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  1. #101
    Quote Originally Posted by chronia View Post
    I wonder how many companies there are that lower prices (and thus margins) when their margins are already dropping very hard to a level that some would consider calling unhealthy.

    Look at 2012 where Activision Blizzard had the following profit margins 32%,17%, 26% en 20% for Q1,Q2,Q3 and Q4, these were healthy margins ranging from good to very good, now look at 2016 where the margins have dropped to 23,8,12 and 12% for Q1,Q2,Q3 and Q4 thats quite a big drop in margins, that some ppl would call something to watch out for.
    Yes because profit = earnings - costs, and Blizzard was pumping money in Overwatch (and some in HS), so you would expect their profit would be lower during development of a new game! And ofc corporations will not be willing to drop prices, but it do not means as customers we should defend such practices.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gehco View Post
    Nothing to do with the tech or development of, it is a business afterall, and you've all proven willing to pay the price. As well, adjustment is needed for currency/market.
    o m g - so why they didn't adjusted prices in asia and us? Dollar inflation is about 8% (comparing to 2012), euro is 5.8% and CNY over 11%!
    Quote Originally Posted by Shinra1 View Post
    black people have no power, privilege they cannot be racist since they were oppressed
    Quote Originally Posted by Bodakane View Post
    Men are NOT suffering societal hardships due to being male. That doesn't exist in most 1st world countries.

  2. #102
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Gehco View Post
    This old trope again.

    Then go play a free to play game, or go play Gui-.. no wait, they charge as well. Go play ArcheAge, no wait, they charge as well. How about Star W-.. Nope, as well.

    In the end, it is a business and they see the store going fine and they do need to adjust now and then. It isn't really that often and this topic appears when they do. And your argument appears whenever anything about subscription of services appear.
    Trying to add "flair" to your argument only makes you look even more inept, fact is that there are plenty of MMO's that are free to play. They get they revenue through the cash shop, there is nothing wrong with that. The problem with blizzard is that they have you pay a subscription for a old game that doesn't even let you access all content (yes vanity objects are content), makes you pay heavily for automated things as server changes and asks a premium for expansions.

    So no, there is absolutely no need to "adjust" anything, they make plenty of money by milking the players on every chance they get.

  3. #103
    Herald of the Titans Dangg's Avatar
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    Well they just calculated that raising the prices compared to the potential lost number of purchases is worth it.

    Is this an understandable action from a company? Sure it is.
    Should I personally as a customer be happy about it? Hell no.

    Is there something *we* can do about it? If puraches go down further than expected they'll likely lower it again. Is that likely? Rather not.

  4. #104
    Quote Originally Posted by Alexeht View Post
    Yes because profit = earnings - costs, and Blizzard was pumping money in Overwatch (and some in HS), so you would expect their profit would be lower during development of a new game! And ofc corporations will not be willing to drop prices, but it do not means as customers we should defend such practices.
    Well yes, but by that reasoning profit margins should have been way higher Q2,Q3 and Q4 of 2016 since that was when Overwatch launched and started making money, yet their margins only dropped seeing that Q1 (when Overwatch was still in development) yielded their highest margins for 2016 and not the quarters after Overwatch actually was released, not to forget that in 2012 they also had games in development in which they would be pumping money.

    And yes, there is no reason to actually defend the changes and show how happy you are with price increases (i guess nobody is, i am not happy with them either, same as that i was not happy with the pack prices going up for HS). But i do think these changes are quite understandable from a business point of view.

  5. #105
    Quote Originally Posted by chronia View Post
    Well yes, but by that reasoning profit margins should have been way higher Q2,Q3 and Q4 of 2016 since that was when Overwatch launched and started making money, yet their margins only dropped seeing that Q1 (when Overwatch was still in development) yielded their highest margins for 2016 and not the quarters after Overwatch actually was released, not to forget that in 2012 they also had games in development in which they would be pumping money.

    And yes, there is no reason to actually defend the changes and show how happy you are with price increases (i guess nobody is, i am not happy with them either, same as that i was not happy with the pack prices going up for HS). But i do think these changes are quite understandable from a business point of view.
    They earn money from Overwatch, but now they have to pay all those people they hired to make this game, as they are needed to make patches and new content -_-

    I will not advocate for greedy corpo business practices.

    Also if I remember correctly blizzard do not give budget and earnings numbers anymore, so what we know from activision do not mean anything since it is not blizzard only ...
    Last edited by Alexeht; 2017-03-24 at 01:22 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Shinra1 View Post
    black people have no power, privilege they cannot be racist since they were oppressed
    Quote Originally Posted by Bodakane View Post
    Men are NOT suffering societal hardships due to being male. That doesn't exist in most 1st world countries.

  6. #106
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by MeHMeH View Post
    Trying to add "flair" to your argument only makes you look even more inept, fact is that there are plenty of MMO's that are free to play. They get they revenue through the cash shop, there is nothing wrong with that. The problem with blizzard is that they have you pay a subscription for a old game that doesn't even let you access all content (yes vanity objects are content), makes you pay heavily for automated things as server changes and asks a premium for expansions.

    So no, there is absolutely no need to "adjust" anything, they make plenty of money by milking the players on every chance they get.
    Take another older MMO as example - LotRO. If you have a sub there, you get the VIP status and get an amount of shop currency every month of your sub. With paying your sub, you automatically get access to their premium services (mounts, cosmetics, etc.) on a regular base and only need to spend additional cash if you want to get things faster. (In LotRO, you also can earn shop currency via their achievement system (=grind), just like you can buy tokens by playing the game, but in WoW its gold instead (=grind).)

    Now, this is also a game which charges for major expansions (while content updates mid-expansions are free for people with a sub). It is some years younger than WoW, but it also has a strong content brand behind it (Lord of the Rings, d'uh). I know I would be playing this game if they had not butchered my favorite class and turned their unique talent system into a boring, generic talent tree like the one we had in WoW at some point.

  7. #107
    Bleh. Burn in hell, greedy fuckers. 25 euro for server transfer is fucking insane!
    No more time wasted in WoW.. still reading this awesome forum, though

  8. #108
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    Quote Originally Posted by MeHMeH View Post
    Trying to add "flair" to your argument only makes you look even more inept, fact is that there are plenty of MMO's that are free to play. They get they revenue through the cash shop, there is nothing wrong with that. The problem with blizzard is that they have you pay a subscription for a old game that doesn't even let you access all content (yes vanity objects are content), makes you pay heavily for automated things as server changes and asks a premium for expansions.

    So no, there is absolutely no need to "adjust" anything, they make plenty of money by milking the players on every chance they get.
    No one needs any of these services to play the game. They are luxury so they are intentionally high. If you want to bypass re-rolling then pay the piper.
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  9. #109
    Quote Originally Posted by nmityosaurus View Post
    Stop acting like this is exclusive to Blizzard :/ Prices go up constantly all over the place. Christ, Nintendo are selling new games for £60.
    Are you comparing a fully automated serviced like a server change or race chance to a game where a studio of people actually put in 2-3 years of work to make said game ?

    You do see for yourself the difference between both don't you ? one costs no effort whatsoever from Blizzard, the other is a project where x amount of people worked months and years on developing.
    Yes I know these services are optional and not needed in any way to play WoW , but the fact you justify the prices by saying that a whole new game costs 60 euro/GBP is just wrong

  10. #110
    Quote Originally Posted by Justpassing View Post
    Most services are bumped by 5 euros (the forum post is on blue tracker). At least we can pay with tokens I guess.
    you realize blizz earns 5 bugs (or 7 euros here) for every token that passed the AH ?

    to be clear:

    what do ppl think what happens when they go like "but for ME token is cheap shit buied with all my gold" ?

    i will tell you (the logical reaction chain):

    - someone HAVE to buy a token with real money so a token can appear in the AH
    - when doing, he pays 20 euros
    - someone buys this token via ingame gold
    - blizzard now lost 13 bugs for not paying his sub (13 euros)
    - so, effectively blizz earned 7 euros
    - now a lot of ppl say "i dont care bc I save money through ingame gold"
    - so a lot of ppl do this
    - blizz now looks at their statistics
    - they realize "hey, we can get money with this shit by doing nothing"
    - now blizzards managment want a broader spectrum with this bc "it works. make more profit."
    - so they start using it for other services beneath sub
    - now that lifted up the overall price segment and they recalc services real money prices
    - now they will increase the prices (happened today)
    - the management now decides that they dont need that much investment into wow itself
    - because they can earn good money via meta stuff (token, services, etc)
    - as a result the investment for development will be lowered
    - there is no problem in doing this since they just "shifted" their profit input point
    - result ofc is: wow quality now sinks
    - less content less quality
    - player/customer is sad
    - blizz is happy

    or in short: by supporting token ingame payment stuff, you support a more greedy blizzard and, way more worse, a less good wow product aka you help transorming the game you playin into cheap shit.

    final words:
    as so often, when acting egoistic shortterm, you will hurt yourself longterm. so think about what you do, when buying tokens, services, etc (regardless if you use real money or gold).
    Last edited by Niwes; 2017-03-24 at 08:26 PM.

  11. #111
    as if we dont pay more then every other region -_-

  12. #112
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Tharkkun View Post
    No one needs any of these services to play the game. They are luxury so they are intentionally high. If you want to bypass re-rolling then pay the piper.
    And your point is?? I didn't claim that you need any of this, but that doesn't make it any better.

  13. #113
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    After years of shafting they know we can fit a bigger one.
    Last edited by TheDeeGee; 2017-03-25 at 08:16 AM.

  14. #114
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    Quote Originally Posted by MeHMeH View Post
    And your point is?? I didn't claim that you need any of this, but that doesn't make it any better.
    That is the entire point. You're crying that Blizzard charges crazy prices for services you don't need. They are purposely priced high to deter people from constantly using them. Blizzard has said this themselves. If Blizzard made transfers free for example, the low pop servers would be practically empty and all the high pop servers overloaded.
    Last edited by Tharkkun; 2017-03-25 at 04:39 PM.
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  15. #115
    Quote Originally Posted by Bjoramier of Lordaeron View Post
    INB4 in the idiots arrive

    Post Constructively
    Too late. They have been here for YEARS, decades even.


    On topic: The sign of the times. Services and products increase in price.

    /shrug

  16. #116
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tharkkun View Post
    That is the entire point. You're crying that Blizzard charges crazy prices for services you don't need. They are purposely priced high to deter people from constantly using them. Blizzard has said this themselves. If Blizzard made transfers free for example, the low pop servers would be practically empty and all the high pop servers overloaded.
    So you have no point. That i do not need any of it doesn't mean that blizzard isn't milking it.

  17. #117
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    Quote Originally Posted by MeHMeH View Post
    So you have no point. That i do not need any of it doesn't mean that blizzard isn't milking it.
    Good argument. Every single game that has offered free server transfers is now F2P with the low pop servers being shutdown. That's a *great* business decision. Giving everything away for free removed all the value from the service being offered.
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  18. #118
    Deleted
    A few notes on the potential economics behind this.

    TL;DR: Inflation probably doesn't matter for this. Blizzard just wants to keep their (USD-denominated) profits steady.


    1. This is not based on inflation.

    First of all, inflation in the US has been consistently higher than in Europe. Yet Blizzard keeps their US prices steady, and only increases EU prices.

    Second of all, inflation is the consequence, not the cause of a price increase - in particular for such a digital service, which is fully automated and doesn't have any significant costs attached to it (no material input factors and no manual labor involved; hence no sensitivity to overall inflation and/or labor costs).

    Third, I'd be shocked if the internal costs Blizzard incurs for each use of such a service was higher than a few cents. Even if something crazy happened and their costs doubled in recent years .. say from 5 cents to 10 cents per use, this won't really justify price changes of 5€+.


    2. They might justify this with FX movements (i.e. EURUSD currency rate)


    EUR depreciated by something like 20% in the past 5 years (I don't know when exactly the latest price for these services was set; probably not quite 5yrs ago, but the FX range should be very rouhgly similar).

    That relative movement seems somewhat well in line with their price adjustment in EUR.

    Would it make sense for them to raise EUR prices just because EUR weakaned against USD? Yes and no..

    - No .. because people in Europe don't suddenly have a 20% higher income. So effectively, the service is now more expensive for the customers in Europe (relative to their available income).

    - No .. because there is no particular reason to assume its prices should be pegged against USD. The internal costs for these services will be close to zero, so there's no argument like "we need to put in 10$ of labor into this, so its price should always correspond to the EUR-value of 10$". The price of these services is pretty much arbitrary.

    - No (morally) because companies are usually quite reluctant to pass on positive effects from FX rates too. E.g. back when EURUSD was at 1.30 and above, games usually cost the same in EUR as in USD (eg 50$ = 50€) (yes, USD prices were excluding taxes; but EUR VATs are more like 20%, not 30%+..)

    - Yes because Blizzard is a US-based company, and reports its accounting / profits in USD. So in order to keep their profits steady (vice versa, and assuming they haven't hedged their estimated FX exposure beyond this point anymore), they'd need to increase EUR prices to maintain their USD-denominated profits
    Last edited by mmoce52dd080b7; 2017-03-26 at 08:10 PM.

  19. #119
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Tharkkun View Post
    Good argument. Every single game that has offered free server transfers is now F2P with the low pop servers being shutdown. That's a *great* business decision. Giving everything away for free removed all the value from the service being offered.
    Right, and that was only because people had free server transfers "of course". Do you really believe that these games failed because people could actually play on a server that isn't dead? That right there is some serious mental gymnastics, it is the one thing that they did in trying to save their game, not destroy it.

  20. #120
    Not thrilled about the price changes, but at least there's the option of grinding gold for tokens. Put in the time and the services can be obtained for ingame gold alone.

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