A month in to an MMO, the question is usually “do I want to start subscribing now?”; for Warhammer, though, I don’t really have to decide for the best part of another month (not that it’s stopped me, look out for a State of the WAR Nation soon). Thanks to the headstart, grace periods and bonus days, I seem to have a subscription until early November, and as the EU billing system has only just become available I haven’t needed to hand over any credit card details to be playing. I doubt we’ll get any detailed official figures, much less broken down by region, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this caused a higher than average drop in EU subscribers as the month-with-the-box draws to an end just from impetus, you have to go all the way to the account page and type stuff into boxes to keep playing, whereas usually you’d have to go all the way there and click a couple of boxes to unsubscribe. Even if it’s not outright laziness, it’s all too easy for it to be one of those “oh yeah, must remember to…” jobs that have a habit of slipping through the gaps, and if your timing’s slightly off you end up subscribed to Age of Conan for an extra month. I had a quick look at the account screen, just to check it was up and running and see how long I had left before having to hand over some cash, and something else that struck me was a little tick box labelled something like “Recurring subscription?” (or similar); without actually trying the process, I presume the default option is that you just pay for your 1/3/6 months, rather than the usual set-up (in every other MMO I can think of) of “we’ll keep taking money until you tell us to stop”. I’m not sure if this is a laudably ethical decision or some legal requirement, but again it seems like the path of least resistance might be to stop playing, rather than keep paying. Or perhaps I’m massively overestimating the number of people for whom going to a web page and clicking a couple of links is a bit too much effort.