Sorry if you’re hoping to jump into WoW for the first time, mind - this offer’s just for the jaded old orcs in the room. Couldn’t be me, of course…
“Shadowlands is nearly here, and you and your allies are needed back on the front lines,” Blizzard write in a Welcome Back Weekend post. “This weekend, we’re giving all players with inactive World of Warcraft accounts full access to the game and all of your characters without a subscription. You’ll be able to access all expansions including Battle for Azeroth, so you can play the most recent content and be ready for Shadowlands when it launches on November 24, 2020.” As noted, returning players are able to play through all existing content, including the most recent Battle For Azeroth expansion. What’ll be more interesting, I reckon, is being able to go back and see all the bizarre changes made to the new levelling experience. I recently used the last of my free Blizz credit to do just that, and it’s a wild, weird thing - compressing the entire levelling experience into an expansion of your choice. Unfortunately, you can’t hop back in time to check out WoW Classic - this free weekend will only offer you access to the main World Of Warcraft client. But if you do have an inactive account, you should be able to simply fire up the Battle.net launcher, install the game and jump right in until 11pm GMT on Monday, November 9th. Shadowlands’ Scourge Invasion pre-launch event should kick off the day after, flooding the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor with ramblin’ shamblin’ zombies. After that, it’s only a matter of weeks before Shadowlands’ oft-delayed launch finally arrives on November 23rd.
