World of Warcraft's account services and store prices were never cheap, and even basic things such as realm transfers for single characters cost a frankly ridiculous €20. Well, I'm afraid things are going to become even worse as Blizzard has just announced a price increase for account services in the EU and UK.

Starting on April 5th Character Transfers will be €25/£19, WoW Tokens will be increasing in price for the UK alone and will set you back £17, and if you were planning to boost a character you might want to do it soon as the Character Boost will go from €50 to €60/£49. You can find the full list of updated prices by heading over to the announcement post.

While I understand that each currency isn't set in stone and that its value is constantly in flux, I can't understand why Blizzard feels like they need to price automated services so damn high! This isn't even a EU specific issue, every player in the world has to suffer exorbitant prices when trying to solve problems Blizzard themselves should be fixing: population imbalance and dead servers. Both of these things make World of Warcraft nearly impossible to play, and as someone that already had to transfer off a dead realm this price increase is really rubbing me the wrong way. For an absolutely massive game with a subscription fee this shouldn't be something players have to do themselves, especially if that something costs €25!

On the 'positive' side, many of these services are currently on a 25% discount in Europe, so if you ever wanted to do a realm or faction swap now would be the time to do so.