Subscription expired = starter edition?

Community General Discussion
1

Wait what?
I was just told that when my subs expire in May that all it means is that my accounts will revert to ‘starter edition’ status…ie I’d still be able to play characters up to level 20 even though Im not paying for a sub.

They also said that if I had allied races, since they start at 20 I could still start new allied races and play them.

Is this true? And if so, what is going on here?
I thought ‘bill not paid’ would mean exactly that.
How can I send a message to blizzard by not paying my sub if theyre just going to keep the account in some kind of ‘active’ state anyway?

2

What are you confused about exactly? If you don’t give them money they don’t get money. They know you aren’t giving them money, and if you don’t play as a starter then they know you aren’t playing as well.

You can do what you did and post here about quitting or you can see if a survey pops up in your email when the sub ends. Even if you don’t they will still know if you’re active or not.

3

I just thought that ‘unpaid’ = 'wont work at all".
I dont think $15 a month is going to break this company.
I thought investors seeing ‘subscription cancelled’ sent a message, but if my accounts are still partially ‘active’ that seems like it more says “just taking a break”, which isnt the case at all with many players who have quit.

4

You can play WoW for free up to level 20. It’s been that way since…MoP maybe? They don’t just delete your stuff if you don’t pay for a month.

5

I see.
I guess i was under the impression since it was a paid account that expires that it would just be locked out entirely

6

This doesn’t work with a new character created on a starter account as they can’t join guilds, but if you have a 20 or below character in your current guild, you’ll still be able to log on and chat in /guild once your sub expires.

1 Like
7

They know if someone cancels their sub regardless of if you can play to level 20 is what I am telling you. “Message” recieved.

8

ah…I see.
So basically I can play for free but still send them the message.
Kinda nuts, but fine by me if thats how they want it :joy::joy:

9

Something they started back around Cataclysm I believe.

Starter edition is free to level 20, but you are restricted. Don’t think you can trade with other people among other things that slip my mind.

For a long time my brother in law would just create new characters when he hit 20. Was a rather strange practice.

2 Likes
10

Personally since they keep jacking my game Im only interested in running classic dungeons anyway at this point. At least till Ion is gone and someone who loves the game itself is back at the helm.
Kinda wishing Id have been around for classic in the beginning at this point. I missed all the good parts of the game over the years and came in right as it was about to self destruct.

11

I think a lot of people look back at that time with rose colored glasses.

There were a lot of cool things about vanilla but an equal amount of irritating things as well.

Travel for one was terrible if you weren’t a mage.

Leveling took a lot longer as well or at least it seemed to. Actually I can’t say that with certainty. I have been an altaholic since day one, so I can’t fairly gauge that.

12

Restrictions
With the Starter Edition, you can do the following:

Create new characters
Level any character up to 20
Earn up to 10 gold per character
Level any profession up to 100
Chat in /say and /party channels
Characters that are ten or more levels higher than you will not see your /say messages
Whisper your friends <- Only friends added by character name. Blizzard and RealID friends will not show up and chat won’t appear from them.

What you CAN’T do:

Expansion content (quests, zones, etc)
Characters above level 20
Pet Battles
Other chat channels and whispers to non-friends
All guild-related functions
Value added services (character transfers, faction changes, etc)
Party formation
Trade, mail, or the Auction House
Voice chat or Real ID
The Emote function in text chat

Those “can’t do” restrictions are, well…pretty darn restrictive. Even so, it makes perfect sense that they would allow you to have limited access to the game, because they do want you to come back.

1 Like
13

yeah, I guess that makes sense.
Let you play ‘some’ so you might get interested again.