So, what the opinion of the stress testers of WoW?

[Thecla]

I've been playing a NE rogue, making it to lvl 20, and a Human Paladin, to lvl 12. The paladin was on a PvE server, the rogue is on a PvP one.

So far, I'm not all that excited about WoW. Meh.

Overall, I'm very impressed by what I've seen so far. WoW may be evolutionary, not revolutionary, and a "Diabloized" MMORPG, but that's what will make it a big success.

I've encountered the odd lag spike (not too many), quite a few critical errors crashing the game (most of them while quitting) which I'm sure will be fixed by release, and some server crashes; but it has run very well for a stress test (though the Guild Wars demo during E3 was more stable).

Graphics are very pretty IMO, with really different feels in different areas. They're not too detailed, since Blizzard always tries to minimize system requirements, but detailed enough that they look good (whereas in D2 they sacrificed too much graphical quality IMO).

I'm currently a lvl 18 night-elf hunter. (I may not be the fastest lvler, but I have certainly put in my share of time -- a lvl 20 rogue and a lvl 12 paladin must have taken a while even in a game you're not that excited about ;) ) I also got stumped when I was around lvl 12 in Westfall and had done most of the lvl appropriate quests nearby but found all the Westfall quests too tough -- I ulimately went back to the Dwarven areas around Loch Modan and found plenty to do there, then returned later to Westfall; so I guess it's just a matter of exploring a bit to find good areas for your lvl. The night elf island was a bit of a dead loss quest and experience wise though.

Combat does have some strategy, though I do find it a bit monotonous. Having said that, though, I am still figuring out how best to use my skills, especially how to use my pet to tank and attract aggro, so even solo combat does require some thought and experience. (Hunters do quite a bit of damage; even in groups it's easy for me to attract a lot of aggro.)

Quests are mostly pretty routine, but they do succeed in providing an additional purpose to what you would be doing anyway (e.g. collect X if you want to solo monsters; kill Y to encourage partying; and deliver Z to encourage exploration). Spawn rates can be a problem in some overcrowded areas, but I guess that may be largely due to a lot of people being syncronized around similar lvls in the stress test.

I've found tradekills (skinning/leatherwork) fun to work on, even if they're implemented in a very simple way compared with many other games -- again not necessarily a bad thing.

Only started one dungeon crawl so far, to deadmines, but got stopped when the server crashed, so I can't say how that is -- but it seems to me they have deliberately included lots of different aspects to the game (solo exploration, groups, instanced dungeons, tradeskills, raid content...) in a way that is additive rather than exclusive.