hi blizzard I’m writing because i cant afford your new gametime for 60 days at a time and really miss playing the game, $20 per month was something i could only just afford, but yeah i cant afford more than that at once for a video game, i know people will say why not save up gold and pay for it with that, well one im not good at earning gold in wow, like iguess im not good at earning money irl… anyways what im getting at is with the new pricechange, it looks like a better deal for sure but in reality its not, it has cause me to not be able to play the game at all… I guess there is always ascension to play but id rather play the account ive played for over 13 years…
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I agree with you maggle
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Such a very strange and arbitrary business decision.
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Can you still buy a monthly sub and cancel it right after?
It definitely got more expensive in Australia at least. Not fun!
It’s neither strange nor arbitrary, but it is unsurprising and manipulative.
The way I see it, there are two reasons for this change.
- It makes it much more inconvenient to pay month-to-month.
- It artificially inflates the cost of a sub in some countries.
So, yes. One can still simulate a month-to-month game time by subscribing and then unsubscribing. However, that’s just one additional step to accomplish the same thing. It’s not hard to unsubscribe, but is more difficult than one month of game time. It basically turns paying for WoW on a month-to-month basis from opt-in to opt-out, guaranteeing that some will not unsubscribe, even though they only intended month to month.
The second point is, due to currency exchange rates, it was actually cheaper in some countries to buy month-to-month. So, by changing the payment system, they can increase the price of the game for those countries.
So, rather than earning more subscribers by improving their game, or increasing shop sales by providing better items, they’re downgrading the billing system to make it more complicated and charging certain people more for the same product they’d been receiving.
It’s Activision-Blizzard. Of course it’s a trash reason.
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Oh, I sense the withered, strangling hand of Activision behind this decision. Not to put too fine a point on it, this move was specifically made to make it more inconvenient to buy game time in order to get more people to simply sign up for monthly auto-debit where you’re more likely to forget or not bother cancelling if you’re away from the game for a few months.
Trust me - I know insidious when I smell it.
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I believe you can still pay the price you have been if you subscribe on a month-by-month basis.
It’s still a very strange move that has no benefit for the player base, but the base price is still the same. Subscribe, then cancel.
Welcome to Wyrmrest Aco- wait a minute. Carry on.
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Here’s the official complaint thread.
yet another change that makes people want to play their game less
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100+
I get P&L, margins, etc but man what a flat-out jerk move to your customer base.
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I genuinely thought this was an April Fool’s joke when I first heard the news. But then I realized it wasn’t even April yet, at the time this change was announced.
i think it’s impressive how attached Activision blizzard are to making changes that are entirely horrible
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By forcing people who can’t go for more than $20 a month to constantly set up and cancel subscriptions, Blizz-Activision gets to artificially inflate their sub count by getting people to waste time jumping through hoops each month!
I have never had a subscription to this game and I never will.
Excuse me while I photoshop some demon horns on a certain business executive…
If anyone from the Forum Cabal still has that edit of Kotick that Zen made before his ban it would be much appreciated.
And not to mention that people who can’t afford $20 every month are more at risk from having subscriptions carry over because they didn’t cancel in time and lose out on the money in months that they can’t afford it.
This seems unimaginable for someone in steady work, and I am currently in said steady work. However, there are workers in seasonal jobs or being heavily impacted by things like zero-hour contracts here in the UK - you will work at least X amount of hours a month, but whether that is X or X+50 depends on how busy the shop is. And if you get a bad month where your washing machine breaks and your minimum hours fall into the same month, you’d usually not buy game time and focus on that.
Stuff like this really makes month-to-month planning a bit more difficult. Adding a subscription trap doesn’t help that one bit.
It would be easier to just manage your money better.
Easiest way to manage money better at this point would be stop playing WoW all together. And then who would you rob? This impacts your racket as much as anyone. You’d have to start earning gold and reagents like an honest player.
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