Account to Account Character Transfer

That is such a BS excuse. Unless they have lost access to the required database(s) somehow, any clownshoes programmer can make it happen.

It's easier and less risky to just deny transfers and push the heroic characters.

And that is what they are doing. Since its all rumor about the person who knew how to do it left, or the update to windows 8 and up broke it or etc etc etc

EQ has a lot of technical debt as the code base is 25 years old.

Character information is going to reside in 1-5 (maybe more?) tables in the database, unless the guys who created the table structure and linking of the tables back in '98-'99 were high asf.

You're going to have every created character with a character_id, that links to inventory (including primary bank) databases, and so on. It's likely that the shared bank (and TS depot) are in a separate table that links to the account & server only.
The character table would either include the server that character_id is associated to, or there is a server table with the character_id listed with the assurance that names are unique.

There's likely an account database that lists only character_id to the account_id, and the referencing of where that character lives is in the server table, or in the character table. Unless the account table resides in a completely different database that the development and customer service have no access to, then it would be less than 30 seconds of effort to move a character to a different account.

This is like 2nd week of "how to play in a database" education. They aren't doing account-to-account transfers because they can sell heroic characters for $30-40 each (plus the cost of market purchases such as heroic forge), and that's the only logical explanation.

I believe Daybreak is still hiring. Since you know so much about how the game code works, as it was written 25 years ago and evolved since to add more features, perhaps you would be perfect to work there.

Sarcasm aside, current database and other coding is vastly different from what was available and used 25 years ago. At various times over the last 25 years, they have done a lot to refactor code to take advantage of newer technology available. One such is in progress currently with the shifts to 64-bit and other newer underlying processes. In old code bases, the way different parts of the code interact and make calls to specific data base entries or locations, making a change in one place that seems to be independent can cause completely unforeseen results with another feature you might not think would be connected. I do not work for Daybreak and haven't worked with game development, but I have been doing software testing on routers for 18 years and on point of sales systems before that. The changes in software development over that time has been astounding. Going back to refactor old code is NEVER an easy process.

Unfortunately I don't reside in San Diego.

You don't need to live there as they have several states that you can work remotely from.

My guess would be that the root cause is a problem with their frontend tool: deprecated methods, authentication issues, outdated queries, etc. Again, all of this is easily solvable, but they have a workaround that can generate as much (if not more) revenue so they're ok with letting it go.

I think that's fine if they're focusing on more important things.

Even if it is fixable they still have to determine how much it is going to cost to fix versus how much they expect to make from the transfers. Not to mention what would have to be delayed or removed from the schedule if they did this work. If they don't think they will make enough to cover the costs or there are higher priority items it would replace it is unlikely to get done.

I do not think it is broken in the first place. They can just ply a ping-pong game using existing code: transfer you desired character to a dummy "Transfer_Server" (that means all existing character transfer rules apply) and then transfer it back into a separate destination account on the original server (again, using existing server-transfer code). That is a very simple task to do once the "transfer_server" is established.
I think they do not WANT to allow character account-to-account transfers for a multitude of reasons, ranging from legal to commercial and anything in between. Trying to come up with arguments for and contra is moot in my opinion.

Why would they need to transfer between servers for an account to account transfer?

They do not "need" to do it, but they can, because the code to do it already exists. And that existing code already checks the validity of transfer, like names for duplicates, special items etc. The code is already there, good working code. But they still do not allow the transfers, i.e. the reasons are not in the code, but in their policies.

It still doesn't make any sense that a server transfer would be done at all during an account to account transfer.

Yes...but also no. The fundamentals haven't really changed.

Structured databases are largely the same today, as they were back in 2000. Sure, everything is lots faster, we've got 64-bit data types, a zillion integrations and "frameworks", we can do things with JSON (XML before that), web APIs, geo coordinates, time, fuzzy logic, recursion, window functions, blah blah. But that's just features and bonuses. The basic building blocks of a structured, relational database? Same as it ever was. Data tables with columns, rows, keys, indexes. The core stuff was figured out in the 1970's, and we're still doing the same stuff today.

That doesn't mean developers don't do stupid things from time to time. But the database work isn't the bottleneck here.

I agree with Fenthen and Alnitak: DPG absolutely can do this. They just don't want to. Because Reasons. Perhaps they feel the ROI isn't enough. Maybe it's to encourage Heroic Chars. Maybe some grumpy old-timer has snowed them, or is gatekeeping, and convinced management "it cannot be done" or "is too risky". Or perhaps DPG just enjoy observing forum questers complain and act unhappy.

Eh, new hires wouldn't have the leverage and influence to get approval, and push something like this through. They'd have to play the Long Game, earn trust and influence, and try to eventually introduce changes over the course of many years.

But really, DPG doesn't even need a full-time hire for this. Short-term contracts would do the trick. Once the data migration tool is built, you don't need the developer anymore, except for the occasional maintenance or patching.

It's not just a database it's also how the code calls the database data.

But I do forget, on the forums DB is always to be perceived as just pushing more Marketplace purchases of thus and so even though account to account transfers were never free. If I remember rightly, they were about the same price as a 100 Heroic or at least the same as the 85 Heroic. So how would not having account transfers benefit them more financially?

Great question. No idea. Perhaps they'll speak up and enlighten us.

It could be that there were more support costs with account transfers compared to heroic purchases. For example, account transfers are sometimes used by scammers to steal characters from accounts, which would mean lots of support time to get things straightened out. Something like a heroic character purchase would not have nearly as much follow on support costs. If they factor in the support costs to transfers, it might mean the cost for a transfer should be much higher than $35 or whatever. But if it's much higher than that, not many people will use it. So their choices might be to make a cheap transfer option that is surpassed by its support costs, or make an expensive feature that pays for itself but hardly anyone will buy because of the high price. That makes it harder to justify assigning development effort to this feature.

Pretty much. Right now the cost/benefit is just not worth it.

Let's compare cost/benefit situation. If a customer wants to move a well-developed character from the existing account to a new account then DPG can collect a character "emancipation" fee and possibly start collecting new account subscription fee (presuming it's a new account and not someone simply "buying" a top-level character from those character "farms", in wich case the account is already subscribed and there is no increase of revenue for DPG).
Alternatively, by refusing character transfer option, they force this or another customer to start a new character and spend weeks if not months developing this new character into a top-level and collect all those extra several months of subscription fees (Kronos or CC charges). And all that without any extra hustle of dealing with all new possible problems and abuses related to character transfers.

In my experience of observing what other players do (including myself) when they need/want a new top-level character - they "bite the bullet" and level it up and bring more playtime revenue to DPG while doing so.
The current policy is a net win-win-win for DPG and a show-stopper for those, who may wish to churn out freshly minted top-level toons and sell them to those who want it.
Few very rare cases when a player legitimately needs to transfer one of the own characters to a different self-owned account and can't possibly wait to develop a new character is so few and far between that it's just a minor footnote for DPG business.
All is good for now.