My original plan was to simply ignore World of Warcraft's upcoming expansion, Battle for Azeroth. However Blizzard now sent me a beta invite. And so I thought that trying the expansion out for free would be worth doing. But after a couple of hours in the beta, I was even less excited about the expansion than before.

Because the beta is on another server, with another client program, starting up the game plays the trailer. But not of the Battle of Azeroth expansion (although I know there is one), but of the previous expansion, Legion. Now the theme of Legion was how Alliance and Horde have to work together against the Burning Legion, so the Legion trailer is full of King Varian Wrynn talking to his son about this need for collaboration between Alliance and Horde. And then you find yourself in the Battle for Azeroth expansion, with a first scenario about Alliance and Horde fighting each other as mortal enemies. Of course that transition will be somewhat smoother in the release version, but for me the episode was a poignant reminder of how arbitrary WoW lore is sometimes.

Just like in my previous short visit to WoW, I was just mashing buttons through the scenario. I don't like that due to constant changes and large number of buttons I can't remember the optimum control scheme. I like it even less that it doesn't really make a difference whether you master a complex control scheme or you randomly mash buttons. At least at the level of the scenarios and quests it doesn't appear to make a difference, and I haven't even distributed my talent points yet.

I will still play a few hours over the weekend, but I don't believe that will change my mind. Battle of Azeroth is still on course to be the first WoW expansion I don't buy.