By Quintin Smith on December 17th, 2010 at 4:54 pm.
DO YOU own World of Warcraft, plus Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King but not Cataclysm? Would that describe your situation? As of today Blizzard are offering you guys a free 10 day trial to sample Cataclysm’s doomsday delights. You’ll need a level 78 character to try out most of the new zones (which our man-on-the-inside Al Bickham writes about here), but failing that you’ll still be able visit the bizarre new Goblin starting area or the Worgen’s gothic home (which Bickham writes about here). So, yes. Go, go, go! Go and be delighted.
17/12/2010 at 17:01 Jason says:
Perfect! I wanted to fly around and see the new Azeroth, but didn’t want to spend actual coin to do it! :)
17/12/2010 at 17:02 Auspex says:
Unless the account you haven’t played for 2 years turns out to have been hacked at some point and Blizzard ignore your emails then you cannot play at all. D:
17/12/2010 at 18:41 mwoody says:
Better than having a perfectly safe account locked behind an authenticator that disappeared during a move.
17/12/2010 at 19:15 Dances to Podcasts says:
Check if your email provider didn’t consider the responses spam. Hotmail, for example, is notorious for that.
You can also try opening a regular trial account and creating a ticket there.
mwoody, you can contact Blizzard to have your authenticator removed/replaced.
17/12/2010 at 17:20 Quasar says:
Fantastic. I’ve been spending my time levelling from 0-80, jealous of those who have thirty whole pounds to spend.
Here’s a question: What happens to my character after the trial, if I don’t choose to purchase Cataclysm? Will I be reset to level 80?
EDIT: Looks like the FAQ answers that question – you can advance up to one XP below lvl 81. So no Azeroth flying unless you buy the expansion, sadly. I’m still gonna do it though, mostly because I really want to try out the goblin and worgen starting areas.
17/12/2010 at 17:49 Danarchist says:
You don’t have to be 81 to fly, it costs 250 gold and I imagine youd be able to do it with the trial but not after it expires.
17/12/2010 at 19:13 Jason says:
Nope, my level 80 is flying around Azeroth contentedly enough.
However, I don’t dare fight anything because I have no idea how to do that anymore, and no talents. :)
17/12/2010 at 17:31 RogB says:
the first one is on the house…..
17/12/2010 at 17:38 Daniel says:
Per Blizzard’s FAQ on the Cataclysm trial, level 80 characters will be able to gain experience until they’re one point shy of hitting 81.
17/12/2010 at 17:51 Zsinj says:
Oh God, I played wow for over 2 years, managed to hold out since, managed to hold out when Cataclysm was released on my birthday(!) But this has pushed me over. Bravo Blizzard, you pushy drug dealers. I’ll have some of that there “free” crack.
17/12/2010 at 19:12 Fillem says:
@Zsinj
nooo..resist with me. Together we can!
17/12/2010 at 17:57 bleeters says:
…Well played, Blizzard. Well. Bloody. Played.
17/12/2010 at 17:59 StingingVelvet says:
Blizzard actually finally lured me in to WoW with a 14 day trial sent out with Cataclysm. I’m a singleplayer only gamer so I ignored it before. It was quite a depressing experience really because I love the world, love the PC focus, love the feel of everything… but then I found out you can’t even complete the good storylines without grouping up. So now I feel like I had a great game dangled in front of me and then taken away.
Damn you Blizzard!
17/12/2010 at 18:42 Jutranjo says:
Actually every single zone has atleast one major storyline that you CAN complete solo. Lvl 1-60 and 80-85. Not so sure about Burning Crusade or WOTLK, wotlk has better quests and storyline in general but I’d say worse than 1-60 now.
17/12/2010 at 18:02 Freud says:
Dennis ‘Cutty’ Wise: The game done changed…
Slim Charles: Game’s the same, just got more fierce.
17/12/2010 at 18:25 Chalky says:
Wow, Cataclysm is the fastest selling game of all time and Blizzard just scream “MORE!”
17/12/2010 at 18:46 outoffeelinsobad says:
Serious Tiger is Serious.
17/12/2010 at 18:47 Tei says:
Stephen Falken: The whole point was to find a way to practice nuclear war without destroying ourselves. To get the computers to learn from mistakes we couldn’t afford to make. Except, I never could get Joshua to learn the most important lesson.
David Lightman: What’s that?
Stephen Falken: Futility. That there’s a time when you should just give up.
Jennifer: What kind of a lesson is that?
Stephen Falken: Did you ever play tic-tac-toe?
Jennifer: Yeah, of course.
Stephen Falken: But you don’t anymore.
Jennifer: No.
Stephen Falken: Why?
Jennifer: Because it’s a boring game. It’s always a tie.
Stephen Falken: Exactly. There’s no way to win. The game itself is pointless! But back at the war room, they believe you can win a nuclear war. That there can be “acceptable losses.”
17/12/2010 at 21:39 Chris D says:
XKCD tackled this recently. Turns out there are some winning moves after all.
18/12/2010 at 00:06 Tei says:
I remember reading on the forums that is more like if both players play correctly, one side (the first?) will win.
Looking at the image seems that you can force some longish games.
Teaching machines “futility” as a direct translation to programming AI: break the recursive tree in subtrees that you decide can’t result on a solution. Removing these decisions branch result in the algorithm finding the solution faster (or maybe finding it all all, avoiding infinite deep recursion trees).
Is kinda cool that what Prof. Falken say make sense.
18/12/2010 at 02:41 CMaster says:
Nope, “Perfect Play” from both noughts and crosses leads to a draw. A mistake by one does open up the chance of victory for the other however.
18/12/2010 at 02:49 Vinraith says:
@Chris D
You missed the point of that strip. Zoom a bit more, there are no “winning moves” so long as the other guy is also playing correctly. All the deepest grids on that map lead to stalemates for a reason.
17/12/2010 at 18:55 Flint says:
You have to be level 80 to properly play the new zones, actually. You can enter them at 78 but the NPCs do not offer quests until you’re 80.
17/12/2010 at 21:41 Duffin says:
Quintin must have been wretching when writing this.
17/12/2010 at 22:21 Spacewalk says:
Time to put your wor(gen)faces on.
18/12/2010 at 01:59 DD says:
Well that’s just simply the best article title I’ve seen.
18/12/2010 at 02:30 Italia says:
Should be able to play a Worgen or Goblin for the ten day trial that locks it when it’s over. That way if you enjoyed it enough you could purchase the game later and it’d unlock them. The content is great and all, but I’m pretty sure most people bought Cata to play a wolf.
18/12/2010 at 04:54 bleeters says:
That is precisely what you can do, it would seem.
“Any new Goblin or Worgen characters you’ve created will be saved and will be inaccessible until you upgrade to the full version of Cataclysm. Once you’ve upgraded, they will be unlocked just as you left them and ready for further adventures”
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&tag=wowcatatrialfaq&rhtml=true
18/12/2010 at 03:13 SquareWheel says:
Never played World of Warcraft, not about to start now.
18/12/2010 at 04:51 bleeters says:
Lucky you’re not eligible for the trial anyway then, eh?
20/12/2010 at 09:46 Catastrophe says:
To be fair Cataclysm is a brilliant expansion pack for a good game, its well worth the money!