Well, the answer depends on too many factors in my view. I will consider the following, most of you guys will fall in any of those:
- EJ vs Cheapo: If you fall between those you are EJ if you like to spend your money trying new equipment, motivations can be many, but most of the time because you are not happy with your equipment until it becomes a Casino addiction and you just keep trying new models and spending way too much money, or Cheapo the guy that want to optimize his money and don't like to spend lot of money in table tennis equipment, those guys like to use all kind of excuses to not spend over their imaginary budget blade/rubber, motivations can be "i prefer to spend this money on coaching", "i prefer to train on my skills", the dumb Cheapo will say "it's just a piece of wood".
- People that play already with a blade and feels that it needs something else to be better then buy the premium version: Examples are people playing Hurricane Long 3 all wood that want to upgrade to Hurricane Long 5 because is too slow this was my personal reason, Long 5 to Long 5 Provincial this people feels that the Long 5 Provincial can be better and is better, Long 5 Provincial to W968 needs no explanation. Viscaria: the regular one is too kicky the dwell time is too short, the Viscaria Gold is tuned to fix those issues i believe with a harder core, the dwell time is better and the blade is less bendy which make the fault tolerance better at expense of speed(Its slower).
- People that want the best: Those guys just want to buy the best to stop right away the searching for the right equipment they don't care about price, they understand there is a correlation between price and quality for most equipment, though some people can find a cheap blade that fit them super good they know this is a very difficult and long take that can be more expensive, for this reason the people that want the best just go for it, some of them say i don't want to buy any blade less than $200, others just go for the reputation of the blade, others because that is the blade that their favorite player use, others because they want to play like their favorite player.
- People that are very sensitive: For example i have 2 HL 5 Provincial 5.93 thickness i like one of them more because the handle is thicker and it has more control for that reason i bought another 5.93 thickness again, i have 2 Provincials 5.98 thickness that i use for all around games strategy while 5.93 for short games strategy and my two W968s that i use for fast attack strategy only. So, in my case 5.93 is perfect for short/attack with all short game strategy, 5.98 for all around strategy, the W968s 5.98s for unrelenting attack strategy the W968 is too kicky and i will loose some points with it(Maybe 2 or 3 but i will loose the entire game for those points and that bothers me), for that reason i use instead the provincial 5.98 for all around game strategy by default, short game 5.93, all attack game W968s. People that are sensitive will feel an enormous difference in blades thickness even glue layers.
- People that are not sensitive: They cannot feel the difference in thickness, and brands with the same structure, they cannot even feel the difference in composition, for those people changing their equipment does not make sense.
- Recreational, occasional, players no serious vs serious about their development: for most of them its not worth buying an expensive equipment and almost all of them feel in this way, but there are exceptions the ones that like to flex blades and the people that only buy the best stuff in everything they buy.
- People that are not refined: There are people that are just not refined even in the way they dress, talk or like living, usually they have a wacky style of table tennis so they don't even think about buying a Premium version equipment they suck anyways, typically you will see those guys sticking with their same paddles for 50 years, it will be severely damaged, the handle severely worn out and the edges all broken due to too many hits on the table, but they won't change it, they don't even think about it because that does not bother them.
Having all this in consideration: Fancy blades means different things for many people.