Ah, yes, come this Saturday, millions of Britons will be settling in for a morning routine. Cup of tea? Check. Buttered scones and jam? Check. Saturday morning copy of The Times? Check. Copy of 14-day World of Warcraft trial included inside said newspaper? My word, that's a pleasant surprise!

Tidy piece of marketing, this, and I doubt it'll be the last time we see something like it. Announced in today's print edition alongside this feature on the game, there'll also be an 8-page beginners guide included, presumably because most readers won't have the foggiest what all the fuss is about.

Which is probably the point of including it in the first place. Bravo, Blizzard. If the British economy collapses in two weeks time, we know who to blame. Luke Plunkett

3:30 AM on Tue Mar 27 2007
By Luke Plunkett
1,803 views
31 comments

Comments

MO3iusONE at 02:39 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

WoOt! That crack spreads mighty quick.
Elrando at 02:41 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

Blizzard!
Devious bastards!!
Lyrai at 02:46 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

Can't wait for the in-game food items "Tea" and "Crumpets"
Paul Soth at 02:50 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

Thousands of WoW players are caught off-guard by a sudden influx of new players speaking and writing in proper English.
joelface at 02:53 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

thats pretty awesome, with the beginners guide and everything... hopefully its a smashing success.
badramen at 03:05 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

That is silly.
Switch at 03:05 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

I feel hideously offended by your comments, Lyria. The sterotypical designations you force upon the people of England are unfounded, and deeply offending. It should be "Earl Grey" and "Crumpets" :D
IronsUK at 03:06 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

I'm surprised The Times are doing a WoW promotion. I thought Second Life would be more up their alley. I guess they are trying to sell a few extra papers to skint Students.
offstump at 03:10 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

excellent. I read The Times, and was thinking of buying WoW
Irenicus at 03:10 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

Great idea for getting more players, at this rate Blizzard will take over the world, and the guy in charge of WoW PR? well he is set for life!
Balance_In_Life (PSN) at 03:14 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*
Connectedness Index: 191

The poor English population... Well blizzard has posed to take down yet another great economy. Brilliant marking. Just like another drug dealer, give a little for free and make them crawl back for more!
drifter13 at 03:31 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

My god, Blizzard you evil bastards...8 million is not enough? How many more souls must you lay before your dark alter of money and epic loot. What's the circulation on the times anyways? Millions? If they even get 10% of those readers hooked... OH WHEN WILL IT END!!!!!!!

GAH, can't fight it any more, MUST....ROLL....NEW BELF HUNTER....
DaveKap at 03:33 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*
Connectedness Index: 135

World of Warcraft still needs marketing?

*confused*
sanjiyan at 03:42 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

Maybe it's time City of Heroes got a bit of love from another well known paper?

NY Times?
SF Chronicle?
SJ Mercury?
Washington Post? (yeah, right)
drifter13 at 03:46 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

Hey check it out, through the magic of WoW Armory

http://armory.wow-europe.com/?#character-sheet.xml?r=Nagra...

Only level 10, so its seems the 31yr old mother of 2 and professional journalist hasn't fallen to far into darkness. Still, she joined a guild, so that's not a good sign :P
vongarr at 04:16 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

Lucky for America, they will be on eurotrash servers. I see enough of the letter U without having to see it in color, or armor, or...moustache. But they added an O there, not a U. But it's just as bad. And this doesn't even include that crazy cockney slang.

Topics such as these keep me awake at night.
metallicorphan at 04:17 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

@Elrando:

calm down....the same 14 day trial costs just £1.49(proberbly not much dearer than the times) in HMV....its been out for a while now

i guess its just advertising for the latest expansion
The Commissar at 05:11 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

Vivendi must truly have money to burn to send this crap out to the already oversaturated market. I mean, how many freakin CD's are we talking about for a trial that is easily downloadable by any git that wants to play? I mean, you DO need an internet connection to play, and the patches alone take ages to download on dialup, so broadband is more or less a necessity. You would think anyone interested - minus 40-something bored soccer moms - would have downloaded it already if they have any interest. Not to mention the insertion costs...I rest my case. They would have gotten nearly the same result just with the guide insert.

Blighters. Interesting gambit but similar crap was pulled with EverQuest and I think the money used on this promotion was a waste. However, this is Vivendi and clearly they have a cash printing press, which they like to call WoW.
AMonkey at 06:13 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

Niceeeeeee....

I've been wanting to try WoW and this seems like a great opportunity.
Sanguis_Malus at 06:47 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

Lapsang Souchong !
Tesz at 07:11 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

Very cool way of spreading the addiction, lol.Seriously, i would love to see something like this done here in the States.It always seems that creative marketing such as this is always done in Japan or sometimes Europe.

Nicely done Blizzard.
Josh* at 07:42 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

Is it cross platform? If it doesn't run OSX I shan't be rushing to the newsagents, I can't be arsed with booting up XP just to play this...
aestheticity at 08:25 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

a few years ago vivendi and murdoch were at each others throats. now you have a murdoch paper promoting a vivendi product. what gives?
Eastwood at 09:48 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

Murdoch likes money. Simple as that, really.

It does seem somewhat odd, though. Not as odd as if this had appeared in, say, the Torygraph.
RRHood at 10:11 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

Easter half term is soon...but I need to revise for A levels...DAMN YOU BLIZZARD AND THE TIMES!
acceptablerisk at 10:24 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

Josh, nearly every PC title Blizzard has ever made also runs on Mac right out of the box. So feel free to WoW away if the mood strikes you.

Sometime back, oh a bit more than a year ago, I want to say, They sent out a bunch of trials in Maxim or Stuff or some lad magazine or another. It included a full installation DVD and a trial key good for like three weeks. I gotta wonder how many people that hooked. I thought it was nice just to have a DVD to reinstall from rather than the pile of CD's that comes in the retail box.
Infradead at 11:52 AM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

@RRHood: Haha, same here man, but... this is just to good to resist. I have to feed my WoW addiction bit by bit so as not to go insane. 14 days lasts until my birthday so... that adds up nicely.
GeneralZod at 01:33 PM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

What would Americans do if something similar happened?

15 burgers for breakfast? Check
2 gallons of coke? Check
Paper has arrived but too morbidly obese to get off your fat ass to go get it? Check

Oh look I can make horribly stale steriotypicle comments too!
ianovich at 03:30 PM on 03/27/07
Reply by Email
*

At my school (University of Arizona) there were beta trial cds for Guild Wars wrapped in the school newspaper two years ago. It certainly caught my attention, but I think the vast majority of them ended up on the ground around the paper dispensers.
Altima NEO at 11:20 AM on 03/28/07
Reply by Email
*

Yeah, my jungle love
Oh ee oh ee oh!

Err wait, wrong The Times.
DaddyKewl at 09:04 AM on 03/31/07
Reply by Email
*

I just bought the times today to find out you only get the disk in London and the south-east so I had to apply for it online at www.offersinthetimes.com/warcraft but i did get the interesting 8 page segment...yay!