Level 20 is not at all representative of the game you’ve built. I think the free trial needs to be revisited from the ground up. I would structure it like so:
100% free to the previous expansion’s level cap.
The current expansion still has a box price tag, but does not require a subscription for access.
A subscription gets you access to ranked PvP, Mythic+ above level 9, and raid difficulty above raid finder.
Yes, this means that a lot of people are going to be able to pay for free. But it means that new players are going to be able to get an actual representative sample of the type of content that WoW exists to deliver. And they’ll buy in for a greater bite.
Add in some perks like the trading post, and a good chunk of casuals will still remain subscribed as well. But if I was a new player, and I was led to believe that the 1-20 experience was what the developers thought was a good sampling of the best they had to offer? I wouldn’t buy Dragonflight, either.
How else are new players supposed to get a representative sample? As is, the free trial is doing more harm than good if it is trying to represent the gameplay that people actually play WoW to enjoy.
None of which is good anymore. How much development tine goes into Mythic +, raiding, and ranked PvP? And how much of that can trial players experience? Is it really a trial if you’re unable to experience even a snippet of the actual game?
Would you ever try to convince a friend to play WoW with you by detailing the leveling experience to them? If not, why should that be enough to represent the game in a trial?
Which isn’t much to people hopelessly invested enough to come to the forums. But it’s a good chunk of cash for people that aren’t as addicted as we are.
At level 30 you are able to fly. I think that would be a big selling point if they either lowered flying to 20 (For subscribers), or set the trial to go until 30, and then grant flight with a subscription.
You have failed to take in to account gold sellers with your proposal. With your idea would it still prevent trials/free players from using the AH, mail, chat, trade or joining guilds?
The entire vanilla world is more than a “snippet”, you get all the questing and dungeon experiences of the old world. Not everything has to be gogogo mythic.
Yea no then you’ll have all the free loaders coming playing, its not even a free trial if your gonna have all previous expansions at lvl cap , its literally giving away all the expansion
Especially considering those characters that are now 25-27 but were previously 60-70 pre-level-squish got grandfathered in with flight with the level squish (except druid flight form at first, but they fixed that). Or if, not 20, lower flight to 25 and raise the trial cap to 25. At midway through a pvp bracket, it also might slightly help with f2p-trail/veteran-with-no-sub/game-time accounts nearly obliterating everyone in the 11-20 bracket though they will still have advantages (having pvp templates just for that bracket [or combine all pre-max-level characters back into templated pvp, while max level doesn’t use templates] would probably help more in that regard).
…And, while they are at it, they can reduce the required level to enter vanilla raids down to 25 and TBC raids to 27 so that they are are doable by characters that could do them before the level squish since they were current (the currently required level for them are 30, which is equal to a level 80 before…which really, really irks me).