Salaries for developers and people doing maintenance increase over 16 years, office leases and property taxes increase, basically anything you can think of that is needed by Blizz to support this game costs a fair bit more now than sixteen years ago.
Well, gosh. A whole $240! Half a console! Before any games⌠or accessories⌠or DLCâŚ
Seriously, given the many hours of entertainment I get out of WoW every year, $240 sounds like an absolute steal.
I Am aware of that, but services have been cut. Do you remember when you could even talk with the GMs ? Not anymore âŚ
Also the servers still suck ⌠And (this is speculation), but i believe the dev team is not even half of what it used to be âŚ
good for you. But others like me on the fence of unsubbing because not getting enough value besides Tuesday and Wednesday after the reset (after that i am finding myself without stuff to do), an increase would mean, an unsub.
So how would that work out ?, Blizz would make more money from subscribers, but would it be enough to compensate for those who lose ?
GMs arenât there for entertainment.
Theyâre not there to have a lovely chat, or to help people with their homework.
Most issues donât require any real-time interaction.
What i meant is that they used to have a dedicated GM team, that used to help. Now without that they are probably spending LESS not MORE to guarantee a price increase.
I mean they can increase because they want to, if they percieve their value proposition is worth $20 or $50 go do it. But just dont come sell us on the idea that it is because its more expensive or because of currency fluctuations. If anything the USD sucks right nowâŚ
It just seems like a sugarcoating the pill
? they still have a dedicated GM team⌠which helps.
one of the biggest issues with GMs, is peoples perception of their role.
Every time a GM doesnât give someone something just because they asked for it, they come to the forum and tell everyone how bad customer service is.
Unfortunately you will have to remain hopeful. I can guarantee you that you and I get nothing more for an increase in the sub fee.
It is what it is. We all subscribe to something we are at the mercy of the market and marketing department.
Extremely downsized.
Want proof ? respond times when they had like 10 M subscribers were faster then than now with 2.4-4 M subs
they have done nothing but cut services and let everything outside of dungeons suffer, they reskin endlessly and use old content for new expansions, if anything the price should go down , not up.
No we are not at anyoneâs mercy.
The PS5 is launching, the Xbox X (or whatever, crap name marketing), Netflix, Jobs, Real life, etcâŚ
There is too much competition for our time and $$$$, way to be competitive if you increase pricesâŚ
What a beautiful place your world must be.
Itâs the principle of inflation. Groceries, gas, other cost of living things rise as do salaries for most, including game developers. So by all rights Blizz could jack the sub price 36% and be fully justified by US CPI inflation from Nov-2004 to Nov-2020 and be fully justified on that alone. However, they will only push what theyâre pretty confident the local market will bear.
But will it be a slap in the face?
What if Canada institutes a tax on digital goods & services?
Since that has nothing to do with exchange rates or inflation, wouldnât Blizz (and any other company hit by this) just pass that on to the consumer if it also has a component that not only taxes the consumer at checkout, but additionally bills the company offering the service (sort of like in the US where employees pay 6% into social security, but employers also have to pay 6% for each employee).
Or your market and revenues were small enough to mask currency fluctuations as rounding errors. lol
VATs only tax the value added in each stage of production and distribution. Thatâs why they are called VATs - value added tax.
So if the VAT was 25%, the consumer would see that VAT reflected in the purchase price based on the value added and wonât be taxed another 25% at retail (unlike a sales tax in the U.S).
For an import like WoW, it would be 25% of the wholesale price of WoW in this example and 25% on the âvalue addedâ or markups by jobbers/wholesalers and the retailer.
We donât have a VAT in the U.S., at least not at the federal level.
I hope they increase the price in the UK, I donât mind shoveling the company more money.
It is interesting that Blizzard reduced the game time purchase option to 60 days in the UK. No more 30 or 180 day options. What kind of shennegans were UK players pulling with game time that Blizzard would reduce the number of options? lol
I already unsubscribes so this is a non issue for me