World of Warcraft Goes Free-to-Play Until Level 20

Just after it introduced patch 4.2 for World of Warcraft, Blizzard has announced that the extremely popular MMO is now going free-to-play, but only until level 20.

World of Warcraft is currently the most popular online role-playing game out there, even if some subscribers have gotten tired of it, so Blizzard is trying to lure in even more people to its MMORPG.

The newest way to do this is by making it free to play, but only until level 20.

Up until now, World of Warcraft could have been tried out by new players in 14-day trials, during which they could have reached any level they wanted.

Now, the studio is trying to offer a bigger trial period for gamers that couldn't play World of Warcraft in a thorough way during those two weeks, while making it more difficult for them to depart with their character and their hard work.

In order to make it easier for these new players to jump into the full game, Blizzard has also introduced a special Digital Battle Chest of World of Warcraft, which includes the original title, as well as its first expansion, The Burning Crusade, available for $20 from its Battle.Net service.

For those that already had the original World of Warcraft, the company has made the Burning Crusade completely free to download, bringing new features to the standard edition, like a raise level cap, to 70, and new areas like the Outlands, and new races, in the form of the Blood Elf and Draenei.

World of Warcraft had a little over 12 million paying subscribers in 2010, just before the release of the Cataclysm expansion, but the number dropped this year, with Blizzard saying that this is just a regular drop, as subscribers usually reactivate their accounts when new things are released for the game.

With the recent patch 4.2, dubbed Rage of the Firelands, the company expects quite a lot of players to return in order to check out the new quest lines and raids included in the update.