Blizzard has made some curious changes in the way players can buy game time for World of Warcraft, their old but popular MMORPG. The options to buy game time in prepaid blocks of 30, 90 and 180 days have been removed, leaving only the option of 60 days. Of course, you can still purchase a recurring monthly subscription.
WoWhead speculates that the move may be a move to fight World of Warcraft bots that use the WoW Token to pay for 30-day passes – they may use their Battle.net account balances to pay for playing time, but that doesn’t is accepted as a payment method for recurring subscriptions. In turn, some players suspect it is an Activision-Blizzard revenue-boosting move, and are irritated by the inability to purchase 30-day passes – particularly players who only occasionally enter the game from time to time.
However, these players are not out of luck – in fact, they can still purchase the recurring monthly WoW subscription – for a price cheaper than the 30-day game time, in fact – and cancel it before charges are made. next month to your credit or debit card.
The main point here, however, is that a percentage of players who intend to play for just one month are likely to forget to cancel their subscription before being charged for the second, and then perhaps feel compelled to continue playing.
Blizzard’s official explanation is not particularly helpful: “We recently conducted an analysis of the services available in all currencies,” wrote the company in an email announcement. “Based on that, we decided to change the playing time options available at the Blizzard Shop. As of today, the 30, 90 and 180 day game time options have been removed and the game time is only available when purchasing 60 days. “
Blizzard points out that the WoW subscription and token prices have not changed and that any game time already purchased will remain valid.