Blizzard's World of Warcraft Beta Goes Live

craenor writes "Perhaps the most anticipated entry into the increasingly crowded PC MMORPG market, Blizzard's World of Warcraft, has just reached the live Beta stage, for those select players lucky enough to be picked. In a distinct change from the existing trend in Beta tests, they are not going to require NDAs for participating players, and everyone will have read access to the official Beta forums while testing takes place." The WoW site includes a basic game FAQ for beginners, and BitTorrent is now live as Blizzard's Beta distribution method of choice, as the mentioned earlier on Slashdot Games.

Shameless

[Bill_Royle]

And already, some idiot is auctioning off his beta test account...

Ebay auction [ebay.com]

Re:Honestly

[d_strand]

What are you talking about? WoW is an RPG, not an RTS. It has nothing in common with the mechanics of the original warcraft games. To be clear: You dont order groups of units around, you play a single character at a time.

Yup it sure is.

[OgreFade]

I read it on their forum. Completely seperate. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow- general&T=715&P=1&ReplyCount=5#post715 See.

Re:Shameless

[phalse phace]

Scroll a litter further down and you'll see:

"This account is no longer for sale. Don't send me any further emails. Thanks."

Re:Rejoice!

[BlackHawk-666]

WOW has mechanisms to avoid this most annoying habit of lame-ass RPGers. They have instance areas where only you and your group will be present so there is no spawn camping outside your own group members.

Comments from an Alpha Tester...

[IanDanforth]

Since I was playing in Alpha I can give everyone a bit of insight as to what WoW is like. First off Blizzard has done a simply wonderful job. The game runs smoothly and if the server crashes, which it may occasionally, its back up in no time. The game play stretches from the familiar, where it has been perfected, to the brand new, to the silly (fishing). The graphics are wonderful and go more for style than realism, which is appropriate to Warcraft. The feedback mechanisms are streamlined, the download process is excellent (if long). The game holds you by the hand a bit much, but other than that I can't really complain. There will be a simply massive amount of info coming out in the next few days from Alpha testers freed of NDA's. So check out the shots and descriptions and see for yourself. Its a great game. Period. -Ian

I'm anticipating Guild Wars at least as much

[Jugalator]

Anyone noticed Guild Wars [guildwars.com]?

Developed by ex-Blizzard employees, and in the same spirit as Battle.net in terms of a free multiplayer service. New extra features can be bought (this is how the MMOG is financed), but they won't be necessary to play with those who have them.

It has pretty graphics [guildwars.com] too. :-) The gallery is all unretouched graphics with interesting lightning effects making some people think they were post-processed.

Screw Blizzard

[Queuetue]

This is still the little arm of Vivendi - you may remember them as the company that used the DMCA to kill bnetd and tried to kill freecraft?

Screw them - playing games isn't important enough to give money to jackholes like this.

Re:Comments from an Alpha Tester...

[rale, the]

I was also in the alpha, so I can give you a bit more info. The best part about wow to me, is the quest system. Its very nicely done, and you get a large amount of experience (along with items and/or cash) for completing most quests. The quests vary from killing a number of a specific monster, to exploring an area, and to collecting a number of specific drops. There are also some more interesting quests, such as protecting an npc while he walks from one place to another and gets ambushed by some bad guys, or others where you have a limited time (complete with a timer on screen) to kill a few things. Leveling ends up revolving around completing quests, and you can pretty much always have a goal for various quests, instead of just killing stuff over and over.

I've played a number of mmorpg (way too much eq, played ao some, daoc, ffxi), and wow is definately the game to look forward to. If the quality of content I've seen extends all the way to the higher levels, it should be a great game.

Re:So whats new in this game?

[meta-monkey]

Exactly! I'm a Mac user, I'd love to play a MMORPG, and I'm sure not going to go out and buy a damn Windows computer just for playing a video game. WoW is what I've been waiting for. Also, it doesn't hurt that

1. It's put out by Blizzard, who has made some of my very favorite games of all time
   
2. Warcraft III and the expansion had great story lines with interesting twists. Be nice to see what they come up with for a MMORPG
   
3. They've included some new ideas that will hopefully fix a lot of the problems from other MMORPGs such as:
   
   1. Instantiated dungeons: no more kill stealing/loot stealing
      
   2. Best loot comes from quests: no more 'camp the best drop spot'
      
   3. Non-repeatable quests: camping the best quest giver won't help...better get out and explore

My credit card is at the ready. Blizzard, finish this game!

Screw Bnetd

[CrazyJim0]

It allowed you to play the game without paying for a copy.

This may be ok for a game that's been out for years, but bnetd had warcraft3 before it was in stores!

Re:Open source when it's profitable...

[Anonymous Coward]

They said they would link it to the official server, or do anything at all to implement it. Blizzard are the ones that were assholes and said no to any and all solutions

An alternative to both of them

[yomahz]

FFXI (Final Fantasy X1) is a wonderful MMORPG. I picked up FFXI to pass the time until WoW came out. Now that I've been playing it for almost 6 months now, I gotta tell ya... I don't see myself switching unless WoW is absolutely amazing.

As an old EQ player, I can't tell you what a breath of fresh air FFXI has been.

The UI is a bit odd at first but once you get use to it, it's more than functional... it's actually nice. Just takes some adjustments.

Here's more:

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/gameplay/
http ://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?cat=16
http://f fo.warcry.com/

Alpha tester's report

[pcx]

Here's a link to an alpha tester's report. It's a VERY long read but it's also a really, really GREAT read. If you're interested at all in what WoW is and isn't as it starts beta, this is must read material.

http://www.graffe.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1552 6 [graffe.com]

Wrong, Blizzard servers do more than matchmake

[AHumbleOpinion]

No. Diablo II is played on their servers. Characters are stored on their servers. Warcraft III routes all packets so your IP is not exposed to other players.

Perhaps you are really describing bnetd?

Star Wars Combine

[bonch]

If it would EVER get finished, the Star Wars Combine [swcombine.com] is what you've described.