why can we not have server transfers?

Eirikir · February 2023

Has this been explained before? I know they have allowed it here and there as new consoles were added and old ones died.

I played a long long time and spent a good sum of money on my account. I really like playing the game, but I no longer have a ps4, and at the same time have a really nice gaming PC. Why can we not allow this? Seems like some legal thing.

phaneub17_ESO · February 2023

Transferring from PC to console when they were blank slates and the game data was all the same. Patch data is slightly different from one platform to another, transferring now could brick your account having incompatible data. Just because they look the same, doesn't mean they are the same code entirely. Fixes over the years has some differences between them.

Then you have name issues, since names are unique to each server you probably end up with a whole slew of forced name changes if someone else already claimed it, but that's the least of your worries.

FluffWit · February 2023

I'd be fine with them doing cross console and console to pc but pc to console is a bad idea, largely for economic reasons.

DMuehlhausen · February 2023

Systems aren't the same. Coding languages are not the same. Sony doesn't want it done. There are reasons most people won't understand or who wouldn't even think it would be an issue.

Can it be done obviously as it is at times, but that takes months or years to prepare for so it's not something that you can just willy nilly let people do.

ghastley · February 2023

How many items do you have in your inventories/homes/storage? Each of those is in the database with an id that is unique on the server, but not across all servers. Moving your account would only be possible if all the ids were unused on the the target system. That was the case at the beginning, as the console server databases were empty.

Yes, it could be possible, but very, very unlikely, now.

CBreeze71 · February 2023

Being a long term coder and database admin, that would be a massive undertaking at this point, besides the legal hurdles and age of the code base. It would have had to be baked in from the start.

Unfortunately AI coding just isn't there yet.

jaws343 · February 2023

Eirikir wrote: »

Has this been explained before? I know they have allowed it here and there as new consoles were added and old ones died.

Nothing like that has happened. The new consoles and old consoles play on the same servers. They did not create new servers and transfer players over.

The only transfer they did was PC players to console when the game first launched on console, since the console Database was completely empty, they were transferring accounts into an empty database. The databases are now full and account transfer would cause a ton of issues. It's not even a could, it is a would. Countless database merge issues would arise, and at the top of the list would be forced character name and account name changes for duplicate names in the PC and console servers. Since console users account names are their platform names, that would cause a ton of problems.

Danikat · February 2023

Does anyone know why it's not possible in ESO but is possible in other games?

Even if they can't allow transfers between platforms because of legal agreements and how accounts are structured it seems like it should be possible to transfer from the NA server to EU or from EU to NA, since that can be done in other games.

I assume it's something that has to be planned from day 1 and allowed for when the servers and the game are being set up (like how some databases can handle duplicate names but most MMOs don't allow it) but that's just my guess.

phaneub17_ESO · February 2023

Danikat wrote: »

Does anyone know why it's not possible in ESO but is possible in other games?

Such as?

Off the top of my head... WoW has all the same architecture and is exclusively a PC/Mac platform with interconnected datacenters. Destiny 2 and Warframe does a Cross-Save which isn't the same, it just keeps the essential data when you logout and load that when you get on a different platform. Final Fantasy XI and XIV are dedicated to cross-platform from the start and synchronize patching both at the same time even if one platform doesn't need the update fix, they both need to match to work.

TaSheen · February 2023

Danikat wrote: »

Does anyone know why it's not possible in ESO but is possible in other games?

Even if they can't allow transfers between platforms because of legal agreements and how accounts are structured it seems like it should be possible to transfer from the NA server to EU or from EU to NA, since that can be done in other games.

I assume it's something that has to be planned from day 1 and allowed for when the servers and the game are being set up (like how some databases can handle duplicate names but most MMOs don't allow it) but that's just my guess.

Part of it might be the "megaserver" choice. In WoW you could transfer from any realm to any other; the only caveat (other than limit on amount of gold depending on level of character) was that if the name your character had was already in use, you would have to choose a new name on first login on the new-to-you realm. I don't know if that was baked in from the beginning - I wasn't there until 2006, and I don't now remember if I knew you could transfer already or not.

It may also be that the database situation here as well as the megaserver setup makes it too likely that many database records might become "disabled" if they do too much messing around - I've used small databases with WordPress for years, and while SQL isn't "simple" it may be nothing like a proprietary game database backend - and if I wasn't really careful when working in the database it was seriously easy to mess something up. Redundant backups yes.... and a very good thing too!

Tandor · February 2023

Danikat wrote: »

Does anyone know why it's not possible in ESO but is possible in other games?

Even if they can't allow transfers between platforms because of legal agreements and how accounts are structured it seems like it should be possible to transfer from the NA server to EU or from EU to NA, since that can be done in other games.

I assume it's something that has to be planned from day 1 and allowed for when the servers and the game are being set up (like how some databases can handle duplicate names but most MMOs don't allow it) but that's just my guess.

I think your assumption is correct. It's borne out by the fact that they can't even transfer individual accounts or characters from both PC servers to the PTS at the same time, they have to wipe the PTS clean and copy the entire US server data to the PTS for several weeks before wiping the PTS clean again and copying the entire EU server data across.

I suspect that they're also keen to maintain balanced server populations for gameplay and performance reasons which would preclude transferring between the regional servers on the same platform and between platforms (assuming that their contracts with the console providers allowed account poaching which is very unlikely). They already have worse performance issues on the PC EU server because even with broadly the same population as the US server there is a greater concurrent population at peak times due to more limited time zone variations. Adding a lot of players from console would make things a whole lot worse, and if it didn't involve a lot of players transferring then it wouldn't be commercially viable in the first place as the system to enable it to happen doesn't currently exist and it would take substantial investment to create and test it. I imagine there would then need to be a significant and permanent increase in the customer support staff needed to deal with its administration.

zaria · February 2023

ghastley wrote: »

How many items do you have in your inventories/homes/storage? Each of those is in the database with an id that is unique on the server, but not across all servers. Moving your account would only be possible if all the ids were unused on the the target system. That was the case at the beginning, as the console server databases were empty.

Yes, it could be possible, but very, very unlikely, now.

Its doable but its quite a bit of work, done it on an system with an much simpler data structure as in just 5 tables.
You start with the account get the new account id, you uses this for all the stored data, then for stuff with child tables like houses or characters you create them, get their id and use these to store items in house or character data.
You also has the mess that login for an account exist in both EU and US servers, but others like store bought items does not.
So its another layer here.
Doable but lots of work.

VaranisArano · February 2023

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

Does anyone know why it's not possible in ESO but is possible in other games?

Such as?

Off the top of my head... WoW has all the same architecture and is exclusively a PC/Mac platform with interconnected datacenters. Destiny 2 and Warframe does a Cross-Save which isn't the same, it just keeps the essential data when you logout and load that when you get on a different platform. Final Fantasy XI and XIV are dedicated to cross-platform from the start and synchronize patching both at the same time even if one platform doesn't need the update fix, they both need to match to work.

Warframe has cross-play for most gameplay now, but doesn't yet have cross-save or cross-platform trading. Cross-save is supposed to happen after all the cross-platform features are finished.

A couple things to note: Warframe doesn't have near as much in the way of dedicated servers as ESO does, since they use the player's game system to host each 4-man mission. Warframe also had to synchronize their updates, which means that they've gotten comparatively slower about fixing stuff since they have to bundle stuff that previously would've been hotfixes into larger update patches for certification. Sort of like how ZOS had to take their time with the block fixes after u36 Firesong.

zaria · February 2023

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

Does anyone know why it's not possible in ESO but is possible in other games?

Such as?

Off the top of my head... WoW has all the same architecture and is exclusively a PC/Mac platform with interconnected datacenters. Destiny 2 and Warframe does a Cross-Save which isn't the same, it just keeps the essential data when you logout and load that when you get on a different platform. Final Fantasy XI and XIV are dedicated to cross-platform from the start and synchronize patching both at the same time even if one platform doesn't need the update fix, they both need to match to work.

WOW and most other MMO runs a lots of servers, so they needed an system to move players between them for stuff like server merges. So they have an account server and database, characters live on the named server with its own database.
Trading is on the server, not sure how bank work but in WOW most loot was character bound then I played before ESO.

Lobby based games like Destiny is much easier to make cross platform as all is instanced unlike an MMO with an persistent world.
ESO selected megaservers who is very complex and make maintenance take an long time, but upside is that no dead servers and no server merges then its truly dead. But that made server transfer little relevant.

ZOS_Bill · April 2023

We have not built, and do not plan to build, the capability to move individual characters from platform to platform. Fursther details can be found in the FAQ below. We will now close this thread from further comments.

Can I transfer my ESO account and characters between different platforms or servers?