Paid Character Transfer Delays - UPDATED

Over the course of the past few days, we have experienced lengthy delays in our Paid Character Transfer and Paid Character Name Change processes. We understand that several characters are currently inaccessible as a result of this issue. Several members of our various departments are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.

You are welcome to cancel your character transfer temporarily. Postponing your transfer until the issue has been resolved is a valid option and will allow you to access your character. If you would like to play your character on it's original realm while we await resolution, please feel free to cancel your transfer at this time.

Please be aware, that cancelling your transfer will require you to initiate a transfer at a later time. Because we do not yet have an ETA for the resolution, you may be required to wait a bit longer if you cancel and transfers begin processing in the very near future. Ultimately, you will be able to access your character until the wait time has been significantly reduced.

We sincerely apologize for the unexpected delays and frustration caused by this issue. Please wait patiently as we await further information. Updates will be provided as quickly as possible.

Thanks again for your patience.

Thank you all for your patience while this issue was being addressed. The Paid Character Transfer service should be up and running in full once again; please be aware however, that the transfers may still take some time to complete.

Please keep an eye on the Paid Character Transactions* page to see if your transfer is waiting to be finalized.

I have unlocked this thread in order to allow for updates regarding any possible issues regarding the matter; any inappropriate posts, or posts that are not constructive will be deleted.


* https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/character-transfer-status.html

Just as a heads up... logging into the character will usually cause delays.

Sareen, you're not actually charged until the transfer is finalized; the charge may be held by your bank, but it won't be processed until it's finalized.

For those of you who have been waiting a long while and your character is not yet "locked", I'd do two things:

First, start the transfer over to ensure that everything is being processed appropriately. Second, DO NOT log in to the character after you initiate the transfer; this can cause delays.

If your character is currently "locked" please remain patient while the transfer goes through.

I'm not going to be able to check each and every person, Success.

Have you read this post yet?

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8121662984&pageNo=9&sid=1#162

Q u o t e:
I was charged. I use a debit card and it was charged $1 then another $25. I am capable of reading my online bank account just fine. I have epressed this issue over and over and I keep getting told I can't read or something. Very frustrating.

Are you sure it doesn't say "Pending"? I know for a fact that the charge isn't issued until the transfer is completed; you may want to contact our Billing department if anything strange is actually listed on your banking statements.

Billing and Account Services:

Webform: http://us.blizzard.com/support/webform-us.xml?gameId=11
E-mail: Billing@blizzard.com
Phone: 1-800-59-BLIZZ (1 (800) 592 5499)

Hours of Operation: 8AM to 8PM — Monday through Friday

The Paid Character Transfers shouldn't take as long as they were and should be going through at this point; the probable reason you are all seeing an extended wait time is because of those that are in the queue at about 24 hours and haven't been processed yet.

Once everyone's transfer is going through it shouldn't take long for everything to catch back up. =)

Q u o t e:
rey is it just finishing up the backed up people? im just curious cause i put mine in today just waiting for more information on when it will clear the backed up people

The system will process them in the order the transfers were requested.

Have you been logging into the characters you are trying to transfer, Caite?

Q u o t e:
please someone help ASAP

I'm not sure what you're asking.

What do you see here: https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/character-transfer-status.html ?

You can play other characters, just don't attempt to login to characters that you are trying to transfer.

Simple version:

Transfer Characters = Bad.
Other Characters = Good.

^_^

Q u o t e:
im seeing transaction page with nothing really on it

What do you mean? There are no pending transactions or anything like that?

Q u o t e:
Can we play on the server thats its xfering to?

Yes.

Hang tight folks, we have a bit of maintenance going on at the moment that may well be affecting these. I have given the powers that be a heads-up that times seem to be climbing, but if that is from normal congestion because more are requesting, or the maintenance - not sure yet.

It's being looked into. We have not forgotten about you.

Q u o t e:
Ok, so I finally redid my request for the third time to my second account after cancelling twice already, seeing how high the averge wait time was.

Ok, so three hours. I'll wait. Now I'm scared by this new blue post. It's been an hour over the average wait time. I'm beginning to think this is one of the accounts in maintenance error.

Can you calm my fears please?

My intent was anything but to frighten you Astana :).

I was just letting everyone know we were aware this was happening, and looking into things.

Q u o t e:
I have gone through the char transfer process but my char is not on any relm. I have checked the status on wow.com and it says completed. Where is my char??

It looks as if the transfer has processed and your character on Blackhand is accessible.

Are you able to log into your newly transferred character?

First, please don't panic guys.

Here's what we have:

1. The technical issues affecting Paid Character Transfers from earlier in the week have been resolved, and should no longer be having an effect on the transfer process. If you restarted your transfer because you were specifically receiving an error message, it should no longer be necessary to do so. It was necessary at the time for the transfer to proceed properly at all.

As this technical issues should no longer be a factor, please do not restart your transfer process, as it will not expedite the process and will simply restart your wait time.

2. Largely due to very high volumes, wait times are high at the moment. I am sorry about that, and I hope it doesn't prove overly inconvenient. You can expect your transfer to be completed within a 5 day window extending from the time of your most recent transfer request.

This is a longer time frame that perhaps we'd like, but I wanted to provide what information is available. I hope this helps relieve some of the stress and confusion that this situation has caused for you guys, and I wish you all luck on your new realms.

Q u o t e:

Newsflash, it is overly inconvenient. Nice try dressing up this issue as a 'possible' inconvenience.

From the transfer process:

Q u o t e:

Things to Know Before You Start!

* The paid character transfer is not immediate and will take several days to complete because of the approval process involved. Your character will NOT be available for play during this time.
* Each character you transfer costs $25.00. This covers the character's ONE-WAY TRANSFER to a new realm, a new account, or both at the same time.
* Your character will not have any guild or arena team affiliation upon arrival at the destination realm.
* Each character may only transfer once every 30 days.
* You will need to rename your character if his/her name is taken on your destination realm.
* If you already have a character on a PvP realm, you may not transfer a character of the opposing faction to that PvP realm.
* Character transfers between accounts are subject to restrictions. Click here to learn more.
* For a list of eligible and ineligible destination realms, click here.

Paid Character Transfer FAQ Part 1
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20558

Q u o t e:
I signed a character up for a realm transfer, but it's still on the old realm and I can't play with this character anymore. What's going on?

Character transfers may take up to 5 days to process. You won't be able to play the characters you signed up for a transfer during that time, so you may want to spread out your transfers so that not all your characters are locked at the same time. Once you've completed the transfer process as described above, your characters will appear on the destination realm, ready to continue your adventure.

Some delays are to be expected as part of this procedure, particularly when volumes are high, and even more-so when an unanticipated technical issue has had an effect on the whole process. While we've always tried to accomplish transfers as speedily as possible, several days is not even remotely outside the normal bounds of possibility.

In short, I know it's been a rough week, and I was merely trying to express my genuine sympathies =/.

Q u o t e:
It is funny how you link the 5 day message, and also tell people cancelling is a good idea. you are letting people restart their own clock, lessening your responsibility.

I, personally, haven't told people that canceling is a good idea at this point. Cancellation was related to circumventing an issue that would have prevented the transfer from being processed altogether. Also, cancellation was only recommended in relation to a very specific circumstance, not as a panacea for this issue =(.

In addition, my posting of some of the information related to Paid Character Transfer was merely a reminder that, completely aside from the issues that occurred earlier, the process can simply take time.

Our Billing Department is scrambling to get these done as quickly as possible, and I really am sorry about the wait. Debating with me regarding the minutiae of the situation is not going to speed these transfers though, and I don't have much more information to impart =/. What I've already provided is the summary.

For now, unless you specifically receive some kind of error message, please try to take a few deep breaths, sit tight, and remain as patient as you can.

Q u o t e:
Why is it, if you're saying that it will be taking this full 5-days, that the system is still giving us estimates in the hours?

You can pretty safely expect your transfer to be complete some time within that 5 day window. I don't have a specific ETA available though. I wouldn't worry too much about the system estimate in any case.

One more piece of information in response to a common question:

If you are logged into a character before the transfer is complete, this may delay it from processing so we encourage you to stay logged out until it is done. Keep in mind that you will lose any mail that you leave in your mailbox when the process is completed.

Essentially, your character may still be available to be logged in until a certain point of the transfer process is reached. It's still a good idea to avoid logging into the character to be transferred.

And once more, please do NOT restart your transfers at this point. If for some reason you are receiving an error message, I'll be happy to look into it. If you are not, please refrain from restarting your transfer.

Q u o t e:
OK So i've been waiting 30(toldtorestart)>24(toldtorestart)>and now another 10 hours. I am still able to log on to my character.

I want direct help from a blue, I don't want a general post to everyone, This is ridiculous, i've been waiting nearly 60 hours and haven't got any help.

If i am still able to logon my char, should i restart the x-fer?

Please quickly refer to this post from a bit earlier in the thread:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8121662984&sid=1&pageNo=18#353

With regard to restarting - were you specifically instructed to do so, or did you do so because you were receiving error messages? I haven't had the opportunity to review the entirety of the thread. I merely popped in to provide what information I had available at the moment.

Finally, avoid profanity, masked or otherwise. While I understand why you might be quite frustrated, I will not tolerate forum code of conduct violations.

Q u o t e:
An update at this point would be really nice. It's been about 2 hours since we last heard from Mal on this, and we're still seeing the same problem. My timer went up to 8 hours, has stayed at 8 hours, and I've now been waiting 8.5 hours. (Estimated time started at 4 hours this morning.)

It would seem that there is still an issue going on here.

Also, the question of business days vs. calendar days wasn't addressed, and that is something that has me quite concerned at the moment.

Ah, I thought that I'd clarified this earlier, I'm sorry about that!

At the moment, there's no need to worry about the 'timer' indicating when your transfer will be complete. If you wish, you may feel free to check the Account Management page periodically, but the shifting estimated time is not indicative of an issue, though I apologize if it's not much use as a means to predict when your transfer will be complete.

Please don't forget that logging into the character you want to transfer can delay the process as well. Thanks for hanging in there guys. I know this has been a trying few days.

Q u o t e:
Hi Malkorix,

I submitted mine around 17 hours ago. I've cancelled a few times during this week in hopes that average wati times will go down. They seemed to go down early this morning so I resubmitted thinking that it'll be done by the time I come back from breakfast.

Could you tell me if there's anything wrong with the process? Possibly an error or anything? :x

I've just been waiting since this morning and Orlyia reassured me it was nothing that I should panic about. :/ Now, I'm kind of getting panicky.

Actually, there's still no need to panic =).

Please feel free to review my prior posts in this thread, as a number of your questions may be answered. You can advance from post to post by clicking the little blue 'Blizz' icon next to the quote button at the upper right of each 'blue' post.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8121662984&postId=82015832095&sid=1#338

Q u o t e:


Thanks for keeping us up to date Malkorix. Its even a Friday night too.

It's my pleasure! I just want to see everyone get where they want to go =).

I would like to ask that everyone attempting to transfer their characters do the following:

1). DO NOT cancel your transfer.*
2). DO NOT login to the characters that you are transferring.
3). DO NOT check to see if your character is "locked". This will cause you to login to the character.

That should help everything go smoothly for you. The Paid Character Transfer service is currently in heavy use and as such that means that it's going to take longer for each transfer to be processed. Yes, it's going to take a while for it to be processed; that's just what happens when there is a lot of traffic with the system. Everyone seems to have wanted to transfer at the same time. =/



*Unless you want to cancel the transfer in general, but please do not cancel it in order to "refresh" it.

Q u o t e:
Wait, did we confirm that transfers happen on the weekends?

They happen 24/7.

The commentary of friends transferring a short time after initiating a transfer makes me curious. Would those of you who have experienced this please provide me with the following information:

Name and realm of YOUR character that you are transferring.

Name and realm of your friend's original character name and realm. (Please edit this immediately, or I will do so shortly after your post; I will still be able to read it.)

I'm going to look into the matter.

This matter is being looked into.

Thank you all for your information.

While I'm still awaiting word from our technicians, I'd like to say that it's quite possible that the previous issues lead towards causing an odd delay in the transfers. It would appear that restarting the transfer at this time should allow you to transfer the character in a short period of time.

Please be aware that these are merely assumptions and possibilities based on the information I currently have available. I would like to apologize for any inconvenience you have all experienced due to these issues.

Please continue to let us know if you continue to experience issues with the Paid Character Transfer service.

I will be unable to check, boost, adjust, fiddle with, finagle, fondle, incarcerate, or do anything else to your character transfers.

The matter is still being looked into, and I do not have any solid information regarding the situation as of yet. We will update this thread with the appropriate information when we have it available.

Q u o t e:
Are these delay issues going on as we speak once again? I don't remember now, but I initiated my Paid Transfer 4th of Dec 2008, it is now Dec 9th 2008.. A bit longer than the 1 hour average wait time..

Would cancelling and resubmitting work or just put it further back in the queue?

If it's been pending this long, I would recommend canceling and retrying.

Also, I'd wait till after all the realms are back up from restarts today.

Locking - this is a really old thread.