I Got In

Got the email. Burning Crusade beta access for World of Warcraft, and after all the delays it actually feels like this expansion might exist. Blizzard handing out keys to test Outland, and somehow I got one.

It’s insane to care this much about a video game beta. Server gets wiped, nothing persists, nothing matters in any real sense. But there’s that moment anyway—being selected, being early, being one of the few people who gets to see something before the rest of the world. It’s not important and I know it’s not important, but it hits anyway.

Plans are dumb simple: waste an hour naming a character, roll a Night Elf Warrior, go north into everything new. New zones, new dungeons, new raids. All the content that doesn’t exist in the live game yet. Ali’s actually going to lose his mind when I tell him I’m already there running around while he’s still stuck grinding vanilla.

Being first to somewhere, even somewhere that’s not real and doesn’t matter—it gets to you. The anticipation beats the actual content. The exclusivity beats the gameplay. You wait for launch like everyone else, but for a few weeks you know what’s coming. That’s the thing that matters, I think.