Price Changes for Certain WoW EU Services on April 5

Originally Posted by Les Grossman

Because surely you have an understanding of those concepts beyond the skin-deep Wikipedia level :P

You have no idea how economics work right?

First and foremost, the overal sallery in some of the countries affected by this is prob half the sallery that US ppl have.
And above that this is automated services. Costs Blizzard nothing to keep this up compared to other stuff in this game.
Sure this would have been ok if you got a few transfers for free but this isnt the case.

Nah this is a greed move and it reflects badly on Blizzard. Just cause 1$ ~= 1£ does not mean the prices should be the same.
Its when sallery + cost of living = salley + cost of living in 2 countries THEN the price for this should be the same in those 2 countries. EU aint a country, and several of the eastern countries mean sallery is so low that this really hits them hard.

Nah if anything this is services that should be free. Atleast character transfers/faction changes and other stuff that actually help ppl to keep playing. I dont care if mounts costs since they are just superficial and is only for fun. But having to pay for 10 chars to move to another server is just stupid.

They want to help Trump build his wall.

Hilarious how Blizzard can make poor decisions after poor decisions, I'm just happy I'm not playing _any_ of their games anymore, what a waste of money.

All their announcements are highly amusing though, so It's worth checking back to this site from time to time, to get a good laugh.

I like how they ruined their own game and now increase costs for shit that should be free anyway.. oh well.

Originally Posted by Alfador

I'm guessing concepts like inflation and exchange rates aren't things you're familiar with.

No but I am familiar with greed and not being able to justify these price increases on services they probably have a 3000% profit margin on. Lol, gtfo of here with your inflation.

Have fun everyone with paying a full AAA title price to skip half of the game. Thank all the people who didn't care back when they started with all these shady practices because "it's optional" or "it's not pay2win". They will be tweaking these systems over and over to make more and more money and it will negatively impact you even if you don't buy their services or cosmetic items. The game market is going to shit.

Originally Posted by Gilian

No but I am familiar with greed and not being able to justify these price increases on services they probably have a 3000% profit margin on. Lol, gtfo of here with your inflation.

Have fun everyone with paying a full AAA title price to skip half of the game. Thank all the people who didn't care back when they started with all these shady practices because "it's optional" or "it's not pay2win". They will be tweaking these systems over and over to make more and more money and it will negatively impact you even if you don't buy their services or cosmetic items. The game market is going to shit.

So just as I suspected. This is just pure economic ignorance. It's pure supply and demand buddy. It's a luxury service that you don't need any have no reason to buy other than to not play the game in the first place. If you don't like it, you're under no obligation to pay for it. But no, nebulously blaming things you don't like on "greed" because you baselessly feel you're entitled to them is totally rational behavior...

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Originally Posted by Les Grossman

Because surely you have an understanding of those concepts beyond the skin-deep Wikipedia level :P

Actually I do. Financial analysis and quarterly price adjustment on services was literally my job for 4 years. It's all supply and demand with a little bit of adjustment for exchange rates, taxes, etc thrown in. If you don't like the price, don't buy it. There's nothing "greedy" about selling a completely optional luxury service for a price that disincentivizes people from just using it flippantly.

Wow, 30-40-50-60 € for a single line of code query (i'm programmer my self i understand how these things go) which is also automated, no manpower is needed to run these services what so ever. Greed is strong with Blizzard, it will be their downfall one day. I could have understand some symbolic price od €/$ 2-3 for these services so they are not abused but this is just disgusting, I mean, most of the games on steam cost less than to change a frickin race or server in WoW, SAD.

Originally Posted by DysprosiumDy

By your logic why would you have to pay for ANY online game or service if that game or service had turned a profit already? Businesses need profit. The more a company earns, the more it can do to expand and create new things. You cannot blame the company for sticking to an optimal pricing system. Literally every for-profit company out there does that.

I cannot? Why? If anything I did expect prices to be lowered, not raised. I don't understand why anyone would advocate for raising prices is 'normal'. Please don't feed me that inflation crap answer. Again, these are digital goods, not real world manufacturing. There is absolutely nothing stopping Blizz from lowering instead of raising prices.. the only reason is they want to squeeze more money from the service. I am not a lemon, I don't like to be squeezed.

I fully understand Blizzard is not a charity organization and Activision always wants more but sometimes less is more.

Originally Posted by Jaylock

Hmm... last time i checked raiding is able to be done *GASP* Cross Server!

And Mythic raiding? Yeah, that applies to maybe .01% of the population? And not even that for those who want to raid but are on "dead" realms.

Reading your comments make no sense at all but keep defending as you always do.
I'll take my sweet time to see when you will finally grasp what "common sense" means.

Originally Posted by Alfador

I'm guessing concepts like inflation and exchange rates aren't things you're familiar with.

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.

This is some serious bullshit... the value of euro is dropping so they raising the prices, I wonder, when the value of the euro will go up will the prices go down? I doubt...

Is it because of declining currency or declining user base?

In other markets like consumer electronics (e.g. digital cameras, personal computers) where number of units sold are declining and market size is shrinking, companies like Sony and Apple have resorted to significant price hikes (Sony's ILC, Apple's MBP line) in order to maintain revenue numbers.

Anyone want to guess here?

Originally Posted by Kensio

This is some serious bullshit... the value of euro is dropping so they raising the prices, I wonder, when the value of the euro will go up will the prices go down? I doubt...

Ofc not. My country had the food VAT lowered from 21% to 9%. You'd expect to see some changes, yet restaurants have the same prices and the big food stores only advertised price lowering(maybe reduced it for a small period) and then went back to regular price. The difference goes in their pocket ofc...

Originally Posted by Die Hard

Wow, 30-40-50-60 € for a single line of code query (i'm programmer my self i understand how these things go) which is also automated, no manpower is needed to run these services what so ever. Greed is strong with Blizzard, it will be their downfall one day. I could have understand some symbolic price od €/$ 2-3 for these services so they are not abused but this is just disgusting, I mean, most of the games on steam cost less than to change a frickin race or server in WoW, SAD.

When people pirate the next piece of software you make I wont cry then. Everything they get to do with it will generally be offline and thus require no man power from anyone and your company will most likely make a profit still, you wouldn't want to be greedy would you.

Originally Posted by BigAssBoy

When people pirate the next piece of software you make I wont cry then. Everything they get to do with it will generally be offline and thus require no man power from anyone and your company will most likely make a profit still, you wouldn't want to be greedy would you.

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....

Good on them raising EU prices instead of US. Thank you blizzard

Originally Posted by caervek

Blizzard using changing exchange rates to extort European customers, didn't see that coming lol.

"Extort" lol. Yeah, because you better faction/server/guild transfer OR ELSE. DUN DUN DUNNNNNN!

Don't be a joke.

im sure some of the poorer European countries blizzard services are like a family dinner out at a nice restaurant and cinema tickets for 4, OR a faction change/realm change.

yeh basically just unsub and do better shit for your money, if you're on a dead server thats blizzards fault don't pay the greedy cunts.

Originally Posted by Kensio

...the value of euro is dropping so they raising the prices...

Yes, exactly. They are adjusting for conversion. The lower the value of the euro, the less money Blizzard makes from each transcation conducted in euros.

The euro is currently worth about $0.30 USD less than it was a couple years ago. Two years ago, a €20 mount earned Blizzard about $26 USD. Now it earns them only $21 USD. On NA servers those mounts are $25 USD. The new €25 price means they'll get $27 USD on those transactions, only slightly higher than the NA price.

You see the issue?

When the value of the euro goes down, Blizzard makes less money from the EU servers. So they increase prices on EU servers. It's not rocket science.

Originally Posted by m4xc4v413r4

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.