Blizzard luring old WoW players back

In a quite surprising move, developer Blizzard Entertainment shifted gears all of a sudden and is now luring old World of Warcraft players back. Aside from putting up a whole page on their official site fully dedicated to The Burning Crusade, we just learned that the company has been sending them emails as well.

This, when you think about it, is a smart marketing strategy for Blizzard. Despite the game’s current behemoth status in terms of subscription, it would be remembered that a good number of fans had veered away from WoW because of several reasons such as issues with management and services. Anyway, here’s the email Blizzard have been sending to old players:

While you’ve been away, something monumental has been happening in the World of Warcraft. Beyond the Dark Portal, the sinister agents of the Burning Legion have been waging their demonic crusade to consume the magic of the universe and lay waste to all in their path. On January 16th, their Burning Crusade will come to Azeroth.

Blizzard Entertainment proudly invites you to return to the World of Warcraft on January 16th and journey beyond the Dark Portal, where an infinity of new experiences await you. Given the high volume of returning subscribers we expect when The Burning Crusade expansion goes live, if you are planning a return to Azeroth, we recommend reactivating your account as soon as possible in order to avoid the expected rush of launch-day activation.

Speaking of the expected rush, people have been worried for some time now if the servers could handle the influx of players on the 16th and succeeding days. If the marketing strategy picks up, one could only imagine the number of active users will be online for any given time.

As we’ve said before, WoW has come a long way already. It can be considered as huge part of gaming culture, if not having set up a culture of it’s own. We hope technical difficulties wouldn’t dismay fans leading them to leave. Blizzard have been asking fans if they are prepared for the Burning Crusade. But the fans are starting to ask the same question back.

In a quite surprising move, developer Blizzard Entertainment shifted gears all of a sudden and is now luring old World of Warcraft players back. Aside from putting up a whole page on their official site fully dedicated to The Burning Crusade, we just learned that the company has been sending them emails as well.

This, when you think about it, is a smart marketing strategy for Blizzard. Despite the game’s current behemoth status in terms of subscription, it would be remembered that a good number of fans had veered away from WoW because of several reasons such as issues with management and services. Anyway, here’s the email Blizzard have been sending to old players:

While you’ve been away, something monumental has been happening in the World of Warcraft. Beyond the Dark Portal, the sinister agents of the Burning Legion have been waging their demonic crusade to consume the magic of the universe and lay waste to all in their path. On January 16th, their Burning Crusade will come to Azeroth.

Blizzard Entertainment proudly invites you to return to the World of Warcraft on January 16th and journey beyond the Dark Portal, where an infinity of new experiences await you. Given the high volume of returning subscribers we expect when The Burning Crusade expansion goes live, if you are planning a return to Azeroth, we recommend reactivating your account as soon as possible in order to avoid the expected rush of launch-day activation.

Speaking of the expected rush, people have been worried for some time now if the servers could handle the influx of players on the 16th and succeeding days. If the marketing strategy picks up, one could only imagine the number of active users will be online for any given time.

As we’ve said before, WoW has come a long way already. It can be considered as huge part of gaming culture, if not having set up a culture of it’s own. We hope technical difficulties wouldn’t dismay fans leading them to leave. Blizzard have been asking fans if they are prepared for the Burning Crusade. But the fans are starting to ask the same question back.