I’ve never been much of a gamer (apart from being addicted for some time to Tetris and later to the pinball game that was first included in Windows NT) and especially not one for RPGs, but a few days ago I learned that World of Warcraft is available for the Mac, it can be downloaded from the Web and you can test-drive it for free for 10 days. I would never buy such a game in a box from a store, but downloading stuff to try from the Net is second nature to me, so I figured I might give it a try.
So I registered an account, downloaded the game (a handful of GBs, so you have to be patient, but it sure beats getting a box from a retailer), created a character, and started playing. I have to admit I’ve been hooked from the beginning and especially captivated by the sheer immensity and variety of the virtual world you end up being immersed into. I did some quests, killed a huge amount of monsters, and got killed in the process many times. To finish the hardest quests I teamed up with people whom I have later added to my friends list, so we can get together easily again every time we go online. Probably appearing as a young, attractive, female mage instead of a burly warrior or a dwarf made it somewhat easier to find people eager to help me in my quests in a world that—I presume—is mostly inhabited by young males 
.
Anyway, my 10 day trial period just ended and I’m not bored yet, so I wanted to buy some “real” play time. There are two ways you can do this: you can buy a pre-paid card from a store (even Amazon has them) or you can, I assume, buy an activation key online from Blizzard’s web site. Since getting the card from Amazon or other online vendors means having to pay shipping and wait a few days or weeks, I obviously tried to buy a key online. I wrote “I assume” when I mentioned buying it online because that’s the thing everyone would assume when one sees a big, red button with the words “Buy a Key Online” on the Account Management section of WoW’s website.
Unfortunately, when I click on it, I either get an unspecified error or a 404 (Not Found) page. I figured it might be some transient problem with their system, so I tried the day after, with the same result. Frustrated by this, I looked for ways to contact Blizzard’s support. Turns out there’s a form you can compile for requesting support; at the end of the form there’s one of those obnoxious CAPTCHA checks for keeping bots away. The code is very readable, so I think even the dumbest OCR can read the code, but I wasn’t able to. Well, actually I was perfectly able to read the code and type it back in the control field, but no matter how many times I tried or how many permutations of upper- and lower-case characters I used, the stupid form kept telling me I wasn’t getting the right code.
In desperation I turned to the support forums, where you have to be a registered user to post. The problem there is that the forum login system kept refusing my username and password. Do I have to register another account just for the forums? I’ll mention as an aside that, judging from the URLs it shows, WoW’s website is using JA-SIG CAS, which is a Single Sign-on system. I wouldn’t care much about Single Sign-on in this case, but at the very least I expect to be able to reuse my username and password across different services from the same company.
So I’m here, frustrated by a company that doesn’t seem to want my money while at the same time boasting having recently reached a 9 million user base. Go figure! I should probably take this as a hint to stay away from World of Warcraft and avoid staying up late at night just to play a stupid game.
Update: I finally managed to submit a support request and got this reply:
Thank you for your email. To upgrade your trial account to a standard version you will need an unused non-trial authentication key for World of Warcraft which you can find either under CD 3 in your box or on the front of the manual in all full game boxes of World of Warcraft. You will need to log on to the account management page at http://www.wow-europe.com/account and select “Upgrade account” then enter the standard authentication key from your box.
You will keep all of your original characters and receive a free month of play time.
The online upgrade facility is not currently available. We don’t currently have any further information about when this service will be available again.
If you have any further questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to contact us again.
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