My card was never charged it seems. I eventually used Option A and bought a retail copy, then created a new account.

Hi I just came across your blog, I was searching for an answer to the same problem :(
I’m just going to give up on it, if WoW are going to be this much of a pain, I’m not playing any more!!
I have one question though, did you get your money back after a while? My bank account hasn’t actually been billed for the upgrade, but my available balance has gone down… it’s all really weird and annoying :'(

@kylievb: My point exactly. Why don’t they just remove the online trial upgrades via credit card and make everyone buy the box instead of doing this shit.

I tried upgrading during my trial (4 days into it I think) and for a day nothing happened then suddenly locked out of my a/c. No email to explain why, and no response from Blizzard so far and it has been a few days. Thank god I didn’t get too addicted! There is no way I’ll go out and buy a retail copy, if they want to screw people around like this I’ll just get Warhammer instead :>

[…] My brother is an avid WoW player. WoW seems to be his only staple game, as he rarely plays anything else. As such, he’s got lots of high level characters all over the place. He did ask me to play again and I was reluctant to do so. But a few posts from one of my favourite gaming blogs, and again from another blog that I religiously read (although his experience wasn’t quite as smooth), I was pushed over the edge. I had to get it. […]

Yeah, apparently gold farmers sped a lot of money on advertising their services. :(

I should probably figure out how to prevent these from showing up here. I use Google Adsense btw, so these are showing up automatically based on the context.

Define Irony: I look below this line of comments and what do I spy? A banner ad for a gold farming site. *facepalm*

[quote post=”2575″]The reason they want you to go buy retail is that if you get to day 89 and do a chargeback (a common gold farmer tactic… so they don’t even end up paying for the service), the cost of the box gets charged back to the retailer instead of Blizzard, who would otherwise have to eat that money in addition to the extra 2 months of service fees. [/quote]

Wow, that actually makes a lot of sense. It still sucks for me as an average customer but it makes sense.

[quote comment=”9532″]The reason you were unable to upgrade electronically and asked to purchase retail has nothing to do with retail sales figures and everything to do with Blizzard’s attempts to combat gold farmers.[/quote] Exactly. From an economic point of view, your lost (potential) business is not worth risking losing the N existing paying customers that will likely get driven out of the game if they let you in and you’re a gold farmer.

The reason they want you to go buy retail is that if you get to day 89 and do a chargeback (a common gold farmer tactic… so they don’t even end up paying for the service), the cost of the box gets charged back to the retailer instead of Blizzard, who would otherwise have to eat that money in addition to the extra 2 months of service fees.

@Joe Cool – thanks for the info. I read your comments on the other blog and I appreciate your wife’s insights into this issue.

Still, like I said in my response on Twenty Sided – I’m new to WoW. I know next to nothing about gold farmers. I had no clue that upgrading my account after long period of inactivity was suspicious. In fact I still don’t know if it was that or the fact that my name is spelled slightly different on my account and on my credit card (Łukasz vs Lukasz). Or is it because I logged in once from work (different IP, different ISP, different town) to change my password. I wish I knew, but no one can tell me. And that’s the problem.

I can sort of understand it now, but that doesn’t change the fact that it sucks for me – an average, naive customer. Anyway, thanks for stopping by!

@Travis – Meh… I’m not really into pirate games at the moment for some reason but thanks for the suggestion.