"Play World of Warcraft for free" - trial

koneko

From:
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=65519

All the best crack peddlers know that you must speculate to accumulate - offer the first hit for free and two weeks later they'll be begging for more and borrowing money off Carol Vorderman's loans company to pay for it.

Well, it's probably a business stratagem that Blizzard is familiar with, too - which would be why they're now offering European gamers the chance to try out World of Warcraft for free.

Sign up for the trial over at the WOW website, download the client and you'll get ten whole days of free access to the game. And a brand new addiction, most likely.

Just remember, kids - there's a monthly subscription fee of £8.99 to pay once the trial is up. You might think you won't get hooked, but so did Zammo.

So if you're not already playing, now looks like a good time to start

sunzz

Koneko reeling in the new blood

Drakar

Won't somebody think of the children!

bizmark

2.7 gig download :eek: and i hear thats for the totaly unpatched client you then have to download 1 years worth of patchs

**** that.

melekalikimaka

so how much is this a year in euro? is private server talk a no no here?

sunzz

Yes it is, as is any other illegal activity stated by blizzard.

Welly ou can buy 6 months for 64.99 off the top of my head, so do the math

Btw, private servers are ****ing horrible.

melekalikimaka

i see i see, well thats not too bad i guess, a yes private servers are crap...so i hear, but all the same i think they do give people a 'feel' for the game, the trial doesnt let you advance very far

seamus

Yeah, but the trial isn't for hardened WoWers. Few people on a free trial would hit the level 20 cap in two weeks.

How in God's name do private servers work? Someone leaked Blizzard's server code?

rainbow kirby

Actually, I started out on a 10 day guest pass, and pretty much hit 20 within the 10 days...

slade_x

koneko wrote:

So if you're not already playing, now looks like a good time to start

I downloaded it and I would have started the trial but then it asked for credit card details

Its stupid really, the credit card details should come after the trial if you want to sign up for a full account..

I would have tried it, if i liked it i probably would have started buying 60 day time cards to continue..

melekalikimaka

seamus wrote:

How in God's name do private servers work? Someone leaked Blizzard's server code?

therea thing called wowemu or something and its a buggy version of the server, some skill/quests are still being tweaked. i'm not gonna discuss this more as i can see myself forking out in a week or so for the gave and dont want to make enemies

koneko

Back on topic, no private server talk in here.

melekalikimaka

so its one month free then 60euro for every two months after that roughly?

Slaanesh

According to the T's & C's you still have to purchase the full retail version at the end of the trial which is ~€30 on top of the ~€13 to be paid every month.

That sucks.

Zapp Brannigan

melekalikimaka wrote:

so its one month free then 60euro for every two months after that roughly?

Nope. It's one month free. Then €13 a month or else a 3 month plan that works out at €12 a month or a 6 month plan at €11 a month.

melekalikimaka

Slurms wrote:

Nope. It's one month free. Then €13 a month or else a 3 month plan that works out at €12 a month or a 6 month plan at €11 a month.

ah thats much more reasonable. wheres best to pick it up on the cheap, i think i saw it for something like 50 euro in hmv, bit steep imo

Zapp Brannigan

Play.com would be your best bet. Or you could look at CD-wow.co.uk

rainbow kirby

Slaanesh wrote:

According to the T's & C's you still have to purchase the full retail version at the end of the trial which is ~€30 on top of the ~€13 to be paid every month.

That sucks.

In fairness, you probably won't be playing anything else while WoW has a grip over you Considering I'm not planning on buying any more console games for a long time, I'd consider it good value for money. That's just me though.

Jim

Oh noes, €30 for a game. You're getting an entire month of it for free.

Slaanesh

I have bought and play the game. I just know that a mate of mine wouldn't be bothered buying it but I know he would pay the €13 a month if he could just continue on from his downloaded trial.

Jimeatsmenu wrote:

Oh noes, €30 for a game. You're getting an entire month of it for free.

slade_x

Slaanesh wrote:

According to the T's & C's you still have to purchase the full retail version at the end of the trial which is ~€30 on top of the ~€13 to be paid every month.

That sucks.

But you get the entire game when when you download the client. the only thing you miss is the 5 cds it comes on

There doesnt seem to be anything stopping users from downloading the client now, installing the game and then buying a time card to create an account on the official european website and then log in with that

or is there a special key(retail authentication key for example) that you receive with buying a retail copy that will only allow you to create an account, then after that free month you would have to use the manage an existing account to enter a newly bought time card

Jim

Slaanesh wrote:

I have bought and play the game. I just know that a mate of mine wouldn't be bothered buying it but I know he would pay the €13 a month if he could just continue on from his downloaded trial.

But you were saying that it sucks that you have to pay for the game after getting it free for a month? I don't really understand...

If you buy the game straight off you get a free month anyway, but you pay the €40 to the game shop for the discs. What Blizzard are doing is letting you play the game completly free of any charge for a month so you can see if its worth buying or not.

I don't really see what sucks about that.

seamus

slade_x wrote:

or is there a special key(retail authentication key for example) that you receive with buying a retail copy that will only allow you to create an account, then after that free month you would have to use the manage an existing account to enter a newly bought time card

The trial keys work on the same principle as the ten-day pass (when you buy the game, you get a ten-day pass key to give to a mate). You can create an account with that key, but in order to continue on afterwards, you have to supply a full key - which you can only obtain by buying the game in full.

I was frustrated myself by the fact that I couldn't just buy a full key from Blizzard online - my brother already had the discs.

Gummy Panda

I'm thinking of getting WOW. I've currently been playing FFXI and it can be a real grind sometimes.

But i got a new iMAC today and am considering wow.

Is anyone here playing WOW on a iMAC with intel processors? I'm wondering what the performance is like?

nesf

The Mac users I know all seem happy enough with it. Then Blizzard are nice to them support wise usually.

Gummy Panda

well one of my mates convinced me to buy it for £17.99 from play. I'll play it for a month and see do i prefer it to ffxi

DemonOfTheFall

It's 30 euro in Gamestop on henry street at the moment i think. Beats waiting for delivery

melekalikimaka

got it for 26 euro and free delivery on sedit.com just there, downloading trial now, see how it goes, anyone wanna reccommend a server?

nesf

Do you want PvP or PvE? Would you prefer a RP (roleplaying) server or a normal server?

melekalikimaka

do what degree is each, like i like the rp element but i wouldnt mind battles with real players, do you get exp/loot? is p vp a constant hassle when questing?

Jim

You don't get xp or loot from killing members of the opposite faction. Instead you get honour points from the kill, the amount of points varies by how higher lvl and their pvp rank. The points you get are tallied up every Wednesday morning and your rank for that week is decided. As you move up the ranks more items are available for you to buy.

sunzz

There are quite a number of us rolling alt chars on @burning legion@ but its a mature server with a full pop, we are on comms and I'm sure you'd be welcome there if you want to roll or have any questions drop me a line.

nah pvp aint a constant hassle when questing it works both ways

rainbow kirby

If you roll PvE, you still have the battlegrounds for when you want PvP action, but you don't have the hassle of being ganked everywhere when you're outside of that and trying to get your quests done. There tends to be fewer immature 14 year olds on RP and RP-PvP servers, so if you want a mature crowd that could be something to consider.
*is still pissed at the 2 14 year olds who disconnected from a DM group last night*
I'm on a PvE server (Kilrogg), it's only a few months old so there's a lot of people at low levels (Server census) and I'm having a lot of fun Lv24 now after about 4 weeks, and I intend to hang around to 60 with my paladin. Of course, if you wanted to go for a completely new server, Aerie Peak is only up for about a week so you'd have a lot of low levels there. It's PvE too.

anonymous_joe

Ouch. 60 levels of lolladin-ing...

rainbow kirby

Believe it or not, some of us actually like being a lol-adin!

anonymous_joe

As a rogue I find that hard to believe...

Gummy Panda

well i went out and bought it today at lunch time.

I hope this is better then ffxi. how is soloing in this?

also, one of my friends told me to join Emeralrd Dram Server. What type of server is this?

nesf

Soloing is viable for a long time, the end game pretty much forces you to group though.

Gummy Panda

ah good stuff.

You have pt after lv10 in ffxi and sometimes it can be a right pain the in ass

nesf

You can solo to 60 if you want. The only times you need to group is if you want a particular quest reward and it involves a nasty dungeon or instance. Otherwise, solo grinding is very profitable and generally interesting enough so long as you are grinding things bigger than you are that introduce a nice risk element to it.

I only party when I'm bored tbh. Join a friendly guild and you can chat away to people as you grind, it makes it a lot more fun.

Gummy Panda

OMG.. its done so well. The interface is excellent and is like warcraft 3 (which i love).

Well worth the 30 euro. looks like i've found my ffxi replacement

anonymous_joe

You bastard. I still can;t play.

Ciaran500

It keeps telling me a key has already been sent to this account. Even though I just started a new one for it ¬_¬.

Anyone want to sign up for me and send me the key?

layke

Either create a new account or check out the support in the blizzard forums.

Ciaran500

I can't see anything on the support forums about it and I tried with a few different accounts. People on other forums were having similar problems.

EDIT: NM, got it to work

4th time lucky, just used my mams email.

Leprachaun

Gummy Panda wrote:

I'm thinking of getting WOW. I've currently been playing FFXI and it can be a real grind sometimes.

But i got a new iMAC today and am considering wow.

Is anyone here playing WOW on a iMAC with intel processors? I'm wondering what the performance is like?

I'm playing on an iMac G5 and it runs like smooth,hot,delicious chocolate.

Ciaran500

If I buy them game at the end of my trial do I get my first month included with it?

rainbow kirby

Yep, I bought the game plus a 60-day time card at the end of my 10-day guest pass in early June, and I'm subscribed up until early September now.

Ciaran500

I'd be worried if I did that I would actually play from now untill september

anonymous_joe

Yes, yes you would.

rainbow kirby

Ciaran500 wrote:

I'd be worried if I did that I would actually play from now untill september

That's the plan for me
Though the work thing sorta gets in the way of good WoW-ing sometimes