Playing the WoW Trial

Pros - It's WoW, and it's free :)

Cons - Level Cap is 20, at which point you stop earning XP. But you can get your first Mount at 20 and they're cheaper than ever (yes, that's a Pro...I think. WoW; now EZier than ever before.)
It's only a 10-day Trial so you need to hit Cap within 10 days or start over. Actually you're starting over either way :P
You cannot use the Auction House, neither to buy nor sell items, so if you want coin you need to grind it (i.e., don't take two Crafting Skills. In fact I'm not sure why I sometimes take even one Crafting Skill, because they cannot be leveled higher than 100.)
Crafting & Gathering Skills can not be leveled higher than 100. (Didn't I just say that?)
You can't Trade with other players, that includes Enchants, Glyphs, etc.
You cannot Join a Guild or sign a Guild Charter.
You cannot talk in any of the Chat Channels, but you can use /S to talk to folks standing next to you.
You cannot Whisper other players unless they Whisper you first.
You cannot Invite other players to Join a Group, but you can accept Group Invitations.
In other words, if a group is forming for an Instance and they announce in General Chat that they have one spot left, you're screwed unless you're standing on top of the Group Leader.

Things I've enjoyed about playing the Trial (other than it being Free ;)

Leveling is reasonably quick and I can ding 20 inside 20 hours if I don't waste time being an Explorer. Much of what you're denied in the Trial prevents you from playing WoW as an MMO anyway, unless you're really determined to do so, but as I'm mostly a solo-player that's fine with me.

But I've also run into a few people and we've helped each other quest, and I've always been up-front and told them I'm on a Trial. Some people don't bat an eye lid while others are shocked that a Trial can play so well, until I reveal that I played for 3 1/2 years. "I knew you weren't retarded," was one comment, which I found flattering rather than insulting.

Sometimes it's fun playing on my own because I can challenge myself by attempting quests as soon as I get them. Hogger is a lot of fun and I've found some Classes struggle with him while others can Solo him with ease. Okay, maybe not with ease, but he is going down. Hunters are good at Soloing him, as are Mages, Warlocks, and a Priest with a Wand. Unfortunately Wands are hard to get at low levels w/o access to the Auction House, so if you want a Wand as a Trial I recommend you take up Enchanting and make one. But leveling Enchanting w/o access to the AH is a problem so you may want to level another Crafting Skill first to give you the Green items to DE for the Mats to level Enchanting, but by the time you've gathered sufficient Mats to do that you'll probably be at a level when you can just buy a Wand from a Wand Vendor. I don't think that's quite a Catch-22.

What I'm saying is that playing WoW as a Trial and Single Player game can take a lot of planning ahead. Want to take up Engineering for the Flying Tiger Goggles? You'll need two Tigerseye gems. How do you get them without access to the AH? Luck. Sheer luck. And Mining. Luck when opening Chests, and luck while Mining. Mining and Engineering compliment each other anyway, but without those Tigerseye gems you're not getting your Goggles so there's almost no point taking up Engineering until you have them.

Am I getting bored, replaying the same content over & over again? Does it look like I'm getting bored constantly rerolling Alts every 2 weeks or so?

Not really, not yet. Although I don't have access to the Dranei or BElf starting areas, that still leaves me with 6 starting areas between the two factions, with a combination of 8 Races and 8 Classes to choose from (not to mention Crafting Skills to level to 100 if I want to go that route). That's a lot of variety even if level 10-20 often takes me to the same areas (Barrens for Horde, Westfall for Alliance). Actually the Alliance have three teen-level areas to choose from (Westfall, Loch Modan, and Darkshore), while the Horde only have two, being The Barrens and Silverpine Forest/Tarren Mill. I'm combining SF & TM because you can't go straight to TM w/o doing some of the SF quests (or leveling up in the Barrens).

So no, I'm not bored. Also, even if I am (and I'm not saying I am ;) a couple of the Blogs on my Roll reminded me that today is the day DDO:Unlimited goes F2P.

So what I might do is set up two Free DDO accounts, one each for my son and I, and then we can play DDO together, for free. He's getting pretty good with his computer games and I think he'll enjoy Dungeons & Dragons:Online. So, does anyone with prior DDO experience have any suggestions for what two classes we should roll? I'm thinking a pure DPS class for the boy (perhaps a Ranger), with a DPS/Healer-hybrid for me, such as a Bard, which I'd probably enjoy playing anyway. Any other suggestions?