I received my beta key on the evening of 4/21/2004, and eagerly downloaded the client and started to play the following day. Here are my first impressions of the game.

If you want to call me a whiney bastard then you have every right to, but the month-long wait between the letter of congratulations and my receipt of the beta key seemed to last forever! With that said, I actually got into the second stage fairly early - five days after the first round of keys went out. It could have been a few weeks from what I've heard from others.

I didn't notice that I had received the key until the morning after I received it in my inbox. From work I went through the registration process and started the download client on my home PC. The download mechanism (BitTorrent) was extremely quick. It maxed out my DSL connection at 1.5Mbps and the entire download was done several hours before I arrived home at the end of my workday.

Character Creation

As of now there are a total of eight races in the game. On the Alliance side there are Human, Night Elf, Dwarf, and Gnome. On the Horde side there are Orc, Tauren, Troll, and Undead. In the first closed beta Alliance races were all people could play. Since that was the case I elected to start the game as an Orc - where I thought I could do the most good.

The classes so far are Warrior, Paladin, Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Priest, Druid, and Shaman. Hunter is also listed in the available class dialogs but it isn't actually ready at this time. Different classes are available or not available depending on what race you choose. Since I'm new to this game I picked Warrior. It fits with the whole Orc thing and Warriors, in my previous experience, tend to be less complicated to play.

After selecting my race and class I changed the look of my character and entered a name. That's all there was to character creation! The only option after that was to enter the game.

Being a New Orc Warrior

The Orc/Troll starting point is called "The Den". It consists of a large natural cave and some skin and wood shelters at the bottom of a cliff face in an arid, rocky desert environment with lots of cliffs and mesas. The starting town is puny. All of the class trainers are in the cave or shelters, and a few merchants that sell basic items are there as well. Overall the environment is that of a barren wasteland. It's generally conducive to making you want to get through with your newbie tasks and leave.

As a first impression: I could tell from the beginning that the horde areas hadn't seen a lot of tweaking. Monster placement was okay, but the desert was a pretty bland and boring place to be. With one or two exceptions the quests were fairly run-of-the-mill for the first area (they got better later). The central 'town' area really needed some more content and area added to it - perhaps by expanding the cave system. As someone not experienced with graphical MMORPGs the game mechanics and general atmosphere held enough of my interest to keep me very happy through this first bit. For people who have more experience, this area probably isn't good enough at the moment. I have been using the /suggest feature liberally and have seen lots of nice changes happening based on my and other players' feedback. It's coming along.

We Seek the Grail!

I had my first quest within seconds. I received it by talking with an orc that had a huge gold exclamation mark levitating above his head. "LouZiffer... go into that cave and talk to the guy with a big question mark over his head. He'll tell you what to do next." That's just what I did. Simply doing that was worth a 100-150 experience point award. After talking with the guy in the cave, he gave me my second quest. "LouZiffer... go kill a few boars just outside of town."

Note that my description of these quests is vague. What you DON'T see in my description is the great story detail that goes into each one. Every time you get a quest in this game you get two sections of text added to your quest log. One section is a simple summary of what you're supposed to be doing - similar to what I have above. The second section is a wonderfully done bit of story that describes why you are doing it and for whom. Blizzard has done a great job on these bits of story. To me, those are a big part of why World of Warcraft is so immersive.

Fight! Fight!

At its most basic, fighting as a warrior in World of Warcraft is simple indeed. You right click on the mob you want to target, and then walk up to it. Your character then begins to bash said creature with the weapon in his or her hands. However, a ton of other options are available while your character is flailing away. Where your Warrior's mana bar should be is an empty bar that gradually fills up as your Warrior gives and takes damage. The red stuff that fills the bar indicates your Warrior's rage level. Rage can be spent on different attacks that help a great deal in making your enemies die faster or to interrupt or counter one of their actions. It can also be used for shouts - similar to the barbarian's shouts in Diablo II in both their effects and durations.

In practice, fighting as a warrior consists of letting your character wail away while you monitor what other actions are available and execute them either by clicking them or hitting your number keys. You can move your most-used abilities to the quickbar at the bottom of the screen and, as your rage builds, they will begin showing up as active when you can use them. On average you will attack once every two or three seconds, and will have some kind of ability available for one half to one third of your attacks.

There are lots of tactics to fighting, and I've found the game to be wonderful in introducing new tactics, abilities, and situations in a structured and fun manner. The encounters start out as simple one-on-one affairs where you can thrash away without being concerned about more bad guys marching in. You also start out with limited options for your abilities, which allows you to get used to the ones that you'll be using the most.

Taking it to the Next Level

In the middle of my second quest I had just killed my third or fourth boar when a big brass gong went off and a burst of light enveloped my character. After I stopped screaming, I saw "Congratulations! You are now Level 2!" on my screen. This was after roughly 15 minutes of play. It seemed a little early for that at first, but I remembered back to my days on MUDs when the jump from level 1 to level 2 came just as fast or faster to those who weren't new to the whole experience.

Levels in World of Warcraft are pretty much the same as they are everywhere. Every level you gain boosts your maximum level for some of your attributes (strength, spirit, intelligence, etc.). You can spend skill points, which are earned at one point per 300XP you gain killing monsters (not doing quests!), to raise those. Every even level you gain tends to open up more class-based abilities you can learn at your class trainer. Those cost money.

Everything in the game is balanced by level. In one-on-one fighting, I've found that monsters at my level plus or minus one can be killed with no great degree of difficulty. Go one more level above that range and they get tough. One more level above that and I have a good chance of dying. This has been true throughout the game for me. Quests come with levels as well, which have the same degree of difficulty based on how close they are in level to my own.

Thoughts So Far, and Interesting Happenings

As an Orc I found the beginning to be somewhat bland - but that's only looking back in hindsight. It was very entertaining, and I had my Orc warrior up to level 5 and out of newbie lands in about two hours of play time. Very tolerable by my standards.

One quest stood above all others in the area around The Den. While exploring around and killing giant scorpions, I found an orc who had gotten in some trouble. Apparently a larger, more vicious scorpion had laid him low and he was about to die. He asked me to avenge him by killing the scorpion that did this to him. After I found and killed the scorpion I went back to him, and he gave me an item as a reward. He also told me to go back to The Den and report that he was still alive so that they could bring help to get him back. I reported back to The Den as promised and help was sent out. The language revolving around this quest and the location where I found it made for a good play experience.

After I had basically finished the first area, I started to explore its boundaries. In doing so I found a hidden path through the mountains to the west. Finding the hidden path actually gave me experience... which was to be my first of much exploration experience in the game. At the end of the path was a sheer cliff face down to a large body of water below. Across from the cliff was the town of Ratchet, a level 15-or-so horde town populated by Tinkers (not yet a playable race, but hints are they might be).

I saw many Orc and Troll bodies at the bottom of the cliff. I was intrigued and decided to leap from the edge. My character survived the fall damage, but was quickly made a meal of by a level 17+ blue half-man half-crab creature that popped out of the water below. I had died!

Once I died my ghost appeared in the nearest graveyard in the same zone I was in. Unfortunately, in leaping from the cliff I had changed zones. I ended up in The Crossroads - the central horde area right now for level 10 to 20 characters which is far away on the other side of ratchet. I had left home in a very big way! Rather than march all the way back to my body, I reincorporated there (paying about 3 monsters worth of experience to do so). Then I checked in at the local inn and logged out. Changing zones that way wasn't so bad for me since I was done with the newbie area, but it'd be a whole lot worse for a level 1 player. I sent a /suggest off to the powers that be to have that fixed if possible.