WoW Classic demo will kick you out if you play too long

You’ll get to play a World of Warcraft Classic demo as part of this year’s BlizzCon Virtual Ticket, and today Blizzard has detailed exactly what to expect from the preview – including some pretty hefty limitations. You’ll have access to two zones, and while you can create as many characters as you please there’s a pretty limited range of levels. The biggest limitation, though, looks to be the demo’s time limit.

“In order to maximize the number of people who can try out the demo,” Blizzard says, “initially you’ll be logged off after playing for a certain amount of time to give somebody else a turn.” That’s in keeping with how the BlizzCon demos work, but it’s a pretty surprising limitation for an at-home trial. The exact time limit is yet to be determined, and Blizzard hopes to relax the restrictions according to demand.

However long your session lasts, your character and progress will be saved for the duration of the trial. Characters start at level 15 and will be capped at 19, though you’ll have multiple character slots to mess around with different classes.

Horde players will have access to the Barrens and Alliance players will get Westfall. Those’ll be the only zones open for exploration, but they’ll come complete with most of their original run of quests and content. You won’t have access to Deadmines and Wailing Caverns dungeons, however, and all PvP options will be limited to dueling.

The announcement also details some of the new features coming to WoW Classic over the 2004 original. Mostly it seems to be quality-of-life stuff – proper widescreen support, easy player reporting, and current anti-cheat and accessibility options. Otherwise, it looks like gameplay balance right down to enemy weaknesses will be back in line with the original.

BlizzCon takes place on November 2 and 3, and will host news across all of Blizzard’s games – though based on recent rumblings at the studio, don’t expect Diablo 4 there. We’ll soon have a much better idea of what to expect from WoW Classic, at least, even if we’ll being seeing it in time-limited bursts.