Charging $35 for a character copy is why people say Blizzard is greedy

[Prag]

I don't think the cost is even meaningful compared to the 13$/month sub. It would pay your transfer and cloning fees for thousands of characters. The 15$ is just pure profit for Blizzard.
The storage to keep the character data for years should cost more than the transfers, and you can make a lot of characters on your account completely free.

Their reported net margins are ~30%, so there are costs somewhere.

[kukkamies]

Their reported net margins are ~30%, so there are costs somewhere.

I could see that ye. For example Customer Service is really big and it's only a loss. So some others have to be very high profits. Marketing is maybe even higher expenses than customer service even and need to make that money back too.

I work at IT department of a decently sized house appliances shop. A lot of the things we sell are at break even, some even at a loss. Additional services is the highest margin market for us, like the "We'll setup Windows for you for 60" or "Additional year of product insurance for 100". Almost all profit.

[rrayy]

And you think they can't control blizzard? You seem confused about what your argument is

ACtivision-Blizzard does.ACtivision does not. Activision also answers to Activision-Blizzard. Activision and Blzzard are two separate companies with their own CEO's who answer to Activision-Blizzard who has it's own CEO. Activision does not report to Blizzard and vice versa. People need to correctly understand the corporate structure.

[TrollHunter3000]

ACtivision-Blizzard does.ACtivision does not. Activision also answers to Activision-Blizzard. Activision and Blzzard are two separate companies with their own CEO's who answer to Activision-Blizzard who has it's own CEO. Activision does not report to Blizzard and vice versa. People need to correctly understand the corporate structure.

no shit thanks bruh

[Arewn]

Not interested in a pissing contest either, but wanted to respond to some of your points:

- I probably could have clarified: I don't believe Blizzard is paying substantially more for any of the services, considering cloud pricing for most services seems to trend downward or flat.
- I wasn't intending to compare an entire staging setup to a single service, it was more toward the sentiment in the thread of "all these services should be free it's just copy/pasting files" which is pretty silly. Our production costs are exponentially higher, and I can only assume that's the case for everyone.
- There are also free template characters on PTR, which are basically boosts, that doesn't mean they should be free in production as well, right?
- I think the restriction you mentioned would have been a much better option. In-line with their "one boost per account", it makes even more sense for a "one clone per account" or something.

I disagree somewhat on the tech advancement and stagnant wages. Tech salaries in California are... high. 2020 had them at an avg of $126k starting, and DICE has the 2007 Tech starting salary average at ~$75k (and ~$95k for Silicon Valley).

Either way, I think we agree on the core point about Blizzard chasing profits, which is sort of a no-brainer.

Fair enough, re-reading my post I think I was being kind of pedantic.

[FelPlague]

a fully geared BIS lvl 60 who will replace all those epics with green gear in 3 levels... are you stupid or something or just dishonest?

its funny how you say this but many classes will not replace their classic epics till level 70, and some of them wont even be replaced till phase 2.
like literally neltharions teir, an item from BWL is BIS for warlcoks phase 1.
Even after doing TBC raids, neltharions teir is still the best.

[Heathy]

the non-cynical part of me always thinks that these things tend to be this way as a means of getting ppl to think twice before blindly impulse buying things. if the price is in a certain range you would hope that more ppl would think 'do I really need this' where as a 10$ boost is something everyone and their mom is going to blindly buy without a second thought.

too cheap and it becomes trivial

too expensive and no one buys it

sweet spot that makes ppl think about the shit they are buying? i'm not simping for blizzard they could be charging as much as they think they can get away with purely for the $$ but I don't like being cynical all the time.

I'd like to think that they'd rather ppl play the game as opposed to buying boosted characters or at least get ppl to think 'can I level my own character vs spending money on one' and at least having ppl entertain that thought.

look at it this way, to blizzard it doesn't really matter if you buy a boosted char or level one up, you're gunna be subbed for x amount of months anyway. it seems just purely a convenience thing, similarly any feature that could get ppl writing more support tickets is obviously going to require GMs who make what min wage?. in the end it is a business so the cost of doing something has to be outweighed.

[Judgebringer]

Sure it's optional, but if you want a new character your other option is to spend like 2 weeks of playtime to get it.

Ha, yea, two weeks. I spent years gearing my character and you think it'll take 2 weeks to get to that level? It's going to be painful to run around TBC leveling a fresh toon while fighting players in T3 or T2.5 gear. So I either pay2win the $15 fee or run around getting ganked by those who are willing to spend money. They should just give it to everyone or not sell it at all.

[Judgebringer]

People are already paying a premium just to play the game. They shouldn't be charged premium prices on top of that.

Finally, someone that gets it. Am I the only one who sees this as pay2win? Nobody mentions that this clone fee is pay2win?

[Queen of Hamsters]

Finally, someone that gets it. Am I the only one who sees this as pay2win? Nobody mentions that this clone fee is pay2win?

Then you're only revealing yourself as someone that doesn't know what P2W means. Although I suspect you're baiting.

Come back when players can clone a character with full T3 that the player didn't have to gear himself.

[Judgebringer]

Then you're only revealing yourself as someone that doesn't know what P2W means. Although I suspect you're baiting.

Come back when players can clone a character with full T3 that the player didn't have to gear himself.

The problem I have is that I play on PvP servers, which means if I don't take my geared toons and level them then boosted level 58's are going to gank my new TBC leveling toon. So that means I either take my toons off Vanilla and forget Vanilla exists or pay money to clone and level peacefully and still have a geared toon in Vanilla. Sounds like pay2win. Also sounds like a problem Blizzard created and are now offering a solution for a fee.

[tikcol]

There's already a weakaura that automatically spits on a player riding that deluxe edition lizard. I was in SW yesterday and I saw 10+ people /spit on the same guy at the same time.

Great success.

[Phuongvi]

Well ... they are not allowing pve to pvp server transfer, so no, they are not greedy

[Shigma]

Eh, tbn i believe such services should be included with the sub.

Because, you know, premium or not, we already pay a pricy base game + x-packs and a monthly sub on top of that.... paying those aren't premium enough?

People being ok with those is madness to me, but whatever. I never bought one of those services and i never will, and not because i lack the money. I just don't understand it and i would never vote with my wallet towards it.

To each its own i guess, but people reacting against people not liking that as they are entitled... well, we have the right to be paying those quotas.

Shits fucked up.

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A game that's not free as you have to have a sub to play #1. #2 they are charging for a collectors edition (if you chose) No one in their right mind was willing to pay $35 for a clone. Just like classic was "free" as long as you had a wow sub. Nothing is free get over that already cause that argument is long dead.

You forgot to add the base game. Oh, and for us here since the start, we also paid every x-pack so long. And also, yeah, i laugh at people saying classic is "free" when i have here the box i once paid and the stupid amount of money i payed as a sub over the years.

I never understood they charge so much for those services when, well, most of them (Like name change) should be something you should be allowed once in a time given, you know, that you pay to support that kind of operations monthly.