I have a fair number of gamer friends, so I often get caught up in conversations about World of Warcraft. Usually I let my eyes glaze over, and try to pretend I’m somewhere else, with friends that don’t play WoW. But lately I’ve been spinning the conversation around, trying to gauge how my gamer friends feel about the new WoW credit card. The response so far as been universally: “It’s a good card, I was thinking about getting it.”
In my stupor, I forgot to ask them how they define a “good card.” So I figured I’d take a look at the card myself, and give an evaluation.
The Hooks
Pretty! – This credit card has some flashy ways of trying to pull WoW players into getting the card. First of all, they’re offering 13 different designs to choose from – enough that every single player can find one that makes them say “Oooo, pretty!” However, that’s completely irrelevant as to whether it’s a good card or not. My credit card is black with purple glitter! Doesn’t make it awesome.
Rewards – The main pull of the card is the rewards program. The site defines it as “Accrue World of Warcraft gametime at the rate of 1% of every dollar in qualifying purchases.” What that means, in English: For every $1,500 you charge to the card, you get a free month of WoW. You also get one free month just for getting the card and using it once.
A 1% rewards program is pretty pitiful. Also, the points you earn aren’t transferable to anything else, even to another WoW account. So if you decide to stop playing WoW (it could happen!), you can’t get anything else with your accumulated points, and you can’t sell that month of access to anyone else. You’re stuck. Tricksy way to keep you playing WoW? Yeah, I think so.
But if you’re truly gung-ho about the game, and have no plans to ever give it up, then this is a fair reward for you. But just to put it in perspective: if you were to only charge your monthly WoW access on the card (and nothing else), it would take you 100 months (over 8 years) to earn a free month of play.
Introductory 0% APR – This, as far as I can see, is the best feature the card is touting. 0% APR for 12 months on all purchases and balance transfers. Balance transfers still carry a 3% fee, up to $75, but that’s becoming pretty standard. The rates after the intro period are actually pretty good – if your credit is excellent, you’ll get 9.99%, if it’s good, 11.99%, and less than good, 13.99%. Of course the rate is variable – they can change it on you at any time for any reason. Standard icky credit card practice.
The rest of the terms of the credit card are rather important, but I’m willing to bet most people don’t look at them, or do, but don’t understand them. But they’re still really important to know before you apply for any card.
Cash Advance APR: 23.85% – Don’t get a cash advance. They’re so painful!
Penalty Rate APR: up to 31.85% – The rate you’ll get if you’re late on a payment. I’m willing to bet there’s also a Universal Default clause hidden in here somewhere. That means this is the rate you’ll get if you’re late on ANYTHING – even your electric bill or your cell phone bill.
Grace Period: not less than 20 days – This is the amount of time from when your statement ends for the month until they start charging interest. Pay your bill in full in this time frame, and you’ll never be charged interest.
Method of Computing the Balance for Purchases: Average daily balance (including new purchases). – This is good. What you don’t want to see here is “two cycle billing.”
Annual fee: None. – Good! Unless a rewards card is really, really, spectacular, and you know you’re going to charge enough to take advantage of it, you never want to pay an annual fee.
Over Limit Fee: $35
Late Payment Fee: $35 if your New Balance is less than $500; or $39 if your New Balance is equal to or greater than $500.
These fees are painful, but pretty standard. Remember, not only will you be charged the late fee, but your interest rate might jump to upwards of 31.85%.
So… good card?
Yeah, it qualifies, if you’re an avid WoW player who’s going to charge enough to get the real benefit out of it. The 0% APR intro period is nice, too. Just remember, once that intro period is over, you have to pay your balance in full every month, or else the interest charges will almost certainly cancel out your rewards.
haha, I saw this card too! I’m a pretty avid player of WoW too…when I have time. I’m a dork. ๐ Yah, the time it takes and the money you have to spend in order to earn 1 month of WoW is ridiculous. I don’t think the card is worth it in terms of earning free online play. >.
Get a card with better benefits, or that will actually go to something worth-while. I love WoW, but this card is definetly not worth it to me.
I think it’s a much better idea to choose a credit card based on it’s terms than how pretty it is. So many credit cards these days use “tie ins” to create a connection with people. In my case, low interest rates and high rewards are what make me feel warm and fuzzy. Not whether it’s related to WOW
Hi, I didn’t know about the credit card! I’m really addicted to world of warcraft myself, I even have my own blog about WoW shadow priest spec, so I need to get this one for sure! Thank your for your article, keep it up!
This card sounded like a great idea, what i did was i got my parents to get one and then pay their morgage with it. This comes to about 2000 dollars every month. so they were paying their bills with no extra cost and i was getting my WoW time for free. This is probably not an option for many of you but its an idea.
This is the best use of the wow card yet lol essentially it’s free world of Warcraft!
I may have to look into this…
Total waste, it looks cool but that’s about it!
Really you can find cash back rewards tat are better for you
getting 15$ back is a month of wow and hey you didnt need to spend 1500 to get it
trust me screw this card and gegt one with cash back rewards then you can buy other things to like energy drinks and hot pockets so you can play WoW
for me im glad I dont play wow anymore lol played it for liek 2 months and got bored
Why not use it to open lots of wow accounts, level up characters using bots and sell them. It’ll pay for itself That is as long Blizzard does not check your purcahses – it’s against their tos to resell account though people still do it anyway.
Thanks for the nice overview.
Nothink special. You can go to your local bank and ask to do credit card with any picture you want. And it will cost cheaper…
I finally decided to get one of these cards =) Not for me but for my brother who spends 10 hours per day playing wow =)) He will be happy
The card it very nice. But the choice of pictures is too small
Well its pretty cool because it gives you game time when you use it. But other than that its pretty much a gimmick and a great way of meeting fellow world of warcraft players I might add. The other day I was in the checkout line with my credit card out and one guy behind me struck up a conversation becase he too played WoW. I have since been meeting him on the servers. However, if you want free game time I suggest taking a look at http://www.hiddenstuff.com/ which has a particular guide that tells you how to get free wow game cards. Its a pretty cool method and I suggest you check it out. All the best in oyur gaming endeavors!
Personally I have not gotten this card yet nor do I plan on it. That being said I can understand why certain gamers would want a card like this. It is all about being a hardcore world of warcraft gamer through and through.
DId anyone else notice that reward points expire after a five year period?
That would essentially mean that you and your significant other had best be planning on playing the game for that long, or spending the points on something else.
5 years = 60 months
thats only $900. You need to get to 1500 to redeem anything
Two people could do it.
It gets even closer when you save money buying larger increments at a time.
5 years is ten sets of $156 six month increments.
So two people over the full five years is $1560.
When you consider how the second option gets you essentially four months of free play time (by being inherently cheaper than $15 a month) its just scary.
never heard of it..i will digg it more.
thanx for the post
i will get that CC ..only if they allow me to chose a rare mount ;P
I don’t think that credit card is any good in my opinion.
It’s amazing how much crap these guys sell off this game!
As if the trading card game, figurines, posters, keyboards, mice, mice pads, in game pets and mounts, wall papers, iphone apps, tshirts, hats, bags and so much other crap wasn’t enough…
Now they’re selling CREDIT CARDS. Wow. I guess it’s great how they’re capitalizing on every little detail from a business point of view.
But as a player who already spends $30 for 2 accounts, seeing a new buy more stuff option every time I sign in is getting old.
I think this is a pretty bad deal for a credit card. Honestly, if you make financial decisions like this because of a video game that you play, you will end up very poor :/. I love WoW, but when it comes to something like this, it should be all business. Look for the best rates and reward programs that really give you something!
I got a card that had the same rates ,but when the 0% deal is off, it’s really off. I guess for a warcraft card it may be cool at first ,but I just wouldn’t go for it. Maybe the if the graphics were cool enough I would get one lol.
Yea, blizzard is spreading out way to much now. Trying to make money from to many different things. They should really concentrate on making better games, having less patches, and getting girlfriends.
I was working at a game company a couple years ago and I remember that one of my friends had a World of Warcraft credit card. He told me that when he used the card, he would get credit towards his WoW subscription. I thought that was pretty sweet. It was like earning frequent flyers miles. If I used credit cards ever, I would definitely get one. Great Review, very detailed information about the card and rewards of having one.
so many more fools to buy game currency
I have this card and it’s not 1% rewards… It’s 1 point per 1 dollar spent. Also there is a whole website of other rewards… Normal credit card rewards stuff. Apparently the writer of this article didn’t do much homework before writing. Actually I’ve had a much easier time getting any reward OTHER that free WoW time…
@Herkfixer: I’m sorry you feel this article is lacking. It was written when the card first debuted in 2007 and is, admittedly, definitely out of date. Can you provide me with the name of the current rewards program it is connected to, so that it can be updated? Thank you for your help!
The rewards are definitely not comprable to the strongest rewards credit cards out there, but there is no annual fee. We have no plans on actually using this card, except of course to show activity now and then. So why get it? We want to buy a house in the next year or two, and my husband has zero credit established. He didn’t want to get any, either. But most mortgage brokers look for three lines of credit minimum. Since he’s been playing since beta I went with this and Amazon (if he’s not on WoW he’s on his Kindle) for two companies he is comfortable with. We use my primary cash back card for all the major purchases.
Building credit is a pain. This makes it a little easier ๐
As for the poster, above, the rewards are in points and the cash value of the points is equal to roughly 1% cash back.
Sadly, this service doesn’t provided in our region. Looks very atractive.