Feldon From TSR-JoshuaM on the EQ2 Forums:
We’ve reduced the amount of time needed in order to purchase a Character Transfer token to 7 days of active, recurring, Gold Membership time. This should alleviate a great deal of the gating issues preventing many of you from purchasing this token.
Station Cash purchases of Non-recurring Gold Membership does not make you eligible for Character Transfer services. This service is only extended to active, recurring, Gold Membership holders or Station Access subscribers.
In the event of an account to account transfer, a process which must be done manually, both accounts must be fully verified to start the process. This may be an issue for free-to-play accounts as you may not be able to meet the verification requirements and this cannot be excepted under any circumstance.
Station Access subscribers and anyone who believes they meet all of the requirements but are unable to purchase a Character Transfer token, you must contact our support staff directly in order to discuss your options and begin any available process we can offer you.
Requirements Overview:
– Active, Recurring, Gold Membership (SC puchased Gold Memberships are not eligible) for a minimum of 7 consecutive days
– Account must be fully verifiable (May not be possible on F2P accounts with no billing history as that is required in the verificaiton process)
– You must be the verified owner of both accounts in Account to Account transfer requests
– Station Access subscribers will need to contact our support staff directly for either server to server or account to account transfer services as you will not be able to see the Character Transfer token on the Marketplace.
– If you do not meet the active, recurring, gold membership and verification requirements, we will not be able to assist you in transferring your character under any circumstance
We will not be offering workarounds for players who simply do not meet the above requirements at this time.
wow, went form a customer oriented service to ****you in one post. wow. just wow
Have they given any official reason that SC-bought subscription time doesn’t count?
There’s no identity verification on SC purchased subscriptions.
So let me see if I get this:
If somebody purchased a year of gold back during triple SC… they’re now ineligible for any form of character transfer until that year has expired. Well, SOE got that money, too bad they don’t want more.
Going to have to tell a friend that he’s borked. But then again, I was trying to save him the $25 on a character we can rebuild in a couple weeks, this just makes it easier.
That is the thing — it’s pretty easy to level up a character, with AAs and everything, in a short period of time. And probably, if it’s an older character, with better equipment and stats.
I agree, these days it is easier to just level up a new character than to deal with the SOE bull fest. All they are doing here is cheating themselves out of more income. That and saying they don’t care about percentage of there customer base.
I actually think this is some kind of measure to stop gold farmers and scammers moving chars around … I am sure some of the posters here would be able to figure it out better than I could. But I don’t really see why they would pay $25 for this service, regardless, so it must be something I don’t understand.
As easy as it may be to level a new character, what about grinding factions with cities, Tradeskillers, rare quests and titles that one may be partial too?
I’m not interested in moving servers myself…but this is kind of a big middle finger from SOE for those of us who DID pay a year in advance, and are not on recurring plans.
Then again, I can only laugh at myself because I’m the one who DID pay them afterall.
I just transferred with a nonrecurring gold. Used live chat though to start it up, would recommend that instead of petitioning.
The “identity verification” explanation doesn’t make sense to me. I subscribed for years back in the day; they know who I am. Why do I have to be subscribed in a specific way for a certain amount of time /now/, even after they supposedly moved to a subscription-optional model?
Because this entire project of changing over to sub-optional/FTP was not well thought out from a database standpoint. It was rushed, and things were overlooked.
I think some of it was just hubris on the part of SOE, thinking they could accomplish some kind of IT triple play in the time given, or else just a poorly thought out project that ran off the rails, so to speak, because there was no time and too many details to sort out.
The team does seem to be working diligently to fix content and make the new features more fun — such as the recent changes to mercs. It is the accounting/billing department that is having the most trouble with the transition, it seems.
Being a developer in gaming is one of those jobs where your mistakes are very apparent to the thousands of people who play your game. SJ’s job is hightly scrutinized by a lot of smart people, who are passionate about his product. This was a big ship to turn around in the middle of the stream, and we are definitely seeing the results of the change, positive and negative.
IMHO the whole F2P transition was in order to make the sale of the European franchise to Prosiebensat, and the triple station cash was to inflate turnover in time to make the price Prosiebensat paid higher.
With F2P dominating their thinking (and SOE’s bottom line) and character transfers not being a F2P option of course it is being neglected.
SOE’s silence is deafening on the Prosiebensat deal (other than the spin)no one knows how it will impact the games euro customers,its funny after all the stunts SOE has pulled over the years with cash shops/LON etc this move,if it goes the way i suspect it will (with them taking over billing etc),will end my time playing SOE games.
So are they taking over all billing, or just euro billing?
I have 2 active accounts yet they wouldn’t let me get my toons off of old accounts not active. I called to give them money & they wouldn’t take it.