Blizzard just loves giving away ponies. Because World of Warcraft is bleeding subscribers for other, more recent MMO offerings, the good folks at Blizzard have decided to step up their game through outright bribery. Announced at the recent BlizzCon convention, the deal goes like this; sign up for a year of World of Warcraft, and you’ll get a copy of Diablo 3, access to the upcoming beta test for a new expansion, and a special in-game mount, Tyrael’s Charger, for free. In real money terms, that works out to about $85 of the human dollars worth of free merch. Blizzard has the details.
It’s pretty obvious Blizz is waving this deal at us because they value a solid year of predictable user fees over a one-time payment on Diablo 3 that people may or may not actually buy. If I were a cynical sort, I’d also wager they’re giving away D3 to ensure an installed user base for the real monies trading shop that’s supposed to be in the game.
Not that I am a cynical sort, of course.