Price Changes for Certain WoW EU Services on April 5

[BigAssBoy]

So any piece of complete software he does deserves to be pirated because it's offline (for some reason, don't know where you got that part) and you're comparing it to something like transferring a character that can literally be done with 5 lines of code... yup, you're completely right....

With his logic yes, in real life no.

[Kathranis]

Anyone want to guess here?

The value of the euro has dropped by about $.30 USD in the last couple years.

What that means in practical terms is that a store mount ($25 on NA) which was being sold for €20 on EU (about $26 USD) is now only worth about $21 USD. In other words, Blizzard is making $5 less on every store mount sold on EU in 2017 than they did in 2014.

The new EU price, €25, is $27 USD, slightly higher than the NA list price of $25 USD. Obviously there's also the whole "24.99" marketing thing, rather than a more direct conversion rate (which would be like $23.12), which means there's always going to be some "rounding up" going on in these price changes.

Of course many (if not most) states in the US also have an additional sales tax that is added to the price during checkout, which I don't believe is the case with EU's VAT (correct me if I'm wrong).

Here in Texas, a $25 store mount comes to a total of about $29.12 USD at checkout, which is still a couple bucks more expensive than the new EU price. (In other words, in Texas a store mount costs €26.94, vs EU's €25).

[caervek]

"Extort" lol.

Yes that's exactly what they are doing. Trying to bring European prices into line with American prices (where everything costs more because people earn more) is nothing more than a cash grab designed to extort more money from customers.

[Deleted]

This is fucking crazy.. it was already expensive for what it was.. and now its just completely bonkers

fucking capitalists

[Alfador]

Inflation and exchange rates are irrelevant for made up prices of digital services that cost Blizzard next to nothing. They aren't exactly losing money on this. Supply and demand? Yes. Also completely made up prices where they milk their customers just because they can, with "exchange rates" as excuse? Also yes.

Actually it's not irrelevant at all. Inflation and exchange rates set the demand curve for the item. That affects not only the variable profit for each transaction but the buy rates, etc. Blizzard can not only affect what they make off this completely optional luxury service and make adjustments to maintain their current earnings, but they can also make adjustments to influence how often those services are used, which is relevant to the larger gameplay environment. Transfers, faction changes, boosts all affect the relative stability of the player population on various servers and thus the player experience. Adjusting the price of a completely optional feature that is in no way necessary or advantageous to keep pace with economic factors helps them preserve the status quo they've set or adjust it as needed.

I get why you don't want to deal with that. Blaming abstract concepts like greed as an mask for entitlement is easier and feels better.