Warlords of Draenor - General Discussion

They know people will want appearance changes to fix their chars after the new models, so upping the prices will favour them.

Hold the phone, they -upped- it?! I've been waiting for years for them to decrease those ridiculous prices, and instead they go the other way? Wow.

We regularly review our pricing and services around the world to make sure we’re offering what we feel is the best entertainment value for the cost, and the upcoming adjustments are being made with that goal still in mind. getting that extra cash we need once the new models arive.

We regularly review our pricing and services around the world to make sure we’re offering what we feel is the best entertainment value for the cost, and the upcoming adjustments are being made with that goal still in mind. getting that extra cash we need once the new models arive. all the extra revenue we can after the updated prices.

They should have done one of two things to resolve the issue:


- Lowered all prices to make everything even at a lower amount. Even if it's a small amount, customers would massively appreciate it and are more likely to use the service as they would believe it was becoming more accessible. As said, WoW is on the expensive side of character transfers etc in the MMO market as it is. Steam sales are proof of the power behind reducing prices to maximise revenue.

- Upped the price but added many more features to transferring. Maybe a reward system so that if you transfer more than two characters from a server, every third one is free. At least try and create some illusion as to why it would benefit the customer for their prices to be raised. Or at least an apology with it and say they're correcting an earlier mistake to balance the prices and so for one week only, every transaction is 50% off.

Oh dear, is blizzard being a business again? Those rascals!

Erwt, you defend anything Blizzard does without reading. Step away from being a fanboy and use common sense for a moment.

My point isn't that they should be giving freebies, but from a BUSINESS perspective, it's bad customer relations. You never up your prices without providing something extra/condolences if you're being smart. They'll earn a bit more money off of it, sure. It won't be drastic amounts as you'll find people become even more hesitant to use the service, but they'll most certainly lose respect from a lot of British customers.

They offered no additional service, no apology and no temporary reduction to make up for it. Instead, they acted as if they were doing the customers a favour and no one has fell for it.


Take the National Lottery in Britain. It went from £1 to £2. Doubled its price. The way they got away with it was increasing the prize fund - it's a very slight reason but people quickly jumped on the idea that they might be doubly rich (even though it wasn't increased by that much).

In..fla..tion?

Yeah, I got nothing. This is pretty nefarious. I'm with Koz on this one: I keep waiting for such an old game to get cheaper, you know, like cheap things usually do, but instead it's getting more expensive?

Let's see what other games came out in the year WoW came out, to compare. Imagine if they re-released Unreal Tournament 2004 in stores and upped the retail price to about 110% of the original price. That shit wouldn't fly!

It's only in the insane (and, let's face it, quickly becoming more and more dated as free-to-play models grow in popularity) business model of World of Warcraft that a game from 2004 can somehow be made more expensive.

It also, for me personally, also feel like blizzards prices aren't all that well tested.
Yes, they are tested. But they are priced "This is the highest we feel people will use them without getting forced". If they slashed them in half I'm very sure a lot more people would use the services far more frivilous.
Spending €20 on a server change is a big deal. You can get a good game for that amount of money. More good games taking in steam sales.
Chop that down to 10 (considering t's -no- worker issue, only computer numbercrunching) and I can garantee that far more would use it.
Even when I've been strapped for cash spending €5 is extremly easy unless I stop to think. Spending €20 when strapped for cash is impossible for something frivilous.

The idea I get when I look at the prices is that Blizzard doens't want people to use their "premium" services.
Which is bad buissness

I'm not trying to defend blizzard's business policies, I'm trying to illustrate how futile it is to get worked up over them. Blzzard upped it's prices, Spring is getting along nicely, and most birds can fly. These are things that happen.

erwtenpeller wrote:Oh dear, is blizzard being a business again? Those rascals!

I hate, hate, hate this kind of ignorant pro-capitalist, anti-consumer sentiment.

But as always, the glorious, noble and divinely inspired Jim Sterling has already said what needs to be said about it;

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

We can still call blizzard stupid for missing the extra revenue lower prices would bring in since they'd get more people using them.

Edit: Thank god for Jim.

That's what you get for not adopting the Euro, stop complaining for your silly policies.

I'd have been happy if they just reworded their pitch differently. If they geniungly said "We get lots of money, but not enough." I'd find it better than making it look like they're doing the consumer a favour.=

"Our shareholders think our quaterlies out of WoW are looking worse and worse. So we're compensating a small bit milking you more."

Don't care about the prices, but the language of that statement is absurd. "In order to give you better value, we're charging you more for the exact same thing."

^

Amaryl wrote:That's what you get for not adopting the Euro, stop complaining for your silly policies.

I think I'd rather take the brunt of having to pay marginally more for a handful of optional frivolities than use a weaker currency and have to bail out Greece all the time :3

Muzjhath wrote:Spending €20 on a server change is a big deal. You can get a good game for that amount of money.

That's exactly my line of thinking. I was thinking of transferring and faction changing a shaman the other day. I figured, what the hey, there's a checkbox that I can tick to enable a faction change after I've selected a realm transfer, so it'll surely be included in the €20 price. But nope, move on to the screen of the actual payment, and all of a sudden you're dealing with a €45 price tag, just to get a toon switched around. Yes, it's business for you, but honestly, I found some understanding for the price a few years ago, when it was newly introduced. Now, six years later? We still pay a monthly fee and the price hasn't reduced one bit. I can go into F2P MMOs (yes, even the decent ones) and pay much less for both a realm and/or race change. If I have to pay 20 or 45 euro for a new character in a game that I've already paid for, I'll gladly keep that money and spend it on several Steam sales, which could very well buy me 10, if not more, excellent games all the same.

I know it's a principle of "if you don't like it, don't buy it" and "it's a business model", but people here have rightly pointed out the fact that they wouldn't do any less business if they'd actually lower the prices of an aging product, just like any other company usually does. Devaluation happens as a product grows older, be it WoW itself or one of the services offered in it. If it doesn't, then you can usually assume that the product is still booming in sales or said company is desperate to compensate for faltering sales in different areas (like active subscriptions). I'm not exactly an economical analyst or anything, but the latter seems to be the more obvious. I can't exactly explain the poor choice of words for their explanation otherwise.

Ruby wrote:Don't care about the prices, but the language of that statement is absurd.  "In order to give you better value, we're charging you more for the exact same thing."

Let us remember the wise words of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman:

"I bet you're the kinda guy that would fuck a person in the ass and not even have the goddamn common courtesy to give him a reach around. I'll be watching you!"

Increasing prices for anything much in a game that's 10 years old?  That's strange to me anyway.  But doing it whilst simultaneously saying you're giving better value/service by doing so?

Haha.  Someone really failed their marketing message there.  Impact on Blizzard will probably be limited anyway, but it's an amazingly stupid statement.

Grufftoof wrote:Increasing prices for anything much in a game that's 10 years old?  That's strange to me anyway.  But doing it whilst simultaneously saying you're giving better value/service by doing so?

Haha.  Someone really failed their marketing message there.  Impact on Blizzard will probably be limited anyway, but it's an amazingly stupid statement.

Blizzard does seem to take its customers for granted at times, forgetting that brand loyalty can only be stretched so far before someone's arse gets bitten. Electronic Arts itself used to be quite beloved back in the day, as I recall.

Personally I think the Blizzard paid services, especially the in-game store stuff, has always been too bloody expensive to justify itself to my wallet. 50€ for a level 90 boost?! I could buy a brand new game for that - and not a cheap Steam one, a physical copy in the store!

Maybe one day they'll start doing Sales on the in-game store like TOR or League of Legends does. It's usually enough to make people buy something they otherwise never would.

Not an actual Blizzard thing, this is fan-made, but damn is it a good idea if I ever saw it

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Now onto Blizzard stuff. The Questing/Levelling armour in WoD.

Cloth

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Leather:

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Mail:

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Plate:

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Also, Priests are now OP in PvP even more so.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Wow, that's pretty bs.

Here's assuming we'll end up getting unique Ashran weapons for all the classes.