Thoughts on discontinuning transfers.

[Henhouse]

You may have seen a few months ago where we discontinued all arena-character transfers, arena mount swap transfers and free Badge of Justice transfers completely. This made a big difference as we no longer had to keep devoting time to manually logging into characters transferring badges, etc.

However, the $3 transfer fee still remains an annoyance. There is really nothing special about the transfer to me, it's not like it's even much money. I only get to keep about $2.4 of it once Paypal takes their share out. The fee isn't to be profitable, it's simply to make people not be able to transfer for free. I would love to make this system automated like the donation system is, but with transfers it's simply not possible. One person may want to transfer just donorship, or change classes and get badges for all their gear back and donorship, one may be changing factions and want their inventory copied, or just transfer 1 item. Making the service not possible to automate.

Transfers, from my point of view, are extremely tedious and time-wasting. I get about 10 a week or more and they all are different. Everybody wants something done a little bit different. I have to usually write down what they want transferred and manually go in and do the transfer. Depending on the complexity can can anywhere from 3 minutes to 15. Because there are 10 or more a week I hate dropping what I am doing to transfer that moment so they tend to build up. I'd rather do a lot at once than over a period of time. If I wait too long players start complaining, even though a "wait time" is said to be experienced.


As we're about to launch the new SF website I realized we have no page that mentions transfers or allows for a fee to be paid for it. It made me question: should I just drop it finally? Smolderforge has gotten a little too big to easily be able to spent time doing this. Transfers literally take up a decent amount of time when you stack them all up. Time that could be used on other things. When we acquired Pineapple WoW back in 2010 (the original SF Wrath) we disallowed all transfers completely. The population was too big and different to be able to set rules and carry out transfers on there. So with Wrath about to open again and things changing I'm considering doing away with it.

What are your thoughts?

[Mynce]

You may have seen a few months ago where we discontinued all arena-character transfers, arena mount swap transfers and free Badge of Justice transfers completely. This made a big difference as we no longer had to keep devoting time to manually logging into characters transferring badges, etc.

However, the $3 transfer fee still remains an annoyance. There is really nothing special about the transfer to me, it's not like it's even much money. I only get to keep about $2.4 of it once Paypal takes their share out. The fee isn't to be profitable, it's simply to make people not be able to transfer for free. I would love to make this system automated like the donation system is, but with transfers it's simply not possible. One person may want to transfer just donorship, or change classes and get badges for all their gear back and donorship, one may be changing factions and want their inventory copied, or just transfer 1 item. Making the service not possible to automate.

Transfers, from my point of view, are extremely tedious and time-wasting. I get about 10 a week or more and they all are different. Everybody wants something done a little bit different. I have to usually write down what they want transferred and manually go in and do the transfer. Depending on the complexity can can anywhere from 3 minutes to 15. Because there are 10 or more a week I hate dropping what I am doing to transfer that moment so they tend to build up. I'd rather do a lot at once than over a period of time. If I wait too long players start complaining, even though a "wait time" is said to be experienced.


As we're about to launch the new SF website I realized we have no page that mentions transfers or allows for a fee to be paid for it. It made me question: should I just drop it finally? Smolderforge has gotten a little too big to easily be able to spent time doing this. Transfers literally take up a decent amount of time when you stack them all up. Time that could be used on other things. When we acquired Pineapple WoW back in 2010 (the original SF Wrath) we disallowed all transfers completely. The population was too big and different to be able to set rules and carry out transfers on there. So with Wrath about to open again and things changing I'm considering doing away with it.

What are your thoughts?

how about doing transfers once a month?
that way you can just keep players satisfied who want to transfer stuff.
and yes it is kinda tedious but i think its because your the only one who does the transfers.
not that anything is wrong with that but if you got someone you can trust maybe you could
ask that person to lend you a hand.

[Peekaboo]

Two possibilities imo.

1.) Cut it completely, work sucks...
2.) most notably when it doesn't pay off, literally, charge more, like 10$.

[Konar]

It's not all about the profit right? It's about having an great server, community and GM team. Transferring a character is a great feature on our server (since this was not implemented into 2.4.3 it kinda makes our server unique) it would be a shame if you need to get rid of it. Since you give the players on your server a opportunity to let them swap characters without having to start all over, which is great!

I think you should ask someone that you trust to do those transfers (you can easily check the GM logs so he can't abuse it). Or you could raise the price to like $10 + dollar so it will be less popular and people will maybe consider before they transfer then.

Also people just need to have some patience before we do their transfers, same goes for the tickets.
We are all volunteers that work on a FREE private server.

[Amgseret]

"Or you could raise the price to like $10 + dollar so it will be less popular and people will maybe consider before they transfer then."

^diiiiis

[Hardlight]

You spelled thoughts wrong btw. but i'm very worried on what could happen.

1. Our server doesn't support "joint faction" pvp environments (dueling area) and removing faction change may cause conflicts with players who have friends joining the server.

2. The idea of transfers is already seen in many popular servers - would the idea of removing transfers still allow us to keep up with the competition?

3. 10 donations x 2.4 = 24 dollars a week. In a year you strip $1251 worth of donations. If anything were to occur such as server swapping, damages and etc- would you still be able to pay for those cautions?

4. Is this the direction we should be heading due to it requireing "alot of work, and ppl getting irritated?"

In general henhouse, personally, i think we should try improving our server and not strip it from previous potential. I think Konar is right - you get trusted GMs to help you with these transfers. And if that doesn't even pass, i still firmly believe we should keep faction swapping.

[Manersi]

I know on the Arena Tournament 2.4.3 server they have this thing were you can talk to a lady, log out, remake your character with the same name/class. But what you do is change the race/faction ect and when you finish, your "undead rogue is now a male rogue"
Maybe you should try using whatever it is they used, and make it just for donors ^^

[Henhouse]

I know on the Arena Tournament 2.4.3 server they have this thing were you can talk to a lady, log out, remake your character with the same name/class. But what you do is change the race/faction ect and when you finish, your "undead rogue is now a male rogue"
Maybe you should try using whatever it is they used, and make it just for donors ^^

I've seen that and maybe we could look into making something that for donors only some day but right now definitely not. When you make private servers you have to make things idiot-proof. If they're not... you're gonna have a bad time.

[Flayne]

Well, I could argue i think well debate why it should and shouldn't be discontinued. I think as a player, you make it your own. Sure you may want something on another character, or you may just simply want a race change and think should i have to re-do all the work again if i can just pay a simple fee and be on my way.

I think it's a great service, I think the fee should be however raised to at least 5 dollars sit it on par with Donation gear. But then again its hard to justify how transferring 50 Badges to another char is worth 5 dollars?

I used to transfer the minor things before it was removed from commands and i didn't think much of it, But i think a donation transfer or something of greater deal shouldn't be free.

Summary, Just keep it. Make it available for the Staff team to do it if you cannot get online Henhouse. If not, well you're stuck with it ;)

Regards.

[Falseroll]

ouch 10$.

Im fucked.

I feel like, things happens before i need to do something