Unlimited Free Trials: Is WoW Next?

PURE SPECULATION

Recently Warhammer Online and Age of Conan, two high profile games, have started offering unlimited free trials of their starter content. So, with more and more games going free to play or offering more content for no money down, is a change of this variety in the works for World of Warcraft?

The idea of giving the Old World content to players for free has been around for a while now. However, there are two obvious problems with freeing that content up in the long run:

1. Wow is way more successful than Warhammer and AoC combined and has no pressing financial reason to all of sudden give away a large part of their game.

2. The next expansion, Cataclysm, is going to radically change the Old World in an attempt to refocus the population of the game.

So, no, in the long term I cannot see Blizzard giving away any part of their golden hen. The short term, however, is a different story. Lately, the marketing push for the game has seemed to of ramped up. Just the other day my mom and I were watching TV when one of those Mr. T Mohawk Grenade ads came on. She thought it was hilarious. It got me thinking.

With the release of patch 3.3 last week the current expansion is done, paving the way for Cataclysm sometime (I hope) in the first half of next year. And this marketing campaign with well known faces suggests that they will push the next expansion more heavily than any previous as it is probably the largest change to the game to date. So, what will bring the most new players into the game in the lull between January and when the expansion hits?

Starting early next year, offer the Old World content for free until the release of Cataclysm.

Age of Conan is doing basically the same thing until, I think, the end of this year. And yes, I know, in the case of Warcraft it might be seen as the old bait-and-switch: get new players in with this old stuff, then when the expansion hits and they subscribe everything they have come to know is different.

That last part though, is solved by just being honest and up front. If I were to advertise that I had a dinosaur living in my backyard, but that it was going to die in a week, people would still flock to see it. That it was going to die soon would only give them a bigger sense of urgency.

Okay, bad example, but you get the idea. Anyway, your thoughts?

-Max

The Unfortunate Part Two: Oh, Blizzard!

Well, my glorious return to WoW was not so glorious. Remember how I said my laptop can no longer run it so I had to pull out our old desktop to run it? Well, turns out the desktop won't run it either... Without fail, (or with a lot of fail) somewhere between five and ten minutes into playing, the computer blue screens and I have to restart it. There have been some other very strange glitches too:

One time I lost all landscape features

One time I tried to tab out and the game got stuck in a frantic, glitchy transition between my desktop and the game.

And one time I was in the middle of a quest that involved setting down a torch to summon some bat demon, but as soon as I set down the torch my perspective flipped upside down. It was like gravity had flip flopped me and I was standing on the underside of the world. Hard to explain. Anyway, at first I thought this was part of the quest...until I couldn't select anything and the bat demon killed me.

You know, for a game like WoW, which is supposed to run on nearly everything, it's pretty ironic (and sucky) that it won't run on any of our computers, despite them being more than powerful enough.

I'll probably give it one more shot today, although my expectations are not high. From what I have seen so far of the changes they've made since I last played, everything is working better than ever. I especially like a lot of the quest log and map changes. It's just a shame I can't get far enough into the game to be able to appreciate it more.

-Max

Oh, Blizzard!

A couple weeks ago I was one of the lucky current unsubscribers to get a free seven days of playtime in World of Warcraft. Given my previous record of subscriptions they probably thought that a few free days would lure me right back in...and they would be right.

Except!

My main computer at the moment refuses to run the game. So, in order to use this time I had to pull out our eight year old desktop and patch the game up. With finals coming to an end this week I finally got around to logging back in yesterday. However, wouldn't you know it, yesterday (Tuesday) they decided to release patch 3.3. So, it wasn't until fairly late last night that I actually managed to log in.

This is the part though that I'm sure Blizzard were hoping for: I wasn't in Stormwind ten seconds before someone sent me a tell asking for a port! I love all that community stuff! Community and Exploration are two of the main things I look for in a game. Not coincidentally, WoW being my home game, has both these things. Say what you will about the WoW community, but in this instance they really came through for their game. So, yes, Blizzard, I would love to resubscribe to your game after these seven days run out...

...just as soon as you release Cataclysm and I find a better computer to play it on.

*Hint to Blizzard: if you want me to resub, how about a new laptop for Christmas?*

In all seriousness I'll gladly be back soon, but this break will probably be consumed by Xbox.

-Max

Now I just need to find out what happened to that guild I was in.....