Will I eventually get a free transfer to consolidate my characters?

No you won't and no you shouldn't. It was your choice to go multi server ( i did also) and every game out there thats stii a subscription mmo is going to charge you ... however you will have the exact same items on and in your bank when you hit a new server.

The cost is generally $25.00 plus tax per toon. That's an industry standard.

I searched a bit, but cannot find any information. I get the need to kill low population servers first, and totally agree. That has to be done in an orderly way to insure it works. No problem. However, everything I read seems to indicate that for me to get my characters I left behind to be able to play the game, I'll have to pay.

I'm of the opinion that the fact I restarted, and continued to pay, instead of just quitting the game was my payment. I'm more than willing to wait, but will be insulted if I'm then forced to pay for what was their initial mistake.

Quite frankly, that my end my time on this game.

I think that in the transfer FAQ it pretty much says outright that any future transfers will have a cost. And while it may upset people, it does make sense.

I think that there's two very important factors to consider when offering open server transfer:

1. Transferring characters costs Bioware money, they'd be crazy not to charge to recoup their losses for open transfers; and
2. Paying money to do something is a disincentive.

Why is a disincentive good?
People constantly transferring would put pressure on the servers and create additional work for staff. While some people might have good reasons for wanting to transfer such as consolidating characters others might not.

Once you put a price on it, people might

• Not care about trivial details; or
• Use a little bit of rational thinking.

I understand that paid transfers may hurt folks that are completely sane and made rational choices that would allow them to keep playing the game. Bioware likely understands this as well. Once you start to draw the line between good reasons and bad reasons however, this creates mountains of trouble for CS who would not be able to explain why player X was allowed to transfer for free but player Y couldn't without saying that player Y was a moron.

While this transfer/merge was integral to people being able to play the game (also no point in maintaining extra servers that no one is really using), future transfers could be considered less so. In the future, a cost would be an advantage from Bioware's perspective since it acts as a disincentive and it also allows Bioware to recoup some of the costs for the new transfers they'll be performing.

HOWEVER, I have been suprised by Bioware before such as when they changed their offer of a free month to 50s to anyone with legacy level 5.

No, Just call them Blizzard, the same stupidity in both cases! I have 3 lvl 50's i can't move free on a server that never seems to have a population on fleet of more than 20 and the only way to move to a better server that I found is to pay! WTG Blizzardware! Sooooooooo lame!

I think that in the transfer FAQ it pretty much says outright that any future transfers will have a cost. And while it may upset people, it does make sense.

I think that there's two very important factors to consider when offering open server transfer:

1. Transferring characters costs Bioware money, they'd be crazy not to charge to recoup their losses for open transfers; and
2. Paying money to do something is a disincentive.

Why is a disincentive good?
People constantly transferring would put pressure on the servers and create additional work for staff. While some people might have good reasons for wanting to transfer such as consolidating characters others might not.

Once you put a price on it, people might

• Not care about trivial details; or
• Use a little bit of rational thinking.

I understand that paid transfers may hurt folks that are completely sane and made rational choices that would allow them to keep playing the game. Bioware likely understands this as well. Once you start to draw the line between good reasons and bad reasons however, this creates mountains of trouble for CS who would not be able to explain why player X was allowed to transfer for free but player Y couldn't without saying that player Y was a moron.

While this transfer/merge was integral to people being able to play the game (also no point in maintaining extra servers that no one is really using), future transfers could be considered less so. In the future, a cost would be an advantage from Bioware's perspective since it acts as a disincentive and it also allows Bioware to recoup some of the costs for the new transfers they'll be performing.

HOWEVER, I have been suprised by Bioware before such as when they changed their offer of a free month to 50s to anyone with legacy level 5.

What about the people that started this game and didnt know what servers were going to be dead and which weren't? Is it fair to them to have to pay?!!?!?! I'm sure everyone on here (unless the knew someone) just picked a random server at the begining and started playing as I did now I;m stuck on a dead server and have to pay .... fair? HELL NO!!!

Your 3 50s will be able to move once the server they are on is selected as a origin server, unless it gets chosen as a destination, as some low pop servers will, in which case you'll probably get the population of like 10 other low pop servers poured into yours. Either way, you will end up on a better server. It won't necessarily be the better server you found, but unrestricted free transfers would not solve our population balance problems, and actively create new ones.