Accessibility

Blizzard has stepped into the F2P ring! All other F2P games might as well curl into a ball and cry... No, not really.

This year a lot of MMO companies have been trying to ramp things up, trying to be more competitive, adding more accessibility and a lot have been dabbling with the free to play idea. Some are better than others, I think some of the better options are from games like LoTRO and Champions Online. But we have everything in between and now it seems Blizzard wants to hop on the bandwagon.

Yesterday Blizzard announced that trial accounts can play forever for free. WoW forever and FREE?! Props to WoW Insider for the heads up. This really offers nothing for a returning player, unless you want to make a trial account to dabble around on, and even then it is really restricted. No options to add anything besides an actual monthly fee, once you do I think you're pretty much stuck with paying.

While it is really a cool idea, hey I'm making an alt account to hop on for holiday events when my main account is dead, I can't see many people actually playing free forever, heh. I think 1-60 F2P would have been really great, maybe the option to pay or not to pay on accounts with characters under level 70. Currently there is no auction house, mail, or guild use available. Chat is very restricted also. Then to cap it off there is a ten gold cap on these accounts. I know this is to try to prevent spammers and gold sellers from utilizing these accounts but it still feels very limited.

So, if you're like me and you have an account with many characters, well, you're out of luck when it comes to playing WoW for free. This is more of an incentive to hook people and reel them into paying a monthly fee. Nothing wrong with that, it's just not as free unless you don't mind capping out at level 20. I already have an army of alts waiting to be capped to level 20 for a rainy day, I always say 1-20 are some of the most fun- I'll just pretend it is Guild Wars!

SOE also released their all access plan yesterday: $19.99 for station access, playing all their games for one, really good, price. If you pay an annual fee it's only 14.99 a month, really cheap. I think they may have decided this would be good idea to help boost subscriptions, especially with SWG closing it's doors. I'm sure it had something to do with it.

I'd like to see more SOE games go FTP especially Vanguard. In some ways I don't want to see it go F2P but I'd like to see development and not have to sub all the time to pop in, I think that's what keeps me tied to a LOT of my (F2P) games, being able to pop in whenever I want.

What do you think of the WoW forever free trial?

Below your existing account you have the option to add a starter account.

Edit: It seems you can add a starter account to your existing account,  but they are separate. I suppose you could use one to log in and say hello to friends on occasion if you wanted to.  Real ID is disabled and they will have to add you to friends in order for you to message them. But technically you can add one of these accounts. Perfect for those wanting to pop in from time to time and just socialize when an account has lapsed.


-kaozz