World of Warcraft has been around for 8 years now, so it’s hard to imagine there are very many people who have yet to try the game, and yet there must still be those who are uninitiated. Blizzard already allows new players to download the client for free and play a character up to level 20 for free (probably a much better method of letting players get a taste of WoW compared to the old 14 day trials that got me hooked). Today, however, Blizzard took their efforts to hook new players even further:

The new World of Warcraft Battle Chest

The new version of Battle Chest includes WoW, The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King (the first and second expansion respectively) all for $19.99 (of course to play you still need to subscribe at $14.99/mo). But “that’s not all!”. Blizzard has made The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King content available to all subscribers at no additional cost. That’s right, if you already own WoW Vanilla (in other words WoW but not the expansions) and are a subscriber (or become a subscriber I presume) you will not have to purchase anything more and will be able to play the game to level 80 without any restrictions.

This deal should certainly appeal to new players and those who have tried WoW but never had a desire to purchase the expansions. Simply subscribe to the game and you can continue questing from level 50-80 at no additional cost (beyond the subscription fee of course).

Should new players then want to venture further they will still need to purchase Cataclysm (the third expansion) for $39.99 (price may drop sometime after the release of Mists of Pandaria), and WoW’s fourth expansion, Mists of Pandaria, which releases Tuesday 9/25 for $39.99.