Thoughts about the F2P bracket

[Tinkerton]

Starter Edition is not the same as a trial account. So long as there's the option to continue to play it indefinitely, it can't be called a trial, that's merely one of the purposes to which it can be put, not it's defining feature (It's more of a 'WoW Lite'). Blizzard knew full well that there would be people who would play it exclusively if they took the time limit off. Only time will tell if they have plans to 'monetise' Starter Edition, in ways other than just hoping people using it will buy the full game, because once you've given people the ability to play for free, you want to make money off them somehow, even if they don't want to pay subscriptions.

True, one might say that it also serves the purpose of 'keeping in touch' with disgruntled former subscribers. Considering that the money making part of WoW (the +/- now 5 million EU/US subscribers, the Chinese 'subscribers' are mostly to pad numbers) is in decline since Cata one would think they do want to get new players as well.



WoW had a strong P2Win slant (as all Expansions are lumped together) as far as pre-end cap PvP was concerend ever since TBC, they just now added Freemium to it. Wouldn't be surpsied if they 'pulled a LotRO' and require payment to use more than a certain number of toons (so far Starter doesn't seem to have a smaller limit).

 

[Tinkerton]

To get back on track:

as far as EU goes, due to the gear and its accessibility being slanted towards Alliance (I could produce a viable Ally Huntard within 10 hrs, Horde toons take quite a bit longer to get on even footing), Alliance had a head start, which it abused to camp the living daylights out of Horde as 'of course' CtF games aren't about CtF and 'twink community' is apparently a joke that only 'worked' as long as peoiple needed each other to get queues to pop.



With the points gained, those wonderful heirlooms have been now acquired and so Horde having caught up in Quest etc gear means very little, also because with cross-realm BG's and they way the bracket works new people end up in the BG's all the time - with Ally newbies being '1k Hunters' and Horde newbies '700 Warlocks'.



So sure, Horde could grin it out and grind till they have looms themselves , but due to the continual influx and the core issues remaining it means little.



Same with running 24's bwt, it only means Ally will run even more 24's (though luckily so far they tend to be laughably bad Rogues) and the core issue - Alliance Dungeon Quest gear > Horde Dungeon Quest gear producing faster more powerful toons - remains.



For me personally it means that Horde is a headache only playable in the wee hours, and Ally (my former P2P 'home' Faction) leaves a very bad taste making me not want to play it either, no matter how cute Gnomes may be.



With the game world being even less interesting than it was just post-Shattering (they e.g. now even dole out Flight Points), and Blizzard all but literally saying they don't care about anything than the niche entertainment (check the ''Red is dead' polls) that is Rated BG's (WSG GY shift says 'hi") and high-end Arena as far as PvP is concerned, I can only say that giving Blizzard not a dime anymore was a sound decision.