So it's not end game discussion, or even in game discussion, but any information you could provide would be hot.

What steps should a person take to make for a smooth transfer?

I hear things like: Clear your mailbox, and take down active auctions to make for a quick transfer, but how true are these things?

How long does an average transfer take (taking a number from Blizzard trying to sell you the service is something I'm not positive I want to trust).

I've heard as short as 1hr and as long as a few days... what's the norm?

I know a fair number of people have done transfers, so if you all could relate your experiences I'd appreciate it.

I haven't personally transferred but I do know the AH and mail thing is correct. You can't leave the server until things "out there" that are attached to your name are claimed. The only time I know of anyone taking more than a few hours was when there were issues with transfers in general, i.e. not being able to go from PvP->PvE.

It varies a great deal. I've transferred 3-4 characters in my time, and it's taken anywhere from instantaneous (about 6 months ago) to 4-5 days (a few days before TBC launch).

You actually simply can't transfer your character if you have mail...you'll get a prompt at the webpage saying your character is ineligible. I'm not sure whether auctions cause the same message.

At any rate, I wouldn't worry about it too much. I think it's generally pretty speedy nowadays. Clear out your mailbox and auctions and do it some morning before you go in to work. Assuming you can check your email at lunch (or, uh, just in the middle of the work day) and click on the "Yes, transfer my character now button", you'll probably be all set by the time you get home.

Don't do it the day before/day after the 2.1 patch release or anything...besides that, I think you'll be ok.

Friend of mine left our server a week ago. His transfer took about 15 -30 minutes. Also clearing mail and AH is a prerequisite for a transfer. I remember well those posts when folks tried to stop some ninja looter from transfering by spamming his ingame mail with worthless stuff.

I have a related question about moving characters between accounts. I want to move my druid to my brother's account, but our last names don't match. Now I know that Blizzard says that the last names have to match to move a character between accounts, but I've heard that account hackers are able to steal characters off of people's accounts. The hackers obviously don't share the last name of their multiple victims. Is this true? Is it possible to move a character to an account with a different last name?

I knew a guy that transfered two weeks ago, it took about 2 hours for him to get to his new server.


Regarding moving characters between accounts, I thought they tracked your last name and address, so if you live with our brother you should be able to do the transfer. I think you are out of luck due to the different last name.

They do not allow under any circumstances transfers between accounts with different names. The way hackers get around this is by creating new accounts and using the same last name as the previous account. I've also never heard of them renaming an accounts last name, even in the cases of divorce/marriage/adoption/etc.

The xfer process is as follows:

- initiate the transfer in the online account pages. You won't be allowed to transfer if you have any mail or AH items (even pending mail that hasn't yet arrived at your mailbox)

- a customer service person reviews the transfer (GM, other dept? dunno). I'm sure they have certain flags, like if the account was recently re-activated (ebay/hacking) or IP access patterns or whatever they can suspend/ban the account. Assuming no flags come up, the toons are flagged as ok-for-transfer. This can take from 5 minutes to 5 days, depending on how "suspicious" your account may be or how busy they are.

- theres a natural queue for xfers, depending on other xfer activity, server activity, etc, etc. Once your toon gets to the top of the queue you are sent an email requesting confirmation of transfer. When you go to the account mgmt page and click that button ok, your toon is transferred and ready to play.

Note that I believe toons are transferred with temp names which will force a rename immediately upon login. A good idea is to hop onto the server on which you want to transfer, and create a bunch of level 1 alts of your faction, including your name (if its not taken). Then you can delete them and name your character when the transfer is ready.

I've done paid and Blizzard-sponsored transfers. The Blizz one was for relieving the realm population problems on Cenarion Circle (and other servers) by letting us go to Farstriders free. In the paid cases, my character had a new temp name. In the free transfer, my character kept the same name and the new server didn't allow creating new characters anyway. It is, however, possible that my character name was taken on the new server and I was forced to change for that reason.

But that's one piece of advice I'd give you is to reserve a name you want on your new server.


The technical requirement of having your mailbox and auctions clear is strict, as others have said.

When I transfered it was pretty close to instant. I happened to not have WoW running when I clicked the submit button, and by the time I started WoW and logged in the transfer had finished. The fact that I stayed in the same battlegroup and transfered at an off-peak time may have something to do with that -- I suspect character transfers are fairly database intensive operations, and are probably prioritized under people actually playing.

Of course, preparing for the transfer took a while. Fitting multiple bank alts' worth of stuff onto one character who already had little open space isn't fun.

When I transferred from my old server it took around 15-30 minutes from the time of clicking the button to the time of being able to play on the new realm.

I'm pretty sure it always prompts you to change your name when you move your character, regardless of whether there's another character on the server with that name.

When I moved my mage "Maelis" from Turalyon to Uther, it said the name violated rules and prompted me for a name change. In the character select screen the name was "Maelis" and I entered the name "Maelis" as the new name, it accepted it.

I think they just flag all transfers with "must change name on next logon" so that it has to verify that the name is unique etc before you can log in.