US Price Increase Incoming

I’m providing perspective. If you took it the wrong way then more power to you.

Must be since you spend enough time playing to be able to buy Tokens every month.

This needs to die. Its so stupid…

No its not. People in foreign countries shouldn’t get a discount because they elect people who lower the value of their money and raise their taxes.

Not really, i bring in a little but don’t actively go out of my way to farm it, i played the AH a lot back in the day so my many millions are not completely gone yet because i don’t have anything i need to buy.

The game hasn’t updated the monthly sub price since it first opened its doors. If they upped it to 20.99 a month, it still would be the cheapest entertainment I can purchase in a month.

Every game company with a recurring subscription wants to increase their total number of subscribers. Slowly phasing out prepaid time is a poor guess at Blizzard’s strategy, that seems very unlikely. The cost of prepaid time was increased in Canada because that country is implementing a digital goods tax. Blizzard chose to pass that tax on to consumers and it seems likely that other digital goods providers, like Amazon and Netflix, will do the same. See my post here.

I can’t see that they have “upped the price for all other regions,” I only see announcements AU and CA. AU was paying $11USD/mo and their price hike brings them in line with US and EU at $15USD/mo. Please cite other regional price increases with some source.

Canada’s price hike has to do with taxes Canada implemented–nothing to do with inflation or exchange rates (see response to Bae above).

This is really all you needed to say about a potential US price increase. The implications about other regions having price increases are irrelevant. According to the US CPI Inflation Calculator, $14.99 back in Nov-2004 has the same purchasing power as $20.42 in Nov-2020, so US inflation over 16 years is adequate justification for a US price hike to $20/mo; no other reasons needed.

They would be foolish, imo, to implement a US price hike now rather than wait until the US economy rebounds after Covid inoculations are widely administered. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did something foolish though–look at recent Torghast changes! :stuck_out_tongue: …or the recent price hikes to AU and CA which also could have waited for economic recovery to some “new-normal.”

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go ahead i buy game time unsubbing is easy

Well, no, that’s demonstrably false. Granted it’s “game time” & BNet balance, not subs (yet) but today they went from CAD pricing ~= USD pricing to CAD pricing > USD pricing.

It’s a harbinger, not fear-mongering.

impossible,

The dollar has been weakening all of 2020.

check the DXY chart on tradingview.

you’re just speculating to farm forum drama

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Paying more doesn’t bug me. The question is, will I be getting my moneys worth?

Well the product isn’t going to change so how much more are you willing to spend?

If it meant that Blizz would stop torturing poor furry critters and upgrade their servers then I would gladly pay more, but the Canada change has nothing to do with it.

You don’t know that, the quality of a product or service can go up, down, or stay the same.

Plus they’d be well within their right to do so just to account for inflation.

I mean I guess? You either like what they put out or you don’t. It’s not like they can suddenly produce more because you’re spending an extra $5.

Assuming it was $5, they’d be pulling in an extra 33% income per month from subs. That could pay for a lot of talent and development. It isn’t just my $5.

If they were going to raise the sub fee, it’d make a lot more sense to do that before the expansion launches, not after it’s launched and players have already seen all the current content.

But yeah, the currency conversion argument is a bit unconvincing when the US dollar’s been sliding for 6 months vs. CAD.

I don’t get how people don’t realise that the $15 Blizzard gets per sub today is $10.61 in 2003 dollars. They’re doing more with less money, for the last 17 YEARS. You want the sub price to stay the same? Well, say hello to more and more things being put into the in-game shop then.

Blizz makes a huge profit just on unit sales, they’ve never put the sub money back into development.