In World of Warcraft the sale of game time is being adjusted. Many options are disappearing, which drives some players to arms.
Anyone who wants to play World of Warcraft must somehow pay for the game time. This can be done via a subscription, a direct purchase of game time, or the WoW Token for in-game gold. However, the direct purchase of game time is now changing – the number of options is decreasing.
What has changed? In the Battle.net Shop, game time is now only offered in 60-day increments. The other options that previously existed – namely 30, 90, and 180 days – are no longer available.
Blizzard justifies this by stating that they have examined the “available services in all currencies” and based on the results, the other options were removed. There is no further explanation for this.
What has not changed? There is no change to the costs or settings for subscriptions. These can still be purchased at the normal cadence of 1, 3, or 6 months. For those who pay for their access to WoW via a subscription, nothing changes.
What impact does this have? The impact is likely to be minor and only affect a small portion of players. One group that is disadvantaged are players who, for whatever reason, purchase their game time solely through Battle.net credit and preferred to do so in 30-day increments. These players now have to opt directly for the 60-day option if they want to pay with Battle.net credit.
The second group consists of players who maintain their WoW accounts solely through in-game gold. For true auction house masters, it was more profitable to buy 5-6 WoW Tokens (depending on country and currency) for gold, convert the tokens to Battle.net currency, and buy the 180 days with that. This was cheaper than redeeming each token in the game individually.
These players now face a financial disadvantage and need to farm more gold to still be able to pay for their game time.
Players are angry: Although the changes may be insignificant to most players, there are loud voices of dissatisfaction (via reddit). It is suspected that Blizzard has eliminated the options to encourage more players to subscribe – in the hope that they will subscribe for a longer period or simply forget to cancel their subscription.
Anyone purchasing game time through the Battle.net Shop is considered a subscriber or “active player” for at least 2 months due to the 60-day option, which can slightly improve Blizzard’s quarterly figures for WoW if these players would otherwise have stopped after 30 days.
While it can certainly be debated whether such a plan is really behind this, one thing is clear: The abolition of the offers definitely does not bring any advantage to the players.
What do you think of this change? Understandable and at least a small step against botters? Or just a sinister plan to exploit players even more?
