BlizzCon: new Annual Pass announced tomorrow?

[brothernads]

Do you think that Morhaime will announce another annual pass during the BlizzCon opening ceremony tomorrow? With MoP essentially complete and a new expansion about to be unveiled (but probably not released for 6 months or more), the timing seems ripe to get people to commit to another year of WoW.

They could package it with a free copy of the D3 expansion as it should be released around April 2014, along with some other standard goodies (WoW beta access, mount, Hearthstone stuff, etc.)

Seems like a strong possibility...

[Killmaim Deathbringer]

Wasn't there an interview somewhere where they stated they have no plans for another annual pass?

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Almost certainly it'll happen. Though it won't be anywhere near the success of AP1 because there's no good game to offer with it.

[Travio]

Wasn't there an interview somewhere where they stated they have no plans for another annual pass?

They said they had no plans at the time of the interview.

However, they can't include the D3 Expansion as part of it.
Why?
Because what of those people who get an AP that don't have D3? The expansion is now useless. If there is an AP, I'd almost wonder if they'd give the (WoW) expansion free with it.

[Darsithis]

Wasn't there an interview somewhere where they stated they have no plans for another annual pass?

Things change! I bet there is one. I hope there is one.

[brothernads]

They said they had no plans at the time of the interview.

However, they can't include the D3 Expansion as part of it.
Why?
Because what of those people who get an AP that don't have D3? The expansion is now useless. If there is an AP, I'd almost wonder if they'd give the (WoW) expansion free with it.

Sorry I wasn't clear - they gave the base D3 game away for free last time, I'm assuming they would do it again here as a throw-in with the Reaper of Souls expansion.

[Lucetia]

They said they had no plans at the time of the interview.

However, they can't include the D3 Expansion as part of it.
Why?
Because what of those people who get an AP that don't have D3? The expansion is now useless. If there is an AP, I'd almost wonder if they'd give the (WoW) expansion free with it.

What they could do is offer the D3 expansion + D3 if you don't already have it (or give those who do a giftable copy) or if you do have it let you grab SC2 expac if you won't so I don't have to get it :P

[Simca]

Almost no chance.

They've said they didn't like how it played out at virtually every interview since 2011.

Edit:

I looked up quotes to put here - apparently they were ambivalent about it rather than hostile towards it like I thought.

The Annual Pass was very popular and allowed a lot of people to take part in beta testing. Is there any chance we will see another Annual Pass in the future?
That is still TBD. We don't have anything planned right now, so you will have to keep your ears open. Maybe at some point in the future, maybe not.

Q: The Annual Pass was extremely successful. Are there any plans for a future Annual Pass after the 1-year term is up on the current one?
We haven’t talked about that. I think the WoW Annual Pass came out of just sort of thinking about the opportunity for Diablo coming out, and thinking there’s gonna be a lot of loyal WoW players who want to play Diablo and thinking about how to make that a compelling offer. Will we do something like that in the future? I’m sure we will. What is it? I have no idea. We haven’t really even started thinking about what that would be like.

I think people might say “Hey, we need to do a Starcraft and WoW [annual pass]”. I don’t know that that makes too much sense. I think the venn diagram of overlap between Starcraft players and WoW players may be a little bit smaller than Diablo.

I guess it is possible, but the most recent "we have no plans" quotes are from like 2 months ago, so that's not a lot of time for it to be put together.

[Grubjuice]

if they do what they did with MoP and guarantee all purchasers of the annual pass access to Beta i will absolutely buy it

i kick myself that i did not do it last time.

[Shudder]

Nobody would be stupid enough to fall for that again.

[Travio]

Sorry I wasn't clear - they gave the base D3 game away for free last time, I'm assuming they would do it again here as a throw-in with the Reaper of Souls expansion.

Yeah, if they gave the D3 expansion, they'd have to do the base game with it as well (unless the expansion has a stand alone campaign as well, which might be cool).

[Agoonga]

I hope there is another annual pass.

[Coldpro]

They said they had no plans at the time of the interview.

However, they can't include the D3 Expansion as part of it.
Why?
Because what of those people who get an AP that don't have D3? The expansion is now useless. If there is an AP, I'd almost wonder if they'd give the (WoW) expansion free with it.

Perhaps it can include D3 + Xpac or even D3 + RoS Beta?

[Marahdeka]

For me it would be cool to have a new Annual Pass. I plan to keep subscribing anyway, so anything extra would be cool.

[Yunru]

Of chose there will be. Its all abauth money. Not to say blizzard wants to keep subs up to make a investors happy.

[Wilhelm137]

They couldn't really be that stupid to flat out tell people that there's 9+ months between this content and the expac a 3rd time can they? Because that's what another annual pass would do is say they want to hold subs again while we sit on the same exact thing for almost a year again, there is a point where they have to learn that will not work anymore.

[RoKPaNda]

Nobody would be stupid enough to fall for that again.

Are we still doing this thing where we act like somehow the AP was a poor deal? Is that what we're doing? I didn't even get the annual pass because I had no plans of playing WoW for that long. I tend to take breaks after I see the current content. However even as someone who didn't get the annual pass, I can see that it was a pretty good deal. If you're planning on playing WoW anyway, why not go for it? Especially since you COULD without punishment break the payment agreement, you just wouldn't get any of the free stuff. Which is what the deal was btw, it was "Do this thing that you're already doing and if you do it for a year, you get free stuff. If you don't, you don't."

The only way the AP was a bad deal was if you wouldn't have been playing WoW anyway and you agreed to the AP and stuck with it.

At some point they'll probably do another AP, but it will be now. For one subs are stable at the moment, they only dropped a very small number of subs comparatively this quarter. (Now that most of the Asian realm bleed off is over, and the west has always been fairly stable.) Two there isn't really anything they can give away that's worth it. Others have covered the expansion thing already. They could give away D3 + the expansion but I don't see that being a big enough incentive. Same with StarCraft 2 since LotV is awhile off yet, and Heart of the Swarm has been out awhile. Hearthstone and All-Stars (Heroes of the Storm) are both F2P so that doesn't work.

[Deleted]

We'll see something I'm sure of it. With a beta incoming they would be mad not to take advantage of it, and there are a few mounts in the game still unclaimed. It doesn't even have to offer a free game.

[Varjo410]

The idea itself was good, the problem was all those people who mindlessly got it right away and suddenly went "I don't care about the beta, or D3, or the mount... Blizz ripped me off, I want out of it!!!".

[Kelimbror]

I told myself I would never fall for it again, but I'm a sucker and I would totally do this. If they included D3 xpac I wouldn't even hesitate, but I'm still inclined to do it since I'm so satisfied with MoP. I'm hoping they do it, because I want more free stuff and goodies.