WoW Goes Free To Play With Starter Edition

World of Warcraft is free to play! Well, up to level 20 anyway. Yes World of Warcraft starting today is going free to play with the all new “Starter Edition”. Blizzard have decided to replace the good old 14 day trial with an all new system which will no longer limit time but cap content instead.

Any one with a Battle.net account and an internet connection will be able to take advantage of the free to play system by heading over to WarCraft.com. The idea is to give new players as much time as they like to sample the wonders that WoW has to offer whilst offering the option of a full upgrade at any point.

Think of it like a crack dealer giving you the first hit for free then making you pay once you are hooked!

Level is not the only cap which will be enforced for free to play players. Gold, trade skills, chat, grouping and even server priority will have some kind of cap or restriction in place to protect paying subscribers and add incentive to the subscription service .

Upgrading will cost as little as £9.99 and will net you the original World of Warcraft which now includes the first expansion, The Burning Crusade.

Full details of the caps and restrictions below:

• 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.

Source: VG247