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World of Warcraft Beta To Begin
MrWonton writes "The word is finally out from Blizzard: the World of Warcraft beta test sign-up begins 6:00 PM PST Wednesday, January 28th. No need to rush though, it'll be open through February 4th, and it's not on a first-come first-serve basis. Good luck!" Update: 01/27 16:34 GMT by S : To clarify, Blizzard say "you will be able to submit an application and receive equal consideration anytime during the signup period", but only selected individuals will get into this initial Beta.
Yes, that's basically the meaning of an open beta. In this case, "open beta" was just flat out the wrong term - there's an application and selection process, it has limited geographic scope (US, Canada, and Korea)...either the submitter didn't RTFA (ironic, eh?), or didn't realize they were misusing the term "open beta."
That aside, I'm curious to hear how the game plays once it's a bit more polished. I've never really gotten into MMORPGs because of the time issue, but WOW looks too good to not at least try for a month or two.
They will be having an "open open" beta sometime in the future, and they will be doing things MUCH differently than the two WC3 betas. Once the applicants have been chosen as soon as they feel the servers can handle more players they will then pick more to test. This sounds like they are going to have a pretty large number of people playing the beta (which is a good thing) if they can do this in rapid sucession without server trouble. So compaired to their previous betas, despite the large number of applications they'll receive, there will be a good chance most people will get in sooner or later. If not that's what the REAL open beta is for.
As part of the application you fill out, you give them info on your PC - their goal for the Beta is to get testing on a wider variety of system, from their minimum requirements up to a brand-spankin-new maxed out system.
Along with that, they also ask stuff about gaming habits, etc.
Your best bet is to be truthful, and hope random selection goes in your favor - if you want to be risky, fill out info you may think is less likely to be commonly entered and see if you can get fewer people in your "bracket" of CPU power and playing habits. I'd go with option A though :P