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Guild Realm Transfer, Faction Change and other services now available
Do you want to rename your guild, move to a new server, or change the guild's faction? Now you can! Blizzard's just announced the new Guild Services, and they're a fairly extensive lot. Having jumped servers with guilds twice now, and having seen a guild jump both servers and factions, I think this is pretty darn exciting news for anyone considering any of these changes. It'll help with holding on to guild resources, guild identity, and should make that horrible feeling of being on a new server without a tag waiting for someone to scoop you back up a thing of the past. You can read the text of the announcement at the official site and we'll have it after the jump, of course.
Guild services to be released within two weeks
Back in March of this year, Blizzard announced that two new guild services would be released. One of the services is Guild Transfers, which will allow the transfer of the entire Guild structure, while the individual guild members would have to pay for character transfers but would keep their status in the guild once transferred. The other service was guild name changing. Cory Stockton in the Open Q&A panel at BlizzCon announced that these services would be released in the next two weeks. He said the services are ready, but they didn't want to release them before BlizzCon. So if you've been wanting to take advantage of these services, now is the time to finalize your plans. The news is out -- we'll be playing Mists of Pandaria! Find out what's in store with an all-new talent system, peek over our shoulder at our Pandaren hands-on, and get ready to battle your companion pets against others. It's all here right at WoW Insider!
The Queue: Combo breaker
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mathew McCurley will be your host today. Oh, you like Anne Stickney, do you? You like how she answers a lot of questions, hmm? I'm not going to be outdone by some lore-toting, tinfoil-hat-wearing mountain dweller. It's lightning round time, fools. As for why Ragnaros is the header image for the Queue, I just like the guy. What can I say? Trinket asked: I just finished watching the latest 4.2 trailer and was picturing tackling the new bosses on my Fire Mage when it occurred to me I'll literally be fighting Fire with Fire... My question is why aren't raid bosses made from fire immune to fire damage? Wouldn't it seem more appropriate that Frost would do more damage against a fire elemental boss? The simple reason is gameplay reasons. Forcing a mage to choose a different spec for Firelands is just not fun from a gameplay perspective. Back in the vanilla days, Molten Core mobs were immune to fire damage and mages who wanted to raid went frost. I forgot if arcane was viable back then -- someone please remind me. I didn't pay attention to mages back in the olden days. Blizzard has said many times in the past that gameplay concerns trump common sense in many instances. Fire mages should not be penalized for playing fire throughout an entire tier of raiding. Sure, it "makes sense" according to made up fantasy physics or whatever, but it's just not fun for mages. It's unnecessary clutter that people confuse with depth, kind of like resist fights.
RIFT offering free character transfers with patch 1.3 [Updated]
It's always tough when you roll a character on a server but find out that your good friends are on another. The question of "Do I reroll or stay put?" is an agonizing one, fortunately one that RIFT players will not have to struggle with too much longer. Trion Worlds has announced that with the advent of patch 1.3, RIFT will allow players to move to select servers once per week -- for free. These free character transfers include a wholesale move of all of the character's items, achievements and titles. Also, Trion has stated that initially there will be no limit to the number of times your character can hop to a different server. Scott Hartsman thinks this will strengthen the game's community: "MMOs are all about playing with your friends no matter which server they're on, and that's why we're offering this as a free service to our subscribers. RIFT is both a game and a service, and adding free server transfers is just one more way we can make this the best possible MMO experience available." Patch 1.3 will also allow guild leaders to transfer over their guilds' details, including levels and experience. The patch is scheduled for "early summer." [Update: Trion has posted a Free Character Transfer FAQ on the forums with specifics as to this service. Check it out!]
Guild transfer service coming soon
Good news for those guilds who want to move to a new realm -- Blizzard will soon allow the ability to transfer the guild and its structures easily with a guild relocation service. It appears that there won't be a single massive "transfer my guild button" that moves everyone over all at once, but instead, each guild member will have to pay their own way over to the new server. Once they get to the new server, all their guild bank, guild reputation, and so on will be over there. Blizzard's full statement is as follows: Nethaera We want to give everyone an early heads-up regarding our plan to implement a guild relocation service for World of Warcraft. The idea is for a guild leader to be able to transfer a guild to another realm. The guild structure remains intact, including the guild leader, guild bank, ranks, and guild name (depending on availability). Guild members who decide to relocate with their guild may initiate their own paid character transfer. Upon a successful transfer they will automatically be part of the guild when they first log into the new realm. Their guild rank and guild reputation will be intact. Guild leaders who do not want a change of scenery may also choose to pick a new guild name using another new service. These services are in development and we will be providing additional details at a future point in time. As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the guild relocation service in a way that will not disrupt the game play experience. Please note that this feature will require extensive internal testing, so you may see bits and pieces of the service appear on the public test realms. source
Tom Chilton talks about the in-game pet store
The guys over at The Instance podcast got a chance to talk to Blizzard's Tom Chilton about the recent decision to sell in-game noncombat pets for real money, and the interview is now up in the latest episode on their site. He talks first about the pets' development, and it sounds like they designed the pets thinking they'd be sold on a real-money store eventually. He says the price point was "arrived at by trying to figure out what it would have to be to make sense for us to spend time working on it." And he mentions the TCG and their loot prizes -- he says those were meant to be a bonus, and they ended up being a roundabout way for players to buy pets anyway, so Blizzard decided to go with this more direct plan. He doesn't say much about the future, but he does say that Blizzard is planning on doing some "pet and plushie" deals, where you'll be able to buy a plushie from the Blizzard store, and get an in-game pet with it. For the game specifically, he mentions the guild transfer service that's coming (we heard about that back at BlizzCon -- you'll be able to server transfer an entire guild rather than do it account-by-account), but otherwise he tells players that the pet store is just a "side project" -- right now, it's not taking away from development at all, and if it does grow, Chilton says Blizzard would hire more people rather than using current developers. We'll have to see what happens in the future.
