Classic->TBC Character Transition: How it could be Handled

[Minguas-faerlina]

Warning: Wall of text.

There has been many talks about the classic to tbc character transition and how it should be handled. The TBC experience was continuing your existing characters at 60 or starting at level 1 in exchange for being able to play as the new race/class available to your side. With this being said, it is expected that there will be some sort of character transfer available to TBC servers.

Some people have suggested opening TBC servers for a couple weeks before the dark portal to allow players wanting to roll blood elf/draeni an opportunity to reach 60 before the portal opens. I personally am not against or for this, but it doesn’t directly tie in to the existing character transition, so i’m not going to be addressing this.

–>Option 1: Allow individual character copies from Classic->TBC. (Worst option)
This could be very exploitable. Players could trade their friends all their gold, and then have their friend trade back all the gold to dupe tons of gold. Not only would it possibly ruin the TBC economy, but it could completely disrupt the classic economy for players who will no longer play it but have gold left on it. If gold wasn’t transferred, it would be unfair to people who focus their gameplay around the economy and would be rewarding players for mismanaging their funds. This method seems out of consideration for the reasons listed. It only yields harmful consequences to both classic and TBC.

–>Option 2: Allow individual character transfers.
With this option, once a character is transferred to TBC, it will not be accessible to classic. This is more desirable than option one, but still contains one major flaw. This flaw is that it would split the community more than required. Some players who work very hard on their characters will want to be able to take that character into TBC but also come back and play that character in classic. This would not give them that option.

–>Option 3: Allow two options to transfer the character with all items/gold intact or to COPY the character (one time only per character) but keep no gold/BOE items.
The idea is that if a player wants to transfer their character and keep all their BOE/craft mats/gold, they can transfer that character to TBC, but will no longer have that character available on classic.
For players that want to play on both, they can copy their character, but the BOE/craft mats/gold will not be copied. Only their BOP items+bags. If a player wanted to copy their character and only move some of the gold/mats over, they could move it to a level 1 character and transfer that character to TBC to get it back to their main.

–>Option 4. Snapshotting (Suggested by Eilethalua

Not my original idea, though I don’t remember who posted it first, but Blizzard could create a complete snapshot of WOW Classic characters (or maybe only those 58-60) as of the release day of TBC Classic realms, and make those available for copying.

Sure, a player could move all their gold to that level 60 the day before, but they wouldn’t be starting in TBC Classic with more than they had earned on one realm, limited by the natural gold cap - no more than a player would have had available to them in vanilla when TBC dropped.

EDIT: Oh, and what would happen with those snapshots is players could choose which TBC realm to transfer them to. (Presumably there won’t be as many TBC realms, though I might be over-estimating the drop in interest.)

Thoughts? Any better ideas of how this could be handled while maintaining the integrity of the TBC experience?

I realize TBC is still a LONG time away, but I think it would be great if we could try to get some ideas on how to handle the introduction of TBC smoothly so it isn’t a huge mess when the time comes.

[Ductape-eldrethalas]

What about account tracked transfers? Only allow that one character to be copied and only once. Meaning you cannot copy the same character, delete it and then copy it again. It’s a one and done deal.

This way you keep your classic character and also get to transfer the same exact character to TBC.

Nothing fancy to this and nothing to exploit.

[Minguas-faerlina]

I thought about this also. While I do like this solution, the only issue I see is it could disrupt the economy (really mainly an issue for classic).

It might not be as bad as i’m imagining but i’m just thinking that this would leak in extra gold to classic for players who have no interest in playing it anymore and copy their character to TBC. With option 3 that I mentioned however, no gold would be leaked between either version of the game.

One other thing to note is if that route should be taken, i’d assume it should be all of your characters and not just one. I don’t see why someone should be penalized for not buying multiple accounts for each level 60.

[Ductape-eldrethalas]

I don’t understand how gold could be leaked through. The one time per character transfer solves that.

[Minguas-faerlina]

A player has 30k gold saved up, player copies character to TBC to never play vanilla again and gives away his 30k gold. That is extra gold leaked into the economy that otherwise would not have been.

Gold sellers especially will be foaming at the mouth at this prospect.

[Ductape-eldrethalas]

The economy has been busted since launch. There is very little that will fix it or ruin it further.

[Minguas-faerlina]

I appreciate you taking the time to talk about this, but I really think that your suggestion would cause more harm than good. Not trying to attack you personally, but I just don’t see what advantage for the economy your suggestion would have in comparison to option 3.

[Enduring-herod]

Three options I can see:
A. Copy character/s over - This would appease many, but gold and AH could be an issue - see black lotus prices for example.
B. Separate Servers like Retail - Would be F R E S H realms but would fragment the community
C. Transition Fully into TBC - Most unlikely to occur, but would be the “cleanest” of the three.

[Ocisly-pagle]

best way would be to just transition the entirety of the servers to TBC, with dark portal event and everything.

the 11 people crying they wanted to stay in classic forever will quit, but they would quit 2 months later after they’re tired of grinding naxx endlessly anyway.

[Revolution-hyjal]

Didnt read OP I’m sorry but my take is that when TBC launches you should be have an option to port your wow classic character to the new TBC client/game. The existing character would remain untouched and you’d be able to go back and play Classic any time you wanted.

[Thatsme-bigglesworth]

The character in its entirety would be transferred to the bc server with no “copy” left on the vanilla server

Blizzard will find a way to still botch this but not nearly as bad as they would a character copy function

[Glinda-azuresong]

Nothing fancy to this and nothing to exploit.

Except that characters will be copied with an entire guild’s worth of gold.

[Pyro-nazjatar]

it should be fresh realms not tied to classic, no transfers

[Holymary-fairbanks]

@Glinda-azuresong

Except that characters will be copied with an entire guild’s worth of gold.

If it is indeed a character transfer, then one wonders whether the Character Transfer Information and Restrictions wouldn’t apply.

i.e. max 2000g.

[Ocisly-pagle]

@Holymary-fairbanks

@Glinda-azuresong

Except that characters will be copied with an entire guild’s worth of gold.

If it is indeed a character transfer, then one wonders whether the Character Transfer Information and Restrictions wouldn’t apply.

i.e. max 2000g.

that is still WAY more gold then most people have at hand.

EVERY SINGLE PERSON would transfer over with 2000 gold.

[Kythaela-ashkandi]

I would only want to play on a “fresh start” TBC server that allowed no transfers from anywhere other than from other “fresh start” TBC servers.

[Holymary-fairbanks]

that is still WAY more gold then most people have at hand.

EVERY SINGLE PERSON would transfer over with 2000 gold.

These are contradictory statements.

[Holymary-fairbanks]

I would only want to play on a “fresh start” TBC server

That would be my preference I think, too.

[Ocisly-pagle]

that is still WAY more gold then most people have at hand.

EVERY SINGLE PERSON would transfer over with 2000 gold.

These are contradictory statements.

entire guild pools money onto 1 guy, that guy copies his character over, passes gold along to the next guy.

[Holymary-fairbanks]

We seem to be having different conversations