An international relocation isn't much fun. I can personally attest to this as I am very nearly ready to leave California -- my home for the last 10 years -- in order to live out the rest of my days in England, the country where I was born and raised. For the past weeks and even months, I've had the hassles of booking expensive flights, shipping belongings via sea, work visas, credit ratings, and all manner of other tedious bureaucracy.

Is it not enough that I'm panicking about relocation? That I'm moving my entire family 5,500 miles across the planet? What else could be weighing heavy on my somewhat fragile mind? World of Warcraft -- that's what.

Amidst the whirlwind of sizeable life changes I've experienced recently, one thing has stuck in my mind more than anything else. This is possibly going to sound weak, feeble and even insane when you consider the future of my young child's education is currently in flux while the move is complete, but one of the biggest changes to my life will without a shadow of a doubt be the inevitable disruption of my regular World of Warcraft playtime on the U.S. servers.

Bigbullocks. Tauren Death Knight. U.S. server Destromath. /cry

I've attempted to play WoW remotely on previous trips home to visit the family on holidays, but a number of factors all contribute to a less-than-ideal set of circumstances. First up is the time difference. England is eight hours ahead of West Coast U.S. servers, so even if I get on to play, none of my friends or guild members are usually logged in. Second is the immortal enemy of all online games -- latency. And from the north of England, connecting to Blizzard's U.S. servers ain't really all that pretty. High latency is a game-killer at the best of times, so even if I decided to pull an all-nighter and play through the small hours of the morning, peak U.S. server time make the lag all the more intolerable.

So I am faced with a difficult set of choices. I can simply kiss goodbye to hundreds and hundreds of hours invested, friendships made, guilds joined, epics gained, and good times had, or I can suck it up and try to muddle through the lag as best I can. I could just let my beloved U.S. account rot in digital hell and start over with a shiny European account, which to be honest is probably going to be my best bet. But I'm angry, because I shouldn't have to.

Blizzard has demonstrated time and time again that it is more than capable of changing the rules of player account features. We can all happily pay a fee to transfer servers, compete in arena tournaments, modify the appearance of our characters, and even switch sexes if we wish, but the biggest glaring omission is the complete lack of an international account or even character transfer service.