Warhammer Online offering free server transfers as prelude to two server shutdowns

If you're playing on the Iron Rock or Volkmar servers for Warhammer Online, it's time to get ready to say goodbye. The development team for the game has just announced that free server transfers are being unlocked for both servers, allowing players to transfer to Gorfang to help bolster the population. That in and of itself wouldn't be all that unusual, except that when the transfer starts, both Iron Rock and Volkmar are being flagged as Legacy servers to prevent any new characters from being created.

Starting on February 9th, transfers will be enabled and the Legacy flag will go into place. After three weeks of open transfers, both Iron Rock and Volkmar will be flagged as "Retired," meaning that any characters not transferred off the server will have to be transferred to Gorfang (or Badlands via a paid transfer). That means that two of the game's remaining four American servers will be removed in the near future, and while the population boost will no doubt help Warhammer Online's RvR battles, it's still a shutdown for two servers.

Reader Comments (62)

Not a surprise. Hopefully this helps the game. I found this game, more than any other, thrives when server populations are high.

@tristanius
Indeed, that's kind of the double-edged sword WAR has to deal with; the whole RvR thing doesn't work too well when your server population is low or imbalanced.

HAHHAHA BURN BABY BURN!

Yeah I had high hopes for the game, yeah I got burned, yeah I tried it after all the "fixes" (the same PQ had the exact same bug 2 years after launch).

Having said that, this is a very smart move to improve population. As far as I'm concerned they should just make one server and work their way up.

Time for this game to go free to play as well

@Rayne26

Which would probably expand the realm population like crazy if they did.

only thing is up to 40 should be free and RR 40...after that you could make a P2P option for certain RR ranks or something.

@Boruk

Sadly, it's pay per month AND pay to rank up over RR80 now. Which is bullshit and one of the reasons i just recently cancelled my sub. That and they went cash shop crazy.

@Rayne26

I was thinking the EXACT same thing. Shutting down servers while still trying to charge a monthly fee are counter productive in the long run. If they continue to make people pay a fee to play the game the server shutdown won't stop at just 2...it'll be the game as a whole.

Going F2P has been a massive success for games in which some have TRIPLED their profits after adopting the paradigm (see [url=http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/01/06/turbine-lotro-revenue-tripled-since-going-f2p/]LOTRO[/url]).

I believe it's in WARs, and it's players, best interest if the game goes the same route as many other MMOs on the market.

@Barinthos

Wow...want to buy an edit button please!

Here's a working link to the LOTRO profit article.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/01/06/turbine-lotro-revenue-tripled-since-going-f2p/

@Rayne26 Definitely time for this to go free to play. Follow turbine's model or some variation thereof and I think Warhammer could see a resurgence. But what do I know, I am just a consumer :)

@Severius

It's a P2P with a cash shop where you buy in-game bonuses. For all intents and purposes, the company deserves to go belly-up. I'm sorry, I really am, but it's true. I loved this game and it's PvP, and I still have the boxed collector's edition, wrapped and sitting here next to my computer. But these really underhanded practices are just terrible.

I swear, anyone who paid into the cash shop for this game is an idiot, and only encourages companies to do these sorts of thing. It's just like that terrible "Archetype" system that's pretty much made the "Free To Play" Champions Online more of a large scale trial.

Would you people please stop being dumb sheep so my hobby can stop being milked to shooting green dust from it's moneymakers? Thank you.

@ShivanSwordsman

Considering the state WAR is in, I doubt there is much green to go around on their side.

Either way, I remember reading something a ways back that they said there was just to much involved in migrating the system to a F2P when they started their endless trial. But it seems like they keep going down the F2P setup without actually being F2P. I have a few friends that were mildly interested in WAR but shied away from playing because of the fee and kept playing WoW while they do play Lotro almost more than WoW.

I blame backwards thinking on EA's part as to why WAR is still P2P and probably a little of the license holder's influence too. These days, its nearly impossible to be a P2P when there are such better alternatives that are free.

NO!!! Not again!!!
Some of my characters have been moved at least four times already!
I started some of them during Head Start and I lost a few names over the years.
Now I'm going to loose characters!
I was hoping to get back into the game and have a $15 Wal-Mart game card that saving for when the game improved.

Now I'll have to use it to say my final farewells to my characters.
Good job Mythic!

@(Unverified)
Insert "I was" in there somewhere.

At some point...there will be no servers left to merge. :(

So much potential, too. If only EA had properly supported it. I still think the classes were the best of any MMO, as far as originality and flavor.

@Accualt War has to be one of my biggest MMORPG regret. RvR plus Warhammer, there was very little that could go wrong.

I still think that the worst problem was EA completely maiming the team with layoffs and reduction of investment to focus on TOR (which I honestly think will fail miserably anyway, looking at how it's going now, and will potentially disappoint star wars fans more than SWG did).

People rile on FFXIV, but if only EA did like Square Enix did (stranghtening the team, waiving monthly fees until the game is where it should be), with the potential it had, probably Warhammer Online would be in a much different place right now.

Alas, poor WAR! I played it, Anonymous, a game of wondrous potential, of most excellent RvR. It hath entertained me on for several months back a
few years, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is!

My gorge rises at it.

I played this starting about a year back and it was really good; i loved it. Then the changes started. Changes to the RvR about taking out PQ's. That completely annihilated anyone doing PQ's and then the dom timers were removed as well as BO's. That's where I was unhappy but decided to come back after being gone a few months to see that HEY! RR100! WOohoo! But only if you pay for it outside of the money I've already paid for the game and per month that i still have to pay to play. I immediately closed the game, cancelled my subscription, started the game back up and gave away all my stuff to my guild and lastly, uninstalled the game.

Hmm "The development team for the game..." When did warhammer get a development team ?.

I finally unsubbed. I'll miss WAR, but its best days have passed.

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Warhammer Online offering free server transfers as prelude to two server shutdowns

Reader Comments (62)

Posted: Feb 7th 2011 10:18PM tristanius said

Posted: Feb 8th 2011 7:10AM Crsh said

Posted: Feb 7th 2011 10:19PM Comrade Domovoi said

Posted: Feb 7th 2011 10:27PM Rayne26 said

Posted: Feb 7th 2011 10:46PM Boruk said

Posted: Feb 7th 2011 11:37PM Suplyndmnd said

Posted: Feb 8th 2011 12:30AM Barinthos said

Posted: Feb 8th 2011 12:30AM Barinthos said

Posted: Feb 8th 2011 1:51AM Severius said

Posted: Feb 9th 2011 2:02AM ShivanSwordsman said

Posted: Feb 9th 2011 4:04AM Halbard100 said

Posted: Feb 7th 2011 10:51PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 7th 2011 10:53PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 7th 2011 10:52PM Utakata said

Posted: Feb 7th 2011 11:31PM Accualt said

Posted: Feb 8th 2011 11:19AM Abriael said

Posted: Feb 7th 2011 11:33PM Alluvian EstEndrati said

Posted: Feb 7th 2011 11:40PM Suplyndmnd said

Posted: Feb 7th 2011 11:53PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 8th 2011 12:21AM MrDiamondJ said

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