World Selection Changes

Garret

Garret

Galkasaur
FC/Active Member
SE said:
Starting March 8, 2007, players will be able to create new characters on the World of their choice. Up until now, Worlds would be randomly assigned to characters upon their creation, while only players with World Passes could join their friends. However, with this new adjustment, all players, even ones without World Passes, will have the option to select their realm at the character selection screen.

Originally, the World Pass system was introduced to maintain a balance among all the Worlds and prevent overpopulation. However, with the continued stablization of each World's adventurer community and recent technical advances in server technology, it has been determined that allowing players to create new characters on Worlds of their choice would not greatly affect the current population balance.

In conjunction with this change, we have updated the character creation screen to include a new pull-down window from which players can select the World of their choice. Also, additional characters added to an account will no longer be automatically assigned to the same World as the first character. Players will be free to choose where they wish that new character to reside, be it the same World, or a completely different one.

Finally, the development team is continuing their work on World selection by making preparations for a new service that will allow players to move their characters to different Worlds. Please keep a close watch on the Topics page for further updates on this exciting feature.
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I bolded the more interesting part.
 
I wonder if this is something set in place now for the future when they start to combine servers. I guess they could have you log in and select a new one when they finally start doing that.
 
It would be interesting if they allowed people to server hop at will. At first you would have lots of people taking advantage of the arbitrage opportunities where they would buy something on one server and sell it on another server a few minutes later for way more gil. Eventually you'd see the server economies start balancing out to where they were all virtually identical.

I think it would be pretty neat though to just be able to hop over to another server to party with someone you always argue with on a forum about who would parse higher, then go back to your normal server. Or, as an LS, you could start tracking ToDs of HNMs across all servers and the whole LS could just hop over to another server to camp, and then hop back.

I know they won't make it an at-will hopping system like that, but it's fun to think about the reprecussions of what would happen if they did, lol.
 
Directly quoted from WoW account management:
WoW Character or Account Transfer said:
Paid Character Transfer
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elcome to the Paid Character Transfer service. The cost is $25.00 per character transferred. This allows you to move your characters to different realms, and even from one of your accounts to another one of your accounts. Please note that account-to-account transfers are subject to restrictions<!--
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elcome to the Paid Character Transfer service. This service costs $25.00 per character transferred, and will allow you to move your characters to different realms, and even from one of your accounts to another of your accounts, should you so desire, subject to certain restrictions. Before you proceed with this process, please be certain you have familiarized yourself with the Restrictions and Disclaimers. You can also find other useful clarifications at the Character Transfer FAQ.-->.The character transfer includes the transfer of gold, items inventory, items in the bank, purchased bank slots, lifetime honor ranking, honor points, quests, and hunter pets that are associated with the character that you want to transfer. The character transfer does not include the transfer of quest kill progress, mail in your mailbox, and the guild affiliation and guild tabard design associated with the character that you want to transfer. Please note that you will be prompted to choose a new character name if a naming conflict exists on the destination realm.
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  • <small class="blood">The paid character transfer is not immediate and will take several days to complete because of the approval process involved. Your character will NOT be available for play during this time.</small>
  • <small class="blood">Each character you transfer costs $25.00. This covers the character's ONE-WAY TRANSFER to a new realm, a new account, or both at the same time.</small>
  • <small class="blood">Your character will not have any guild affiliation upon arrival at the destination realm.</small>
  • <small class="blood">Each character may only transfer once every three months.</small>
  • <small class="blood">You will need to rename your character if his/her name is taken on your destination realm.</small>
  • <small class="blood">Characters on a PvE or RP realm may not transfer to a PvP or <nobr>RP-PvP</nobr> realm.</small>
  • <small class="blood">If you already have a character on a PvP realm, you may not transfer a character of the opposing faction to that PvP realm.</small>
  • <small class="blood">Character transfers between accounts are subject to restrictions. Click here to learn more.</small>
  • <small class="blood">For a list of eligible and ineligible destination realms, please click here.</small>
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Before you proceed with this process, please be certain you have familiarized yourself with the Restrictions and Disclaimers. You can also find other useful clarifications at the <nobr>Character Transfer FAQ</nobr>.
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Like it says, you can even split a character from your account to another account, which would be very very very usefull for people who started with 1 account for 2 players (like husband and wife), and now want to play together, but can't because SE is too retarded to see the benefice of this. You also can move only once every three months for $25.00 so people would think about it twice before transfering their character.

I won't turn the thread into a FFXI vs WoW, but FFXI could take exemple on WoW about account management.
 
Just to continue with discussion...

I doubt you will be able to server hop back and forth on a whim. I've transferred two characters in WoW, and it's basically stated that:

- Your character is not accessible during the transfer application and processing of the application.
- The processing may take up to one full week (both my transfers took an hour though).
- You can not have anything on the auction house or in your mailbox.
- You can not transfer that character again for a full three months.
- It costs $25 US for the character to be transferred, each time.

There are other things like server types (not a FFXI issue though) and some servers are blocked from being transferred on to (could be a FFXI issue).

Some things I have noticed with WoW transfers though, server natives often despise transfers (this is almost strictly an end-game issue), and some people use transfers as a way to take a break from a guild and play on another server for three months with some other friends and then come back to their last server. This is more of a recent thing, as it used to be a six month cooldown to transfer a character again.

If you want to parse against someone from another server, the one option I see FFXI could use is something similar to WoW's battleground system, which several months ago became a cross-server system. FFXI could possibly do something like that with Ballista/Brenner (not something I'd be super interested in), or maybe some sort of "lobby --> Assault/Limbus/Salvage" system, but I don't see that as very likely.

In the end, if people can transfer characters, we're possibly going to see a) epic LSs formed, b) more rampant gear/account theft, c) people taking vacations from their home servers or d) weaker/slower servers getting raided by full LS transfers. But that is all just hypothetical.
 
Oh, this is bad.

They probably will take a WoW approach to this, but the main difference between WoW and FF is RMT rules this game like an ugly six titted bitch goddess of yore.

We actually have it better on Valefor than most, but this opens up so many options for RMT that are already rampant. They can easily spread out across all servers with this option, and even distribute their resources after bans. You can buy accounts on one server and move them to other servers without the stigma of RMT attached.
 
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