You can still gift 60 day game time.
And of course it’s greed. 
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i hope this is so. my way of taking £20 back off of blizzard by having another player not pay it.
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Several issues occur to me with regard to recurring subscriptions:
Trust in banking systems, in general.
Predictability of income.
Reliability of sticking to a monthly budget.
Tied into that would be control of unpredictability of ad-hoc expenditure.
The more consistently & predictably you can control your monthly budget, the more you should be able to be reassured with recurrent/automated subscriptions.
of course they do.
- subscriptions require another action if you want to stop playing
- game cards need an action to renew you game so it actively asks you DO YOU REALLY WANT TO PLAY?
- Game cards are way more expensive (generating/production)
- Revenue might me less if vendors get them cheaper than a subscription price
- All the plastic used by the cars might cost blizz a CO2 fee as well, certainly will in the future
so actually it is a good thing if game cards disappear alltogether, but for payment problems, sometimes it is good to have an alternative
would say this is kinda paranoid considering I never ever had any problems.
Wondering how this is a general issue? Basically if you cannot afford 13 EUR a month it would be wise to stop playing anyways.
wouldn’t a monthly sub make this much easier? Then you exactly know the cost per month and don’t rely on a 2 month higher purchase that you might forget to factor in every other month
Yes; there are still people who do not trust the Banking world - I, however, am not one of them.
There are people who rely on overtime & bonuses as part of a regular income, or have commision only jobs that may have volatility as a factor to their pay structure - may not be many, but they’re out there.
This would presume that everyone has a sound grounding in money management &/or have growing children with the unpredictability of growing out of school clothing (for one)… or who can only afford to run an inexpensive car that may just happen to have a bad run of reliability…
All these are factors that could prevent a player from taking on a recurrent subscription; to think otherwise is, frankly, narrow-minded.
well sure the tin foil hatters are everywhere, I don’t think anyone should have their quality of life on their mind.
Maybe in other countries?
I work in Germany and China and both countries do have solid base incomes. China then obviously have the bonus/OT part as their regular income. But again if you cannot afford 13 EUR a month with this structure, it is wise to not play anyways. I don’t think you can afford the Computer or Energy consumption either then :
Doesn’t the UK also have minimum wage or stuff like that (considering we are in the UK forum here?)
sure hickups can happen for low income families. If 13 EUR makes or breaks you from being able to live, again I don’t think a luxury game is the right option in this case.
When I was a student I didn’t play either, because simply I needed the money elsewhere.
I am not really narrow minded and I understand that people fail to manage their money well, but this doesn’t really has anything to do with game card vs sub. A sub is cheaper but requires you to cancel immediately to have a cheaper effect than buying a game card, so I don’t really understand the argument here?
Generally I do understand blizzards intentions here and I also get why some people are angry about it, mainly because less options are always bad. Considering we are on a trip to save the planet everywhere, I guess it is positive to remove more plastic D:
very good point, but they could easily move to card? scratch cards (lottery) are done on card and still have the silver scratch off piece.
also, why do the cards need to be so big? they’re like 4 times the size of a CC or more currently. all they need to do is hold an 18 digit (or whatever) long code securely.
i think we are getting off topic a tad.
im presenting this case on the basis that the player has enough money to play the game. they just have a preference for another method of payment.
but blizzard have now removed the choice and forced us down one of 3 paths, 2 of which are sorta to our detriment, and the 3rd is not to everyones liking.
we are forced to either:
- get a token which is a bad option as it is over priced, for gold or £.
- to get a £15 or £40 balance card which does not fit with a purchase of £19.99
- or get a reoccurring sub which people have their reasons for not wanting.
people wanted more choice because they are losing faith in the quality of WoW. as such, MANY people wanted the option to play for a month, let their time expire, then wait a couple of days or weeks untill THEY chose to get more time or not.
how many people have wanted to take a break since SL came out? i would wager its very high, especially as 9.1 is probably not out for another 2-3 months or so at least.
but again, this option is removed from us, or provided in a way people dont like.
just bring back the old options:
- 30, 90 & 180 day options, and
- £19.99 time cards.
That may not be what breaks a monthly budget, but - example - a €300 repair bill that swallows your WoW sub, due the next week, may be a reason you have to cancel your sub/not play for a month.
You may not believe my words but I too doesn’t like people forcing my hands and anyway i bought a 30 days gamecard and well it worked and the code worked fine.
Maybe it got something to do with what you said in the edit , anyway 30 days gametime balance to be redeemed on the official site worked fine for me.
They could, but I guess cards have some disadvantages (i don’t know about them), so I guess there was a reason why they used those plastic cards in the first place, especially considering they cost quite some more money than paper.
indeed, but as I said, more options are always better. They certainly cut them for a reason, be it environment (probably not) or to maximize their profit (most likely)
I understand that, but with a sub you pay 2 eur less than with the card, so there is really no argument about that.
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I know a recurring sub is the best value option for paying via RMT; why else would I have a 6m recurring sub…? ‘Cos I’m tighter than a ducks’ behind in a flood…
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sure while 6 month is cheaper is brings other issues.
Will you like the game still in 4 month?
Can you afford to pay 65 eur upfront? (there you got the argument actually)
I bought a 6 month sub this time and I regret it already. Didn’t log in since 3 weeks or something, so yeah, subs are also a trap 
Disappeared from most major retail outlets months ago, in the UK.
Well it costs money to print the game time cards, to have someone ship them to the store, and for the store to actually sell them in their shops. So in theory having online subs and buying game time online is cheaper for the company than issue game time cards. This is why ecommerce and shopping online has also taken off so quickly it is 2021 after all.
I am curious as to why you would buy Blizzard balance cards rather than just buying a game time card? I appreciate that the card costs slightly more @ £20.99 on Amazon (although I found some on G2A for £19.64). If you were just after game time surely you would just buy a 60 day game card rather than worrying about left over balance in your account after purchase.
Why do you have to buy timecards?
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That’s a sweeping statement, that seems tinged with cynicism. Individual feelings towards something are a different issue altogether & seated in other areas than financial management.
I didn’t say that 6-monthly was something everyone should do, just that it makes the most economic sense.
‘€65 upfront’ - as you put it - is no different to putting fuel in your car, but then you aren’t going to drive the car for a few weeks.
If commitment is a trap, why sign up to anything at all, even if you DO mean metaphorically…?
Most likely reason would be some level of financial ineptitude/insecurity.
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One of my friends used to buy timecards when he was like 15 because he didnt want his mum go know he was paying monthly for a game.
Which when you think about it, why do we pay monthly for WoW? Immediately restricts the amount of people who could play. Maybe they should make it free, and the have subscriptions offer something extra… I dunno, I’ve been paying monthly for this game since about half way through vanilla. Not sure what that would work out as in total.
I still hold by the thinking; “Pay because you WANT to, not because you HAVE to”.
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