World of Warcraft, closed European beta

I've been lucky to have been selected for the closed European beta of World of Warcraft. Anyone else here playing? I'm playing a Human Paladin myself.

You lucky, lucky bastard. I'm still waiting to hear if i've been selected.

My friends wanted me to join in, but I'd rather not. Though it looks a lot better than I thought it would.

Spike said:

You lucky, lucky bastard. I'm still waiting to hear if i've been selected.

Ditto

Fuck MMORPGs. They just turn you into an obsessive geek that would rather spend quality time with their computer than their friends.

I'm not an obsessive player - in fact, I usually stray away from online games because I don't like having to deal with other people on the Net most of the time. That being said, I'm very interested in this game because I played during the open Stress Test beta and liked what I saw - plus I want to be able to experience the game all the way, without getting PK'd by some level-30 idiot. (My fault, actually...)

EDIT: Okay, I was actually talking about the upcoming North America open-beta...

Danarchy said:

Fuck MMORPGs. They just turn you into an obsessive geek that would rather spend quality time with their computer than their friends.

I already do that but I still don't even want to get sucked into a MMORPG ever

Danarchy said:
Fuck MMORPGs. They just turn you into an obsessive geek that would rather spend quality time with their computer than their friends.

I've fired my friends, so that's not a problem anymore :)

Anyway, normally you couldn't drag me into a MMO game either, but this is particulary well executed. I have yet to see player grieving in the few days that I've been playing! The closest to that is finding out that some fucking low-level midget Dwarf has covertly mined that copper node behind your back, while you were fighting the surrounding monsters.

There's no loot stealing. Once you've engaged a monster, it can only be looted by you regardless who kills it. When you form a group there are several options for dividing the loot, including an automatic lottery for splitting up the better stuff. Trading can be done anywhere, via a trade window.

There's no playing killing. The World of Warcraft has a PvP and a Beta server, so you can choose. On the beta server the world is divided into two factions (Horde/Undead vs the Alliance). This works surprisingly well to keep same-faction people from grieving eachother. And if you do want to fight someone on your own faction, it's by mutual consent only.

However, there ARE raids from one faction into eachother's territory. But, that rarely poses a problem as most towns are defended by extremely high-level NPC guards. It's simple really: if you raid, you die within minutes.

WoW is still a bit buggy in places, especially in regard to monster spawns which sometimes gets bugged after which the monster ends up being inert. Which sucks if that monster is part of a quest.

The world itself is very nicely executed. Not cartoony at all, as I had first thought. Still, Gothic2 looked much nicer but then again: that was a single-player game and not a game that has to handle thousands of players.

The quests are nice, ranging from the simple "kill X monsters" and "deliver X to Y" to quests that contain multiple tasks to "epic" undertakings.

Every character can also learn some Skills such as fishing, cooking and first aid. Each of these skills are very extensive. Eg. cooking allows you to process raw food, but you need recipes which can be obtained from vendors, quests or monsters drops. You can further customise your character by using level-up points on Talents, which strenghten some aspects of your abilities. And then you can choose a maximum of two Professions, which allows you to create items (again, using recipes) that are better than what you can usually get from a vendor. This can be traded to other people, even anonymously via Auction Houses.

In short: give it a try when the open beta rolls along.

Of course, the real test comes when WoW goes retail. What's the monthly fee, and will Blizzard be able to keep their realm hack/cheat free this time. Their track record is NOT promising.

I'm in American closed beta. Best game I've ever played. 51 UD Warlock go horde!

Mordeth said:

Of course, the real test comes when WoW goes retail. What's the monthly fee, and will Blizzard be able to keep their realm hack/cheat free this time. Their track record is NOT promising.

Hello? Diablo 2? I've been playing that off and on since it came out, and never once in all my days of playing on closed Battle.Net have I seen any hacks worse than maphack, and you don't even see that anymore. Sure, I've run into a couple exploits, but every game has that.

Anyway, my previous point is that I have a lot of friends that just sit around all day in front of their computer and sometimes if you try to budge them, even just to play D&D, they're like "No, I'd rather just play Lineage 2/City of Heroes". Fuck, I know I play a lot of Diablo 2, but if anyone calls, I drop everything and leave. Some people have no self control.

I shun mmorpgs ever since my diablo2 addiction which was pretty fucked up. And that wasn't even a real mmorpg...

Bah I want a key too :(