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Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

World of Warcraft Stress Test Beta Signups Open 83

Posted by CowboyNeal from the sneak-a-peek dept.
erax0r writes "FilePlanet has been given 100,000 World of Warcraft stress test beta accounts. Sign up for a FilePlanet paid account to be given a beta CD key which will be activated a later date. Blizzard has also composed a FAQ for the stress test." If you're not a FilePlanet subscriber, and with the exception of this I don't know why anyone would be, you have a chance of getting in the stress test, but forking over the cash guarantees your spot.
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World of Warcraft Stress Test Beta Signups Open More

World of Warcraft Stress Test Beta Signups Open

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  • save some money (Score:5, Informative)

    by saqq ( 685613 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @01:56PM (#10097593)
    For anyone who was planning on forking over 15.00 use this link [fileplanet.com] to save you some money! (7.90)
    • Back in my day, beta tests were free!
      • The Beta is free. But this isn't the beta. This is a stress test that will last only one week.

        My friend is in the Closed Beta and he says it's the greatest MMOG he's ever played, and that he would gladly fork over a monthly charge to play it.
        • Right, people should know that this is only going to last 7 days, it will be on a separate server from the regular beta that is solely designed to be stress tested. Imagine 100,000 accounts trying to log on one game server. The whole point is to crash it repeatedly, so don't expect to have much actual play time if you are only in the stress test. There will be an open beta (I bet within the next month or two). And as stated above I "heard" it is a truly awesome game.
      • It still IS free, you just have to sign up for the free fileplanet registration, then wait on one of their retarded 'download queues', but thats still free.

        • And until you're through the queue and finished the download the beta is over.
        • It isn't free, you have to pay 15$ for a subscription.

          • Re:save some money (Score:3, Interesting)

            by DarkFencer ( 260473 )
            You must not be looking in the right place. I signed up, didn't even give gamespy my name much less my credit card number and downloaded all 2.2GB of WoW goodness. I installed it, but the stress test isn't up and running for a few more days still.

            I'm not sure what problem people are having.
            • Well the link on Fileplanet is to sign-up to be in the closed stress test. I cant find any other link, care to share how you got through?
              • When I went there, I saw signups for paid file planet memberships, and free basic memberships which is what I used. They didn't ask for more then an e-mail address (and I happily gave them an @spamgourmet.net address) and a username/password.

                Blizzard asked me for more information then gamespy did and I gave it to them (thoough still with a spamgourmet e-mail address).

                I'd give exact links, but fileplanet seems to have failed their own stres-test and is now inaccessible.
                • Hmmm...Well i'd already registered with FilePlanet/Gamespy/IGN...But I didn't see anything about downloading it unless you had a paid account. Ahwell, I can deal with not playing for a while longer...I mean, stress tests usually involve stress...and heavy player counts. Thats gunna be...fun...NOT!
            • You may have downloaded it and installed it - but do you have a CD key that will let you register with the Blizzard servers?

  • US only (Score:4, Insightful)

    by lastninja ( 237588 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @02:00PM (#10097613)
    Why US only? Yes I read the FAQ; same time-zone, language barrier yadda yadda. Wouldn`t it be better if they had different time-zones, that way Blizzard could monitor the game play during working hours and not leisure time. Or maybe Americans play games when at work ;) .
    • They probably only have servers setup to cover the US. If people from all round the world tried to connect to these servers, it would create lag that they wouldn't have once they have a network of servers to cover America, Europe and Asia seperately.
    • One would imagine they wanted to see what the load on the servers is in heavy but non-peak usage as well? Testing their nightly log dumps, server consistency checks, etc?

      Or perhaps they want to see what quality of connection they can supply to their customers, and don't want hundreds of Europeans, Asians, Africans or Australasians sending them reports about their inevitably bad connections?

    • Re:US only (Score:4, Funny)

      by iCEBaLM ( 34905 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @04:35PM (#10098641)
      Not US only, North America only.

      *waves Canadian flag while downloading WoW beta*

    • Re:US only (Score:4, Informative)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @09:11PM (#10100218)
      "Stress test" to me sounds like "Let's see what happens when everybody is on at the same time." It's easie for that to happen if everybody lives relatively close to each other longitude-wise.
      • Yes I am in full agreement with you about how to conduct a stress-test. But my point is that most people play after business hours, that is when Blizzard`s employees have left work (if they work 9-5 that is).

  • I know why (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    " If you're not a FilePlanet subscriber, and with the exception of this I don't know why anyone would be"

    Let's see: nice quick downloads, early betas of Tribes, Worlds of Warcraft, Warhammer, etc. Instead of waiting 2-3 days for a reliable bittorrent of a game file, I can get it in a shorter period of time.

    • Re:I know why (Score:3, Informative)

      by sevensharpnine ( 231974 )
      Yes, and you can contribute to the crass stupidity that is Gamespy. Their planet sites have often refused to post news regarding non-hosted mods (if you want your release on Gamespy, join up and serve their ads). They've also worked hard to stop third-party browsers from letting you browse online games by getting exclusive contracts will game devs. And Fileplanet has (I don't know if they still do) allowed people to download files that they were never given permission to host for fee (HL maps, models, et
    • Ah good, a chance for me to gripe about how FilePlanet sucks. Talk about a worthless service. If FilePlanet didn't exist then other mirrors would be permitted to share files, meaning I could download from my favourite local host. But no, I HAVE to use FilePlanet, and they're not willing to let others host it. After all, a company selling air wouldn't want clean oxygen to be available elsewhere.

      So, whenever I want something that FilePlanet got their grubby hands on, I have to sit in a stupid queue for

      • Unfortunately, the "huge scads of bandwidth and server paid by banner ads" business model DOES NOT WORK.

        They have to try to recoup their costs somehow, and putting a stranglehold on new files is one logical way to do it.

        Hey, I hate it as much as anyone, but I also understand that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
        • http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/ and http://public.www.planetmirror.com/ both seem to do fine offering free downloads.

          As for game relevant downloads, my host offers them for free. But some stuff from Fileplanet they aren't allowed to mirror: files.bigpond.com and games.bigpond.com

  • What are they testing? (Score:5, Informative)

    by KDR_11k ( 778916 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @02:35PM (#10097846)
    Considering FilePlanet's average performance this is more of a stress test on FilePlanet rather than WoW.
    • Not sure what you are talking about. I personally have been subscriber to Fileplanet for a little over a year now and have never had an issue with their servers. I can't remember the last time I was not able to max out my cable connection downloading from them.

      Moreover, its nice to be able to get the latest movies, patches, and files without having to wait in-line or scour the net for it. Hell half the time I find it handier to go Fileplanet to look for patches to old games, than to go the publisher's s
      • The 5 hour queues on highly popular downloads make me think that Fileplanet cannot REALLY handle the files it tries to serve. No, I'm not one of those people who have money for a download service, thank you.
        • "No, I'm not one of those people who have money for a download service, thank you."

          Therein lies your problem. The download queue isn't there because their systems can't handle it. Its that to make it cost effective to provide a *free* service, they have place limits on the number of users.

          As someone who manages to cough up the few bucks, I have yet to wait in-line or have less than outstanding download speeds.

          Gailin

  • About stress tests (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dragoon412 ( 648209 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @03:35PM (#10098242)
    I don't know exactly how this one will go; maybe they've upgraded their hardware since I last played in beta, but even the stress tests with the standard beta crowd made the game utterly unplayable. The server would die every few minutes. You'd get 5 minutes of play for every 10-15 minutes of downtime. Often times, you'd get disconencted in the middle of a fight, and log back in as a ghost, then spend the up-time trying to get your body back, jsut to die again.

    I think a lot of people are just getting their hopes up over what's essentially going to be one, bug, on-going crash.

    And in case anyone's interested, here's my 2-sentence review:

    World of Warcraft absolutely perfects the EverQuest-styled game, and pulls it off with a lot of flair and refreshingly understandable design decisions. Unfortunately, I've come to expect more from a game than EverQuest-styled monotony in a no-skill-required environment, and WoW, for all its polish, comes away feeling like half the game it should be.

    • Re:About stress tests (Score:2, Informative)

      by MistaE ( 776169 )
      I was under the impression that the beta servers that are used for currently testing the game are no where near the capacity of the actual servers that will run the game when it goes live. I also remember reading somewhere that beta testers and stress testers will be on different servers, so this confirms my suspicions.

    • Re:About stress tests (Score:3, Informative)

      by kwerle ( 39371 )
      Every time they release a new beta (new patch set), the servers go wonky for days. That's the way it is with beta software - and is why they're testing it in beta.

      I certainly hope they are planning on using the current beta as the stress test. The servers are now fairly stable.
    • By all trustworthy accounts, your 2-sentence review hits the nail on the head with a giant paladin's maul. While I appreciate that they made it the best EverQuest style experience possibly, I really wish they would have managed to transcend it with an even more fun and organic experience.

      I guess now they're owned by Vivendi Universal, and the MMORPG market being expensive and risky as it is, Vivendi decided to take the safest road, stick with the known, and do Everquest +1.
  • Please, gawd, someone post a .torrent.

    WineX is supposed to run WoW perfectly,thankfully.

  • I got in (Score:1, Redundant)

    by wyldeone ( 785673 )
    I got in, and am downloading the client now (70% done). I am not a fileplanet subscriber.

  • Back on Track (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Not sure anyone read the FAQ, but you don't have to pay to get in on this Stress Test. The people that pay get the first crack at the signing up, but they are/have opened it up and anyone who wants to (subscriber or not) can download the stress test and play for 7 days when they open it up. As there are ~100,000 openings (I have no idea how many subscribers Fileplanet has that are interested), I imagine everyone that wants to will get a crack.

    This isn't a beta test; Blizzard is just seeing what it looks l
  • Apparently I've got to disable my firewall so that their security server can post a picture. Why does it need it's own port? I hate gamespy

  • US only?! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by node159 ( 636992 )
    Phear the proxy muahahahaha :).

    As for fileplanet, what an incoherent pice of dribble, the thing doesn't even work properly half the time ;P. As for timestamped url's for downloads, so much for technological progress like download managers, 1.4Gb file single stream without restart capability, snigger...

    Please ohh please someone post a torrent!
    • I can resume my downloads from FP even with the Opera download manager, and that means something!
      Wait until the server tells you that your download is ready, then, instead of clicking the download link, you tell your dl manager to resume.

  • Who wants my key? (Score:2, Informative)

    by mixtape5 ( 762922 )
    I have one of the keys for getting in the game for free but wont be using it. Anyone who wants it can have it. Email me at hckymanr@yahoo.com and I will send it to you :)
  • For those morons who are screaming "OMG BLIZZAARD IS A MONIEZ MACHINE",

    Fileplant has been offering subscribers first crack at stuff FOREVER. Since they started subscribing, they had subscriber only offers. Blizzard gets not part of this, they PAY to have their stuff hosted there and panned out to the masses. If you don't like the fileplant downloads, subscribe, if you don't want to subscribe, don't bitch about it.
    • The problem isn't about the money its the lack of choice. There are a million other places and ways to distribute a beta or stress test or demo. Yet these companys put it on these fileplanet like locations first because its easy and takes no time. They don't seem to give a damn if it takes forever to download through them and its horribly slow but they want people to buy their end product.
      • Well put, I personally have had a fileplanet account for almost two years now and therefore don't know how bad the "normal" downloads are.

        Downloading the file through my "personal" subscriber server though was easy quick and fast (I use Opera btw).
  • No need to pay for the subscription to get it. Just sign up for the free membership, login, then click on the link. I got the cd key emailed to me a day later with a link to download it..
  • A good site for information about the game and to meet other people playing it is http://wow.warcry.com/ I do some work for WarCry, though not on the WoW site, but I do think the site is good. I downloaded the beta. Kind of burned out on the "EQ style" games but I've enjoyed Blizzard games previously so willing to give it a try... for free, that is.

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