# World of Warcraft open beta signups live -- sort of! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 2, 2004, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493 "2004-11-02T03:43:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/1 "2004-11-02T03:43:27Z")
So, the good news: you can now sign up for the World of Warcraft final stress test! The bad news: you have to do it through [www.fileplanet.com](http://www.fileplanet.com), which means paying at least seven or eight bucks for a membership to the site. They make it look like you have to pay at least sixteen bucks for ninety days, but if you poke around you may be able to find alink to a cheaper signup, for seven or eight bucks. Try refusing their initial offers and see if they give you the cheap rate to lock you in; or try signing up from their main page instead of signing up through their WoW pages. The worse news: they somehow didn’t anticipate that they’d get a metric crapload of site traffic with this beta signup, and so they’re really far behind on processing the signups. It was three hours after I signed up that I received email confirming my account, and now it’s six hours later and I still haven’t received the code that’ll let me actually download the beta. The good news again: if you aren’t as much of a Blizzard crackhead as I am, you can save your money and wait a week, and the Open Beta will begin. Anyone else a Blizzard crackhead like me? Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Incubus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c68b51/32.png) [@Incubus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Incubus)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/2 "2004-11-02T04:34:17Z")
I was actually anxiously anticipating the release of the Open Beta. I played the Stress Test, and much to my chargrin I was hopeless addicted (well, at least for the 3 hours I had the opportunity to play it ☹ ) However, I think I’ll pass. I have so many things on my plate- work, school, the NaNoWriMo, christmas shopping, that the beta would just be a diversion, and I’d put things off to play it, or be bored out of my skull during work out of the desire to play it. If I hold out until it is released (probably by christmas time) I will have much, much more free time to enjoy it. But by all means have fun! I know I look forward to playing the Dwarf Paladin (can’t wait till they release Paladin talents and racial special abilities! 😃 ) ---
**Author:** ![Brainiac4](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brainiac4/32/3534_2.png) [@Brainiac4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brainiac4)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/3 "2004-11-02T04:50:19Z")
Release date is 11/16 – so I’m afraid that you paid for a week or two of beta time. It _will_ be in stores on that day. Expect an initial patch after install, though. It’s… pretty damn good. I spent a month or so playing in the beta, before City of Heroes came out and I jumped to that. I’ve played a bit since then. It looks great, is fun to play, and will be really popular. It’s not nearly as finished as I would like it to be – Paladin talents have not yet been playtested at all, which is a problem – so it will see a fair amount of patching early on. In other words, it’s an MMO. ---
**Author:** ![Who\_me\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/958977/32.png) [@Who\_me\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Who_me_1)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/4 "2004-11-02T12:24:07Z")
Best Buy had a hundred or so World of Warcraft boxes on its shelves Saturday. They were all marked as for pre-order only, but the time is getting close. I’m just going to wait until the game comes out and buy it. I’ve never played a MMORPG before, but I’ll learn as I go. ---
**Author:** ![Brainiac4](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brainiac4/32/3534_2.png) [@Brainiac4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brainiac4)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/5 "2004-11-02T13:32:51Z")
The pre-order boxes are how Best Buy handles in-store pre-orders. You buy the box, usually for $10 or so, and you get some kind of trinket – Doom III had a pewter figurine in it, for example. The store then knows to increase its order of the game to account for the fact that you’ll be back on launch day to pick up a copy. When you go back in, you bring your receipt from the pre-order box, and get $10 off the game itself. It’s kind of a neat system. I’ve used it a couple of times, although I prefer to pre-order online. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/6 "2004-11-02T13:35:16Z")
> [@Brainiac4](#): > > Release date is 11/16 – so I’m afraid that you paid for a week or two of beta time. See, you think I’m a sucker, but you’re wrong. I’m a hopeless junkie, an addict desperate for a fix. To be precise, I paid for less than a week of stress test: next Monday the open beta will be completely free, and I know that, and I paid my eight bucks anyway, because _I can’t stand to be without the game_. The game that is still only a quarter downloaded, because FilePlanet is the most disorganized bunch of fools this side of a baboon herd. I finally got my confirmation email allowing me into the stress test some seven hours after I’d signed up (a process that should’ve been automatic and immediate), and the download keeps stalling out. Grr! But I need my fix. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/7 "2004-11-02T14:11:07Z")
hmmm… you guys _do_ know that if you poke around on FilePlanet, you can find the download itself. It’s not restricted to some arcane email message. I had no idea I was supposed to wait for an email, so I found it myself. [Here’s the link](http://www.fileplanet.com/download.aspx?f=147141). You do have to be a FilePlanet subscriber to download it, and you’ll have to wait for your email to activate it. But you can at least get the download going while you wait for the activation code if you want. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/8 "2004-11-02T14:32:00Z")
> [@Athena](#): > > hmmm… you guys _do_ know that if you poke around on FilePlanet, you can find the download itself. It’s not restricted to some arcane email message. I had no idea I was supposed to wait for an email, so I found it myself. > > [Here’s the link](http://www.fileplanet.com/download.aspx?f=147141). > > You do have to be a FilePlanet subscriber to download it, and you’ll have to wait for your email to activate it. But you can at least get the download going while you wait for the activation code if you want. That link doesn’t work if you haven’t received an activation key–I just tried it. [this link](http://www.fileplanet.com/_dlmgr.aspx?fp=147141&url=http://x73.fileplanet.com:28900/102004/worldofwarcraftopenbeta.zip&g=dc6c2312-fc60-4877-b484-04cec3d61c83&p=0&ps=http://x73.fileplanet.com:28900/&v=44), however, does seem to work; it’s from the [battle.net](http://battle.net) forums. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/9 "2004-11-02T14:34:46Z")
Hmmm. I have yet to receive an activation key, and I’m halfway through the download. You sure that you don’t mean that it doesn’t work if you don’t have a subscription to FilePlanet? Cuz you _do_ need a subscription to download the stress test client. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/10 "2004-11-02T14:46:58Z")
> [@Athena](#): > > Hmmm. I have yet to receive an activation key, and I’m halfway through the download. You sure that you don’t mean that it doesn’t work if you don’t have a subscription to FilePlanet? Cuz you _do_ need a subscription to download the stress test client. Strange. Maybe it depends on your settings? Or maybe they’ve given you an activation key but the email’s not gone out to you? When I click on your link, it redirects me to a signup page. Or maybe…I didn’t actually try signing up, since i finally got my key last night. But prior to that when I followed the link you just gave and tried signing up (and had already received a subscription email), it just congratulated me for signing up and left it at that. Maybe they’ve changed it since midnight last night. Who knows. Fileplanet really seems to have dropped the ball on this one. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Brainiac4](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brainiac4/32/3534_2.png) [@Brainiac4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brainiac4)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/11 "2004-11-02T15:14:42Z")
Activation key is used in the installer, and again when setting up your account. You can download the client, but without the key, it’s just 2+ GB of 1s and 0s. At least, that’s how it worked in the beta. Also, I believe they are still using BitTorrent, and if so, and you are using a router, you can greatly speed up the download by forwarding some ports to your machine. 6881 to 6889 3724 6112 I more than doubled speed of the download this way, on multiple occasions. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/12 "2004-11-02T15:35:35Z")
> [@Brainiac4](#): > > Activation key is used in the installer, and again when setting up your account. You can download the client, but without the key, it’s just 2+ GB of 1s and 0s. > > At least, that’s how it worked in the beta. I think they’ve changed it: as I said, I was unable last night to get to the download page until they’d assigned me a key. Before that, I could get almost to the download page, but then I’d be redirected back to the signup page. Maybe they’ve changed that in the hours since. > [@](#): > > Also, I believe they are still using BitTorrent, and if so, and you are using a router, you can greatly speed up the download by forwarding some ports to your machine. > > 6881 to 6889 > 3724 > 6112 > > I more than doubled speed of the download this way, on multiple occasions. Interesting! I don’t think they’re using BitTorrent, but I’m not sure: I think they’ve got dedicated servers instead. The closed-beta folks are using bittorrent to dl the latest client, and are complaining like crazy about it, since their dl speeds are a fraction of the Fileplanet speeds. 'Course, they’re also not having to pay for it. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![FilmGeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@FilmGeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FilmGeek)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/13 "2004-11-02T19:19:26Z")
Ardred was PISSED when he saw that they were charging. He thought that the “Open Beta” was going to cost him $16 bucks and flipped. I assured him that the beta itself was free and that only the really hardcore people had to pay. I’m still skeptical about the release date. ---
**Author:** ![Brainiac4](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brainiac4/32/3534_2.png) [@Brainiac4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brainiac4)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/14 "2004-11-02T19:27:01Z")
> [@FilmGeek](#): > > I’m still skeptical about the release date. Don’t be. It’s too close to jack around with at this point. I work for a major etailer, and we’re trying to figure out how to get our online pre-orders shipped on the 16th. If they change the date at this point, it would cost them bigtime. Plus, it’s starting to get crowded, with Half-Life 2 and MOH:PA coming out in November as well. Games are getting to be like movies, where the big ones want a weekend all to themselves, with nobody else in there to suck up all the customers. ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/15 "2004-11-02T19:35:57Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > Anyone else a Blizzard crackhead like me? > > Daniel My six year old is on the sixth campaign of the Frozen Throne. He got all the way through III, although I have to help him sometimes. Sometimes he teaches me new tricks. I imagine he’ll be quite good (and have CTS) by the time he’s 10. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/16 "2004-11-02T20:13:52Z")
> [@ShibbOleth](#): > > My six year old is on the sixth campaign of the Frozen Throne. Holy crap! That kid frightens and impresses me. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2004, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/17 "2004-11-04T14:18:13Z")
Woot! Finally last night I finished downloading the program. It took me 48+ hours to download it over the Blizzard servers, but I finally got it. For some reason, Fileplanet was agonizingly slow for me on my home machine: the downloads never exceeded 150 kps, and hovered around 2-6 kps most of the time. But yesterday at work, on a lark I tried downloading from Fileplanet, and got a consistent 1.2 to 1.5 MPS download. I don’t know whether FP upgraded its servers, or whether I just have a rockiner connection at work. Anyways, I’m playing now, and am thrilled! It is incredibly fun and addictive, even when I’m just running around chopping the heads off tigers and selling their pelts to furriers. This is a game that’s going to make me lose sleep. Anyone else playing? I’m playing Horde on Server 13, but I can’t remember my character’s name :(. I’ll post it later, in case anyone wants to say hi. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2004, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/18 "2004-11-04T14:31:49Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > Holy crap! That kid frightens and impresses me. > > Daniel He does the same to his parents. Glad to see you got your download. I’m not up for Beta stuff, too lazy, but will let you know when we catch up. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2004, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/19 "2004-11-04T16:14:46Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > Anyone else playing? I’m playing Horde on Server 13, but I can’t remember my character’s name :(. I’ll post it later, in case anyone wants to say hi. > > Daniel ooOOo, I am on 13=) right now i have an undead nuke named Lillitha, will make something on the good side named aruvqan, say howdy to me if you catch me in game=) ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2004, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493/20 "2004-11-04T16:31:32Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > ooOOo, I am on 13=) right now i have an undead nuke named Lillitha, will make something on the good side named aruvqan, say howdy to me if you catch me in game=) Excellent–will do! (Nuke=mage?) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-open-beta-signups-live-sort-of/272493.md?page=2)