Yesterday's TTR Stress Test had its up and it had its downs, but overall it was a very fun experience. It was rocky in the beginning, with the server needing to be pulled down for a hardware upgrade shortly after the test was scheduled to begin. The TTR was riddled with soul-searing, unplayable lag up until that point, so I'd say it was needed.

The WoW Insider gang sat around for an hour doing a load of nothing until the server came back, but it was worth it. Most of the lag was gone, the Blizzard Entertainment crew were out and about doing their thing, and we were finally able to hit the arena. Unfortunately, our first match was against a three Resto Druid team. In a magical fairy world where Druids don't have Innervate or any natural mana regen whatsoever, I'm pretty sure Adam would have still gone OOM trying to Mana Burn all three of them to nothing.

Interested in the good times we had? Hop on past the cut and I'll give you the details!

For those of you that are curious, our record in the arena was 1 - 8. To be fair, I've never played an Arms Warrior at 70 before, and 3 of those losses were due to client crashes on one or two of our team members. Silly Test client. The epic battle with the three Resto Druids never actually had a resolution. We fought it out for a good 20 minutes before the TTR dumped us off. And it counted as a loss, too! What's up with that!? That's okay though, even if we did terrible I had a ton of fun. I do have to say this, though: Nerf Cyclone.

Before I even get started on the next bit, I'd like to give a big thank you to everyone that sent me tells over on the TTR. The support was just awesome, and I loved hearing from you guys, especially the people that broke off from Nethaera's parade of fans to talk to me. That just felt awesome.

Now, on with the show!

We didn't get a chance to duke it out with Nethaera, Bornakk and Dawson. However, i did get to have a chat with Nethaera. I sent her a tell asking how her team was doing, not really expecting a response because... well, really, would you? I was sure the Blizzard crew was drowning in tells and I wouldn't hear anything back, but she actually replied pretty quickly. We had a pleasant little conversation, and she was really nice. Candle = Good People.

Adam, Amanda M. and I had some more adventures, running back and forth from Sen'jin to Razor Hill, up to Orgrimmar and back down again, following the tales of Kazzaks, Doomwalkers and Jaina/Thrall death matches. GMs Sarasota and Clearwater seemed to be having lots of fun with people on those occasions where they weren't getting horribly spammed with tells and yells. Clearwater was the guy(gal?) Adam and I had an opportunity to duel earlier on in the night. Nerf Death Touch, too!

We eventually migrated over to the other continent to see what was up, and ran into Nethaera herself. The massive crowd following her wherever she went was pretty amusing, though I started to feel a little bad about whispering her earlier on because of that. She was being a pretty good sport though, joking around with people and holding conversation.

Then, the ground shook and my eyes popped out of my head while I tried to figure out what the GMs were spawning on us this time. I swivel my camera around just in time to see Brutallus stomping over my head. Luckily, it wasn't Brutallus at all. It was a GM in a Brutallus suit! This GM, Englewood, was another amazingly cool person and let the WoW Insider gang take some screenshots with him. He teleported us all off to Dalaran and shrunk himself down to a more manageable size.

That was easily the high point of the day. You can arena anytime, but the interaction with the Blizzard crew was really a gem. Hanging out, even for just a minute or two, with people like Nethaera and Englewood was just amazingly cool. It was interesting to chat with some a couple of the Blue folks like they're people, rather than just seeing them post on forums or whatever else.

My opinions on the TTR stability is for another time, I really just wanted to talk about how cool Blizzard was throughout this thing. It was a very fun experience, and I'm glad I decided to participate.