Community Relations Archive
Thread: Character Transfer to All Access subscription concerns
Phhantom,
The problem here is that I was unable to name my SWG accounts the same as EQ - when I tried it did not allow this back at SWG launch. It was almost like they had linked the game accounts so that you couldnt duplicate but at that time SWG was not part of All Access so we could not even add this to our EQ subscriptions - this came much later on prior to the launch of EQ2.
Also for you information I have never sold any account or ever intended to. If you held an EQ account at the time of SWG launch and were able to name your SWG account the same as SWG I would be surprised (apologies if you did but I certainly couldnt). All I am asking if that I get the full benefits of paying for All Access - either transfer my current account keys to my all access and rename the account accordingly or if that isnt possible then give me my current accounts free and dont charge me whilst I pay All Access costs. Why should I pay more that noobie guy who just paid $30 for Total Experience when I have been an SOE customer for 7 years....makes no sense to me. In this time of competition you would think SOE would be a little more responsive to its loyal player base.
Tiggs - I appreciate the update although I have to be disappointed with the response. When I spoke to the CS on the phone not once did I hear 'we appreciate your business over the last 7 years sir but there is nothing we can do' - it was more like' hey its your choice - we cant help you'. The CS need to start realising there really is a choice out there now.
Mil
Milandriel wrote:
Phhantom,
The problem here is that I was unable to name my SWG accounts the same as EQ - when I tried it did not allow this back at SWG launch. It was almost like they had linked the game accounts so that you couldnt duplicate but at that time SWG was not part of All Access so we could not even add this to our EQ subscriptions - this came much later on prior to the launch of EQ2.
Also for you information I have never sold any account or ever intended to. If you held an EQ account at the time of SWG launch and were able to name your SWG account the same as SWG I would be surprised (apologies if you did but I certainly couldnt). All I am asking if that I get the full benefits of paying for All Access - either transfer my current account keys to my all access and rename the account accordingly or if that isnt possible then give me my current accounts free and dont charge me whilst I pay All Access costs. Why should I pay more that noobie guy who just paid $30 for Total Experience when I have been an SOE customer for 7 years....makes no sense to me. In this time of competition you would think SOE would be a little more responsive to its loyal player base.
Tiggs - I appreciate the update although I have to be disappointed with the response. When I spoke to the CS on the phone not once did I hear 'we appreciate your business over the last 7 years sir but there is nothing we can do' - it was more like' hey its your choice - we cant help you'. The CS need to start realising there really is a choice out there now.
Mil
Message Edited by boceifus2000 on 06-16-2005 11:00 PM
I can understadn that. The thing is I never had a problem at release adding my SWg account to my EQ account then when EQ2 came out i had no problem adding that account too.
I did this for two seperate accounts that have all access.
I am just curious how it worked for me twice in a row and you all got shafted. Which I am sorry to hear. If this is indeed the case and you are claiming this on acurate time lines with release then SOE should by all means help you all..
The details I suppose are nitpicky things like how much you charge for it etc...(currently 30 bucks but that also deletes all your items I think... does the character transfer from one account to another actually delete items if you stay on the same server?). I just wouldn't charge for it in this sort of case. Not that you should be charging anything for an itemless transfer in the first place (when you can't move jedi), its not like non jedi characters are worth anything really anyway, its the items that matter. Everything else can be regrinded in a few hours with enough cash, which is x-server traded constantly whether that is intended or nto.
If you really want to handle it on a case by case basis you create a character on the preferred accoutn name (new char name... append an x in good old soe style), use a CSR character builder/blue frog type thing to level up to identical skills, and manually move all items over. There isn't a lot in game that isn't tradeable so that shouldn't be hard, a nuissance to be sure, but not all that hard, delete the old character, rename the new one by removing the x.
There doesn't seem to be much benefit in trying to maintain a database around around say credit card numbers rather than account names, so move it all to one account name. That or entirely rebuild your database around some new unique ID information.
Any other system is complicated and likely to cause problem ah la world of warcrafts billing people 13 times in the first month and such.
Not that easy friend Character transfer with items. As resources Vary on each server. The same one on one server is not the same in stats on another.
Unless they can scale to match the server stats which is alot of work. Even with a payment of 150$ for transfer would not make it worth SOE's time imho. That is a lot of coding lol....
I was Force Sensitive/Jedi to beable to transfr. I could not hang with my friends after I unlocked and They did not tell us that Force Sensitives could not transfer til 2 days before the release. so a lot of people rather be on other servers. But who wants to give up all that hard work...
Message Edited by Phhantom on 06-16-2005 12:22 PM
As for transfers accross servers, since everything is unique the resource names and such shouldn't matter, either you convert them to the resources with the same name or just keep them as a servername.resourcename and the stats are the stats, no big challenge there really, just juggling pointers which any second year student can manage. The problem is that you may have duplicate item serials and dupiclate locations for structures, which I admit is a potential pain to deal with since you need to check (intensive), and then reserialize, even more of a pain. Though I suppose if you do your hashing algorithm in the database its not that bad, I don't think that SOE uses hash tables for its databases, or if it does the hash functions are crappy because the database seems to degrade exponentially in n (a good hash table should be nearly constant time whether 1 item or 1 million). The if you find duplicate serial numbers you can use a second hash to find a free serial number for your item.
Which arrives at the more fundamental issue of serialized items in the first place, which isn't such a great idea (obviously given how much of a strain on the database it is), but that's another rant.
I have been playing since EQ beta as well like the original poster. The only reason people usually seperate accounts is the ability to sell them or use for trade an account.
I have had the same two accounts with all Espansion packs up to date with EQ, EQ2, Planet, SWG. For 48$ a month. 2 all access passes. Why do people choose to create new station names then come here and complain? They offered the feature of using your same station name years ago.. A lot did not know about All access, but hey so what if they didn't. That is not SOE's problem. That was a perk to the people like myself who did what SOE asked. This saved Space for SOE and kept better track of there customer base.
I feel bad for the people who can't afford the games. In all fairness they should of did what SOE Asked of them.. Why shouldSOE loose money for user Error? What people are asking of SOE is yuppie like in that movie where the guys goes to the casino manager and says "Hey, I got an Idea I lost out nest eggg here how about you give back our money and we use it as a promotion deal." The Casino in turns says if I did that I would make no money and would loose in the long run. With the Yuppie still whinning with possible solutions..
