Services Price Increases

ZeitgeistGlee

https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17615085726

We carefully review the prices of our games and services in all currencies on a regular basis, and we occasionally need to make changes based on regional market conditions. Considering this, we’d like to let you know that we’ll soon be adjusting the European prices of some of the optional services available for World of Warcraft.

The new pricing, detailed in the list below, will start on April 5. Subscription prices will not be affected.

Price from April 5 - EUR

• Name Change - €10
• Helms - €15
• WoW Token - No change
• Character Transfer - €25
• Race Change - €25
• Mounts - €25
• Premium Mounts - €30
• Pet & Mount Bundle - €30
• Faction Change - €30
• Guild Transfer - €35
• Guild Faction Change - €40
• Character Transfer & Faction Change - €55
• Character Boost - €60
• Guild Transfer & Faction Change - €65

Stuff's about to get a fair bit more expensive, currently there seems to be a 25% sale on stuff (not sure how long it lasts) so I'd stock up now if you think you might want something later.

Kiith

Blizzard take the absolute piss with how much they charge for these services. The shop stuff i don't care about (mounts, pets etc...), but character transfers are beyond ridiculous.

TheDoc

Yeah the transfer pricing is really annoying as is race change. 25 for a race change is taking the absolute piss.

I moved to a new server recently to trial for a guild and want to bring an alt with me. Probably going to just get everything done shortly.

ZeitgeistGlee

I really don't understand it myself, logically you want these services to be used by as many players as possible so to me it would make more sense for them to be cheap enough that they become whim/impulse buys for players. Continuously raising prices just means you have an ever decreasing pool of players who'll actually shell out of them which means less money in the long run.

TheDoc

ZeitgeistGlee wrote: »

I really don't understand it myself, logically you want these services to be used by as many players as possible so to me it would make more sense for them to be cheap enough that they become whim/impulse buys for players. Continuously raising prices just means you have an ever decreasing pool of players who'll actually shell out of them which means less money in the long run.

Well I guess the counter argument is you actually don't want people using these services willy nilly.

Placing emphasis and onus on players to make sensible choices for where they roll characters means that servers have integrity and population. IF you could transfer whenever you wanted, servers would get RAMMED and tons of servers would become redundant. Don't disregard how many younger players would go straight to servers where top guilds raid, or top streamers to join in on viewer runs. Being really slack there would lead to serious issues, so I get that.

Race changing, while shouldn't be a big deal, again puts emphasis and onus on the players to think about their choice. When race traits were more impactful, if you could just change when you wanted, you'd typically have all of X class playing race Y. And you still do have a ranking for races to classes where you get DPS gains based on a certain race. So if you could change whenever you wanted, you'd likely just have everyone changing all the time as patches drop.

With the reduction of race traits in terms of relevance, and the arrival and continuation of cross server raiding, partying etc., these services probably are on the drop as they really just arn't required that much anymore.

Granted I think bumpig the price is a bit cheeky, there is no real need there, I doubt this will be a very impactful thing.

I'll always happily pay to transfer a main and bring an alt if im moving realm, but everything else? I think in 12 years (was looking at my account history this weekend transfering my alt) I've used very little paid services.

ZeitgeistGlee

Thing is with faction/server changes you can control that by just introducing a cooldown/cap of 1 per month per character so that players can't easily abuse it, or filter server transfers to exclude the very highest population ones or faction changes where one side is already hugely outnumbered (EU-Silvermoon for instance).

IMO it's actually in Blizzard's interest that players on low-pop servers (even with cross-realming/joint-realms) should be able to move to more populated ones because it help stem entropy bleed-off of the playerbase. There should also, IMO, be a transfer pack that you can be for the cost of say 5 individual transfers that moves all your characters so that altoholics aren't utterly ripped off.

Racials aren't hugely important anymore either, yes there will always be min-maxers trying to squeeze every little bit out of their characters but for most people these days it's "Do I like the look of this character? Yes/No". Name/Appearance changes are purely cosmetic and the entire system itself is automated so there's no reason not to encourage players to use them.

At the end of the day Blizzard are aiming to make money with the services system, from that point of view I'm assuming putting up their prices must be in line with what they see will make them more in the long run.

Kiith

I agree. It's more money for Blizzard...nothing more. That's the only reason imo that they haven't implemented a better system. €55 to transfer a character and change it's faction is beyond a joke, especially as it requires practically no work from Blizzard.

Given that we bought the game, the expansions, and pay a monthly fee, i don't think it's too much to ask for a free transfer every few months.

ZeitgeistGlee

I suppose these are the perks when you're the biggest/longest lasting/genre defining game of the market, you don't have to cater to players (in that fashion) because any threat of "Well we'll just go to 'MMO X'" is never a real threat because' MMO X' won't ever have the long-term subs/profitability to make it a real challenger.

Now, that said, the three times I've had to call up Blizzard support I've been blown away by how friendly/helpful they've been and how easily my issues got resolved.

TheDoc

ZeitgeistGlee wrote: »

I suppose these are the perks when you're the biggest/longest lasting/genre defining game of the market, you don't have to cater to players (in that fashion) because any threat of "Well we'll just go to 'MMO X'" is never a real threat because' MMO X' won't ever have the long-term subs/profitability to make it a real challenger.

Now, that said, the three times I've had to call up Blizzard support I've been blown away by how friendly/helpful they've been and how easily my issues got resolved.

I think aswell the fact it takes literally no real tangible time to level a character to 100 these days, that to be honest paying that sort of money should be seen as a service and not an entitlement.

Opening up easy trasnfers would just cause so many problems that sure they could introduce counter measures, but why bother when you can gate it for money?

I'm not defending them, I just don't think it's as straight forward in terms of Blizzard milking it for more money. In terms of the services in general. Not sure about the price increases, considering they are running a sale right now like. So it's hardly like there is costs involved that are skyrocketing from what are surely automated systems.

In saying that, might be a ploy to just get people buying services, I know the fact prices are rising and the sale is on, I bought some services I otherwise might have ignored or left off for months