CAD Price Change: Clarifying Sub vs Game-Time

Community General Discussion
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https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/canadian-dollar-cad-price-change-for-world-of-warcraft-game-time-excludes-subscriptions/780791/343

Apologies for a copy and paste from a reply 300 responses in on the thread linked above, but in the discussion of CAD price change the confusion between a recurring subscription and a one-time purchase game time seems to have come up pretty often. This new topic is just to clarify the difference.

A subscription is a recurring transaction that is automatically charged to credit card, PayPal account, or some other payment method Blizzard accepts. Game-time is a one time purchase (no recurring transaction is setup). You can buy digital game-time direct from Blizzard or on physical prepaid cards at places like Walmart, BestBuy, and GameStop. You can only buy subscriptions direct from Blizzard.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/canadian-dollar-cad-price-change-for-world-of-warcraft-game-time-excludes-subscriptions/780791

New Price CAD
180 Days Game Time $115.99
90 Days Game Time $61.49
30 Days Game Time $21.99
Subscriptions Unaffected ← LOOK AT THIS LINE

You can of course make speculations or commentary here, but I would recommend you add your responses to one of the two original threads:

  1. CAD Price Change (Blizzard announcement)
  2. US PRICE INCREASE INCOMING (player speculation)
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Game time link 6 months : $115.99
Subscription link 6 months : 97.99 (which is same I paid at end of November)
Only bulk chunks of game time are going up.
Put a subscription on, wait to charge, cancel, rinse repeat and pay same price.

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I don’t think anyone is confused about sub vs game time, rather people are angry about the fact that

  1. they raised the price. plain and simple, people don’t like paying more for anything.
  2. Blizzard gave a BS excuse to why they raised the price (i.e. exchange/currency rate differences or market), when anyone can do a quick google search and see for themselves that the exchange/currency rate or the market between the US and Canada has not changed over the past few years, nor has fluctuated much, if at all, including inflation rates between the two countries, even over the past 16 years since wow’s launch.

Plus I’m sure some of the anger comes from when you realize that if they can do it to canada, they can do it to the US. While Blizzard has raised prices in other regions of the world over the years, North America has avoided any fee changes over the past 16 years, however that changed as soon as this price raise was announced for Canadian players who are apart of the North American region, so it isn’t too far fetched to speculate that they are serving as a testing ground for a complete North American (chiefly USA) rollout or that this price will eventually include subs down the line once players get acclimated to the game time price increase.

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I wish I’d read that line before I sent my winged monkeys after the Blizz accountants.

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Those 10 responses all mention sub (or a lack of understanding about the difference for game-time) and that was just in the first 40 posts out of 400. That last guy is either buying 6-month game-time at intervals or he has a recurring 6-month sub, but he used both types of purchase in the same sentence–doesn’t know the difference or is using them interchangeably when they are not.

Blizzard felt enough people were confused that they issued a clarifying statement that subscription prices were unaffected, but that clarification is 327 posts in. Most people presumably didn’t see it, because there is still abundant confusion in both the CAD Price thread and the US Price speculation thread you made after Blizzard tried to clarify (albeit deeply buried in a fast-moving thread).

4 Likes
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1/2 of those you can tell that those people mentioning sub, they just mean game time in general… even i do that myself, when i buy a token off the AH for game time, i don’t say i am buying 30 days game time, i am buying 30 days sub, or say i’m buying a sub token

it’s just nomenclature and convenience

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7

Got it now.

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Why are you bringing me into this topic? Saying sub based games are the rarity and going out of style has nothing to do with this. Make your arguments on your own.

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What Blizzard really means:

  • We want to make our subs look higher for stock holders.
  • We know there are tons of bots and multiboxers farming materials, and now we want to charge them more money.

What it might mean in the future:

  • Increased 1-3 month subscription prices. But hey the 6 month and new 1 year sub will stay the same price! Btw we aren’t going to release new content for 6 months.
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This is just discrimination that’s all this change is. Corporate racism is no different than individual racism. Blizzard bans people for racist speech and actions from their game but has no problem discriminating themselves. Hypocrites.

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I did the math in another thread to calculate how much the one month rate should be based upon current USD to CAD rates and it should only be $19.03 CAD. Anything above that is too high - HOWEVER, if you consider inflation since the game’s inception, it’s actually less. I just hope that they’re not reading this post or else the US might be next… :thinking:

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I’m pretty sure it’s that they’re confused.

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