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WoW Makes A Change For Game Time, But Subscriptions Are Staying The Same

Effective immediately, Game Time is only purchasable in one option: 60 days for $30.

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Blizzard is making a change to how you might pay for World of Warcraft--going forward, the only option for Game Time is to buy it for 60 days. The 30, 90, and 180-day Game Time offerings are going away, and only 60 days will remain. The game's subscription offerings, meanwhile, are staying unchanged (more on that later).

This Game Time change is effective immediately, but any time you might have bought already will remain available at the current rate and duration. Going forward, the only option will be to buy 60 days of Game Time for $30 USD.

Blizzard said it's making these changes following a "review on the available services in all currencies."

"We appreciate that players choose to spend their time with World of Warcraft, and we are committed to ensuring the game continues to provide players with great entertainment value," Blizzard said.

For WoW subscriptions, nothing is changing. You can still pay $15/month for one month, or $14 per month if you lock in for three months. The rate goes down to $13 per month if you subscribe for six months.

WoW remains wildly popular, more than 15 years after it was released. The franchise grew even bigger in 2020 with the launch of WoW Classic, which has become a massive MMO on its own. That game's next expansion, The Burning Crusade, is now available for beta testers.

The success of WoW Classic has surprised even Blizzard, which thought the game might only appeal to core fans. Executive producer John Hight told GameSpot: "It certainly surprised us."

He added: "When we put out Classic, we weren't sure, is this going to be a big deal or not? We kind of thought, 'Our core fans are really going to love this, so let's do this for them.' And then, no, it became a whole big community of WoW players. As large as our modern WoW community. That surprised us," Hight said. "We realized, 'Oh gosh we have to support two communities. How do we do that?'"

"Suffice it to say, I believe we probably now hold the record for the two biggest MMOs on the planet Earth. So it's a significant community. Much bigger than we thought it was going to be."

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