Transfer Me

Yes, character transfer service is now available for EQII players. If you have the funds that is.

At a cost of $50 for changing a character to another server and $50 for changing a character to another account ($100 if you do both), you don't want to be hopping from server to server like a drunken froglok.

Now, this seems expensive to me, but it's no surprise as EQ character transfer services are rather pricy as well. So, I'm sure the debate has been raised before but it is a valid one. I can't imagine that there isn't a relatively simple system in place to handle character transfers, but I'm sure SOE would say it brings about customer service complaints and issues which eat into profitability.

Still, forum poster Tollian in this thread on the official forums brings up an old quote from Smed, who says, "Would you believe we've generated over $1 million in revenue simply from moving characters?" I googled this quote and it seems to come from this Business 2.0 article. However, only the first page is free so I wasn't able to verify the quote. (I'll do a lot of things for my readers, but subscribing to Business 2.0 isn't one of them.)

In any case, the article is a fun bit of nostalgia discussing Smed as he "strolls around observing his fellow citizens." It even includes a quote from Brad McQuaid saying that Star Wars Galaxies "will blow the market open like a supernova." On a related topic, if you are a Brad McQuaid fan, you might want to read the quite lengthy discussion of SOE Brad recently launched into on the Vanguard forums (via Pitfalls). He seems to like EQII.

But, back to the transfer service, it's one of those services that, when you really need it, you're glad it's available, regardless of price. Here's a suggestion for more easy money - a fee to change your character's last name. I'm sure quite a few people would pay for this. Did SOE ever offer this service in EQ? I was careful about mine but I'm betting some people screwed up. I'm sure this would cut down on SOE's precious customer service time as well.

Also worthy of note is that it doesn't look like the majority of your EQII Players stats will transfer with you. That's rather poor. The whole EQII Players stats service could be a lot better and more functional in my opinion but that's another story.

The funniest thing for me from the transfer service post is this quote: "The EverQuest II community is growing on a daily basis." Is that in some kind of bizzaro SOE alternate universe in which they are the market leader? Well, I don't know what the basis of this claim is and it's not what I've been hearing but as a player I hope it's true.