World of Warcraft Closed Beta Ending

JD-1027 writes "Blizzard is ending it's closed beta test of World of Warcraft Friday at 3pm PDT. Somewhat of an abrupt announcement, welcome by most, that means the release of the game is inching closer." In all likelihood this indicates the imminent arrival of the Open Beta Test.

Comments

Stay tuned...

[HanShootsFirst]

For another stress test. A Blizzard rep posted in their official forums that signups are on the way.

They are preparing for the next stress test.

[Xenopax]

Which will be a slashdotting of their open beta. ;)

Closed Beta was fun

[Godai]

All you guys who end up downloading the Open Beta client are in for a treat. I've played a troll mage (EnSabahNur) through to 57 and had a great time. Still work to be done on it, but a blast nonetheless.

I've had no desire to play an MMORPG before, but

[CodeWanker]

It must be a good game; my cube used to be adjacent to some guy in this Beta, and for months he spent more time talking on the phone about... uh... soul shards and necromancers and other esoteric things than he did actually earning his salary. I was preparing to kill him and leave D & D lead figurines stuffed in all his orifices (got a good deal on 25 pounds of them on eBay) when I picked up a better contract somewhere else.

Horray

[jayhawk88]

Dropped FFXI a couple weeks ago after about 8 months of play, and have been really looking forward to WoW.

I really liked FFXI, but in the end the time sink required for this game was just too much for me. SE's insistance on making FFXI a true multiplayer experience was certainly inspired, but in the end was just too hard on the "casual" gamer like myself. Past level 20 it's almost impossible to level efficiently or to get anything meaningful accomplished without the help of 5 or more other players, which really requires a lot of time meeting and maintaining game relationships. Again, for those with the time to do this the game is wonderful, but those of us who can only put a few hours a week into the game, or perhaps have one or two real life friends they only want to play with, really find ourselves at a disadvantage.

It's my hope that WoW is a little better in this respect. From what I understand the majority of experience in the game comes from doing quests of various kinds? Hopefully many of these quests can be done solo if one wants to.

Re:Horray

[Moonshadow]

This is mostly correct. If you like, you can solo most everything easily. The only places these break down are against elite mobs (mobs of a certain level for hit/miss purposes, but which have much more hp and hit harder. These generally take 2-3 people of equal level to take down, at a minimum.) and in instances (which are all full of elite mobs).

I really enjoy both solo and duo play, and WoW does both wonderfully.

One thing of note; groups are pretty fluid in WoW. You might advertise that you're looking for a group for a particular mission in the zone channel. Three other people join up, you go do the mission for 20 minutes, you're done, and everyone goes about their way. It's very nice to be able to find groups easily if you want them, and even nicer to not require a group most of the time.

Re:Horray

[syle]

I was a level 44 rogue in WoW beta as of this morning (level cap is 60) with about 6 days of /played. Most of the quests are soloable, but not all. They show up colored by difficulty, and usually tough ones are much easier if you just wait a couple levels to do them. What may take me a team of 3 at 35 is usually soloable by 38. Blizzard has said explicitly that they want it to be possible for all classes to solo to 60, and from what I've seen they're living up to that. If I just grind xp and don't quest, the 40-45 levels take maybe 3-4 hours a piece (rogues tend to level solo faster than most classes, but not a lot faster). Really though, you usually won't be just grinding because the quests will overlap things you want to kill anyway, and the xp and item rewards are very good.

Re:Horray

[syle]

There are your garden variety of quests, especially in outdoor zones. For example, "Kill 10 Stranglethorn Raptors" is the first in a series, then on completion you get "Kill 10 Lashtail Raptors," (higher level) followed by "Kill 10 Jungle Stalkers" (higher still). After the Jungle Stalkers, you get one to kill a named high level raptor, with a nice raptor-skin tunic as a reward.

What separates it from something like EQ is that the rewards are always very good xp and often items (sometimes your choice of items). They're things you would be killing anyway, only if 10 kills gets you 2500 xp, the quest reward will plop another 3000 on top of it.

Another thing that sets it apart is that the writing is excellent. They can manage to make basic "talk to these 5 people" quest lines develop into an epic scope.

There are plenty of others, quests that lead to unique boss encounters, saving lost people, etc. Basically, the quests in each zone tell the storyline behind the place. Last night I was solving a murder mystery, the night before I was stealthing into a tower and pickpocketing vital information from a boss that would kill me in one hit. Before that, I was defending a small town in the woods from a huge ogre that walks through and kills people nightly.

And there are a lot. You can only have 20 quests at a time, and it's extremely easy to fill that up if you just accept them all. You often have to pick and choose ones that look interesting.

Looking forward to the Open Beta

[Xian97]

If nothing else, participating in the open beta will give me a chance to try it out before buying WoW. One of my strongest complaints about MMORPGs is the lack of a playable demo or trial. While you usually get the first month free, you still have to shell out $50 for the game itself without knowing if you are going to enjoy the experience. You have to make your buying decision based on reviews and in-game movies instead of a playable demo. This alone has kept me from trying several games since I didn't want to buy it to find out I didn't like the gameplay.

I am looking forward to this one since I have found most Blizzard games to have great gameplay. I didn't care as much for their older games, Blackthorne and the Lost Vikings, but the Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft series rank among my favorites.