WoW Street Date Announced

OneMadOgre writes "Ready or not, here it comes. Blizzard has announced that the World of Warcraft will be released to NA/AU/NZ on November 23, 2004."

Comments

Re:Open Beta is going to be awefully short then!

[Timber_Z]

I was one of the Open Beta Testers for Diablo 2,

Man that was a blast.

It was heavily restricted on levels, characters weapons and such, so the super rare stuff then was the stuff "No one " would bother with now.

Also, no one had any clue to what worked and what didn't, so you couldn't go on the internet and find the ultimate build. At least not for several days. And even then there was tons of experminting you could do.

I started playing diablo 2 again couple weeks ago, and man, totally different experience. Everyone has all the best combo's figured out.
Heck even the game algorithons have all been published.

No varity in the game ether, every one just rushes to get to baal, then spends endless hours killing his minons. Only thing that changes is trying out different ways to kill them. (Course almost every possible way has been tried.)

Still I was reading the journels of one guy who went through the whole game without killing anything, that wasn't required to complete a quest.

Now thats cool.

More then got my money out of the game, but after awhile it gets (EXTREMALY) repetative.

Hopefully WoW will keep this from happening.

Heck if they can just put and end to dupes, that would well worth it right there.

Not Yet Ready

[HeavensTrash]

I've been in the closed beta for some time, and seeing this announcement earlier today made me cringe. There are TONS of things yet unimplemented and I don't see them being put in by the 19 day release. For example:

Paladin/Hunter talents haven't been put in the game yet. Other classes have had talents for a while and have had time to test/rebalance... Pally/Hunter will be thrown in and then instantly nerfed at retail because of no time for testing.

Warlock pets aren't finalized yet.

Battlegrounds aren't in whatsoever.

Hero classes have yet to be put in as well, and blizzard won't give any information on them.

Racial traits aren't in yet

No raid content yet.

Tradeskills aren't complete yet

Horde lacks quests and content, especially high level content

Numerous quests still missing rewards/are bugged

I was upset to hear Closed Beta had ended as soon as it did - Honestly Vivendi is rushing this one out the door to compete with EQ2. Blizzard usually takes their time in games and are notoriously late, but... Guess it's gonna be just like every other MMORPG where the first 6 months are a paid beta test.

All that aside though, WOW in it's current form is STILL the best MMORPG out there. Crazy

Re:Not Yet Ready

[NaugaHunter]

I'm also in closed beta.

They test everything in house, and they've had these talents for some time. They will get a tweak if in two weeks it's obviously unbalanced, but it's not as if they just came off the blackboard yesterday.

Again, they've tested Battlegrounds internally. Basically most of the testing here is for PvP balancing, which we've been doing for months.

Hero classes aren't until level 60. They have a couple of months. (I'm not getting into a power leveler vs. casual player tangent, but keeping a casu

Racial traits are in in internal builds and have been for a while; they've been commented on the boards by Blizzard employees.

They've said repeatedly on the boards that they weren't sure if they would show raid content in the Beta, as they want to keep it as a surprise.

Trades skills, warlock pets, Horde content, unfinished quests - going to play the 'internal build' card again.

Before I get labeled a Blizzard apologist, I too was surprised at the suddenness of this announcement, though I'm starting to think they've known for a while but didn't want people to slow their testing with a possible character wipe coming. But on the flipside, with 90% of an intended release done having your internal testers testing the last 10% is not that bad. You have thousands test everything until you get to the point where what you are changing can actually be tested by dozens effectively. Then you release it with a couple of weeks left to check for gross problems, and you're done.

I will agree that there are a couple of things that didn't get done (e.g. weather), but I think the few things that you've listed that are needed by launch will be there.

Not too impressed actually

[Alcimedes]

I played the Beta for a while. It was fun for about the first week. Then, the grind started to get to me.

I know a lot of people seem to like this type of game, but really the fact is I don't want to feel like I'm working while I'm playing a video game, and to me most MMPORG's feel like work, not play.

That, and the PVP aspect of it felt very broken. The classes had serious balance issues, and level was almost everything. (i know, it was beta, maybe it will get better but i'd be surprised).

Dunno, but after playing games like Vendetta for a while, I see less of a reason to the WoW angle. Vendetta does something that every game should aspire to. The better skilled player wins the battles, not the highest level player. A very low level play can clean up against much higher level unskilled players, which is how it should be.

Guess I just don't have to time to dedicate to get to be one of those highest level characters running around, and I'd rather not get my ass handed to me just because someone doesn't have a job and can put 10 hours a day into a game.

Re:Not too impressed actually

[Richard Whittaker]

The better skilled player wins the battles, not the highest level player.

That's the difference between an online game and an online role playing game. In an RPG the player (that's a real person) takes on the role of a character - it's the characters skill and level - NOT THE PLAYERS - that is supposed to determine how good the character is at things (fighting, for example).

Remember:
Player : the actual person playing the game, this person doesn't necessarily actually know how to shoot a gun, fight in melee combat, pilot a spaceship, etc.
Character : The in game "person" that the player controls. This should be considered a completely seperate persona that is not necessarily related to the player in any way. A single player can "posses" multiple characters, who may actually have opposing agendas, goals, etc.

That's why it's called a role playing game.

Perhaps this kind of game (RPG) just isn't for you - many people hate them and want their own skill to make the difference, but thats not how an RPG is supposed to work - the characters skill is everything. In an RPG, the way a players skill comes into play is in knowing how to make use of the characters skills in any given situation.