Huh, am actually pretty tempted...

[xannoside]

I got off the WoW train months ago, since Cataclysm, while fun in the single player, was one of the more grindy raid experiences I had ever had (reminded me of the bad old days of Vanilla a little too much).  If I want to go back to grinding an MMO, I'm turning my EvE Online sub back on.

However, with the announcement of Mists of Panderia, I'm thinking to dive back in.  Panderia sounds like they're actually adding some really big PvE content zones (which were my favorite parts about Cata).  They're re-working talents again into something less complicated, which was another thing I really liked about Cata (what's the point of complicated point systems when everyone has the same build anyways?).  And they're adding Pandarens, which I have wanted to play since WoW was announced back in 2001.

So new xpac, basically yes. 

And then there's this annual pass concept.  Since up for WoW for a year, get Diablo 3 for free, and various bonus stuff for WoW and beta access to MoP.  Pointless if you don't intend to play WoW, but with D3 taken into account I'd be essentially paying $8/month to log into WoW 2-3 times a month for 3-4 hours a pop, which is pretty far from bad.  Plus, the last content patch of each Xpac has tended to be pretty good since vanilla.

Need to think about that, but it's very tempting.

Comments

[feiran.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of taking them up on the offer too, but when I went in to see about pricing, the site wanted me to put in a credit card and buy a subscription package before getting to the yearly pass purchase screen, which I found ridiculous. I couldn't even find the yearly pass price to see how much of a deal it would've been.

Plus, do you have to buy Mists of Panderia as an expansion, or is it just new patch/download content? And do you have to have Cataclysm for the Panda expansion to work? I never bought Cata. So though I was tempted, because D3 YAAAAAAY, the offer sounded like a much more expensive proposition than it appeared.

Do you know how long the sale is running?

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

The "annual pass" just means being locked into the sub for 12 months. So however you want to pay it, it's that price. So if you pay per month, you're locked into $15/month for the pass to work. If you pay for 3 months at a time for $12/month, that's how much you're paying per month for the pass.

You need a current and active WoW sub for it to work, and I'm not sure how that works. Their FAQ page makes it sound like I need to re-sub, then elect to be locked in for 12 months, but I'm not entirely sure.

And I don't know how long the sale is running. I thought about waiting a few months, but not if the sale is going to stop when 4.3 comes out in a few weeks.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Locking you in for twelve months makes a certain amount of sense, from Blizz's standpoint: I'm sure I'm not the only player who buys the expansion and plays for 2-3 months before getting bored and doing something else. 'Course they're getting a lot more from me per month -- including the initial purchase -- but I don't know if that's the metric they follow.

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

They probably have their customer lifetime value figured out to millimeter precision.

Likely the reason why they're rolling out new content and likely MoP so quickly is because Cataclysm did significantly worse in terms of user retention than either of the previous 2 xpacs.

Naturally, the raiders are lifers, and even you and I stuck around for a fairly significant amount of time before turning our subs off.