Your options for buying World of Warcraft game time have just changed for the worse: only the 60-day option is available for purchase. That said, WoW subscription options thankfully remain unaffected by this change.
World of Warcraft is Blizzard Entertainment's flagship MMORPG and arguably its most popular product on the market. As an MMO, players have to pay a monthly subscription or purchase game time in blocks. There were quite a few options for buying World of Warcraft game time, but that's all changed today — now, you can only buy game time in 60-day increments.
Why is World of Warcraft Game Time Changing?
The changes to World of Warcraft game time were announced in a post on the game's official forums (via Wowhead). The options to purchase game time in 30-day, 90-day, and 180-day increments are now gone for good, although players can still pick up subscriptions with various lengths of time.
"We recently conducted a review on the available services in all currencies," read the post on the game's forums. "Based on this, we have decided to alter the available Game Time options in the Blizzard Shop. As of today, the Game Time options of 30, 90, and 180 days have been removed and Game Time is only available as a purchase of 60 Days."
One might wonder: why are these changes happening? Removing the 30-day option means that a player who wants to jump into the game without committing to a subscription will have to buy 60 days worth — no more, no less — and it certainly seems inconvenient for players who like to have options.
It might come down to the fact that subscriptions automatically renew and game time does not. A cautious player might want to buy just 30 days of game time to check out the game without risking forgetting about the subscription renewing.
That said, the much more likely reason is somewhat explained in Blizzard's post. While you can buy a digital World of Warcraft game time card, a physical game time card is also available at online stores and, more critically, physical retailers. If the 30-day, 90-day, and 180-day cards were not selling as well, it would make sense for Blizzard Entertainment to reduce the options down to the most popular one. That makes it easier for retailers to stock and display the cards and it would also reduce Blizzard's printing costs by changing it from four options down to one.
As Blizzard's forum post notes, the automatically-renewing subscriptions and WoW Tokens remain unaffected by this change. You can get started with World of Warcraft with a free trial on its official website; beyond that, you'll have to buy World of Warcraft: Shadowlands starting at $39.99 or your regional equivalent and pay a monthly subscription starting at $14.99 a month.
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What do you think of the change to World of Warcraft game time? Do you prefer to buy game time or stick with an automatically-renewing subscription? Let us know in the comments below!
