Proposal: Paid Region Transfer / Warband Migration Service

Community General Discussion
1

Hi all,

I’d like to suggest a new service that I believe would greatly benefit many players who relocate internationally. Currently, World of Warcraft accounts are region-locked, which means that characters, mounts, collections, and now Warband progress remain permanently tied to the region where the account was first created.

For players who move between regions (for example, US → EU or EU → US), this can be extremely discouraging — years of progress and entire Warbands effectively become inaccessible if you want to play on local servers with better latency and more active communities in your new time zone.

Suggestion:
Introduce a paid Region Transfer service, similar in spirit to existing paid services like character transfers.
The service would transfer or duplicate all characters, collections, and Warband progress from Region A to Region B.

To avoid duplication issues, the content could be removed from the source region once the migration completes.

This would be positioned as a premium, one-time service for players who genuinely need it.

At the very least, items and services that players have paid real money for should be transferable across regions. This feels especially important for time-limited items and services that only appear rarely. For example, if a mount is available for a week and then disappears for months (or years), there is no way for a relocated player to re-purchase it even if they are willing to spend the money again. That purchase is simply locked away forever in another region.

With Warbands consolidating so much of our progress, the lack of a region transfer option feels increasingly restrictive. Offering a formal service would give players a fair, legitimate way to continue their WoW journey no matter where life takes them, and it would help Blizzard retain long-term loyal players who want to stay invested in the game.

I’d love to hear what others think, and whether this ascould be something Blizzard might consider in the future.

Thanks for reading,

2 Likes
2

Whilst I think there would be some who are interested in that, I don’t think the level of effort required to completely migrate across servers would be worth the cost for Blizzard - else they would have implemented it before now? The amount of processing that would be needed to duplicate across servers, then delete the original, all for the sake of the minority of people who want it? Plus there would probably be some way to exploit it.

Maybe they will do it eventually because of Warbands but I somehow doubt it. :confused:

1 Like
3

I agree we don’t have insight into Blizzard’s internal systems, so I won’t pretend to. That said, Warbands clearly indicate increasing centralisation of account/collection data across characters. From a player’s perspective, that suggests a region migration service is at least plausible, even if not trivial.

Rather than an “all or nothing” migration, Blizzard could scope a practical, low-risk version first:

  1. Phase 1 – Paid, one-time transfer of paid/limited items
  • Account-wide, real-money purchases (mounts, pets, cosmetics, Trading Post/Shop entitlements).
  • Time-limited items are the biggest pain: if you relocate, you often can’t even buy them again.
  • Source region entitlements are revoked on completion to avoid duplication.
  1. Phase 2 – Warband-level progression sync
  • Collections/transmog/achievements/currencies that Warbands already unify.
  • Again, a move not copy: content removed from the source region to prevent exploits.
  1. Phase 3 – Characters (optional, premium)
  • Full character migration for those who need it, priced and rate-limited (e.g., once per 12 months).

Safeguards Blizzard could use (to address exploitation and cost concerns):

  • One-time, account-verified request with cooldown; 2FA required.
  • Audit log and delayed cutover window (e.g., 24–72 hours) to detect abuse/chargebacks.
  • Strict entitlement parity check: if anything can’t be mapped 1:1, exclude it with a clear report.
  • Price to match complexity and cover operational overhead.
  • Start as a pilot (opt-in, limited support scope) before scaling.

This approach recognises there’s real engineering and operational cost, but it also focuses on the highest-value player pain first (paid and time-limited items), with clear anti-duplication rules. Even a narrow Phase 1 would solve the most frustrating cases for people who relocate.

Ultimately, Warbands changed the stakes: more of our history is shared at the account level, and region walls now carry more friction than before. A paid, carefully-guarded migration path feels like a reasonable evolution of Blizzard’s existing paid services.

1 Like
4

I’d love to swap as someone who enjoys RPing and socializing alongside more casual content these days. Argent Dawn is really empty compared to the US RP servers. Not to mention how much more social people are on NA.

5

One final thought on this that might be an easier win than full migration:

Give players the option to re-purchase items they’ve already bought in Region 1, on their Region 2 account — regardless of whether those items are currently on sale.

This would apply to mounts, pets, cosmetics, shop bundles, Trading Post exclusives, etc. If I’ve paid for it once in the US, I should be able to unlock it again in the EU by paying again — even if it’s not part of the current rotation.

From Blizzard’s perspective, this is pure upside:

  • It avoids all the complexity of database migration.
  • It avoids duplication or exploit concerns.
  • It generates additional revenue from players who are willing to pay again just to restore parity across regions.

I genuinely don’t understand why this isn’t already an option — it feels like an obvious win-win for Blizzard and players who’ve relocated.

6

What are you in about?
AD is packed and filled with nice people

7

Literally no reason why they can’t, and I don’t accept their BS on technical issues considering websites can literally track your account’s collection and achievements, etc.