I’m going to list here my plan to make through this painful choice of blocking foreign players from World of Warcraft american servers.

– The first step is obviously about getting the box of the game. I ordered it directly through Gamestop. They shipped it in time and the box just took off from Paris, on a plane, heading to Italy where I live. Aside Gamestop you can try to buy it through dvdboxoffice (cheapest choice). But I don’t guarantee you’ll receive the box soon. I had both good and bad luck with them.

Then the problem is about actually getting an account. In fact you cannot use the “free” month included in the box without registering with a valid credit card. And we know that Blizzard blocks foreign credit cards. So, there are workarounds to this problem?

– The first workaround (not confirmed) is about ordering a gamecard. These are prepaid cards with 60 days of “play time”. It’s the easiest way to play without a credit card so it will be probably possible to log in the game even as “foreigners”. Both EBworld and Gamestop ship these cards but they won’t arrive (at the shop) till this Monday.

– The second workaround is by getting and using a Paypal account. Even this possibility is unconfirmed since it’s still not enabled. Blizzard announced that they are trying to solve the issues so that they can enable it. No ETA. Possibly “soon”.

– The third workaround is confirmed by a few players. It’s the easiest one but a bit more “risky”. If Vivendi goes berserk now, in a month or more you can finish with a banned account. It shouldn’t happen but it’s still something not impossible. The trick consist to feed the billing application with a valid australian zip code and obviously setting Australia as your nation. If all goes smoothly the billing process will digest your foreign credit card and you’ll be able to pay monthly as with every other mmorpg.

– The fourth workaround is about getting a virtual credit card. To do this you need an already working credit card. From what I understand you are going to create a virtual card on top of your real one. Then you can change the billing infos of your virtual one so that you can finish with a “faked” USA credit card that Blizzard’s billing process will be able to digest. I went through this and the process isn’t easy. After registering the virtual credit card the company will charge your real card with a random amount. From 0.01$ to 2$. You then have to figure how much exactly it is (calling your bank) and send them this info. This process is needed so that they are sure that you own the credit card. Once your real card is verified they’ll enable your virtual credit card and you’ll receive a new number and CVV2 code. I believe that you can change the “owner” behind this card to whoever you like (and so someone living in the USA, enabling you to get into the game). This is why you can read on the site that the virtual Visa allows “anonymous purchases over the Internet”. The card is also pre-paid. So you can set an amount of money you want to put into it and have it enabled to spend that and not more than that. I also believe that your real credit card won’t be charged at all till you don’t start to effectively spend the credit.

That’s it. When my box arrives I’ll see which one works. Hoping to not finish with a banned account and a lot less money when I’m just trying to play a game and not being a l33t hacker.

World of Warcraft beta closes tomorrow.

Blizzard definitely loses the possibility to show that they are able to hold the load on the servers.

Now dream about magic patches to solve-it-all.

Same fate for the half-promises about keeping the beta characters active, at least on a special server. Or some kind of different reward for the closed beta testers. Here’s what you get:

you’ll have the knowledge that you played an instrumental role in the creation of a game of epic proportions that players will enjoy for many years to come.

Knowledge for everyone!

I’ve updated the .torrent to get the recent open beta client that is linked now on the official page of the game.

The file is here.

As a notice: It seems that the beta is currently “open”. I subscribed from Italy with my real name and address without a problem. I won’t play the game or download it because I cannot afford the time to get 2.5 Gb on the connection I have but at least I’ll follow the forum till they release the game.

EDIT: You’ll see a tracker error but it’s probably how Blizzard’s torrent works, the file isn’t broken and if you wait enough the download will start properly even if you keep getting the error. Dun worry.

Who didn’t expect this? :)

Both Fileplanet and the community site of World of Warcraft are dead. The “Open Beta” is officially started, at least in the dreams of both Blizzard and their players.

To begin with it’s not an open beta but when you are Blizzard you can also redefine the meaning of a word, who cares? You’ll have to subscribe and the fun is that the number of keys is limited. There are also local restrictions to be part of it.

The fact that the beta keys are limited is pushing the players to furiously refresh the homepage and hope to still get a spot. This obviously killing their site. Good plan, Blizzard. You couldn’t do this worse. Planning ahead your death must be fun.

Someone could expect that these big companies learn from previous mistakes.
No. This industry is made by masochist or noobs. Or both.

The World of Warcraft and Open Beta Account Creation sites are temporarily down. We are experiencing technical difficulties on our end and are working diligently to restore service to this site. We apologize for any inconvenience this is causing you. We do not currently have an estimated time for when the World of Warcraft Web site will be back up, but we are working extremely hard to solve these technical difficulties as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.

N – O – O – B – S

Who could expect that “limited accounts” + “open beta” would have caused this? Come on, who?

Commenting some of the issues about World of Warcraft latest patch. The mantra “we are reading bug and suggestion reports for the players” doesn’t have anymore a value. All these issues were repored months ago, with solutions to fix them. With this new patch they addressed nothing and pushed in brand new problems and breaking the game systems more.

—
This was a joke. Now in the PvP this is REAL. PvP now directly cost a fee if you want to take part.

Aside this. There were three big issues that where reported over and over by the players during the previous beta:

1- The experience in instances was too low
2- The item decay forced players to interrupt the gameplay to go back to towns, becoming the second cause of “group breaking” after the quick quests
3- The PvP need a different death system to address the various issues

Now. FOR ALL THREE, Rob Pardo came on the boards to type three answers. The answers were basically the same:

1a- Don’t worry, we are fixing the exp in instances next patch
2a- Don’t worry, the item decay is indeed a moneysink but it isn’t suppose to interrupt the gameplay and become annoying, we’ll retune it properly next patch
3a- Don’t worry, the PvP system isn’t finished and it will adjusted to address the problems

The patch arrived and we had three new anwers:

1b- Fantastic! We have increased the exp in the instances as we said. Woot! But we also increased the exp requirements! Teehee!
2b- Superb! Not only we didn’t change the item decay system, but we have consolidated it, now you take a 10% durability hit each time you die!
3b- Awesome! The death system for PvP is unchanged, but we added the item decay to it as well. Want PvP? No money? No party.

Now the fun part is that all these three changes not only break the previous problems that were reported, But they CREATED A BUNCH OF NEW SERIOUS ISSUES:

1- The increase in experience in the instances comes with an increase of the experience requirements, making any change at all. The fun part is that solo players are, by definition, out of instances and so for them the “present” is a +20-25% for each level. Fun!
2- The decay system wasn’t broken because it was a (perhaps needed) moneysink. It was broken because it broke the gameplay, forced you to stop in a middle of an instance or a quest to return to a town. It was broken as a boring timesink. Now they even improved this by adding another 10% for each death. As a consequence this becomes a major *game breaking* for new players that use to die often since they need to get use to a new genre.
3- The PvP was broken, who cares? Instead of implementing a different death system to address the issues, they broke it even more, adding problems. Now it’s the grief paradise. Normal players will have to avoid PvP if they don’t want to loose money, while organized grief guild can have way more fun because now not only they can corpse-camping, but they can also inflict money penalties to their victims, forcing, at best, a res at the spirit healer and a 100% item decay.

Want solutions to have fun, not-broken PvP? Here:

The “incentive”, about which you write, shouldn’t be “excused” by a penalty. But it should involve a *purpose*. Give the players and groups objectives to achieve, give them reasons to fight for. *This* will make the combat meaningful because there will be a structure that tells you what you should achieve and why.

If the reward is about the rejoice for the winning group because they made the other group face a downtime and a moneyloss, well, the game is really weak.

A better idea, spawning from your graveyard solution, could be about building a very simple CTF (Capture The Flag) system. I agree that both Horde and Alliance should respawn at their own graveyard (no corpse run if you die in PvP, *just a respawn* at your graveyard. No choice.). But we also build a system so that EVERY contested zone has “generic” graveyards that can be “conquered” and flagged. Once the Horde (for example) own the graveyard, they’ll be able to respawn there, while the Alliance will only able to respawn at their nearest “owned” graveyard (which can be in a zone nearby).

In this way we start to offer something to fight for and with a purpose.

I also DO NOT accept this. It’s a PLATE armor.

—
While I was writing Blizzard posted two updates:

– They announced that they’ll take away the durability hit from PvP.
– The release policy to respec talents is a new moneysink. Each time you respec the cost goes up.

So we are back to the previously broken state. Fun. Bad signs coming from this game, these glaring mistake at the base of the design aren’t acceptable.

It’s already available pretty much everywhere and also here.

It’s based on Blizzard’s installer and you can still use it with a program of your choice. If you get a “tracker error” don’t worry. The file will start to download what it needs anyway.

Have fun. I’ll watch from the outside since I’m done with them.