About trial accounts

A few posts down in my blog I have a so called "trial transmog". I thought I'd tell you a little about what it's like playing on a trial account. Trial accounts are, most importantly in my case, free. I currently can't afford paying the monthly fee for playing WoW, and I simply don't have time to raid since I study. When I miss WoW too much I just simply log in to my trial account and do some low level dungeons instead.

Trial accounts have the following benefits:

• They are free
  
• You can keep them for an unlimited time
  
• If you have the trial account connected to an already existing battle.net account, you get access to the same mounts, heirlooms and titles
  
  

However, there are several restrictions as well, such as the following:

• Maximum level 20, then you stop gaining experience
  
• It is not possible to lock your experience gain. You will reach 20 if you keep playing
  
• You can't trade or use the AH
• You can't use addons
  
• You can't use in game mail / postal service
  
• You can't invite people to a group (although you can accept party requests)
  
• You can only gain 10 gold, maximum
  
• You can only have 100 in the primary professions and you can't learn archaeology
  
• You can't visit Pandaria
  
• The only battlegrounds available are Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin - and also Alterac Valley and Eye of the Storm as of patch 6.0.2
  
• The only dungeons available are the Deadmines, Ragefire Chasm, Wailing Caverns, Shadowfang Keep, Blackfathom Deeps and Stormwind Stockade
  
• You can only use /say, /party and /instance chats by default. You can only /whisper to people who whispered you first or if you both are on each other's friend list

Because of these specific restrictions you can't get the best gear and enchants and you can only compete in the 20-29 PvP bracket. It is therefore necessary to try to get the best gear possible from quests and drops - some of it you have to craft yourself with your 100 profession skills, and you have to enchant and enhance everything yourself. I've spent alot of time on wowhead figuring out which gear is the best I can wear, and on MogIt trying to put together transmogs with the scarce material available.

It is possible to get heirlooms (which I have on my priest Mysfox, and my boyfriend has them on his trial shaman Ohej), but getting them is very time consuming if you are a new player. If you already have an account with high level characters you can access your old heirlooms from that account. If you're NOT using a trial account connected to a real account, you have to earn them from scratch. During Darkmoon Faire (starts first Sunday every month) you can collect Darkmoon Prize Tickets, and for about 110 of them you can get an Heirloom item. That means you might need 1-2 Darkmoon Faire weeks (2 months). You can also buy PvP Heirlooms for justice points.

This might sound like a whole lot of work for just a level 20 character, but it's part of the charm. All of my enchants and leatherworking enhancement kits are crafted by me and it's actually quite fun to know you're slowly going towards a set goal, unlike the "real" game in which new expansions are released and limits are pushed further. I enjoy not having to worry about getting full gear before the next expansion comes, when it will be worthless. It's enough for me at least :)