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Next WoW expansion introduces paid early access, but Blizzard promise it’ll offer “no long-term advantage”$90 premium edition creates War Within the community
$90 premium edition creates War Within the community
Image credit:Activision Blizzard
Image credit:Activision Blizzard
World of Warcraft’s expansion packThe War Within, out next year, comes in several flavours. There’s the standard version of the pack, which includes access to previous expansions, currency for cosmetics and a level 70 character boost. The Heroic edition gives you all that plus a mount, a pet and extra in-game cash. And then there’s the most expensive Epic edition, which includes a pet, two toys, 30 days of game time… and three days of early beta access to the game, yours for $89.99 in the states.
The War Within Announce Cinematic | World of WarcraftWatch on YouTube
The War Within Announce Cinematic | World of Warcraft
“It is a trend across the industry that we’re paying attention to,” Hazzikostas said of paid early access at large ina new PCGamer interview. “A number of games have done it.” He assured the site that The War Within’s three day beta will be calibrated to avoid creating competitive advantages, but admitted that the developers haven’t done a tremendous job of advertising this.
“The immediate concern that we knew we needed to tackle, and I think frankly I wish we’d done a better job of explicitly spelling out when we announced it on the web page as part of the pre-sale process, are the restrictions that are associated with the early access,” Hazzikostas said.
Blizzard have imposed certain limits on what The War Within’s Epic editioners can do, as with previous expansionDragonflight. It won’t feature most endgame advancement opportunities, for example, though it’ll let you get a few days head start on levelling up before the World of Warcraft weekly content reset that follows the expansion’s release.
The paid beta period is “aimed more at a lot of players who may not have as much free time and not have the ability to take time off work, and therefore miss out on that first week of running Mythic Zero [dungeons], or running max level dungeons with their friends and their guild mates who are able to jump in,” Hazzikostas explained.
Rare spawn creatures, Mythic Zero dungeons, Mythic Plus, weekly profession cooldowns and profession specialisation points are a few of the things that won’t be available in The War Within till the weekly reset after the full release, once the owners of the regular and Heroic editions can play.
Which is all well and good, but doesn’t quite address certain other complaintsraised on Reddit. Many World of Warcrafters feel that it’s a bit nickle-and-dimey to charge extra for early access on top of a subscription. Others argue that the early access period will split the playerbase and stop people experiencing the expansion as a community, though this was surely just as true of previous randomly awarded betas.
The War Within Features Overview | World of WarcraftWatch on YouTube
The War Within Features Overview | World of Warcraft
