Blizzard opens doors to World of Warcraft character transfers

Realm-jumping for a small fee and limits on how much gold you can take with you.

Blizzard will soon allow players of its popular World of Warcraft massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) to transfer characters between realms - a feature long sought after by players and a very welcome addition.

Previously, character transfers were only performed in controlled, one-off circumstances by Blizzard to balance player loads on overpopulated servers. Now, for a fee of US$25 you can whisk your character to a realm of your choosing, complete with equipment, levels, gold, reputation, quests and Player vs Player ranks.

Due to its massively multiplayer nature, World of Warcraft relies on multiple servers to support its 6 million-plus customer base. Over 100 such servers, or realms, exist. However, while players on these servers all experience the same World of Warcraft game, players on one realm cannot interact with those on another.

Paid transfer will change this. In order to take advantage of the service, all a player needs to do is log into their account management page on the World of Warcraft website and click the 'Paid Character Transfer' button.

According to Blizzard, the transfer process can take anywhere from 1-10 days, and the character will be inaccessible during this time. If a character with the same name as the one you are transferring already exists on the destination server, you will be required to change it.

The service will also allow players to transfer characters from one user account to another, as long as they are the registered subscriber for both accounts. This is checked by matching the last name of each account.

The transfer can be cancelled at any time before the process is completed.

Blizzard says that to start with, not all realms will have the service available - the developer wants to monitor a small selection of servers to make sure it doesn't overload itself with requests and to test its limits. It's almost guaranteed however to become available to all realms. A list of available realms will be viewable at the World of Warcraft website.

This isn't the only limitation. Players will not be able to transfer if the realm they choose is already at capacity; the realm is less than 90 days old; the source and destination realms are of opposing rulesets or a free character migration is upcoming for either realm.

Regarding rulesets, players of Player vs Environment (PvE) realms will not be able to transfer to Player vs Player realms. The reason for this limitation is that it is far easier to develop a character in a peaceful environment than one with hostile players.

PvP characters are free to transfer to PvE realms. Blizzard mentions that other technical limitations may prevent transfers. For example, players may not transfer characters between regions (ie. North America to Europe).

In order to transfer, players must make sure their character's mailbox is empty and that no mail is incoming, their auctions are completed and they cannot be the leader of a guild. Characters of level 10 or less cannot be transferred, and characters carrying large amounts of gold cannot move either. This is to prevent 'gold farmers' from spreading to new servers or servers with developing economies and upsetting the normal processes that occur with new server growth.

The gold limits are as follows:

Level 10-30: 300 gold limit
Level 31-50: 1000 gold limit
Level 51+: 5000 gold limit

Players should also make sure that the transfer they wish to perform is what they want. Blizzard plans to limit transfers to once per character per six months.