Tiervermittlung Frankreich » Does nothing to convey this to the player

When I express that to Kevin, though, what I'm saying is, hey, I know the first 20 levels of this game you're playing are bad but trust me, spend $60 and I promise the last bit of it is really much better. It's a shaky value proposition even from a trusted friend because, honestly, I don't know if Kevin will actually like World of Warcraft, and the free trial does nothing to help him decide that for himself. If Kevin does buy WoW Classic Items, a "class trial" will let him test run an endgame class for a bit, there's no way for him to know if he'll enjoy the pace of running a good dungeon, grinding World Quests, or fighting in Battlegrounds PvP—or any of the other things I enjoy about WoW.

On the surface, that's really no different than any other full-priced game you buy. You can read all of the reviews in the world, but shelling out cash for a game is always inherently risky. But even if an expansion like Battle for Azeroth adds all new features and experiences, World of Warcraft is over a decade old and, sadly, people do judge a book by its cover.

This abstracted idea of value further exacerbates the problem because you're not just buying a brand new game that'll last 30 hours. You're buying a full-priced 14-year-old game where the expectation is you'll pay a subscription fee and continue to play an indefinite amount of time. It's an evolving relationship that can't be summarized by the hours between pressing play and the credits rolling. My opinion of Warcraft is the result of hundreds of little experiences that slowly congeal together to form a mosaic in my mind. It's a unique phenomenon worthy of being treasured and part of the reason why, love it or hate it, tens of millions of people have played World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft is a hopelessly massive game that, no matter how hard Blizzard tries, will always have rough edges. Systems like the leveling experience begin to age and the developers have to try and divide resources between adding new things to be excited about while simultaneously updating old systems to stay relevant. It's an extremely tough job that I think Blizzard has tackled remarkably well. The new level-scaling, for example, means that monsters and quests always present somewhat of a challenge for new characters as they level up. I'm no longer having to drop a storyline mid-quest because I've out-leveled it.

But the free trial and subsequent new-player experience does nothing to convey this to the Buy Gold in WoW Classic player. World of Warcraft's value potential is unlimited, but that doesn't mean people don't expect it to, like any form of media, communicate that value early on. Like poor Kevin, new players are merely dropped into a now eight-year-old version of Azeroth with a few basic abilities in their hotbar and left to wonder what all the fuss is about while, on the other side of the virtual world, my raid party and I are fighting for our lives against the living incarnation of a demon-possessed soul of a planet. And, yes, that's as fun as it sounds.