Blizzard is offering Diablo III for free with a WoW annual pass.

I'm sure this isn't news to most, but I'm wondering how many are getting in on this. Having never played WoW is it really worth it? I'm tempted.

play the trial don't spend the cash.

Not really news no, but it does show how desperate they are to actually give away the game for a WoW annual pass. WoW itself was an amazing game, till they pretty much turned it into poo. Now They could offer me £1,000,000 to play the game and I would still say no. For a new player that has never seen it try it out, for an old player like me who played it for 4 years, dont bother returning.

P.S, Diablo 3 is online ONLY, so you need to play online all the time, hence I have zero interest in it.

You do have to ask - are they worried about WoW subscriber numbers skydiving? I'm less inclined to say that this is their main concern, given that WoW is past its sell-by date now and a drop-off is inevitable.

I'm more inclined to believe that Blizzard is worried about Diablo 3 tanking - reaction to the beta has been mediocre at best and the DRM and real-money auctioning has lost it plenty of fans - and they're giving it away so that they can claim at a later date that they have all these people playing Diablo.

I'll give the free play a shot then. A year subscription is a long time. Especially if you're miserable. I have to say I was wondering the same thing. Like it wouldn't stand on it's own legs.

Agreed. The free trial is good because you get to see a small portion of what the game is. They have changed it from what it used to be like in Vanilla. So to me the whole game is different. To you everything will be brand new. Oh and for the record the free trial is available to you until lvl 20. To level further you need a sub.

The effective implementation of my ISP's coming network upgrades will determine whether or not I purchase Diablo III. If I have to use a satellite connection to stay logged into a single-player game the whole time that I play it, I want it to be a strong connection.

The free trial is now *free to play* but you are limited to what area's you can go to, and what level you can attain. So you can stay lvl 20 as long as you want and play as long as you want. But to go any further you need a subscription. Oh and another thing, the base game now includes the first expansion pack free of charge, so you have WoW, and The Burning Crusade expansion.

They offered this up a while ago, back around Christmas or before I believe. Anyway, it's not worth it. What is it... $180 for a year's subscription of WoW and that's not included the $20 for the base game + BC package, then you need to get Wrath for another $30 then Cataclysm for another $40 just to be able to reach the current game's level cap/relevant end game where people are playing. Never mind the fact Cataclysm just had it's last significant content expansion so you'll be coasting on fumes until they get around to releasing Mists of Pandaria for another $40. And who even knows when that will be released. Probably not for another six months.

If you want Diablo 3, just buy Diablo 3. As mentioned, though, you can try the WoW trial. Since there is no time limit you can play around with all of the classes and even do a few dungeons and such.

Annual Pass is only available for accounts created on or before October 18th, 2011. So I don't think you can opt in to it.

Ahhh, well I think that solves that problem then doesnt it :P

Well, there goes that. I'll still give it a try since I've never played it. Thanks all.

If somebody is going to play WoW he will probably have no time to play Diablo = will not buy it.
If someone is interested in Diablo, he will not have time to play WoW = will not buy it.
So in any case Blizzard will not lose any "extra money" by this offering. It is just marketing trick.

I don't know how much WOW annual pass costs but a plain sub will cost you 180 USD for the year. Now if it's discounted, that's fine, but you'll be able to buy Diablo III for a lot less. You need to look at it the reverse way, take the price of WOW annual pass, is it worth it now? If I knock 60 USD off, does it now become worth it? If you didn't answer "yes" to at least one question this is a horrible deal for you. Just buy Diablo III.

IMO, the real point of this promotion is so Activision doesn't have to report another drop in subs to shareholders when D3 launches.
Nope, it's more clever than that, it's a trick to make Kotick look good to investors, he promised to bring WOW subs back up recently after a 800k drop. The D3 launch could actually fuck him over on said promise. If they can get most of their WOW market that intends to buy D3 to buy into this (and why wouldn't they?) then they won't drop their WOW sub for 3-6 months while they're dicking around with D3.