ArenaNet surprises me again

Just a short note, but I found something, again, about Guild Wars 2 that I had to really like. In a news blog ArenaNet discussed choosing a home world (server) and transfers. The basic part is that once you pick a world all your characters will be on that particular world. You will have an option to move home worlds once a week for a cost of 1,800 gems. Now I'm going to assume that is a cash shop item (there is another topic for another day.) and that it moves all your characters. I'm used to World of Warcraft charging $25 per character to move, which frankly felt fairly ridiculous. I'm frustrated with Bioware because server merges and character transfers are not a priority at this time, and I'm stuck on a low populated world. Again, no idea how much 1,800 gems would cost, but I'm sure it would be significantly less than what I would pay in other games. Putting this in perspective, I have five level 50's in SWTOR, and if they charged $25 per move, I'm looking at $125 to just move my 50's, and I have plenty of other toons with signifcant time invested. At that price, it's easier for me to go play another game, or re-roll on another server and be extremely angry at Bioware.

If you look at the news blog, it introduced me to the concept of "guesting". Short version is that you may have a friend that plays on a different server but you can still play with them on their server, or vice versa with some restrictions. Obviously WvWvW PvP is something that you wont be able to share, and I wonder about dungeons, but if I can still go do things with friends on a different server, then I dont have to try to get every group of people I want to play with all in the same place. I cannot express how good I think this feature is.

I am amused that the more I dig and the more I find, the more impressed I am with ArenaNet. Some of these things are very simple customer service issues, as well as easy of playability and enjoyment for customers. Their approach however isnt the same as other developers, and part of me feels that other companines should be asking: "Why arent we doing it this way?". Maybe it is game engine, or game design, I dont know, but my point is simply that ArenaNet is just trying to push the envelope in one area, they are doing it in an awful lot of areas, and that alone is probably a reason why consumers are standing up and taking notice.