A Rant

[Slaiv]

Blizzard, you have failed me.

 

For those of you who don't know, the World of Warcraft Open Beta started yesterday. [Don't get your hopes up of entering it now.]

 

I will now, step by step, give you a description of my hellish experience:

 

Monday Night, ~20:00

-Blizzard's servers crashed, no way to download or enter beta there

-I go to Fileplanet, only to find that all their beta keys are gone

-By luck, I reload the Fileplanet page, and find they have gotten a few more from Blizzard

-I apply, and get a beta key

-I head over to the Blizzard site, to find they have a download of the Beta there [Fileplanet's servers were also down]

-I begin the 2.45Gb download

 

Tuesday Afternoon, ~15:00

-Download still going. About 60% done [going at ~20Kb/second because of Blizzard's awful idea to use a P2P system.]

-Can't use computer, download takes up too much memory

 

Wednesday Afternoon ~15:00

-Download finally finished.

-I go to Blizzard's website, with my beta key, only to find that they are no longer accepting any account applications. So I found out that I just wasted 40 hours of my life downloading a 2 1/2 gigabyte file that I can't use.

 

If Blizzard is going to make a demo, err, "beta", they should be smart enough to only make enough Beta Keys available as they have accounts available!!

 

This post does have a point. Since I can't get into the beta, even though Blizzard says there's a small chance of opening up more acocunts, I am wondering:

Is anyone else lucky enough to be in this? Is the game entertaining?

 

If not, I'm not going to waste my money.... I'd rather make sure it's enjoyable before I spend $80, plus ~$15 a month.

[Abramul]

You mean they're actually CHARGING to play the final game online? I thought Blizzard didn't do that!

[Peregrine]

You didn't miss anything. My experience with the beta:

 

1) Send in beta application.

 

2) A few months later, finally get accepted for a one-weekend test.

 

3) Spend way too much time downloading the game. Ok, not too much, since my connection is nice...

 

4) Attempt to play. Discover the gameplay is absolutely terrible.

 

5) Stubbornly continue to try playing, so I don't miss the rare opportunity to play a highly anticipated game before release.

 

6) Discover insane lag. Get lunch while waiting for my character to finally move.

 

7) Discover my first bug, in which a horde of players is trying to fill their quota of kills of a respawning group of monsters. Nearly snap keyboard in half as a high level character camps the respawn point and kills them all before anyone else can, and continues to do so.

 

8) Discover more lag.

 

9) In the one bright spot of the entire day, the annoying spawn camper gives up due to lag. Finally, I complete a quest!

 

10) Now a couple hours after starting the game, discover that the gameplay is still terrible, and still shows zero sign of improving.

 

11) Uninstall and contemplate suing Blizzard for wasting my time with that over-hyped *censored* *censored* *censored* *censored*.

[Slaiv]

Thanks for the advice. I'll save my money, and get Guild Wars with it.

 

You know, this kinda makes me doubt Starcraft: Ghost, as well..... Although, thankfully, that's not being developed by Blizzard.

 

*Goes off to burn all Blizzard products he owns.*

[postaldudeleo]

I had this for a while now. I played it and it sucked. Not only is gothic 2 better but the space is so empty and boring. Green lizards and crashing servers don't help either. Why the stupid ____K can't blizzard make a rpg single player version of world of warcraft. Also the test quests are lame as hell. Also, I want Warcraft 4! Byt he way, anybody agree that blizzard should make the game more mature with bigger violence to disuade 7 year olds from playing. I hate kids.....................so stupid..............................

[Slaiv]

Why the stupid ____K can't blizzard make a rpg single player version of world of warcraft.

Because, if it's as boring as you say it is, then think of playing throughout that massive world with only you.

 

Byt he way, anybody agree that blizzard should make the game more mature with bigger violence to disuade 7 year olds from playing.

I agree, they're annoying, but I don't agree that Blizzard should add violence and gore just to stop kids from playing. One - that won't work. Two - that's just a stupid reason.

 

For anyone interested, my name's "Slaiv." I usually play on Test Server 2, if you happen to have the beta. It's not that great, but seeing as I have no money for Halo 2, I have nothing better to do.

 

As you've probably guessed, I finally got things worked out, and got an account, so this thread's pointless. As such, I'm requesting that it be locked.

[Peregrine]

As you wish.

[Dark0ne]

Would just like to open this up again and let you know that I was a part of the EQ2 Beta, and have ordered EQ2, which has come to day. Game looks amazing...so much better and more realistic than the Disney Land graphics in WoW.

 

The people are better (experience from closed beta of EQ2 and Public Beta of WoW) and generally everything just seems...better.

 

Anyone else had similar experiences?

[Malchik]

Mind-reading! Or as Switch said 'uncanny'. At 4.02 I sent him a PM asking why no one had mentioned EQ2 on these forums. I was interested because I had read rather a lot of hype and wondered if it was as good as they say. I look forward to seeing how others respond!

[Slaiv]

I have said that the EQ2 water graphics are the best I've ever seen.... and the regular GFX are incredible as well. However, I've always thought that EQ is waaaaayy overrated, and was being milked for all it's worth through crappy expansions released nearly every month. [There's been like 10 expansions.] So I was kind of turned off for EQ2. But, I can't rightfully say anything, since I haven't played it yet...