[Suggestion] Dual home server NA/EU
Or you could go the way many of the rest of us have gone: A secondary account. Either paid or free.
Not a perfect solution, but at least we can see our friends’ character in game.
Or why just not put transfers between regions to 0 gem like before but limited to only 1 reference server by region…
I considered buying a second account, but I think it’s ridiculous to pay twice a game.
I created a f2p account, but it’s boring to not have all the stuff, gold and skins collected so far. Doing the same thing again would be a waste of time not invested in the main account.
And what about PvP ? Is there an Anet rules saying the best players or NA must never fight the best players in Europe ? That doesn’t make sense…
(edited by Riss.1536)
Physically I don’t think this will work as NA and EU servers are separate. I’m no expert, but account/character data isn’t stored in a place that can be easily transfered between NA and EU servers. As such, in order to transfer your account you have to delete all characters to be able to transfer from an NA world to an EU one (or vice versa).
I think the separation of EU and NA servers is to improve ping. If the servers were combined, they’d be in one spot and result in huge ping for some players. Currently there is a server in germany and someplace in America (I forget where).
If there were no technical restrictions, then there would be no need to stipulate character deletion, and thus your suggestion of free transfer/secondary world could be more reasonably discussed.
Even if this was possible I think there would be huge implications. Server capacity would have to be increased. WvW would be affected.
In conclusion, there is a far less costly way for you to play with both NA and EU friends. Like Garambola suggested, get a second account- free or paid. You can even use your alt account as a little side business to earn a bit of gold (through laurels and crafting). If you want your second account to be in a similar position as your main account, transfer gold (or buy gems with cash and convert to gold) and gear up your alt account characters that way.
What you are asking for would be a huge cost to A-net and is extremely unlikely to happen. Rather than wait, if I were you, I’d get a second account and start building it up.
- The reason that NA and EU are separate by account is technical, not philosophical. ANet hasn’t found a good way to synch the servers in Bavaria with those in Texas, without introducing too much latency.
- The reason transfers were free originally was that guesting was broken, so the only way to play with friends from other worlds was transferring. WvW only influences the restrictions on how often we get to transfer.
- Bandwagoning (following a winning server) is only one of the reasons that gem costs are high to transfer. Another is that ANet wants to discourage people from moving too often, since the infrastructure costs to enable the system are substantial.
- The costs of setting up and maintaining dual-region accounts would be high. It’s more than just flipping a switch.
tl;dr The costs to enable this are high, the benefits are slim (and affect a small fraction of the community).
Like I said I know that it really concerns a minority, that’s why I suggested a gemstore item “unlimited pass” to transfer to the other region restricted to one server (keep the cost interegion). That’s the easiest solution to implement.
Not everybody buys gemstore item right ? So that should limit the number of transfers.