Over the past week, we've had an in-game poll up on the US and EU-English servers aimed at gathering an updated view of what everyone thinks of the idea of Station Exchange and whether they'd be interested in participating in it.

For anyone needing to get caught up, background on this topic is available at: http://www.stationexchange.com

Here are the results of the polls:

What do you think of Station Exchange?

For It:          33.71%
Neutral:       32.61%
Against It:    33.68%

Do you want to participate in Station Exchange?

Yes:             24.76%
Don't Care:    29.90%
No:               45.34%

While opinions have been strong on this subject (in all directions), we'd like to thank you all for continuing to express yourselves in a way that has remained largely civil. :) We want to make sure that what we do with this service takes everyone's opinions into account, and that what we do is as tasteful as possible from everyone's point of view.

Here's what you can expect to happen from here:

  • 14 days before the service launches, we'll be letting people from all US and EU-English servers register for a move to a new Exchange-enabled server. These moves will be free, and characters will move with everything they own, except shared bank items, just like a normal /movelog does today.
  • Once we've registered enough people to fill one server, we'll shut down movelog registrations and let you know that the registration period has ended.
  • The service will initially launch on one new server, which will be populated by those who registered.
  • Once that server is filled, we will repeat the above steps to fill a second server.
  • In the future, people will be able to use the Character Transfer Service to move characters to Exchange-enabled servers, with one important limitation:

    Characters that move from a non-Exchange server to an Exchange-enabled server will do so only with their NOTRADE or ATTUNED equipment and house items, and without coin. This is aimed at preventing the non-Exchange servers from being fertile farmland for those who might seek to farm on one server, then move and sell on the other.

  • While nearly one out of four people indicate they would actively like to play on an Exchange-enabled server, we don't plan on drastically altering the landscape of EQ2 from the outset by opening many servers on the same day. We'll continue to open new servers as demand for the service requires.

If these plans change, expect further postings describing the changes.

Thanks very much for logging in and answering the poll, and for your continued feedback here on the boards.

Good hunting.

- Scott

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Scott Hartsman
Senior Producer, EverQuest II

View Scott Hartsman's offical post.