Account cancelled. Thanks for the fun times, but it’s not worth the cost any more.
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Seriously. It might be scummy as hell, but Blizzard easily have the cash to throw at a few highly-paid lawyers and make sure this cruises along smoothly.
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I am all for paying $3 more a month if blizzard will fix oceanic specific issues like the VAST majority of Aussie players being Alliance while still enjoying the US-based 30% warmode benefit.
5 years ago AUS to USD was 72c on the $, today it is 73c on the $. No matter what they say, we are getting fleeced. Its not a currency based issue.
Market factors… potentially local hosting/server upkeep and other overhead costs but NZ connect here too so their market should also be affected by any localization overheads… basically this seems to just be a price gouge by blizz because Aussies will absorb it.
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High paid lawyers don’t do crap against the Australian ombudsmens, we aren’t America.
That said, I doubt they have a case to answer here really.
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Just go buy game time on ebay and add it to your account!
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Australia’s ombudsman are more powerful than the PM hahaha
Agreed. Also fix the lag we endure when playing with someone from NA, 200 ms in bg’s/5 mans because its hosted in NA really impacts gameplay.
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I’m not trying to say that this is a total scumbag and unnecessary / wrong move to make… but, no wait that’s exactly what I was trying to say.
That being said why no price rise for NZ or US, you’re bragging about how shadowlands is breaking player preorders and subs etc… but apparently you need to increase your profits on the backs of aussies, 16 odd years and USA never seen one price rise.
But when aud was stronger than us you changed to regional pricing and bumped us up to 16.50 collecting almost 20usd off us and since our dollar dropped it’s barely moved but apparently now even while it’s still stronger than nz you need to raise our prices? Like you care though. What a greedy faceless Corp you have become
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I think its a price gouge but one argument that could be made in blizzards favour is our consumer protection… we have an insanely good amount of protections that businesses need to adhear to that cant be circumvented by policy/user agreements… generally speaking even the most sternly worded EULA will not trump the rights of Australian Consumers in our jurisdiction.
For example blizzard can say “no refunds for shadowlands bnet balance only” (as valve’s policy used to try to be)… any Aussie consumer that wants to refer the matter to fair trading, ACCC or a relevant ombudsman (after trying to resolve with the vendor) will generally get their way… its mostly about how much of a stink do you want to kick up to the point it becomes not worth the company fighting.
Edit: I use the above examples but blizzard are usually pretty good and accomodating. I dont take issue with the price increase/fleecing we pay the market rate. What I do take issue with is not getting premium services for the premium charged e.g adjusting the warmode bonus based on the oceanic pool not the combined US pool.
Kind of a tangent here, but paying $20 a month for a laggy gameplay experience is really something, isn’t it?
There’s games I can pay for literally free that manage to have a south-east-asian server cluster, and the tools to filter out US/EU servers/players.
Yet this now $200 a year premium product can’t even manage that. What on earth is the sub even for? Hell, I’ve been wondering that for a couple years, now.
What the hell are we even paying for? Just feels like the money goes to lining someone’s pockets, since it’s definitely not funding the stellar servers and support of yesteryear.
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I was so happy to finally have oce servers based in aus, only to find out we still share the na pool and as soon as a na player grouped, its auto hosts to na.
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This isnt the first time the AUD currency has been down against the USD, nor have we received reductions when AUD has been up against the USD either.
Honestly this move is making you look like a mobile game strategy that leaves Oceanic players in the dust because we are a minority.
Maybe Blizzard/Activision want us all to be farmers and sell gold or gather play tokens instead of enjoying the game experience instead.
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This is only when cross-grouped with US… my experience is pretty much lag free (except in overly populated areas, like when 100 people surround an NPC to try to turn in the new pre-patch quests).
Literally yes, they are a publicly traded company, the money (after all costs are factored in) goes to investors as dividends to line their pockets for laying down capital.
That said I still get emails spruiking private servers, personally I pay for the blizzard quality/service.
Load of rubbish our currency buying power has increased over the last 6 months.
Stay out of economics with your confirmation bias.
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You do know even with this price hike we pay less in USD than US subscribers right?
The only seemingly odd thing about this is that NZ price hasn’t changed since their getting even cheaper subs.
Perhaps they think aussie players can afford the increase and are likely to pay it?
EDIT: NZ pay a HIGHER sub price at roughly 22$AUD we had a good ride it now they know we can afford more
Radio silence on terrible Oceanic performance for the entire of Battle for Azeroth and now you have the audacity to increase prices because of MaRkEt CoNdItIoNs.
Wonderful!
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This makes 0 sense. Why only in Aus? The New Zealand dollar is worth less than the Australian Dollar, yet only an increase here, good way to kill off your player base in a very specific country wtf.
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Are you Orcing kidding me?
This is some lame Blizzard joke to end BFA on that I’m not understanding, surely? No?? You’re seriously going to attack the pocket of the AUSTRALIAN Crowd!?
You ignore Oceanic issues for YEARS leaving us with an already reduced quality experience.
LONG content droughts of extremely low quality fetch quests and bugged system disasters as is whilst still chugging down on our coin all the while. and want to fleece US?
This news has made me beyond infuriated and absolutely enraging to see.
I look forward to this news being rescinded in the next few days, or I’m out. 16 years. and that’s just WoW…
Absolute scumbag move, you can tell your activision sith lord to suck on a duck.
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For those complaining about the NZ prices not changing as well and feeling ripped.
We already pay more than you Aussys even with the new prices.
$23.99 NZD for a monthly subscription or $22.72 AUD. Vs your new price of $19.99 AUD you’ve just had it good for a long time.
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This game isn’t even worth $16.5 a month now lmao
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