From $207.00 to $249.00 every 12 months, plus expansion costs… That is too much for me to justify any more, particularly since I only play a few months a year since there are way more fun and affordable games out there that I enjoy way more than wow and it doesn’t feel like a chore.
I will no longer be paying 12 month subscriptions. I like Runescape’s subscription model where they grandfather previous rates if you keep your subscription active. It is respect for loyalty.
So this cost increase will cover some adding some actual good content right… right? not just some pos island with 1 daily quest 3 revolving bosses. and a rain storm.
Dunno why we’re not just charged in US Dollars, the exchange rates change all the time…
I haven’t even logged in for that.
I use to have a passive subscription up, but I just canceled today because I don’t play enough to justify the price. I will just buy one or two months a year now. In the end, Bilzzard’s greed is going to loose them more money from people like me.
They have never inseased U/S sub price though. This is our 2nd or 3rd?
You misunderstand the sarcasm. I meant if the US price increased, EVERYONE else would suffer.
So how does that work with in game tokens? 
What “value” will they become in the shop?
Day/night issues, calanders out of sync etc… im sure with the extra cash OCE is required to pay they’ll fix those issues right?
My apologies I missed it until after I replied :-p
i do hope blizzard start losing players after this then they feel hurting them less money coming in
It will though.
Once they scalp OCE to the point its no longer “sustainable” (profitable), they will shut down the servers and pass on the scalping to the US player base.
Blizz is just a big ol whale hunting ship at this point.
who cares, you will pay every month
Unless the OCE servers are empty I’m sure the excess funds they get overall from their microtransactions, subs, merc, etc. is more than enough to sustain a couple server clusters. Of which probably communicate partly (backend stuff) to Blizzard’s servers in the US anyways, meaning a lot of it is already in place for other servers to utilize as well.
Only way I can see them putting the price back down is if people actually stopped playing over this.
They could put it up 100% and the simps would still defend Blizz…
“iT’S nOt tHiEr fAuLt”
“ThEy oNlY mAdE 3.5 BilLiOn lAsT YeAr”
Heya!
Any chance of a family discount? Like where multiple subs are linked to same address/credit card.
Are prices in AUD not automatically converted? CAD prices vary depending on the dollar conversion . CAD price is $18.99.
Dang bots would love this. I doubt it would happen.
There is already yearly discounts etc, you could take advantage of!
Apologies for the wall of text…
Wow vet of 15+ years here,
Saw the email come through regarding this, it’s honestly a bit of a wakeup call for me.
In terms of value, we really need to ask ourselves what are we actually getting from our sub, box fee and any in-game items we decide to buy. I personally don’t even play retail anymore and have just been raiding on several toons in Cata classic which has been pretty much abandoned by the devs at this point.
The amount of bugs players on Cata classic have had are insane. Glory of the hero having multiple achievements not working or raid mechanics like flash freeze on Maloriak just instantly killing people. Oh what about Ascendant council with the one boss that sometimes never leaves a frost patch even though you have heaps of players at ranged? There’s probably better examples…
I’ve had someone from one of my raid teams try to go through customer service for a bug which screwed them over an early 359 BOE drop on Cata classic. He had recorded footage of what happened. They just got automated AI responses multiple times until he was advised if he kept escalating he’d be banned permanently. Like what kind of customer service is that? Gone are the days of human interaction.
If you ever try to report something blizzard has made it painfully hard to log a query. The end result is “post on customer support forums” which don’t ever go anywhere? Just a dumping ground for tickets to sweep under the rug. It’s all about OPEX and reducing it, that’s why they’ve made it that way.
There’s so many other games out there that do a better job and provide way better entertainment for the same cost if not way less.
Which other company can get away with having a P2W game with a sub/box fee and an in-game store? I don’t buy the argument that it’s not P2W because you can easily get gear from GDKPs or buy carries for gold. Which is true for all versions of the game. People will also make the argument that the game has WoW tokens that you can buy for gold and swap for sub. Yeah I’m sure those are going to inflate to the moon, so unless you’re like that 0.01% with all the time in the world or just amazing at making gold, good luck.
My counter to this is the amount of time to make the gold to buy the wow tokens is worth alot more to me than the wow tokens worth since the value of what we’re getting with WoW is just not there.
I have plenty of friends and even family that don’t play simply because of the sub fee. Some of them are very casual now and they’d prob only play for say a week of that month. $27 NZD to play a game for a week? wtf is that, there’s so many amazing games you can get for that off steam.
Blizzard should be moving away from sub fees and towards F2P and make their money from selling dinosaurs on the in-game store honestly. They’d get way more people playing their games and then they’d turn a profit from those people that decide to buy from the in-game features. Remember the sparkle pony made more money than Starcraft 2.
At this point one of my raid teams has been asking whether I’d lead them through MOP classic but honestly i think I’m just done after Cata. As much as i love the banter with the boyz on WoW, I just can’t continue to keep supporting blizzard.
Anyway I’d love to know what their expected churn from this price change is. They don’t provide a feedback option on the email like every other retailer does when it comes to prices changes, so who knows how they do their reporting on customer interactions. Oh wait, they don’t have any.
20 year Australian player here, fully agree with your whole post. It’s ridiculous.
There is no “in fairness”
It’s price gouging.
They have an in game shop which generates considerable revenue AND a mandatory subscription. No other game could get away with that.
Plus 3 mini expansions that are priced in the 100’s?
And this is why the shareholder model fails. Even with huge profits, the greed of the shareholders means the company needs to keep increasing profits and the only way to do that once it gets to a point in sales/products, is to charge customers excessive amounts. We will never see savings.
I currently play wow because it’s a cheap form of entertainment. Raise prices and it brings it’s cost in line with other forms of entertainment, giving me options away from the game.