World Of Warcraft Is Free For Lapsed Players This Weekend

It may seem hard to believe, but World and Warcraft has a long and storied history that nearly goes back 14 years. In that time, plenty of people have played the game and later dropped their subscriptions, and now Blizzard is trying to tempt those lapsed players back. If you played World of Warcraft at one point in the past but are no longer subscribed, Blizzard is inviting you to check out what the game has to offer for free this weekend.

This new promotion was first outed in a thread over on Reddit, where one user by the name of pikmin264 posted that they were able to log in with their level 110 character without having an active subscription to the game. While that user suspected that it might be a bug, it didn't take Blizzard long to confirm that this is in fact a promotion aimed at pulling those with inactive accounts back into the fold.

For more information, we turn to Battle.net. This promotion is officially called the "Welcome Back Weekend," and will grant to players free access to either their latest expansion purchased or Warlords of Draenor, whichever is more recent. Essentially, if you've purchased Legion, you'll be able to play all of the content from that expansion, whereas everyone else will get to play all of the content up to and including Warlords of Draenor.

This promotion will run until June 24, giving you the weekend to explore Azeroth on the house. Blizzard is clearly making a play to get people excited about World of Warcraft before its next expansion, Battle for Azeroth, launches in August. That much is evident in a special offer referenced on that same promotion page, which says that pre-purchasing Battle for Azeroth will net you a free copy of Legion as well.

Considering that all of the expansions up to Legion are included in the base edition of World of Warcraft these days – which costs $19.99 – that means pre-purchasing Battle for Azeroth will get those lapsed players up to speed on available WoW content just in time for that expansion's release. WoW's Welcome Back Weekend is live now, so if you're interested in diving back in, download the Battle.net launcher and install the game from the page linked above.