One Born Every Minute

And I'm not sure if I'm talking about a sucker or a WoW player.

I seem to now qualify under both headings, because I read about the latest Black Friday promotion launched by Blizzard, in which they invite folks to buy vanilla WoW for $5, burning crusade for $5 and wrath of the lich king for $10.

Being that I went and bought the battlechest a year ago or so to fiddle around with a cow druid who made it to cat level (or lvl 20ish), wrath of the lich king for $10 usd is kinda tempting a steal.

Who knows, I might create the 11 millionth death knight in an effort to experience the much talked-about starter zone introductory missions!

Of course, there is a catch. Or rather, with Blizzard, many catches.

Apparently, shortly after my 2 month game time expired, WoW/Blizzard introduced this whole new improved Battle.net which "strongly encourages" you to merge your WoW account - or not play at all or something along similar lines.

So in order to buy WoTLK at 10 bucks, I would have to make a FREE Battle.net account. Or look up my old ones, which I have promptly forgotten all but maybe the username of. Some lackluster "forgot password" attempts later, I wasn't even sure if I had one, and to which email account it might be linked to.

Nevermind, let's make a new one. It's FREE, anyway. Telling the truth on my region immediately shoved me into the sea.battlenet website, where I uncomfortably tried to check around to see if they had the $5, $10 WoW promotion, and ended up with a "page not found" message. Erm. Not getting the promotion would rather invalidate the point of the battlenet account.

So I moved about a decade back in time and professed to be a resident of the good ol' US of A, yadda yadda.

Enter Sucker territory as I check out my account management page to see the $5, $10 deal, and I sit and wonder if I should merge my current WoW account or just buy a new one - since I am effectively attaching it to a pseudo-battlenet account.

Eventually, I come to the conclusion that I really don't like WoW that much anyway, and the worst thing that could happen is that the account is lost via banning or hacking, and it was already money spent, and it seems pointless to spend more money on something I don't love, and *shudder* I really didn't want to level up in the Barrens one more time to level 20 in the extremely boring tauren and orc zones.

So what the heck, I merge the account, and am about to pick up WoTLK for $10, when the marketing gimmick pops up and says, BUT WAIT, you can pre-order a digital edition of Cataclysm NOW for 37% and play immediately when it launches on Dec 7 (and WoTLK is bundled into the price FREE)...

... Except it was a lot more eloquent than that - it just used pictures. One big cataclysm box. A plus sign. A smaller WoTLK box. And 37% off.

(Or maybe they think their WoW audience is more or less illiterate. Not that far off a guess, I guess.)

I click on the "Learn more" button to check out the cunningly hidden price. $49.99. Ok, 50 bucks. Take off the price of WoTLK, and it's 40 bucks. Did I want to buy Cataclysm for 40 bucks, or $52.30 sgd?

Ehhh. Well, the POINT of doing this now is to putz around in the lowbie zones before Cataclysm, see "The Shattering", and then see what's changed post-Cataclysm. Including maybe play a *rowr* Worgen because I am a closet furry. Except to play a worgen, I must buy the Cataclysm cos it's basically a prestige race for an expansion. Which means I have to buy it -someday-.

And what are the chances of Cataclysm dropping in price? Let's face it. Locally? Zero. WoW is so big. So popular. They are still selling the battlechest full price, more or less, $50-80 sgd, and people are buying. I bet Cata goes for $80, at the very least, when it launches. Digitally, it might eventually drop, like what Blizzard themselves are doing now. But probably only from Blizzard - unless Steam gets their hands on WoW. I'm surely not picking it up from Best Buy or places like that.

Long story short, I convince myself to freaking upgrade to Cataclysm now, and suddenly, not only did I not just get a cheapo WoTLK deal, I have suddenly become a poster boy for WoW: Cataclysm early adoption and given Blizzard 50 bucks instead of ten.

Oh dear lord. There's one born every minute.

To top it off, since my account has been frozen since running out of game time, I have to sign up for a monthly subscription. The good news is that they accept Paypal, since I'm quite paranoid about keeping a payment method stored on anything remotely related to Blizzard, even more so than Apple.

Sighs. At least now with the exchange rate being what it is, I am getting a better deal than trying to buy a 2 month time card for $45-50 sgd - not to mention the inconvenience of frequently frequenting a brick-and-mortar place. I didn't bother with the three and six monthly ones though, I still have some rationality remaining. Will probably end off my stint in 1-2 months. We hope. Unless the hardcore raider bites me or something horrible like that, at which point, you may point to this blog post and laugh. :(

The more hopeful scenario is I will just end up with a folder full of furry postcard screenshots before giving up. Again.