We recently conducted a review on the available services in all currencies. Based on this, we have decided to alter the available Game Time options in the Blizzard Shop. As of today, the Game Time options of 30, 90, and 180 days have been removed and Game Time is only available as a purchase of 60 Days.
New Game Time Option
Price
60 Days Game Time
39.95 AUD
60 Days Game Time
47.99 NZD
Please note that currently, the options and pricing for the purchase of both WoW subscriptions and WoW Tokens will remain unaffected. Also, any Game Time that has already been purchased for an account will not be affected by this.
We appreciate that players choose to spend their time with World of Warcraft, and we are committed to ensuring the game continues to provide players with great entertainment value.
If you would like to review your World of Warcraft Game Time and payment method, you can do so through Blizzard Account Management at any time.
This has to have something to do with keeping people from staying subscribed by farming gold. To many people must have been playing, essentially, for free by buying 30 days subs with wow tokens purchased with in game earned gold. Either that or they have lost faith in the content and want to lock people into longer subs so they can release less content by only needing to draw players back ever 2 months rather than 1. Either way it reeks of corporate analytics.
Sounds like the corporate analytics team ran the numbers and decided locking in a 2 month sub option produced max profit vs minumum required production. At this point its all about the money. Any time they do something that doesnt make sense follow the analytics.
Seems like they ran some numbers and realized that they could profit off those who trade gold for a token even harder if they removed the option of long term discount game time from the blizzbucks store.
I bought my game time in 6 months for ~$77 blizzard bucks, basically the cost of 5 tokens… but I would be locked in for 6 months, which as I learned from BfA and now SLs, isn’t exactly a positive.
Uhm…do you understand how this works? A token that is purchased on the AH and exchanged for game time brings in $20 instead of the $14.99 of 30 days game time. They make more money on these transactions not less.
Indeed there are more internal processes that run for the token over the game time direct (presumably unless the processing system is … almost maniacly poorly programmed). These processes are internal once the token is purchased and can only cost pennies per completed process.
My presumption at this point is that is meant to be more of a buffer against the volatility that money markets have been showing in recent quarters. The change in value of currencies is most likely costing blizzard a measurable and not insignificant amount over the course of 90 and 180 day terms.
I’m…less sure of the elimination of the 30 day term and sense that perhaps “well…as long as were changing things locking people in for 2 months instead of one can probably be slipped in” weaselese has occurred.
I would bet good money it was done because they saw people buying 1 month to see how things were and then cancelling subs. This ensures they squeeze 2 months out of their “valued” cashcows… I mean customers.
Either that or the mass firings of employees wasn’t enough to cover Kotick’s pay increase.
This might be a silly question but im confused and the above link to the shop doesn’t go to any info on subscriptions for me.
Does this only affect those who were buying one month at a time or do those on a monthly subscription need to now buy two at once too? Couldn’t those who subscribe just cancel each time and then resubb?
this is just stupid. i have to believe that most people would buy single month. if they did indeed buy multiple months then the recurring supscription would save them money. instead what this does is it forces all of us who pay for 30 days, to either pay for 60 instead or quit…
Given someone spent more on a token than the buyer who used gold would have paid… lulwut? No effect here as i buy 4 tokens a month with only 10 or so hours in crafts/farming /shrug building up that bnet balance…
