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.

Stay tuned...

[HanShootsFirst]

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

Re:Not much known fact

[Anonymous Coward]

Never actually tried to do that, have you?

You can't make it past level 55 without completeing a quest requiring 18 people. Not to mention that none of the storyline missions (past the first "rank") can be done solo. Most of the quests can't be done solo either.

Unless you have a large community of friends, and don't mind this little dude [penny-arcade.com], you really can't play this game.

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.

Re:Horray

[NaugaHunter]

Their were essentially four quest types:
- Slaughter - Kill x of Mob y
- Farming - You need x of object z which drop off of Mob y
- Travel - Go to area m and talk to NPC n.
- Named - Kill a specifically named mob, sometimes retrieving a drop

Any of these could be marked "Elite", though usually the Slaughter and Named only. What makes a quest Elite is the mob will hit as if level L, and will have armor as if level L, but will have a LOT more hit points to out-last soloers. Therefore, if it's something you want to see you can do it alone or at least in a small group at a higher level, you just won't get the experience for killing the mob itself. Note that Farming quests sometimes worked against Groups - you could kill faster in a group, but you'd have to kill more to collect enough for everyone.

Quests are by no means required; you're free to level on your own if you want. But they have two benefits: experience and usually a monetary or item reward.

(Level 43 Undead Rogue, and a handful of lower level characters, for reference.)

Re:Horray

[AyanamiChan]

There are many, many, many garden variety quests in WoW. Often you'll have a particular area full of, say, Kobold miners. Wandering around the nearby town and farms you'll find a quest to kill 10 Kobold Miners, a quest to collect gold dust that drops from them, a quest to collect candles that drop from them, a quest to explore the mine, and a quest to kill a named mob that spawns in the back of the zone.... and you can complete all four at once, and turn them all in for rewards and about 5% of a level worth of xp each, not counting the xp from kills.

You'll never have to spend an hour waiting for the named you need for your quest to spawn. Any mob related to a quest is either on a 5 minute spawn timer or in an instance. Mok'rash in Stranglethorn is on a 30 second timer, I think. =/

I am a solo player, for the most part, and have gotten to level 60 that way. I rarely group for quests outside of instanced dungeons, and then it's only with guildmates or people I know. However, it's quite possible to get a group for any quest anywhere and complete it in half the time, if you're willing to share xp and loot.

I'm hardly a casual player, but I do regularly find I have a half hour of free time and can log on and feel like I accomplished before I have to log off.

-60 mage
-41 warlock
-26 hunter
-21 druid
-16 shaman