Well no, it’s 3 options removed and you’re left with just 60 days.
If you wanted to buy 30 you have to buy 60. Most people buying game time probably just wanted 30 days. It’s a rip off.
2 Likes
Just subscribe and pay £9.99 a month… You don’t need to purchase 60 days for 19.98
Blizzard, seems like you rush to announce €€€€ changes asap but when should we expect PvP changes ? At least tell us a date to expect 2-3-5-99 months or whatever give us something or atleast if you prefer this kind of meta and balance between classes tell us that the game will remain in this state for an undefined period and ill be ok with that.
For the love of God, tell us anything PvP related !!! We pay €€ aswell and we deserve to know future directions of the pvp state since a lot of players are disoriented right now!!! Not only sub-oriented issues and how you start implementing ideeas to hook up players with as much possibile game-time bought at once.
No longer pinned, I see.
I understand.
But what if someone wants to buy time for someone else?
This is not a good thing. Certainly not a “new option”.
2 Likes
To be honest, this is a bit naughty, and actually makes no economic sense, from an international finance perspective.
I’ll preface this by saying that it won’t effect me personally. I pay my own sub monthly. It does irk me that customers in GB are actually charged more, given exchange rates than customers in the EU, given that we theoretically get the same service (Subs would be £8.99 if in line with EU subs, but were increased to £9.99 a while back, yes, before even this Brexit nonsense was even heard of).
The problem is, this new model makes no economic sense, in fact, it isn’t going to help anyone, not even Blizzard themselves.
Why would you buy purchasable game time cards? a. For yourself, or b. as a gift for another.
So lets look at Option a first.
If you are receiving a regular income, this is not going to hit you much, at all really, it just becomes a twice monthly expense that is double what you would pay monthly. Not a problem right?
Wrong.
Especially now, when many people are receiving less money, due to Covid, or in some cases may have lost their jobs entirely, it is a real gamechanger. Some players may well be on benefits due to the pandemic. Now I have previously lived on benefits for a time, and it does actually make a difference. I could handle paying £9.99 each month. and budget for it. Benefits in the UK are paid twice monthly (though in some cases one lump sum monthly. You do have to budget. You also have to live. There is actually a massive difference between being able to justify £9.99 to yourself monthly, and being able to take a £19.98 hit bimonthly. Sounds crazy, but anyone who has ever had to depend upon benefits will tell you it -does- make a difference as to your spending. Chances are really high that even when budgeting, sometimes you just can’t justify affording it, rather than affording essentials. Consider it like bulk buying.
Lets say a can of coke costs £1. Thats not much, you can afford that. But what if you were suddenly not able to buy a can of coke singular, but had to buy two every time? You might not want two cans of coke, you might just want a can of coke, but the shop refuses to sell you just one can of coke. You may just go “Ehh, nah, that’s putting me off, I could buy 1 can of Own brand Cola for £1 instead” which suddenly becomes a more attractive option, even though you wanted Coke. As a business model some bright spark at Blizz accounting probably thought it makes sense, because then they are tying people in for 2 months, but actually when people are -forced- to bulk buy, it has a deleterious effect on the amount of units of product sold.
So really it doesn’t work out for the consumer, and it doesn’t work out for the provider either.
Option b) Cards are bought for a gift for someone else.
Lets be honest. We all have a financial limit as to what we buy as presents. I love my little brother, but I am more likely to buy him a CD or DVD for his birthday, than I am to buy him a Rolex watch. This especially becomes a feature when we hit adulthood. When I was a kid, I got presents from my family, extended family, all the Aunts and Uncles etc. Now, as an Adult, I only get presents from my direct family, so mother, brother and sister in law, romantic partner. I don’t get presents from aunts and uncles anymore, nor do I buy them ones. We simply get less presents the older we get. And thats fine. Thats how it actually should be. Birthdays and Christmas are always more important for kids, than for adults. You appreciate the presents you get, but you generally get less spent on you, the older you get. (That makes it sound like a horribly ghoulish mathematical equation ‘They’re x old, I only need their goodwill for another y amount of years!’ )
So essentially the point is that you are less likely to spend -more- on presents, when really, you would only spend a certain amount. So whilst a loving friend or relative may feel disposed to spending £9.99 on a present, spending £19.98 on one is a bigger deal. You’re more likely to go “Actually I’ll get the x instead, that was closer to the price bracket I had in mind”
So again, the service provider is shooting themselves in the foot, by making purchase of game time cards a -less- desirable option for people wanting to buy them as gifts.
It is also a little bizarre that the UK in particular is being singled out for this treatment, and no, it isn’t because of ‘Brexit’ and if it -was- due to financial uncertainty caused by Covid it would effect -everyone-, so it does seem like a bit of a strange move, to be honest, as it isn’t going to benefit either Players, or Blizzard themselves…
Very odd. Something doesn’t tally up, finance-wise.
6 Likes
Is this a method of getting people that buy 30 Day Game Time to go Monthly Subscription instead?
Can’t be because of Brexit. If it was you would remove Game Time completely.
Probably, will makes their numbers look better. They probably can’t do it for those paying in Euros because of some EU rule that protects them and now we are out of the EU they can get away with it here.
They’ve upped the cost of game time for Canadian dollars too but not the sub I believe.
Not so long ago I read about how a lot of EU companies stopped serving the UK cause of the high tax thing, it´s a lot of hassle apparently.
I wonder if this would still happen (blizzards scamming brits) if they stayed in EU.
So, whilst most of what I’m about to say has been mentioned already in some form – whether in this thread or another – I’m going to add another voice into the crowd for the purpose of keeping the discussion going a little while longer. With any luck, and enough voices, we’ll at least get to see a greater degree of transparency on why this decision was made; if not seeing it partially reversed, or removed entirely. If you would prefer to skip this, please at least read the conclusion.
I won’t dwell too long on how it affects people individually, namely for those who typically buy 30 days of game time – alike myself – as opposed to a subscription. Whilst this does add the awkward additional step of having to immediately unsubscribe each time we purchase a subscription in case we forget, or would rather pay on our own terms, it is ultimately just a pain rather than a complete problem. Those that are more direly affected by this change have already spoken on it, and there isn’t much I can really add to that from my own experience outside of merely preference.
Where I would like to draw further attention to is how this affects gifting. I’ve seen the point raised that you can just gift two months instead of one, or three, or six; alongside that you could just give a person the money directly to buy it themselves – an indirect gift, so to speak. The problem I have is that this makes things complicated for seemingly no gain. I’ll outline a few examples, along with my own experience on this.
I’ll start with my personal experience on this. Namely, I’m in an overseas relationship and find that WoW game time makes a pretty ideal gift for Birthdays and Christmas. It fits neatly within a budget and is something that we can do as an IOU alongside another game, or maybe something silly, then give to them at a later date when we both want to play WoW. Due to this, the 30 days game time was particularly handy since I could buy that for myself, then also gift it to them, and at the end of that 30 days, we could decide if we wanted to keep playing for another month – and so on.
Now, you could make the argument that we could just pay our own subs – which we typically do – or just gift two months. The problem with the former is that it removes a really good gift giving opportunity, whilst the latter means we are locked into two months when we don’t always want to play for that long.
Moving on from the personal case, there is another side to the coin. If you wanted to gift multiple months, you now have to do it in two month purchases. Whilst this doesn’t affect me, I imagine that at least someone out there is a little miffed that their one-click has turned into several. Again, not the end of the world, but seemingly a weird choice since ultimately… The money received for, say 6 months, is the same; but they have had to do it in an awkward way, rather than a single click.
I suppose, ultimately, what I’m saying – alike others prior – is that the decision just feels like it makes no sense. I’m sure there is some business reason behind it, but without the transparency to explain that in a way we can understand and appreciate, its hard not to feel cheated in some way. This single decision has made it difficult for some people to purchase their own game time, made it awkward for others, and completely removed an assortment of helpful options for those that use it for gifting. It’s possible I’m missing some really easy solution or some other means of gifting that solves all these problems, but… I just can’t seem to see it. I’d like to see this decision reversed, or altered in some way, but at the very least… Can we at least know why this is happening? And using an explanation that we can understand rather than a vague mention towards some background process which we, or at least myself, don’t know anything about.
Thank you for your time.
Curious about the reasoning for this since you can still get monthly subs and cancel instantly.
If ppl thought Brexit has no side efects, i dont know in what world you are living…
It was voted… i keep reminding people that bcs it so damn silly
1 Like
Oh I know it does. 52% of the population voted for blue passports, trade chaos, and a shortage of vital medicines for people who really need them. It just doesn’t have much to do with -this- as Blizz have already been punishing the UK market before Brexit was even floated as an idea at the top levels, let alone a business concern.
If I had my way every voter who wanted to leave the EU should be on a register, so that every person whose life is negatively effected can point at them and blame them, and likewise if there -are- any people (Apart from Tory chums) who benefitted that they can pat them on the back and say “Well Done”.
Personally I would like to kick them all up the backside for shortening people’s lives by their selfish desires, but sadly, and ultimately, sensibly, we cannot register how people vote, that would be entirely counter to the process, illegal and unethical. Still, would be fun. "You voted for my medication to be taken away did you? " Swings a baseball bat Negan style
1 Like
A man of culture i see
Also
Laughs in paying 30 day gametime in Euro’s
Now that makes a lot more sense, thanks.
1 Like
No, it doesn’t make sense, because “you can still subscribe for 1 month” which costs just a little less than the 1 month game time cost.
They are trying to force people to take up subscriptions. Plane and simple.
and it will cost them, as i describe here…
Option removed to buy 1 month of game time from the Blizzard Store? Wtf? - Support / Customer Support - World of Warcraft Forums
I will no longer gift my friends game time. Gifting a month of time was an option, i would never gift someone 2 months of game time.
1 Like
Calling someone stupid and expecting them to feel no offence because you wrote “no offence” is quite strange. I question your logic. Don’t be so quick to throw out your insults. Thanks.
I do not maintain any social media accounts, for your information. Nor do I subscribe to “conspiracy theories”. Now if you want to call it a conspiracy that blizzard are trying to force people to subscribe? Then go ahead. But that isn’t a crazy theory, it is an actual conspiracy (if you want to call it that). I will explain why…
Firstly, I do not use any direct debits for anything. I do not use automatic payments for anything. That is my choice. That is my liberty.
Next, A blizzard WoW subscription is not a “Direct Debit” payment. It is simply an automated transaction which is activated when the game time expires. (They hold my card details and charge the card).
Also, if I take the subscription option for 1 month of time, I will then have to log onto the website and immediately cancel the subscription, then do the same thing next time my game time expires. It doesn’t cancel the game time you already have, it simply cancels the automated payment, but not many people know that so they are reluctant to cancel until the time is about to expire.
I think last time I did this, before I started simply buying 1 month of game time from the Blizzard Store, I also had to remove my card details, so it involves some messing around which is needless, considering they could just let us buy a month of time.
So how this will cost them is, like I said, I will no longer gift people a month of game time. Then those people who I might have gifted game time to, will not pay for more game time when the gifted time would have expired.
I am sure that I am not the only person from the UK who would have gifted their friends some game time.
3 Likes
Ofc they will use anything they can to make people pay more for services, friendly reminder, Elon Musk had 27 bilion dollars at the begining of 2020 now he has 185 bilions, thats what they do they are in it for the money by any means posibile, its up to us act on it, blizzard reputation went downhill, wow is more of a second job only thinking bout how to make u play more not be fun, just metrics, they wont stop these scummy tactics while people keep subbing to the game, in Bobby’s eyes its GUCCI 
You seem awfully angry at Britain, what did we do, nick your smarties or something? invade your country? (actually don’t answer that, a lot of people can probably answer ‘Yes actually’ to that one)
60 day cards are actually going to become less profitable for Blizzard within the next two months, for precisely that reason. It is a very counter intuitive move, that is not going to yield the results they hoped for. But then, this is not the first time American companies have made these sort of mistakes, at least this time it will only effect a gaming company and not the US Housing market, Economy of Investment nations and cause a global crash, like the last time they tried this sort of stupid stunt just over a decade ago.
But anyway, on all your responses to these threads you really seem to have some anger management issues with regards Britain. Can you show us on the map where Britain annoyed you?
Indeed so…
What an unpleasant attitude to take towards others. I suggest you remedy your manners, sir or madame, as they leave a great deal to be desired.
Oh thats just businesses being businesses. That is what they do, and always have done since the Phoenicians invented modern currency and the concept of how to generate more money by doing something rather than simply putting it in a bag under your pillow.
My point is, that this is a bit of a naughty and cynical move, using a nation leaving a body politic as an excuse to try and yoink more money out of them. I mean is it scummy behaviour? Yes. Is it also Shrewd business practice? Yes.
But then, when have businesses -ever- not acted thus?
4 Likes