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World of Warcraft Stress Test Beta Signups Open
erax0r writes "FilePlanet has been given 100,000 World of Warcraft stress test beta accounts. Sign up for a FilePlanet paid account to be given a beta CD key which will be activated a later date. Blizzard has also composed a FAQ for the stress test." If you're not a FilePlanet subscriber, and with the exception of this I don't know why anyone would be, you have a chance of getting in the stress test, but forking over the cash guarantees your spot.
For anyone who was planning on forking over 15.00 use this link to save you some money! (7.90)
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Why US only? Yes I read the FAQ; same time-zone, language barrier yadda yadda. Wouldn`t it be better if they had different time-zones, that way Blizzard could monitor the game play during working hours and not leisure time. Or maybe Americans play games when at work ;) .
John Carmack fan, browsing at +5 since 1999.
Considering FilePlanet's average performance this is more of a stress test on FilePlanet rather than WoW.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I don't know exactly how this one will go; maybe they've upgraded their hardware since I last played in beta, but even the stress tests with the standard beta crowd made the game utterly unplayable. The server would die every few minutes. You'd get 5 minutes of play for every 10-15 minutes of downtime. Often times, you'd get disconencted in the middle of a fight, and log back in as a ghost, then spend the up-time trying to get your body back, jsut to die again.
I think a lot of people are just getting their hopes up over what's essentially going to be one, bug, on-going crash.
And in case anyone's interested, here's my 2-sentence review:
World of Warcraft absolutely perfects the EverQuest-styled game, and pulls it off with a lot of flair and refreshingly understandable design decisions. Unfortunately, I've come to expect more from a game than EverQuest-styled monotony in a no-skill-required environment, and WoW, for all its polish, comes away feeling like half the game it should be.
Yes, and you can contribute to the crass stupidity that is Gamespy. Their planet sites have often refused to post news regarding non-hosted mods (if you want your release on Gamespy, join up and serve their ads). They've also worked hard to stop third-party browsers from letting you browse online games by getting exclusive contracts will game devs. And Fileplanet has (I don't know if they still do) allowed people to download files that they were never given permission to host for fee (HL maps, models, etc.). And then you have to factor in the large amount of game ads that accompany their "reviews"--I can't prove that they sell high scores, but I highly suspect it.
So yeah, if you think this is ok, then go ahead and pay them for your precious betas. But don't come here thinking you're so smart and getting a great deal by paying for the things the rest of us get for free. Some of us have a baseline standard of business practice we apply before we spend our money somewhere. Some others are just useless fucking tools.
This all assumes, of course, that you're not some bottom-feeding astroturfer. Given the history of Gamespy, that wouldn't surprise me.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
Blizzard used Fileplanet because they have a shitload of servers to host this giant file. The stress-testers will only be able to play for seven days.
100,000 * 1.5 gigs each is just too much over such a short time for anybody except an established file-serving company.
Why not judge them on how they got the actual closed beta copies to the the players, with BitTorrent.
And if you don't want to play WoW because of this, I feel bad for you. It's an amazing game.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
That is why online games are so popular with publishers. Instant anti-piracy protection. As long as you make sure only known accounts can play you have instantly killed of piracy. Just check the number of people begging for half-life keys.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Maybe because it's a stress test; which by its very nature has to have a shitload of people.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.