Guild Wars 2

I’m not much of a server hopper/bandwagoner. I’ve always been someone that dislikes the drama and stress of T1. However, before the January 28th update I was thinking I needed a change, so I switched servers. Drama on the server I left stopped, and the people I enjoyed playing with all started their own guild. I’ve been having thoughts of switching back, so out of curiosity, I decided to see how much I’d have to spend.

I expected around 10 dollars for the top tiered servers/highest populated.

For me to return to my original server, it would cost me 1,800 gems, which is roughly $22-$25 USD.

This seems a bit outrageous to me, as even just upgrading your game to the deluxe edition would cost me less.

I understand that ArenaNet wants to make money, but I feel as though forcing players to either spend a hefty price or be somewhere they aren’t happy is a bit ridiculous.

I feel that the top end servers should be a tad bit cheaper than this.

I’m okay with spending the money to go where I’d like to go, but with that amount of money I could buy tons of items off the BLTP, buy two whole new character slots, or receive around 25g.

The other concern I had, which I brought up before paid server transfers, is that due to this, people are discouraged to change servers. It was bad that people would hop all the time and bandwagon. Lowering the price would stop so much bandwagoning, but having this price sticks people where they are at and keeps the same servers fighting each other, ruining the whole ranking system with how much WvW is determined by coverage. It seems it’ll always be the same servers in each tier until people quit the game.

I’d be happy with paying for new content, like the upcoming events if need be. But I feel like I’m being a bit ripped off when having to pay so much just to have a bit of change.

My theory as to why kitten costs to much in the BLTP is because you can exchange gold for gems and vice versa. Whilst the thought is nice I honestly don’t think that should’ve happened. Anyone that can play the TP well pretty much never has to pay 1c to buy something off the TP.

With that said I do agree that world transfer should not cost $22-$25. I’d be much happier with $10, which seems like a reasonable price.

I love Gw2 but I’m not going to waste my money on such an expensive transaction.

Edit: ^ Rising Dusk you make a very valid point.

Since they’re doing a 1:1 conversion, it’s even worse in Europe. For the price of a server transfer, I could go to a cinema and watch two overlength 3D movies.

/e: which leads me to the question: can I purchase gem cards in the US when I travel there and use them here in Europe later?

The whole point of making server transfers cost real money is to try and keep WvW fare and balanced. Anet is not trying to get rich off server transfers but to provent the total one sidedness WvW was before the change. I think they came up with a fare price for server transfers, you need to pick to one server and stick with that server. When server transfers were free everyone was trying tu jump on the winning server. Now you have to think about it and it will detour most people from doing this.

$20-25 is a fair price. Was same in EQ2 for years before they went F2P. You’ve had ability to transfer anywhere free since August. And now you’re bemoaning having to pay?

The problem with server transfers is that they can have a detrimental effect on other players. SWTOR has had issues where whole servers have been hailed one moment as the place to be (fatman) and the next they are empty and nobody knows whats going on. That sort of social instability is actually damaging to the game experience and to player confidence.

chronometria.3708:

The problem with server transfers is that they can have a detrimental effect on other players. SWTOR has had issues where whole servers have been hailed one moment as the place to be (fatman) and the next they are empty and nobody knows whats going on. That sort of social instability is actually damaging to the game experience and to player confidence.

The problem with SWTOR is that it is just a bad game. End of discussion

The price is meant to scare yo to staying on one server and not bounce from server to server. The price seem fair for what it is meant to do.

If you are not happy with your server guest to another till you find one you are happy on then dish out the money

yep to regulate players from server hopping,

i would rather put it 50$ each transfer, or 2k gold + 250 ecto to transfer

since our server population is decreasing, our top guilds migrated to T1 since gold is kinda trivial when its under 50g to top guilds

This is outrageous me and one of my friends accidently got separated for our other friends that play this game and now it is around $50 for us to get back with our friends. This has convinced me to stop play Guild Wars 2 but I would gladly come back if they changed the price.

They wont’ change the price, because if they did, more people would leave WvW than people who object to the price..it’s that simple. WvWers are begging for high price service transfers.

And to put it in perspective when I played WoW, it was $25 for a server transfer AND the game charged a monthly fee.

Anet is the only game that allows guesting that I know of, or one of the only ones, so you can play everything except WvW with your friends, even if you are on a different server.

If Anet was greedy, guesting wouldn’t exist.

I thought server only affects wvw… You can guest if you really want to play almost every aspect of the game with your friends(not wvw).

1800 is fine for me: about 10 hours of cof grinding, not a big deal. I also get the chance to joke with my friends when grinding. Its a double win from my view—improving game experience and friendships at the same time.

People who believe Anet is doing this because it’ll make you consider changing are wrong. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY

22$ or 25$ to transfer all your characters(this can range from 5 to 8+) is a fair price.I remember one other game where you have to pay 25$ per character.
I don’t find Anet greedy or anything.I have an option to buy gems either with real money or not.Till now i have use only ingame gold to buy gems and that suits me perfectly.That other game would never let me use ingame curency.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I agree that it is a ripoff, but I actually think that is the intention. They want you to see the price and instead of pulling out your credit card / in-game gold, step back and go “Whoa, that’s pricey, maybe I should stay on my server instead”. Seeing as how server means absolutely nothing outside of WvW with the introduction of Guesting (and the fact that instances are cross-server already), this makes sense. That said, they also don’t want players who are desperate for WvW with their friends being held out from doing so, and that is why we’re still allowed to change servers at all.

If you want to play with your friends in their guild and do PvE/PvP content, you can do all of that already at no charge. If this is strictly about WvW, however, then you really need to cost-analyze it. Do you want to support that server that much? If so, then go for it, and it’s worth the money. If not, then don’t and never look back.

You cannot go into WvW or sPvP when you are guesting, sorry.

Kaizer.7135:

People who believe Anet is doing this because it’ll make you consider changing are wrong. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY

Evidence? Didn’t think so. Stating opinions as fact doesn’t really accomplish much.

You know, I get why they did it. They didn’t want large guilds jumping from server to server and essentially controlling the WvW rankings. Its kind of nice, given that those types of shifts are usually caused by drama and general kittenation. But as a tier 1 player, I would have probably jumped down to one of the lowest tiers by now. Contrary to popular belief, being in tier 1 is not always fun. I’m on SoR and I love my guild, but you can’t run anywhere solo for very long, and sometimes it can take literally hours to even grab a tower because there’s just so many people on BG. Zerg or die is pretty much the stage of tier 1 WvW lately, which gets old in a hurry. The server transfer fee is way to high. Here’s an idea… make the server transfer fee like gem purchasing in that it adjusts based on how many people do it. That way a solo guy such as myself could jump servers every once in a while, but the big guilds couldn’t just up and leave cause their leaders panties got in a bunch over something petty.

Im Mudbone.1437:

You cannot go into WvW or sPvP when you are guesting, sorry.

I am actually very sure that you can go to sPvP while guesting. Unless they stealth changed that very recently?

The transfer fee is disgustingly wrong. It punishes new players the most who are typically not to change servers to win in WvWvW, but would like simply to gather with their friends or realize too late that they picked the wrong server – which is very easy to do btw. If I remember right the only information I had on the “choose your home server” page was NA/EU and list of established guilds. I also remember I was encouraged not to choose a very populated server.

I wonder can you join a cross-server guild? I guess not, but I’m still not familiar with the significance of guilds anyway.

The intention to deter people from server-changing with the price will backfire. If I’m stuck on a dead server I’ll rather just stop playing then pay significant money just to have another try.

The “you can pay once and have all your characters transferred” argument is false. Because in reality your existing characters are holding you hostage on your dead server: you can not even start again on another server with a new alt.

Guesting is limited 2 times per 24h which is also ridiculous because they will boot you from the game because of updates, and then you need to guest again.

It’s also factitious that all the people who are defending the fee did have the opportunity to transfer freely before until they found their ideal place. And now they deny this from the newcomers.

All in all, I demand free server transfer!

If one is new, they can delete their existing characters, and transfer to any server free of charge. Well, you can do this even if you aren’t new. As for guesting only twice per day, that isn’t the case, you can guest to only two different worlds per day, but as many times as you like. As far as dead servers go, I haven’t really heard about any yet, but if there are some, I would guess ArenaNet would put in place some other option for those on such a server. You can join guilds cross-server, there are some different rules about influence and upgrades in that circumstance. The wiki has lots of information about guilds and guesting, and really, all aspects of the game. =)

You can play on any server for free, paid transfers ONLY affect WvWvW players. If you want a different “home team” to play for, then it’s up to you to make the sacrifices necessary to transfer.

The prices are not cast in iron and concrete. Not long ago they allowed free transfers to certain servers and will no doubt do so again. They can also cut the price of transfers either permanently or as a limited time sale, though the former will most likely anger a lot of people who paid a lot to transfer so sales are more likely.

If you are trying to get on a T1 server then the only reason to do so is WvW bandwagoning and they should increase the price even more.

If you just want to play with your friends in WvW you can transfer to a low pop world for a fraction of the cost. If you want to play with your friend in PvE/sPvP then it is free regardless of server.

They even offer free transfers to lower population worlds from time to time to keep the population balanced. There is really no grounds for complaining.

lordkrall.7241:

Im Mudbone.1437:

You cannot go into WvW or sPvP when you are guesting, sorry.

I am actually very sure that you can go to sPvP while guesting. Unless they stealth changed that very recently?

Yes you can, just not WvW.

Yopoe.1380:

This is outrageous me and one of my friends accidently got separated for our other friends that play this game and now it is around $50 for us to get back with our friends. This has convinced me to stop play Guild Wars 2 but I would gladly come back if they changed the price.

lol this made me laugh…how do accidentally get seperated from your friends? Were you walking and your friends took a wrong turn? I mean Its a massive server we are talking about not a bushwalk. The only reason you would be split apart from your friends is if you hopped servers for some reason while your friends did not. That is your fault, I’m happy you left.

$25 = High enough to stop people from sever hopping all willy nilly, but low enough that it is affordable

Ping.5739:

lordkrall.7241:

Im Mudbone.1437:

You cannot go into WvW or sPvP when you are guesting, sorry.

I am actually very sure that you can go to sPvP while guesting. Unless they stealth changed that very recently?

Yes you can, just not WvW.

I stand corrected.

Vayne.8563:

Kaizer.7135:

People who believe Anet is doing this because it’ll make you consider changing are wrong. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY

Evidence? Didn’t think so. Stating opinions as fact doesn’t really accomplish much.

They’re a company trying to make money through their products?

What’s wrong with charging for a server transfer in a F2P game? You can even guest so this is a ridiculous thing to complain about.

Kaizer.7135:

Vayne.8563:

Kaizer.7135:

People who believe Anet is doing this because it’ll make you consider changing are wrong. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY

Evidence? Didn’t think so. Stating opinions as fact doesn’t really accomplish much.

They’re a company trying to make money through their products?

Charging more=/= making more. The more expensive something is, the smaller the number of people willing to purchase it. So we don’t know if charging more for transfers actually earns anet more.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I agree that it is a ripoff, but I actually think that is the intention. They want you to see the price and instead of pulling out your credit card / in-game gold, step back and go “Whoa, that’s pricey, maybe I should stay on my server instead”. Seeing as how server means absolutely nothing outside of WvW with the introduction of Guesting (and the fact that instances are cross-server already), this makes sense. That said, they also don’t want players who are desperate for WvW with their friends being held out from doing so, and that is why we’re still allowed to change servers at all.

If you want to play with your friends in their guild and do PvE/PvP content, you can do all of that already at no charge. If this is strictly about WvW, however, then you really need to cost-analyze it. Do you want to support that server that much? If so, then go for it, and it’s worth the money. If not, then don’t and never look back.

Umm, I don’t think that’s what Anet intended when they set the price that high. I honestly think one of them just said, “Well, looks like we can squeeze them for all the money they didn’t spend on RNG, so let’s set the price to 30 bucks.” Pure greed, and not an actual feeling of care for the game.

I doubt you received a ‘nasty’ response to your Customer Support ticket. Maybe you could post a picture of said response. I don’t think it would be fair to hold ArenaNet responsible for your computer woes. Perhaps, you could have used a friend or relative’s computer to transfer your account during the free transfer time period. It would not be conducive to the health of the game to grant free transfers to everyone who said they couldn’t afford it, or their computer wasn’t capable, or whatever the excuse/reason, as everyone would just say something to that effect, and expect to be transferred at no cost.

edit: Hmm, post disappeared. I guess that is why one should always ‘reply’. Oh, well.

What they need to do is give everyone a free transfer, once a year or so. This would help encourage people who have dropped the game to pick it back up again if they have friends on a different server back when they used to play. Currently I have friends that have stopped playing the game months ago, and while they are not necessarily thinking about coming back anytime soon, being stuck alone on their old server would pretty much be the nail in the coffin for the idea of them ever coming back to the game.

tl;dr: This idea of one free transfer would really make it easier for people to return to the game after a period of not playing.

Considering it’s your whole account and not one character. Seems fair.

Any other MMO would charge you that price per character.

But then again this is from some one that never uses server transfers. Let alone pay for it.

Galtrix.7369:

Rising Dusk.2408:

I agree that it is a ripoff, but I actually think that is the intention. They want you to see the price and instead of pulling out your credit card / in-game gold, step back and go “Whoa, that’s pricey, maybe I should stay on my server instead”. Seeing as how server means absolutely nothing outside of WvW with the introduction of Guesting (and the fact that instances are cross-server already), this makes sense. That said, they also don’t want players who are desperate for WvW with their friends being held out from doing so, and that is why we’re still allowed to change servers at all.

If you want to play with your friends in their guild and do PvE/PvP content, you can do all of that already at no charge. If this is strictly about WvW, however, then you really need to cost-analyze it. Do you want to support that server that much? If so, then go for it, and it’s worth the money. If not, then don’t and never look back.

Umm, I don’t think that’s what Anet intended when they set the price that high. I honestly think one of them just said, “Well, looks like we can squeeze them for all the money they didn’t spend on RNG, so let’s set the price to 30 bucks.” Pure greed, and not an actual feeling of care for the game.

Multiple guilds have been transferring left and right on the backbone of cof1 runs, not actual credit card purchases. And you’re wrong. For too long wvw-ers have been complaining about spies, and bandwagoners (during free transfer server days). The implementation of a high transfer cost more or less mitigated those negative stuff. If it wasn’t high, we’d still see those problems today. If it wasn’t that high, wvw-ers would still complain.

@OP
Lowering prices would encourage MORE bandwagoning, and mess up the matchups. Just try to suggest this in the wvw forum and see how people react.

They should make it so that transfering to lower-pop servers is completely free, while transferring up costs.

Would solve a lot of problems.

Alternatively, they could scale the cost based on server population. It should cost less to move to a low population server than a high population server. (Which I thought was the plan, but I must have dreamed it.)

Reikou.7068:

They should make it so that transfering to lower-pop servers is completely free, while transferring up costs.

Would solve a lot of problems.

Still would make a number of guilds bandwagon and artificially pushing up the rankings of lower-tier servers.

TooBz.3065:

Alternatively, they could scale the cost based on server population. It should cost less to move to a low population server than a high population server. (Which I thought was the plan, but I must have dreamed it.)

That is actually already the case.

I hope anet fix guesting, you have to reguest every time you log in. ANNOYING.

Though the price is way less than in wow, where it was like a months sub fee for EACH CHARACTER T_T

at least in gw2 you can transfer infinity characters. Though it’d be nice to be able to make characters on different servers…

*shrug

lordkrall.7241:

TooBz.3065:

Alternatively, they could scale the cost based on server population. It should cost less to move to a low population server than a high population server. (Which I thought was the plan, but I must have dreamed it.)

That is actually already the case.

Thanks, when I looked at transfers I must have missed the difference. I’ll check when I get home.

WoW has charged $25 for a realm transfer for years now…PER CHARACTER. $25 is not “outrageous.” It’s better than the “Standard” mmo price.

Hickeroar.9734:

WoW has charged $25 for a realm transfer for years now…PER CHARACTER. $25 is not “outrageous.” It’s better than the “Standard” mmo price.

Even better you can use in-game money to convert to gems and transfer. Farm CoF for a week and you can transfer without spending $$. You have it better than most games, yet here you are complaining.

I don’t think we was complaining. If he was, he’s more subtle that most forum posters.

TooBz.3065:

I don’t think we was complaining. If he was, he’s more subtle that most forum posters.

This is not complaining?

This seems a bit outrageous to me, as even just upgrading your game to the deluxe edition would cost me less.

I understand that ArenaNet wants to make money, but I feel as though forcing players to either spend a hefty price or be somewhere they aren’t happy is a bit ridiculous.

There is also a 3rd option besides buying gems with $$ or with gold. Delete all characters on the account. Transfers are free when there are no characters. Then there is the fourth option, buy some gems with $$ and buy the rest with gold.

I wish they still had GW1 stype instancing so I didn’t have to choose between groups of friends to play with. Bought the game yesterday and I can’t wait to play but I can’t even jump into the game because I have to wait for people to be online to see where they play!

look, I know all the reasons they’ve done that, I also agree with most, but I’ve joined GW2 unaware of many things, played for some time and found out that the only sv with an active RP community was Tarnished Coast(on NA), that said I’ve just left the game and I’ll not come back till I’m able to transfer, got tired of my lame sv and the lame ppl in it, also, I can see no point on keepin in GW2 without any sort of RP element since I’m quite saturated of MMOs(played at least 11 diff mmos over 10 years, none ever made me happy except of a brief moment where I was able to RP in WoW for a while, til the expansion breakout came and ruined the guild), anyway, thing is they should and must if u ask me, they own this at least, a 1 time transfer for new players so we can pickup the game, see how it works and then decide on server, the server communities vary alot, some are focused on X others on Y, some are more receptive others are aholes, and so forth… I don’t like being forced 25 bucks out of missformation, it’s a ripoff and quite unfair, it also made me realize this company isn’t worth shots anymore, GW1 was much superior, GW2 didn’t keep to it, and on top of that this…

Just came to give 2 cents since I was googling to see if the prices had lowered, logged in and found the same 1.8k gems pricing quite annoying…

Kisses hahaha

weirdly enough no one seems to stand up to flame me on this one? I am surprised, no one else thinks like I do also? I feel like talking alone hahaha

xdjinn.4071:

weirdly enough no one seems to stand up to flame me on this one? I am surprised, no one else thinks like I do also? I feel like talking alone hahaha

1. The original thread was posted 7 months ago.
2. Your main post was a block of text.
3. You can use gold —-> gems for a “free” transfer.

I probably spent $200 or so total on character transfers in a different game that had a sub.