BW could do transfers now but hasn't...why?

Then start with the 3 lowest pop servers. You're telling me they couldn't handle that? Heck, as low as the pops on those servers are, they could probably do 6 or even 9 servers.

Presumably they looked at the cost and benefits of doing them manually vs. doing it in automated fashion and concluded the latter was the better option.

Nerd moment incoming...

Have you actually done the math on manual transfers? To figure out how many man-hours it would take, you take the number of players who would take advantage of the service, multiply by the average characters per player, and multiply that by the time (in hours) each character transfer takes.

You can then use that number to figure out how much it would cost and how long it would take. For cost, simply take the man-hours and multiply by the hourly pay of a CSR. For how long it would take, divide the man-hours by the number of CSRs working on the project and divide that by the average length of time each day that a CSR spends working on it.

Now, using this formula we can plug in some numbers, let's say 200k players would want to use the service with an average of 3 characters each and each transfer takes 30 minutes. 200,000 * 3 * 0.5 = 300,000 man-hours

If the CSRs get paid $10 an hour, that's a cost of $3 million. If they have 500 CSRs working on it full time(8 hours/day), it would take 75 work days to get done. (300,000 / 500 / 8).

Now, if they started doing manual transfers the same day they started Aussie transfers (Apr 24) and had them working on it 7 days a week, they would have those 200k players all transferred on approximately July 3rd.

So, using those numbers, manual transfers would have cost millions and taken longer than the system they are developing now.

I am aware that these numbers are just speculation, but I think 200k players transferring and $10/hour pay for CSRs at Bioware are both conservative estimates if anything.

It would be great if a Bioware rep would respond to OP.

Nerd moment incoming...

...let's say 200k players would want to use the service....

Err.. you actually think there are 200k players on all the low servers COMBINED???

Thanks for doing all the math and failing to read the OP. I suggested taking 3 or 4 of the lowest pop servers per week and starting transfers. This would come nowhere near as close to the number of players they transferred to the Aussie servers, which took only a week. For a server where there are only between 5-15 players in fleet at peak times per faction, I doubt you'd need to transfer that many accounts. A generous estimate might put 500 active subscriptions on those servers. That would be 2000 accounts per week for 4 low pop servers. Hardly a drop in the bucket to relieve the worst servers and gain some good PR in the process.