Blizzard offers free copies of WoW, removes demo time limit

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Blizzard just made it a little easier to persuade your most reluctant friends to take their first hit of WoW. Last week, the company announced a new "Recruit-a-Friend" promotion that allows veteran players to give away free copies of the aging MMORPG. It's unclear precisely what constitutes a "veteran" player, but if you're worthy enough to don that title you should've received an email notification along with a code that'll grant your buddy a fully functional copy of the original World of Warcraft title along with their first 30-day subscription.

Although the free copy technically comes without restrictions, the base installation of WoW only covers levels 1 through 60. To access the maximum level of 85 and all the WoW content Blizzard has published since 2004, newcomers will have to cough up about $65 for three separate expansions: The Burning Crusade ($10), Wrath of the Lich King ($35), and Cataclysm ($20) -- not to mention the subsequent $15 monthly subscription. In other words, you're only saving about $10 (you can buy WoW and The Burning Crusade together for $20).

To accompany its Recruit-a-Friend campaign, Blizzard announced today that it would loosen the time constraint of its trial program. The company previously allowed new players to explore Azeroth for 10 or 14 days, but that time limit has been removed. Folks can now play WoW for an unlimited amount of time without paying, but only up to level 20 -- a cap that has always been a part of the game's demo period. Again, if you want progress beyond that point (which shouldn't too take long to reach), you'll have to pony up for the full experience.

Both changes are designed to ease WoW's hemorrhaging subscribership. During a shareholder's call last month, Blizzard co-founder and president Mike Morhaime said subscriptions fell by 600,000 to 11.4 million between October 2010 and March 2011. Morhaime noted that subscriptions in March had already dipped below pre-Cataclysm levels and almost below pre-WotLK levels. The former expansion launched only a few months ago in December and fresh content generally encourages long-lost players to return for another taste.

Although Blizzard is clearly concerned about WoW's player count, losing 5% of its subscribers is hardly a death knell for the wildly popular MMORPG. Interestingly, instead of focusing on pleasing existing (and former) players, the company seems to be embracing an "out with the old, in with the new" philosophy by making it easier for fresh faces to join the crowd. Along with opening the doors to Azeroth, the company is reportedly interested in porting WoW to Apple's iOS platform, thus exposing the game to an entirely new audience.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/44459-blizzard-offers-free-copies-of-wow-removes-demo-time-limit.html

 

[Xclusiveitalian]

To expensive for my taste. The whole pay to pay to play is just not for me. I bought Guild Wars and was very happy. WoW is set up in such a way that missions and doing things with friends take hours, which is just crazy. It's a good game I have no doubt but the whole give out free copies thing is like giving your friends free "hits" on a drug you do to get them addicted lol

 

[jetkami]

No game is worth $15 a month. If they gave me the full game including the expansions for free that might make me bite.

 

[Guest]

I remember when almost everyone I knew played wow. Relatives, friends, coworkers, including myself, most involved in one big happy guild. Since id say about 2009 everyone started quiting due to money issues, boredom, illness, other reasons. Last I played was in february due simply to boredom. Glad i did. Now i cannot find anyone playing anymore and with this scheme of gaining new so called fresh faces i doubt will entice me or others that once played or to many that have not.

 

[spydercanopus]

Good thing the WoW drugs tastes terrible. Maybe it will help Blizzard get real by seeing how primitive their business model is for 2011 standards.

 

[Shnig]

spydercanopus said:
Good thing the WoW drugs tastes terrible. Maybe it will help Blizzard get real by seeing how primitive their business model is for 2011 standards.

Dude if you had any idea how much money Blizzard are raking in off WoW you would not have said that...

Think €12 X 12 months by 12 million people. Thats just subs, doesn't include 100 and 1 other things Blizzard make money from in WoW. Other companies would kill for this kind of model to work for them.

 

[gwailo247]

"Along with opening the doors to Azeroth, the company is reportedly interested in porting WoW to Apple's iOS platform, thus exposing the game to an entirely new audience."

LOL, we'll be seeing posts by Apple users about this hot new game called World of Warcraft.

 

[Julio Franco]

Interesting news bit but like other said before me, I'm glad to say I'm past WoW's repetitive but nonetheless addictive gameplay. One of the biggest cash cows in games history, that's for sure.

 

[Guest]

LOL, we'll be seeing posts by Apple users about this hot new game called World of Warcraft.

WoW (and many other Blizzard games) are available on Mac OS since their release.

But WoW on iOS? I cannot see myself do anything other then grinding on such a platform. All the more complex aspects of the game would require more screen surface and decent input devices.

 

[wardogz]

I can see plenty of these sub based games losing custom over the next year or so, the whole world is in a DEEP recession, about time these companies realised that. Everyone and his dog are having to tighten their belts and cut out non essential items like this, and as a vast amount of these online subs are paid for by the players parents, although 'little timmy' might not like it and indeed regard it as essential, i'm guessing his parents will not see it that way and it'll be one of the first things to be cut from the budget.

 

[Cota]

Julio said:
Interesting news bit but like other said before me, I'm glad to say I'm past WoW's repetitive but nonetheless addictive gameplay. One of the biggest cash cows in games history, that's for sure.

Amen, WoW is a second job in wich you cant fire mouth breathers, just like collage.

 

[ramonsterns]

Any and all MMOs that are just like WoW and have a monthly fee will fail. This law has been proven true time and time again, so I hope that for all the crap it has brought it, that it will help SWTOR fail. If it doesn't, Bioware is lost to us.

 

[Ithryl]

wardogz said:
I can see plenty of these sub based games losing custom over the next year or so, the whole world is in a DEEP recession, about time these companies realised that. Everyone and his dog are having to tighten their belts and cut out non essential items like this, and as a vast amount of these online subs are paid for by the players parents, although 'little timmy' might not like it and indeed regard it as essential, i'm guessing his parents will not see it that way and it'll be one of the first things to be cut from the budget.

WoW is actually a money saver in many cases. Not talking about the little kids whose parents want to save the 13€ for sub(although once you cut 'little timmy' off he's gonna demand other things which are very likely more costly than the subscription). I know (not only) from my past experience that you actually spend time playing the game instead of going out and spending more than the subscription costs during one night. A friend of mine even stops smoking whenever he comes back to WoW. First of all though they should finish D3 already.

Anyways, good move from Blizzard. Even if just a small fraction of those who will be given the free account upgrade to full and start playing/paying. I just hope they're really working on the 'other' MMO and that they do something like a dual subcription.

 

[Guest]

The general direction WoW seem to be taking is rather strange. They want to attract tons of new (and casual) players while letting the old timers leave, how many of the new players are going to stick to the game past the first couple months?

Guess they want to squeeze as much money as possible from this before moving on to their next MMO.

Regardless, the so called 'free' offer is quite meaningless considering how quickly anyone levels from 1-60 nowadays. The game (almost) literally holds your hand the whole way. Completely new players may enjoy it though but I doubt many of them becomes hard core raiders.

 

[Mister_K]

ramonsterns said:
Any and all MMOs that are just like WoW and have a monthly fee will fail. This law has been proven true time and time again, so I hope that for all the crap it has brought it, that it will help SWTOR fail. If it doesn't, Bioware is lost to us.

And time one and time out we seen that F2P MMO's "fail" as well. Honestly define "fail", lack of subscriptions? not making the money back? boring? all the above?

If you can't play monthly fee or simply don't like the time that you have to put in to most MMO's this isn't the genre for you. I am happily to pay monthly fee for a MMO that is quality.

Sure Blizzard is making alot of money and they could cut back on price but this is a COMPANY in for the money, just like anything else in this world.

The server upkeek is around $120,000 to $140,000 A DAY! Now on top of that resources for creating new content it all ads up...

If WoW was F2P id think it wouldn't be as big or maybe it would... I don't know but honestly they wouldn't survive with JUST vanity items on sale... they would have to offer more.

 

[wcbert]

I stopped playing wow since they dumb down the game.

 

[Guest]

I'm just happy I'm not a WOW addict.

 

[Muggs]

As someone who raided HC from vanilla through Wrath (world class raiding guild) I can honestly say the game is just tired. There is only so many times you can regurgitate the same thing and keep people interested. The game is just boring and I didn't even pick up Cata and never actually had a desire too after testing it in beta and actually quit half way through wrath.

One thing I can say for blizzard is they definitely own the rights to the addiction algorithm and if they apply it to their new IP they will have another hit. I personally would never play an MMO again and have gone back to my roots with games like torchlight and looking forward to Torchlight2 and D3 where I can play with people if I want but solo play when I have time is still a ton of fun.

 

[LNCPapa]

I played WoW from release till about a year ago - it actually saved me quite a lot of money. Prior to getting into WoW I bought games (PC and console) pretty regularly and after getting into it I started to slow down on my purchases. I still have PS2, XBox, and even some XBox360 games still sitting in the original plastic because I was used to buying games due to name or developer. I've since quit all of that and even quit WoW - though I just have a new MMO I play. My daughter enjoys playing Rift with me so I do have a couple of subscriptions to that.

All in all WoW was a great game which gave me lots of enjoyment for a few years. I'll always remember it and appreciate it for what it was. Their model works great and even to this day other companies are striving to release the next WoW.

 

[Johnny Utah]

wcbert said:
I stopped playing wow since they dumb down the game.

That was Wotlk content, and I did also. It's not the same now, I can attest to that.

 

[Guest]

Blizzard really bit off more than they could chew with Cataclysm. Revamping the 1-60 experience and filling in the gaps in the Old World to allow flying mounts was a welcome and long overdue endeavor, but it's pretty clear that they didn't have the time to give every zone the same level of attention AND provide enough endgame content. Also guild leveling and reputation was poorly implemented and didn't reward players for staying in a guild as much as it punished players for leaving. Maybe I'm just bitter because all the fun toys and mounts in Cataclysm were either from rep grinds or Archeology and so my huge stash of gold was pretty much worthless.

 

[example1013]

artix said:

ramonsterns said:
Any and all MMOs that are just like WoW and have a monthly fee will fail. This law has been proven true time and time again, so I hope that for all the crap it has brought it, that it will help SWTOR fail. If it doesn't, Bioware is lost to us.

And time one and time out we seen that F2P MMO's "fail" as well. Honestly define "fail", lack of subscriptions? not making the money back? boring? all the above?

If you can't play monthly fee or simply don't like the time that you have to put in to most MMO's this isn't the genre for you. I am happily to pay monthly fee for a MMO that is quality.

Sure Blizzard is making alot of money and they could cut back on price but this is a COMPANY in for the money, just like anything else in this world.

The server upkeek is around $120,000 to $140,000 A DAY! Now on top of that resources for creating new content it all ads up...

If WoW was F2P id think it wouldn't be as big or maybe it would... I don't know but honestly they wouldn't survive with JUST vanity items on sale... they would have to offer more.

There's a market for a more casual MMO out there. Plenty of people don't have the time to invest the many hours a week actively playing WoW requires and would rather be able to log on for maybe a couple of hours on the weekend and a couple of times during the week and still be able to have a ton of fun.

Unfortunately, everyone keeps trying to make a WoW killer and steal market share from WoW. Making a good MMO and competing with WoW don't have to go hand-in-hand. I can tell you right now that I'd pay $5 or $10 a month for such a game.

The thing that such a game would need, though, is a gameplay mechanic that can be done over and over again without getting boring. I think a great element to choose for this would be a PvP thing. There are literally hundreds of PvE grind MMOs out there, both P2P and F2P, but how many PvP MMOs are there? If you focus the game around some good endgame PvP that allows players to log in and go fight people for a while a few times a week, without months of pointless grinding, you have a game that doesn't compete with WoW (and won't suffer from not being able to kill WoW) because you'll have a game that will appeal to people who don't even like WoW.

It's a pipe dream, though, as publishers and investors want easy money, and WoW is easy money. Just look at Rift. The devs of that game basically said that they were going to take as many WoW mechanics as legally possible and develop a game around it, and they got funding, and now they're making money. The game is like a professionally developed emulator, and that's exactly what investors want, because it'll make buckets of money.

 

[yRaz]

example1013 said:

The thing that such a game would need, though, is a gameplay mechanic that can be done over and over again without getting boring. I think a great element to choose for this would be a PvP thing. There are literally hundreds of PvE grind MMOs out there, both P2P and F2P, but how many PvP MMOs are there? If you focus the game around some good endgame PvP that allows players to log in and go fight people for a while a few times a week, without months of pointless grinding, you have a game that doesn't compete with WoW (and won't suffer from not being able to kill WoW) because you'll have a game that will appeal to people who don't even like WoW.

A free MMO me and my friends like to "fight people for a while a few times a week" is MU online. I play on a private server called zhyper MU. 40 hours of game play and you have a max stat character and the PvP is a lot of fun especially if you PK in a party. It's a lot of fun for a game to play 3-5 hours a week.

 

[Guest]

12 million X ~$15.00/month = $180,000,000/month
$180 million X 12 months = $2,160,000,000 annually

Yes that's 2+ freakin BILLION dollars per year in subscriptions alone!

Do you think you are getting good value for your money WoW players?
and they have the nerve to charge for each expansion on top of that!

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

Guest said:
12 million X ~$15.00/month = $180,000,000/month
$180 million X 12 months = $2,160,000,000 annually

Yes that's 2+ freakin BILLION dollars per year in subscriptions alone!

Do you think you are getting good value for your money WoW players?
and they have the nerve to charge for each expansion on top of that!

not quite... they have 12 million names in their database of people who have signed up for WoW at one time or another. It's why their ad says '12 million have experienced the intensity' not 12 mil ARE experiencing the intensity. I'm not sure they release the current subscriber numbers. They probably go up and down a lot, but i'd guess that this new promotion is here because the numbers are now going down more than they're going up. I heard Rift was a flash in the pan, so I can't speculate to what is taking WoW's players besides people not caring about it anymore.