Email from Blizzard - Prepare for the Cataclysm with 7 Days of Game Time

[Soulflame]

The earth-shattering rage of Deathwing will soon be released upon the lands of Azeroth. Return to the battlefields with 7 days of FREE game time! Simply click below to claim your time and prepare for Cataclysm ... but act fast, as this offer will expire on Dec 1st, 2010.



Prepare for Cataclysm™, the next expansion to World of Warcraft®, whose features include:

    Two New Playable Races – Adventure as one of two new races: the feral worgen with the Alliance or the resourceful goblins with the Horde.

Classic Zones Remade – Familiar zones across the original continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms have been altered forever and updated with new content, from the devastated Badlands to the broken Barrens.

Flying Mounts in Azeroth – Explore Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms like never before!

Level Cap Increased to 85 – Experience new quests and dungeons as you seize ever greater abilities and tap into new talents!

New High-Level Zones – Explore newly opened parts of the world, including Uldum, Grim Batol, and the great Sunken City of Vashj'ir beneath the sea.

Guild Advancement – Progress as a guild to earn guild levels and guild achievements.

Archaeology – Master a new secondary profession to unearth valuable artifacts and earn unique rewards.

New PvP Zone & Rated Battlegrounds – Take on PvP objectives and daily quests on Tol Barad Island, a new Wintergrasp-like zone, and wage war in all-new rated Battlegrounds.

And much more...

We look forward to seeing you back in Azeroth.

- The World of Warcraft Team

So.  Seven days of free time.

In a very weird coincidence, I launched the patcher last night for WoW, because I thought I might like to take a look at how the game is now.

[Rasix]

It's a trick. Get an axe.

[Lantyssa]

I got it as well.  I'll probably give it a shot over Thanksgiving.  Not because I expect to re-up, but I'd like to see the changes first-hand and when I go into the armory to lament my Draenei I can see them instead of a silhouette.

[Sjofn]

The new armory seems totally random about who it updates. I totally logged in Sofi and Sjofn but they're still SHADOW PEOPLE. Tritana was one for a while but now she suddenly is not. Damn newfangled whatnot!

Zandrys is looking good, though. 

[caladein]

I was planning on resubscribing at the end of the month anyway to get everything ready for the expansion, so this just works out as a free week.  Yay.

[01101010]

Haven't looked at this affliction of a game since I fucked around with BC. No way in hell I get roped into it again, but damn if I am not curious to see how the landscapes change.

[Soulflame]

Just an FYI:  If you're patching, start it days in advance of when you want to play.  Just going from 3.3 to 4.0.0 is 4.76 GB of data that is likely to take 2 days to download.  I was kind of thinking of playing this weekend, now I'm not entirely certain I'll be done patching before Saturday night, because after that, then there's whatever downloads are required to get to 4.0.3, and I seem to recall people saying some of those contained a lot of data as well.

[caladein]

Once you've patched to 4.0.0 there's another 1.4 GB to get to 4.0.1.  If you set yourself to preload Cataclysm, that's another 800 MB, at least when I did it a bit back.

[Dren]

I did the Cata preload.  It took maybe an hour or two.  It will be interesting to see if it really lets me play the expansion on launch day like they advertised.  My money is on no.

[Soulflame]

Playing on expansion day is like playing on patch day, but worse.

[Paelos]

Playing on expansion day is like playing on patch day, but worse.

I'm giving it a solid week before I log in. I'm going on vacation.

[Ingmar]

In theory the blow will be softened a bit by the fact that the old world changes are going to be live a few days (not sure exactly how much) before the actual expansion release date.

[Paelos]

In theory the blow will be softened a bit by the fact that the old world changes are going to be live a few days (not sure exactly how much) before the actual expansion release date.

Except there are plenty of people who won't bother showing up until they can level.

[Ingmar]

They can start their dwarf shamans (or whatever) up though, and remember the new leveling zones will not be off on their own server somewhere. They're going to be in the old world with everyone else, so this should serve to let the population ramp up more normally in theory.

It will probably still suck though.

[Merusk]

I took vacation days on release of BC and LK to get ahead of the masses. It was still rough in some spots of Hellfire because I was at the 2nd quest hub by the time school and work got out.  When compared to my wife and guild mates who complained bitterly about lagged quest text and not enough mobs, I'm still pretty sure it was the best decision to make if you didn't want to wait out the first month.  I was able to get out of Hellfire by the 2nd day and it was clear from there on out. 

LK wasn't as bad because people were spread-out across two zones and they'd implemented dynamic respawning, but I do still remember hearing complaints about the ground items not spawning fast enough on some quests.

[Ingmar]

If you are going to try to level on the first day I'm guessing you'll want the underwater zone. I think people will tend to go to Hyjal instead for a number of reasons - lore connections (Ragnaros and Malfurion OMG), repressed memories of TOA or Deep Ocean, Vast Sea, etc.

[Merusk]

Yeah, my plan was to check out the water zone just because I keep hearing people say "THIS!  This is how water zones should have ALWAYS been done."

[Tannhauser]

I'm taking the day off and hitting the high level zones.  Had good look doing that in the last two expansions.

[Yegolev]

This question is on-topic, really... but I'm going to need to reinstall WoW at some point, and I guess buy some expansions, so what's the most efficient route here?  I'll guess that there's an updated client image that I can download, but assuming I have to buy some expansions would those be in there as well?  Do I have to buy them first?

[Fordel]

WoW's new client SHOULD just stream whatever you need now, but I haven't had to reinstall in a long, long time.

[Xanthippe]

I just re-installed it on my other computer, and got it from the Blizzard site.  Their new system of however they do it works great.  Sometimes I have to wait a couple of minutes to get some new zone before playing but it's not long.

[Nevermore]

I guess Blizzard doesn't like me.  I never did get an email about this and when I looked at my account there was no option for any free game time.  Oh well, makes it that much easier to not resub.

[Rendakor]

Try this link:
https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/claim-promotion.html?promoId=SEVEN_DAYS_PROMOTION
I got no email, but used that to re-up an expired second account. I needed it to roll some alliance rogues for my girlfriend's Turkey Lurkey achievement.

[Nevermore]

*clicks link*

"This World of Warcraft license is not eligible for this promotion."

[Draegan]

I haven't played in about 10 months and thought I'd see if I could get some free time, but it's broke. :(

[Rendakor]

Hmm, weird. It worked for my former RAF account.

[Lantyssa]

Really weird, since we should have canceled at about the same time.  If it helps, you're not missing anything in my opinion.

[Mattemeo]

Honestly, I think one of the chief reasons I haven't even tried to get in on the free week action is I simply cannot be bothered with the rigmarole and time wasting of downloading and patching the whole fucking game again. I imagine I'll end up back on Azeroth some time in the future at some point (I think I'll happily wait a while for Cataclysm), but I lost out on a day of the recent free weekend on City of Heroes etc simply because it took over 12 hours to get it running. That was an annoying sting.
Plus, in the months since I was forced out of playing WoW (laptop GPU died in february, couldn't afford to replace laptop till october), I got a lot more productive on the art side.

[Soulflame]

You can fully patch WoW without starting the trial.

[Rendakor]

Or even having an account.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I gave a friend the new $5 original wow as a gift and she was playing her character withing 30min.  Not sure how they do their streaming of data but it's very fast.

[Fordel]

It's streamed directly as you go. If you swap zones too quickly, you'll see these giant blue walls of fog preventing you from going anywhere until the first bits of the world actually load the immediate area around you, it's like seeing the code in the matrix. 

[Dren]

I haven't had much issues with dl'ing, but I tend to just get the amount I need to actually play and then stick to the areas I have for the night.  Then I restart WoW and let it run all night for the rest of the updattes.  I have to say this is a major improvement over the past system.  This just feels more professionally done and nonobtrusive (in comparison anyway.)  Any future MMO's really need to adopt something similar from the start.  Updates are large and frequent anymore, deal with it so your customers don't get bored and frustrated.

[Numtini]

Yeah, I recently did a reinstall and just let it run all night and it was done in the morning. Gone are the days of "the install" followed by ten thousand patches.