Blizzard giving out free playtime?

[Lochton]

The free days given to everyone for server issues stopped when the Activision takeover happened, you can still get individual ones though.

Didn't stop at all.

[Itori]

Oh the days when Blizzard was Blizzard and treated their players as paying customers and not mindless money sheep.

[T3ramos]

In 2005 the servers were taken offline quite often. The longest offline period was 3 days or so. Still having nightmares

[Diaphin]

Oh the days when Blizzard was Blizzard and treated their players as paying customers and not mindless money sheep.

Just general free playtime was always a compensation for extended server or game issues that made it unplayable, that kind of stuff just doesn't happens anymore, the game usually runs smoothly and very stable and even on the rare occasion where there are server queues, they tend to be rather tame compared to for example Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Launch.

[FelPlague]

Last time I got some free playtime was 2016 after contacting the CS team and asking if there was any available. They also gave me a free cinder kitten pet.

I feel those day's are long gone, but worth a shot.

They still do it, friend literally told blizz he lost his job shortly after renewing his 6 month sub in 2020, cause they were downsizing because of covid.
Gm refunded him, didnt remove the gametime, told him to enjoy his time in quarantine.

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If you haven't been subbed in a while you can ask for 1 or 2 days of gametime to try game out/buy token etc. My brother did that a month or so ago and he was granted 2 days.

Other than that I haven't heard of any freebie game time in a long while.

havent had any EXTREME server issues since wod, so havent needed to, the old days where they did it consistantly was back in the days when literally every tuesday was matinence day.

people complain about the game being down for like 7 hours on a patch/expac prepatch day.
i remember back when every tuesday the servers went down for up to 7 hours.

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The free days given to everyone for server issues stopped when the Activision takeover happened, you can still get individual ones though.

???
Activision took over in 2008, and they have had MANY free sub time since then, wod famously gave 5 days because of its server issues.
you gunna bullshit, don't do something that is so commonly and easily disprovable.

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In 2005 the servers were taken offline quite often. The longest offline period was 3 days or so. Still having nightmares

3 days that was the tbc launch, i remember it well, when i got home from school my big brother was sitting at the pc waiting for the servers to go online, could hear him from my room "YES I"M IN!!!!" onyl for 2 minutes later "GOD DANMIT ITS DOWN AGAIN!!!" he skipped first and last class, as he knew mom would only be called if he didnt show up at all in the day, or did not show up at lunch. so he would be still there when i had to walk to school, and would be there when i got home, normally he would be gone first and home after, which those times were when i got to play on the account, so the only tbc launch stuff i got to do was watch him, till mom found out and grounded him, then i got to play.


I got to 70 before he did. get fucked Eli.

[D3athsting]

Wod launch was a shitfest with players stuck on the gryphon above the garrison, that was the last time they gave free time

[Lochton]

Wod launch was a shitfest with players stuck on the gryphon above the garrison, that was the last time they gave free time

The Garrison conga-line, and if you managed to get in, you would just ALL be in the same Garrison... So packed, so many players..

[Awfulist]

I think for giving us a beta-quality UI we ALL deserve 1 free week.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

How bad was it? Never played WoD

Garrisons were constantly crashing the world servers. It was literally unplayable if you were in Draenor, as in your character would simply get stuck in limbo after disconnecting if you made the mistake of going to Draenor. I think I remember some DDoS attacks also went on at WoD launch, further causing issues just with trying to log in.

[Lochton]

I think for giving us a beta-quality UI we ALL deserve 1 free week.

Oh stop.. The UI isn't even in that bad a state compared to other MMOs, and is hardly worth enough to trigger a free week. They even listened to people and made changes coming by the next update.

[Stickiler]

Just wait a few months. After a few weeks after Dragonflight launch you will get a lot of free to play gametime at some point. Especially when it is only the raiders which still play the game.

You're gonna be really disappointed when the game doesn't go F2P, huh.

[rhorle]

variety of in-game goodies (including game time, mounts, pets, and more special surprises) will be available to participants and audience members throughout the broadcast

As part the Variety show Episode 2 they will be giving out game time. There hasn't been a need to give out game time as compensation in recent patches. Blizzard really has gotten better with that sort of stuff.

[Lochton]

As part the Variety show Episode 2 they will be giving out game time. There hasn't been a need to give out game time as compensation in recent patches. Blizzard really has gotten better with that sort of stuff.

There are a lot of people who doesn't believe this, and it is insane, haha.

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You're gonna be really disappointed when the game doesn't go F2P, huh.

Just the average doomsayer.

[FelPlague]

I think for giving us a beta-quality UI we ALL deserve 1 free week.

The UI is fine what is beta quality about it?

[Twdft]

The UI is fine what is beta quality about it?

Can't resize minimap, can't change groups in raid frames...

[FelPlague]

Can't resize minimap, can't change groups in raid frames...

Could you do that before?
also you can do both with an ingame command.

[Twdft]

Could you do that before?
also you can do both with an ingame command.

Don't see how that matters when the whole UI wasn't customizable before. What does matter is that Blizzard announces a customizable UI and then doesn't let us do everything.
Also I'd be interested in those ingame commands.

[edit] since this is off-topic, I'd appreciate a PM with the ingame commands

[Lochton]

Can't resize minimap, can't change groups in raid frames...

Never been able to, nor is it a default feature idea, nor is it the right thread for this discussion.

[MrLachyG]

they did that in response to servers/realms being down for extended periods of time, most of them happened right after a new expansion launch, and the realm instabilities that came with them. Blizzard has perfected their art over the years and maintenance isn't what it used to be or nearly as long. they really have no reason to do it anymore.

This. The last time I remember there being huge issues was at the start of BfA I think where a specific server was down for 12ish hours because of some bug. But it was just that server

[rogoth]

Could you do that before?
also you can do both with an ingame command.

you could before with old command line text, they removed that when they purged almost all command line text alterations outside of what they deemed 'allowed', the most notable being maxcamdistance command line, but yes, to answer your question you could alter these kinds of things in the past but can't do it now, meaning that it's a worse product as a result.

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Never been able to, nor is it a default feature idea, nor is it the right thread for this discussion.

unless using a mod to alter the minimap in some way that's always been static, but you were once able to alter the default raid frames/party frames and ui with command line prompts.