Topic: WoW goes "free to play" up to level 20

[idolminds]

Guess I can go see the new starter areas now.

[Quemaqua]

Interesting, and if you bite and already had the original game, you get Burning Crusade stuff for free. I'm not going to bite because... god damn it, I just can't. I love the world but the game itself is too much of an investment.

... but it's fucking tempting.

[MysterD]

You know, I still have my WOW Battle Chest, untouched...w/ keys for WOW + BC....

[Ghandi]

Interesting. This would have been awesome back in the day, but since they have streamlined leveling (at least early on), getting to level 20 is really quick now. Back in vanilla it took me a bit, but the last time that I played I got to 20 extremely fast. Also lots of restrictions on the free accounts.

Basically, "Free sample of crack! If you want more you can pay!".

[Xessive]

[Update: Blizzard has added a list of limitations for the Starter Edition on its Support site:]

    A level cap of 20.

    A maximum of 10 gold.

    Trade skills are capped at 100 ranks.

    Unable to trade via the Auction House, mailbox, or player-to-player.

    In-game access to public chat channels unavailable. Players are limited to communicating using only say, party, or whisper.

    Characters will be unable to create or join guilds.

    Characters are not able to send whispers to other characters unless they have been added to the characters' friends lists or have received a whisper from a character first.

    Characters will not be able to invite other players into a party.

    Characters will not be able to join parties with other characters above level 20.

    Voice chat disabled on Starter Edition accounts.

    Realms experiencing login queues will prioritize players who have full, paid accounts.

    Starter Edition accounts are not eligible for character transfers

    RealID features are disabled on all Starter Edition Accounts.

Quite restrictive.

[iPPi]

I don't think I will ever play World of Warcraft again.

[PyroMenace]

So it's pretty much the trial account thing theyve always had.

[idolminds]

Without an expiration. But man, those restrictions do sound...restrictive.

If I did this (not likely with all the downloading required), I'd use it as a challenge. Level 20 and explore as much of the map as possible.

[Xessive]

I recall the same starter kit has been available in stores here over the last few years for about $5 but it only lasts 14-days. A demo that's not free. Blizzard has the nads to pull it off. Damn their magnificent art!

[Pugnate]

I imagine if Blizzard were an actually gangster operating in the hood, they'd have gone up from corner boy to boss man pretty quickly.

Yes this was inspired by Toxic's post and The Wire.

[Xessive]

Checked it out.. So many years since my last trial of WoW the only major difference I'm noticing is the DX11 rendering option.. It's still as uninteresting to me as it was back then.. I still can't justify the price-tag of a full subscription or even the >10GB download (which expands into a 17GB install).

I'm a big fan of Blizzard's art work in general and visually that's the only thing really holding WoW up. Technically, the low-polygon models and low-res textures really make it look dated, which it actually is, but it's is a testament to how long the game has thrived. Blizzard definitely deliver in the quality of their service and in maintaining their servers.

Payment schemes aside, I still don't know why I would choose WoW over any other MMO (particularly Guild Wars). I'm further dissuaded especially when I consider the growing library of unrestricted Free-To-Play games.

[W7RE]

One thing thing could be good for, is if you just enjoy the questing in WoW and don't like to be bothered by a lot of other people. You can take your time and level up to 20 as slowly as you like, and the low level zones don't have a lot of people in them. Even once you cap out at 20, you can go and do almost any of the zones with quests that don't require a level higher than 20. Or you could just reroll new characters for each of the starting zones.

Blood elves and draenei seem to be available to trials, so the only starting areas that are off limits are goblin/worgen/death knight.

One of the advertised limitations is the inability to join a group with someone over level 20, but I invited one of my trial characters to a party with my level 85 character. Maybe this has to do wtih them both being on the same Battle.net account?

RealID functionality isn't actually disabled like they say. It's more "hidden". I created my trial account as a new account on the same Battle.net ID as my main account. People who have me on their RealID friends list see when I log onto my trial account, but I only see people in my friends list if I add their character. I see no popups when people log on/off, but they see them when I log on/off.