Does WoW Classic have a free trial?

WoW is technically free to play. You can enjoy the retail version of the game up to level 20 and make as many characters as you want. There are other restrictions, but if you want to just play a little bit of the game, you can do it. For whatever reason, that’s not possible with WoW Classic.

If you go and read the Starter Edition FAQ on Blizzard’s website, it explains that accounts without subscriptions can’t make characters on the Classic version of the game. You can see this for yourself if you lack a subscription and log into the game. It won’t let you make characters, and it probably won’t let you log into any in the future.

It’s unclear why this limitation exists for the game, but it’s likely because Blizzard would make more money from the relatively small $14.99 subscription than it would if a bunch of people played for free. You couldn’t let people play to level 20 and expect them to want to pay continue because it takes so long to do that in the first place. Maybe in the future Blizzard will put a level 10 restriction and allow anyone to play the game.

The lack of a free version might also be to prevent more clutter in the starting zones as the game is still in its early stages. It’d be easy to see them allow for low level players when the realms get rid of layering and need ways to entice new people to keep the populations healthy. Free character transfers are a inconvenient workaround compared to letting people give new servers a shot.

All of that said, the low cost to get into the game is welcoming. It feels odd that you don’t have to buy the original game at all still. It feels like Blizzard wanted to make playing the game as simple as possible — which might mean Starter Edition accounts won’t be out of the question down the line.