A few days ago, I met up with my guild in WoW and put the yoke back on. (Try to keep up, Part I is here.) I had been “avoiding” this for a while, to enjoy the peace and quiet of solitary play … without having to race around helping others, gathering crap for the crafters, dealing with tells from outsiders either wanting to join or bitching about a member.

You know, that old chestnut.

Tonight, after a mass PvP free-for-all in Hordeville, the WoW Open Beta came to a close and the wait for Live Day begins.

By the way, Blizzard never did give a parting gift for the beta testers … there is a protocol here, people! They unleashed some NPCs that wiped the floor with us, BFD. Put out with the max level; we need to aspire before we fork over the box price and a major slice of our future lives.

From the WoW thank you letter (still no workable permanent link system over there) :

The beta test community has been a tremendous source of information and feedback for the development teams, and we wish to thank our beta testers for participating in the beta test process. When the final version of World of Warcraft hits stores on November 23rd, you’ll see the culmination of your hard work.

(Ok, I guess.)

To end the evening, the guild had a brief convo on TeamSpeak about loot and how it will never tear us apart! (hehe, noobs.) Their naivete is both endearing and forboding.

I’ve been down this road before. It has a slippery slope.