Lack of transfer is a real issue.

Rohirthileth

This is to to voice the concern that I would like to know why I, and everyone else having 9,000 hours on the Xbox NA megaserver can in no way can switch my account or play The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) on PC. I am outright disgusted by this. For the last 11 months this has been on my mind and I request a way to convert to PC from an Xbox one account and hopefully PS4. I have spent nearly 1000 USD on your your companies game to only be left feeling terrible and hating myself to have all the effort on one account become entirely useless as the game is barely optimized for console. It is mortifying and is the representation of everything wrong with the company, I regret ever supporting the growth of this game and those before for years. It is sad to see the turn of the company and is the same for many I know. I plead that we all have the ability to transfer.

[Edit to remove threats and demands]

Unit117

I’ve requested it too..

idk

Doubtful Zos will reply to this thread. They already stated this will never happen over 4 years ago, which is well before anyone started playing on any console.

[Edit to remove reference of removed content]

Acrolas

CAN I TRANSFER MY ESO ACCOUNT AND CHARACTERS BETWEEN DIFFERENT PLATFORMS?
Updated 08/03/2018 09:55 AM
We have not built, and do not plan to build, the capability to move individual characters from platform to platform. We were only able move characters in bulk for console once on June 1st 2015 because the database tables we copied to were brand new (empty). Now that the database tables are filled with other data, the techniques we used before no longer work.

idk

Acrolas wrote: »

CAN I TRANSFER MY ESO ACCOUNT AND CHARACTERS BETWEEN DIFFERENT PLATFORMS?
Updated 08/03/2018 09:55 AM
We have not built, and do not plan to build, the capability to move individual characters from platform to platform. We were only able move characters in bulk for console once on June 1st 2015 because the database tables we copied to were brand new (empty). Now that the database tables are filled with other data, the techniques we used before no longer work.

Great find.

However, OP seems to find it offending that Zos will not permit them to move servers even though they purchased the game when there was no means to transfer servers.

eso_lags

ZiviPK wrote: »

This is to to voice the concern that I would like to know why I, and everyone else having 9,000 hours on the Xbox NA megaserver can in no way can switch my account or play The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) on PC. I am outright disgusted by this. For the last 11 months this has been on my mind and I request a way to convert to PC from an Xbox one account and hopefully PS4. I have spent nearly 1000 USD on your your companies game to only be left feeling terrible and hating myself to have all the effort on one account become entirely useless as the game is barely optimized for console. It is mortifying and is the representation of everything wrong with the company, I regret ever supporting the growth of this game and those before for years. It is sad to see the turn of the company and is the same for many I know. I plead that we all have the ability to transfer.

I feel the same way but its most likely never going to change. Im sure this isnt what you want to hear but this is what it is. Thousands have asked and the few that got answers got the same ones. Something like "they only offered transfer one time during console launch and are unable to do it again because of X reason".. I dont really buy that but im fairly certain it will never happen..

You can hope for it if you want. I mean im also 99.99% sure they will never improve the games performance, especially in cyrodil, but i still have that shred of hope..

Also, im not sure what you do in the game but my main focus is pvp. Specifically solo pvp. So my idea was to keep my xbox account that ive had since IC patch (with all my achievements, gear, etc..) and make a PC account specifically just to pvp on with one max char.. The thing is once i got to CP 160 i got geared and went to non cp pvp and i didnt notice a huge difference. Ya the game looks way better on pc. Combat also feels better and less clunky on PC.. But the performance in cyrodil was still bad. Maybe not as bad as xbox but still bad.. So imo it wasnt worth the grind to max lv.. But thats just me, i know a few people who have made the change and still play on pc.. Max cp players with alot of achievements (former emps, flawless, etc..) and a lot of gold..

Zekka

You will probably have to wait until consoles versions are so empty that running their servers are no longer profitable for ZOS to propose a transfer to PC option.

MLGProPlayer

The game is built on an old engine. The capability to transfer characters just isn't there and would be too expensive to implement. I don't think they planned to release the game on consoles/multiple servers when they started development.

I would love this feature too, but I don't think we'll ever get it. I just hope their next MMO project has it (therre is really no excuse not to today).

richo262

Hypothetical on how they could do it, should they choose to. Firstly, they'd need permission from Xbox. Doubt they'd get permission from Sony.

To do it, they would need a 'transfer server' or even a 'sync server' should they every have cross play. This server is like the PTS, it is not the real game.

You would pair your PC and XBox accounts, and on the 'transfer / sync server' you would have all your characters even if over the threshold. You would have multiple instances of any houses you own. You would then have to cull your characters / houses to meet the thresholds confined in a single account. You may also have to rename your toons should their names already be taken.

If you own a house on PC and Xbox, you'd need to move all items from one to the other and declare that one the one you keep.

If you have more characters than slots, you'd need to delete those that are over the threshold you have, or purchase slots.

I'd like to think that crowns spent on one account on items / houses that are now doubled up and there destroyed can be used to purchase character slots and upgrades in this process.

End result, two accounts effectively destroyed, and 1 account created that is a merge of the two accounts, one time or in perpetuity if crossplay ever comes to ESO.

idk

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

The game is built on an old engine. The capability to transfer characters just isn't there and would be too expensive to implement. I don't think they planned to release the game on consoles/multiple servers when they started development.

I would love this feature too, but I don't think we'll ever get it. I just hope their next MMO project has it (therre is really no excuse not to today).

Not really. The engine used was heavily customized by Zos so it is not an old engine. Any major update to an engine is a heavily updated product. They rarely start from scratch when updating programs.

As for old engines not being able to handle server transfers, SWTOR is on a very old engine and it can handle server transfers.

It is simply Zos chooses not to build out what would be needed.

Edit: and as Richo pointed out agreements with the console systems may be the reason Zos is unwilling to provide transfers. It is very likely and Zos would not call out their partners over this as that would be bad business.

MLGProPlayer

idk wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

The game is built on an old engine. The capability to transfer characters just isn't there and would be too expensive to implement. I don't think they planned to release the game on consoles/multiple servers when they started development.

I would love this feature too, but I don't think we'll ever get it. I just hope their next MMO project has it (therre is really no excuse not to today).

Not really. The engine used was heavily customized by Zos so it is not an old engine. Any major update to an engine is a heavily updated product. They rarely start from scratch when updating programs.

As for old engines not being able to handle server transfers, SWTOR is on a very old engine and it can handle server transfers.

It is simply Zos chooses not to build out what would be needed.

Edit: and as Richo pointed out agreements with the console systems may be the reason Zos is unwilling to provide transfers. It is very likely and Zos would not call out their partners over this as that would be bad business.

Development of the game started as early as 2007. Any tech from that era is outdated by now.

And they could allow regional server transfers on the same platform at the very least if they're concerned about violating console partnership clauses. The game's engine simply wasn't designed from the beginning to facilitate that, most likely due to it being too difficult to program on such an old engine.

idk

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

idk wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

The game is built on an old engine. The capability to transfer characters just isn't there and would be too expensive to implement. I don't think they planned to release the game on consoles/multiple servers when they started development.

I would love this feature too, but I don't think we'll ever get it. I just hope their next MMO project has it (therre is really no excuse not to today).

Not really. The engine used was heavily customized by Zos so it is not an old engine. Any major update to an engine is a heavily updated product. They rarely start from scratch when updating programs.

As for old engines not being able to handle server transfers, SWTOR is on a very old engine and it can handle server transfers.

It is simply Zos chooses not to build out what would be needed.

Edit: and as Richo pointed out agreements with the console systems may be the reason Zos is unwilling to provide transfers. It is very likely and Zos would not call out their partners over this as that would be bad business.

Development of the game started as early as 2007. Any tech from that era is outdated by now.

And they could allow regional server transfers on the same platform at the very least if they're concerned about violating console partnership clauses. The game's engine simply wasn't designed from the beginning to facilitate that, most likely due to it being too difficult to program on such an old engine.

1st, Zos did not start development of this game with the engine they launched with. It is widely known they started with a different engine when working on early development.

2nd, It is irrelevant if you consider the most recently updated engine of any major MMORPG out there is outdated, you are still incorrect with your guess that Zos cannot setup server transfers because of the age of the engine.

And again, SWTOR did not sever transfers when they launched. They chose to start offering it and build out what was needed and their engine is much older than the one ESO runs on. Simple as that. It is just a transfer of information to another db.

The age of the engine is not the issue. Zos just chooses to not build out what is needed and or the agreements they have with MS/PS/Steam have pretty strong measures to prevent Zos offering it.

ImmortalCX

If they allowed transfer from consoles to pc, that would mean less profit for console providers. And it would crater server populations and embitter players who couldnt move to pc. And it would reduce account numbers of ppl who buy new copies of the game on pc.

Won't happen.

Houshiki

Even though its unlikely to happen, I'm pretty sure its possible at least.

Not entirely, but pretty sure that when ESO first hit consoles, PC players were offered an opportunity to have their accounts transferred over. Personally I didn't transfer over and therefore don't know how far it went, but I had heard that it more or less broke the consoles' economy for a while.

Skoomah

Why don’t they allow you to play on any platform as long as you have an account. If I want to sit at a desk, I play on the computer. If I want to play on the couch, play on the console.

The economies on all platforms have pretty much evened out and leveling has plateaued. Why not make accounts universally available across all platforms, but not merged. So pc and consoles would be seperated still but at least you can log into any platform with same account.

zaria

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

The game is built on an old engine. The capability to transfer characters just isn't there and would be too expensive to implement. I don't think they planned to release the game on consoles/multiple servers when they started development.

I would love this feature too, but I don't think we'll ever get it. I just hope their next MMO project has it (therre is really no excuse not to today).

Characters are just data, and you would transfer the entire account not characters but again only data this includes houses.
The issue is that its lots of tables in the database(s) Account settings is one or more, character list, character stats and attributes, inventory, bank, crafting bag. Houses adds even more tables.

You would have to make an programs to gather all this data export it an import on the other database. while handling stuff like name conflicts and errors, say player moves to console from pc and has items not jet on console or has obsolete items in inventory.
Doable but will take some weeks for an developer with all the testing.

Itzmichi

You know what? I just gave a flying F when I switched from PS4 to PC and just started all over again. They can't even release 1 proper patch, nor fix gamebreaking things, so obviously they don't know how their own game and server works.

Loved the email I got from the support regarding this matter, they didn't even understood what I actually wanted back then and suggested they could move some crowns over or something like that, funny stuff really.

I just started all over again February this year, invested a lot of € on PS4, so now they got someone on Pc who don't spend any money apart from eso plus and the chapters anymore.

Tandor

Technically it's probably doable but unlikely to be cost-effective for the amount of people interested versus the development time required, and I doubt that it would ever be considered a priority at least while platform/server populations were healthy.

Contractually, it's probably impossible due to the likelihood that neither MS nor Sony would have signed up to the ability to lose their customers in this way. In any event, it's something that interested players should also be raising with MS or Sony rather than just with ZOS. Have they done so?

rexagamemnon

this should have been available for a long time. we should be able to switch servers and platforms. example: Xbox EU to Xbox NA, or PC to PS4, or Ps4 to XBOX, etc.

Wildberryjack

I don't know what issues could prevent transfers between platforms, but server transfers on the same platform should definitely be possible.

We should be able to move all of our characters between the NA and EU servers. It is a simple connection issue, or at least it should be since they are the same type of server on the same platform. If we have characters on both NA and EU we should be able to merge the characters and everything from one server on to the other server, similar to doing an account merger in World of Warcraft. It's really quite ridiculous that we can't do that at this point.

The_Brosteen

If everyone on console quit playing the game and stated it was due to performance issues and would play if they could transfer to pc then they might find a way to make it happen.

Otherwise it never will.

The ironic part is that they cant or won't change they way the game is structured so it runs better on console, so the game has and will always perform worse on console compared to pc. So the only option really for better performance is to switch to pc.

BleedMe_AnOcean

While I agree with you and I desperately wish there was a way to move a character to another platform (insert "PC is superior to console in just about every way in this game - change my mind" meme here), I don't find it to be this big a deal. I understand why ZOS isn't doing it anymore due to their database being filled, but part of me wonders how difficult it would be to build in a new database specifically for this purpose, then allow those interested in transferring toons from one platform to another to buy the ability and wait in some kind of queue to prevent overload.

Hell, even when I played WoW and we moved toons from one realm to another, we had to wait hours - sometimes a full day - to access our characters on the new realm, and I assume it's for much the same reason. (I am in no way claiming WoW is superior to ESO. I'm just making a comparison. Obviously I quit WoW and came here for a reason.)

In either event, if they can't do it, they can't do it. That information has been available for quite some time now, too.

The_Lex

I recently switched from Xbox to PC. Through some quick research, I knew that transfers were not possible and that I had to start over. I did it anyway.

SO WORTH IT. SERVERS ARE BETTER. FPS IS BETTER. ADD-ONS.

I hit CP 160 in about two weeks. Have my crafting maxed - still researching though. For fun, I fired up the xbox version. Night and day difference. Yeah, transfers should be a thing, but (for me) it was well worth starting over.

Noldornir

I dont work for ZoS or anything related but i'm a dev and what i can guess from this

We have not built, and do not plan to build, the capability to move individual characters from platform to platform. We were only able move characters in bulk for console once on June 1st 2015 because the database tables we copied to were brand new (empty). Now that the database tables are filled with other data, the techniques we used before no longer work.

Is "no way, unless we are forced by events to."

I would say the same and it's not an engine related issue, the issue is the database AND then fact that in the old days no different version existed.

What i can GUESS is there are 6 different database (one per platform/region) and the issue is easily explained even in a simple line

Let's say i'm user 19975 (identifier must be unique) on PS4 EU and I ask to transfer my account to let''s say PC NA

There will ALREADY be there an user ID 19975 (with a different name but same ID).

This could be fixed by giving me another number but EVERY SINGLE THING related to me is using that number to identify me and me only.

As they stated it's not an issue if i move to an empty database (there will be no collisions) but here's a few things that could happens to me by moving into an already filled database:

All my things are gone
All my things are gone but a lot of things (not mine) are there (they are of another player who's finding his acount pretty much wiped)

This is to be optimistic.

Cant login at all (me and another player) or when i login i am someone else

This is less optimistc.


The database is now inconsistent and is not working for anyone. All players must wait for a rollback to log in again.

This is most likely and could happen in BOTH database (where i come from and where i'm going with an high chanche for the latter).

Things like this are VERY delicate and can work properly only when the whole system is designed to work like this since the beginning. This can't be the case of course.


Think like this:

Should it be a simple task (like an alt name edit) they would probably just do it charging you something. This would be the best practice to increment gains but they probably know better not to run the risk.

DjMuscleboy02

I think the only way this could be handled would be on a case by case basis. But it would still require resources. I imagine it would look something like this.

- Call the "Transfer My Account" number or something of the like.
- They validate you have a console account you would like transferred.
- You may only transfer your CP and crown store items. All gold, weapons ,armor, materials, etc will be lost in the transfer. MAYBE you can transfer characters but would have to rename them all.
- Essentially the ZOS rep creates a new account for you and gives you your requested username (or a dummy that you can easily change for free later) and gives you your CP and crown store items.

This would eliminate worry of guilds existing on both platforms, usernames, item IDs, anything of the like. However it would require resources that ZOS likely would not wish to spend as they gain next to nothing for it.

The_Brosteen

The_Lex wrote: »

I recently switched from Xbox to PC. Through some quick research, I knew that transfers were not possible and that I had to start over. I did it anyway.

SO WORTH IT. SERVERS ARE BETTER. FPS IS BETTER. ADD-ONS.

I hit CP 160 in about two weeks. Have my crafting maxed - still researching though. For fun, I fired up the xbox version. Night and day difference. Yeah, transfers should be a thing, but (for me) it was well worth starting over.

@The_Lex Welcome home brother (i switched from xbox to pc almost a year ago). If you pvp, or just need someone to farm gear with feel free to add me ingame, @ name is br0steen.

The_Brosteen

DjMuscleboy02 wrote: »

I think the only way this could be handled would be on a case by case basis. But it would still require resources. I imagine it would look something like this.

- Call the "Transfer My Account" number or something of the like.
- They validate you have a console account you would like transferred.
- You may only transfer your CP and crown store items. All gold, weapons ,armor, materials, etc will be lost in the transfer. MAYBE you can transfer characters but would have to rename them all.
- Essentially the ZOS rep creates a new account for you and gives you your requested username (or a dummy that you can easily change for free later) and gives you your CP and crown store items.

This would eliminate worry of guilds existing on both platforms, usernames, item IDs, anything of the like. However it would require resources that ZOS likely would not wish to spend as they gain next to nothing for it.

Gain next to nothing unless they can connect it to lost revenue due to players leaving because of console performance. A player that would otherwise continue playing on pc would mean that doing this would protect future profits. Think about it @ZOS_MattFiror

The_Lex

The_Brosteen wrote: »

The_Lex wrote: »

I recently switched from Xbox to PC. Through some quick research, I knew that transfers were not possible and that I had to start over. I did it anyway.

SO WORTH IT. SERVERS ARE BETTER. FPS IS BETTER. ADD-ONS.

I hit CP 160 in about two weeks. Have my crafting maxed - still researching though. For fun, I fired up the xbox version. Night and day difference. Yeah, transfers should be a thing, but (for me) it was well worth starting over.

@The_Lex Welcome home brother (i switched from xbox to pc almost a year ago). If you pvp, or just need someone to farm gear with feel free to add me ingame, @ name is br0steen.

Hey, thanks! I may take you up on that.

Defilted

Game runs fine on my Xbox1X/SSD. Maybe upgrade instead of transfer, or just transfer and think positive.

Good luck

shadowwraith666

it might be due to the XB/PSN account binding, also Zenimax might not be able to transfer currency, items or services bought via XB live/ps store platform without permission from micro$oft or Sony.

Haashhtaag

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

The game is built on an old engine. The capability to transfer characters just isn't there and would be too expensive to implement. I don't think they planned to release the game on consoles/multiple servers when they started development.

I would love this feature too, but I don't think we'll ever get it. I just hope their next MMO project has it (therre is really no excuse not to today).

You do know they allowed pc players to transfer to console, right?