Before the maintenance, I was able to play again with my level 80 characters even without an active subscription thanks to the free weekend, queue for dungeons, test the expansion, and even level up some level 20 characters that were free trial characters above the limit. However, now I can no longer select any characters above level 20. Was it intentional to remove this “3 days of active subscription” experience, or is it a bug from the maintenance?
8 Likes
Wondering the same thing
2 Likes
same here.
blizzard have egg on their face again… lol
5 Likes
yup, wasn’t looking forward to any of the changes, but free is free. so i tried but was greeted with the same ”subscribe or pay 299k to play”
at least now i know i’m not being pranked.
It “was” working for me on the 29th of January, 2026 now on the 30th of Jan. no longer free. I was told also from a friend that the Starter Trial account was not working at all on the 29th.
I’m experiencing the same issue. I cannot use characters above the free trial level on this fully unlocked weekend anymore. It was working before the realms were all offline. Hoping this can be fixed sooner than later.
3 Likes
yes the free weekend is not working, it seems to be bugged
1 Like
It was working. I am similar to you. I figured free is free. Played a lot yesterday. Then this morning “You must have a subscription”
Same here, i keep trying refreshing. It’d be nice if we could get a response from Blizz on it.
Same. Hopefully Blizz will track that there are now several threads on this same topic and will respond quickly!
i had opened a ticket with explaining the problem and also linking to all the forum posts and they were totally useless
Issue ID: #107707825
Your ticket has received the following response:
*Hello,
This is Game Master Benoekaata.
This matter is controlled by the WoW team and the game developers. We as Customer Support are unable to interfere with or comment on this matter.
Please share your feedback in this regard with the game developers and they will see if the suggested changes should be implemented.
Best regards,
GM Benoekaata”*
1 Like
GMs will not be able to help with this so I would not recommend putting in tickets.
One of the other MVPs has passed it along to those at Blizz that we have contact with to flag the issue and we’re waiting to hear back too.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the dev team already knows and is working on it.
Here’s hoping for a quick resolution.
7 Likes
The problem is still there. What a mess. It’s always the same errors. Everything is a disaster with this company.
Same issue here. I was hoping to make use of an inactive account during these days, but it looks like it’s not going to happen. =/
Same here, no problems yesterday but now cant log in with my characters in retail and TBC
Its a little be insane to me that this happened. You are trying to bring players back you make a big announcement get the word out of free weekend.. Then you mess it all up. This is what you would do if you were trying to make sure anyone on the fence about coming back would never even bother.
3 Likes
@Blizzard CS did just post an update.
Server issues were posted on Twitter and Bluesky, likely from someone monitoring from the EU team when the US team was offline.
The forums are not manned around the clock, so no blue post is guaranteed.
9 Likes
Biggest Blizzard scam….
2 Likes
Stellar work! Do a free weekend to attract former players, then immediately screw it up.
Thanks for reminding me of all the company’s amazing QA. 
3 Likes
same here, my characters are inactives
1 Like