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The most popular MMORPG of all time, World of Warcraft, will be free to play — at least until your in-game character reaches level 20 — Blizzard Entertainment has announced.

Blizzard, a video game developer and publisher, has considered the option for years, and it dabbled with a number of free trial programs, all of which were time-limited.

Now, under the new program called World of Warcraft Starter Edition, new players can play at their own pace without having to worry that the free trial will expire. When they reach level 20, they can continue playing but will stop earning experience, making it impossible to level up. To play past level 20, new players will need to upgrade to the full version of the game, which can be done online You must login or register to view this content..

Although there’s no time limit for trial players, there’s a great deal of other restrictions besides the 20-level limit: Trial players can have a maximum of 100 gold; their trade skills are capped at 100 ranks; they are unable to trade in the Auction House or join guilds; their chat options are limited; and they cannot invite other players into a party and so on.

In short, the game itself may be free, but it’s a far cry from the full World of Warcraft experience.

Here’s an You must login or register to view this content. describing all the intricacies of the new free trial system. To sign up, go You must login or register to view this content..

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Do you think WoW is on its way to becoming a FTP game?

maybe or maybe not

Not hating here or anything, but anyone who plays wow/ knows blizzard, knows that WoW will never become free forever...

- Blizzard would lose sooo much money
- people who played would be mad as hell, as they had to pay a fortune for gametime alone

these are just 2 of the reasons why not..

Just a method of keeping you hooked to the game, which will then make you wanna pay for membership.

I know these myself, I was just looking to see others thoughts and opinions.
Thanks for the input Pikachu.

Do you play?

No not really. I have a trial account, that's it.
I got an email about this so I posted.

They would probably put Jagex, makers of Runescape, out of business if they did this. Many people play Runescape because it is cheaper to play but with a new F2P feature, that will change things.

I personally don't play MMO games anymore so this doesn't apply to me.

Level 20 isn't a large amount of game time, so WoW's F2P compared to RuneScape's is lacking in both scope and re-playability. Many of the people (at least 50%) that play RuneScape play it because it's a good all around MMO, and WoW, to them, cannot compare. WoW isn't as popular as people seem to think, especially since there are hundreds of MMOs out there, many of which get just as many players as WoW. You just don't hear about it.

True true. To be honest, I don't really focus on MMO games at all. I just know of a few that carry about 200k+ players.