What should I look at when Switching Realms
Feedback: Ok, I am on a pathetic realm that is always WAY behind the others in terms of progression; I have alot of my toons on this realm and a nice stash of gold so I haven't been in a big hurry to move, but friends that have transferred to other realms have progressed a lot faster and it is beginning to look more attractive to transfer.
For at least one article, probably not a series - what should someone consider when selecting a realm in WoW besides perhaps reading the Blizzard realm-specific forums? Or time zone? Or distance to the data center?
In other words, what would you look for if Blizzard was shutting down your realm for some mysterious reason and had to transfer?
Response:
Your Own Progression and Abilities
This should be the first thing that you take a good hard look at. Now since you’re on this site, I’m going to concentrate on you being a healer.
Having a good hard look at yourself as a healer is going to be critical. The problem for most healers is that they’re at the top of “their” game. This doesn’t mean that you’re playing to the best of your abilities. It’s likely that you just don’t know what you’re missing.
The first step is really being honest with yourself. If you’re not, you’re going to transfer to another realm and fail the trial. The end result may be you on a foreign realm, with no friends and no guild.
Ok, enough of this touchy feely crap, lets move on to the other things that you should look at.
The Guild
You’re going to be searching for a guild where you want to belong. You’ll need to work out a few things about that guild.
What they need? Do they have a need for a healer of your caliber?
How are they progression wise compared to you? Many healers struggle with making too much of a big leap. Going from TOC easy mode raiding to ICC hard mode raiding may be too big of a jump for you to handle. It’s a good idea to apply to a guild that has slightly better progression than you.
How close are they to your temperament. This is like the pulse of the guild. Are you after a hardcore guild where you’re doing nosebleed difficulty encounters before the rest of the world or do you prefer to look for a more social raiding guild. Hardcore guilds tend to be harder on their raiders. If you make a mistake, get used to being called out on it. How close knit are they?
Raid times. This is going to be a very important thing to consider. Does the guild you want to join suit your time schedule. What days do they raid? What is their attendance minimums? Are they a social guild where you can pick and choose whether you turn up.
How long has the guild been established? This will help you work out how stable the guild is. A chunk of guilds don’t survive a new expansion, some fall apart after new content comes out. Other guilds seem to last forever.
Progression of Realm
This is probably going to be way more important than your guild itself. It goes to alternative options you have if the guild of your choice doesn’t work out.
You’re going to want to research the raid times of the server and the demand for your class in other guilds.
Economy
Another factor can be the economy of your target server. You’re often going to be looking at transferring to a server with a higher population. That’ll usually mean there’s more demand for goods, but that also usually means there’s going to be more competition.
Moving Gold
Not sure if you’re aware of this, but there’s a 20k gold cap when transferring to another server. This means that you can only transfer a maximum of 20,000 gold. While this is more than what most people have, there are people who have way more than 20k gold. The trick is working out how to transfer the rest of it over without having to move multiple characters.
The best way is to buy high value items on your original realm, keep them in your bags and sell them when you reach your new realm. A typical item used for this is the engineering bike. A dozen of those and you can transfer a lot of gold over. You can even take a small loss in the transaction just to ensure you can bring your gold with you. Other options include stacks of gems, Primordial Saronite’s and other high cost materials.
There's probably more factors to consider when transferring servers. I've personally never considered the possibility. What is written above just makes sense. It doesn't come from any personal experience.
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