1 subscription. Access to both US and EU servers

Community General Discussion
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Hey guys,

Just to clarify up front as I know people regularly misunderstand what I’m saying. I’m not saying the ability to cross server play, trade, raid etc, so read on for clarification.

I have a very international friends group. I am from the UK and historically have always played WoW on EU. But over the past few years, due to both living in the US temporarily and being involved in other games international communities, I have had a growing group of US based friends, who like me, historically have played in their local region, the US.

Both my EU friends, and US friends have decided to play WoW WOTLK Classic, and have both been asking me to play with them. Furthermore, my main retail account is on the EU, and I do want to give Dragonflight a chance and come back properly for the first time since Legion. I’m excited to play WoW in general.

The problem is, battle.net is so archaic, that I cant. Battle.net has been improving, its nice to see both my EU and US battle.net friends in the same friends list, due to the client being global now. I HOPE this is indicative of Blizzards desire to make not just their launcher global, but their subscription too.

A US subscription is slightly more expensive, and I admit it will pose a slight commercial issue for Blizzard, £9.99 vs $14.99 I believe it is, and with the strength of the US dollar vs the pound/euro at the moment, it does make a US sub historically the most ‘expensive’ it has been for myself as a Brit.

But its 2022. Games ARE global. Gaming is global, friends groups are global. The technical limitations on cross server play are obvious, and nobody reasonable is suggesting that WoW can or should fix that, EU and US is separate for the time being and I accept that, but there is absolutely nothing stopping Blizzard from changing a subscription to being more global. All the game client has to do, is look at my battle.net.

#JoeXXXX has a US, or an EU subscription. Check. Access granted, regardless of whether you launch the US or EU client.

Right now, whilst I might admit most people wont share my problem, I am being pushed into an awkward position. Blizzard always talks about connecting with other friends/gamers and the social aspect of their game/ethos, but right now, I cant buy into it, because I’m being forced to either not play, pick between two friends groups, or pay two monthly subscriptions, and purchase two copies of the same game. I cant afford to do that, and its going to be extremely awkward picking one group over the other.

PLEASE before the release of Dragonflight/WOTLK classic, at least try to work on this issue, even a blue post just acknowledging your position/intentions on this matter would help.

It honestly sucks, again, this is 2022, not 2004 anymore. World of Warcraft and battle.net should be global, especially for a game with such a premium financial model. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to play with both my US friends and EU friends when I’m paying almost £300 per expansion.

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what and lose out on double income for people who play more then one region i think not

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Realistically speaking how many people play more than one region. Those numbers are insignificant surely.

Furthermore, theres probably a decent amount of players who would come back to play WoW if it was more accessible. Im not paying a sub at all at the moment. I literally bought a month sub on US servers just to play a week and a half of TBC classic with them but dont intend to pay any more.

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well joking aside i play Eu, Na and Sea but im pretty sure blizz would never lose out on those 2 exstra subs

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Damn, how do you play SEA with ping, are you over 200?

Im glad you put the joking aside, greed is always a concern in business, and sadly gaming now days, but I still do genuinely believe that people who pay 2 subs are VERY rare, id say you paying 3 subs is a pretty extreme exception.

I honestly think you’d get at least as many players returning just to casually play on US and EU as you would have people willing to stay and pay 2 subs, if not more. I guess my point to add to that is. Of the people who WOULD play on US and EU, id imagine that the vast majority of them either pay no sub, or one sub, with more not paying a sub at all than paying 2.

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It would be honestly really nice. While currently none of my US friends do play WoW (I haven’t played seriously since Legion either tbh), there have been times where I had to choose between the two subs and I did not love it.

Especially since the other big sub based MMO does not ask you to pay multiple subs to play on different regions/data centers. I think for a long time things have been accepted just because WoW was the MMO to play.
(hey, it’s hard not to compare, I’ve played both WoW and FFXIV for about a decade now)

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Woah, is it gold plated? I can afford an extra £10 a month for two accounts and that’s the cheapest entertainment for the money. Not sure why you can’t, you sound like you have a good job.

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This would definitely breath life back into the virtual world and give the game that old “full” feeling no matter what time of day you play or want to play. Right now when I log on early morning its feels like I am the only person online and seldom see other players. Where as in the past if you logged on at 4am in the morning there would still be tons of people online doing stuff and even the main cities were buzzing. I do hope they would consider this.

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It does look like an archaic system which many modern games have no problem with. I’m sure it made sense 15 years ago but today. The region are so separated from each other that you can’t even server transfer. I don’t like the forums been separated too to be honest. Seems kinda pointless to me when it’s still the same game and we’re speaking in English anyway.

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It’s not that battle.net is old it’s the WoW servers were set up many, many years ago that it’s probably not worth Blizzard making them ‘region free’.

It cheaper than ‘free’ games.

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A) because every other game in the world dosent make you pay twice for the same product.

B) Because I cant afford it, im sorry if I dont meet your financial standards.

Not sure why you are insinuating that I have a good job or that I should be able to afford it either since I mentioned no such thing, and I outright stated that I cannot afford to pay an extra $400 USD per expansion just to play with some extra friends that I should already be able to.

Why are you even taking this stance anyway, you’re literally a player? And its obvious that in 2022 when every other game has a global model, and when WoW which costs significant more than almost any other game, dosent have this, that its wrong and needs to be improved.

I dont understand why a gamer would shoot themselves in the foot and not side with other gamers and instead take the stance of “suck it up and just pay” instead of “yeah you shouldnt really have to pay twice, Blizzard should sort it out”

Also good for you for being in a strong enough financial situation to afford an extra £10, but thats completely irrelevant in this argument. Its a really really weak stance you have if you’re viewpoint is “Well I can afford it, so why cant you” hmmmmm.

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Exactly, it made sense in the past no doubt, but its time they just fix it.

They definitely can fix it too, its not like they cant. The WoW clients tie into your battle.net, all you should need to do it buy a battle.net wow sub that globally covers you.

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It makes no sense that English-speaking EU players are segregated in the forum that gets far less attention, as if we’re second class citizens.

It doesn’t make any sense that worst case there’s no way to move your account from EU to US, especially when test realms and betas prove it’s trivial to transfer the data. A while back UK players also had the contract transferred to a new subsidiary, so it’s pretty easy to move it between different legal entities.

I think the only hurdle to using the exact same client might be a handful of legalese stuff, but this should not be an impossible issue to resolve.

As you say, most games are global. If I play a game of Halo or something, it will try to match me up with EU players. But it definitely doesn’t say, “you cannot interact with US players, EVER, get back to your bubble”.

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The limited data transfer is notoriously unstable.

Brexit, that’s why, and I seriously doubt it was a trivial matter. I’m sure there was more to it than writing a new ToS going on in the background.

You conveniently fail to mention that it’s a service very few would use, why would they bother.

If Blizzard thought they could make a good amount of money from it they would have it available in no time!

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How the hell are you spending $400 on an expansion? If you mean buying and paying for the subscription for the whole of the expansion then it’s not paid out all in one go.

I’m in a good financial position and it’s really not a lot per month to pay for a US account. You could even farm gold and pay with a token.

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Weird Flex. Noone asked for that though. People are tired of everything being monetized to oblivion with huge Gates for everything. One of the most stupid concepts in wow imo, is that there are no cross server and cross faction guilds. It’s really some arbitrary gate, where you have to pay 25 euro per char to play with other people. Transfering regions should also be possible. Imagine you change your residency due to your job, and then lose all your wow progress

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You’re making an incredibly strong argument here Dottie, ill break it down for you.

The average length of WoW expansions is 23.42 months. Basically 2 years.

A WoW sub is $14.99.
$14.99 x 24 = $359.76
The base price of Dragonflight is $49.99.
$49.99 + $359.76 = $409.75.

Assuming you are financially secure enough to pre purchase your game time in 6 month segments, then thats $12.99 per month, which equates to $311.76. $311.76 = $49.99 = $361.75.

How the hell do you not realise that a WoW sub is ~$400 per expansion. Its irrelivant that its not paid out in one go, how is that even remotely relevant. Thats like saying a house dosent cost $500,000 because you dont pay it all in one go.

I can purchase a yearly/bi yearly AAA release for $49.99 and play it for 12/24 months free of charge. The comparison between WoW’s cost and other games is quite obvious.

Honestly the fact you are bragging about being in a good enough position to pay for WoW in two regions and you are literally coming here into a thread to try and use that as ammunition against having a global sub (for those who stated outright that they cannot afford it) its just morally wrong, and quite sad. Again, good for you. And no, I cant farm gold and pay with a token, I dont want to have to grind a significant number of hours purely for the purpose of making gold on two servers. I want to pay a single £9.99 sub, and play casually with my friends when they want to hop on.

Again ill reiterate. I cannot afford two pay £49.99 AND another $49.99 to buy Dragonflight twice. I cannot afford $14.99 AND £9.99 to pay for two subs, and I cant/dont want to spend the time farming every single month just to play with those subs. I want to pay a single £49.99 and £9.99 sub, and play with my friends.

There is literally zero arguments as to why this is unreasonable. I play a plethora of other games with my US friends. I am yet to find a single game that I cannot play with them without additional charge purely because im from another region.

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It’s like you saying you cannot afford it because it’s $400, technically it is, but not in one go and your post seems to make people think you are when in fact it’s mostly spread over two years.

Also, I don’t buy it in two regions, I pay for two accounts in one. It’s not really bragging as most people spend far more than that for entertainment in a month. I am 100% sure you could find the money if you really tried, You could stop smoking if you do for one.

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i am playing all day with ping over 250 ms and yeah it is actually playable.
There are some things worse of course (like combo point classes and fire mages) but the rest and also the mechanics in pve have more than enough reaction time

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Stop backtracking.

“How the hell are you spending $400 on an expansion?” - Proven.
“Woah, is it gold plated?” - Evidently not, but still $400.

You’re just chatting nonsense now and making yourself look even worse. Can I afford a $1,000,000 house just because its spread over 60 years. No. Get over this ridiculous idea you have that just because you dont pay for something in one go that that somehow makes it significantly more affordable. Its still $200 a year per account on average. I spend like £40-80 a year on games, let alone spending an extra $200 for two different clients.

Again what are you even trying to prove here Dottie! Do you, or do you not agree, that you should just buy one copy of the expansion, and pay one fee, and be able to log into whatever server you want. Yes or no?

You’re really going to hold onto this viewpoint are you, even though I outright told you, as have others, that what you’re saying is really wrong. “I am 100% sure you could find the money if you really tried, You could stop smoking if you do for one.” - I dont smoke, drink, go out to the cinema, go out to restaurants/cafes, buy fast food, I do none of that and I cannot afford an extra $200 a year to play a game casually with friends.

Just because you have expandable income that you can justify spending on one of the most expensive monthly subscriptions to any game in the world, dosent mean others can Dottie, get this idea out of your head, not everyone has $15 a month laying around to blow on some casual gaming or an extra $49.99 to spend on a second copy of an expansion that you already bought. Why dont you understand how ridiculous that is?

And yes you are bragging, as others have said, you’re repeatedly reiterated how its not that expensive and how you can afford it twice. You even outright said it wasnt even that expensive. Wrong, not expensive for you.

My post dosent do any such thing too by the way, anyone with a brain can figure out that im calculating the overall cost of playing wow per expansion similar to how you buy any other yearly/biyearly release game and can calculate its rough cost to you.

1 Like