Random Rant: Game Cards
by Mike D'Anna 
Mar 2nd 2006 at 5:37AM
I don't know how most of you pay for your monthly WoW subscription, but since I have a friend who works in a game
store & can get me a friendly discount, I've always used the pre-paid subscription card method. I'm not sure if
it's cheaper or not in the long run, but it makes me feel like I'm saving money, and if not, I can live with denial
pretty well.I've never had an issue with paying this way, until I tried to log on to the game & found out that my pre-paid time had expired. In the past, I've always remembered ahead of time & picked one up during one of my frequent trips to the store, but this time I forgot, and that 's my fault...but my issue is this: I didn't get any notice from Blizzard that my account was about to expire.
Okay, it sounds like I'm whining...and maybe I am, but in every other MMORPG I've played, I've received some sort of notice if my account was about to lapse...wouldn't it benefit Blizzard to let their players know this? After all, they do want our money, right? With all the pop-up & ad technology available to us today, wouldn't this be the easiest, most cost-effective thing in the world to implement? You know the old adage: it's cheaper to keep an existing customer than to try & recruit a new one. Then again, they do have 5,999,999 other folks funneling cash into their pockets...
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
bobilox Mar 2nd 2006 6:20AM
Blizzard has a general problem with customer relations. The apparent lack of concern for the lag problem, not keeping us informed of relm status when they are doing emergency work and form letter e-mails and such do not keep the customer satisfied. The shadow moon posts are a clear example of this. Posts in the realm status forum a week or so back when they were down didn't tell us a thing. They said server such and such was going down for a couple of hours. Five hours later, without an interium update, it comes back. They really need to make each customer feel that they are important to them.
Craigy Mar 2nd 2006 7:52AM
They also dont let you know before they charge your credit card like other MMOs do.
Mike Mar 2nd 2006 8:47AM
They are doing something right: 6 millions subscribers and counting. They are running the largest persistent, massively multiplayer universe in history and they have set the gold standard for online RPG gaming. Cut them some slack.
boneyard Mar 2nd 2006 9:04AM
sure blizzard doesn't do everything right and certainly people will / have quited over that. but as mentioned looking at the population numbers it doesn't stop them from growing.
GlennZilla Mar 2nd 2006 10:29AM
I don't get upset with Blizzard's Customer Service. I figure they never expected to be 6 million cutomers successfull. So they are scrambling to keep up as best they can. This means band-aid fixes until they can spare the time and train the manpower to address the situation in more depth.
It's not like you can hire an IT guy off the street and expect them to know everytihng about the highly customized and unique system Blizzard has created.
To address the question of the post, Using game cards, my answer is that I prepay 6 months in advance. This equates to an almost 50% off rate. If I am going to be addicted, I don't want to be broke enjoying it.
Pinguino Mar 2nd 2006 2:15PM
Hey Glenzilla.. Um how does one pay for 6 months in advance and get a discount? I'd like to do that.. or maybe a year in advance?
Tyler Love Mar 2nd 2006 2:32PM
They give you a warning during game play. I believe it warns you on the little chat box that you have 15 minutes left before you subscription expires and they log you out :P
GlennZilla Mar 2nd 2006 2:51PM
The prepaid 6 months is one of the subscription options available on the website. It's $12.99 a month (one charge of $77.94 each 6 months)
So I must now eat my words. It's not as good a deal as I thought I was getting. I'm saving a whopping $12 every 6 months.
I remember buying a 6 month card when I originally bought the game and it was $65 at the time. A far better deal though I can't find anything but the 3 months cards now and they don't offer any savings.
bobilox Mar 2nd 2006 3:07PM
The point of the original question, I thought, was the lack of communication on Blizzards part about an emminent account lapse.
Yes, 6 million people can't be wrong and I'm sure other game developers see this and are looking at copying WoW. How many of the 6 million would switch to a WoW without the lag? How many people love the game but are very unhappy with blizzard? I would be much happier if I had a clue about what their plans are for addressing the problems. We get news about respecing classes, news about holiday activites but nothing about a soulition to lag or overcrowded servers.
There were a LOT of unhappy people responding to the Shadow Moon post.
Mike Mar 2nd 2006 3:31PM
Maybe a lot of people to you or me, but a lot of people in the grand scheme of 6 million subscribers? The topic on Shadow Moon is 47 pages long. That means, if each of those posts was by a separate author and all of those authors were complainers, that would be 940 complainers. Let's see... 940/6,000,000 = .00016 or .016% of WoW subscribers.
Now I haven't read every post on there, but I'm sure that at least a couple people have posted multiple times. And I'm sure that some people weren't complaining. The bottom line is that I'm almost positive that the VAST majority of users are relatively happy with WoW. But there is a growing minority of vocal complainers that apparently has come to expect immediate gratification from Blizzard when they whine about something, be it game mechanics, or lags, or queues, or what-have-you.
The bottom line is, while some may disagree, "customer service" shouldn't necessarily mean kowtowing to the demands of every poster on the WoW community forums. I don't know how Big Blue prioritizes these issues, but I'm sure they have some method. IF the problem gets big enough, they'll address it.
bobilox Mar 2nd 2006 7:11PM
So, mike, you point is that if only .016% of your subscribers are complaining about your service, then you don't need to fix it? I don't think lag is selective. Everyone experiences it and can't be happy about it.
If Blizzard would simply communicate their plan to address the problem to me, I would be much happier.
Lack of this implies they are ignoring the problem or don't care about their customers satisfaction. Like the original intent of this blog.
And instant gratification takes too long.
Mike Mar 2nd 2006 9:50PM
In short, yes. If only .016% of your customers are unhappy, then you don't need to fix anything. That's one in ten thousand people. You can find one person out of ten thousand people who will complain that the damn sun came up this morning.
Obviously, if I was one of these disenfranchised players, I'd want my problem addressed as well. But I'd completely understand why the voices of 940 players were dwarfed and drowned out by the voices of 5,999,660.
Anyway, back on-topic, they probably should notify you when your subscription is coming due, and it couldn't be too terribly hard to automate something like that.
the Brightside Mar 3rd 2006 3:08AM
Trying to read the number of comments against the number of posters to a forum that's dedicated to one server is slightly disingenuous. A better sampling would be those 940 (though that number itself is high, we agree on that) as compared to how many discrete payors exist on Shadow Moon, since one person can have several characters, and one person can have several accounts (God only knows why you'd get more than one). But even then you aren't getting a realistic sampling of the population that as stated above likes the game, but can't stand the way Blizzard's managing it.
I'm one of the latter. Yes, they're in a unique position. Yes, it's a big game, it takes expertise, blah blah blah. On the other hand, their press release patting themselves on the back for getting 6 million subscribers just seems smug. Ok, so you've got 6 million subscribers. How many more subscribers are you going to get before your infrastructure chokes, and they find some other game?
I've been on the fringe of canceling for about a month now. I probably won't, I now live 2000 miles away from everyone I know, and WoW is definitely cheaper then a cell phone. But I'll be damned if I'm just going to shut up and take it when Blizzard wants to keep taking our money and ignoring what we have to say. Sooner or later, they'll need to sew the veins together, rather than just slapping another band-aid on the hemorrhage.
To be a bit more on-topic, now that I've vented the frustrations from tonight's god-awful lag on Hakkar, their lack of notification that your game card will expire is probably a nifty mechanism for providing the recurring charge option with a veneer of convenience. It's pretty simple marketing. The automatic payment makes you forget you're paying every month to play the game, as it abstracts that layer away from the experience. Then, when you stop playing, it might take you another month to cancel your subscription, because you forgot it was a subscription. Without expending any effort, they'll catch some extra money from someone who won't check. (Note that I'm not attaching either 1. Any moral value to this or 2. Any solid belief that's what they're doing. Odds are they're too busy planning the next 40-man raid instance to implement a reminder.)
Daryl Mar 3rd 2006 8:00AM
I work at GameStop so I pick up my gamecards with a discount, but it isn't a whole lot less than what you would pay normally. I just remember every 2 months that I need to pick one up. Like just recently, my time was going to expire on March 3 (it told me when I put in the last card, this time it runs out on May 3), and I knew I got paid on February 24, the last time before I expired that I got paid. So I picked one up when I went to work. It might be easier for me since they are usually readily available to me on a daily basis, but as long as you keep track of when you expire, by marking it on the calender, or having your email service send you a notice yourself, you should be just fine.