Mists of Pandaria Beta

This week’s Shared Topic on Blog Azeroth asks if we’re playing the Mists of Pandaria beta.

My confession is that I’ve been in the beta since VERY early, since the first round of outside testers were allowed in to experience it.  Yet, I’ve never downloaded the beta client and certainly never logged in.  I’m funny about betas.  When it’s a game, expansion, whatever, that I *know* I am going to play no matter what, I have no interest in experiencing it before it goes live to the public.  There is a sense of pure excitement and wonder when you log in the first time, and I don’t want that feeling to be on a beta character, some carbon copy of Treetopsy or another shell of a character I have no attachment to.

A big part of WoW for me is the exploration, the quests, the story, and the “little things” that make MMOs unique and special.  I have no desire to spoil that through logging in.  I also do my best to avoid major spoilers on all the blogs I read.  I’ve been reading Cymre’s posts on the pet battles, but those don’t feel too spoilery.  I try to avoid all the screenshots of the new zones in MoP as well, because I am excited to step into a world I’ve never previewed before.  It just doesn’t seem like there is a point to it all, because I know I’m buying it and don’t need any convincing.  I also don’t need to be any more excited than I already am — new zones and content is all I need to be stoked to play MoP.

I have great respect for the people who log in to MoP beta and write up such detailed and useful guides.  I know I’ll be thankful for these guides when Mists goes live, so thank you to those people who don’t mind spoiling their experiences!  I also know that the bug reporting you all do is immensely helpful for those of us who are spoiler-free, so thank you. 🙂

For me, I’m going to enter the world of Mists of Pandaria without knowing what to expect.  And I’m thrilled about that.