WoW Classic finally gets paid character transfers

WoW Classic finally has paid character transfers. They’ll cost you $25 just like they did 12 years ago, as just like they do in the live game today. Although the Blizzard Store Page hasn’t updated yet, Wowhead confirmed that the transfers work via the in-game option.

If you have a PVP character, you can stay with the PVP ruleset or move them to PVE and RP realms, but neither PVE nor RP characters can be transferred to a PVP realm. In this old GameSpot article from 2006, Blizzard’s Shane Dabiri explained the reason for this restriction well. The limitation is to prevent you from leveling up your character on a PVE realm without the dangers of enemy players, then transfer to a PVP realm when it’s time to camp lowbies at Nesingwary’s Expedition. It’s made to conserve the experience and to make you have to fully commit to PVP from the ground up.

Aside from that, your character must have been logged into recently and they must be at least level 10. From levels 1 – 30 you can only bring over up to 100 gold. At levels 31 – 50, it’s 500 gold. At 51 – 60, it’s 2000 gold. There’s also a 90-day cooldown on how often you can transfer characters.

This is the first time since the game’s launch that players have been able to move to realms without the benefit of a free realm transfer for high and low populations. With the removal of layering, this change could start fluctuating realm populations in the future. It’ll surely be a fascinating thing to keep an eye on as the game nears its completion. Not only are there big releases coming up like Ahn’Qiraj, there are also only so many phases left to be released. There might be a considerable drop in players once there’s no more content left.

For now though, if you’ve been waiting to join your friends or you have a sudden itch to join a new server, you can finally do that. Choose carefully though — you’ll be stuck there during the game’s upcoming Phase 3 launch. You don’t want to be caught taking a trip to Darkmoon Faire without any friends, do you?