We have made changes to the Paid Character Transfer and Paid Name Change cooldown times, and have lowered
them from three months to one month. The cooldown refers to the length of time between when a character
first uses one of these services and the next time it can be used. These two services do not share a cooldown.
When the paid transfers originally opened back in June of 2006, they included a six month cooldown. This
was rather high as we had no statistics or data that would show us what effect the transfers would have on
the game as a whole. It was rather conservative for a new feature. After analyzing any possible security
risks, impact on the economy, and effect on in-game communities, the cooldown was reduced to three months in
October of 2006.
Since that time we have released eight major content patches and the Burning Crusade expansion, and as the
game has evolved we have continued monitoring the impact these services have, who’s using them, and purpose
for their use. We’re now confident that a cooldown reduction to one month will not increase an already minor
impact these services have.
Original post by World of Warcraft Community Site
