It was earlier this month when we first hear about the World of Warcraft “Veteran Edition.” In many reports it was painted out to be the start of a full free-to-play mode for all players. Now Blizzard has come out and clarified things, explaining what exactly the Veteran Edition brings.
Blizzard explained on its official forums that World of Warcraft Veteran Edition is a new free-to-play mode that’s actually not that different from the Starter Edition trial for users who have accounts already.
“We’ve always had this kind of weird limitation where if you’ve never played WoW we let you play as much as you want, albeit in a very restricted Starter Edition account,” writes a Blizzard community manager, pointing out that if users ever had a subscription at one point but don’t currently have one they’re not ever allowed to log in.
So in patch 6.1 Blizzard has reverted lapsed accounts into a Starter Edition “mode” that has all of the same restrictions. The only difference is that sub-level 20 characters are able to join a guild if any of the player’s other characters are still in that guild.
Blizzard also clarifies that this mode is internally referred to as “Veteran,” and that “it’s unlikely to be a term we use to any great degree externally.” Simply put its going to be the default state for accounts that don’t have an active subscription currently.
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