Unfortunately, I don’t feel that this resolves the problem. As a guild leader of a guild on Faerlina, its incredibly difficult to even consider the topic of transferring.
We moved to Faerlina from Skeram when Skeram died off once already, and the point of going to a large megaserver was to avoid having to risk that situation again. Megaservers offer something that is innately unique; the ability to raid with multiple groups, on different characters.
Many of our guild members are regulars in GDKP’s, or even raid in scheduled guild raids, with other guilds. They have communities outside of our own. If I, as a guild leader, were to decide to broach the subject of moving servers, it would require all of those other connected communities to be considering the same, which in a chain-reaction, would need their various members in other guilds to do the same. People do not want to be forced to abandon a raid team or guild that they have been part of for months simply because their other raid team wants to move; and no guild will put its community into that situation.
Keeping characters on two servers, while possible, is terribly inefficient and results in economic issues; as now you have to generate/spend gold in two separate locations, and you can’t use resources you gain effectively.
I fully understand that this is a very complicated problem, but the solution to simply ignore it and hope that the player friction becomes enough that people move is not really viable. The friction required to force movement for many players at this point is too high.
Once you also consider the circumstances that could go wrong in a transfer, it immediately makes it an even worse option. The announcement that transfers could be closed without much notice simply could say “we may cut you off from those in your guild that got off work late and missed the transfer”. Locking character creation tells us “you can’t play with your new girlfriend on this server”, and leaving the solution up to only the players rapidly feels like Blizzard doesn’t understand why these issues exist in the first place.
The solution is to offer SAFER options to transfer.
Ways to Transfer that are either temporary, bulk, or otherwise provide less risk. If there was an option to transfer to Eranikus, with a guarantee that after 4 weeks we automatically transfer back to Faerlina, then that becomes much easier to accept. It may not solve the issue permanently, but it might kick the can down the road enough to let the surge of new players spread out or the concurrent logins to evenly distribute.
Any solution has to quell the concern and fear of players that are at risk losing access to their friend groups and communities that have been built over the past 3 years. Anything that does less will not work.
What would it take to make me leave?
I asked other guild leaders in the Faerlina Discord what it would take to make them able to consider the prospect of transferring, and I’ll be cataloguing some of their responses below in hopes to give a direct line of communication from guild leaders (and the decisionmakers of large transfers) to the developers on what is required to make this work.
Expanse - Bagzli : “The ability to come back seamlessly if things don’t work out on that server. and also gold cap would have to be raised if transfers are to happen”
Disorder - Minamus : " the population decline was noticeable even at phase 2 in TBC, we just suffered through until we didn’t have a choice hoping free transfers would happen and they didn’t. The same thing will happen. There will be a lull in content and people will quit or begin to raid log and people will want to go to a populated server. I don’t want to transfer out of a mega server to another just for it to die again and force my raiders to once again transfer and go through the headache of moving gold, change their name, etc. its a huge headache."
Triad - Churm : “If the target is the new or returning player I think if they added an icon on the launcher that says “Save our servers and take the free character migration option, upon transferring off the server you will receive, Eranikus, our new unique companion” or some incentive a lot of returning players may be more likely to take it.”
non-gm - Waju - “Your post is spot on to how our guild feels about free transfers. We just don’t see how servers filled with players with no social ties to the game are gonna have any longevity”
Sleepless - Palydan : “I came from Kromcrush and we paid to go to a server that wouldn’t just die off. There needs to be a guarantee of a transfer back after a period of time and they need to make the transition easier for the entire guild to opt into and transfer intact instead of making us do all the setup over again to fix their issues.”
Wagyu Beef - Sariae : “My worry, and I’m sure many here agree, is the fact that there is no guarantee or way to look into the future to see if that new server that we transfer into (should we choose to do so) actually succeeds. What is stopping it from dying like Earthfury? The mega servers pretty much are a given that they will not dry out. That, and everything that entails, is what’s keeping people here.”
Edits
edit 1: perhaps a new server that is only for transfers, that will shut down after a month and return people to their origin; that way nobody on that server currently risks being left behind? Just spitballing ideas that might work. Something where the health of the server isn’t a question, but an assurance.