Let me start this with the folloing. *bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep* Ok, i feel better now. And now for a rant on, you guessed it, WoW open beta! Lets start with saying that game companies that make MMO's are, in my opinion, PARANIOD! Lets start with EQ2. They have been in closed beta for, oh, about 6 months. what? 6 months without an open beta or ANYTHING!!! That's absurd! If tons more people buy it on the release date then were in closed beta, they'll be, the servers will go down, and the general release as a whole well fail.... it all seams rather absurd to me. Its an MMO, emphasise on the first M. If you do an open test, then you actually get the Massively part. I mean, these servers are SUPPOSED to withstand about 10,000 logging on and downloading at once, so why not make it open and see if it actually can? This is why i've been giving guild wars so much credit. They went stright from standard alpha testing to open beta, and even some open alpha testing during E3. They, unlike Blizzard and sony, were not caught up in the "Everyone will think the game is bogus if we go open and the servers fail" plan of thinking. Come on, people, no one expects betas to be perfect in the least! (And if you find someone who does, well... i think you couild guess what i'd have to say to them.) and then, there's Blizzard and FilePlanet. Blizzard is a good game company, and generally knows how to get files around as well as the games themselves.. (Which is making me wonder why they aren't using their Blizzard Downloader, a very good peice of software in its own right, to get the WoW Stress Test Final beta around.) Then we have FilePlanet... Part of the GameSpy nation, which appears to be after the entire downloads market on games. Let me quote this part from the official WoW final Stress Test Beta FAQ.

"Are you charging people to play the final stress test? Blizzard is not charging a fee to play the final stress test or the open beta."

Seems like the right idea, right? wrong. Here's the rest of it, and where fileplanet gets involved and gets money to boot.

"However, to help defray the costs associated with distributing a large number of files and to keep our focus on finalizing World of Warcraft, we have partnered with FilePlanet for the distribution of the final stress test client, which is only available to FilePlanet subscribers. Subscription to FilePlanet carries with it a nominal fee. "

yes, thats right people. Blizzard is letting FilePlanet charge to get the Final Stress Test. letting them charge for something BLizzard could do themselves, if they would let the servers do some work before the Final Stress Test. Absurd, isn't it. It takes a very small amount of time to set up, a few minutes a day checking to make sure its still running, and a few seconds to shut it down, all in the comfort of their own servers and with no fee's attached. *sigh* Oh well. I'll just have to wait for open beta and grive in the mean time... Shade and sweet water!