World of Warcraft Goes Free With Starter Edition

Stoobalou writes "Blizzard Entertainment has announced that its enormously popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft will be free to play for characters up to level 20. WoW has always offered free trials of one of the world's biggest multi-player online games but previous offers have always been limited to a set number of days. The new policy means that first-time visitors to Azeroth will be able to build an unlimited number of characters and classes up to level 20 at their leisure, although there will be some limitations."

Comments

Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[elrous0]

When I first heard about this, I was actually excited. I never really got into MMO's much (I did play some MUD's back in the day pretty addictively). I've tried out a few, like Eve Online and City of Heroes, but usually got bored with them after a while (Guild Wars was the only one I played for any length of time). People keep raving about WoW, and I've been tempted to try it out a few times. But paying $50, plus buying a bunch of expansion packs, *ON TOP OF* $15 a month?!?!? Christ, why don't I just give them my house too? That's a lot to go into an MMO, sight unseen.

But the more I read about how much they've gimped this trial, the less interested I am. No chat, no auction houses, no guilds (basically no social interaction of any kind, which kind of defeats the whole point of an MMO). If it were JUST the level 20 thing, or the skills cap, or even the guild thing, I could live with giving it a shot. But basically, they've stripped it of *everything* that makes it a MMO. That's a shame. I really would like to give it a try. And I'm not above paying if I get into it (I'm not a cheapass who pirates all his movies). But I don't think this ultra-gimped version is going to get me into it.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is they did this because of the rampant spamming problems they used to have

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[morari]

[quote]I've tried out a few, like Eve Online and City of Heroes, but usually got bored with them after a while (Guild Wars was the only one I played for any length of time).[/quote]

WoW is no different. It's just another glorified point and click, practically turn-based fetch-n-step quest machine.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[The MAZZTer]

I played a WoW trial once. A friend tried to send me some armor in the in-game mail system; because of trial limitations it never reached me, and he never got it back. It just disappeared. Also no voice chat, IIRC, and I couldn't do coop stuff with him (raids I guess?). I got bored with it 2 days into my 14 day trial and quit.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[jeffmeden]

When I first heard about this, I was actually excited. I never really got into MMO's much (I did play some MUD's back in the day pretty addictively). I've tried out a few, like Eve Online and City of Heroes, but usually got bored with them after a while (Guild Wars was the only one I played for any length of time). People keep raving about WoW, and I've been tempted to try it out a few times. But paying $50, plus buying a bunch of expansion packs, *ON TOP OF* $15 a month?!?!? Christ, why don't I just give them my house too?

$15 a month for what (for most people) amounts to hundreds of hours of entertainment *per month* is a steal... But you are right, for casual users this is too far in the other direction, the likelihood of getting bored to death when all you can do is start a character and level them to 20 is pretty high. Why not just dust off Elder Scrolls?

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Sylak]

It's basically a trial account with double the level cap and unlimited play time. The only reason they first implemented those limits to the trial accounts to begin with was because of the spambots and the gold farmers using trial accounts

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[cgeys]

So you really did not read the article at all? Now it does have chat and auction houses. Besides, paying for the game and $9/month (notice the cheapest one is $9, not $15) is a lot cheaper than most hobbies.

What comes to this free trial, it might be a really nice opportunity to try multiboxing. Actually, that I will do this weekend.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[elrous0]

Well, it would be nice to at least have some way to prove I'm *not* a spammer, bot, or gold farmer--and at least get access to chat and auctions.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Nos.]

I was of the same opinion on the $50 startup + $15/month. I had been playing Guild Wars for quite some time, and enjoyed it quite a bit. Most of my regular gaming group was moving over to WoW and I finally gave in and got a trial from a friend of mine. The difference was incredible. Far more developed game play and polished interface. There's a massive community developing addons that further make the game more enjoyable. In the end, I felt that the monthly fee was worth it for a few months. The first few months, I didn't really see the point of a guild, and to be honest, it doesn't provide that many advantages if you're in a relatively casual one like I am. I still do most of my leveling solo. When I do daily heroic dungeons, I generally do it with a public group, not my guild. There are more serious guilds out there, but that's not really my preference.

For anyone that hasn't tried WoW, and is curious, why not give it a shot. If you don't like it, all you've lost is some bandwidth and time. If you do, you've been sucked into a monthly fee like the rest of us... nothing to be ashamed of :)

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[superwiz]

Actually, the first thing I thought of when I read the headline was that this would be a boon for the gold farmers. But since they can't do any money laundry with these starter characters, this is actually an improvement on what the starter toons were able to do previously.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Normal Dan]

or casual users this is too far in the other direction, the likelihood of getting bored to death when all you can do is start a character and level them to 20 is pretty high. Why not just dust off Elder Scrolls?

The idea is to get the player hooked so he or she will buy the game to advance the character.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[elrous0]

From the FAQ I read:

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.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[errandum]

I'm sure they'd love to hear your ideas.

I'd say that whatever method you could use to "prove" you're not one, the spammes would use too :)

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[elrous0]

Well, at this point I'm going to prove it by not buying or playing the game.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

It has voice chat, and has for over a year now. Not like it matters too much. The trial limitations are there to combat vs gold sellers which are rampant as hell. As it is now they compromise paying people's accounts and then made random characters with random names "ofihsaojdfs" and spam everyone as much as they can there. I can see them wanting even more. But these trial accounts aren't even a trial, more of a benchmark demo, more or less.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[elrous0]

And that's a pretty good idea. But the problem is that they've gimped a bunch of other stuff besides just the level. You would be playing such a stripped down version of the game that you really wouldn't be getting a taste of it. Even with Guild Wars (which was free to play all the way through), I had access to chat and trading (guilds too).

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[vlm]

No chat, no auction houses, no guilds (basically no social interaction of any kind, which kind of defeats the whole point of an MMO)

Allow that, and it'll be spam bot hell for the paying players.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[geekoid]

WoW has had chat and auction houses for years.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[compro01]

But these trial accounts aren't even a trial, more of a benchmark demo, more or less.

Level 20 is sufficient to get through the first few leveling zones and try the early dungeons (ragefire, deadmines, wailing caverns, stockades).

It cuts you out of guilds, world chat, and trading, but otherwise gives you what I would expect from a trial, a good overview of typical gameplay.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[mrchaotica]

Why not just dust off Elder Scrolls?

You don't even necessarily need to dust it off; Skyrim is coming out in November.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[interkin3tic]

My guess is they did this because of the rampant spamming problems they used to have

I'd guess that they would point to that as the reason, but the real reason is they don't want to give the milk away for free. It seems like you could pretty easily make sure the free players weren't spamming or gold farming. I'm not familiar with WOW, but it seems like you could do -something- that's between "Allow spamming" and "Block all chat."

How is not allowing them to use the auction house or guilds in any way related to spamming? Again, not familiar with WOW so maybe there is a reason, but it doesn't sound like there would be.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[retchdog]

WoW and Morrowind have similar hardware demands which could today be called "casual". Skyrim looks stunning but I won't be playing it for a while.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

paying for the game and $9/month (notice the cheapest one is $9, not $15)

Nice try. The cheapest isn't a monthly fee. It's, what, an annual or bi-annual fee? It may workout to be ~$10/month but it isn't $10/month. It's $120/year. Which can end up being much more expensive for anyone who doesn't play consistently.

Especially since you skipped the GP's obvious point of never getting into MMO's much and not real excited to drop several Xpac's worth of money to *try* the fully featured game to see if he'll like it. W(hy)TF would he drop $120 on a subscription to try a game just to get a cheaper monthly rate? When he stated it's a good chance he won't stick with it based on his experience.

The way you talk makes me think your a politician.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

You do have to pay in terms of losing large chunks of your life, real world social skills, outside interests, etc.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[HaZardman27]

Hopefully it's more interesting than Oblivion. Oblivion felt like a dulled-down Morrowind with prettier graphics. There was no compelling reason to explore the world.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[second_coming]

I'd say not allowing use of the auction house is related to gold selling.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[whereiswaldo]

They should at least allow friends to interact. There's a good chance a person was introduced to WoW by a friend, and I'm sure they'd love to be able to chat with one another during the trial. Thats pretty much a showstopper for me.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[enjerth]

$15 a month for what (for most people) amounts to hundreds of hours of entertainment *per month* is a steal...

Wow (no pun intended)! Hundreds of hours a month. Like maybe 200? Most people spend an average of 6 hours and 40 minutes per day playing WoW? I guess most people who play that game have ABSOLUTELY no life. Even if "hundreds of hours" means just 100, that's 3 hours and 20 minutes every day of the month. Most people who have a full-time job and a family (or any social life outside of "the box" of your PC screen) probably don't average more than 2 hours a day.

I guess, by your definition, a casual gamer is anyone who doesn't play 3 hours a day?

Casual doesn't mean you only play a game for an hour a day. Casual means you don't play regularly.

If you spend 6+ hours a day on a game, you're not a regular gamer, not a hard-core gamer... the game is practically your whole LIFE.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

Try LOTRO instead, if you're looking for a MMORPG. Free To Play. You can get into your mid 20s without spending a cent maybe even the early 30s. There are some restrictions but nothing as bad as what you said.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[LordLimecat]

Id be interested to see how a level 20 could farm gold. If you prevented EITHER buying OR selling, they would not be able to launder gold either.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

From the FAQ:

"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."

So if they add you as a friend, you should be able to chat away.

Plus this phrasing:

"In-game access to public chat channels unavailable. Players are limited to communicating using only say, party, or whisper." ... makes me wonder if private chat channels will be allowed.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[DrgnDancer]

No, they really do this becasue of the spammers and gold farmers. I played for on and off for about 5 years. Even with severely gimped trial accounts the problems with spam and gold farming are rampant. Originally the trial accounts were not gimped this way (they were level limited, but could chat and stuff), they were forced to do this by player complaints. Ordinarily I'd be more that willing to entertain corporate greed as the motivation, but in this case I can verify that it's a legitimate attempt to prevent abuse.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[LordLimecat]

If you think its "practically turn based", youve never done progression encounters or played in the arenas. There is a global cooldown (and Im not sure it would be feasible to make a game that didnt have some kind of GCD), but against good players it is nothing like a turn-based rpg. There are several "instant" moves which you have to be ready to react to at any time.

Not sure how different it is from Guild Wars, but the games tend to have mechanics that differentiate them; Warhammer had some interesting mechanics like the auto-balancing of under-leveled characters in battlegrounds, the ability to join a battleground with a brand new character and compete, several of the guild mechanics (which WoW promptly stole), etc. In fact, a lot of the cooler ideas that Warhammer had were promptly copied by WoW-- experience in BGs, Guild leveling, achievements everywhere (Warhammer gave you achievements and experience for things like "died 10 times to a bright wizard"), and probably several others I missed.

That might be the biggest thing that sets WoW apart-- each time a competitor fails to unseat it, WoW takes its uniqueness and adds it to itself. Its kind of the Borg of MMOs; each failed assault simply makes it harder to unseat them as reigning MMO.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[LordLimecat]

To be fair with the second point, theres a really good reason to prevent public chat:
1) Spammers would absolutely love this. No way to trace them (no credit card), and unlimited accounts to spam trade chat with
2) You REALLY dont want scores of trial newbies spamming in cities. Generally they dont have much to say anyways, as they will be able to buy precisely no gear that is advertised (too low level), contribute to no raids, and join no guilds; their contribution would end up being to conversations on the virtues of Murlocks and Chuck Norris.
3) Generally if you are on a trial, youre in with a friend, and will still be able to talk to them.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[LordLimecat]

They do. To quote what several others have quoted...

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

In other words, they simply cant spam the global world chats. Oh the horror.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

i guess they figure if you have a guild/friends to chat with then you don't need to demo because your friends have already convinced you (and they can give you their discs to install) and save you the hassle of installing ~12 discs to get to the current patch level (incl all expansions)

@ level 20 you really don't need access to the AH because you won't have too much shit to sell and will get drops often enough to keep you "geared"

oh, and the REASON they deny you social interactions is so the gold farm spammers don't have a way to bug paying characters with an unlimited supply of free toons.

I believe part of this deal is the original game + the first expansion for $20 bucks AND that includes a month of game time (that isn't gimped). if you have friends who play and you want to check it out that's a pretty good deal. you will have to pay full for the last 2 expansions - but you don't need them unless you want to level past 70.

as a recovering WoW player.. I can tell you they make it super easy to cancel your sub - no worries about that

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Liambp]

Yup I second this. There are several top quality fantasy mmorpgs now available on free to play (read pay as you go) models. Lotro is good, as is Dungeons and Dragons online, Age of Conan or Everquest 2 are also available. Runes of magic also has it followers but it is generally considered a tier below the four games I have mentioned.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[mrchaotica]

To be honest, I'm not holding out too much hope. They're removing more of the magic skills, such as alteration, as well as hand-to-hand and adding dual-wielding and dragons (whoop-de-do). In other words, they're adding even more emphasis on stereotypical hack-and-slash warrior types, and further screwing over magic/stealth/weird players.

For example, in Morrowind, I could create a character that flies around naked and beats people to death with his bare fists. In Oblivion, he'd have to walk and might as well wear armor (because they removed levitation and the "unarmored" skill). In Skyrim, he'd have to use a sword or something, and what's the point in that?

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[orn]

A better solution might be to just create a level 20 server. Have the full game on there, including all the normal features. But no one on the server can get above level 20. Then, if someone decides to join, give them a free transfer to another server of their choice.

The only problem I could see is if the economy on the trial server is broken... transferring goods between servers would throw the economies out of whack if the incoming server's economy is broken... but I can't think of any reason why it would be...

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Tridus]

They were used for laundering. Gold seller bot gets gold. Gives gold to level 5 trial account. Level 5 trial account buys weird gray items thrown up on AH by players who are buying gold for absurd amounts of gold, which is how the players get the gold they bought. Transaction log shows a level 5 trial account as the one buying the bogus auction.

It adds more steps to tracking it down to then have to sort out where that account got the gold from.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[timeOday]

I think they should nix the $50 startup fee, then charge 50 cents per hour up to a maximum of $15.

But my guess is rather than "most people" playing hundreds of hours per month, most people actually play 0 hours per month, and just don't check their credit card statement very often, and they don't want to lose those.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[jiriw]

Well ... I dare to contend that. It didn't happen with LotRO.
A Free to Play player there can reach the level cap entirely without paying a single cent (although it will be a helluva grind because you basically have to level on monsterkills and the epic questline or you have to do every deed in the areas you have full access to on, on at least three characters to get all the 'virtual currency' for free to buy off the most annoying restrictions and all quest packs)
They have (limited to one message every 5 seconds or so) use of all the chat channels. Goldselling is prevented by a 2 gold per character level cap (which is sufficient to be able to do almost everything in game except buy a house or a special reputation horse mount or the expensive stuff on the auction houses) They can buy on the AH what they can afford but not sell on it.
They can unlock quest packs and all the other stuff that differentiates them and subscribers by single payments of a 'virtual currency' (Turbine points) which you can buy with hard cash OR by actually playing the game. And if you spend real money(tm) at least once (subscribe for a month, for example, of buy virtual currency once) most of the restrictions on your account are broadened or completely lifted. (5 gold cap, ability to sell 5 items on the auction per character, no more chat restrictions, etc.)
I think that kind of restrictions give people plenty of ways to play for 'free' and still be a contributing character, unlike what I read about the WOW Free to Play options. Also I have alts who level through the starter areas at the moment and do not notice an increase in goldselling and chat spamming. I do notice an occational ninja-fellowship-invite and the odd 'rude' player but not noticably more if you keep in mind how many more people are actually playing in those starter areas nowadays.
In the kin I'm in (the second oldest on that server; Iluvatarian Knights, Gilrain) there are a couple of free to play players and they start to notice some really annoying restrictions only when they are already half way to the level cap. Then they can decide if it's worth their money to skip a bit of grinding or start an extra character and get enough 'virtual currency' that way to pay for quest packs. Also it opened the way for those of us willing, to experiment with a second account without immediately spending for a second subscription. We also have a multiboxer in our kin who has (beside a couple of subscriptions) a free-to-play multibox account group. He runs great barrows with six rune-keepers for the fun of whatever multiboxers percieve as being fun (it's not my thing :P ).
Each of them have different reasons not to pay for a subscription. It might shock you how many people can't get a creditcard (or simply can't afford to spend any money at all) and thus can't easilly subscribe but have tons of free time to spend on a game. Underaged, people with low income, people with variable income, people paying off debt (who don't have access to their own bank accounts), people who don't have access to their own accounts for other reasons (which can be plenty), people in countries with a 'difficult' financial relationship to the USA, people in countries with an alltogether 'difficult' relationship to the USA. And then there are ofcourse the people who very much like to play ... a few hours in the month, when they have a day off between working and raising their kids. They are never gonna pay a whopping 15 dollars/month for a subscription but they might once in a while invest in a quest pack. And lastly there are also people who are not willing to pay anyways on principle.
I don't know what Turbine made after making LotRO free to play, but the rumours say it's a tidy sum and it did make the servers and especially the starter areas a lot more lively.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Ihmhi]

EVE Online (who is also in the news about this monetization sorta stuff) was always really good with this in the last few years. Originally they were like many MMOS - drop fiddy bucks on the game, then pay $15/month. Now it's $5 to activate your account and $15/month after that. $5! Wow is like a hundred bucks to get all the expansions (and then some), and that just gets you started. It's a huge up-front cost. Blizzard made more than enough money on their game at this point - I'm honestly surprised that they haven't switched to a similar model.

Scratch that, no I'm not surprised at all. They know that the fanboys will pony up the $50 every time an expansion comes out. *sigh* I'd actually be more likely to get into WoW again and play it occasionally if it didn't cost so much.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[asavage]

You should try Vindictus. They used to have a token system limiting how much you can play for free but it was recently removed. I think it is only available in Canada, USA, and South Korea the moment but a European version is supposed to come out before the end of the year.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[JeremyBanks]

Note that these restrictions (including the level 20 limit) have always been in place for trial accounts. What they've really done is remove the time limit on the trial.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[brkello]

I don't really agree with you. They do this for a very good reason (as others have already messaged...spammers/gold famers-sellers). You know there is going to be a lot of people there. You know there will be social interaction and an auction house, economy, etc. This gives you a feel of what the game is like and if you will enjoy it. If you like that part, then you will enjoy the game because it isn't all that hard to find a guild and people to hang out with once you decide to buy it.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Impeesa]

When I first heard about this, I was actually excited. I never really got into MMO's much (I did play some MUD's back in the day pretty addictively). I've tried out a few, like Eve Online and City of Heroes, but usually got bored with them after a while (Guild Wars was the only one I played for any length of time). People keep raving about WoW, and I've been tempted to try it out a few times. But paying $50, plus buying a bunch of expansion packs, *ON TOP OF* $15 a month?!?!? Christ, why don't I just give them my house too? That's a lot to go into an MMO, sight unseen.

For what it's worth, you can now get the full retail game plus the first expansion (70 levels of content with a free month to start) for a twenty. That's enough to get a pretty broad sample of the game, for a movie ticket and snacks.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Garble Snarky]

Have you ever met someone who plays wow? I had a friend who definitely played much more than 6 hours a day while he was unemployed.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

For anyone thats actually played the game for a while (and recently) - you're bound to be aware by now that WoW doesn't survive on its content or gameplay, it survives because its the effective equivalent of Facebook - or other current 'in' social site. Most people don't spend their time raiding, or grinding, or PvPing. They hang about in Orgrimmar or Stormwind and basically just chat to people all day. The last thing they want to do is give away the reason most people still play for free. WoW also lost its already fairly small hardcore playerbase in Wrath of the Lich King.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[enjerth]

I've met a few people who played MMO games for more than 6 hours a day. Most of them wound up alone (wife/girlfriend left them) and unemployed. Including my brother.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[EoN604]

If "free for 10 days" was enough of a taster to hook in millions of players, then logically "free until level 20" will do even more of the same.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Osgeld]

sounds like a quest to me!

never played the game, but I like playing MMO's, I like playing single player games, and would not mind running around as a freebee with crap everything just to explore the land

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Osgeld]

right..., I somehow ended up with the totally wrong topic

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

... *rolls eyes*

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[whoop]

Your house is worth less than $50+15*12, say for a year's worth (not counting discounts for buying large chunks of time at once)? If so, I think you could use an escape from that and live in Azeroth for a while...

Anyway, MMOs are best played with friends. If you have people you know playing, it's good fun to get together, chat, kill some monsters. When it gets dull, cancel your subscription and come back in a few months, if ever. While it's fun, you can find yourself spending many hours playing, well worth $15 in a month. In 11 years of playing MMOs, friends and myself still recall adventures we had working through dungeons and stuff together.

If you don't have any real-life friends you can group up with, and you're not too keen on making new friends in-game, than sure, sit out of the MMO genre as it's not for you.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Sancho]

Yeah, the GP clearly exaggerated (or is wildly out of touch with what "most people" means) but the point stands. At $15/mo, less than the cost of dinner and a movie (heck, in some places, less than the cost of a movie) you can get several hours of entertainment. One could probably discuss the quality of the entertainment, but that wasn't discussed. And there's the value of opportunity, too. That $15 gets you as much playtime per month as you want. When that movie ends, it ends.

Even if you play for 4 hours, 4 times a month (16 hours) you're beating almost all commercial entertainment that's out there.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a way - just enter your credit card details and subscribe...

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[mattack2]

Hundreds of hours of entertainment per month?

Hundreds, being minimum 200 of course, would mean playing 6 2/3 hours per day, 7 days a week.

Even as a purposeful exaggeration, that sure seems like a LOT of time. Maybe these people just play WoW and never watch movies or TV or read instead, for example? (Just to use other entertainment/time-wasting options most people do.)

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

How is not allowing them to use the auction house or guilds in any way related to spamming?

Very simple - spamming is mostly a means for gold farmers to sell gold for real money, and the Auction House is the primary means by which those gold farmers make gold in-game. You farm up a bunch of gear or materials, post them on the AH, and wait for the gold to roll in. Often players' accounts are hacked and their inventories emptied and everything that's not soulbound is placed on the AH. You then take the gold and put it in your farming group's guild bank to protect the gold in the event the toon you're farming with gets banned or returned to its rightful owner, plus there's an upper limit as to how much gold a single character can hold at one time. Thus, eliminating access to the AH and guilds makes it more difficult for gold farmers to operate.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[WuphonsReach]

It truly is because of the gold spammers.

You see, unlike some other MMOs, you start off at level 1 in the full shared environment, where your automated bot software can run your little level 1 tushie over to the nearest major city and start doing /shout and /say spam in addition to spamming the trade chat.

Interestingly, AoC has less of an issue with this because every new character starts out in an isolated instance and until they hack/slash their way to the starter city they have no access to a mailbox or many of the chat channels. (The starter area acts as a tutorial for AoC, and you're level 4 or 5 by the time you finish it in about an hour.)

Blizzard *could* have done something similar when they remade the world, but they failed to.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[mysidia]

I'd say that whatever method you could use to "prove" you're not one, the spammes would use too :)

Eh? How about you enter a real name, street address, phone number, mobile number to sign up for the free account.

You are required to send a SMS text message from your mobile phone to a game company supplied number, for which there is a $2 charge. In response, you receive a SMS with a pin number.

You are then required to call in from your home phone (the caller id will be checked) and type in the PIN number, when prompted.

The spammers will not be interested in paying tiny SMS message fees to get a throwaway account setup.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[cratermoon]

They did for the two new races: worgen and goblin characters can't get out of the starting area -- it's "phased" -- without doing the quests up to the end of the starting phase.

You do have access to a mailbox and zone chat, as well as guilds and such if you have friends, but no auction house or trade channel.

That still leaves all the other races that were around before that last expansion just a short run to a capitol city, but Blizzard did move the AoC direction a bit.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[McGuirk]

If you think its "practically turn based", youve never done progression encounters or played in the arenas. There is a global cooldown (and Im not sure it would be feasible to make a game that didnt have some kind of GCD), but against good players it is nothing like a turn-based rpg. There are several "instant" moves which you have to be ready to react to at any time.

I would like to introduce you to Dark Age of Camelot. No GCD, plenty of Instas (which for the most part have cooldowns, the ones can don't can be spammed as fast as you can hit the button...or hold it down on the keyboard), and about as far from turn based as you can get.

As a point of difference, as an example, between DAoC and WoW, a WoW caster gets 10 different spells that he or she rotates in the optimum order to maintain DPS. A DAoC caster gets a "kill" spell of some sort they spam if they're trying to DPS, as well as many types of utility or CC spells.

This sounds simple and boring, except that in DAoC, movement is key, because if you get hit, your spell is completely interrupted, and you cannot cast for another 3 seconds or so. However, this is offset by the ridiculous DPS of a caster who isn't being interrupted.

As another difference, in WoW, leveling is grindy but arguably fun, and there is definitely variety. In DAoC, leveling is both grindy -and- boring! What fun! New players never stay without help. Great way to run a game, thanks Mythic!

Very different games. Absolutely no comparison in the quality of PvE and PvP. DAoC has no good PvE (for the most part). WoW has no good PvP (for the most part). If you disagree about WoW's PvP, then you haven't played DAoC...

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

if they can join guilds they will be able to rob guild banks that are poorly set up as well as just spam the guild chat if they manage to get invited. the auction house is a bigger risk than chat channels as they'd be able to channel gold through trial accounts for sale ridiculously easily.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[beelsebob]

I'm not a WoWer, but you're giving it rather a hard time. WoW is impressively cheap for what it is.

Not being a WoWer, but liking games, I spend maybe £35 a month buying the latest thing I want... Some of them (typically Rockstar games) last me more than a month. Some of them last me a matter of days or hours. Over a year, I'll maybe have spent £400 on games.

If I were a WoWer, I'd spend £8 a month on a subscription, and £20 a year on a new expansion. Meaning only about £100ish.

So all in all, as a WoWer I'd spend 4 times less, but get constant gaming experience. That's pretty cheap.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Jaruzel]

Having done both the Worgen and Goblin starter areas I can say that Blizzard have really put a lot of effort into drawing the player into the game without unleashing their Level 1 characters out into the real 'world'. What Blizzard now need to do is the same to all the previous races as their starter zones are as earlier commenters have mentioned; you are dumped into a newbie area, and all you have to do is run for 5 mins to the main city and there's the banker NPCs and the Auction Houses. Previously, I've only done the Orc starting 'zone' and other than a couple of 'here's how to kill things' quests (that you don't have to do) you are pretty much left to your own devices immediately with full access to the 'world'.

-Jar

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

Give every person a complex math problem, if they get it right, they're a Chinese gold farmer.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

Friends can chat. A trial account can chat with players who have them on their friend's list. Perhaps you should learn some facts before you start flaming.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Jaruzel]

Broken econ on the gimped server wouldn't be much of a problem up to level 20 you aren't going to use the AH that much as you'll be mostly picking up greys/whites that can be sold the NPC vendors for an ok value.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Jaruzel]

The trial level limit used to be level 10.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[MareLooke]

Yes but it annoys longtime players, traditionally starter zones didn't have access to anything (there wasn't even a mailbox, I dunno if this has changed, I quit playing early into Cataclysm) and most of them just wanted to get their character leveled as soon as possible (the fact that the first 60 levels were outdated and that most of them had gone through them dozens of times already over the years didn't help). The way to do this was to buy BoA (Bind on Account) gear on one of your max level characters and mail that to your alt, these made your low level toon considerably more powerful and provide an experience boost to boot. Of course this required making trek to the nearest mailbox...

Granted, I haven't tried the new starter areas (all my character slots were already filled on the realm I played on), but I imagine that after leveling a few characters you'd get tired of these as well. Something that also often happened was that people went to starter areas of other races (because they either gave better gear, required less pointless running around or they'd just not done them before and weren't interested in said raice), the Blood Elf start area was notorious for Horde players coming from all over Azeroth to quest there in TBC.

Then there's the banker characters, low level characters that get parked in major cities for the sole purpose of providing additional (bank) storage for other characters and/or to buy/sell goods on the Auction House.

I'm pretty sure if all of the above were made impossible there'd be quite a bit of rage going on (of course, longtime players might not care as they got their bank(ers) in place, though they'd probably be hit by the change when they move to another server

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[errandum]

Spammers nowadays have:

Lots of personal information stolen from customers;

They BUY the game and pay for anonymizers/vpn's so they can spamm, I'm sure a 2$ sms would not bother them. But I highly doubt that if someone is trying the game for free would pay 2$.

They could also "phone in"; Also, do you know many people that would gladly give out their personal info and personal phone number if they didn't have an ulterior motive? Like spamming you? Furthermore, Skype accounts are free and many people don't own a home phone nowadays, since mobile phones became ubiquitous.

What they already did:
Tried to block every international IP (from non-supported countries) to access the game. There was a s**tstorm - lots of players play from non-supported countries;
Started to ban by IP, the spammers started to use vpn's/proxies.
Tried to block vpn's and proxys, there was a s**tstorm because some legit gamers use those;

There is no way apart from requiring a photograph of yourself and of your ID card to allow for that, and I wonder how many people would trust a big company with those.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[MareLooke]

About time they started to steal player housing and appearance gear from EverQuest 2 then. Gimme EQ2 with WoW's raids and I'd be sold. As it is now questing in WoW is tedious and arguably pointless once you hit max level. EverQuest keeps you motivated to quest just to get more shiny stuff (eg, cool looking gear or trophies/furniture to put in your house/guild hall). Raiding in EQ2 otoh is just boring and tedious for most classes, which probably is more to do with SOE not giving a shit anymore than with any inherent problem with the game.

Also EQ2 (and I assume EQ1) has no GCD (in fact only straight WoW clones seem to have a gcd, like Rift), but all actions have some form of casttime (or a, usually very long, cooldown, in very rare cases).

Before I quit playing the only thing I still did in WoW was raid, the rest of the game was just stale, there's no reason to quest, except to grind reputation (or get achievements). Dungeon queues for dps were 30-45minutes and chances you got a decent group (aka one where the tank/healer didn't bail before getting to the end) were around 0. Imho the LFG system killed the game, as when I found out I didn't really know anyone on my new realm since grouping etc went almost entirely through the LFG interface (which is cross server, for those who have no experience with it) I quit. In TBC I had a crammed friendlist of people I knew I liked grouping with, this all went to hell with the introduction of the LFG system. Sure it made finding groups easy, but it also ruined the social aspect and it made grouping unrewarding (no more yay, I got a good group and managed to get through Magister's Terrace without deaths!).

This might be false, but it appears to me the LFG system also promotes juvenile behavior even more since before the LFG system people had to at least show some respect for each other, because an asshole got a bad reputation on the entire server and would be shunned, people that constantly dropped group halfway through an instance would get a bad reputation as well, etc etc. This is all gone and loads of people just behave like total assholes because they can get away with it, the self regulation of the game has literally vanished.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Lord Lode]

It's free. Why are you asking for more?

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[MareLooke]

It's been 20 since at least TBC, which for most people means it might as well always have been 20.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[advid.net]

Have you ever met someone who plays wow? I had a friend who definitely played much more than 6 hours a day while he was unemployed.

I've met a WoW player, employed in an IT office, playing a least 6 hours a day - at home...

He comes back at home, eat a quick lunch, and then plays from 8 pm to 4 am... Uh uh... that's 8 hours !! For a typical day. Lets make it an average 6 hours a day for week days. During week-end it could be twice as long... He has some summer hollydays, two weeks. Guess what ? He stayed at home for a massive WoW play time...

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

I consider myself a casual gamer, and I don't think I would get bored because of the level 20 limit. Quite the opposite, I would never reach level 20 because I get bored long before.

I played a different MMORPG, and although levels don't translate directly between games, AFAIK the level cap in WoW is around 90, and the other game I think it was 100, so level 20 would be approximately the same level of progress. I think I reached level 16 before getting so bored of the game, that I may log on maybe twice per year.

The whole concept of grinding to level up is the definition of boring to someone like me.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Rogerborg]

So they punish real humans because they can't deal with robots and Chinese? Epic Fail.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[UpnAtom]

Thirded. WoW is pretty but dull - apart from the battlegrounds.

LOTRO is much better, with less mindnumbing quests in a universe we know and love.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[beowulfcluster]

Even with severely gimped trial accounts the problems with spam and gold farming are rampant.

One thing they were able to do while I still played was make a bunch of crap characters, teleporthack themselves to a major city, hack themselves high in the air and fall down and die in a nice little pattern where the corpses of the characters in the ground spelled out the url of a gold seller website.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[GNious]

People, as in the human variety, will also not be bothered with the above - trust you me, this is simply too much work to get to play something.

Giving the you name, address and phone kinda ruins the notion of "free", given how these are rather juicy details about you.

oh, and caller-id can be spoofed, protected and prolly a number of other things that would fail this setup :(

I do understand what your trying to do, and applaud it, but generally speaking, any scheme too "convoluted" for spammers to try and automate, is out-of-scope for typically-lazy human beings.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[jeffmeden]

$15 a month for what (for most people) amounts to hundreds of hours of entertainment *per month* is a steal...

Wow (no pun intended)! Hundreds of hours a month. Like maybe 200? Most people spend an average of 6 hours and 40 minutes per day playing WoW? I guess most people who play that game have ABSOLUTELY no life. Even if "hundreds of hours" means just 100, that's 3 hours and 20 minutes every day of the month. Most people who have a full-time job and a family (or any social life outside of "the box" of your PC screen) probably don't average more than 2 hours a day.

I'd like you to quote some studies contradicting the notion that the average full-on WoW player is in-game for less than 3.3 hours a day... I have known a lot of people who play WoW, and 40+ hours/week seemed to be the minimum (for those with a job) and 80+ hours/week seemed to be about right for anyone without a job. Anyone who dropped below that level was in the "trying to quit" category and usually either went off cold turkey, or went right back to playing for 6+ hours/day 7 days/week.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[hesaigo999ca]

Or think of it this way,...All users who have paid for their subscription lyaly for the last 5 or so years, and paid many times over, their commitments, would probably feel very much cheated if they were to give away stuff like this, unless they were to credit 2 free months of FULL game play to those with lvl 85 characters...then I guess no one could gripe about it...

I would prefer they do a sort of ...next month is free for every one, come get as high a level as you want, every one is playing for free next month, meaning also that all who have paid for that month will get a bonus month later tacked on their account.....this would atleast make sense on a full user scale, and not just new players...

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[mysidia]

They BUY the game and pay for anonymizers/vpn's so they can spamm, I'm sure a 2$ sms would not bother them. But I highly doubt that if someone is trying the game for free would pay 2$.

Ok... how about they require the trial players get a non-trial player who has made significant progress and standing in the game (e.g. "Higher than level 20, played for X months") to vouch for them and "promise" they know them personally and that the trial player is not just another spammer.

If a player vouches for multiple people who are found to be spamming, their account is deleted with the spammers'.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[elrous0]

Good god, is it really THAT bad?!?!?

Maybe staying away from WoW isn't such a bad idea.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Slider451]

Hear hear for Lord of the Rings Online! F2P got me to try LOTRO last September, the first MMO I've played since quitting EQ in 2001. I enjoyed the lore and original story content so much I've been hooked ever since. I'm currently a subscriber but have purchased the expansions and quest packs with the intent to drop back to F2P this fall as an "owner" (Premium) instead of a "renter" (VIP subscriber). No other game let's you play end-game content without a monthly subscription.

The removal of the time-limit on WoW's trial is a good move. Exploring at one's own pace gives guys like me an option to explore the content without having to block time within the limits of their trial. But LOTRO's model is better.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[ginbot462]

I don't know, that's some tenacity. ... like life-sentence prison inmate tenacity.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[camazotz]

Well, for what it's worth the introductory experience that the current trial account offers is the same deal, and all it does is limit certain forms of communication that are normally abused by spammers; actualy in-game chat with other live people still exists, but in certain channels (local, for example). Likewise, because of the leveling mechanic for guilds I can see why they restrict that feature as well. This is still a limited-feature trial run, even if they removed the 14-day restriction. Unfortunately, I don't think that you're the guy this is aimed at; there are plenty of MMOs out there with no restrictions and a F2P model that supports what you're contending would open this up for you, but WoW is still designed as a pay-to-play model and they need to make sure there's an incentive to subscribe. It sounds like you really just wanted unlimited level 1-20 F2P and at this point I doubt you'd subscribe anyway if you're not willing to even give the existing trial a shot; I don't fault you, though; this game may cost only a small amount per month, but if you end up playing for years as so many have, it can add up over time. There are plenty of F2P MMOs out there that are decent experiences without necessary buy in that you really should investigate (i.e DDO, LTRO, Champions Online and more to come I am sure). Aside from that, I feel obliged to point out that the cost fo entry is more like $20, with the battle chest on Amazon which includes the core game and the first two expansions, then another $30 for Cataclysm (although the core game includes all the level 1-60 Cataclysm revised content, fyi). So $50 right now for ownership of the whole game, plus the $15 sub fee is more correct.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[cratermoon]

Leveling in the starter zones is so rapid that there's really no need to have BoA items, and you can't get through them until you finish the quests for the phase anyway, so you'd be spinning your wheels doing quests you've out-leveled. I seem to recall there wasn't a mailbox available at level 1, but sometime before leaving the starter zone there was an inn with a mailbox. You can learn your tradeskills in the starter zone, too, but it's VERY easy to out-level the gathering skills if you don't make an effort herb/skin/mine etc.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[enjerth]

I'd like you to quote some studies contradicting the notion that the average full-on WoW player is in-game for less than 3.3 hours a day...

I never contradicted that notion.

I have known a lot of people who play WoW, and 40+ hours/week seemed to be the minimum (for those with a job) and 80+ hours/week seemed to be about right for anyone without a job.

Now, how about those who have a family?

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[errandum]

I'll just tell you one of their old techniques.

They have 5 level high level characters following a leader and mirroring what it does. That allowed them complete a few select instances, providing them with some gold.

Selling that gold is what the spamm is for (mainly). Those 5 characters could vouch for anyone.

Furthermore, there is a bigger problem. Right now the spamming is pretty much only done with hacked accounts. If they'd get those hacked accounts to vouch for a low level character, they'd be able to spamm twice as much with each compromised player.

Honestly, I don't believe there is a solution to this problem other than make spamming irrelevant (by basing the economy on something you can't buy). But that would also screw a part of the game (trade skills give money, what's the point of those if money goes away?).

I'm sure blizzard theorized quite a lot around the issue, and I sure hope they solve this problem some day... I just don't think they will.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[wwphx]

(A) I explicitly have text messaging blocked, sending or receiving, on our cell phones.
(B) I don't have a home phone, just a cell. I also don't have a work phone per se as I telecommute, and that wouldn't pass the caller ID/location trace test.

How would I register?

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[ildon]

Yes, I'm sure your model of grossly lowering their income on their highest profit margin players in the hopes of an extremely small increase in the number of those high margin players (who will actually probably now become the lowest margin players) will go over very well at Blizzard.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[ildon]

The level cap for trials has always been 20.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[drb226]

Thanks for the FAQ. Grandparent commenter made it sound like there was absolutely *no* chat. Below lv 20, do you really need anything besides say/party/whisper?

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[Sylak]

I stand corrected, but my point still stands that there are no changes for people who already knew about trial accounts other then perpetual time

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[bckrispi]

All the starter zones (and many mid-level 'vanilla' zones) have been completely revamped with the Cataclysm release.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[bckrispi]

The restrictions in place sound exactly like the restrictions they used for earlier trial accounts. Only now, the trial can go on indefinitely rather than just 10 days.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[bckrispi]

As it is now questing in WoW is tedious and arguably pointless once you hit max level.

You've obviously not played the new "end-game" quests that dropped with the Firelands expansion on Tuesday. The "Rescue Thrall" questline is arguably the most epic in the game. The new daily quests added are also far more varied and now actually give a sense of accomplishment. End-game questing has been getting stale for years, but Blizzard obviously payed attention to user complaints with this release.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[CubicleView]

Sounds more like a select statement to me..

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[bckrispi]

Low-level mats (at least on my server) auction pretty well. Last week, my 20 priest made over 200g just by selling a few stacks of light leather when the supply was low.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[snuf23]

A lot less. I raid twice a week, 3 hours a night. Some weeks that's all I play. The most is maybe 15 hours a week, for some dungeons after raid time or on Sunday nights. I typically log on two to three nights a week. Most of my guild members average about the same although we do have a group that play MUCH more (multiple raid capable character, achievement seekers, pet collectors etc.).

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[MareLooke]

I know, it'll just postpone the problem though. If they increase XP gain again to make people level faster after each expansion (which they've done with each expansion so far) we'll be back to where we came from in 2 expansion.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[MareLooke]

I don't know how long you've been playing for, but the same thing was said about the dailies of the Argent Tournament when they were released, but we'll see, I reactivated my subscription for a bit.

As for epic questchains, there's quite a few. The AQ access chain, the Onyxia one (that went the way of the dodo, alas) was also neat as was the Nagrand one etc. But this isn't what I meant, the point is that there's no real reason to do them, there's no rewards (except achievements maybe and gold) for people that have done them once already. But on the other hand even with all the "zomg gay" comments about being able to decorate your house etc in the likes of EQ2 and the use of appearance gear most people in those games still make extensive use of it (some places get farmed extensively just because a cool looking weapon drops there). It's not like anyone can see your achievements, but hopping around in your shiny tier gear from a previous expansion set that took a ton of effort to get is quite clearly visible (and would probably get people to redo older content just because some item looks cool). There'd also be a lot less whining about the design of new gear as peeps could just wear what they want, don't like the look of the new tier? Fine, just stick with the old look.

Maybe I just fail to explain the entire concept, or maybe you need to have experienced it to "get it". I dunno. But gold and experience aren't really big motivators for questing and achievements only "work" for a few "achievement whores" (how many people care about them on their alts?). Quest gear very quickly is obsoleted by the first and best dungeon drop as well.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[whereiswaldo]

I was simply responding to the OP who said:

No chat, no auction houses, no guilds (basically no social interaction of any kind, which kind of defeats the whole point of an MMO).

I think my interpretation was fair and hardly a flame. Glad to know they were incorrect.

Re:Yeah, but they gimped it so bad it's worthless

[KingBenny]

try forsaken world on steam if you want to get into mmo's, its pretty decent for a free game, lets you level to the cap and no purchase is required to unlock content, only aids (as in 'to help you level faster') and cosmetics cost real money so far from what i've seen, playing wow free til lvl 20 is just plain stupid

The first hit...

[trunicated]

...is always free

Re:The first hit...

[Scottingham]

Beat me to it! MMOs always gave off the addictive drug stink to me, this just proves it further.

Re:The first hit...

[camazotz]

I can quit anytime, really I can....

Re:The first hit...

[ginbot462]

Bullshit. Or pulling back a bit, the inspiration/propagator of that phrase ... the 80s "War on Drugs" ... was spewing bullshit (again). Maybe that true in their imagined "hood", but like anything else some friends/acquaintances will share or try at first. But, that goes for anything ... even something like "crashing" at your place. You give that first time to be nice, but after that ... However, the 80s insinuated that dealers did this to get "kids" hooked. Whatever, they got rims for their Eldorado to buy. No handouts. They only free handouts I see our corn-syrup covered chicken on a stick At least, I hope it's chicken.

The 80s "Just Say No" image of scruffy Eldorado
From your friends maybe ... the fucking

Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

My one friend claims he can get to 85 in a day.

Besides, this really isn't news, its more like an advertisement.

If Slashdot.org got paid for this, great... If not, get this off my Internet.

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[Nom du Keyboard]

My one friend claims he can get to 85 in a day.

He must already have his own personal guild to carry him there.

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[Riceballsan]

Well I haven't played WoW since the vanilla days and I know they've simplified and sped things up alot since then, 85 in a day still sounds extremely far fetched in the old days (IE when the cap was 60) I would say a week and a half to 2 weeks is more par for the course for someone who already knows all the tricks, best leveling areas etc... 1-2 months realistically for someone new to WoW. I would more realistically say, assuming a fairly typical 3-4 hour a night playtime, you would reach level 18ish on day 1, hit the cap by day 2 (note that is assuming a player who picks up things at a decent speed but does not know the best leveling routes in WoW yet). Your point is still valid just exaggerated.

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[wmbetts]

Who the hell would mod this insightful? It's a flat out not possible even with bots wearing all BoA + dual boxing RAF.

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[LordLimecat]

The first player from 60 to 70 in BC was 27 hours non-stop, with an entire guild carrying the guy. I think it was similar for WotLK, and I imagine it would be from 80 to 85 now; that ignores the few days it would take to get up to 60 (at least 1-2 hours to get to level 15). Looking online, I see that a number of folk's fastest times hover in the 4-6 day time span; I havent seen any under 4 days.

Basically, sounds like BS if he means "1 day without recruit-a-friend and solo".

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[_Sprocket_]

My one friend claims he can get to 85 in a day.

I would be a bit skeptical. When the last expansion hit, you had players who had play-tested the beta and hit the ground running to go from 80 - 85 in ~5hrs. 1 - 80 in ~19hrs might be possible. But in any case - we're talking experienced players running a strategy as efficiently as possible.

When I run new characters for fun, I hit 10 in about an hour. Usually hit 20s on the 2nd day. But I've been playing since the start. I understand the mechanics of the game. And occasionally, I gift my lowbies with gear. I would expect casual players just starting out to get a good several days if not weeks of poking around before they hit the cap. More so if they try out different character classes.

As for advertisements - bah. You might not have noticed, but occasionally /. talks about games and has been talking about WoW in various ways since before it was first released. Arguably, before it was even WoW.

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[flimflammer]

Your friend can't hit 85 in one day.

They could get pretty high in 24 hours of /played time, but real time wont get them too far.

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[vux984]

Who the hell would mod this insightful? It's a flat out not possible even with bots wearing all BoA + dual boxing RAF.

Even if its hyperbole, it makes a good point. Getting to 20 in 1 day is beyond easy, even without help, and if your trying it with a group of friends... trivial.

What are you supposed to do after that?

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[Macgrrl]

A new player isn't getting to 85 in a day.

That kind of expedited leveling would require heirloom items in every slot available (which requires a max level character with significant resources and time played), L25 guild XP bonuses (and possibly some rest XP, though it would be burnt pretty quickly in the starting levels), possibly a RAF XP bonus to 80 and an intricate knowledge of the optimal leveling path - even queuing in instances as a tank for instant queues would be lucky to get you there in a single day.

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[Macgrrl]

You are assuming the the player already knows how to play. If you actually read the quest text, need to familiarise yourself with the UI, have no mental map of the game world to navigate by, L20 will take much longer than 1 day.

And if your friend is dragging you around by the nose not allowing you to experience it for yourself they are doing you a disservice.

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[vux984]

You are assuming the the player already knows how to play

If you've played any modern MMO, you know how to play WoW. I got to level 20 in under a day, without trying.

I was actually annoyed because you actually level FASTER than you can experience it for yourself, unless you go out of your way to avoid any fight that you don't specifically require to complete a quest....

They've accelerated the rate of XP gain substantially since the game was released... so your "first day experience" in WoW a couple years ago is not the same as it is now....

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[spiderbitendeath]

It took me half a day to level from 80 - 85 when Cataclysm launched. It was me questing, only stopping to empty bags when they were full. I quested by myself, without anyone's help, and without Bind to Account gear.

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting to 20 in 1 day is beyond easy, even without help, and if your trying it with a group of friends... trivial.

What are you supposed to do after that?

Just like in Rift. I maxed out my trial on a server in less than a day. And I hadn't played the game at all before. 2 character limit per server really sucked. -.-

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[Jaruzel]

I'm a so-casual-sometimes-i-don't-play-for-weeks WoW player, and so far it's taken me over 3 years to get to the mid 60s... and I've enjoyed every minute of it :)

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[Zaatxe]

This supposed friend of yours is a liar. It's impossible to get to level 85 in a day, unless you start at level 84. (Disclaimer: I've been playing WoW for almost 2 years, I think I know well, this game at this point.)

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the quest text? Noob!

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[drb226]

The 14-day trial (or 7-day or whatever it was) was also capped at lv20. Basically they took off the day restriction, but the trial level cap has always been there.

Re:Isn't this is worse then 4 days?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have leveled numerous characters to 85 in just over 3 days played. Yes, I used rested XP and BoA items, but I did it all solo, questing only, with no recruit-a-friend. I bet I could drop that to 2.5 days played if I really tried. It is easy and FAST to level in WoW now. With help of others that one day just might be possible.

Keep in mind, this is days played, not days played straight through. That would be insane.

Just another gimmick

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, they have dumbed down the game so far that your average dog can now play. Of course this lets all those people with no morals and no common courtesy in which makes the game unbearable.

Re:Just another gimmick

[Anonymous Coward]

Head on over to Everquest then, it's over 10 years old and not very popular, but has absolutely tons of content.

It's not dumbed down too far yet, but not as brutal as it used to be, raids of 54 instead of 100+, easier experience than the old days, and now you can hire mercenaries which helps one to be able to build groups very easily. No more sitting for hours hoping to get a group.

The majority of the people with no morals or courtesy have headed on to other realms, they tend to like an audience.

Re:Just another gimmick

[_Sprocket_]

I wasn't aware that hardcore playing required common courtesy or morals.

"Unlimited number of characters..."

[osu-neko]

"Unlimited" meaning "10" in this context. :p

Re:"Unlimited number of characters..."

[blair1q]

What? They can take DNA samples over an Ethernet cable?

Re:"Unlimited number of characters..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlimited for the very low values of the infinity !

Re:"Unlimited number of characters..."

[compro01]

Actually 50, unless they changed it. 10 is the maximum per realm.

Re:"Unlimited number of characters..."

[Macgrrl]

10 per server - there's more than one server. And you can delete characters you don't want to keep and level a fresh one.

Re:"Unlimited number of characters..."

[MareLooke]

Wish they'd extend this (well, I wished when I was still playing). This was about the only thing I'd be willing to pay extra for (as in, one time extra to buy an additional character slot)

The Gold Limitation Sux

[Nom du Keyboard]

Why the limitation to only 10 gold coins? That seems stupid. It would seem to me that given that you can have unlimited characters under the cap anyway, that the more gold you accumulate, the more you're going to want to go out, spend it, become well-equipped, and then break through the cap and rise in the game. That means $$$ for Blizzard, so why the gold cap?

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[vlm]

Why the limitation to only 10 gold coins? That seems stupid. It would seem to me that given that you can have unlimited characters under the cap anyway, that the more gold you accumulate, the more you're going to want to go out, spend it, become well-equipped, and then break through the cap and rise in the game. That means $$$ for Blizzard, so why the gold cap?

Limiting the usefulness for gold farmers.

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[Skuld-Chan]

Well free accounts = free laundering money to resell for actual cash. I can see why they restricted it.

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[Anonymous Coward]

free trial, no $$$, you must have ZZZ'd through TFSubjectLine.

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[Anonymous Coward]

The ironic thing is that this isn't going to stop gold spammers.

First, the /tell command is available. This means that it is trivial to just whiz through player list (gleaned either by logging who is talking in chat channels, various /who commands executed, or just seeing what player characters are nearby.) An account ban would mean nothing for the spammers -- they just fire up a new free account, give the char another random name and are back in the fray.

I liked it when it took at least $10.00 to have some type of account. This way, it would cost spammers something to start blasting through names with /whispers. Now, they can just create accounts and even if the anti-spam code boots them after 20 repeated /tells, the spammers are ahead and are making money.

WoW doesn't need F2P. It is understandable for other MMOs to use this tactic because they don't have the player base. However, Blizzard should not go this route, or if they do, limit the F2P accounts to just a few servers (ones created for this purpose.) When someone ponies up the cash for a full account, offer them the chance to move their characters to another server.

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[rmp135]

I wouldn't be surprised if this was to deter gold farmers from creating hundreds of free accounts.

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[Dewin]

First, the /tell command is available. This means that it is trivial to just whiz through player list (gleaned either by logging who is talking in chat channels, various /who commands executed, or just seeing what player characters are nearby.) An account ban would mean nothing for the spammers -- they just fire up a new free account, give the char another random name and are back in the fray.

As a trial account, you can only whisper someone who has you on their friendlist.

Most of the trial restrictions (with the notable exception of level) are to hinder goldsellers and other sources of spam. e.g. not being able to trade (and the 10g limit) means you can't filter your stash of illicit gold/stolen equipment from hacked characters through 20 trial accounts. Similarly with the auction limitations -- goldsellers could buy/sell their own auctions to move money around otherwise.

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't play WOW, but know gold farms are a serious issue. Peeps in low income parts of the world basically have jobs playing games for hours on end (botting all they can), getting gold built up, then selling online for real money.

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[dave562]

10 gold is a lot of gold for a level 20 character to accumulate. Most of the low level quests only give a couple of silver.

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[chuckugly]

If you can't interact economically with others all you need gold for is the in-game money sinks. For that 10g is a lot under level 20.

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[GrumblyStuff]

It's not like you can do anything with it. You can't trade with players, either directly or through auctions. Repairs won't ever reach those heights and vendor gear at that level is worthless (unless you pay with honor points). Basically, all gold on trial accounts is there for mounts and vendor bags.

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like the limitations are meant to keep out gold farmers. No chat (so you can't spam the chat channels). No auction house (so you can't sell your stuff for gold). 10 gold limit so you can't gold farm (not that a level 20 could farm much gold, but they don't want these used as mule accounts for gold farmers).

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[brkello]

10 gold is actually a fair amount. You can't use the AH, so you are just going to be buying vendor stuff which isn't very interesting. They do this so they don't collapse the economy due to gold farmer abuse.

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[Anonymous Coward]

Last year, as I had a week to lose, I leveled up to the max lv of 20 with a trial account (I was not planning to keep playing after the trial expired, at least not immediately). I did tons of quests to earn the gold required to get a mount, as a kind of final achievement for this trial period. And in the end, I couldn't buy it because of the stupid gold limit :(. Playing for more than a few weeks without a mount is going to suck soooo bad.

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[Macgrrl]

Back in the day you had to be L40 to get your first mount and they cost 100g which was a huge amount to accumulate. Many people didn't get their first mount until much closer to L60.

These days there are many times more flight points to make it easier to get around, several classes/races have movement speed increases that make getting around easier.

On top of that, the questing experience no longer seems to require the level of run to one end of Darkshore (for example) to the other or between zones like it used to.

Given you wouldn't actually get the mount until L20 (the trial cap), there is no incentive for them to let you buy a mount at that point - they want you to become a paying customer and keep leveling, at which point the 10g limit goes away.

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[mikael_j]

I'd say that for a player new to WoW 10 gold at level 20 might seem like a lot.

For an experienced player leveling an alt (even without heirloom items or support from a level capped character or a guild) it's not hard to make a lot more than that if you know what you're doing (mining + herbalism or mining + skinning, as it turns out most level-capped characters can't be bothered mining copper ore and would rather pay 20+ gold per stack for it).

Now, back in "vanilla" it was a different story, I remember trying to purchase the riding skill and my first mount at level 40, I started saving up gold around level 35 and still couldn't afford it until level 42, and this was normal because back then 100 gold was peanuts. But there is some serious inflation. My "main" (not that I play all that much these days) has two maxed-out crafting skills and is able to craft a number of items that require around 2,000g worth of materials but the items sell for 4,000+ gold. So yes, in a single day just by going to the auction house and buying materials and then crafting a bunch of items I sell I can make tens of thousands of gold. But I rarely have more than 10,000 gold or so (unless I'm looking to purchase some rare and expensive item).

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[mikael_j]

Oops, I meant "...back then 100 gold wasn't peanuts."

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[Anonymous Coward]

If $1 = 10 gold directly from Blizzard. You could shut down farmers in a week and Blizzard could make more money.

Re:The Gold Limitation Sux

[Anonymous Coward]

You will never ever reach 10 gold or need 10 gold at level 20.

Is pvp enabled?

[oic0]

I bet level 19 twink pvp becomes real popular lol.

Re:Is pvp enabled?

[stonedcat]

I was just thinking the same, but they'll probably restrict you from gaining honor or something so as to make it totally worthless.

Re:Is pvp enabled?

[compro01]

Any trial account twinks would be severely limited by the lack of heirlooms and inability to purchase BOEs on the auction house.

Like any drug...

[Gavin Scott]

...WoW's users are building up a tolerance. Players are consuming new content at an ever increasing rate, and with the latest expansion Cataclysm, which took the better part of two years of development effort, many users have consumed the content and quit (again) after only six months or so.

An increasing number of people appear to be becoming tired of the same old recurring end-game structure of 10/25 player raids and working week after week on the next boss fight mechanics in order to slowly replace all of their equipment from the last tier of content with gear from the current content which will eventually get replaced again in the future.

The subscriber base has dropped significantly since it's peak shortly after the Cataclysm release, and Blizzard are now trying lots of things like giving away free copies of the original version of the game, allowing their "refer-a-friend" program to work up through level 80, and now the unlimited free trial period offer here.

Ultimately though the problem is that Blizzard has not been able to think outside the box enough to invent new and compelling *kinds* of content, and their players are increasingly unimpressed with the same cycle of leveling/raiding.

It is likely at this point that WoW has seen its peak in terms of subscriber base and relevance in the gaming world. I think they will always be able to maintain a subscriber base measured in millions, and may well run indefinitely, but if they want to grow again they need to get some fresh talent into their design group.

G.

Re:Like any drug...

[Anonymous Coward]

Being one of the many it seems that rushed at Cataclysm then quit a few months after I totally agree with your point's. We hit a wall with the raids and I got tired of trying to find competent groups for raids. It was great up till the raiding. Less issues with gold farmers was nice too. Great post!!!

Thank you
Duska

Re:Like any drug...

[kwr760]

With 11.4M users and $15/month -> $2B/year. I wish I could think and produce inside that box. Funny how people criticize what I have to assume is the most profitable computer game there is.

Re:Like any drug...

[wmbetts]

The raiding is fine and the mechanics (for most fights) aren't really that hard if you have a competent guild. You're problem was constant pugging.

Re:Like any drug...

[Anonymous Coward]

What does it cost to maintain servers?
What does bandwidth for that much usage run? It's not a fixed rate I imagine.
Infrastructure to support the servers is a bitch too.

Sure they are still making gobs of money, if I remember right around $20Million/month after taxes but I see this plan to pull people in a sure sign that subscriptions are falling and people are moving on to other games. They are reaching out in an attempt to find more people and increase their base. I see this as the start of their decline, no matter how much money they are riding in from their cash cow. Eventually cows die.

Knowing that, blizzard will figure out how to make steaks in the end.

Re:Like any drug...

[shermo]

I agree with your overall point, but a large portion of those users are Asia based, and they pay per hour rather than a monthly fee. Also, paying 6 monthly drops the price to about $12 or so.

Re:Like any drug...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what caused it was the fact that you levelled to 85 in cata, and then it became a true grind.

In WotLK, after a few patches, you could fire up the dungeon finder, and unless you ended up with a pickup group full or psychos, you could end up getting to a decent gear level in a few days after getting to 80. Then, one could start doing raids, normal and heroic.

Cata, the risk/reward is far worse. Most pickup groups will leave you with a 200 gold repair bill. Even if you actually get the dungeon finished, you likely won't get anything useful, and the points earned are not really that much.

It also takes a higher level of gear to survive in cata, causing a catch 22. In WotLK, you could step into heroic healing the second you hit 85, and perhaps got a few blues. Cata, you really have to run as DPS until you get a set of purples. Elsewise as a healer, you will NOT have the mana to keep a group alive, and as a tank, you will be squashed flat.

Also, replay value in Cata sucks. The path is so linear, and you have to get all the xp zones unlocked. At least in WotLK, you unlocked the Sons of Hodir, then unlocked the flight paths around Icecrown, and was done. With Cata, you have to grind the same old boring quest arc so you have flight paths, the ability to swim without drowning, and towns to visit.

Cata was supposed to make WoW "challenging again". It didn't. I never thought I would say this, but Cata is to WoW what Gates of Discord was to Everquest -- the expansion that caused people to go elsewhere. RIFT or EQ2 are great places to try, and have plenty to do without lining up to deal with boneheads in order to get to a basic gear level so you have a chance at a raid slot.

Re:Like any drug...

[Opportunist]

Actually, doing so could well be deadly. It has been done before (DAoC, I'm looking your way!), with devastating results.

Of course, feeding the same formula to the same people forever will not work in the long run, with varying definitions of long. Blizzard did a lot of things right with WoW and that's why it is simply the most successful game ever. I won't go into lengths what went right and how a lot of companies tried to copy the success and FAILED badly because they ignored the most important cardinal rule: Release it when it's at least done insofar that it's mostly playable (let's be honest, most MMOs released today are at best a very early beta). But I digress.

The formula of WoW is, as you correctly identified, "gather stuff so you can slay the tougher monster so you can gather better stuff". That's it, in a nutshell. And every expansion the old stuff is turned into worthless junk and the tough encounters are softened up so the late comers can catch up. That's (together with the "release when finished" part) is basically what made WoW such a success. It's not the eye candy or the (snicker) interesting quests, it's simply that they exploit our millenia old "hunter and gatherer" cravings.

Changing this formula because people walk away from it because they're sated would be damaging, though. Because, well, people gone are gone. If they left the game, not because they are simply "done" with it but because they're fed up with the formula that drives it, they won't come back for the next expansion, expecting the game to be the same. OTOH, the people that stay now like this formula and changing it might alienate them, too.

WoW has done one thing right so far (where many "big players" eventually succumbed to the temptation to get the "lost" players back): They did not change the basic scheme. People like it when things they love are predictable and stay the way they are. Easy to see with every change in gameplay, it rarely is well liked by the ones that got used to the "old" style and now have to relearn everything. Do it too often or too radically and people will just toss the game.

Re:Like any drug...

[LordLimecat]

It is likely at this point that WoW has seen its peak in terms of subscriber base and relevance in the gaming world.

You could be right.

However, this has been stated over and over for the past 5 years, and each year WoW continues to grow. Currently they STILL have over 10million subscribers, and though one chart indicates that theyve lost some over last september (11.4 million vs 12mil), it is absurd to claim they have lost relevance when they are still by far and away the biggest MMO out there.

Re:Like any drug...

[NeutronCowboy]

Really? Interesting, because I had the exact opposite experience on pretty much all points.

Cata, the risk/reward is far worse. Most pickup groups will leave you with a 200 gold repair bill. Even if you actually get the dungeon finished, you likely won't get anything useful, and the points earned are not really that much.

Unless you are 100% with 359 level gear or higher, a single repair bill will run you 20-50 gold. I'm geared for heroics and basic raiding, and that's what a semi-clean run costs me. Tanking kinda sucks, because even if you do everything right, you're still hit with a fairly significant repair build. But the only way to get to a 200 gold repair bill is to wipe so often that you have to repair multiple times. Which brings me to the next point....

Cata was supposed to make WoW "challenging again".

It did. It's possible you ran with a high-level guild that downed Illidan and the Lich King, and are used to the type of fights in end-level raids. At that point, I can see that there isn't much transition to Cata in terms of difficulty. But for semi-casuals like me who managed to gear up through lazy questing and BGs, WotLK heroics were an absolute joke. The only problem was keeping the DPS from going ape-shit right from the start of every fight. But the fight mechanics were trivialized by even mid-level purples. Cata, on the other hand, requires you to know the fight. You have to pay attention, know who is in charge of what and when, and DPS has to watch its aggro. Running heroics was actually fun, as long as the group paid attention. They didn't even have to be good - just be able to follow instructions and know their character. Once you got the gear to run heroics, the only thing that mattered was team work and communication.

Also, replay value in Cata sucks. The path is so linear, and you have to get all the xp zones unlocked. At least in WotLK, you unlocked the Sons of Hodir, then unlocked the flight paths around Icecrown, and was done. With Cata, you have to grind the same old boring quest arc so you have flight paths, the ability to swim without drowning, and towns to visit.

Complete nonsense. You can get to heroic dungeons by doing only 3 out of the 5 new zones. And the quest lines are actually fun! Yes, Sons of Hodir was a pretty nifty zone. As was the Argent Tournament. But WotLK was a much, much bigger grind than Cata, and the fun quests were few and far in between.

If you have trouble getting a raid slot because of gear, you have no clue what you're doing, or are used to outgearing dungeons. Raid level gear is attainable after a few heroics, some craftables, and the weapon from Tol Barad.

All in all, Cata is the single best expansion for the casual gamer. By a mile. I actually had fun getting to heroic level gear. I couldn't say the same about WotLK.

Re:Like any drug...

[epine]

When your business model is to convince people to surrender their marginal economic energies to *rent* the job of grinding away at the accumulation of a fictitious fiat currency, there's only so many ways to skin the cat.

It's quite possible Blizzard planned this out long ago. I don't know why this is painted as a reactive move. Surely they surmised at the outset that eventually the mania would crest. Their server capacity charges are likely far less now than when the game originally rolled out. Parameters change.

The big pharmaceuticals employ similar strategies when drugs go off patent. One is the expansion pack reformulation of the same stupid thing, at three times the price. The other is to make pacts with the generic manufacturers to roll into generic status with a progressive price decline, rather than cold turkey last year's wonder drug 12 tabs for a dollar.

Or is is more likely that the purveyors of WoW are just as myopic as the Warcrack addicts on the grounds that it takes one to snow one.

Re:Like any drug...

[luther349]

this is always the first hint of the game abought to go fully free. game has free tiral then free trial becomes without a limit then all of a suddion they rebomve the caps and limits and wala free game. i would assume when the game does go free the first 20 levels would still have those linits in terms of un able to spam hehe it was a issue back in the day why they made the trials like that.

Re:Like any drug...

[Anubis IV]

I actually think subscription numbers may have peaked a lot earlier than Cataclysm. They stopped announcing active subscriptions sometime during Burning Crusade (at the time, they were around 12-13M, as I recall). Since then, they've been pretty much mum on the subject. Cataclysm may have been a local maxima (all indications seem to point towards it having brought back a number of players), but in terms of reaching the subscriber base they had a few years ago, I doubt it. WoW is on the long decline now.

Re:Like any drug...

[Tridus]

Changing the formula has a name. It's called the NGE. Pissing off a vast quantity of your existing customers is a poor idea when you're not at all guaranteed that the new formula is going to bring in enough new people to offset them.

Sony tried it, and it was a total disaster. I can't imagine anybody is insane enough to want to do that with a game that has the subscriber base of WoW. Even if it's peaked and is now on a gradual decline (as happens to all games, there was no way this could last forever) it's got years of major profitability left. Improving the game is good. Rocking the boat is career suicide.

Re:Like any drug...

[brkello]

I don't really think you know what you are talking about. You can't talk about WoW players in such general terms like that. Expansions always see a jump of people because there are people like me who like to play the "single player" portion up through group dungeons but don't feel like putting time in to doing raids. Cataclysm was well done and very enjoyable. But it is an old game now and despite the improvements, its engine is getting dated and showing its limitations. Nothing is going to last forever. Blizzard always impressed me with what new things they did every time I came back. I had to learn a whole new game since it changes so much.
 
And content isn't just released with major expansions, new dungeons count out every month. People have been playing the game for years now...it isn't surprising that people eventually are going to move on. This isn't due to a problem with Blizzard...they are just as good as ever. They have a new MMO on the way. If anything stands to be a WoW killer, it's going to be made by them. WoW still is the most polished MMO out there (despite the graphics being dated). It has nothing to do with your "not thinking outside the box. garbage. If thinking outside the box was so important, some other game would have risen up and stomped WoW. So many people would love to leave WoW for something better, but no one yet has done it as well.

Re:Like any drug...

[Anonymous Coward]

Vanilla was good, really good.
They started distilling the MMO experience with BC.
With WotLK they perfected their distilling of the MMO experience into a formula.
In Cata they reshaped the entire experience according to formula.

Everclear will get you drunk quicker than wine, but there's more flavor going on in a glass of wine than a glass of everclear.
Knowing what I know of people; WoW isn't going anywhere soon and Blizzard can keep it going strong for another 5 years.

The next logical step for the Warcraft IP is Warcraft 4.

Re:Like any drug...

[talicni_tom]

More that half of those are in China paying significantly less per month.

Re:Like any drug...

[basscomm]

...WoW's users are building up a tolerance. Players are consuming new content at an ever increasing rate, and with the latest expansion Cataclysm, which took the better part of two years of development effort, many users have consumed the content and quit (again) after only six months or so.

An increasing number of people appear to be becoming tired of the same old recurring end-game structure of 10/25 player raids and working week after week on the next boss fight mechanics in order to slowly replace all of their equipment from the last tier of content with gear from the current content which will eventually get replaced again in the future.

The subscriber base has dropped significantly since it's peak shortly after the Cataclysm release, and Blizzard are now trying lots of things like giving away free copies of the original version of the game, allowing their "refer-a-friend" program to work up through level 80, and now the unlimited free trial period offer here.

Ultimately though the problem is that Blizzard has not been able to think outside the box enough to invent new and compelling *kinds* of content, and their players are increasingly unimpressed with the same cycle of leveling/raiding.

It is likely at this point that WoW has seen its peak in terms of subscriber base and relevance in the gaming world. I think they will always be able to maintain a subscriber base measured in millions, and may well run indefinitely, but if they want to grow again they need to get some fresh talent into their design group.

G.

It seems to me that they've also got a serious problem attracting new and lapsed users. For the few souls out there that haven't dipped their foot into the WoW Waters(tm) yet, they might pick up the Cataclysm box in the store and notice that it requires Wrath of the Lich King, which requires Burning Crusade, which requires Vanilla WoW, and suddenly they're looking at an investment of $120, and then $15 a month on top of that. Heck, I stopped playing shortly after Burning Crusade came out, and I'd have to blow $80 on expansions if I wanted to jump in and see the new content. That's just too steep for me.

Re:Like any drug...

[Anonymous Coward]

this is exactly why I quit being sucked into Diablo/LoD. You'd work honestly and hard getting some levels and wild equipment, carefully researching stats and powers and doing outsider/surprising builds like a Werewolf Palladin-PK Killer only to have the next patch nerf everything, change ratios, screw around with your hard-won characters and generally turn everything into crap once more. Then you were on the merry-go-round; you had nothing to be proud of unless it was instantaneous, like having some alliance gift you weapons and armor and carry you boringly through levels... grind grind grind. It finally got to the point where you could NOT complete Hell level solo, on your own merits, with only the equipment you found/scored. You HAD to have hacked stuff/gifted/traded stuff. At that point, the fun was gone for me and I'd rather do accounting; just as boring but you get paid for it.

Re:Like any drug...

[rasmusbr]

Sounds reasonable, except there is no way in hell WoW will run forever, at least not officially. I bet that almost everyone who is playing WoW would be in the market for a better MMO and unlike other kinds of software you only have time to play one MMO at a time. It's only a matter of time. If you want to play the better MMO you have to quit WoW. For all we know Blizzard could have a better MMO than WoW in internal beta right now. They should have if they have invested their money wisely.

Once subscription numbers for WoW drop under a certain level the best way to continue is probably to make both the server and the client freeware and let the community take over.

Re:Like any drug...

[julesh]

What does it cost to maintain servers?

Not $2B. Maybe $2M, but I'd be surprised even at that.

What does bandwidth for that much usage run?

Say an average user plays 10 hours per week, so they're looking at 6x10^9 player hours per annum. Total usage is probably around 10MB per player hour, so about 6x10^13 bytes of transfer per annum, which equates to about 15 megabits per second. OK, there'll be substantial bursts at a much higher rate, but it looks like 1Gb/s would be enough to cope with their demand. Bought directly from reputable datacenters, an uncapped link of this capacity would usually cost about $500/month, so a drop in the ocean compared to other costs.

Infrastructure to support the servers is a bitch too.

Still trivial compared to the revenue. Almost the entire cost of running WoW will be in areas you haven't touched yet: support staff, marketing, the dev team. Figure they're probably employing about 1,000 people with an average salary of maybe $30K => $30M, plus overheads to employ them, so figure $50M. Advertising budget probably runs to ten times that.

Re:Like any drug...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is that word we talked about: consume

Let it be said once and for all, using it in this context doesnt't make sense. Have fun consuming bytes and choking on them, consumers!

Re:Like any drug...

[MareLooke]

The only way to make it better is to drop the LFG system, so people actually know who the hell is on their realm and know who to group with and who not to group with (because of skill or just because they're omgwipequitters or just plain rude bastards). I had a full friends list in TBC, in Cata after changing realms and being on the new realm for an entire year the only people I knew were my guildmates (who transferred with me) and the realm clowns in trade chat (who I avoided) and it's not like I didn't try (joining WG/TB, pugging the PvP raids etc)

Finding a competent PUG in Cata was hell (I had just changed realms/guilds), I totally gave up on heroics because of it as tanks would ragequit after one wipe (usually caused by them being idiots and not listening to the healer or just going on with the Wrath mentality of "healer will heal through this") resulting in another 30-40min dungeon queue, only to have the story repeat. I think there are far less tanks now that tanknig actually requires some skill again (I leveled/geared a paladin tank in TBC, I guarantee you, it was hard, pallies weren't always faceroll like they were since Wrath)

Also Cata wasn't necessarily hard, hell, most normal raid zones were "yawn" for experienced raiders. The problem is players were no longer used to having to put any effort or skill into instances.

I think I vocalize the sentiment of a lot of players when I say: give me back my TBC, they took some steps in the right direction but not enough.

And I repeat: ditch the automated LFG.

Re:Like any drug...

[emt377]

The raiding is fine and the mechanics (for most fights) aren't really that hard if you have a competent guild.

Unfortunately, competent guilds don't grow on trees. And the ones that are tend not to have too many spots open. So you have a choice of playing with <Team Fail>, or <Relive Old World Glories>, or getting bossed around and maybe play once a month. Or when there's a spot you're not geared because you didn't get to play any of the previous content. On top of that you have to listen to the inanities on Vent of people you'd never spend time with for any other reason. The whole guild system, or rather its necessity, is the core problem of WoW and why I personally quit playing shortly after Cata.

Re:Like any drug...

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard has not been able to think outside the box enough to invent new and compelling *kinds* of content

Underwater mounts? Low orbital mounts? Mounts for their mounts? The possibilities are limitless.

Re:Like any drug...

[Anonymous Coward]

If they had some way to pug raids and got rid of the lock-out crap I might have stuck with it. Between the massive pain-in-the-ass of getting into a guild raid or getting one started and the massive time suck raids required (not to mention the odds of getting any gear for your time wasted) I just couldn't take it anymore and quit WOW cold-turkey.

Having all my hard-earned gear become crapola with the expansion didn't help either. It just reminded me how much of a time waste it was.

It was pretty, some of the stuff was fun, a smoothly run raid plus a piece of gear or two was great but I'm glad to have my life back. I'll never play another MMO that requires that kind of time commitment ever again.

Re:Like any drug...

[bckrispi]

The only way to make it better is to drop the LFG system, so people actually know who the hell is on their realm and know who to group with and who not to group with (because of skill or just because they're omgwipequitters or just plain rude bastards). I had a full friends list in TBC, in Cata after changing realms and being on the new realm for an entire year the only people I knew were my guildmates (who transferred with me) and the realm clowns in trade chat (who I avoided) and it's not like I didn't try (joining WG/TB, pugging the PvP raids etc)

You can have my Random Dungeon Finder when you pry it from my Cold... Dead... Hands. :) No one is forcing you do do heroics cross-realm. You can simply get a 5man group together with guildies or realm friends and still get your Valor points. You said you had a 'full' friends list prior to your realm switch. Why leave a good thing?

Myself, I level mainly through doing 5-mans. Doing this was neigh impossible before RDF if you were on a low-pop server. Even with an active guild and large friends list, it's a huge effort to find four other folks who are in the narrow level range (and who have the desire) to run specific Vanilla and BC dungeons. If I wanted a Scarlet Monastery or Mana Tombs run, I'd have to spend an hour or so in trade chat (or spamming a 'who' listing of similarly leveled characters) to get a group together. Plus the travel time to get two people to the summoning stone. Add another 20 minutes to find a replacement for the Tank who went 'gtg' before you even started. Add a ragequit halfway through the instance, and the group you've spent nearly two hours putting together disbands after 20 minutes of play time. How much fun is that??

Now, keep in mind that these are dungeons that people regularly level through! You want to do Scholomance, Dire Maul, or Stratholme? Forget it! Everyone's moved on to BC content by level 58. BC dungeons were even worse! I never saw more than half of the BC dungeons before RDF. People simply didn't run that content anymore. With RDF, I can get a group for any dungeon I want. The population is now large enough to support this. And with the incentives to do daily randoms, groups are always forming. BEST OF ALL, I'm not stuck wasting my time as I wait. I can quest, do auctions, raise skills, while RDF puts my group together for me. And if someone quits halfway through, RDF pulls the guy from the top of the queue into our group. It's virtually painless.

Finding a competent PUG in Cata was hell (I had just changed realms/guilds), I totally gave up on heroics because of it as tanks would ragequit after one wipe (usually caused by them being idiots and not listening to the healer or just going on with the Wrath mentality of "healer will heal through this") resulting in another 30-40min dungeon queue, only to have the story repeat. I think there are far less tanks now that tanknig actually requires some skill again (I leveled/geared a paladin tank in TBC, I guarantee you, it was hard, pallies weren't always faceroll like they were since Wrath)

I'm confused. Is the renewed difficulty of Heroics a "good" or "bad" thing to you? I agree that pugging Heroics with RDF for the first month or so of Cata was painful. More than once, I'd spend 30 minutes in a queue, plus a solid hour in an instance only to get vote-kicked by guys in the same guild so they could bring in one of their pals for the last boss. To Blizzard's credit, they've taken steps to fix this. Heroics have been manageable for some months now. And with more people running with full sets of raid/Zandalari gear, you can start facerolling through a lot of them now.

Also Cata wasn't necessarily hard, hell, most normal raid zones were "yawn" for experienced raiders. The problem is players were no longer used to having to put any effort or skill into instances.

Now, I'm really confused... You can find 10-25 competent folks on your server to raid, but can't find 5 to do your daily heroics??

Re:Like any drug...

[bckrispi]

Once subscription numbers for WoW drop under a certain level the best way to continue is probably to make both the server and the client freeware and let the community take over.

You're not going to see those numbers for a long, long time. Anecdotally, I saw a big exodus with Rift. (With the anecdote being that our small-but-active active guild lost half it's members when it came out) WoW has hundreds of realms worldwide. I'd anticipate them consolidating realms long before they give it away for free.

Re:Like any drug...

[wmbetts]

I guess I'm lucky. I play on a small pop server on the ally side which is even smaller. So I guess there's more of a community feel to the game for me. Minus the trolls in /2 it seems like I know alot of the really active people on the server and I got in to a small, but active raiding guild. It's pretty casual, but we still down content. It might not be as fast as some of the high end guilds, but we've managed to go 9/12 so far and starting bwd heroics. If you're ever on Vashj and Ally I'll give you an invite. We try not to be too bossy and tell people how to play their toons, but we do offer pointers. I'm one of the "core" healers and I've even given up my spot for newbies so they have a chance to see content, get better, and get gear. I'll hop in on some of the later bosses that we're not farming.

Re:Like any drug...

[MareLooke]

Raiders don't tend to group much outside of raids, also since I was new to the guild most groups had already formed so the new guy was left seeking PUGs most of the time.

I agree that for leveling it's a nice thing to have, but also it makes groups boring. There's no such thing anymore as someone's "reputation" on a realm (except when you're the local Trade chat clown I guess) which is a bit of a shame. There's no chatting anymore in dungeon groups (besides "hi" and "bye" if you're lucky, no silly shit going on anymore) which is a real shame.

The trouble in getting groups for old dungeons is related to a couple of factors, firstly they made it faster each expansion to get through the previous one, making dungeons uninteresting as there are faster ways to quickly accumulate experience. Secondly: the gear was horribly out of date. That's two important motivations for people to do dungeons right out of the window. I think fixing those two would have been better than the LFG system.

So yeah, guess we gotta take the bad with the good but I dunno if it's really worth it.

I just resubbed for a bit and I'll try and level a character from 1 on a totally new realm (and new faction, so everything will be shiny and new, except for the game mechanics) and see how it goes. I somehow expect it to be a pretty lonely experience (which is a rather sad thing for a multiplayer game), but I'd be very glad to be proven wrong.

Re:Like any drug...

[bckrispi]

I agree that for leveling it's a nice thing to have, but also it makes groups boring. There's no such thing anymore as someone's "reputation" on a realm (except when you're the local Trade chat clown I guess) which is a bit of a shame. There's no chatting anymore in dungeon groups (besides "hi" and "bye" if you're lucky, no silly shit going on anymore) which is a real shame.

This is a good point. Cross-realm, there are no real sanctions for being a jerk in a group anymore. But that being said, cool guys will still be cool cross realm. I've met and real-id friended a few of the RDF pugs I've run with.

The trouble in getting groups for old dungeons is related to a couple of factors, firstly they made it faster each expansion to get through the previous one, making dungeons uninteresting as there are faster ways to quickly accumulate experience. Secondly: the gear was horribly out of date. That's two important motivations for people to do dungeons right out of the window. I think fixing those two would have been better than the LFG system.

So yeah, guess we gotta take the bad with the good but I dunno if it's really worth it.

Correct. If you're out to steamroll up to 85, you won't be running lower level dungeons. But RDF makes dungeon-leveling workable for those who don't mind taking a little more time to reach end-game. Before RDF, a dungeon was a luxury I could have once every couple days. Now, I've leveled several toons (with tank or heal spec ;) ) almost exclusively through dungeons.

I just resubbed for a bit and I'll try and level a character from 1 on a totally new realm (and new faction, so everything will be shiny and new, except for the game mechanics) and see how it goes. I somehow expect it to be a pretty lonely experience (which is a rather sad thing for a multiplayer game), but I'd be very glad to be proven wrong.

Blizz put forth a lot of effort into revamping many of the starting zones. I'm a big fan of the lore, so it's been nothing but a pleasure for me. I just leveled through the new Forsaken starting area, and it was FUN! Even though I didn't run into many other players, the quests make you feel like you're much more a part of the story. And with phasing, you actually see the battle lines change through Silverpine as you push back the Gilnaens. ... And, for the love of all that is good, play through the Goblin starting zone! By the time you reach level 10, you will have 'fixed' a professional sporting event, shaken down your competitors, hosted a party with way too much alcohol, and committed insurance fraud while using high explosives.

WarCrack

[HeckRuler]

The first 20 are always free, kiddies...

Re:WarCrack

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I have the same deal on whore crack please?

Re:WarCrack

[Zaatxe]

I'm not addicted. I stop whenever I want!

My first thought was

[jader3rd]

My first thought was that they're doing this in response to Age of Empires Online having a free version when it releases later in the summer. I imagine a lot of WoW players were also Age of Empires players. Not that AoEO is as nearly as in depth or detailed as WoW, but it could pull a noticable amount of playing time from WoW to itself.

Re:My first thought was

[Tridus]

If anything this is more of a response to the rather poor reception and sagging numbers Cataclysm got.

RTFA/RTFFAQ

[billstewart]

He's not complaining that WoW doesn't have those things - he's saying that the Free Starter Edition version doesn't include them, so you're missing out on a lot more of the game than just not getting above Level 20.

TF2, now WOW?

[interkin3tic]

Did something happen at E3 to convince people of the wisdom of giving more of your aging game for free to get new income? Did WOW see that more people are excited about TF2 since it went free and realize maybe they could hook some new players if they followed suit?

Maybe XBOX live will give a little bit more functionality to the free "silver" membership? The two things I'm assuming most people use paid live for are netflix and multiplayer. Someone at MS should consider making the lesser-used one available to free memberships with some limits. You can watch one netflix movie a week or play 1 hour multiplayer? At the very least, make it work with paid hulu plus accounts.

Probably not though. According to wiki, xbox premium can work with twitter, but not the free one. I guess someone thought twitter on xbox would be a good thing to reserve for the gold members, so that to me says whoever is in charge of that is a moron.

Re:TF2, now WOW?

[Tridus]

I think WoW realized that if they change the existing trial program slightly (you now have longer then 10 days to reach level 20, not much else changed from something they've offered for YEARS) they can generate headlines and publicity without particularly doing anything.

And going by this post on Slashdot that acts like this is something new and shiny, they succeeded. In reality it's the existing trial without the 10 day limitation. But hey, minor details like facts should never get in the way of a good story.

Re:TF2, now WOW?

[brkello]

Considering it would take a hell of a long time to code this, I guarantee it has nothing to do with TF2.

Re:TF2, now WOW?

[eL-gring0]

TF2 is a good point. At least in TF2's case, dropping the price below anyone's impulse buy threshold grabbed a lot of players. I was surprised that $0 got so much more than $9 or $5 or whatever it fell to, not to mention the amount of times it was bundled or given away.

Robin Walker cautioned that they aren't at all sure it would work for many, or perhaps any of their other games, but it was interesting to see so many new people when they thought that everyone who wanted TF2 had it. I think they might keep a large portion of these new players, as well. The account limitations are pretty hard to bump into, and don't cripple you. It's practice and ability (or lack thereof) that limit you. Overall, people seem to have a lot of fun with it on the servers that Valve spun up recently for them.

With WoW, I'd be the first to think they advertised their customer base to death, but I guess there's always room to be surprised. Difficult to say without real numbers or statistics, which Blizzard is pretty scarce with providing, but maybe upcoming stock reports will tell. I mention that in contrast to Valve, which constantly displays its playerbase for games on its Steam stats page. Blizzard kept a lot of restrictions on their trials, and as it's mentioned several times above, it really crimps the social, or massively multiplayer, aspect of the genre.

Free to play seems to have been a good business call for TF2, and players appear to like it. WoW? Anyone's guess, but I'd wager it's just staunched the bleeding for a few weeks or months at best.

Re:TF2, now WOW?

[runningman24]

Just found out that TF2 is now free from these comments. I just finished creating a Steam account and it'll be about 3-4 hours before TF2 is installed. It's one of those games that I really wanted to try at the time, but never got around to. Finding out it's free and active is more than enough to get me to give it a try.

I think the main reason I never tried it is that I didn't realize that it still had an active community, and I've been tired of paying for games I get bored with easily. Also, though the game may have slipped to 10 bucks, I never even knew it was that cheap.

On topic, I tried a trial of WOW about a year ago and played about an hour before I got tired of it. Took me about 2 weeks before I completely deleted it though. I have no intention of downloading it again due to the changed terms. I know I'll get hooked if I play long enough, but while I'm still clear eyed it just doesn't seem to be that fun of a game.

Re:TF2, now WOW?

[ildon]

Everyone seems to be focusing on the new unlimited trial period, when the real news is that the first expansion is now included for free when you purchase the base game, and that the base game is now $20, and that Recruit-a-Friend benefits (triple experience and the ability to teleport to your friend and grant levels) now extend to level 80 (from 60).

Re:TF2, now WOW?

[ildon]

Uh, all they did was remove the 10 day limit. Change field "10 days" to "recurring". Code complete.

PVP now gains XP

[Anonymous Coward]

so lvl 19 twinks don't stay that way for long.

Re:PVP now gains XP

[compro01]

They also added the ability to shut off XP when they added that.

Just a little ball of crack

[gubers33]

"And if doesn't even hurt the crack babies" This is Free Wow Trial is just a gateway drug to more terrible things like a monthly subscription, nightly raids, and a pasty complexion.

Appropriate targets

[Caerdwyn]

For those who don't like this policy:

1. It exists because of spammers. Vent your anger at the spammers, not Blizzard.
2. It exists because spamming for gold sales works (otherwise people wouldn't bother). Vent your anger at gold buyers, not Blizzard.
3. It exists because of guild-looters (people who join guilds, strip the guild vault, and sell the profits). Yes, guilds should manage themselves better; trusting people on the Internet without direct experience to demonstrate that trustworthiness is idiocy. But a looted guild bank generates a lot of direct costs to Blizzard (GM tickets) and indirect costs (people who unsubscribe because of the negative feelings this gives about the game).
4. Freeloaders don't get a vote. Someone on a trial account isn't contributing anything; the purpose is to let the person decide if they want to get the privileges that others pay for (and in the process contribute in a positive way to the multiplayer environment). Trial accounts aren't for YOU, they're for Blizzard as a sales tool. Paid accounts ARE for your benefit (as well as Blizzard's). You're just being given first-hand information (for free) on whether you'd enjoy the game.

Typical "entitlement" attitude. Nobody is "entitled" to free games. Be glad you're being given anything, because you're not owed anything. Think games should be free? Write and host your own, and learn firsthand about just how badly people behave even when what they're being handed is free.

Re:Appropriate targets

[Anonymous Coward]

You mad bro?

The product sux.
Not buying that.

Re:Appropriate targets

[Anonymous Coward]

Objectivist alert!
Other than your attitude, I agree with you. I think most of us do. Nobody is entitled to free stuff, but Blizzards pricing scheme borders on predatory, which is probably why subscriptions are dropping off at record speeds. Over 100 dollars PLUS 15 dollars a month to pick up the game is killing their new subscriptions. Blizzard needs to pick one, and honestly keeping the 15 dollar rate is probably more beneficial to everyone involved, including Blizzard(they'd make less per person, but more people would subscribe). By a conservative estimate, lets say 100 dollars to buy the game, plus 15*12 = 280 dollars MINIMUM to play this game for a year.

Re:Appropriate targets

[camazotz]

Startlingly well presented and cogent post.

Re:Appropriate targets

[bckrispi]

Your numbers are off.. a lot.

Vanilla + BC = $20 (comes with a month free)

Wrath = $20

Cata = $40

Total: $80 If you buy a 6 month subscription, your cost is $12.99/month. That's up to dozens of hours of entertainment for about the cost of a movie ticket. How is that "predatory".

WoW destroy lives

[Dunge]

Reading this article just as I was raging over my potatoes roommates who just played all day long instead of cleaning up the apartment for moving tomorrow as they were supposed to. WoW doesn't even have good gameplay, doesn't bring fun, it just exploit some human mind flaw.

Fact: *WoW is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *WoW is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *WoW community when IDC confirmed that *WoW subscriber base has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all MMOs. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *WoW has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *WoW is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent fat, cheeto-stained basement nerd comprehensive MMO test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *WoW's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *WoW faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *WoW because *WoW is dying. Things are looking very bad for *WoW. As many of us are already aware, *WoW continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Icecrown is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its obese, socially-awkward player base. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time loser clans Arcane Union and Blood Legion only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Icecrown is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Agony leader Craxon states that there are 7000 users of Doomhammer. How many users of Proudmore are there? Let's see. The number of Doomhammer users versus Proudmore users is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Proudmore users. Aszune users are about half of the volume of Proudmore users. Therefore there are about 700 users of Aszune. A recent article put Earthen Ring at about 80 percent of the WoW market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 users of Earthen Ring. This is consistent with the number of bespectacled, antisocial virgins hanging out on Hellscream.

Due to the troubles of Azeroth, abysmal sales and so on, Cushbridge went out of business and was taken over by Hellscream, who run another troubled server. Now Kilrogg is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *WoW has steadily declined in market share. *WoW is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *Wow is to survive at all it will be among MMO dilettante dabblers. *WoW continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *WoW is dead.

Fact: *WoW is dying

Re:Fact: *WoW is dying

[Travelsonic]

Fact: bolding an unsubstantiated opinion doesn't make it become a fact.

Re:Fact: *WoW is dying

[Loopy]

Fact: missing the punchline(s) does not mean there wasn't a joke.

Re:Fact: *WoW is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

Turn in your /. card, mister, 'cause you fail at old memes.

Gold spammers

[feddas]

Gold spammers are why there's no social aspect to the free version. Previously people utilized the multi-day trails to spam chat. So it makes sense Blizzard restricts this so playing customers don't have to be spammed.

I tried a multi-day trail. I'd end up on a quest where multiple people were camping a mob to complete the quest. I was unable to ask them if they'd group for the quest, so that we could all complete the quest on a single mob respawn. The only way to interact with other players is through the WoW defined emotes, which do not contain a /wantToGroup.

The multi-day trails did have the ability to join guilds. This gave them a taste of the social aspect. I don't know why they'd remove the ability to join a guild as a paying account is the one initiating the trail accts invitation to the guild. That paying account can easily boot the person if they're a gold spammer.

Re:Gold spammers

[bckrispi]

I tried a multi-day trail. I'd end up on a quest where multiple people were camping a mob to complete the quest. I was unable to ask them if they'd group for the quest, so that we could all complete the quest on a single mob respawn. The only way to interact with other players is through the WoW defined emotes, which do not contain a /wantToGroup.

Not true. You could still communicate with /say.

The multi-day trails did have the ability to join guilds. This gave them a taste of the social aspect. I don't know why they'd remove the ability to join a guild as a paying account is the one initiating the trail accts invitation to the guild. That paying account can easily boot the person if they're a gold spammer.

Not true. Joining a guild has always (at least for the past 2.5 years) been reserved for subscribers.

I understand the need to control RMT, but...

[RanceJustice]

As a longtime WoW Player - relatively casual mind you. I've never beaten an expansion's end-game raid content during that expansion (ie. I went to the Sunwell for a tour when I made 80) - though I disagree with their limitations, I can probably inform non-players on why they are so strict

0. Level 20 - Goes without saying, this is a nice chunk of the early game. If you want to go higher, you'll like the game enough to subscribe..hopefully
1. 10 Gold Limit. WoW has a copper/silver/gold scheme, and 10 Gold is a lot of money for a level 20..who's not a second or later alternate character being "fed" by a max-level character with thousands. This limit I actually agree with - it ensures that Chinese reps that sell gold for real money can't use these characters to make "free" delivery mules as the only people buying gold are buying it by the thousands or ten thousands.
2. Trade Skills Capped at 100 - This is sort of the "crafting" (Blacksmithing, Cooking, Fishing, Mining, etc...) equivalent of being capped at level 20. There was a time when certain blocks of trades were level-limited anyway so you couldn't have a crafting-only mule (ie. to make Artisan level items of 225+ skill you needed to be over level 45)
3. Unable to trade - This is probably again to keep Chinese from using these characters to sell expensive high-end items for real money. You would pay on their website, they log in on one of their low level characters and give you the item you bought. Personally, I think this is far too restrictive. Rather, I would like to see them include all these trade formats but only limited to "Item levels" (in game, mostly hidden ratings on items) viable to level 30 and below. That would enable your friend to give you a set of level 15 armor, without allowing you to hold Furor's Compendium of Dragonslaying or the Battered Hilt (two old items that were often sold for tons of gold as they started the quest for the user to pick up an excellent Epic weapon).
4. No public channels - Again, blame Chinese Real Money Transaction/Farmers/Hackers. They already spam public channels (such as the Trade channel that exists in all major game cities) but have actually been cracked down on quite a bit. This is far too draconian a restriction as the public channels are a great way to make friends, get answers, and generally open a new player to the MMO community. (And if you're on a PVP server, you get the bonus feature of being called a 'gay scrub faggot' whenever you speak too!)
5. No whispers outgoing - Yes, again with China. Since they started getting banned by players reporting their spam in public chat, they started whispering individual players they saw speak in chat at some point. If you get a whisper/tell from low level with an incomprehensible name, that seems like "do u remember me?" or "hi friend do you have time I have great deal for you", you're being offered paid services from this gray-market industry. The restrictions are not too bad here so if someone whispers to you, you can talk back.
6. No party invites - Not sure the idea behind this one. Partying is an integral experience and there's no reason after going through 10 levels or so that a new player wouldn't feel confident enough to start their own or run one of the low-level dungeons. I guess you can be invited to others - not sure how the gadget that auto-finds you dungeon groups factors into this - but I see no harm in having trial players offer parties to others.
7. No parties with those over 20 - Okay, this is to keep from being "powerleveled", (Someone with a much higher level kills everything for you to gain experience). To my knowledge this doesn't work any longer because the XP calculation is miniscule if there's a greater than 5 level disparity in members. I guess its to keep them from killing everything so you can finish quests unusually quick. No real problem here.
8. No VOIP - Most players use external VOIP so this isn't a big deal, but there's nothing its even really helpful to have VOIP for around level 20 anyway. I guess

Re:I understand the need to control RMT, but...

[Andreas Mayer]

Rather, I would like to see them include all these trade formats but only limited to "Item levels" (in game, mostly hidden ratings on items) viable to level 30 and below.

You could still trade expensive vanity pets (no level restriction on those).
Also it seems like a nice incentive to join the game when someone wants to give you something and you can't trade. ;)

but I see no harm in having trial players offer parties to others.

Gold sellers again. They would invite you into a party to spam you on the party channel. I actually had happen this to me once.

Re:I understand the need to control RMT, but...

[RanceJustice]

Ahh, maybe I'm incorrect but I thought that vanity pets had "item levels" but no actual level requirement? If this isn't the case then I can see how they'd have to keep that kind of limitation there.

As far as the spam/goldseller invite - That's a new one. Honestly I didn't think it had a high enough ROI - you can send out 20 whispers at once with a good chatmod and see who talks back, but you only invite to one party at the time and there's not that many people who will accept party invites from strangers and stay there past the initial spam. Then again, perhaps something like a limit on party invites...only 1 per minute or somesuch for Trial accounts would get around this issue and make it even of lesser usefulness for goldselling.

I think they blew it here.

[Shivetya]

I would have opened it up to a higher level than 20, maybe as far as 60. It does need the social interaction of being allowed to join guilds. I could see a restriction in that you could not help form one, that would prevent people just starting trials to make new guilds. As for other limitations, let them buy off the AH and disallow monetary and item trades to other characters. Its not like the 14 or 15 bucks a month will break anyone's bank, but I don't think 20 levels is enough to hook new players. You barely get to see the game or experience your class.

I played WOW off and on for many years, finally calling it quits with the new expansion and its emphasis on making their arena games less of a joke (hence the high health pools but high cost to heal them - basically no quick kills but no endless fights either).

Still no Linux version

[Anonymous Coward]

pffft

Gold Selling Ads

[wmbetts]

So I look up at the top of the summary and see this.

http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/imgad?id=CNyWgqXE0MyoxQEQ2AUYWjIIwoZhlNY3qIk

Not $50 startup

[subanark]

Getting to level 20 will probably take around 3-4 hours. Once you want to purchase the game, you pay $20 for the game which includes 1 free month. This allows you to level though the classic game (revamped with the latest expansion) and though burning crusade (they made the first expansion part of the base game at the same time they made trials unlimited) which will probably take around 100 hours to complete (even then you can go back and play with 8 other classes, and/or try a different faction for roughly 1/3 different experience). If you want to level past that you will need to buy 2 more expansions in order to get into the more hardcore raiding and pvp at max level.

I don't see why there is an article on slashdot about this. This simply gives people an extra chance to try the game again without having to make a new trial account.

Useless title goes here

[Anonymous Coward]

"The new policy means that first-time visitors to Azeroth will be able to build an unlimited number of characters and classes up to level 20 at their leisure, although there will be some limitations."

So it's not free.

Exactly!

[raehl]

WoW is simply adopting the cocaine sales model. Give 'em a little for free so you can enslave them to your product!

Come to think of it, I don't know anyone who has ruined their life because of drugs. I know a few who have ruined their life because of WoW.

Re:Stop it with the WoW hate already!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't see how a 24/7 WOW habit can be compatible with family life. Married, 2 kids, 24/7 WOW? I think you can only do justice to 2 out of those 3 (at most).

roles for trial accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

If more people will play, the world will be more interactive.
Further, blizzard may offer some kind of Mob roles to trial accounts. More fun to engage in fight with non-ai manipulated creature.

Mountain out of a molehill

[goonerw]

I don't get the fuss over this from /. and other tech sites (I'm glaring at you Ars Technica). The *ONLY* thing that has changed is they've removed the 30-day limitation. All the other restrictions in place have been in place for years. There is absolutely *NOTHING* stopping you from creating another account if the old one expired.

Relevance?

[Anonymous Coward]

These days I hear more talk about Angry Birds than WoW. How's that for a relevance?

Your local store charges $50 for the base game?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously?

It's been under $35 here in Oz for at least the last 2-3 years (I know, because I bought it for $35 about 3 years ago).

Yeah, it sucks having to buy the expansions as well. But then, you don't have to buy them until you get to the appropriate level, because you can't use them until then anyway. You've still got 60 levels of content to play through until you *need* to buy the first expansion to progress further. That's fully-updated content, too - you don't need to buy Cataclysm to get the updated beginner zones.

And if $35 is that much of a barrier to you for something that may provide literally *hundreds* of hours of entertainment, well, the term "cheapskate" comes to mind...

Re:Appropriate answer:

[Anonymous Coward]

1. It exists because of spammers

No. Trial accos exist because Blizzard are greedy fuckers.

2. It exists because spamming

No. Trial accos exist because Blizzard are greedy fuckers.

3. It exists because of guild-looter

No. Trial accos exist because Blizzard are greedy fuckers.

I vent my anger at companies who think big profits mean it's a good product. Do I think BigMac a better product than a steak because BigMacs make more money? Hell no. Fuck hamburgers and fuck Blizzard. I want steak.

A pretty interesting move

[benengel]

You know its quite a uniquely funny position that Blizzard are in from the point of creative game development. No game ever made before has been such a financial success over such a long time as wow has been.

Even todays announcement that possibly indicates subscriptions are plateauing or possibly in decline still doesnt mean that Blizzards isn't going to continue to make absolutley bucketloads of cash from it for years to come.

You wonder how the game designers that worked on the game over the last 7 years feel about the ongoing amazing financial success of the game - obviously they put their hearts and souls into it and produced one of the most fantastic games of all time but as anyone who has ever worked creatively knows there is a time and place where you should always move on to the next project and put your old one up on the shelf.

I am really excited about whatever Titan is going to be - with blizzards track record Im sure it will be amazing but I wonder if the real leading creative lights at Blizzard at some stage will actually prefer World of Warcraft to die so it becomes another historical jewel in the crown of Blizzard alongside Starcraft 1 Warcraft 2 Diablo etc and not stick around outdated and ugly alongside whatever new and amazing thing they come up with in the future merely because it continues to pump out rivers of gold for Activision.

Re:Appropriate answer:

[crow_t_robot]

"It" == "trial account limitations"
"It" != "the trial accounts themselves"

Your reading comprehension grade: F

Maybe you should demand the same quality out of your education system that you demand from your game publishers.

Missing the Point

[tecnico.hitos]

These measures are making the whole experience very unappealing. They might be avoiding some problems, but they are unlikely to attract anybody that didn't make their mind before playing this trial mode and they may even change the mind of the ones who did.

Whether the free gamers have "entitlement attitude" doesn't matter, because if the free mode fails to entice players, then it is pointless. No self-righteousness will make anybody buy/subscribe.

Oh joy

[VickiM]

If I remember correctly, the experience isn't that grand. All I remember from my below-level 20 characters is running around trying to get the materials I needed for my skills (herbs and ores) but there always being high-level characters with epic mounts grinding for copper and iron to sell in the auction hall, standing in line for quest-related spawns, and the unexplained fact that while only one in twenty murlocks have an eyeball, they're fairly effective warriors.

Not really news

[neminem]

1. The first twenty levels are the most boring.
2. It takes almost no time to get to level 20, comparatively (which is a good thing: see #1).
3. "Some limitations" is a laugh. I remember the free trial; I used it to make sure my computer could run WoW adequately, after which I immediately upgraded, because you were locked down something *fierce*. Can't have much gold, can't talk in public channels, can't talk to anyone who hasn't already friended you, can't send or receive mail or use the auction house, can't send party invites... does that sound like a very fun MMO? No, it doesn't. It sounds like a crappy single-player game, except with evidence of people all around you having way more fun than you are.

Yes, fine, that's all because every possible social interaction got abused by gold-spammers, and yes, I do enjoy not being spammed by gold-spammers as much. I'm not complaining about the restrictions, I'm just saying: who in their right mind would want to play free-to-play WoW with all those restrictions for more than 30 days, or even 7?

Twinks are back!

[feddas]

This is going to lead to a huge influx of level 20 twinks in the game.

Doing twink Battlegrounds will no longer be a 10+ hour queue.

Half price

[bruceslog]

*snip* By a conservative estimate, lets say 100 dollars to buy the game, plus 15*12 = 280 dollars MINIMUM to play this game for a year.

It'd cost you much less than $100.00 to get the game and all of it's expansions now. About half that, actually.

With the newest patch, [ 4.2.0 ] - anyone who has a retail version of vanilla WOW ( The first CD ) is automatically upgraded to The Burning Crusade expansion now. see http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2993743#technical ( last item under general patch notes ). And that first version of WoW is on sale often for about $ 10.00 these days.
So for $10 bucks if you catch it on sale, you get World of Warcraft and the first expansion ( The Burning Crusade ), which is now included. ( It downloads for you automatically when you begin playing ).

I found the Cataclysm expansion on sale at Buy.com during the month of May for $18.00 shipped.
So I'm up to $28.00, and just waiting for the WoLK expansion to go on sale somewhere. I figure I should be able to snag it for $20.00 or less. Making WoW - with all the expansions - cost about $48.00 for the software this year, or about the price of most other games on CD / DVD lately. Whether they be for PC, Mac, XBox, etc.

Just FYI :)