I personnaly think that 14$(2000 SC) should be reasonable. More than that it would laughing at the face of the player base, especially since the first step should have been a server merge or a free token. Hopefully they laughed enough with the sunderer/flash horn.
50 certs would be more reasonable, as someone just starting out i had no idea which server would be or is a good choice, but there's no chance i'm spending numerous hours to start a new char or spending 2000 points just to move(that's the cost of 2 guns). Honestly though, i'm quite happy with my server choice, but it would be nice to have the option at a *reasonable* cost.
Playing your characters on other servers should cost nothing. Why? Because this game works when there are populated servers, then it works extremely well. However it doesn't work if: 1) there are empty servers 2) there are massive ques to get in the servers. Monetizing char transfer, is going to leave some servers empty, the 3-4 busy servers with ques, and cause a customer realtions nightmare in virtue of monetizing this. Going the other way and making characters not bound to server, solves a lot of the problems of the current 'near full' and 'empty' servers, as players will graduate to the servers with the best lag/player amount ratio, and any further servers SoE are left with with minimal amounts of people as extra capacity, for when they fix performance a bit and people rush back. Please, find flaw in my argument.
The simple answer is the game doesn't need transfers. Transfers will not help the game, they will hurt it. Why do you think a player would want to transfer? Low population on your home server? If you make it free, more people leave. If you charge, the people that can't or won't pay to fix a problem SOE created will quit. Those who don't transfer from a dying server have even less people to play with. Population balance issue with your home server? You leave a server where you're the minority, and move to a server you're in the majority. Congratulations, you just made the situation worse for the minority on two servers (the teammates you left behind, and the enemies at your new home). SOE needs to realize the only way to fix the problem is to give players the freedom to choose the server they play on at any time, provided the server doesn't have more than 35% representation by their faction. Server merges will help a little, and are inevitable given the dwindling numbers, but they won't solve everything.
