WoW-Free
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New players get World of Warcraft free until September 26th
You read that right. It's apparently as easy as downloading the Battle.net app, using it to download World of Warcraft and launching the game. If you're on the fence about returning or have someone you want to show the game off to, now is possibly the best time imaginable, since you won't have to pay for the majority of the month. There's also a helpful link to Blizzard's beginner's guide, which can help you dive in and get started in WoW. Probably a pretty good time for a promotion like this, with a lot of people having let their subs lapse during the long content drought, it's an easy way to try and ease some of them back into the game while also giving new players a painless way to explore whether or not WoW is the game for them. Edit: Turns out it's not all new players. It's part of a specific email promotion.
Tom Chilton can imagine a future where WoW is free-to-play
PC Gamer posted an interview with Tom Chilton where he discussed the possibility of World of Warcraft eventually going free-to-play. He clarified that there are no active plans for this now, but he can imagine a future where it would be possible. As massively multiplayer games become more mainstream, a common tactic to compete with WoW is to make the games free to play while charging microtransactions for in-game content. It makes games more accessible, and in theory can make publishers enough revenues that they can be profitable. If enough games break even this way and WoW starts losing momentum and market penetration, instead of shutting down, it would only make sense for Blizzard to keep the game available for the residual income. The original EverQuest is still live, for example. Instead of leaving vast empty realms populated by a very small number of nostalgic gamers, however, making WoW free-to-play could keep it residually profitable for longer. While WoW will undoubtedly lose the majority of the market share some day, this day is not close. Warcraft is past the red-hot growth phase of its life cycle; however, it's still the largest player in the market. Chilton acknowledges that there's no reason for Blizzard to make this change while this is the case: "We're not spending a lot of time thinking about it. It's not something that's a reality for us in the near future."
Free 7 days of game time for select unsubscribed players
Blizzard is offering, via email, select inactive accounts the chance to return to the game with free seven days worth of game time. These emails are what appears to be a special unannounced promotion for those that have left Azeroth, coinciding with the five year anniversary of WoW. We can confirm these emails are legitimate, the links and headers all point back to blizzard.com servers. And indeed a blue over in the Customer Service forums has more or less confirmed that it's legit. These kinds of promotions are not all that uncommon in the MMO world. Several companies that have MMOs of varying degrees of success have offered them in the past -- they're a nice way to get some old players back and make them feel like part of the community again. We want to be sure we're clear: it appears these emails are not going to all unsubscribed accounts. If you have an unsubscribed account, don't count on getting one; right now it looks like it's just random chance whether or not you'll get some free game time. Thanks to AishaLove for the help!
Free transfers and a new US realm
There was a ton of free transfers announced last night, hopefully some of this will have the effect of freeing up the long queues we've become used to lately.In addition to the normal transfers, a large block of PvE servers have the option to get a free transfer to a new realm, Garrosh.Garrosh is a PvE EST based US realm. It's been placed in the Emberstorm battlegroup. Blizzard's announcement lists next Wednesday, January 14th, at 6:00 p.m. PST as the cutoff date for the transfers. However they will close the transfers early if they meet their internal quotas. Transfer early and transfer often. You can begin the transfers via your account management page at worldofwarcraft.com.The complete list of eligible transfer realms after the break
