In the old days, World of Warcraft used to hook people by giving them a free 14-day trial.  If you had a friend who played, maybe you’d get a free month.  Either way, it was just long enough to hook people and make WoW a full-fledged cultural phenomenon.   But that wasn’t enough for the diabolical geniuses at Blizzard and parent company Activision, so they’ve turned up the stakes.  World of Warcraft is now free to play until Level 20.

The last WoW expansion, Cataclysm, sold 3.3 million copies in one day.  As if that wasn’t enough for Blizzard, they go and do something like this.  By making the world completely free for the first quarter-ish of the game, they’re doing a twofold purpose.  For one, it makes people more likely to roll a bunch of different characters, level them to 20, and find one they like.  For two, it makes old subscribers (like me) more likely to roll a new character to go see just what’s going on with Blizzard’s new worlds.

It’s really hard to fight off that urge, especially since I thought I’d quit WoW for good last year.

Tags: WoW, World of Warcraft, Warcraft, Blizzard, Activision, World of Warcraft free to level 20, World of Warcraft free, video games, RPGs, role-playing games, MMORPGs

I’ve never had a problem eating food from a gas station.  Just two weeks ago, I ate a couple of hot dogs purchased from a gas station.  They were delicious.  That’s not the first time I’ve eaten gas station food, and I doubt it will be the last.  There’s nothing like a fun food novelty. […]

Commissioner Roger Goodell gathered 32 NFL owners for one big question.  One of the league’s most wanderlust-stricken franchises is looking to move again.  The Oakland-Los Angeles-Oakland Raiders, tired of gutting it out in a run-down stadium, were once again looking for greener pastures.  Only the Miami Dolphins refused to cooperate.  With a vote of 31-1, […]

In 2006, an injury to Dallas Cowboys starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe opened the door for an undrafted free agent by the name of Tony Romo to take the helm of America’s Team and lead the Dallas Cowboys to an early playoff exit.  Bledsoe went from starter to afterthought in a season.  Now, the circle continues […]

For 89 years, Oscars has never had a major mistake.  The last few Oscars might have had a few flubs, but at least they never got the most important category of the night wrong.  Well, that’s now changed, all thanks to OG Bonnie and Clyde legends Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.  When Faye Dunaway called […]

Tom Brady has been wildly successful, if controversial.  He’s the first quarterback ever to win five Super Bowls and only the second player to do so after Charles Haley.  Unlike Haley, Brady won all his Super Bowls with the same team, the New England Patriots.  The only thing that seems to be able to stop […]

Ben Affleck, no matter what you might think of him, is a talented actor and director.  He’s got the goods, but he’s smart enough to know when he’s in over his head.  All along, since he took on the mantle of Batman, he’s had his eyes on writing, directing, and starring as the Caped Crusader. […]

In May, students for the for-profit American College of Education were running into some problems.  Their access to email accounts and course information was locked down by Google, who had disabled their accounts.  The reason why?  A fired IT worker for the American College of Education locked the school out of their Google cloud account. […]