The limits and possibilities of Bind to Account
by Mike Schramm 
Jun 17th 2009 at 9:00PM
Aeuis brings up an interesting point over on the forums: even though some of the items we get are called "Bind on Account" (or, more properly, Bind to Account, even though most people use BoA as shorthand) they're really not that, because you can't actually send them across factions or realms. Of course, that's pretty obvious to people who've been playing the game for a while -- Blizzard has never really encouraged cross-faction interaction at all (you can "send" items through the neutral AH, though even that is a bit of a hack, not really the intended purpose). So BoA items are actually bound to account, server, and faction.But Wyrxian is surprisingly open about "future possibility:" he does say that while Blizzard could allow us to send items between factions if they wanted us to, they also wanted to leave things open just in case the functionality came into view in the future. That doesn't mean we can expect a change in the next patch, but it does seem to mean that Blizzard is still open to the "possibility." You'd think it be tough technically (character inventories are all over the place, especially cross-server), but considering that we can now have cross-server battlegrounds, all it would probably take is a tweak to the in-game mail system. One character sends an item, another character receives it.
And really, the only possibility that might come open is just ease-of-use -- that's why BoA and Heirloom items are in the game already, and if Blizzard determines that it would be easier to have you share items between your characters' factions and servers (perhaps if they upgrade the character re-customization feature to include a faction change?), then it will likely happen sooner or later.
Filed under: Horde, Alliance, Items, Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Tori Jun 17th 2009 9:08PM
Hmm, I suppose it would be handy if, say, you decided to reroll to the opposite faction, yet here you are on a brand new character with no gold, no high level characters, and possibly no acquaintances.
If you could send heirloom items to your newbie, it would help in gaining a foothold in this new faction where otherwise you pretty much have to start from scratch.
I don't know if I want to see faction change become an available feature though.....ehh...I'm just pretty iffy about it.
theRaptor Jun 17th 2009 9:14PM
Cross-realm battlegrounds have absolutely nothing to do with the possibility to send cross-realm mail. Cross-realm battlegrounds only work on realms in one physical cluster (because of the bandwidth needed in the networking interconnect). A better example of the possibility for this would be server transfers. It seems to me that the logical way to do this would be to have a section on account management that showed your BoA items and allowed your to transfer that way. Easily tied into the existing infrastructure and doesn't require a reworking of the mail system.
kworry Jun 18th 2009 11:49AM
I posted this exact same thing on Monday on the suggestion forums. An out-of-game way to aquire BoAs and send them to another server.
As an alt-a-holic I have one realm with all high level toons where hierloom items are useless to me. It would be nice to have BoA items on other realms where friends are and where I have no high level characters.
For the record, my post was removed almost immediately. Maybe they're working on it?
Rylka Jun 18th 2009 12:02PM
What I would like would be a Goblin Delivery Service, a neutral mailbox that can ship cross faction. Sure the rates would be higher, just like the cut the goblins take in the neutral auction houses is higher than the cut the faction AHs take, but it would be worth it. Maybe you would have to go to a goblin city to send the package, but ideally it could be picked up from anywhere.
You could make the service only available within toons on a single account, but I don't see that as necessary.
All this would do is replicate what we have been doing with two accounts through the neutral AHs with the addition that you would be able to move BOA items cross faction to toons on the same account.
The main problem with opening up any kind of AH or mailing between servers is that it would aid gold sellers in moving gold between realms. This is something that Blizzard will likely never do.
But a neutral mailbox that sticks to one server won't help the gold sellers more than neutral AHs already do, so this shouldn't be a problem.
"Time is money friend." Just sounds like a parcel delivery service logo. : )
Starsmore Jun 17th 2009 9:14PM
I think the only thing you should be able to send cross-faction or cross-server should be the buyable BoA items.
tatsumasa Jun 18th 2009 3:11PM
this, if ever anything. otherwise the economies will suffer greatly
on a side note i always have to point and laugh at the people who complain on the forums about boa not really being boa because of the restrictions that affect everything else. technically the items are still boa, just there is no system in place to get the item to the other faction or another realm. it's not blizzard's fault if people assume boa's can somehow make miracles happen even when there's tons of information out there letting them know the exact functionality of these items before they buy them.
rika13 Jun 17th 2009 9:18PM
maybe change it to a mail system, sorta like with battlebots, where a new toon gets all the BoA stuff
Mike Jun 17th 2009 9:36PM
Having tried out my own private server before, I can say that there is a lot of cross-faction capabilities built into the game that they don't enable on the live servers. Things like Free for All PvP, learning opposite-faction languages, and even grouping cross-faction. It was only ever me and a buddy who played on it (and only once or twice: the game loses a lot of draw when not populated), but we were playing opposite-faction races in the same party.
Fizzl Jun 18th 2009 4:48AM
You don't need a private server to discover this, back during the zombie event we found that zombies from either faction could communicate and trade. It's well known your race is just another flag on the character.
Grendalsh Jun 17th 2009 9:45PM
Part of the issue is things like pets and mounts. I went to Blizzcon08, and got the Big Blizzard Bear. I redeemed it on Silvermoon-A. But although it's BoA, I can't have it on my hordies or Allies on other servers. How then, is this item BoA? It's not just a matter of mailing the summoning/learning item to my other characters, it's that I also can't redeem across my account. I wanna show off my Blizzcon pride on my hordies, but no dice.
Considering these items are bound to my account, it should be possible for Blizz to make BoA items available across the account, not just on the first server/faction the code is redeemed.
artifex Jun 17th 2009 11:58PM
Interestingly, my Battle-bot has shown up on both my Alliance and Horde toons, across multiple servers. Including ones I've made *after* activating the bot. So BoA now can mean something else than what it meant when you got your thing.
And this brings up a good resolution to the BoA heirlooms: they should just be mailed out to all toons you have or later make. Either faction. And then trading across servers is not needed.
Kylenne Jun 18th 2009 1:11PM
Amen. I got my Big Blizzard Bear via the DirecTV promotion, and I'm with you on that. I don't play Alliance anymore and have no intention of ever going back to it, but my very first toon is sitting at 80 with the bear in her bank. It would be nice if my Horde toons, the ones I actually play, could get the use of it. Not to mention those heirloom shoulders I got for my spacegoat shaman that have been collecting dust for four months because I'm not playing A-side anymore. I have a lot of lowbie alts that could use those, but because they're Horde, they can't.
At the very least, you should be able to send BoA items to your own characters cross-factionally. The system as it is now is broken and stupid.
Arlen Jun 17th 2009 10:05PM
What blizzard should do is when you but an heirloom item, activate an option to give characters the item regardless of faction/server in the account management section on the worldofwarcraft.com website.
Belkar Jun 17th 2009 10:25PM
Sorry, but this isn't technologically challenging in the slightest. As much as we'd like to think so, our characters are just database tables referencing other database tables. I'd kill to be able to mail Heirloom and other BoA items across server and/or faction. Heck, I'd even consider PAYING to do so.
Gessilea Jun 17th 2009 10:35PM
For all the customization stuff that comes up I never really thought about faction transfers. That would be very interesting. I could see the sticking point being races, however, as it would be impossible to change factions without changing race. Thus far everything that has been opened to customization is completely cosmetic stuff (hair, gender, name), and even server transfers don't actually change your character's play in any way. Racial abilities may be of minor use, but they still do affect actual game play. Take Moroes, for example. Playing a dwarf gave a pretty nice advantage on that fight. Would it be worth changing your race over one fight? Maybe, maybe not. I don't see that being a door that Blizzard wants to open.
VioletPheonix Jun 18th 2009 12:23AM
Are you kidding? This is something I have said I would PAY to do, (and quite a bit of money) simply because it seems that everyone I know suddenly went horde while I took the summer off last year. (the alliance population on my server sucks!) All of a sudden I found myself at a massive disadvantage with the new content and not being able to experience it. This was kind of fixed by creating a death knight, but I am still very attached to my hunter and warrior, both who are now on the wrong side of the server! As we are getting ready for ulduar and finding ourselves short on off tanks and ranged this really stings.
I think it would be pretty easy to switch just have each faction city have the rep transferable to a counterpart and go!
Gessilea Jun 18th 2009 12:36AM
I really didn't say anything about whether or not I thought it would be a good idea (I think it would be a lot of fun) or how hard it would be (I try not to make judgments like that at all since I don't know the system), or whether or not people would want to have that option (of course people would). All I was saying was that given the race swapping issue I think it would be unlikely. I'm not sure which part of my comment your "are you kidding" was directed at.
Mentioning Death Knights though does remind me that this has been a fairly decent fix (assuming one is okay with playing a DK) for people who want to play on a different faction but don't want to level up from the beginning. I would guess that there will be at least one more hero class, and who knows, maybe eventually Blizzard will allow people to start new characters of any class at higher level.
VioletPheonix Jun 18th 2009 12:44AM
'Are you kidding' is more something that I say, but if you had to point out the part where it was actually said at something specific, it would be the part where you said that it's not something you think of. This is something that's impacted my play, and I have thought about it often. Though it does make sense that it might not be on the minds of average players, their servers not as extreme in the difference between horde play and alliance play as mine is.
Luckily the DK is a good fit for me, but I like playing ranged DPS. I am also a fairly slow leveler, and hope for more hero classes, in part to see them and in part because I love the way that dk's were implemented. But as for other classes starting at higher levels, I am not as hopeful. Blizz seems to be working too hard on making leveling go quickly to just decide that no one has to do it anymore.
But if they do, I will definately be first to make a new alt!
Gessilea Jun 18th 2009 12:48AM
Oh yeah, that makes sense! For whatever reason almost no one I know plays Horde, so it just hadn't occurred to me and I haven't seen it on the forums (at least, not in a blue post). I know that I dated a guy for a while who played Horde and it would have been nice to be able to have a high level character on his server rather than starting from scratch.
You're probably right about them increasing the leveling speed being another sign that they're not likely to allow people to skip levels. I have a set of the heirloom shoulders and they really help. The chest with stacking bonus will be pretty sweet too!
Kylenne Jun 18th 2009 1:28PM
I would pay stupid amounts of money to be able to change faction. My then-boyfriend was the one who finally convinced me to try WoW (I'm an FFXI player that held out for several years, against cajoling from all my friends). I REALLY wanted to roll Horde, the only Ally races I like are Draenei and Nelves, pretty much all my favorite races are Horde. But my BF despised Horde so badly, he wouldn't even roll a Horde alt to play with me. So I was stuck playing Alliance. I got a spacegoat mage and then a Nelf hunter to 70, raided with his guild, etc then leveled to 80 when Wrath came out. Did Naxx and VoA, got geared. Maybe a month or so later, we had a bad breakup, and I left the server, and A-side, so I could finally play how I wanted. So now I've got almost a full slate of Horde toons.
The problem is, while my Hordies were starting from scratch, now I've got an 80 mage with T7 and epic flight with an ungodly /played time literally collecting dust because I have no interest in A-side. The hunter is at 70 in T5, languishing in the same dust. Not to mention the fact that I have a number of BoA items on those toons, including a Big Blizzard Bear I paid $40 to DirecTV for, and heirloom shoulders for a lowbie shammy. I would give anything if I could make 'em both trolls and transfer them to my current server.