I think you all know where this is going, so let's just skip to the main course.

I think I've pretty much nailed down a closed beta spot for myself. I levelled a Tauren Druid on the Tichondrius server to level 36 during the Stress Test, which made him a very close second amongst Horde druids on Tichondrius by the end of the test. What does this mean? I think that, unless I get disqualified for some reason that I cannot possibly fathom (as I didn't do anything that should warrant disqualification), I'm finally getting in on the beta. Which should make several Cantina and #massassi patrons very happy, since they won't have to listen to me anymore.

Anyway, SCREENSHOTS!


END OF THE WORLD DANCE PARTY IN CROSSROADS!


Gnomeregan boss' room. COOLEST boss fight ever.


Goblin Jesus welcomes you to Booty Bay.


My hat is cool. <3 Gnomeregan bossguy who drops it.


Gratuitous hat stat shot.


Orgrimmar. I didn't know how to hide the HUD at the time.


Ashenvale. The primary road leading from Ashenvale to XR. Also known as "always has a few skeletons on it" road.


Shot of the boat leaving Booty Bay.


Me in cat form, but with the Night Elf druid's panther cat form model (bug with polymorph). So much cooler than the stupid horned lion that Tauren get.

Image limit:


Dalaran.


Goblin/Gnome racetrack on the Shimmering Flats.



PARTY BOAT


Goblin Town Ratchet


An awesome quest place off the coast of Stranglethorn Vale. Takes place entirely underwater. I hope they do an actual dungeon with submerged portions. That'd kick ***.


Running through the Barrens in travel form.


The scene of a gigantic slaughter outside the Crossroads about 15 or 20 minutes before the stress ended. Apparently the Alliance raided.

Disclaimer: I apologize for any questionable language that may/may not be present in the screens, I haven't gone over them with a fine toothed comb, just resized and uploaded, so be wary. The goons have a tendency to be potty mouths, and so do I.

You got a WOW client? Its the first sign of the apocolypse, run children!

Once I get the email from Blizzard so that I can transfer Gonktarg to the closed beta PvP server and play at will, yes, I will be happy. Currently just paranoid, as usual.

Now instead of hearing him whine about how he can't get into WoW, we get to hear him talk constantly about how good it is. I wonder which one I would've prefered...

How many hours did you put into this?
I put in a few hours one night and easily obtained a level 10 character. I pretty much only played the stress test twice. Does leveling get crazy hard after this or was the competition for high levels just not that good?
.. I'm hoping that the actually game is harder to level. Because it was kinda too easy.

Get a life!

Ah.... the end of an era. *shigh*

NEVER!

Anyways... I think I logged in something crazy like 5 days worth of time into the game. The levelling IS faster than most other games, which I actually think that, combined with the rest system, is better for attracting and keeping casual players, as opposed to only rewarding the OMGMUSTPLAY14HOURSEVERYDAY hardcore EQ crackheads.

I did it primarily because I'm paranoid and wanted to make sure I got in the game, but I did manage to burn myself out on it. I would've also preferred to have taken my time with a lot of things, done a lot more PvP, and worked on crafting, and generally just explored a bit more. The pace was hectic so I really couldn't pull that stuff off until the last day when I was pretty sure I was getting in. At which point I went insane and slaughtered Elves, Gnomes, Dwarves and Humans on sight, and travelled all over the place gathering flight paths and such.

That game is beautiful... Someone give me money.

Just so you know, levelling in beta's is usually increased significantly, so they can have more people testing higher level things, as opposed to having six trillion level 6 guys still running around after a month.

In SWG you were getting 300, 500 xp per desert beetle kill in beta. In the actual game, 14 was lucky...

I wouldn't be surprised if they slowed it down a bit. They're actually going to increase the XP gain from instances, however, which seems to point that they're gearing the game more for group play and questing than solo grinding of monsters endlessly.

Dud, it was the exact oppisite of that...

Cool, thanks for the screenshots and especially the thumbnails!

ImageShack is awesome.

That's awesome Gonk.

my cousin was doing the stress test and he was stoked about it.

I'm thinking I might get WoW for my new iMac G5

You need to find yourself a girl, mate.

Going into GFX? Either way, don't forget that just because it's a G5, doesn't mean it comes with a good video card. I still don't see how Apple can call FX5200s high-performance.

Anyways, yeah, I can't wait for open beta. Wheee

So when does this game come out? I'm kind of happy that Blizzard isnt pulling a SOE and releasing a buggy-as-hell game like SWG.

What a girl to mate with? WHERE!????

November, last I heard. The date its coming out. It's not quite fixed, yet, though

Or could it be that you practise 3 hours a day because you have already found a girl, and are otherwise incapable of wooing said strumpet?

Yay Gonk!

I agree. Calling it high preformance is nonsense.. hell with their PowerMac G5 they are selling GeForce 6800 Ultra out of the box. To simply not acknowledge that in their G5 iMac is kind of silly. They actually go out of their way to stress how awesome an FX5200 is!

Regardless, being able to play Halo will be just fine. Right now i'm running it on a first Generation PowerMac G4 (433mHZ with a GeForce3) and at low detail i can get 30fps out of it.

We'll see how it handles WoW (if I decide to get it, that is)

Not too bad. I never understood why Powermacs aren't clocked higher--it's not as if PowerPC processors can't handle it. But hey, whatever.

Yeah, my 6800GT should deal with this game juuuuuuuust fiiiiiiiine.

I also agree that it was to short of time for leveling. Good for you gonk, having accomplished what I have not Hopefully, not likely, I get the beta *15 warlock* if not theres always Euro Beta to look forward to. *Cough*

I still reckon if the Koreans were in the comp, you would've lost.

Gonk may not have won the competition if Koreans were in, but he would give them a good run for their money.

You need to be a bit more creative in your joke assembly, mate.

Agreed.

Hey Gonk, Can you say what PVP server is like in WOW?

I would of been in the stress test myself, But dang fileplanet downloads didn't seem to want the same

I can answer that. Lets say this. PVP puts the war in warcraft. On the PVP servers. However, you have to hit a town with basically no guards, otherwise you get ***** back to orgrimmar or stormwind. Because guards spawn fast.

Don't complain to me. Complain to the PotC scriptwriters.

PvP is Faction vs. Faction currently. Its not fully implemented, according to Blizzard. All you can do is attack another player as you would a monsters, provided they're of the other faction.

The guards spawn REALLY fast but it has been stated by Blizzard that when they implement the PvP changes that are in the pipe, they'll assess the situation with guards and consider removing the large majority of them.

You CAN do raids and stuff, but most of the time you can't simply overrun a town and kill all the NPCs and stuff. The guards spawn fast and are really, really tough to kill because that's currently the only way they have to deter people from just overrunning a town and making the game unplayable for the other faction in that zone. Which would be massively annoying, especially when you consider that the Alliance pretty much always outnumbers the Horde by at least 2:1, and has higher levels due there being more quests on the Alliance side, better rewards, etc. etc. (And this is documented, not whining.)

Yea, don't get me wrong I'm not for that hardcore leveling stuff.. I hate that.
But this was *too* easy. So it looks good that I hear they'll be toning it down some.

I'm pretty Anti-MonthlyfeeRPGgaming .. I only once paid for a montly RPG before and that was because some chick who I liked wanted me to, and I knew I could spoil her with good items. But it turned out I suck at MMORPG's and she was better than me so I quit. lol. But after trying out this stress test.. I have to say.. I'm tempted to buy the game and pay it's montly fee. It's just that good of a game. Now, I'll stop playing after a year, and sell off my items the best I can. More than a year will just be .. probably boring if they don't.. but is most likely inevitable.. release a expansion pack. I am not going to dish out more money for this though. So, it ends.


I'll try it out and get a high level character. Kick some ***. Then quit.

Of course they're going to release an Expansion pack for WoW. It's blizzard, for ****'s sakes.

Yes they'll almost assuredly do expansion packs, AND on top of that they're going to be doing monthly content additions, etc., which will not only give you new stuff to do and get, but also advance the WC storyline along.

Word has it that levelling isn't going to slow down much. One of Blizzard's main goals is to make WoW casual gamer-friendly.