The weekend is upon us and after being out last night I thought.. today will be the day I grab Battle for Azeroth! Only had to grab 100 MB of patches, then I got an interesting popup. “Trial for BfA! 3 days of game time included”. This sounded good, I was on the way to buy it anyway.
So I logged in all my toons, cleaned up the bags for the mains, grabbed a quest, did a scenario (Fall of Lordaeron) and then… couldn’t continue. I would’ve expected a breadcrumb quest to lead me to a new zone, as with all the other expansions before, but nope. Went around a bit in Orgrimmar, nothing – so I went to search the web and apparently it only works with a freshly created Trial character. Not so cool. I was still interested so I checked what class/race combo I was missing among my high level characters and decided on a Gnome Warlock. Apparently I had created one to save a name, so I logged in, mailed the Heirlooms to another toon, deleted, and recreated. Then I had to do the scenario again (doh) – but at least from the other perspective now. After that I could indeed go to Kul Tiras and experience roughly half an hour of gameplay. At that point the game decided this was enough and I should now pay up. Including holding that character hostage with a big fat lock on the login screen and a “Trial Completed” message.
But what I saw from Kul Tiras and the new quests was really nice. Except for the jarring mouth animations when the NPCs were talking. I also feel drawn to the Alliance quite a bit, as the scenario wasn’t really more enticing than the preview cinematics. This also sucks, I’d prefer to play my old mains from before Legion.
So yeah, on the one hand it’s my own fault. On the other hand this “free” “trial” has pissed me off enough that I’ve not instantly gone and bought it. Actually I’m quite dissuaded at the moment. Good job, Blizzard, if it hadn’t been for the wording and execution of this trial I would’ve bought it already, incl. a subscription.
That’s pretty much all Blizz is doing as of late it seems, giving their players a nice, big F U at every opportunity.
Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t support them much with my time and money over the years.
It’s a shame because the high standard of quality and polish they apply to all of their games is second to none and should be an example for every game developer.
Their attitude towards the people who pay their bills (and yachts) though…it’s disgusting, really.
I don’t know, you sound overly negative 🙂 (said the guy who wrote that blurb above..)
In a vacuum the new content looks cool – maybe not for a long-term MMO (read about too many problems) – but under different circumstances I’d definitely join for a 3 month stint again. It’s just… that I ignored it in the summer when it came out (different reasons, mostly SWTOR, but also not wanting to dive in when I know I’ll be gone for 2 weeks, 4 weeks after launch.. also my dead guild, and so on).
I don’t feel let down by the game itself… it’s just some things at Blizzard that seem a bit weird. For example I got the “hey, 3 days of free trial!” to the email address linked to the account that had started that trial 24h before. Come on, why do I notice the trial by accident in the Blizzard launcher and not via the email in the first place? I can imagine how it would be hard to roll back the changes once I had started the new content on an existing character, but why is there no clear communication what this trial entails?
Whatever. It’s done for now and I’ll wait for 8.1 and then check my interest and hype meter again.
Yes, unfortunately I am indeed pretty negative about certain companies at the moment. It’s not only Blizzard, Apple for example is also very high on my black list right now.
I’m fed up with those mega-corporations that just know millions and millions of people will buy their shit no matter what they do. So they push changes or ‘features’ down our throats that we don’t actually want or need and tell us to like it (or worse, that if we don’t like it we’re just too dumb to ‘get it’).
I’m generally not a negative guy, I rather talk about things that I like than complaining about stuff I don’t. It’s just getting out of hand at the moment, and I think it’s important not to give them any more money if you feel like me, and to speak up about it (although I concede that this isn’t really the right place for it 😉 ).