You just have to buy two months at a time then and nothing else changes.
Are botters not already using stolen CC’s to buy game time?
I do get the extra effort argument though.
I have no idea lol
My experience with botters is as far as watching them go in and out of Alcatraz/Mechanar back in the day.
I see this only deterring botters that dont’ want to break any actual laws where it is illegal to use stolen CC’s and such (e.g. Billy living in Mom’s basement making some side cash selling gold won’t want to do this, but Acme Inc. sweatshop in China will continue doing their thing).
I guess it’s still better than nothing though.
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Tbh I wouldn’t think so, seems extremely risky.
I am neither and I don’t like this change.
Here’s why: Sometimes I and some of my friends have trouble maintaining an active sub. We’re short on cash one month and our sub lapses, so we support each other, often by buying 1 month of game time for them so they can play and re-sub on their own the following month.
This change means I can’t support my friends and they can’t support me if these situations come up again, because $30 is not as small of an ask as some folks think. Hell, in Australia it’s $40 which is half of my weekly shop when I’m buying fresh ingredients.
So yeah, this hurts me, and it hurts others who like to help their friends by buying them game-time when they’re in a bind.
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I suppose. Although it’s a added benefit, I strongly suspect botting isn’t really the reason for this change.
Probably some analytics showed not a lot of people use the service and so they consolidated for some undisclosed reduction in process.
But this is the internet. So obviously now apparently every single million person is going to claim they exclusively paid the game that way.
lol
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I see you were careful to leave out mention of the group that is mostly impacted: people who use in-game gold to buy tokens they convert to bnet balance. I guess you’re assuming they’ll be happy to go back to paying with real money, or that people who have up until now been paying monthly with gold will be glad to pay double to get more gametime than they want.
But in any case, you clearly had reason to misrepresent the situation to mislead people.
Plus they mine more personal data to sell like some cheap clickbait site. They want you to use a credit card.
If you buy a token with gold you can just redeem it for 30 days without converting to balance.
I didn’t misrepresent a thing. Glad you see things negatively though.
And by the way, I do not know where folks are getting this idea that it will impact botting. There’s no evidence of that. Besides, the worst of the worst when it comes to botters and gold sellers often use stolen/phished credit card info from other people so… yeah they’re not going to give a damn if they have to spend $15 or $30 since it’s not their money they’re spending.
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There is evidence in how botted accounts are created. They pay for the subscription with 1 time pay $15.
Probably analytics showed that people who bought only one month of gametime at the start of shadowlands let their time run out and didn’t buy more. So obviously the solution is to make them buy two months, so if they’re done in a week they’ve paid more and can’t get that back. Alternatively, if they can be convinced to buy a sub they will likely forget to stop their subscription until a while after they stop logging in = more profit.
You mean, just like new players.
They also removed access to the premade group finder for <50 players at the start of shadowlands to eliminate paid carry listings in the group finder. How well is that working out?
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That is not how profitable businesses work. I know it’s a low hanging fruit and hating is easy. And Blizz messes up on the daily, but from a business point of view, that’s dumb thinking that doesn’t roll in a board meeting.
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Besides that, they need a profit spike to show for the upcoming quarterly earnings report.
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I thought these were generally on stolen account, so it doesn’t matter. Someone else is paying for the account anyway.
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Will have unnoticeable effect on either.
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That is what the celebration package and other shop products are for.
Pre-sale for D2, special prize on SL, etc etc.
Not by “scamming” short sub bucks on a quarter 
So much misinformation in your post but I’ll focus on the one that affects me. In the past, I bought the 180-day discounted game time ‘sub’ using bnet bucks funded with WoW tokens. That option is now gone.
It’s a price increase because the new and unimproved version only has a 60 day game time option at no discount.
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No. In my case You could buy 4-5 tokens, convert to Balance, and buy the 6-month (with discounts).
Buying month per month and using one by one was, in the longer term, ‘more expensive’.
Seems just like the Subscription option, but without the need for credit/debit card information.
Now? Most people might keep paying the ‘old, first days of Token appearance’ ways for a time, but slowly (or faster now), more and more players will move off of this great game, as some couldn’t afford real money with the ‘recent increases’ some countries had.
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