So, I bought the CE for Shadowlands. It showed up, I don’ know, almost a month ago? Of course it comes with a code to add shadowlands to your account, which I didn’t immediately activate. The code didn’t say as much, but I suspected that the associated game time would automatically start as soon as I entered the code. Since my account was lapsed, I figured I’d wait until release, or at least pre-patch release. I finally decided to activate it yesterday to check out the pre-patch content. Sure enough, the game time immediately activates on my inactive account. So, if I had activated as soon as the box arrived I would have had nearly a month of “wasted” BfA time before shadowlands released. I would have had to pay for another month of game time, another $15, just to see the start of Shadowlands.
So, Blizzard delays the game just long enough such that everyone with an inactive account that pre-orders and activates will have their 30days of time expiring right when the expansion actually ships. There’s an extra month sub for Blizzard by doing that. Was this the same for digital purchases?
This feels like a giant scam honestly. It makes me a bit sad that I’m at this point I see nefarious business practices is just about everything they do.
This is the Shadowlands “epic edition” card that has the code:
postimg.cc/gwCBHkXq
No indication that applying this code to your account also immediately activates the 30-day game time. There should at least be a warning that you’re about to activate a timer attached to content that isn’t currently available. Frustrating.
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Let’s not even get into the fact that this pre-patch content seems to be 100% recycled content.
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Get a refund, I don’t think you want to play this game at all.
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You might be right. I think I might have a hard time convincing Blizzard to take back the physical box copy though.
Fool me once, shame on you. Teach a Blizzard to fool me, and I’ll be fooled for a lifetime.
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TL,DR:
Person buys a product with promotion. Person save the promotion until closer to product launch to maximize percieved value. Person somehow twists this into a scam. Roger.
TL,DR TL,DR: Person doesn’t know how calendars work and clearly doesn’t know Sunday was day before yesterday.
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Oh, I know how calendars work. That’s precisely why I didn’t activate the time when it first arrived. I saw through the scam. What I’m frustrated about is that the game time card had no indication that the time would start immediately. Given that the actual game wasn’t going to be arriving for another month, you’d think people might want to know that.
What is the scam? The time runs as soon as you activate it. I am not understanding the problem.
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The game time wasn’t specifically SL game time. It’s WOW game time. There’s no reason to expect that it wouldn’t start right away because it would give you access to whatever content is available.
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The game time card does not indicate that it activates as soon as you enter it. I’ve never used one before, so I didn’t know if that’s how it worked or not. I had to guess. I guessed right. I suspect some people didn’t, and will end up feeling scammed out of a month of time.
How did you think it would work? 30day of gametime is 30day of gametime…
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Oh. Ok then. I would think they would print it on the card for those not familiar with it.
Why in the world would it not? That’s kind of how activating a card works. It’s common sense. If you need this explained to you then I really don’t know what else to say.
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You have been duped!!
Blizzard delayed the expac just to scam us!
/s
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i feel like you don’t know what the word “scam” means
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You are not understanding the problem, because there is no problem. You seem like a rather sane individual. LOL. I cannot believe, for the life of me, that the poster thought this up, sat down, wrote it, and then hit publish. Unreal.
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I’m…really not understanding the issue here? Fair point, you’ve never used one before, but…any other card as soon as you enter it, it gets used? If you add a gift card to iTunes, it immediately add funds. If you had Steam credit, it immediately add funds. Why would a WoW card be any different? Think of game time as funds, of course it will be used right away.
This is less a scam and more an unfortunate learning lesson about how prepaid cards work. Sorry, OP, I’m trying to be understanding but it really sounds like a lot of grumbling for an unfortunate mistake.
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Could you know, call Blizzard or a ticket or something and get this cleared up. I’m sure they will fix that since it sounds unintentional.
TL,DR addendum: Apparently gift cards are hard.
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I didn’t make a mistake. I understood how the card worked.
The reason it feels scammy is because the box arrived right around the time that they delated the game. If someone excitedly got the box, opened it, entered the code thinking they’d be able to play it, they’d end up very disappointed.
Not everyone pays as much attention to what’s going on with WoW as you forum dorks. Probably doesn’t affect most of you because you stay subbed all the time, so extra time would just get tacked on the end.
For those of use that come back for a month or two when a new expansion or patch drops, it feels misleading to have game time that wouldn’t even extend into the expansion that we expected to play.
Does that make sense?