Upcoming Australian Dollar (AUD) Price Changes for World of Warcraft

[The One Percent]

guess you guys are going to have to unleash the emus.

[rustyboy]

With Shadowlands about to release, it's most likely a ploy to spark long term subs to artificially inflate the expansions re-sub stats. At the same time they get a nice increase on their monthly takings. In reality it's just penny pinching because they can and has no real impact on Blizzards long term viability.

The most egregious costs are to do with the service costs. Race Change, Character Transfer, Character Boost, Faction Change, Name Change. These services are fully automated. All of these should be lower than $10 USD. The days of trying to motivate players to stay on specific servers to maintain population is gone, especially in the Oceanic region where if your horde and your guild/server is dying the most appealing option is just to transfer to Frostmourne Alliance.

The games profit right now comes from WoW Tokens and for years I have noticed a gradual change of in game systems that place economic pressure on players. Consumable material scarcity and high consumable material requirements, an increase in the amount of strong crafting/BoE items that compete with raid drops for new raid tiers, the black market auction house where anything rare pretty much goes for gold cap, removing items like the Burtasaur auction mount instead of keeping them available just like all the other expensive mounts. Even with the whole Gallywix debacle, they have implemented virtually zero mechanisms (e.g. no way to filter out the listings polluting the group finder by default) to tackle pay to win player activities, they pretty much encourage it. Let's not even get started with the cosmetic microtransactions.

These systems are not put in place for player enjoyment. They are implemented to take advantage of human psychology and if they were not in the game you wouldn't even miss them. At first it was just here or there, but now I've heard so many stories through my friends where someone has forked out thousands of dollars on wow tokens to buy something in game. To Blizzard/Activision the player base is just a dairy farm but I suppose that's how the game industry sees everyone these days.

[mrgreenthump]

It's funny how the sub never gets adjusted when US dollar is weak..

[Your Mommy]

Well, guess that's an unsub for me then.

Already having trouble justifying the price in the current situation, and now it's gone up once again. Perhaps i'll return when things become stable again, but until then... have fun folks.

I am not Australian, but I have also felt the same way lately even without a price increase in my region.
I mean I don't know, they increase the sub prices only to pump out more store mounts than content.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

im not australian but i'm outraged at this. yall should be outraged too. they are gonna do this to other regions if you just sit back and dont voice your outrage. RAGE RAGE RAGE.

That’s really not how this works they have been doing regional price changes since atleast wod no amount of rage is gonna make them stop something they have been doing for years.

[MrLachyG]

This. They sync cost with exchange rate, that's fine. Let my Aus brothers and sisters have better schedules.

I'm starting a Twitter campaign. tweeting that request to every single Blizzard employee I can find til I get an answer. there's a thread about it on the oceanic forums, want to guess how many replies from Blizz there are on that thread? hint: rhymes with nero

[moofinek]

It is quite funny that some people think that Australians should be angry at the price change. They paid 25% less than I did. Even after the price changes, they will still pay less

[uncl55]

cool, now time to adjust EU prices Blizz

[Koward]

It's funny how the sub never gets adjusted when US dollar is weak..

Well money always deprecates over time. So I guess if you don't change often your price, you know it will always go up. You just have to hope it increases proportionally less than your salary or it becomes a problem .

[erifwodahs]

They are getting more bnet balance for token redemption too.
I mean it's a 2.5$ more a month for a service, less than that if you have few months pack. It's less than a cup of coffee and blizz has not adjusted their prices in years and they don't do that at a whim. Some other games has their sub prices literally doubled over the last 10 years.
Whatever services you get - server maintenance time, customer support it's a different matter and should be discussed in different environment than screeching

[Zoibert the Bear]

cool, now time to adjust EU prices Blizz

You need to stop saying things mate. The Aussies have it easy, 1 AUD is 0.62 EUR, we pay quite a bit more than they do.

1 month = 12.99 EUR = 21.10 AUD = 15.31 USD (current rates)

We are being fucked in the ass too.

[Seranthor]

How many of you are actually going to unsub because of this?

[erifwodahs]

How many of you are actually going to unsub because of this?

None,this is less than what a large coffee costs and is still less than most of the world pays so they were getting better price for the same product for years

[sychofish31]

Its a tax change. Same thing happened here when the NZ govt introduced GST for all organisations outside of NZ... Im guessing this is the same thing here - Not Blizzards fault. Its your govts... time for a new Prime Minister - youve had the current one a tad too long

[tersit89]

Just FYI in Russia 1 month costs 549rub which is around 7$ due to ruble devaluation. This may sound great but in reality all goods and services are becoming more and more expensive

[Bladescourn]

How many of you are actually going to unsub because of this?

My wife and I are considering it. It has been hard to justify the ongoing expense, especially when the game is so outdated, play time is limited, and like others have said, there are other cheaper options for entertainment. World of Warcraft should be trying to hold on to its decreasing subs, not charging them more. They have done a lot to get people back into the game by making it easier to level and setting up a great and interesting expansion, now I’m wondering if I should reconsider and get a refund before it’s released.

EDIT: We also have some of the highest costs for living in the world. Simply googling it a moment ago, we are ranked 9th in the world for cost of living while US and UK are 21st and 23rd respectively. We simply can’t afford to pay the same costs as everyone else because we are just trying to get by.

[Kumorii]

Blizzard seems to now lose 1 AUD on token exchanges compared to previous pricing.

[Super Kami Dende]

How many of you are actually going to unsub because of this?

I unsubbed yesterday anyway due to pre-patch being underwhelming. I'll likely not be re-subbing with a cost increase.

[Tyresias]

The cheapest option which is the six month sub at $17.25 is higher than the old most expensive one month sub which was $16, that's a crazy leap.

Cheapest for me in Eastern Europe is 11 euros for 6 months with is still a bit more expensive then the new aud price so not crazy at all they're just bringing yours in line with it.

[Asrialol]

meanwhile in my country these bastards charge everyone in Euro's which is not our currency and as the euro is super strong compared to my currency i would be paying double the amount that everyone elsewhere in the world is currently paying but by giving up a bullshit address in a bullshit nation i get the normal price others pay.

changed this a long time ago as i was paying almost 25 dollars for a month with the exchange to euros, but it went down to 15$ when moved my "address" to a different nation and a different exchange rate, as they are already cheating every single person in my nation, weird how they only want to change the price when they feel like they could get more not when they are overcharging. shit company.

You seem intelligent. Which is why I assume your question is rhetorical, and you aren't actually asking why they use Euro in certain european countries, and the whole "greed" thing you're accusing them of is just you being funny.