MMORPGDot Feature: World of Warcraft Beta Journal #1
Dialogue, 2004-03-22

Some details about the Beta as it stands right now. The current "push" of the Beta client is Alliance Only. The Dwarves, Humans, Gnomes and Night Elves are getting sent back through the ringer to ensure that quest coverage is adequate, the cities are all good, monsters in the Alliance areas are alright...right now the Alliance is getting a work out. Besides the lack of any of the Horde races, the Hunter and Druid classes are also currently unavailable. Blizzard has begun the beta test with the bare bones of the game open to us, and it will be very exciting to be able to relate to you the game as it begins to build on itself. Aside from that there are some small bits and pieces which need to be fleshed out. The reputation system is not in the game at the moment, still being tweaked. Alcohol has no affect yet (all of those beverages have (needs effect) on them), and some of the bit-part NPCs need new models. One of the most humorous pieces that still needs to be included is the various /dance emotes for the races. There are different dances for each gender, so there are a total of 8 possible dances in the game right now. The Night Elves and Gnomes of both genders have their dances in their final stage. For the record, as I know some Blizzard employees are going to read this: You guys are freaking sick. :) The humans and dwarves for the most part only have a placeholder dance animation in place that looks suspiciously like the electric slide.

It was about 11 in the evening on Friday when the Beta download finished on my machine. I installed, started up the game, and looked on the Dark Portal into Azeroth for the first time. I was a happy, happy camper. My first character is the one I've been anticipating making in World of Warcraft for months now. Grodin is a Dwarven Warrior and I began in the newbie village of Anvil Marr, far to the south of IronForge in the lands of Dun Morogh. As has been reported, the very first thing you see upon entering the game is a friendly NPC with a yellow exclamation point above his head. Someone has a quest for you! In Anvil Marr, there are two NPCs right next to each other with stuff they want you to do. One would like you to clear out the wolf population a bit, the other would like you to deliver a letter to a friend of his just down the road a piece. From these simple favours, you are swept up into a series of quests that define what it is that distinguishes World of Warcraft from the other Massively Multiplayer games. The quests mean something. They're not just endlessly repeatable "bap the foozle, bring me their heads" types of treadmills. The quests reward you for participating in the world around you. For example, the Troggs, a small knobbly humanoid that you encounter in one of your first quests, are a major factor in the life of an Ironforge Dwarf. These beasts have intruded horribly on the Dwarven way of life, and it's up to you to make sure that your heritage stays in place. History, pride, honor, and beer are some of the major themes that run through the quests a Dwarf encounters. After only a few hours of playing, Blizzard hooks you in a way that makes you *really* connect with your character. I found myself actually respecting the heritage of a fictional character in a fictional world. This immediate and obvious connection to the world around you turns the shiny images into another kind of home.

You're going to hear a lot about my love for the quests in World of Warcraft. The reason I find them so endearing is that the world is very obviously built for the quests. There are little side areas and monster haunts that, upon first sight simply do nothing but give you a landmark to remember. A level or two later, it turns out that the haunt is the location of a beast or item that a new friend of yours needs. One of the most enjoyable quests I did early in my career was a straight up monster hunt in a cave in the corner of Dun Morogh. I was around level 6, and a gentlman in the hamlet of Kharaonas asked me to whack some of the trolls that were residing in the cracks of the world. I hooked up with a small group of gnome adventurers and we headed in. The ease of grouping is extreme. Experience is divied fairly and the default looting scheme is "Round Robin". Each adventurer gets a chance in turn to loot the bodies of the monsters you slay. If a quest calls for a looted item, everyone in the party who has the quest gets a copy of the item, ensuring that groups *want* to form in order to quest for items. It's a great system that has no basis in "reality", but reinforces once again the excellence of the game design behind this game.

I've got a line on some Kobolds, so I'm going to end this first entry here. Don't worry though, you're likely to hear more from me on WoW before the week is out, so keep watching. I'm going to try to remember to make movies of the /dance animations for you....so that you can share in my emotional scars. Until then...