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.

Horray

[jayhawk88]

Dropped FFXI a couple weeks ago after about 8 months of play, and have been really looking forward to WoW.

I really liked FFXI, but in the end the time sink required for this game was just too much for me. SE's insistance on making FFXI a true multiplayer experience was certainly inspired, but in the end was just too hard on the "casual" gamer like myself. Past level 20 it's almost impossible to level efficiently or to get anything meaningful accomplished without the help of 5 or more other players, which really requires a lot of time meeting and maintaining game relationships. Again, for those with the time to do this the game is wonderful, but those of us who can only put a few hours a week into the game, or perhaps have one or two real life friends they only want to play with, really find ourselves at a disadvantage.

It's my hope that WoW is a little better in this respect. From what I understand the majority of experience in the game comes from doing quests of various kinds? Hopefully many of these quests can be done solo if one wants to.

Looking forward to the Open Beta

[Xian97]

If nothing else, participating in the open beta will give me a chance to try it out before buying WoW. One of my strongest complaints about MMORPGs is the lack of a playable demo or trial. While you usually get the first month free, you still have to shell out $50 for the game itself without knowing if you are going to enjoy the experience. You have to make your buying decision based on reviews and in-game movies instead of a playable demo. This alone has kept me from trying several games since I didn't want to buy it to find out I didn't like the gameplay.

I am looking forward to this one since I have found most Blizzard games to have great gameplay. I didn't care as much for their older games, Blackthorne and the Lost Vikings, but the Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft series rank among my favorites.

Re:Closed Beta was fun

[Moonshadow]

Seconded. I played a human paladin up to 45, a tauren shaman, an undead mage, and a night elf rogue up to 10-20 apiece, and each one was just fantastic.

Odd as it may sound, I'm highly considering not buying it when it goes retail, because it is MUCH too addictive.

For what it's worth, this is coming from someone that thought SWG was a steaming pile of crap.

Re:Horray

[Anonymous Coward]

Doing quests != grinding? I thought all the quests were the same anyhow. This game is all about grinding for the end game (which is PVP).

Quests are all one of a finite set of types (gather X of this, go see this person for me, kill X of these to name a few). Most of which are easily solo-able.

The folly quest in sepulcher area was fun, as was the wailing caverns and the aragul instance, but once you've done them a few times the game begins to lose its luster.

I suspect this game will go to the diablo "OMG I PWN J00" crowd before long. The ease of solo'ing, while nice for the casual players (who indeed will stick together--which is a good thing) just exacerbates the problem of the bnet kiddies running around at the top end game, laughing at you while ninja-looting and griefing to their heart's content.

WoW is a fun way to past the time brainlessly hacking and slashing, but for an MMORPG leaves some complexity to be desired.