Aren't the WoW services priced a bit excessive?

[Tradu]

Yes, they're massively overpriced, especially compared to other games in the same space. Especially when it comes to moving multiple characters at once, where other games(to my knowledge) offer either discounts for moving multiple at once or just straight up let you move as many as you want for 1 payment. Unfortunately plenty of people have no choice but to pay the services or to quit, so they'll keep them at that silly price level simply because they can get away with it.

[Razorice]

Well, I'm planning on transferring 12 of my chars to a different realm, so I need to farm up about 13M gold. 5M to go.

[Scifix]

My thought exactly when i was going to faction change my main a few days ago for the first time in aaaaaaaaages, 30 euro for it, at least it used to be 25, and that is still alot for such a service imo

[Mojo03]

Ethical theft, when someone offers a service you are not obligated to purchase in the slightest, but we're too poor to pay for it, so we call it theft.

It's not about being to poor to pay for it, it's about taking advantage of people and showing a clear exploitation of them. If you put a lot of time into something, you are emotionally invested in it and if there is a financial option that exist to shortcut any repetition and save time you'll feel obligated to do it. In this case that option cost the company itself basically nothing, about as simple and copying and pasting, after the cost of setting up the infrastructure. A very minor fee could offset that cost and still leave plenty of room to make a profit. Blizzard instead chose to exploit that option and charge a premium, knowing the people whom have invested a lot of time into the game will pay to save them that time, or in cases of name changing/appearance change, because of walls in the system they put in place, that don't actually need to exist.

Some people have to pay for the services to enjoy playing the game, which they should not be punished financially for having to do.

You could even argue it's not possible for the game to exist in this day and age without those services, so saying they are an optional thing that doesn't need to exist is false, they do need to exist in this day and age for the game to be taken seriously.

If I ran a company today, people with your mindset are exactly the type of people I'd take advantage of. So keep it up, your making people like me money.

[Lochton]

Look I work a job with a decent salary, I make in the 50k CAD/year range and I'm not in debt or anything financially going well.

But I grew up poor and I appreciate the value of money, so for me when I consider the price of a server transfer and faction change to play with a friend and it's 55$ USD, i.e like 65-70 CAD, I'm like holy fuckarooney. It's the price of almost 4 months of WoW, which pays for all the servers, programming and maintenance work and future content!

What warrants these prices? The programming for these services was completed years ago, everything is automated now. Wouldn't like 10$ everything be more reasonable? Paying the price of a new AAA game so I can play WoW with a friend just strikes me as what the fuck.

Although then again we live in an age where people pay over 1000$ for a cellphone because its screen is more shiny than the previous version, so what do I know...

To be honest...

... not.

The game at current, is easy mode to level, easy mode to gear with the often follow up catch up mechanics and easy enough to handle. If you wanted to be on a different server, it could be done easily. The services are priced accordingly to the use, because so many people use it, seems the price isn't all bad. You aren't forced to do it, and it is a side business for them. As it is optional, there isn't much trouble.

And you aren't paying the price of a new AAA game, unless you are talking about the boost, which is just a luxury product in a world where leveling can be done in under 15 hours played from 1 to 110.

[Zyky]

Yes. Didn’t stop them from increasing the price though.

As long as people are paying they wont change anything with the exception of possibly just increasing them again.

[zlygork]

"supply" and demand. If people are willing to pay it, it's the right price from a business perspective.

[Jaylock]

God you are fucking stupid. There's nothing reasonable about charging the price of a full game for some stupid automatic service that costs them nothing. It's not about not being able to afford it, it's about basic fiscal responsibility. Is this an alien concept to you or something? Do you just enjoy buying clearly overpriced shit and get a warm feeling inside for supporting the company that is ripping you off? It's a miracle you manage to remember how to breathe.

Infracted: Flaming [ML]

Guess what man, people pay the prices of the services. People pay the $60 for character boosts.

If people are paying those prices, why would blizzard in their right mind ever reduce the prices? For heavens sake man, they even have sales on their services from time to time. Stop whining, and if you don't like the prices then *GASP* don't buy them!

[Kazuchika]

The only thing I think is dumb is $10 for a name change. I get why stuff like faction xfers/server xfers are priced the way they are.

I don't even know why paid name changes exist especially considering if you know the trick you can get one free every 14 days.

[Trend]

God you are fucking stupid. There's nothing reasonable about charging the price of a full game for some stupid automatic service that costs them nothing. It's not about not being able to afford it, it's about basic fiscal responsibility. Is this an alien concept to you or something? Do you just enjoy buying clearly overpriced shit and get a warm feeling inside for supporting the company that is ripping you off? It's a miracle you manage to remember how to breathe.

Infracted: Flaming [ML]

It's always interesting how the people with the least understanding of economics have the greatest confidence in their own opinions.

I am glad there is a lot of money to be made in the video game industry when a title ends up being a hit. That potential is what allows companies to take risks and spend tons of money on new projects which may or may not pan out.

This is not some kind of core infrastructure that needs to be regulated and capitalism will work just fine on its own. Your quality of life is not impacted as a result of whether or not you can transfer your video game character to another server. There is not some deep ethical issue as if we were discussing the pricing of life-saving pharma. Blizzard's services are purely luxury and what is and is not "reasonable" can be ascertained by what people are or are not willing to pay for.

And since you can go from level 1 to level 110 > ilvl 910 in 3 days played anyway, what's the big deal? If you cannot or do not want to pay for the services just make a new character.

[Spotnick]

Your other option is to use the free boost you get with every expansions.

But yes, it's expensive. But you have to understand you are paying for the development of the feature and all the time they invested doing it when they did the faction change, and obviously that's a LOT of work.. Problem is, prices didn't drop over the years, but they didn't increase so technically they are cheaper every year due to inflation.

[Regalbeast]

I personally think it's pretty lame, but it probably prevents server abuse, etc.

I've probably spent over $500 on WoW services (not including subs, obviously) in my lifetime. It's all automated on their end so considering that it's pretty dumb.

[Spotnick]

I personally think it's pretty lame, but it probably prevents server abuse, etc.

I've probably spent over $500 on WoW services (not including subs, obviously) in my lifetime. It's all automated on their end so considering that it's pretty dumb.

It cost a lot of resources to automate those.. you don't pay for the service itself you pay for the development time it took to set it up.

Software development is really not cheap...

[Deleted]

Look I work a job with a decent salary, I make in the 50k CAD/year range and I'm not in debt or anything financially going well.

But I grew up poor and I appreciate the value of money, so for me when I consider the price of a server transfer and faction change to play with a friend and it's 55$ USD, i.e like 65-70 CAD, I'm like holy fuckarooney. It's the price of almost 4 months of WoW, which pays for all the servers, programming and maintenance work and future content!

What warrants these prices? The programming for these services was completed years ago, everything is automated now. Wouldn't like 10$ everything be more reasonable? Paying the price of a new AAA game so I can play WoW with a friend just strikes me as what the fuck.

Although then again we live in an age where people pay over 1000$ for a cellphone because its screen is more shiny than the previous version, so what do I know...

It is very much ridiculous. However, people still pay these ridiculous prices for these services. Just like new Iphones or whatever.

Can't blame companies making profits off stupid people.

[Planetdune]

Blizzard has always had overpriced services. Problem is, you either pay up or don't do it. And for those that want to do it, they pay the premium.

[Deleted]

It cost a lot of resources to automate those.. you don't pay for the service itself you pay for the development time it took to set it up.

I hope this is irony, because this strikes me as development work than can be done by a half-arsed intern in a few days. The cost of developing these services has probably been recouped within the very first day of releasing them.

At topic: Yes, I find them to be exorbitantly expensive.
Especially since they're charging ridiculous prices for services that are sometimes needed to address flaws of the game Blizzard themselves is responsible for.

Empty servers? Well we won't merge that but why don't you just pay a few hundred bucks to transfer your chars.
Leveling is boring as hell and even our lead designer openly admits this? Hey, but you can always shell out 50 EUR to boost a character!
Thank you, please feel free to buy a pet or mount on your way out.

I'm lucky enough to earn extremely well and fortunate enough that affordability wouldn't be an issue. But I refuse to support insane practices like that out of principle. If your game turns to sh.it and you want me to pay extra to circumvent your own flaws, well .. goodbye. (And indeed I've been unsubbed for a while, naturally not just because of that, but for a variety of reasons)

[Softbottom]

Look I work a job with a decent salary, I make in the 50k CAD/year range and I'm not in debt or anything financially going well.

But I grew up poor and I appreciate the value of money, so for me when I consider the price of a server transfer and faction change to play with a friend and it's 55$ USD, i.e like 65-70 CAD, I'm like holy fuckarooney. It's the price of almost 4 months of WoW, which pays for all the servers, programming and maintenance work and future content!

What warrants these prices? The programming for these services was completed years ago, everything is automated now. Wouldn't like 10$ everything be more reasonable? Paying the price of a new AAA game so I can play WoW with a friend just strikes me as what the fuck.

Although then again we live in an age where people pay over 1000$ for a cellphone because its screen is more shiny than the previous version, so what do I know...

I am also Canadian. I spent $400+ moving all my chars from horde to alliance and to another server. Sucks they can charge whatever they want unfortunately Would it be worth it to level a new char vs spend the money? To me fuck no. 2 hours of work vs 2 weeks of leveling. No thanks.

[DarkAmbient]

you don't pay for the service itself you pay for the development time it took to set it up.

That's what the price of the game is for. Not to mention the subscription fee.

The prices are excessive. But let's face it, there are plenty of people who would defend Blizzard if Bobby Kotick and Ion turned up at their house and shit on the doorstep.

[S7orm]

Transfer prices must be kept relatively high to avoid mass-transfering of materials and gold (it's already profitable enough) across realms

[Onikaroshi]

They all but removed the restrictions, so something has to be prohibitive to people moving willy nilly. They could have gone either way Expensive but with no hard restrictions or cheap with excessive hard restrictions.