wow Community Reactions to Purchasable Game Time Limitation Announcement

[Starym 3,800]

 

Blizzard's recent removal of game time options was a very controversial one, with a lot of negative feedback from many players. Despite a 60-day game time card being the industry standard, the decision did not go over well with the community, and today we'll be taking a look at some of their concerns and reactions.

One of the big things that became clear with the posts following the announcement was that many didn't exactly understand what it actually meant. Due to the confusing nature of the specific "game time" term in the Blizzard Shop, many assumed it just meant, well, game time, regardless of the manner in which it was purchased. While it seemed pretty clear and explicitly stated in the post that subscriptions and WoW tokens would not be changing/affected, many still assumed that 60 days was now the minimum amount you could buy time for, even with a subscription, and thought tokens would no longer work or would have to be bought in pairs.

For those that realized that subs would stay the same (and others who it was explained to in the threads) the pressing concern was credit cards. Many players either can't or don't want to pay via credit cards or similar means, and so for them the change was very significant. Some players also gathered enough store balance via WoW tokens to buy 180 days of game time in the Blizzard store for the discount, and will no longer be able to do that, having to get an additional token for 6 months. The fact that you can buy a sub and them immediately cancel it was also brought up many times as a solution for the 30-day card's removal, which should help some players adjust to the new system, but again some simply can or will not use credit cards.

And then there's the deluge of negative feedback which dominated the conversation, as Blizzard has had a string of recent decisions that didn't sit well with the community, from the firings and severance packages, to Bobby Kotick's $200 million bonus and regional price changes. Let's start with the top rated comment in an almost 1,000 post thread and move on from there:

Quote

There's nothing about this that benefits wow players/subscribers. - Harlandus
...
Nope. They aren't giving any reasons at all, it's just hey we changed this. - phaiz55
...
I kinda think the blue post was rhetorical and really poorly written lol. I read it, and I know it said that, but it just wasn't that clear to me - other articles about it are way more clear. - TheBigGame117
...

tokens still work the same.

This change seems to only be targeted at people that already have a lot of B net balance, for whatever reason.

Thus tokens don't work the same. No more discounted 6 months through bnet balance from tokens. - Shigeloth
...
It feels more like Blizzard is trying to cash in on the old gym membership idea.

Simply forget to cancel your recurring subscription and make some extra bucks from that. It also means that people who forget to cancel long-term subscription plans on automatic payment boost the sales figures quarter-to-quarter more. If someone forgets to cancel their six-month sub, that's another user locked in for two quarterly reports. - BCMakoto
...
Damn they really are trying to piss off the player base - infiniteAnchor
...
Pointless change, only causing frustration.

Blizz has really not been on top of their game lately. - Dvveh
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Well this sucks. Instead of directly turning tokens into gametime I always turned them into bnet balance and purchased 6 months at a time for the discount. - kr3b5
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What kind of survey did they do where the outcome was that players want LESS options wtf - sushade
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This benefits no one and only hurts the part of the player base that don't use credit cards (students and people with no fixed income or stable jobs). If your reaction to this is to say "lol, who doesn't have a credit card, how do you live" try to understand that america is not the entire world. Paying with gametime is really common here in Brazil, for example, and ontop of all of this, this decision was accompained by a price hike in BRL. - Caua539
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You can pay month by month in game with gold. I have 0 issues with them removing the 30 day option from the store to combat bots, but wish they had the 6 month option for the price break with Bnet balance. - Dongalor

Here are the main threads where the issue is being discussed:

• Changes to Purchasable Game Time Options
• World of Warcraft no longer allows you to buy 30 days of game time... Good or bad
• Im a boomer who exclusively buys physical cards of game time for 10 years...mandatory 2 month subs?
• Eff you Blizzard for removing the 30 day game time option and instead forcing me to buy the 60 day one.
• Changes to Purchasable Game Time Options - 30, 90, 180 Day Options Removed, Subscriptions Remain

Hopefully Blizzard will take all of the comments into consideration, as offering fewer options to players, regardless of what the industry standards are, is usually a bad idea, and this particular one has really upset a significant part of the WoW community.

[GBeast 33]

I'm pretty sure it had something to do with people getting accounts from argentina, where they are a fraction of the price to to maintain

[Calysia 229]

And I'm guessing that 90%+ of the people complaining are not affected at all by these changes...they are the chronic, resident forum whiners.

[Hypersonic 119]

12 minutes ago, Calysia said:

And I'm guessing that 90%+ of the people complaining are not affected at all by these changes...they are the chronic, resident forum whiners.

I'm sure not.. these changes just *filtered* ridiculous again. I don't know what kind of standards they're talking about because they lead the industry so make those standards.
It's just totally pointless to force people using subscription tab even if they want to play only for a month -due any reason- and after a month don't forget to cancel it... Just a pure asshole move this whole *filtered* again.   

[Darkclaw 23]

imho i don't undestand why ppl are so mad about this, it's not like blizzard is forcing you to actually BUY the 2 monts, ppl still have 3 ways to get only one month, wow token, suscription and if u dont have the gold on ur toon you can get a pal to lend you some, send a ticket to a gm for an hour of game, trade, buy token and there you go, yet again i neither understand why blizz did this, this wont stop the boting or the gold/BN balance selling.

[Bobbis 208]

6 hours ago, Starym said:

While it seemed pretty clear and explicitly stated in the post that subscriptions and WoW tokens would not be changing/affected

People are idiots, don't read beyond the title, and just assume the worst... unfortunately standard stuff these days

[Kopuliak 17]

4 hours ago, Calysia said:

And I'm guessing that 90%+ of the people complaining are not affected at all by these changes...they are the chronic, resident forum whiners.

I'm guessing that 100% of the people making excuses for this arrogant Blizz decision are subscribers using credit cards not affected at all by these changes.Unlike those "forum whiners" who will have to pay more money for the same product in the future.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Kopuliak

[Steveson 193]

1 hour ago, Darkclaw said:

imho i don't undestand why ppl are so mad about this, it's not like blizzard is forcing you to actually BUY the 2 monts, ppl still have 3 ways to get only one month, wow token, suscription and if u dont have the gold on ur toon you can get a pal to lend you some, send a ticket to a gm for an hour of game, trade, buy token and there you go, yet again i neither understand why blizz did this, this wont stop the boting or the gold/BN balance selling.

People are mad because the game's overall quality (even if you include WoW Classic) isn't worth so much money to cough up every month. Especially in those countries where minimum wage is waaaay less than in US (in USD equivalent). So this gives people even less reasons not to cancel their subscription and more reasons not to buy more game time. They'd rather spend said money on something else. Like you've said - we are not forced to play this game and we're gonna do exactly that. We will stop playing and cancel our subcription. THEN Activision will realize how seriously they've screwed up.

[ResoWho 68]

sad, i always bought tokens with gold, sold them for bnet currency and bought game time with it (like that i always saved ~1€ per token) and every once in a while got a mount or something like that for 6 month game time. now i just can use the tokens instantly without any benefits since the price for 60 days is the money you get for 2 tokens 😞

wish i knew that earlier so that i could have spent my gold on tokens before the change

Edited March 28, 2021 by ResoWho

[Arcling 898]

7 hours ago, Calysia said:

And I'm guessing that 90%+ of the people complaining are not affected at all by these changes...they are the chronic, resident forum whiners.

Pretty sure there are players here from Brazil, Russia and other countries affected. So this comes as very ignorant and stupid.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Arcling

[Trest 61]

7 hours ago, Calysia said:

And I'm guessing that 90%+ of the people complaining are not affected at all by these changes...they are the chronic, resident forum whiners.

Everyone knows that 83.76% of all statistics are just made up 😆

As someone who has been using bnet balance to buy game time in 6 month chunks for the discount, this change does negatively affect me.

[Ragingwolf 310]

All comes down to personal preference.  Those that have a re-occurring subscription will not be affected by it, that's if you plan on just playing WoW compared to other games, along with those that grind out gold or gifted a WoW token to be used for 30 days.  It's still technically $15 a month, that standard rate has not increased, to play and you still have your opinion on being subbed for the full duration or not.

I can't get mad or angry of the changes that were implemented to two months for $30 nor can I agree 100% with the those opposed to it either.  And stating it's all Blizzards fault is not entirely accurate either.  Activision is basically closing and opening areas of opportunities for increased revenue due the world being hit with Covid 19.  Do I stand by their decisions that affect Blizzard?  Nope.  Am I empathetic to those that are in rough patches that might restrict their game time? Yes, because I've been there before.

[blackstar128 30]

The problem is this change doesn't solve any problem, while causing problem for some people ( I don't know what percentage of player base but still a significant chunk will be negatively affected). The only incentive I can see for this move is to push people is blizz trying to get more money out of people. While you can sub for 1 month, many who do that may forget to or too lazy to cancel and end up paying more. Also many of the people don't have time to play full time and just buy a 1 time 1 month game time for each major patch to experience the content, which isn't a viable option for many. 

Its pure greed, from a game that has been monetized in a way that is no way acceptable in today standards, with a non-existence support for a live service game where we are paying more than Xbox game pass for a single game that also has full game purchase AND in game shop. Add to that the low quality of wow recently (I mean shadowlands has been better than bfa but thats not saying too much). I grow up playing wow and I love it, but they are REALY pushing it to the breaking point.

[Wildwitch 108]

Everyone has an opinion...how many of these people work inside the company and know what the reasoning is?

NONE OF YOU. It's a choice. Quit the game. Maybe now the gold farmers/sellers will quit!

[Steveson 193]

2 hours ago, Wildwitch said:

Everyone has an opinion...how many of these people work inside the company and know what the reasoning is?

NONE OF YOU. It's a choice. Quit the game. Maybe now the gold farmers/sellers will quit!

We are consumers. We pay for the product company provides. If we don't like it - we won't buy it. We don't really give a damn about their inner politics - we want a good product for a fair price. WoW at it's current state does not fit such criteria. End of story.

[Meraktus 1]

Its very easy to say it if dont have time and money  invested. Its easy too if you was not involved in the game history since beginning, friend. Activision knows this

Edited March 29, 2021 by Meraktus

[Steveson 193]

1 hour ago, Meraktus said:

Its very easy to say it if dont have time and money  invested. Its easy too if you was not involved in the game history since beginning, friend. Activision knows this

Me who was an active player in all addons since WotLK: "Watch me" *unsubs without missing a beat*

[Ragingwolf 310]

I know this was not mentioned anywhere but I am curious of this one plausible cause.  Was their a change in local government on taxation of subscription services in other countries?  Did said country increased fees for incoming services?  Or are we all just going to stick to it's all Activision's fault theory?