why would someone buy the game if they don't know if they're going to like it or not?

thousands of people have played 10 days free, and then became hooked.

those ten free days for me have translated to probably around $165 revenue for blizzard. and that's just my account!! i may never have played the game in the first place if it wasn't for the free trial.

...because the free month of play and trial accounts serve different purposes?

Lack of trial accounts is the sole reason I don't play more MMOs. At this point in my life, I don't want to sink $40-50 on a game I don't enjoy, and if I don't enjoy it, the free month is just a 30-day reminder that I blew a week's worth of dinner on something I don't want.

I agree, Trial accounts (or demos) are essential to the success of a game. There are so many times that I've wanted to check out a game, but if I can't find a trial or demo, I'm not going to bother. I'm not dropping 50 bucks on something I may not even like.

WoW is one of the very few MMOs that allow people to try it out first. I've wanted to try several other MMOs, but so far the only one I've found that lets you try it out first is Anarchy Online, and that was crap. I would be very mad if I had actually purchased it.

Exactly! I don't accept invites from someone my own level if they don't talk to me first.

They're not. But getting an invite every 15 mins is bloody annoying.

I accept so I can press the little "Report Spam" button. As far as I know, there's no other way to report them without opening a ticket, and I don't think GMs would appreciate me bugging them just so I don't have to accept an invitation and report them specifically for what they're doing.

About the change, I'm real happy about it. It got tiring reporting those guys. For some reason I don't have as big a problem with reporting them in /say as I do in /p. I just hope this doesn't turn away too many players that are on their trials, though. I suppose if they really wanted to group with another trial, they could just have somebody invite both of them to their party, and the inviter could leave. Would be a pain, but what're ya gonna do, right?

I was wondering why I never saw gold-selling/stat-changer spam on my Alliance lowbies. I haven't played a new Alliance character for a while, and I just started an alt frenzy (recently hit 70 on my main) with mostly Hordies. I got so many random invites, and I probably saw a giberish-named Orc sitting in the spawn point of The Den every time I was there. Today I made an Alliance Paladin, and I haven't gotten a single invite for him yet. I thought the problem was almost totally isolated to Horde because of that, but after reading this article, I guess it's a different story. Maybe when I was playing my Allies that method wasn't super popular for some reason, and now my Ally was created right when the problem was fixed. What a coincidence =)

Yeah, we get those in SW and IF all the time. Reporting them is pretty much a waste because they'll only be logged in for a few minutes and then it's off to creating another human or dwarf character. Wonder why I never see gnomes selling gold.....

@Jasperwind (bah, no threading!): But the report attaches to the account, not the character, as far as I remember.

Could just get to level 2 couldnt they?

@14
Doesn't matter. Still a trial account. So they still can't send invites.

I don't think he meant that literally.