[World of Warcraft (Stress Test) Impressions] Added 9-12-04
As of the writing of this little first impressions post, the World of Warcraft stress test beta is coming to a close. Though I really only had a few days to play the game (with my stalwart Paladin character of Zantarax) I did note that the game doesn't really seem to be all that different from most of the current MMPORPG fair out today.

Visually speaking the game is very nicely polished. If you've played Warcraft 3, just imagine playing as one of your foot soldiers zoomed in ALOT. The fauna and flora can get repetitive but the city environs are very interesting and give you a sense of "scale" that can sometimes be lacking. Night time doesn't seem quite as creepy as in some other titles, mostly because there always seems to be a strong sense of moonlight to guide you on your travels. Though some of the smaller critters (spiders, gnolls) can be hard to spot as they blend in.

Controls are very basic in keeping with Blizzard's tradition of relatively fuss-free interfaces. This can be both a blessing and a curse. While keybindings can be done, I haven't really seen anything in the way of creating macros or stacked commands. Hopefully this may be implemented but even w/o such an option the game is easy to get used to.

Gameplay as stated above is pretty vanilla in so far as I have seen during this short run. If you've been playing City of Heroes, or Final Fantasy XI you'll pretty much be familiar with the drill. Find a quest, do the objective, get a reward. In this sense nothing has really shown itself to be awe inspiring or innovative. Perhaps one nice aspect is that you can readily solo (though it will mean a lot of cautious adventuring) or group to combat really tough opponents. Shared loot and shared quests make things less cumbersome when trying to ally yourself with another player. Much like Final Fantasy I find that grouping in World of Warcraft (WoW) is all about complementary skills. Having a good healer, a few tanks etc. However some times the action seems a little mundane and unlike FFXI there's no cool bonuses for chaining special abilities. For some classes however their own powers should be chained. Paladins, my favorite class in any RPG, have the ability to shield themselves (or a party member) giving them time to use a healing potion or cast a healing spell upon themselves. For the solo-paladin these two special abilities are a great way to get out of a harry situation.

All in all the stress test went well. Very little crashes (though there did seem to be problems upon program exit), logging in and starting a character pain free. For a short-run beta there really isn't much else one can ask for. I look forward to seeing WoW hit store shelves.