To avoid upsetting anyone all my beta information is going to be hidden from the main page, So if you want to have content spoiled you will need to click the "read more" link further down the page. The only clue will be from the title of the post but these will, I promise, always be vague enough to not give anything away.
My purpose of playing the beta is to try to break the game, I'm not doing any actual content that I am likely to run Evlyxx, or any of my alts through a kajillion times after the launch. I am here for exploration, looking at the older Azeroth content and to see where I need to go to be able to power level professions.
If you have any requests for places you'd like me to go or NPCs to visit drop me a line at evlyxx at evlyxx dot com or leave me a comment below.
Now the beta installer program was large, a whole 650 Mb, now my puny 2Mb ADSL didn't appreciate that much and took a full overnight session to download. But I sleep PC works the ADSL out and I was happy. Ran the installer and it started to install the game. I was impressed had Blizzard squeezed a whole game and 3 expansions into a single CD? Even the original came on 5 discs so that was most unlikely.
Then when it got to 100%, it prompted me to open the launcher. Seriously impressed and very excited I opened the launcher and it began to download the full content. Bah! OMG 15.7Gb. I picked myself off the floor and left for work again leaving the downloader slapping my ADSL into submission like Mike Tyson did to our Frank back in the 80s.
Arrived back home and I'd got a full 4Gb /cry and then I read the gumpf on the launcher window:
and my bar was yellow! I logged into the game and there I was in Dalaran ready to explore. To Stormwind I went and what a change.Everything in Stormwind is very shiny and new. Flying across the city you get views that you never really considered. There are many, many new things and my first tour report will be of Stormwind, I promise.
Anyway I had a fly around Azeroth and previously infinished textures in mountains have been filled and polished nicely. Then flying over Searing Gorge I hit the first "your game experience will not be ideal" that was referred to., a big unpassable purple wall followed by a self induced DC when I closed the game client instead of the full screen map (I'm used to a map mod that makes it not full screen!). I logged back in and fell to my death, hmm seems a DC while flying is bad mkay, bug report submitted, and yes Searing Gorge still has that nasty corpse run.
Onwards my journey went to Scarlet Monastery, probably my favourite and most visited instance (outside of raid instances, Molten Core, Karazhan, Naxxramas and ICC probably win that contest). Then bug 2, dismounted flying over Scarlet Mondastery, yay levitate ftw! I landed safely on a roof and the safety conscious designer had even put a wrought iron fence all around, back onto the flying mount and off I went. No I cannot take off bah a no fly zone, another bug report submitted and a HS back to Dalaran.
More flying around Azeroth followed many ooohs and ahhhs but the lag I had from the continuing download and the fact that the game was continually fighting to download the content for my ever changing world location was too much to put up with and I eventually gave up and let the full client download. It took a while and used up a whole bunch of my DL quota for the month but even if I end up paying a few £££s for it I'll not complain.
My conclusion? What we are about to get seems fantastic but as many 3rd parties have said before me the game still looks very far from being finished. Its beta content not a pre-release preview for the media types. Its frustrating and refreshing to see a major developer confident in their product to be able to release it in this shape.
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