World of Warcraft Open Beta Online

Everyone and their brother wrote in to mention to us that the World of Warcraft Open Beta has begun, breaking Fileplanet in the process. The WoW community site has also been hammered into a whimpering ball, and the normal version is down in favour of a simple black page of text. The torrent to download the game is still up but if you're looking to join you'd best be signing up soon. The Open Beta is a first-come first-serve affair. For our friends across the pond, IGN has details on the European Beta Test, which sounds like it will be a profitable venture for Blizzard. From my experience, if you are at all interested in fantasy gaming this one will knock your socks off.

Comments

Re:Bittorrent?

[WereTiger]

Oh, the proprietary client IS a bittorrent client. Neat. pointless, but neat.

BitTorrent

[lune tns]

If you're a paying customer, you can grab the file from FilePlanet. Alternatively, you can signup for the WoW beta here, and grab the Official Blizzard Download Client from the signup area.

Since the official Blizzard download client is a marvelous piece of BitTorrent shit (the Blizzard forums are rampant with posts complaining of choked bandwidth and horrible download speeds - I'm personally getting about 6 KB/s down and was putting up 70 KB/s before I choked the upload with a 3rd party program.), does anyone have a torrent file for this?

I did find a torrent on Suprnova, but haven't been able to get a decent connection speed.

Re:BitTorrent

[Toxygen]

I'm personally getting about 6 KB/s down and was putting up 70 KB/s before I choked the upload with a 3rd party program

That's a real good strategy there. You must really understand how bittorrent works. See, the reason you're only getting 6 k/sec is because there's SO MANY OTHER PEOPLE LIKE YOU who are choking their upload speed to suit their personal idea of what "fair share" should be. If everybody let the uploader have as much bandwidth as it needed there would be more than enough to supply the downloads.

When you take away 50 KB/s of upload speed, you're taking it away from the geek on the other side of the country who's complaining that he's getting slow speeds so he capped his upload to "compensate".

first impression: ... eh.

[joe094287523459087]

i've played FFXI for over a year but that's my only MMORPG experience, so my comments about WoW will inevitably have some ffxi-comparison flavor to them. i'm a hardcore gamer other than that though.

the character customization was a letdown. you can choose skin color, hair color, hair style, and facial hair, but each option has only 10 presets. you can't pick any RGB combination.

it was a little confusing when trying to get in to play with friends. apparently you start in your race's home town, and half the races (horde) start on the other side of the planet from the rest (alliance). so you have to coordinate and have everyone at least on the same island, and same race if you want to level up together.

the first thing i noticed was navigation. there's a little map but it doesn't show anything important. if you get lost an NPC can put a marker on it for you but i didn't see a way to mark it myself. guild wars has an awesome feature where you can draw on the map and everyone in your party can see it. ffxi has a full screen map mode that shows everything in your current zone (although you have to do a quest to get the map). the WoW map was jsut ... green. it was useless to me. the town didnt appear on the map at all.

the next thing i noticed was how cartoonish everything was. not just the style of the models and architecture, but the 3d engine. every surface was flat and shiny-smooth. the characters and monsters moving around didn't seem to inhabit the world - footstep animation didnt match how quickly the characters moved. it looked like a movie made by an art student.

it took me about 2 hours to get level 5. apparently the best way to level up is to do quests, most of which require you to kill stuff. in ffxi, you have to be ok at your job at 10 and good at your job by level 15 or you will die every fight. in wow, i was soloing stuff 2 levels higher and reading the news in another window - it's very easy.

i've only played it 1 day and there's review by people that have played it for months already, but i wanted to comfort the people that didn't manage to get a key yesterday - (for me) it's not addicting and after the first 2 hours i was ready to stop playing because it was boring.

will it be the biggest MMORPG in time? i'm gonna go against conventional wisdom and say No. when i first started FFXI, i immediately felt like i was part of a big complex world and every time i went around a corner there was something really cool to discover. wow just seems antiseptic and empty. then again, when FFXI released in NA, it had already been out for a couple years in japan and for many months in NA beta. this is a fresh new world in WoW so maybe that's how all MMORPG start out.

blah

[Anonymous Coward]

http://66.90.75.92/suprnova//torrents/2984/WoW(2). torrent

Got in last night

[dr00g911]

My wife and I made it in the open beta last night.

FYI -- whichever installer / torrent you download, the Mac *and* PC versions are included so you don't have to worry about sucking down 2.6 gigs for each platform if you've got both platforms at your disposal.

Initial impressions after about 2 hours on my little undead warlock:

- Incredible amount of polish (except for the whole server being reduced to rubble thing)
- Much quicker progression than other MMORPGS -- level and quest design are extremely well thought out
- Seems to borrow from the best of other MMOs, and really polish the hell out of the annoying parts (treadmilling, 'where do I go now?'). You've always got a purpose.
- Leveling and progression are a little 'odd' right now -- not knowing how to spec, without the massive fansites that Camelot or EQ have make training a little risky. But this promotes a bit of experimentation, and besides -- my toons are gonna get wiped at launch anyhow. I may as well tinker.
- I'm curious about the 'endgame' -- in DAoC it's all about (extremely addictive) consentual PvP. In EQ, it's all about camping. Being Warcraft, I'd assume that the first expansions are going to be seriously PvP focused, similar to what DAoC's got. At least that's my hope.

As a guy with a few lvl 50s in DAoC and an original EQ account abandoned way back around Kunark, I was simply blown away by how much fun I was having. And I loved DAoC.

This is the telling part: I didn't even notice the experience bar in the interface, nor go looking for it until the end of my playtime when I started customizing the interface. It just didn't matter because I was simply having too much fun exploring and doing quests. Yep. FedEx, scavenger and kill quests are fun in WoW and really seem like they're adding to the texture of the world.

This seems to finally be the MMO that my casual gaming friends can pick up along side me.

The last time we tried this was buying about 10 copies of Shadowbane for Macs & PCs, and boy did we get burnt. Badly.

Port Forwarding

[hords]

Wow, check out PortForward.com! If you need help forwarding ports for this game, or bittorrent to download it :), this is the place. Found the link on Blizzard's website. Pretty useful stuff!

Re:Meanwhile, over in Everquest2 land...

[spaeschke]

You couldn't be more right. SOE has been outmaneuvered by too many other companies that are better at this than they are.

Not to say that I think Blizzard is all that great; for one thing they move like pondwater when it comes to updates. Still, they're better than Sony, and having played the EQ2 beta I can say that that game is horrible. In so many ways it's a huge step backward from the first EQ.

No, the best developer out there right now is Cryptic. They've done everything right with City of Heroes. From the sheer fun, the quality of everything, the great customer service and the continuing updates (which a lot of other companies would sell as expansion packs), these guys are the slickest devs out there.

SOE can still be competitive, but they're a long ways away from the 800 lb. gorilla that they used to be.

Second Time Through...

[LordYUK]

Let me say this, I was in FilePlanets 4 day stress test two months ago, I got to level 18 in 4 days, and I loved every minute past level 4 (I was a warrior, they suck quite literally till they get a few abilities). The game is gorgeous. People complaining about the cartoonish looks have obviously NEVER played a Warcraft game. If it looked ANY DIFFERENT it wouldnt be WarCraft.

The game is very simple to learn, and always has me wanting more. I moved from CoH with 3 friends (trying to get my girl to move too grr...) and we all LOVE it. I have 4 characters already, and I dont care that in two weeks I'll have to start at square one on release, THIS GAME ROCKS!!!

Downsides: no talking, well, not like EQ2, but thats okay, they DO talk, just not as much.

Cannot speed up text for quests. I read faster than Blizzard "scrolls" the text, which is frustrating.

Cannot really start in same area. If you're a dwarf and I am an Elf, we can group, but not till about level 8-12 (note this takes about 3-4 hours, which isnt THAT bad, but still, its annoying).

Upsides. everything else. the quest system, the jokes (the human warrior tells a joke about a magical set of bracers, Master of the Bracers, yes, a LotR spoof!!!), the world (peasants, there are PEASANTS gathering wood!!!), everything.

I R BLIZZARD FANBOIII ONCE MORE!!

This game rocks :)

Re:Second Time Through...

[Ghent99]

Cannot speed up text for quests. I read faster than Blizzard "scrolls" the text, which is frustrating.

The UI for WoW is completely customizable, including the quest text speed. There are a few mods out there, but only recommend one:

CTMod

The install is easy, but you'll need to read the forums to get it work with the current patch level. (There's a number to change in a few files). I'm sure the guys over there will release an updated version when retail ships.

This mod is fantastic, it adds many hot bars which you can turn on and off, several features, and a quest text fading enable/disable feature. Turn it off, and bang, quest text appears in it's completeness, instantaneously :)

Check it out, I can't play WoW without it :)

the real torrents are embedded in the downloader

[Fo0eY]

you can get the real torrents here:
http://wowtorrents.de.vu/

or here:
http://fooey.net/stuff/WorldOfWarcraft/torr ents

Re:Bittorrent?

[Enucite]

How to make a torrent from the blizzard downloader using vim:

vim WoW-downloader.exe
/d8:
d:1
:w WoW.torrent

Great game

[jgoemat]

This comes from an EQ background (played DAOC for a while too)... Some of the things I like about WOW:

1. No exp penalty for death - I don't think a game should seriously punish you for wanting to explore. If you die in WOW, your ghost appears in a graveyard in the area and you just have to follow the mini-map back to your corpse. You get resurrected with 1/2 mana and health for free. The only penalty is the time it takes you to get back to your corpse. A game is supposed to be fun and exciting. In EQ I found myself killing safe mobs because if I died I would have to spend an hour or two getting that experience back. Now you can actually feel more like a hero and take a chance every now and then.
2. MINIMAP! - You have a map of the large area with roads and rivers displayed on it, as well as a mini-map showing exactly where you are in the local area. People in the next stage for your current quests are shown on the minimap, as well as your party members and (hopefully not) your corpse. Also you can ask guards in any town for directions if you want to find your trainer, someone to do with tradeskills, the bank, or other things, then a marker is placed on the large map and the mini-map.
3. QUESTS! - You don't have to walk around to every person and talk to them to see if they have a quest. If someone has a quest for you, a yellow exclaimation mark is over their head. Now you don't have to search the fan sites to find out what the quests are, you can just play the game. Also they quests are fun and plentiful, and actually give you good rewards (exp, cash, and items)
4. Tradeskills - So far at least, you just get trained and have recipees for things you can make. If you want to make something, you click the tradekill button and pick a recipe. If you have the items, hit 'Create'. You can even batch create a lot of the same kind of item if you have the materials. I hated having to look up or find the formulas for things in EQ and then having to deal with failures. The free tradeskills cooking and fishing look interesting too.
5. Downtime - So far at level 8, it only takes a short while to regenerate health and mana while sitting, even less time if you eat or drink something. I hope this continues into higher levels, I hated meditating for 5 minutes after each kill in EQ.
6. PVP - One thing I liked about DAOC was the feeling of being on a team and being able to engage in PVP if you wanted, or be safe if you wanted. I've only seen one member of the horde and chased him out. In normal servers in WOW, you are safe unless you attack a player of the other side, then you have a PVP flag set for 5 minutes during which the other team can attack you. If you don't want to do PVP, just don't attack anyone.
7. Items - EQ was all about camping monsters to get that uber-item or an item you needed for a quest to get an uber-item. I don't think WOW will be like that, the equipment doesn't seem to confer that much of an advantage.

Re:not really a beta.

[jorenko]

Day/night is on a 24 hour schedule, matching the time zone that the server you're playing on is in. Although dusk does last longer than it should. You don't really see stars until about midnight.

Re:Meanwhile, over in Everquest2 land...

[Dachannien]

Actually, I think Blizzard dropped the ball on this one. If they had opened the open beta before this past weekend started, that would have been a ton of people not buying EQ2 and playing the WoW beta right up until late November. As it stands now, a lot more people went ahead and picked up EQ2, and will be far less likely to waste their free month playing WoW instead (and therefore will be less likely to try out WoW unless they decide they completely dislike EQ2).