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.

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)

So who is sick of the touchy feely shit? I know I am. Time for me to go on again about World of Warcraft. I think everyone knows by now I’m in the beta and that I love the game. Well now I got my own WoW TV thing, which can be found over here. I only really play during the morning hours. You can tell if I’m playing if the the little box on the left has in game image. If it has a WoW login screen I’m not playing. Below are some screen caps taken from my little WoW TV thing:

Blizzard released a patch yesterday and you can read about here in the patch notes. The biggest thing this patch for players is the return of Talents. Talents (shown in that second screen) allow you to customize your character a little bit. So that each player class can be a little different. With this patch only warriors and mages have talents to buy. It works a little like Camelots specs or even closer to Diablo 2’s skill system. The warrior has Protection, Fury, and Arms to choose from in the talents menu. Protection has different choices that affect armor class. Fury is about giving you a chance to go crazy thus improving your chance to crit. And finally Arms gives you bonuses in the different weapon categories.

Also with this patch the game now has an auction system (third screen) that allows players to buy and sell items. There are auction npc’s in the big cities that allow you to use this system. It costs you a minor fee (it’s refundable) to place an item up for auction and once you sell it there is another fee (non refundable) based on the selling price.

My human warrior is now level 12 and I’m enjoying him way to much. I can solo mobs at least two level ahead of me. And it’s not really a problem taking on two at once as screens shots 5-7 show. At some point I have to get back to the other classes so I can report on how they are. I’ll have more to say later and be sure to ask questions in the forum thread for this post.

So I rolled an undead rogue to see what World of Warcraft offered in the world of stealthers and liked what I saw. Like the warrior class you have combat moves (like Camelot’s styles). The neat thing about the rogue is that he has what they call finishing moves. These are special styles that you can only use after you build up a certain number of combo points. Certain styles give combo points when you use them. Now the more combo points you have the more damage the finishing move will do. If you look at the screenshot number seven you can see the five little circles indicating how many combo points you have earned.

Stealth works the way I imagine it works in all of these kinds of mmorpg’s. I’ll play around a bit more with this class so I can see what higher levels bring to it. So far I really enjoy it. And I’m not usually the kind of guy that plays a thief/stealther type of character. Check out the official rogue class page for a good rundown on what this class can do.

Woot! I’m in the World of Warcraft beta! I’ve been playing since around 9 am and just quit only because the servers went down for maintenance. I’ve already made level 5 and I got to say it is as fun as I hoped. Below are four screenshots showing off the game:

I got to take a nap now or I’ll be dead at work tonight. Questing is a huge part of the game just like the previews said. It’s cool how once you get high enough level you get a quest to go visit a region you have not been to yet. Also cool is that you get experience for exploring new regions. Lot of cool things in the game. Already it seems polished enough to be retail right now. And it runs like a dream even at a resolution of 1280×1024. Man I’ll probably never log onto Dark Age of Camelot again. Just kidding. Time for my nap.

My obsession for World of Warcraft builds. I can’t stop following the development of this game. I check the official Beta and the Non Beta forums on a daily basis. I just can’t get enough details about this game.

I just can’t get enough screen shots to satisfy my desire to play the game. This place in particular is really cool. It has some great screen shots journal style that shows off some of the neat things you will find in the game.

And this site I just can’t stop watching. It’s a really cool page that refreshes every 10 seconds and shows screen shots live from the game being played. The shots above are from the live “WoW TV” they got going on. I want to play the beta now! I don’t want to wait for it to go into the open beta.

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?