How did you manage to screw up Scilla?

Q u o t e:
We got free transfers to our server and now have lag everywhere, WG is unplayable and now have a 400+ queue. If you are on a server that wants free transfers to it, just hope it doesn't happen because they brutally screwed us.

The population on Scilla spiked quite considerably from Sunday to Monday, even after we shut down free moves to this realm early. We had projections to watch for before shutting moves to Scilla down, and we gave warning of an early shut down after the transfer projections were reached. We will be watching the realm closely to see if the population spike lessens. If it doesn't we'll make it a source realm in an upcoming round of free moves.

We try to keep as much control as possible over the populations of all source and destination realms when opening free moves, which is why we only open moves up to a very limited amount of realms at a time. If we have to shut down moves early, we always try to give advanced warning so transferring friends or guilds aren't unexpectedly split. It seems that realm populations on Super Bowl Sunday -- Sunday generally being the day of the week populations peak -- were abnormally low.

Q u o t e:
Are you seriously using the Super Bowl as an excuse? That really is unacceptable.

No, it's not really an excuse as I had the transfer goal in front of me. Had I taken the lower populations on Sunday into account though, I would've shut down free moves sooner. I take full responsibility for the queue on Scilla right now.

We're looking to do another round of free moves within the next week. I'll make sure Scilla players have a chance to move elsewhere if they wish, and do apologize for the population spike on your realm these last two days.

Q u o t e:

Are people who recently transferred Scilla going to be allowed a reset xfer cooldown so they can leave? If not this whole idea is pointless.

The transfer cooldown applies only to paid transfers.

Q u o t e:
Zahrym, while you are here can you adress the issue of the ninjas, Billpaxton and Cameltotem in their 25 man naxx on saturday. Off of kelthuzad they masterlooted the helm of the lost protecter to cameltotem, instead of talladus. And BIllpaxton ninjalooted the betrayer of humanity to himself.

I opened multiple tickets, however Blizzard told me it was "my fault for grouping with them, chose who you group with carefully?" How am I supposed to know that? Also when I said "So Blizzard condones ninjalooting, I have screenshot proof and 24 other people to back me up, it is against the spirit of the game," the gm told me to "stfu"...

I'm not immediately familiar with, or oversee, in-game policy on such matters. If you're looking for verification about what you were told by our in-game support department, your best bet is to post in the Customer Service forum.

As an update, I'm hoping to get a new round of PvP free moves going tomorrow and Scilla will be on the list. I'm also going to push for more destination realms, ideally to reduce the risk of destination realms overcrowding.

The spike on Scilla from Sunday to Monday was virtually unpredictable, and I'd like to avoid that potential variable going forward.

Q u o t e:
I would think that Blizzard could implement an automated system that would allow them to specify how many transfers they want to allow. Then when that number is met the free transfer is automatically disabled.

We sort of do that, except it's not automatic. We have set numbers we watch for, including thresholds for announcing the early shut down of moves to a realm.

The main variable when doing free moves lies in the number of transferred characters to a given realm versus that realm's nightly peak concurrency.

Free moves from Scilla are now available: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910061320&sid=1

Q u o t e:
WTB x-fer reversals and Blizz to learn how to count the number of people on a realm w/out looking at peak hour numbers.

There's roughly 3-4 times the number of accounts with characters on a given realm versus the amount of concurrent players on that realm during peak hours. Regardless of how precisely we monitor the numbers, it's still a variable we can't completely control when looking at populations, queues, and transfer numbers.

Q u o t e:
Question, Zarhym. Why were some RP servers allowed to transfer to a PvP server, but some weren't?

I was dissapointed when Moon Guard wasn't elligble to transfer to the PvP server and only the other RP server. :(

Only RPPvP realms had the option of transferring to a PvP realm in the last round. We generally try to avoid opening up free moves to different realm types. In that case though, there were no RPPvP destination options, so we gave players on two RPPvP realms the choice of a RPPvE realm, or a PvP realm.