So about a year ago my wife went out and bought a WoW Battle Chest (Wow and TBC) and played it day in and day out for a few months. Things came up and she hasn't played it for a long long time, though she says she really wants to get back into it.

That said, I'm looking into trying out the game for the first time for myself and I had a few questions I'm hoping those of you in the know can help me out with.

1. I know there is a free WoW trial game out there, but is it just WoW or do I need all the expansions to play this? ie. Do I need Cat., WotLK and MoP?

2. How long is the trial? I had heard somewhere that it was good until a certain level and other people have said it was only a certain number of hours.

3. If I do get hooked and love the game, which I'm almost sure I will, how much is the monthly fee? (Canadian if possible)

4. Since my wife did already enter the pin code that came with her Battle Chest, do you think I could still try out the free game without having to go in and d/load everything off of Blizzards servers? ie. Do you think I could try the free game with my wife's old (probably expired) account?

So those are my WoW questions. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks guys/girls.

The trial will give you access to any Race and all but two classes (Monk requires MoP and Death Knight requires lvl55). The limitations are that you can only get up to lvl20, your chat options are severely limited, you cannot trade and you cannot initiate a party (although a paying member can party with you). There is absolutely no time limit on this free trial ac count. You simply go to the Battle.net website and make a free account there and your good to go.

From there you have the option to download the entire game (last time I checked I think it was 10-15gb but that was a few years ago) or you can use your disks to install the Client (its totally seperate from the account, i.e. any Account can log into any Client) and update from there.

When you decide you like the game you can by the game from Blizzard or somewhere else like Amazon upgrade the account (this is a unique Cd key). You can buy simply the Battle Chest or go whole hog and buy the expansions but the content in the expansion wont unlock until lvl70, 80 and 85.

The monthly fee is $15 american (Im from the UK, no idea about American prices).

Cool, thank you sir!

So I can just use the disks that my wife has already bought and paid for? Good. I didn't wanna have to d/load 10-15 gigs if I didn't have to.

Thank you!

@Rodent said:

Cool, thank you sir!

So I can just use the disks that my wife has already bought and paid for? Good. I didn't wanna have to d/load 10-15 gigs if I didn't have to.

Thank you!

You can use the disks but you're still going to have to download a HUGE amount of patching.

Hmmm...As in gigs of patching?

Reason I ask is I'm on an 80gig per month plan and I don't wanna burn through that if I don't have to. I guess they would probably list what size the patch would be wouldn't they?

@Rodent: I believe that Blizzard's website does list the patches' size on it.

It will be a somewhat large patch, as the game always updates to the current patch, regardless of what expansion you may have up to, or if you are a trial account, etc.

However I don't think it will burn through your 80gig per month plan, provided your other internet use is of normal standards.

Alright, I'm gonna have to look into this myself but I just wanted to find out a few basics before I did.

The trial mode is absolutely atrocious relative to virtually any other one, fair warning.

Alright a new question for you all.

Uhm..how can I word this? How is the population of WoW without Cataclysm? When my wife was playing WoW, she wasn't playing the Cat expansion and she said that the pre-Cat Wow population was pretty low. Said she could literally run around run minutes on end without running into another player. Is that still the case? Would it be best to start my WoW experience with the Cat expansion already loaded up and installed and the world altered? Or could I, should I or is it even worth starting WoW without the Cat expansion?

Alright a new question for you all.

Uhm..how can I word this? How is the population of WoW without Cataclysm? When my wife was playing WoW, she wasn't playing the Cat expansion and she said that the pre-Cat Wow population was pretty low. Said she could literally run around run minutes on end without running into another player. Is that still the case? Would it be best to start my WoW experience with the Cat expansion already loaded up and installed and the world altered? Or could I, should I or is it even worth starting WoW without the Cat expansion?

Alright, thanks man. I think that just about answers everything I was wondering about. Yeah I was wondering if you could still play the game as it came out (before the Cat alteration) but according to you you can no longer do that, which kinda sucks but I guess that's the way it goes.

Thanks for your time!