Dead Man Switch

The game card is no dead man's switch.

My brother is addicted. So I bought him a game card for Christmas.

You see, I thought it was a brilliant move. If he was addicted then I was the only one who bought him something he would actually use.

If he wasn't addicted, I thought he could use it as a planned exit. It was intended to be a count down timer and a dead man's switch. i.e., stick that card in there, knowing you have 2 months to play and get those recurring payments off of your credit card. Then, in order to keep playing, you'd have to go in and tell it to start charging your card again.

Well that BACKFIRED. In TWO ways.

First: He never stopped long enough to put the card in (takes two seconds bro, go here).
Second: Look what happened when I added my card back in April:

All it did was postpone the credit card charge. So once the game card finished off, it didn't stop charging me. It just went back to charging my credit card.

So why did I buy him another game card for his birthday that just passed? Because I'm the only one that got him something he'll use. :)

(That is, of course, if he actually loads it.)

Game Card Added

In light of the recent billing fiasco (Accounts set to re-up on April 20 & 21st just plain didn't and then the phone lines to the billing department died. Niiiiiice. Has since been resolved though.), well I figured I should get off my bum and post about my game card.

I had posted previously that by buying a gamecard at Amazon.com you could play for $12.50 a month. I ordered my 60 day Game Cardand added it to my account.

Bottom line - It was Fast and Easy.

Once you log into your account look in the list of links in the upper right hand corner for the "Add a Game Card" link. The instructions there tell you to scratch off the grey strip on the back and type in the code that you find. I liked this feature because that way if I wanted to buy a card off of someone I could verify it had not yet been used if that strip was still there.

Once it's added you get a success message like this:

My 3-month subscription was set to re-up the next day but I added the game card and voila - it posted right away and pushed back the date to charge my card 2 months.

More information about using your game card can be found here at the Blizzard Gamecard Billing Information page.

WoW for $12.50/Month

I finally sat down to confirm a suspicion that I had. It turns out there's a cheaper way to play World of Warcraft. Not by a lot, but hey, it all adds up.

As you may recall from that fateful day you signed up for WoW, you chose to pay in increments of either 1 month, 3 months or 6 months. The longer you signed up for, the cheaper the monthly rate ($14.99, $13.99 and $12.99 respectively).

Well, I noticed that on Amazon.com I could buy a 60 day Game Cardfor $24.99 which is about $12.50/month (free shipping on purchases of $25.00 or more).

Type	Length	Cost/Month
Amazon	2 Months	$12.50
Subscription	6 Months	$12.99
	3 Months	$13.99
	1 Month	$14.99

For only a two month committment I can actually beat the cheapest rate available.
So I ordered a card and I'll let you know how it goes.

(Disclosure - these are affiliate links, which allow me to bring you such beautifully crafted links such as this:)