OK, this is not the Christmas post that you’ve been (probably not) waiting for. But after seeing posts from yesteryears this morning I needed to write this post.
Seven years ago I wrote this post about breaking down and buying World of Warcraft. It was a game I really wanted to get into as I did not want to go back to EverQuest. While I loved my beloved EverQuest, I was afraid that it would swallow me whole like it did so in the past. I played for a few months, perhaps even a year, I really don’t remember, but then I stopped. Like most MMOs, I probably just didn’t have time to sink into it and since you have to pay a monthly fee to play, it was money that was being burned.
So, why did I need to make this post? Well, I bought this yesterday.
I think it’s ironic that almost 7 years to the day I ended up buying this game again. I still have my original copy of the game, but unfortunately it will not work with OS X Mavericks. The game I had was made to work on PowerPC architecture, and they dropped support for that with OS X Lion. So while we were out running errands yesterday afternoon, I popped into Best Buy and grabbed a copy.
Here’s where it gets fun. Quite a while ago Blizzard made World of Warcraft free to anyone who wanted to play. The free play had a level cap of 20, after which you would need to open up a regular subscription. You could download the software for free but it came in at a hefty 25gb download. That was a bit much, so I decided that the next time I was in Best Buy I would see how much a copy would be.
Best Buy did indeed have a starter kit there for $19.99. It was exactly what I was after. I really didn’t care about any expansion packs at the time. I just wanted the core game to get me started. When I took it up to the register it rang up at $5. Yep, there was a sale and I got $15 off the game! Sweet!
So I go home and install it on my iMac. After downloading another 4gb in patches, I was ready to play. So when the game launcher, I was a bit confused. Then the opening cinematic played and I was confused a bit more. Then it hit me. This starter kit came with all of the expansion packs included. So for $5 I got a full copy of World of Warcraft with all of its expansions. Now THAT my friends is a great deal!
So I ended up starting a character last night; a Human Warrior. That’s always a safe bet to start with. I played for about 45 minutes or so and got to level 4. I’m not going to be playing this game like I used to play. Since it’s free, I’m going to play at a very leisurely pace. A little bit here, a little bit there. Just enough to scratch that MMO itch I tend to get.
