Ive done a lot of gaming betas over the years, all the way back to the original UO beta. good times.....however, they can be an excercise in frustration and a test of ones patience.

have fun

Day 1 report from the WoW Wrath of the Lich King expansion:

4+ hours downloading 1.88Gb (but that's OK, Alex downloaded 10Gb worth of Warhammer earlier this week)

Eight separately patch downloads

Finally got it running last night.

I had the option to create a new starter toon or copy an existing one of mine over, so I imported Tenigma.

As per the terms of service, I was required to change her name when I got into the game, so I renamed her "Tenikita" ("Nikita" is northern-sounding, and this expansion is all about the north and cold weather, and "kita" means "north" in Japanese).

I also went to the barbershop and gave Tenikita a new hairdo.... undead females how get a few new hairstyles including, most notably... GNOME PIGTAILS!! So of course I had to get some. Kind of funny since you can't see it most of the time since she is in shadowform.

Picked up all new talents (went up to the top tier in the Shadow tree).

Went out to check out the new area and quest a bit, and chatted with people who could type in complete sentences and seemed relatively mature/sm'rt.

Met one level 71 Death Knight and prodded about the class... was impressed enough to roll one.

Created new Death Knight--a female orc!!! I saw a ton of blood elf DKs in the starter area (that is soooo last year), quite a few tauren DKs. I think I was the only female orc. Orc orc orc!!! Rawr!!! I love female orcs, they are sooo hawt-looking. Named her Tenixia which everyone would pronounce "tenick-siya" although the name is derived from the Chinese word "xiá" which is their chivalrous hero/heroine class (and probably pronounced "sheeya" or "shya").

Without giving anything away, OMG Death Knights ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyone who plays, I would recommend rolling a DK just to try out the starter area. Well, I'm assuming the Alliance area is the same. But you know, who cares about Alliance. lol. So well thought out.

So now I'm having such a blast I will probably spend most of my time playing in beta. Hahahahaha. Fun!

I was part of the beta testing for Klondike a couple of months ago

Apparently Lani has noticed that I am no longer listening so you all get the benefit.

Congrats on your ultimate geekness! :D

It's easier to smile and nod from afar as you scroll through the excited updates.

;) :D

what's Wow ?

World of Warcraft. An online role playing game aka a giant timesuck.

I was a beta and theater tester for another online game, but we were required to sign an agreement to not divulge our participation for two years. Is WOW different in that respect, or is the company I tested for just really paranoid?

Testers sign varying degrees of non-disclosure agreements depending on how far along the game is in the testing stage. In the earliest of stages ("Alpha" or "friends and family only") it is completely closed, and anyone leaking information about the game or sharing screenshots gets in big trouble.

We're not in closed beta anymore, meaning people can write about it. However a person can only play the beta version if they get a select invitation from the company, as they are restricting how many users to the server at any time.

After this round is over, we will go to public beta, where anyone who has the game can download the beta to test it out. Usually by them the biggest of the bugs are already fixed.