Whenever I think about the fact that there are people out there who haven’t played World of Warcraft, I can hardly believe it. Then I remember that I’m one of those people and it becomes slightly more believable. Blizzard, not one to rest until every carbon based life form on the planet it enthralled to their MMO/crack habit has changed the free trial of World of Warcraft to be level based rather than time based. Back in the day, the day being yesterday, you could play World of Warcraft free of charge for 14 days before the pay gate slammed shut on you. Now you can get your character all the way up to level 20 before Commerce rears its ugly head. I have no idea if this is an improvement as I don’t know how long it takes to get to level 20, but 20 seems like a fairly large number. There are other restrictions such as not being able to use the Auction House (whatever that is), your wallet being capped at 10 gold (not sure if that’s a lot) and not being able to join guilds, invite people to your party or join a party if said party has characters higher than level 20. So basically you’re on your own until you decide to pay up. Don’t fret though, because once you do pay you get Burning Crusade free of charge, which is more than the people who have paid thousands of dollars to Blizzard over the years can say. They had to pay for Burning Crusade. Suckers!
The full list of restrictions can be found at Blizzard’s support site.
I played for a 14-day trial period. After getting maybe three solid days of gameplay in (of maybe 4-8 hours each), I was bored and quit. By that time, I was around level 12. Progression had started to slow dramatically at that point, but I think level 20 within 14 days is easily possible, depending on the amount played.