What is the first thing I’m going to do on the 28th? Here is a hint from the official World of Warcraft site:

At 6:00 pm PST on Wednesday, January 28th, the signup period for the World of Warcraft Beta Test will officially begin. Testers are not going to be chosen on a first-come, first-served basis, so you will be able to submit an application and receive equal consideration anytime during the signup period, which will end on Wednesday, February 4th at 6:00 pm PST.

They do say “Please note that multiple submissions from the same household will result in complete disqualification”, so I can’t sign myself up a hundred billion times. Doesn’t stop me from using all of my friends address’s though.

The beta for World of Warcraft is live. People are playing the game and probably having a shit load of fun. Dirty rotten bastards, every single one of them! Now I’m not bitter or anything. I’m not mad I didn’t get in the beta. This is just the first phase of the beta. So I could get in it later.

But it’s a good thing I’m not in the beta. I would have (and eventually will) spent to much time playing the game. In fact I see myself becoming one of those people. You know the kind of people I’m talking about. The ones that do nothing but play the game. And I’m not saying that is a bad thing. I’m that way with Dark Age of Camelot, in controlled short bursts.

Life will go on. Staying on the subject of mmorpg’s, I do need to cancel my Horizons account before I’m billed. I wrote earlier that I had canceled already. I wrote that under the impression I could cancel via a web based form of some kind at the games site. But no that’s not how it works. You have to call them to cancel. Which makes me think they are glutton for punishment.

“Why are you canceling your account with us?” The Horizon support guy asks.

“Well frankly your game sucks and so do you.” I say to him. You hearing crying on the other end of the phone.

It just doesn’t seem the way to go. But then I’m not very knowledgeable about these kinds of customer related issues. Wait yes I am. And let me tell you I love getting people to tell me I fucking suck (happened just once). So maybe these Horizon support guys are all sadistic evil fucks who get off on it. Just seems that must be the case. Seeing how they are making it hard on their customers to cancel the game. What can you do?

I’m still playing the shit out of the World of Warcraft beta. I just can’t say enough good things about this game. Below are 4 videos I made for my guildmates in the Acolytes of Destruction that I posted in the forums.

You will need at least the DivX 5.1.1 codec to be able to view these videos. You can grab the free version of DivX right here.

WoW Vid 01 (7.8 MiB, 47 hits)

WoW Vid 02 (20.8 MiB, 38 hits)

WoW Vid 03 (18.7 MiB, 38 hits)

WoW Vid 04 (12.3 MiB, 39 hits)

Want to play World of Warcraft? Didn’t get accepted into the beta yet? Or maybe you never signed up for the beta? Well here is your chance:

In order to evaluate World of Warcraft‘s account-creation process and server performance under heavy loads, Blizzard will be conducting a seven-day stress test beta in the days ahead. This test will require over 100,000 players to download the World of Warcraft stress test beta client, create an account, and log on to play when the test goes live!

To make the client available for download to such a large audience, we have partnered with FilePlanet, GameSpy’s Web-based file-delivery service. Click here to learn more about the World of Warcraft stress test beta and to sign up for a chance to participate in this special event.

Head over to this forum post for more info and to find a FAQ on this FilePlanet stress test.

The World of Warcraft stress test beta is live and running. I had many worries about playing during this stress test. Some of these worries were put to rest. Some of them are just annoying.

I assumed that there would be one server. I could just imagine the lag on this one server in my mind. Thankfully there are quite a few servers to chose from. Both the normal and PvP servers are choices. Also I swear that performance on these stress test servers are much better than on the closed beta servers. I was getting over 100 fps on the stress test server I joined. On the beta server I get around 30-50 fps. Maybe Blizzard tweaked some stuff here and the next time I log in on the closed beta server it will be all good.

Now my biggest worry and something that just annoys the shit out of me is all of the god damn newbs playing this game. It’s just fucking chaos on this stress test server. The newb area is swarming with people. It’s standing room only around all of the mob camps. And the majority of these people must have never played a mmorpg before. Because their fucking clueless. All of the questions that fly by on the main chat channel are crazy. Where my trainer? Where is this? Where is that? Open your eyes and look around for christ sake.

And don’t get me wrong. I don’t claim to be a power gamer at all. But I don’t have a problem exploring around an area looking for shit. And sure you can say I’m in the closed beta and I already know all this shit. But I looked around and explored when I first got into the game on the closed beta. And World of Warcraft makes all of this stuff so easy. There is no reason a player has to be that lazy.

The funniest thing even with all of the people in the starting areas the game is still fun as hell. So far two of my fellow Dark Age of Camelot guildies are playing. With any luck we will have a guild going tomorrow. It’s only ten silver to get a guild charter and I feel that can be done by tomorrow. The problem will being getting enough people to sign the thing. I suspect I will be playing all day today. But what the hell I got nothing better to do.

Holy shit! I got this e-mail today:

Greetings!

If you are receiving this email, you are one of the valued testers currently in World of Warcraft’s closed beta test. This message is to inform you that the beta servers will be coming down at 3:00 PM PDT on Friday, October 29 and will remain offline for a few days in preparation for another stress test. Your account and characters will be active for this stress test, but a new client download will be required. After the game servers come down on Friday the 29th, you will be able to log in to the community site and download the new client.

Once the beta-server preparations are complete, we will announce the start of the stress test, and the servers will come back online. When that happens, you will be able to log back in, download a quick patch, and then continue playing. Please keep an eye on WorldofWarcraft.com for more information about the stress test in the days ahead!

We want to take this opportunity to thank you for all the hard work you’ve been putting in to make World of Warcraft a better game. You’ve done a great job, and without you, the classes would not be where they are today, places like the Barrens would not be as rich as they are today, and the changes implemented from your suggestions would never have taken place.

We hope you’ve been enjoying your exclusive look at World of Warcraft these past few weeks and months, and we hope you’ll take some satisfaction in knowing that you’ve played a big part in shaping its destiny. We’ll see you again online soon!

Sincerely,

Blizzard Entertainment

I didn’t see this happening so soon. So another stress test is coming and then open beta? And then woot retail! Bye bye Camelot! See you all in Azeroth!

If you pay for Fileplanet.com get over there now and sign up for the World of Warcraft Stress Test/Open Beta! Again this is for paying costumers of Fileplanet. If your not it’s only 7 or 8 bucks. And whatever you do make sure you say no thanks to the 15 buck quarterly rate they offer. Because the next page you get after saying no offers you 7.90 a month.