With free to play MMOs becoming rapidly more popular, it’s beginning to be a major source of competition for Blizzard’s colossal MMO World of Warcraft. Games like Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine and League of Legends are completely free to play, but users can fork over real world cash for certain unique items exclusive to a payment shop.
Though World of Warcraft has some of these perks, the income is based on a subscription model, and a short trial. Blizzard needed a way to entice more players and came up with the starter edition. My previous article on World of Warcraft talked about veterans being given keys that they can distribute to their friends to give them a chance to try the game with all its benefits, the starter edition being heavily stripped down, but otherwise free to play.
The restrictions on the trial version are as follows according to the Blizzard FAQ.
– A level cap of 20.
– A maximum of 10 gold.
– Trade skills are capped at 100 ranks.
– Unable to trade via the Auction House, mailbox, or player-to-player.
– In-game access to public chat channels unavailable. Players are limited to communicating using only say, party, or whisper.
– Characters will be unable to create or join guilds.
– Characters are not able to send whispers to other characters unless they have been added to the characters’ friends lists or have received a whisper from a character first.
– Characters will not be able to invite other players into a party.
– Characters will not be able to join parties with other characters above level 20.
– Voice chat disabled on Starter Edition accounts.
– Realms experiencing login queues will prioritize players who have full, paid accounts.
– Starter Edition accounts are not eligible for character transfers
– RealID features are disabled on all Starter Edition Accounts.
Rather reasonable, though I completely disagree with being unable to invite others to a party or join ones with characters above level 20. Other than that you have a good deal. Once you hit level 20 and the other limits, you are free to keep playing for as long as you want, but you will not gain EXP beyond that. Oh well, there goes the rest of my summer playing another MMO.
