones, but this is not to be relied on – which is why we state they finish on the Tuesday.

Q u o t e:
You are wrong and I want you to admit it. Stop being so tough about it and help out your loyal customers who pay each month playing your game since the release of it.

We are always happy to admit when we made a mistake, as we did with Darksorrow earlier this week.

Q u o t e:
Trollbane is the worst server for horde on Reckoning, only few people might use the migration.

A rather large number of Horde characters transferred to Trollbane over the last week, including a small but substantial amount from Drak'thul. Our current intention is to continue with Trollbane as a Horde destination for another week, though we are also opening the range of choice for Horde destination realms a bit (two new destination realms, bringing it to a total of three). We will post the new FCMs later today, once they are implemented.