A Mass of Tier 1 Twinks?

I have always been a fan of unintended consequences. It warms my heart and makes me chuckle when short-sighted planning and the general perversity of the universe gang up to undermine things.

Even when it happens to me.

Especially when it happens to me.

I have a bit of the anarchist in me.  I like to be reminded that real life does not care for anybody’s plans.

So when I saw over at Werit’s Blog that Warhammer Online was removing the 10 Day restriction from their free trial offer, the intent was clear:  Somebody felt that more people would subscribe to the game if the free trial lasted longer.

Now I haven’t seen anything official on this, and the Warhammer Online free trial page still says “10 Days,” but I understand that the key restriction in place will be that you cannot advance beyond tier 1 content.  There are probably others, but that is the only thing I have seen.

So I will be interested to see what happens (if anything happens) when an subscription MMO makes the first 10-15% of its game content available for free for unlimited play.

I cannot recall a similar scenario.  Certainly SOE offered their “Trial of the Isle,” but that had a hard geographical limitation.

So what do you think is going to happen?

A mass of free-loading tier 1 players?  A surge in subscriptions?  Nothing at all?