World of Warcraft Stress Test, Day 1 Posted September 11, 2004 at 12:00 am

I got into the World of Warcraft Stress Test through some miracle of association. (Thanks Vance!) When I joined the game for the first time, I was hit with information overload. Vance joined me on this first romp through the Teldrassil, the starting town for the Night Elves, and he graciously helped bring me up to speed. I recall that it took a minute or two just to figure out how to send a message on the right channel (private vs. party vs. world). My initial impression is that the interface is not as immediately intuitive as I would like. Left-click selects things; right-click interacts with things; but movement is done through the keyboard, much like a shooter. It’s not bad so much as it’s different, at least from anything Blizzard has previously done. I felt like I was being dragged along through much of this initial experience. It wasn’t until later, when I had time on my own to experiment, that I began to feel comfortable in the game.