I was fortunate enough to get into the World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth Alpha. After thinking about it, I decided to roll a Void Elf and make her a Warlock. The Void Elf is one of the Allied Races.
The best thing about Alphas is the amusing “bugs” that players can find. The goal is to find and report all the bugs so they don’t make it into the final version of the game.
I play World of Warcraft on a Mac. My first few attempts at playing the Battle for Azeroth Alpha resulted in failure. It was possible to select a race, class, and gender. When I hit “customize”… the game promptly crashed.
Since I couldn’t report that bug in-game, I went to the Forums. Several other players, who also use Macs, had reported this bug, and I added my comments to theirs. The bug got fixed, and I was able to customize my Void Elf.
Ready to play! The game started me off with this lovely demon minion, so I tested that one first.
Not all of the Battle for Azeroth Alpha videos I recorded while streaming on Twitch were good. A few got recorded while I had my sound settings messed up, and this made them unwatchable.
One of the first quests I picked up involved going into a mine. The NPC (non-player character) in charge of the mine berated Gendrendia because she wasn’t wearing a mining helmet. The next thing I knew… she was wearing one.
Here are some of the videos that worked.
In the video above, I repeatedly encountered some very aggressive deer. They rush over to pick a fight with a player. I also reported some bugs (which is the whole point of playing an Alpha).
In the video above, I found a significant bug. After fighting and killing some enemies, the game kept me in combat. I was stuck in combat after that, and could not heal by eating food.
In the video above, I found some NPC’s with interesting names. One was Skinner McGuff that wanted me to collect poison for him (by killing a certain number of bugs and dinosaurs that ate the bugs). He’s a sketchy guy, and I wonder if players will encounter him again sometime.
The other was a Castaway named Stabby Jane. She sends players on several quests, one of which requires the player to find items that three Castaways have lost. She is missing a locket.
When I found the locket, the description said it contained a photo of Stabby Jane and another woman. We don’t get a clear answer of who the woman is. Could she be Stabby Jane’s sister? Or, is the woman Stabby Jane’s wife? Players are left to decide that for themselves.
There were plenty of bugs to report this time! My game crashed twice, and I had to close it and start again. A glitch caused my Warlock to rise from the ground in a way looked horribly unnatural. I quickly discovered that my character could turn, but could not walk. Once again, I restarted the game.
The birds are still glowing after death, but fail to open a loot window. My character got stuck in a position as if she was trying to loot something. I could make her walk, but the instant she stopped – she went back into a looting crouch. These are just a few of the strange bugs I found this time.
There is a quest chain that involves an extremely creepy child, who wants to have a tea party. I’ll leave you to watch the video to get a clearer idea of why I think the kid is creepy.
The first thing I noticed after logging in this time was that my minion was now blue. Up until this point, this minion was a white and light purple color (as seen in the videos I posted earlier in this blog post).
I wasn’t sure what to do next, so I wandered through a graveyard and randomly killed things. My best guess is that there are quests connected to that area – which I haven’t picked up yet.
I decided to go hunt two of the creatures that showed up on the map with a star – Gorehound and Nevermore. There were also Treasure Chests appearing on the map. Of course, I wanted to go find them.
In the video above, I picked up a quest that involved going into an area and rescuing Rangers and their pets. Interestingly, it didn’t seem to matter which ones I rescued. The pets were separate from the Rangers, and the game did not require me to match them up.
The quest area overlapped with a few other quests and a Bonus Objective that required me to kill skeletons (and other creatures). I love fighting skeletons!
When that was done, I randomly stumbled upon an area that was overrun with Quillrats and their Matriarch. Not much happened after I killed the “big bad”, so I think there must have been a quest for this (which I had not picked up yet).
In the video above, I found a bug – a boat went directly through a rock. I wandered around the market area of a town I’d never been to. The spice vendor sells a lot of interesting things, but none of them are spices.
Eventually, I went back to where the Castaways were at so I could turn in a quest. It turned out there were other quests in that area that I failed to pick up – because the game had a weird bug and I didn’t end up on the coast where I was supposed to be.
One quest involved killing the Sirens that were luring sailors to their death. The Sirens don’t seem to care if the sailors are male or female. Anyone will do. This quest led me to where the NPC I came here with ended up. I think this area was where I was supposed to start.
I ended up fighting a rare spawn called Fowlmouth – a huge parrot (that insults the player’s mother). Later, I picked up an escort quest that involved following around my drunken NPC friend Flynn.
In the video above, I completed a few quests in the pirate town. The pirates like their alcohol! I found a “bug” that resulted in a malfunctioning cannon.
In the video below, my character (and her NPC friend, Flynn) join the pirates. Sort of. Both of them have to wear purple pirate hats. Gendrendia the Warlock doesn’t like her hat.
Gendrendia the Warlock doesn’t like her hat.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the video below would be my last one from the World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth Alpha. It was time for the Beta to begin!
In the video above, I worked on a quest that required me to find clues about a stolen treasure. It seems like a very fitting quest to come from a town full of pirates. Another quest had me searching for an NPC named Rodrigo – who wanted me to feed his “pretties”. Rodrigo is my favorite character in that town!
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth Alpha is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites.
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