Beta Over Thur.

[MrHat]

Just a headsup:

In preparation for the upcoming retail launch of World of Warcraft, we will be taking the North American open beta servers offline on Thursday, November 18. While this will mark the end of the open beta test, there will still be some work left for us to do. To provide the best experience possible at launch, we will be making numerous final optimizations to our hardware based on the data we've acquired during the open beta test.
During our closed and open beta test phases, thousands of improvements were made to World of Warcraft. Those changes were made through game-client patches and updates to the game's server and database infrastructure.

As we moved closer to retail, we continued to make changes and optimize all of the code that makes up World of Warcraft until we reached the point where we felt we could create a gold master -- the version of the game that's currently being pressed onto the discs which will be available for purchase at retail.

Likewise, these processes must also take place on the server side to ensure that no out-of-date code, which could corrupt the retail version of the game, still exists. Before the retail version of the code can be installed, the current hardware must be wiped clean. This also includes the information on current accounts and characters that are being played on our test servers. So that all World of Warcraft players will be able to make a fresh start on our community site at launch, the same procedure will be taking place for the North American beta forums when the open beta test ends.

We realize that you've grown attached to your characters, and we're sorry that the end of the open beta test will require you to part ways with them. However, with the retail launch of World of Warcraft on November 23 comes the opportunity to begin a new adventure in Azeroth on fresh, untouched servers. Along with that, you'll have the knowledge that you played an instrumental role in the creation of a game of epic proportions that players will enjoy for many years to come.

We greatly appreciate all the time you've spent with us testing World of Warcraft, and we look forward to seeing you in-game!

Please note that this does not affect the ongoing European closed beta test. Further details regarding our plans for the closed and final beta tests in Europe will be announced on the European community sites next week.

[Resvrgam]

Thanks for the info.  Looks like it's round three for King Sisyphus  :)

[schild]

Along with that, you'll have the knowledge that you played an instrumental role in the creation of a game of epic proportions that players will enjoy for many years to come.

Companies still try to sell beta as influential on the final game. What bullshit. They need to get over themselves and just tell everyone "Thanks for the free press, suckers. Give me my $50 little man, my porsche needs some new performance upgrades."

[AlteredOne]

Bah, I just moved into a new house, barely got a chance to mess with the open beta.  Got to level 10 or so.  Yes, I suppose I'll fork over the $50 and enjoy the thought of Blizzard employees laughing at my idiocy while sipping martinis in the Bahamas.

[Morfiend]

Along with that, you'll have the knowledge that you played an instrumental role in the creation of a game of epic proportions that players will enjoy for many years to come.

Companies still try to sell beta as influential on the final game. What bullshit. They need to get over themselves and just tell everyone "Thanks for the free press, suckers. Give me my $50 little man, my porsche needs some new performance upgrades."

I think that was more directed to the Closed Beta testers. And we did test. Lots of good stuff was added due to tester feedback.

The open beta, yeah. Thats a "come try me".

[Kageru]

Well, considering how much fell over during open beta I'd say they're being surprisingly honest.

I'll be playing, and it looks like my EQ guild are also making the move.

[Trippy]

It's nice to see that after breaking the fundamental gameplay for groups by changing taunt they are giving people less than 2 days to test the "fix" for it. Oh and the forums are down once again so no feedback is coming through that route. I guess they didn't want SOE to be the only ones who rushed out fundamental gameplay changes in the last few weeks of beta.

[Mesozoic]

Oh and the forums are down once again so no feedback is coming through that route.

The forums are probably down from 500,000 12-yos posting "OMG u kiled my char!?!? I quit!!!!!!" at the same time.

And lets be honest - useful feedback from the forum?  Did you ever go there?

[Paelos]

I played the open Beta for four days and about a total of twenty or so hours. In that time I managed to get an undead warrior to level 17 with appropriate equipment, blacksmithing to 80, mining to 90, and fishing to 135. I also had one gold in the bank. After my experience I will be playing the game. Here are my impressions.

1) The game is casual friendly in the beginning, but as I got further up the ladder the quests get much harder and require groups. If I had one hour a night to play, that may be a problem.
2) Epic quests would be better if they were more straight forward about the mob levels. Telling me its a level 15 epic mob doesn't give me much of an indicator on how I'll fare. Just streamline it please and have standard levels, its nothing more than a nuisance.
3) Dying is inevitable in the game, but the reduction of the durability hit from 100% to 25% has eased some of my problems with having to do corpse runs.

Overall, its a fun game and it delivers on many of the promises. We'll see how it holds up on release.

[Zetleft]

2) Epic quests would be better if they were more straight forward about the mob levels. Telling me its a level 15 epic mob doesn't give me much of an indicator on how I'll fare. Just streamline it please and have standard levels, its nothing more than a nuisance.

In your quest list there is a color scheme just like in monsters con.  Quests listed in red are very hard, those that are grey are something very easy.

[Signe]

Someone broke in and fiddled with the forums.  Changed some of the wording of the devs to silliness.  All terribly amusing.

[bhodikhan]

The forums went down last night when someone "hacked" onto Caydiem's account and began posting replies to a bunch of posts.  The replies were quite humorous. i.e. "If you don't like playing a Warrior perhaps EQ2 would be a better fit". "You're right we don't like druids either. We're thinking of naming the game World of Shamancraft".

Needless to say the forums got taken down ASAP.

[HaemishM]

I'll see how much I miss my Tauren Warrior over the next 3 or 4 days. If I miss him a lot, I'll get 2 copies, one for me and one for my wife. If I don't really miss him, I'll not get it.

I must say it's a decent MMOG. It ain't robot jesus, but it ain't EQ2.

[chinslim]

Being the sheep I am and itching for an MMO, I have WoW on pre-order.

But is it me, or does combat feel somewhat slow?  I never got a toon over 15 so maybe I don't know...but with WoW's roots in Diablo II, I can't help but compare the two.   Maybe what I really want is pre-LoD Whirlwind mindless killing back again.

[Phred]

Being the sheep I am and itching for an MMO, I have WoW on pre-order.

But is it me, or does combat feel somewhat slow?  I never got a toon over 15 so maybe I don't know...but with WoW's roots in Diablo II, I can't help but compare the two.   Maybe what I really want is pre-LoD Whirlwind mindless killing back again.

Wierd you should say this, I've seen people complaining on other places that combat is so fast people aren't learning any strategy. You certainly aren't going to get an I win move like pre Lod whirlwind in a MMOG I don't think.

Compared to EQ combat, fights are over very quickly in WoW I found. With my hunter it was send in pet, shoot 3-5 times, loot, every place but in an instance or if I got nervy and went for a mob 3 levels higher than me, in which case I had to take a break part way through shooting and heal my pet a few times.

I had the same experience with the Dwarf pally I tried, his 2h hammer didn't take more then 3 or 4 swings to lay out a mob unless he missed.
Crits seem frequent enough in the game to make a big difference in how fast stuff dies too.

[bhodikhan]

I think the ability to solo most of the game is both a blessing and a curse. I've played enough DAOC to know how various roles work and what happens when everyone doesn't know their role and how to play it.

While I'm glad there isn't the "holy trinity" required for instances I've seen many groups focus on healer-tank-damage so they look for only those characteristics.

Because people can solo so well in WOW I'm worried about how people will build community bonds and also how they will really learn to play their chars without more grouping.

Grouping does two things 1) Teaches you how to maximize what YOU do best and 2) Forms bonds that keep you in the game.

Nothing wrong with being able to solo when you only have 1-2 hours to play but this very issue could pose a problem in the long term.

The games I've enjoyed were because of the people I've played with. Levelling in DAOC was quite fun because I was playing with friends. Levelling in WOW seems sterile as groups only formed to do one quest and then fell apart.  

Maybe when a few RL friends play in retail we'll see how the WOW formula of both solo and group play work out.

[Xanthippe]

The 'elite' quests cannot be soloed at all; they must be done in a group due to the difficulty of the mobs.  Nice loot drops, they are fun to do, mobs are really tough compared to normal mobs.  

Shadowfang Keep instance was really neat, as was Blackfathom Deep.  I only hit 4 elite instances, and really enjoyed them.

[Dren]

Along with the more difficult quests I think there are other reasons for devloping a community around yourself.

One would be for any tradeskills you want to develop.  Many resources cross over to the other disciplines so having friends you can swap items with will be beneficial.

Guilds will want to keep tight threw the early leveling days so they can have a common purpose during the PvP portion of their gaming days.  Of course, not everyone will be PvP'ing, but I hear you will be doing some NPC pk'ing even on the PvE servers at higher levels so you'll have to have some support there.

In general, I think the higher level instances would be much more fun done with friends.  As WoW develops over the months I can see this being a large priority for the dev teams to input more content to the game.  In general this is a great place for the game to grow for the PvE crowd.  I imagine that these instances will get harder and harder so you'll have to have a good group of people to accomplish them.

I agree, the lower levels are pretty much solo only.  I still had fun doing a lot of it with a couple friends, but I also had fun just logging in for a few minutes to do some things on my own too.  I think they have a good mix right now.  Time will tell.

[Resvrgam]

But is it me, or does combat feel somewhat slow?

Combat speed seems to be roughly dependent on your character's class/weaponry.   I played a Night Elfin Hunter for the most part and found combat fast-paced and very responsive...then I decided on a Human Paladin and, with his two-handed Mallet, sat in boredom as the lumox took forever to swing his "whack-a-mole" prop. :(

I later tried my hand at a Troll Shaman and found that class to be a bit faster than the torpid Paladin but still slower than my Night Elfin Hunter at the lower levels.

All in all, WoW's combat experience hasn't bored me as much as LevelQuest 2's "Kick, Wild Swing, Taunt, do-the hokey-pokey & shoot lightning out of your arse at enemies."

 ...about grouping...

I actually enjoyed WoW's stance on NOT forcing me to wait around for other players to rely on.  A game's funfactor shouldn't be reliant on other people making good or not (IMO).  I've met more social players in WoW than in that other MMOG currently enjoying its newness for the time being due mainly to the fact that there weren't as many MMOG veterans in this game yet (or at least that's how it felt).  

Many of the people I came across weren't as obsessed with maximizing their efficiency at reaching that level-cap as the other MMOGs I've played seemed to promote.

Grouping was easier for me as well in this game: I trek over to an area where I need to complete a quest and find myself outmatched and outnumbered by my enemy...so I ask those around me who are trying to complete the quest as well if they'd like to temporarily team up.  The result: 9/10 times we join forces and complete the task at hand.   A few of those times, we exchange idle chit-chat while moving or during the camp for the spawns to reset.  Some of this chit-chat has made me some full-time team members that I enjoy grouping with beyond the "Hurry up and get the quest so we can all go stomp mob X's ass."

I also enjoyed the intense panic players would create for themselves when they spot enemies of the faction (Horde or Alliance):  "There's a small raiding party of about 10 Horde coming our way!!!  We need reinforcements in Auberdine!!!  Lvl 20-40!  They've got Shamen!"

Forced grouping just puts a sour taste in my mouth and usually is reduced to "WTF Healer....hello?  Anyone?  I'd like to be able to play the game I spent money on but no one will team up so I can only hunt Badgers and animated turds that look like diarrhea in a bog."

[HaemishM]

I managed to get in on a PVP raid in the last hour or so of beta. I literally logged off with about 2 minutes left until server shutdown.

The PVP was fun, though most of us were in the late teens - early 20's. We fought in Ashenvale outside of Antsarar (sic) or something like that. It was fun until the guards from that town came out of the town to join in the fight. Level 40 guards were not fun. Why does it seem strange to me to have so many guards in contested territory on a PVP server?

[Xanthippe]

That town in Ashenvale (Astranaar? Something like that) is an Alliance town, the same way Splintertree Post is a Horde town.

You can go around it to continue on and avoid the guards.

[sidereal]

My only PvP experience came when about a dozen alliance teens and 20s (mostly night elves) ran up from Ratchet to the Crossroads in Barrens.  After the call went out on the Defense channel, it took 2 minutes to assemble a force of 30 or so.  The Alliance group got whacked in another couple of minutes.  They weren't very good.  Mostly they ran around in random directions while I stunned them and my wolf and a platoon of Tauren warriors ripped into them.

Hint for Alliance players: The Barrens are not contested.
Bonus Hint: 90% of Orc, Troll, and Tauren players between lvl 12 and 22 are bound to the Crossroads.

[Morfiend]

I managed to get in on a PVP raid in the last hour or so of beta. I literally logged off with about 2 minutes left until server shutdown.

The PVP was fun, though most of us were in the late teens - early 20's. We fought in Ashenvale outside of Antsarar (sic) or something like that. It was fun until the guards from that town came out of the town to join in the fight. Level 40 guards were not fun. Why does it seem strange to me to have so many guards in contested territory on a PVP server?

They recently changed the way guards work due to a guild of asshats called DIE. Said guild would bring in about 40 high level players, and camp the main leveling town for the horde for lvls 22-30 for around 8 hours straight. It was a real pain in the ass. So now guard spawns are almost unlimited in town. If you kill one, a new one spawns in the town, so if you are holding a town, you will have a constant battle and it makes it harder to hold enemy towns.

[Resvrgam]

If you kill one, a new one spawns in the town, so if you are holding a town, you will have a constant battle and it makes it harder to hold enemy towns.

I could see that implemented on Capital cities (the starting places for players of each faction) but to make it like that for every enemy city seems a bit counter-productive toward promoting the sieging of enemy cities.  WTF's the point of besieging an enemy city if you can't terrorize your enemy?  

Disruption doesn't feel as compelling a draw for PVP raids as downright domination over an area:  "We need a large group of Alliance soldiers to push back the Horde from Auberdine and retake our city...there's a bunch of Alliance players wanting to continue quests in that city but it's been overrun with Horde for the time being!"  With NPC guards cleaning up the place, it seems rather pointless to even care if your city is under attack: "Eh, let the auto-re-spawning guards take care of it."

To counteract the "Hey, that's griefing!"  Why not initialize new quests for noob/lower leveled players to rally their NPC guards?

e.g.  "Auberdine is taken and needs to be reclaimed by the Alliance.  A new NPC spawns after the the deaths of the guards in Auberdine (probably somewhere in Darnassus/Shadowglen/Dolinaar) who issues a quest similar to the "awaken the slumbering Druids" quest.  This quest will probably be something simple for a few higher leveled players but would actually pose a challange to the low-leveled lot still residing on the Teldrassil island.  

When the quest is completed, the "reward" would be something like adding faction points toward your Darkshore/Darnassus alligeances and the Call to Arms would be issued in which an ass-kicking battalion could arrive in Darkshore and clean house (the way these guards seem to now).  The only catch would be: players would have to actively pursue this defense/fortification opposed to automatic spawn-freebies chucked their way.

Well, that's what I'd be suggesting to Blizzard for ways to make PvP a bit more meaningful, engaging and fun.  Too bad their forums and feedback sections are down. :(