For me it depends when the beta comes, if it comes tomorrow then I'll still be failing on pretty much every heroic DS boss (only heroic kill is Morchok, but I'm proud of that one!) and so won't care about the beta. If we're 8/8 or have given up, then I'll be in MoP beta rather than live.

Also remember those of us with the pass only have a promise to get access. Beta could run March-May, and 1/3 of sign ups get access in March, another 1/3 in April and so on, they never said how long we'd get access for, so although 1 million people will get to experience the beta, it may be that only a couple of hundred thousand of us get it at any given time.

I think I'm in the minority-- I signed up specifically for beta. I loved the one time I got to spend on the PTR, trying out new things and figuring out mechanics before anyone else. It was more relaxed about death and a blast. I can't wait to get my hands on all this new stuff and try every single bit of it out (even though I have no intention of playing a monk on live)

Grovin,

You are probably right about that; however, from a planning and prep perspective Blizzard has to expect them all to actively participate throughout the course of the Beta or plan for a tiered entrance into the Beta because if they go by your assumption and then the opposite happens it would be a nightmare of complaints and bad press etc.

Not only ruining the experience for live, but quite a few people will be deterred by all the resets to characters, re-downloading of the beta itself, and all the bugs.

I was in the cata beta, it was fun, but I think that may have been the cause of me never rolling a goblin. I enjoyed Kazan, but HATED WITH A BURNING PASSION the jungle part (town in a box never really worked).

Favorite thing for me was the bug with Crusader Aura and Aura Mastery :P

Also having a whale shark chasing me on land, which was actually pretty terrifying when you just see the fin start to pop out of the water and the rest of it slowly rising and you're like "huh what the... OH MY GOD I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW OH CRAP OH CRAP"

@Nick

Although it's true that Blizzard never really said how much beta time we'd be getting, they'd be skating on pretty thin ice if annual pass users got a distinctly different beta experience than what we saw in the WotLK and Cata open betas. I am not talking about legal issues, here, of course. The Annual Pass agreement is vague enough that they're protected there.

However, when you have a million people signing up with a certain set of (generally reasonable based on experience) expectations and those expectations are not met, you're asking for trouble. Someone will complain and someone will report on it and that creates a PR problem that Blizzard would rather not have.

I think Blizz is essentially banking on exactly what Grovin says. There will be some people who jump at the chance to actually test the beta, but they've probably got numbers that tell them only a certain percentage of players who enroll in a beta actually spend any real time in it.

True, but they control the flow to whatever extent they haven't already promised away. I didn't sign up for it so I don't know the fine print, but if the wording for the annual pass merely said "beta access" - not "unrestricted beta access", not "access for the entire duration of the beta", etc. - then they may just issue each person a key valid for exactly one stress-test weekend, like the ones SWTOR was giving out like candy back in November. I don't think it'll be THAT extreme, but even if it was, the merits of any complaints about limited access would only be valid in proportion to the level of access specifically spelled out in the agreement - not in proportion to the level of access people may have assumed they'd have in the absence of detail.

I meant to say "@arixian"...

I'm reading what I wrote and now feel like I need to clarify. I don't think they'd actually give each person only a weekend key, and then reply to any complaints with "We said beta access, you got beta access"; they're smarter than that. I just mean to say that if nothing was stated that commits them to a greater degree than that, then they technically could if they wanted to (and of course, suffer the consequences).

I found that I enjoyed Cat a lot less by playing the Beta.

I like the slow titration of enjoying a game. The Beta let me experience it all too much and too fast.

I will futz around with Panda Skins, and probably do their starting area. But that's it.

I could see that being possible.

I could also see it being one of the most widely tested expac's they've ever had.

I think it could go either way.

I loved beta testing cataclysm, b/c I reported several game-breaking bugs when I was in it. Their bug reporting system was pretty top notch when I used it. :)

My toons are mostly alliance, so my plan is to stay for the most part on horde faction toons. If their emphasis really is on alliance vs horde, I should stay relatively unspoiled for the actual quests, which is all that matters to me (and getting spoiled on the larger stuff will simply get me more excited).