K.
I work in business and finance, I think I know more about the “why” behind some of these decisions than you do. 
Just because you don’t like my answer to your asinine questions doesn’t mean its an “illogical stance.”
Have a nice day!
This will do nothing whatever to combat botting.
You’re a blizzard employee with insider information? Good to know.
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I’m not going to pay $30 to go back to WoW after my sub ends in 3 days.
Blizzard, you just made this a whole lot easier NOT to return to WoW.
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uh… i think you and the 12 people who 
'd your post are a tad confused.
Jayden has nearly 300 more posts than you.
To be fair, 30 days already felt like a lot to commit to when deciding if I wanted to come back or not. You could get another entire game for $15. Or it could be 15 delicious tacos.
If only they had a one-week gametime deal. I know they won’t, though.
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Oh my apologies then. It was ridiculous that it was flagged in the first place though just because ppl don’t agree with the stance.
I also work in business and finance and I know well and truly how much customer quality can get cut to increase profit margins and I assume you do to
it might slow them down a bit initially.
Cant botters just like sub for a month then cancel it?
I dunno the finer details of how to set up a botting operation
Wasn’t removing the ability of sub-50 level players from access to premade groups supposed to eliminate paid carry ads from the group finder?
A few people in hundreds of posts have suggested it will hinder bots. I have seen nothing that would indicate this is anything more than guesswork.
I keep getting told that buying and canceling a 30 day sub is so, so easy and convenient that I won’t even have to think about doing it. How does that stop botting?
Did you not read the post?
They specifically said they did a review of the model, and the result was the change.
And what would be the purpose of the change exactly?
Who on earth does this benefit
I don’t know, but frankly I don’t care. Its a change to their game time model, and there is sill a way for me to purchase 1 month if I want to.
I think the faux outrage is just over the top and unnecessary.
I mentioned this in other thread, but am I only one thinking they removed the options to prevent people using wow tokens to buy sub?
Then why exactly did you feel the need to white knight blizzard for what is clearly an unpopular change in a wide string of what people consider consumer unfriendly business practice
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Sigh…
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sure… the random players who have secondary botting accounts will probably still do that.
but the larger operations should initially be slowed.
i don’t know.
i’m not sure of what the motivation behind that was.
it wouldn’t have made much of a difference to the quantity of advertising.
these companies don’t have any shortage of 50+ characters at their disposal.
the only thing which is going to stop the spam, is cracking down on the players who pay for these services.
See you next week 
Just to be clear, this “scummy loophole” as you describe it that fact that I’m using battle.net balance funded by tokens bought with gold off the Auction House to buy the180 days of sub time option that Blizzard provides in the shop.
But it’s NOT, in your view, a “scummy loophole” to use battle.net balance funded by other means, say gift cards bought from a store like Wal-Mart or off of Amazon.com.
And it’s also NOT, in your view, a “scummy loophole” to buy that 180 day chunk of time in a one time purchase with a credit card.
And it’s also NOT, in your view, a “scummy loophole” to have a six month recurring subscription using a credit card.
That’s all correct, right? I am understanding you, correctly here, aren’t I? Only my way is the “exploiting” of a “scummy loophole” but not any of the others, right?
Because in all four cases, the cost for 180 days is a real world $77.94. Regardless of whether you have a recurring sub or a one time purchase, and regardless of whether the one time purchase was via a credit card or battle.net balance, and regardless of whether the battle.net balance was funded by gift cards or tokens, the cost is exactly the same: $77.94.
And I didn’t set that price, Blizzard did because they decided, as you can see in the shop for a recurring 6 month subscription, that the more time you buy, the cheaper it is on a per month basis. They even state that on the shop page that for the 6 month sub it’s $12.99, “save $24.00 per year” because they want people to buy in bulk instead of one month at a time. Hence why they, and nearly every other business, offers discounts for a larger number of items purchased (e.g., that’s the whole basis of Costco approach).
You probably don’t realize that in doing it my way, via battle.net balance funded by tokens bought with gold off of the Auction House, that Blizzard actually receives MORE real world money than any of the other ways that only get them $77.94 per 6 months/180 days. Let me explain.
With people like me, my five tokens that I bought to get sufficient battle.net balance to buy that 180 day chunk of time meant that those five tokens on the AH that I got were bought from Blizzard by other players for $20 each, meaning Blizzard sold $100 worth of tokens (5 x $20) that I used to buy my 180 days, not $77.94 that would be collected by Blizzard in any other way, for a net increase in profit to Blizzard of $22.06, from people like me.
So I’m “exploiting” a “scummy loophole” by funding battle.net balance with tokens even though it nets Blizzard MORE money than any of the other four ways of getting 180 days of game time. Seriously? You really think that I’m like some criminal mastermind sort of bovine that years and years ago discovered some super secret that Blizzard never saw coming until just now? I wish!
(To be accurate, five tokens only gets $75 in battle.net balance, so I’d be $2.94 short with those 5 tokens alone. It’s more accurate to note it takes 5.196 tokens for enough balance. But I’m rounding down a small bit for simplicity’s sake.)
Of course, with these latest changes eliminating my ability to buy 180 days with battle.net balance, doing it my way will require me to now buy 6 tokens instead of 5 tokens, which corresponds to Blizzard taking in $120 for me to buy six months of game time. Yet for those using a recurring six month subscription, they can continue to pay only $77.94, so Blizzard will now net $42.06 more from people like me.
I think the real motivation here in removing the 90 and 180 day one time purchase options is that Blizzard wants to force people who want to continue to receive that discount for a larger game time purchase to do it via recurring subscriptions, which all businesses with that type of business model know is more profitable because lots and lots of people forget to cancel when they meant to, because they just forget.
I also think the main motivation for removing the 30 day one time purchase option is to increase the costs by botters and gold sellers so that when they get their accounts banned, they are losing more real money because they have to shell it out at $29.99 at a time instead of $14.99.
In the end, Blizzard’s motivation is to increase the bottom line, and since they clearly don’t want to increase the sub price in the US like they did in other countries, they are getting creative to find other ways to accomplish that.
I’m just a sad and unhappy cow that my costs to keep playing are going up initially a flat 20% (5 tokens vs. 6 tokens) to get the same 180 days, plus whatever additional increase in the gold price for tokens that will result from me and others having to buy more tokens.
And before anyone says it, I’m retired and on a fixed income, and while I agree that even at the full $15/month WoW is still a good entertainment value, not having to spend that $15/month in real world dollars is helpful and allows me a chance to eat out once in a while that I would not otherwise be able to do. Plus, these days being retired, I have more access to more hours to spend in game earning that gold by crafting stuff from prior expansions using my alt army, which is not a bad way in this humble cow’s opinion to spend my time in game.
/moo 
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