World of Warcraft

[Jerrek]

The following was taken from the Everquest Wizard forum, where someone was writing about his experiences in World of Warcraft.






I Was a Teenage World of Warcraft Alpha Tester

(Warning: The following is a big info-bomb. While I have tried not to spoil a lot of the cool surprises beta testers will discover in play, I wanted to give what I felt was a full overview of the game as it currently stands. A good amount remains to be done on the game, but in many ways, World of Warcraft feels fairly complete already, and so the following is not short.)

In November of 2003, I made my first World of Warcraft character, beginning play the night the human push (humans only) of the Blizzard WoW Friends & Family alpha test ended. Since then, I played in every push, getting a dwarven paladin to level 30, an undead mage to level 20, a troll shaman to level 22, and made characters of every other race and class (but priest) and got them to level 10 or so. (I had just about gotten a human paladin to level 14 the day the alpha test wrapped.)

I split my time between EverQuest and World of Warcraft alpha, and was unable to tell anyone about this, under threat of a) being kicked from alpha, b) being banned from beta and c) betraying the trust of people I like and respect at Blizzard Entertainment. I know I have some friends whose feelings will be hurt that I didn't bring them into my confidence, and I'm sorry about that.

But now, that time is over. The first phase of the beta test has begun, and I'm looking forward to seeing my EQ friends stomping around the World of Warcraft with me. (My family members somehow managed to not try and sign up for beta until after the beta test sign-ups ended. I'm starting to wonder if I'm adopted.)

Things changed in every push (phase) of the alpha test, and more changes are still coming (the level 31-60 game, hunter and druid classes, a few more tradeskills, access to mounts, et cetera), but here's the inside scoop based on my experiences. Feel free to ask questions, and I'll answer what I can. (I mention the various pushes throughout the following. In order, starting in November 2003 and running through March 2004, the pushes were Human, Dwarf, Undead, Tri-Horde †“ featuring orc, troll and tauren †“ and All-Alliance.)

First off, what World of Warcraft is NOT

WoW is not a generic fantasy D&D world. It is also not EverQuest, which is pretty much a generic fantasy D&D world.

You will not be playing a high elf †“ I know some asshat ran around as one using the leaked alpha client using character models currently available, shooting screenshots like crazy, but he could have also done the same by pulling up a crab character model, and it wouldn't mean that you could play crabs, either. I've seen pretty much all of the level 1-30 world, and have seen four or five high elves in all those areas. Only one of them was still culturally a high elf. The others were openly blood elves, or had turned to violence and piracy. Play Warcraft III and its expansion to experience (and cause) the fall of Quel'Thalas and the high elves. There are also no Drow/dark elves and expect to have everyone smack your ass around if you refer to night elves that way (think of them as wood elves as played by Shaquille O'Neil after he's found religion).

In addition, if you are rabidly against steampunk, be aware it's part of the World of Warcraft. This isn't Arcanum †“ swords and shields are still the order of the day †“ but you will see dwarves, gnomes and goblin technology around (it's the only way to cross the ocean for the Horde half of the time, for one thing) and any race can learn the Enginering tradeskill. Dwarves and goblins especially are a huge part of the world, and you will be running into examples of their technology, even if you never set foot in Khaz Modan. But only hunters (of certain races) will be able to use guns from level one, and the steamtech in WoW feels very appropriate; several people I played with were initially against the idea of it at all until they saw how it blended into the world.

The classes, even if they have familiar names to you, are not D&D classes, they're not EverQuest classes, they're not Dark Age of Camelot classes. WoW paladins do follow a code of honor, but they'd take Sir Galahad aside and tell him to stop being such a damn wuss more likely than not †“ and he'd use a giant sledgehammer before using a sword and shield. WoW shamans bear little resemblance to EverQuest shamans, and while I like the class in both games, there will be people crossing over from EQ to WoW who will find the fact that they're almost entirely different jarring.

WoW is also not Dark Age of Camelot. This seems self-evident, but there were a lot of DAoC players in the alpha test who couldn't get over that the game is going to feature consensual Player Versus Player combat, and not full-on PVP or have PVP as its endgame. PVP may well factor into it, but there's no indication that the endgame won't be PVE †“ Player Versus Enemy. There's simply too many serious bad guys in the Warcraft universe that need a raid-sized hole stomped in their ass to think that Deathwing, Arthas and the Burning Legion won't be a factor †“ in fact, given the foreshadowing in levels 1-30, I can pretty much guarantee we'll be seeing them at some point.

WoW is also not Diablo, it is a true MMORPG. You do not level to 30 in an afternoon (although some psychotics have done it in a weekend). It is a fast-paced MMORPG with some randomization on loot, but it is definitely still an MMORPG.

Finally, WoW is not the Warcraft RTSes. While the classes and monsters and settings closely resemble those games (players of the Warcraft series will be getting non-stop nostalgia hits visiting old battlefields, seeing memorials to the heroes of Beyond the Dark Portal or even visiting villages just mentioned on Warcraft III's load screen maps), things are different. Some background elements from manuals or mentioned in passing have been tweaked to make them work better in MMORPGs. (Where the Horde's trolls come from, for instance, has moved from Stranglethorn, to just outside the Maelstrom, to just off the coast of Durotar, to further down the coast, in the Warcraft III manual, Warcraft III demo missions, The Frozen Throne and World of Warcraft, respectively.) Some spells you expect to see aren't available, either because they're being saved for hero classes, because they're (temporarily) removed to rebalance them or because the dev team hasn't found a way to implement them in a way that works in an MMORPG yet. While the setting is the same, WoW is not a Warcraft simulator. The dev team's stated goal is to create a game that's fun, not a MMORPG-as-social-experiment, as EQ did early on (all those empty buildings in Freeport are there for player-created content that never appeared) and Star Wars Galaxies did more recently.

What World of Warcraft IS Today

Let's start with the first one. It's fun. It's a LOT of fun. Remember that magic you felt the first time you clicked with EverQuest? It's back, and it's back in huge buckets full. The first time you hear the snow crunch under your feet in Khaz Modan as your breath steams in the air, or the first time you ride a wyvern across the Barrens of Kalimdor or the first time an NPC shouts out your name, celebrating you saving the day at the end of a long quest, you'll feel that magic. WoW is not perfect, but man, it's really, really close. It's loyalty to friends that kept me still playing EQ, but many alpha players dropped EQ, DAoC or Final Fantasy like a bad habit and never looked back. Expect sleepless nights, calling in sick from work and lost weekends all over again.

Eye Candy/Ear Candy

The game looks and sounds like a dream. Screenshots don't really do it justice, but when you're moving and running around, birds flying overhead, crickets chirping in the trees and the wind whistling through the branches, it feels like you're playing and exploring a Disney cartoon for adults. While the art style isn't anime, that's the closest thing I can come to for a comparison †“ while it definitely looks like an animated movie, for the most part it's all done in an adult fashion. The half-shuffling, half-swaggering undead patrol moving up the road in the Arathi Highlands, past the battle-scarred walls of Stromgarde certainly doesn't look like anything for kids. (No one playing Toontown is likely to have ever frantically typed "GET OFF THE ROAD! GET OFF THE ROAD!" at their groupmates, for instance.)

The sound and music also are nothing short of incredible. Zoom your camera in as you run along, and you hear the jingle of your chainmail armor, and the sound of your boots crushing dry grass. The music is evocative and appropriate without being overwhelming (although run around Duskwood long enough and you'll be ready to crawl out of your skin, the music's so slasher-flick creepy). This is a game where you'll want to leave the music on.

Starting Play

When the (big, big) download is finished, you begin by selecting a race and a class, and then doing some simple physical customizations. Usually this is hair style, face, facial hair, hair color, but it varies by race. More customizations are being added: During the undead push, we only got to choose the above options, but since then, they added all sorts of extra available deformities, like faces with no jawbones, straps to hold a shattered skull together and so on. I personally feel there is plenty of customization already †“ you're not choosing between two nearly identical faces or hairstyles, DAoC style; the choices tend to be dramatic †“ but the folks who want more are gonna get it.

After that, you click the button, there's a load screen, and you see a real time in-game cut scene, complete with voice-over narration as the camera races in towards you. Not all of these were available in the alpha, so this could change, but it was nice for setting the stage and letting you know the current state of things.

The first town you arrive in is a tiny little hamlet for your race (or, in the case of trolls and gnomes, it's shared with an allied race). You get some very simple quests, have access to trainers who can help you through level 6 or so (although you'll likely have left by then) and can get acclimated with the basics of the game in a mostly safe environment. Between level 4 and 8, you'll move onto your second town, which is a little larger, has many more quests things available, including many tradeskill trainers, and is a harder area, and will take you through your low teens. (Orcs and trolls have an additional town between these two, a troll village on the coast.) After that, you're close to your capital city, which you are typically sent to visit in a quest. These places are huge, so first time players should expect to sink a lot of time into exploring them. After that, you move through a series of different villages in new zones for each level range, each with higher level quests and content, each moving further and further out from that starting hamlet. It feels quite organic, and you usually don't realize that you've made the transition from Anvilmar to Kharanos to Thelsamarr until you realize your quest log now all features areas far removed from the place you once called home. Starting with the capital city, almost all of these locations have flight paths that you unlock the first time you reach them, allowing travel back to where you've been through the capital city hub. (The games are centered around these cities, and learning your way around them is time well spent.)

Quests

When playing WoW, the vast majority of your time is spent on quests. These aren't the (generally speaking) painful, slow and not-terribly-productive quests EQ players dread. A quarter to a half of your experience each level will come from just the quest end rewards, much of your gear will come from them (at least initially) and if you're doing anything in WoW that moves your XP bar, odds are, you're on a quest. Unlock every single one you can find †“ Warcraft III style yellow exclamation points will be over their heads, while silver ones will show up on quests you can get in the next five levels. The stuff around you to fight is almost always something you can also be getting quest rewards for fighting, and not taking on these quests is pointlessly hurting your character's progress.

The quests vary from "the local tribe of gnolls are raiding Lakeshire, I'll give you 5 silver pieces if you go kill X numbers of them to help drive them back while we wait for reinforcements from Stormwind" to "the Dragonmaw orcs are reorganizing and preparing for a military strike. We need you to sneak in to their hidden base and destroy their catapults." The quests tend to be designed around the race in the area. You'll find bickering human farmers asking you to sabotage each other's crops, dwarven brewmeisters needing help finding ingredients for a special beer they're working on, undead alchemists testing out a new plague to wipe out humanity for good this time (and the Scourge for good measure), or Taurens going on vision quests.

There are quests designed for soloers, quests designed for groups, and "elite" quests starting in the teens that are designed like five person raids, with double hit point very tough enemies and great rewards.

The goal is to never have an empty quest log at any level. Human lands absolutely accomplish this, but there are a few thin spots still for the other races, but more quests are constantly being added. The various classes also have (or are getting) class-specific quests that grant you new special abilities. Shamans face challenges set forth for them by spirits only they can see to gain mastery of new elemental totems, for instance, while paladins must prove themselves worthy over the powers of life and death by first resurrecting a fallen hero.

Your experience of WoW will revolve around these quests and the flavor and style of them varies greatly between races. If you find that the undead quests just turn you off, travel over to the rest of the Horde in Kalimdor and try there, because the higher level stuff continues much of the same themes. Dwarves, for instance, are focussed on fighting back the trogg threat, enjoying food and drink, exploring ancient ruins and battling the sinister Dark Iron Dwarves from levels 1-30 and beyond. If that seems like something you're not interested in, it's not going to change. Personally, I find the various themes each race explores to be very cool and nicely diverse. I won't spoil things in detail, but there's honestly a style of play for everyone.

The racial lifequests (think EQ epic quests) appear to start in earnest at level 26, although all of them play off themes introduced early on. Pedi and I started on the dwarf and human ones in earnest, and while I hadn't found the night elf one †“ night elves were just added at the end, and the quests might not have been added †“ the human and dwarf ones were so freaking cool, I'm not at all worried. No idea what the rewards will be, since both quests are still in their earliest stages. Lifequests are good examples of the multi-stage quest series very common in WoW, with their own XP, cash and loot rewards along the way. We were only able to get a few stages in on the dwarf lifequest, but the designer's note in the quest title said "<needs PHAT reward>," and given what's required, I fully expect it to be great. It appears that any race can do the racial lifequests for their faction, and the crises involved are certainly ones that the races wouldn't mind help on. But the themes are very much tailored to each race, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the final rewards players can choose between were flagged to only be useable by members of the race in question.

Roleplaying

A few quick comments about roleplaying, since people on the official non-beta WoW boards seem to gnash their teeth a lot about this when they're not doing the PVP/carebear fight that crept into alpha (thanks to all the DAoC players) as well. First off, World of Warcraft is not, in fact, improvisational theater or a Live Action Role Playing game. This should be obvious, but a lot of the people announcing how WoW will be overrun with Battle.net kiddies seem to think this is an amazing insight. (And, for the record, the Battle.net kiddies aren't particularly bad †“ frankly, they're a lot less disruptive than most of the people you can find in the Plane of Knowledge at any time, day or night, in EQ.) The game is totally level-driven, and it would be very, very hard to gain more than one or two levels off of mere exploration XP and non-combat quests. (You actually can get a fair amount of XP this way, but the non-combat quests don't constitute most of them, and they're rarely consecutive. This isn't the World of Peacecraft, after all.)

Having said that, WoW is closer to Ultima Online than it is to EQ for enabling roleplayers to actually roleplay. In addition to the ubiquitous shops providing means to kill and prevent from being killed oneself, the environment is full of props and settings like florists, tailor-made formal attire and large meeting halls suitable for player-run events like weddings. For the RPG lite crowd, the interaction with the world also naturally draws your characters into the story. Your young dwarven would-be hero isn't spending two hours filling backpacks with orcish belts in Crushbone (or, worse yet, the Bazaar) to dump on an NPC en masse and squirt through six levels. Rather, he has quests to collect information about the troll and trogg presence in the Coldridge Valley, delivers it to superiors, who in turn send him along to the next valley up the way to report, and then gathers more information there, and ultimately delivers it to the senate in Ironforge. The underlying mechanic is much the same †“ we're talking about slaughter and collection quests in each case †“ but what makes WoW more RP than EQ is that what you're doing actually feeds into the storyline. (The very same storyline that includes the racial lifequests, although it'll be a while before you see the strands start to come together.) The fact that you can't go and redo the same baby quests over and over because that's easier than actually progressing through the story also helps.

Don't expect WoW to be Dwarf: The Quaffing, but it's going to be a lot more RP-friendly than EQ or DAoC, by a country mile. (If someone comes up with Dwarf: The Quaffing, please let me know.)

Classes

Each phase of the alpha had different races and classes available, and I played what interested me of what was open at the time. As I said before, I downloaded the client the last night of the human push, so I didn't do anything that phase. But I've played all the available classes but priests to one extent or another †“ note that druids and hunters were not available at all during the alpha test, although I'm told both have been tested to an extent in Blizzard's internal alpha. I'll list the classes in the order I played them, for the most part.

Before I do that: None of these classes are support classes. Every class in WoW is meant to both contribute to a group and to be able to solo. When one, like the priest, has trouble, serious rebalancing occurs, and lo and behold, you end up with a class that not only can solo, but solos well. Strike phrases like how a class is "group-dependent" from your vocabulary; that has no place when talking about WoW. Lots of former EQ and DAoC players tried to put the priests in that box (and mages later), but Blizzard has been resistant to idiotic comments like that †“ of which they receive plenty through every medium imaginable. Don't be one of the asshats, please.

Oh, and while Blizzard doesn't respond to all, or most, of the comments posted to the alpha boards (and presumably the beta boards), they clearly were watching. Ideas and issues floated on the boards or via the /bug or /suggest commands routinely showed up in patch messages. It was, frankly, sort of cool to see. But with the much, much higher volume of posts likely on the beta boards (and especially given that many of the initial comments will be covering issues that the alpha folks have been commenting on since November), don't freak out if blue names aren't responding constantly. They are reading, and a truly good comment will be listened to. (i.e. don't write up a big screed about how class-based MMORPGs are crap or how the world needs to be redesigned so it can be a full-time PVP gankfest or how two minutes to get to a distant new zone is far too long to travel and you'll never play WoW unless you can simply teleport from store to XP and back effortlessly, all of which some doorknob or other screamed about during alpha.)

[Jerrek]

Paladin

Pedi played a human paladin for a few levels, and I got a dwarf paladin up to level 30 between the dwarf push and the final all-alliance push at the end. While some folks in the alpha test found the paladin to be a little unexciting about the warrior, I really, really liked this class, so much so that I intend to play a human paladin in the beta test until such time as dwarf hunters become available.

EQ paladins and D&D players will recognize paladins as being a hybrid of healer and melee, but in WoW, the slant is much more towards melee than healer, and they have a large number of unique abilities. For starters, they have the ability to cast buffs (seals) on a target. Each target can only have one seal cast on them at a time per paladin, so having multiple paladins in a group is by no means redundant. These seals do things like raise melee damage, raise melee damage versus undead even more, regenerate mana faster (yes, WoW's Breeze equivalent is a paladin buff), lower aggro, create a temporary Divine Aura shield around someone, transfer part of melee damage taken to the paladin, and so on. These are some of the best buffs in the game, and the most combat-focussed.

Paladins also get auras that affect everyone in the group. A paladin can only maintain one aura at a time so, again, having multiple paladins is a good thing, although there are fewer choices for auras than there are seals. Auras raise armor class, provide a damage shield, improve resistances, or regenerate health faster during downtime. (The latter isn't that amazing, since food and water refill health and mana quite quickly, and a smart player has a bag full.)

The class only gets a few combat moves to use during combat, as opposed to warriors and rogues, who are button-pushing like crazy the whole time. They get a bigger strike with their weapon (with a moderate cooldown period), an instant cast stun and an effect they can stack on an enemy that makes their Holy Strike do more damage. They also have some anti-undead spells, including an anti-undead fear spell and the ability to track the undead, which is immensely useful when questing in Duskwood.

The class is also a decent healer, although without the mana pool of the priest or even the shaman (note that paladins and shamans can never group together, since paladins are Alliance-only and shamans are Horde-only). They serve as decent back-up healers, although I've heard of people who worked on their mana pool and were competent enough main healers. I'd still rather have a priest, though. Paladins are also one of the three classes we had access to that could resurrect a player. Like shamans, a paladin resurrection brings back the target at 1 percent health and mana. If you do a combat rez on a paladin, the subject will be dead again in a second when they get low health aggro. (In contrast, a priest brings targets back to life with 15 percent health and mana. And yes, there is such a thing as rez sickness in WoW.)

Even without super-duper uber gear (most of my stuff was from quests or drops, with a few things I smithed in the final push of alpha), I found the paladin to be a very capable soloer and great in groups as both a main tank and as DPS. While not as sexy as rogues (don't be surprised if rogues are THE most popular class in the game) or warriors, I found it to be really enjoyable, and there was a quiet but sizable group that preferred them over all other classes.

If you play a paladin in beta, consider either going a DPS-heavy route with talents and gear, or hit point-heavy. If you go the latter route, note that you only have two tools available to you for gaining aggro (Holy Strike and the Fist of Justice stun) and you might have trouble retaining aggro in groups. I went DPS-heavy and it took Pedi getting her mage into the late 20s before she was able to pull aggro off my admittedly pretty tired weaponry. I went all two-handed hammer, but if I had to do it over, I'd have keep my skills up in one handed mace and shield as well, for times where I couldn't take the hardcore beating some bosses, particularly elite bosses, dish out. You can spend two skill points (gained one per level, and used on weapon skills or tradeskills) to learn how to use swords or two-handed swords, but other than just having the ability to switch back and forth, I didn't really see a lot of value in it. And, you know, Uther used a two-handed hammer.

As for tradeskills, mining/smithing is a great combo for self-reliant paladins.

Mage

Pedi played a dwarven mage to level 30, starting at their highest point, during dwarf push. I got one to 20 during their lowest point, the push right after, undead push. That sort of provides a nice snapshot for what's been going on with the class: extensive balancing and tweaking. When Pedi started, mages were pretty close to an uber class, and the ease with which they could kill caster NPCs in particular was nothing short of awesome. When I played my mage, a lot of those offending spells were either removed, or retired for retuning, and I also got the extra love of undead area content that incorrectly had things 100 percent immune to frost spells, which are about a third of the mage's arsenal (and the best third). In the final push of alpha, mages got a bunch of new spells, including some really awesome ones (expect Amplify Magic and Dampen Magic to be shamelessly stolen by other MMORPGs), but the class isn't quite there yet. Expect some more tinkering before Blizzard is done. (The priest went through the same process earlier, though, and is now one of the most powerful and versatile classes, after being the class that NO ONE wanted to play previously.)

The class is a versatile one, with bolts, instant cast nukes (with cool down timers, don't get too excited), various AoEs and even an AoE damage over time spell (your targets catch on fire, and flames lick about their body for the duration). They also summon food and water (used to restore food and mana during downtime), can teleport between capital cities of their faction, turn invisible, open locked objects, have a variety of buffs and, generally, are a pretty neat class. In some ways, though, they were too good, which is why Polymorph (turn the subject into a pig, chicken or sheep, reduce damage output and prevent spellcasting) is on a vacation for retuning. Ditto their super-root, Chains of Ice.

At this point, the class most closely resembles an EQ mage without the pet, although this could certainly change as quickly as the first patch of the beta. Mages do get pets, both water elementals at higher levels and EQ sword/mace style pets that look like little smudgy ghosts at lower levels.

If you play a mage the first portion of beta, expect things to change, but change for the better. It's a fun class right now, but it's not quite up to the level of the other classes †¦ yet.

As far as assigning talent points go, there are folks who think that stamina and hit points are all that matter. You should know better, since mages need mana more than anything. This is especially true now since they get a new Mana Shield spell that converts mana to hit points at a 3:1 ratio. Pedi's level 30 mage, with her whopping 2k+ mana pool, can now take the hits almost as well as my level 30 paladin can with his Divine Shield up (like Divine Aura from EverQuest, but you can do anything you normally would with it on). For tradeskills, herbalism/alchemy fits like a glove, although some folks prefer herbalism/enchanting or tailoring instead.

Warlock

I played warlocks off and on during the undead and tri-Horde (troll, orc, tauren) pushes. They're fun, but not my cup of tea. Here's the basics, though:

While mages use fire, frost and arcane magic, warlocks are the masters of fire and shadow magic. In addition to a few nukes, they have dots, can chew their hit points for health like an EQ shaman, can summon other players like an EQ mage's Call of Hero, get a horse pet (nightmare) at level 40, and oh yes, they summon pets.

Warlock pets (imps, voidwalkers, succubi, fel hounds and infernals) each can be trained with different spells and abilities as you level up, and (barring a bug) will have the same abilities next time you summon them. Imps are trash-talking little buffers and nukers, voidwalkers are tank pets, succubi are rogues who can learn to mez, and fel hounds and infernals weren't available in the alpha push, being higher level pets. (If you play the undead, you can go to the circle of summoning in the mage quarter of the Undercity to see an NPC warlock instructor summon all the pets, one after another.)

Warning: Every horny no-girlfriend dude who doesn't play a night elf mangina (more about them later) will play a warlock once they've seen the succubus. You've been warned.

The class is quite versatile, and was reasonably popular for the three pushes it was available. If it gets changed, look for it to be powered up a bit.

Talents and tradeskills for warlocks are similar to those for mages, except the fact that they can chew their health to give back mana also means bumping up Stamina and hit points makes a lot of sense.

Vashanti leveled up something like 20 different warlock tailors, so he can tell you more about them.

Shaman

The Horde-only class that's not-quite a counterpart to the Alliance-only paladin, I played a troll shaman to level 22 in the tri-Horde push. The class got something of a reputation as being unpowered, unfairly in my opinion, but different strokes for different folks. Note that if you're someone who "always plays shamans" (and so help me, I've seen people say this), this class is very little like the EQ shaman and yet also more shamanistic in many ways than any RPG class I've seen. You'll go on vision quests, battle spirits invisible to observers and sling around totems like it's going out of style.

The class is another hybrid of melee and spellcaster, but unlike the paladin, the balance is much more towards spell caster. The shamans use a unique system of spell skills based around the four elements and unlike most spellcasters, cannot use a wand at all. Shamans heal, have a paladin-quality resurrection spell, fling lightning bolts and release blasts of fire and have a ghost wolf form that is one of the few movement speed buffs (self only, though). You also can drop down up to four totems at a time, one for earth, fire, water and air. Each has a different type of effect, and works as a stationary area of effect spell. You might, for instance, cause your group to take less melee damage, blast nearby enemies and do a healing over time to your group. (No idea about air totems †“ that's higher level than I got with my shaman.) Multiple shamans in one group can drop a different totem for even more effects.

When playing my troll shaman, I typically dropped the lower damage totem and the nuke totem, and meleed while rotating between spells. Some folks who tried to play shamans as all-melee or all-spellcasting reported extremely mixed results.

I found the class to be a nice all-around utility player and if I play a Horde character ever, I'm almost certainly going troll shaman.

Talents are the same as for mage, although some people pump points into Strength to help with combat. Good tradeskill choices include skinning/leatherworking and herbalism/alchemy.

Warrior

This is, quite simply, the warrior class every EQ warrior has been waiting for. Incredibly robust, perhaps even overly powerful, warriors have a wide variety of attacks and abilities. You simply cannot just hit Attack and walk away as EQ warriors can do on raids. I played a tauren warrior up to middling levels in the tri-Horde push and Pedi played an undead warrior to 20 before that.

Warriors have the ability to use almost every piece of armor in the game and almost every weapon, although mastery of a lot of these requires buying the ability with skill points, and many aren't available until later levels. Warriors cannot use ranged weapons until level 20, for instance, and their choices are limited by race (although every race gets more than one choice). But more than just weapon and armor choices define warriors. They can switch between offensive and defensive battle stances and each features an array of combat abilities that slow attackers, snare them, stun them, taunt them and more. (That's right: One stance only has Taunt, and the other stance is meant for soloers. Good warriors will either stick to this stance in groups or come up with an alternative means of holding aggro. Stay tuned.) These abilities are unlocked based on the warriors' rage bar, which they get from tanking, although certain abilities give them some freebie rage with which to start the ass whooping.

And after oodles of MMORPGs where casters could pull monsters away from melees running up to engage them, warriors will be doing that in WoW, with the Charge ability that warps them onto their enemies from a distance. (There's a graphic involved, but that's what it amounts to.)

Talents are what you'd expect, with hit point builds the most popular, but building up Strength and other damage talents is also a good idea for taunting ability in both stances. While mining/smithing is a popular tradeskill combination for warriors, some have also experimented with cooking (and sometimes fishing and survival) as they're one of the few classes with no means to recover hit points after a battle.

Rogue

Rogues were the darling of the final push. Not only were they a brand-new class, they may be one of the most all-around fun classes in any MMORPG ever. Seriously. For anyone who wished that rogues in MMORPGs could be more like the old first person sneaker game, Thief, this is the class for you. I played a night elf rogue to middling levels, and Pedi got a dwarf rogue to 21 by the end of alpha.

They have the things you'd expect, like a sneaking ability (skill based, not magically on or off or simply level based), back-stabbing, pick pocketing, (actually useful) poisoning and gain lock picking earlier (and for no skill points) earlier than anyone else. Now, atop this, they get a slew of combat moves, some of which give them points they can then spend on finishing moves †“ rogues can become a whirlwind of deadly blades when they want to. They can also sap a target from behind and knock them out, garrote them and when all else fails, have a special ability to sprint away at high speed. Oh, and they also dual wield, throw weapons and can learn to use ranged weapons. What they can't do after level 10 or so is tank very well. So rogues become the sneaky SOBs with a bunch of tricks up their sleeves we've always wanted as well as the DPS machines MMORPG players have come to expect.

On talents, Agility is their key damage stat, and Toughness, Lightning Reflexes and Evade are practically a necessity for survival's sake. Sneaky ups your Sneak skill cap, and Perceptive does the same for that skill, letting you see the OTHER sneaky *******s creeping around. For tradeskills, skinning/leatherworking is popular, but herbalism is apparently needed for some poison recipes, so herbalism/alchemy and herbalism/enchanting are also good choices.

Priest

Not a D&D or EQ cleric, these robe-wearing guys can put their enemies to sleep, slap on damage-over-time spells and have one or two big blasts. They also, of course, are the masters of healing and resurrection spells. Early on, they were fairly weak, especially solo, but Blizzard did an extremely good job taking them back in the shop, adding things on, and now they're regarded as a fun class and, as you might expect, they're very, very popular with every group. They're not as required as they are in EQ (where they're arguably not truly required either), but you couldn't tell that from the attitude of a lot of players, who won't go anywhere without them.

I never played this class (I barely remember to heal on my shaman, let's be honest), but Pedi played a troll priest to 22.

On talents, follow the advice given for a warlock, since priests take a hell of a beating, even with their shield spell.

Druid

Druids were not available as a player class in the alpha test, but NPC druids were masters of shapechanging, were able to heal themselves and even could put a single target to sleep (mez, in EQ terms). NPC classes don't always match up exactly with PC classes, but it certainly suggests they'll be fairly potent and probably more melee-focussed than a lot of players expect.

Hunter

Hunters were not available as a player class in the alpha test, although NPC hunters, with and without pets, were fairly common (and damned frustrating to fight).

Having said that, trainers for various hunter pets were found all over, and it looks like nearly every not-gigantic beast (animals other than ambient life like rabbits) will be available as pets. The only beasts I recall that did NOT have a trainer for them were kodos, giraffes, zhevras (zebra unicorns) and hyenas, although that last one seems like an oversight.

Each animal has a different special ability, and that means the choices hunters make about their pets will determine how the class is played. Someone picking a bear, with its heavy HP and rend AC attack will likely use their pet to tank. Someone with a cat or boar with their self-hasting attack will use their pet to add DPS. Raptors do knock-downs, birds disarm, spiders poison (and there are high level ones that throw nets, spit poison at a distance and/or cast silence). Other beasts with trainers include wolves, crocolisks, plainstriders (prehistoric ostriches) and scorpions. Not all trainers are available in every area, so people wanting an exotic pet like a raptor or crab will have to learn where they can find those trainers and make the trek back every time their pet is able to learn new abilities.

For talents, it's hard to say with 100 percent certainty at this point, but following the rogue path, where applicable, wouldn't be a bad idea. As for tradeskills, mining/engineering seems self-evident, as does skinning/leatherworking.

Races

Racial abilities were disabled in the final push of the game, so it's hard to know if they'll be coming back, and in what form. But races are a lot more than that †“ they determine where you start (which in turn controls where you can get to easily), and the quests and gear in your race's part of the world definitely plays a big impact on how your character develops. There are also a few racially restricted weapons.

Remember that, when picking out races for the beta test and beyond, Alliance and Horde members cannot group together, and most don't understand each other: Only the undead speak both Common (the language of the Alliance) and Orcish (the language of the Horde). It's only been four years of (very) fragile peace since the end of Warcraft III, which in turn was part of over 20 years of constant slaughter and warfare.

Humans

The first race available, humans seem to be the most popular Alliance race, which sort of surprises me. (There were always as many humans online as dwarves and gnomes combined, and as many night elves as dwarves. Go figure.)

They were the first race tested, and are attractive if a little plain. Unlike the Pamela Anderson model EQ human and barbarian women seemed to be based upon, WoW human women are a little closer to Christina Aguilera, or another bordering-on-too-thin starlet.

Human lands are gorgeous, with a mix of high fantasy and fairy tale feel, and each has a very different and distinct tone, from the pastoral and even idyllic surroundings of the Elwynn Forest, to the deserted dustbowl of Westfall, to the rugged fantasy high adventure of the Redridge Mountains to the Ravenloft-esque Gothic horror of Duskwood. Humans currently have more quests in their lands than any other race (thanks to that area apparently have been in development the longest) and the overarching theme of the nation of Stormwind is intrigue and mystery.

The capital city of Stormwind is a show-stopper, and perhaps the game's most spectacular city. It's a huge European medieval city with canals and distinct districts. Despite this, it's reasonably easy to make your way around, between the signage, the on-screen captions when you move into a new sector of town, the color-coded shingles for each district and matching banners hanging on the outside of the districts. There is also a field trip of NPCs roaming the city, with the teacher stopping at different points to explain to the class where they are and what they should know about the location. That's just one of many, many NPCs roaming the city with their own scripts. The city is also full of quests large and small, and even has its own small instanced dungeon in the stockade. When you visit Stormwind, don't be afraid to blow a lot of time there exploring the different neighborhoods, the shops and doing all the quests offered to you at your level.

Human mounts are beautiful massive horses that resemble Clydesdales, but in a variety of colors. The pinto is probably going to be very popular, based on what alpha players have said. The horse farm is in Goldshire, the second town human players come to in the Elwynn Forest.

[Jerrek]

Dwarves

The second race available in alpha, the dwarves of Khaz Modan are great, in the classic Warcraft ridiculous Scot accent sort of way. But they're also one of the few dwarves in fantasy that aren't based on Tolkein's dwarves †“ instead, think Indiana Jones with axes. If Warcraft dwarves discovered King Tutankhamen's tomb, the thrill of discovery would be as big a deal for them as the treasure inside. This theme of exploration and discovery goes through all of their lands, and beyond: Dwarven archeological digs turn up in the damnedest places in the World of Warcraft.

Dwarves are beefy, with truly elaborate facial hair and hair options and, by far, the absolute best in-game voice emotes. (There are a number of voice emotes like "/v cheer" that play an audio file along with the emote in the game.)

Dwarf lands are ruggedly beautiful, from the snowy peaks and valleys of Dun Morogh to the placid waters of Loch Modan and the Stonewrought Dam to the rolling moors of the Wetlands. Not surprisingly, these lands are also primo places to mine as well, and it sometimes seems as if every dwarf player character is a miner. Dwarf quests are almost comically centered on food and drink early on, and on exploration. There's also a strong citizen militia spirit, moreso than the humans who sometimes impress players into the service of the Stormwind Army.

The capital city of Ironforge is everything a dwarf city should be. Built around an extinct volcano, the city is three concentric rings around a shaft of lava, which provides the heat for the forges in the center of the city. The rest of the city is an echoing din of craftsmen and military might, which shops and apartments creeping up the high, high walls. The city is awe-inspiring and even a little oppressive on first glance, but it quickly becomes clear that it's broken into neighborhoods, like any big city. Dwarf apartments are typically studded with trophies, weaponry and enormous kegs for family use.

Dwarf mounts are shaggy rams the size of Shetland ponies who look as through they could smash their way through a castle gate if they wanted to. You can find the ram farm in Dun Morogh, near the Misty Pine Refuge.

Undead

The undead †“ rebels who have broken free of the Lich King's mental control, often without a clue why or how †“ are seriously creepy, with rotting and decayed faces, bones exposed from their joints, and a nasty, unpleasant demeanor. If you want to play an evil race, this is it. The third race available in the alpha test, the undead were a chance to jump in feet-first into evil. Beset on all sides, the undead are fighting the Scourge, the surviving humans of Lordaeron, the Alliance and doing it all while keeping the rest of the Horde from knowing what evil *******s they really are.

Undead have some of the best emotes in the game, with /salute and /lie being two of my favorites. All the d00ds who end up playing warlocks for that hot succubus loving will likely also like the male /dance emote, and at times you couldn't get in or out of the bat flight stations in alpha without running a gauntlet of a half-dozen or more of them doing it. It's funny, don't get me wrong, but only the first 100 times in one day.

Undead lands are post-apocalyptic fantasy. Instead of the lush Gothic feel of Duskwood, these lands are bleached out ruins, with signs of death and horror everywhere, Night of the Living Dead instead of the Bride of Frankenstein. Bodies hang from trees, demonic dogs prowl the fields and any buildings that haven't fallen into ruin are usually home to something you don't want to mess with. The undead lands are not totally under their control, though: Scourge mages and necromancers are attempting to conquer the lands for the Lich King, and the magocracy of Dalaran may be destroyed, but the survivors are attempting to do SOMETHING about it. The neighboring human kingdom of Gilneas waits nearby, sealed off behind a protective gate until sometime after the game goes live. Higher level regions in the undead lands are battlefields between multiple factions struggling to control them, including against cults dedicated to the demonic Burning Legion.

The Undercity beneath ruined Lordaeron (which looks identical to how it appeared in the Warcraft III cinematics) looks like something from a Tim Burton movie. It's lush, it's evil, and it's very, very insane. A bit smaller, area-wise, than the other capital cities, it's compact but intensely well organized. The city also has Stormwind-style scripts of the undead going about their daily business, much of it highly depraved. There's little doubt about the undead's true nature here.

Undead mounts were originally black stallions with red eyes and red (bloody?) hooves, but are apparently being replaced with undead horses. Look for the stable in the village of Brill.

Orcs

The first race released at the same time as others, orcs are the lynchpin of the Horde. They clearly haven't gotten too terribly far from the bad old days of demon worship †“ there may be orc shamans around, but there's also warlocks and demon cults dot Kalimdor. Orcs in general are massive, savage looking and not anyone you'd want to meet in a dark alley. Or a not-dark alley, frankly. Their story concerns securing themselves in their new home, battling those who refuse to let there be a peace between them and the humans and rooting out the demonic corruption festering in seemingly every dark corner.

Orc lands are brutal and harsh, with red soil like their native Draenor. Only the undead lands are more intrinsically hostile, and all sorts of nasty animals dot the landscape, along with human renegades who once served under Admiral Proudmoore and the cultists of the Burning Blade. Beyond Durotar itself, central Kalimdor spreads out into the enormous plains of the Barrens, a fantasy African savanna with kodo beasts, alien giraffes, raptors and gazelle. It's a setting that seems so perfect and right that, in retrospect, you can't believe that no one has done it before. The Barrens are an enormous area, and all three Kalimdor Horde races adventure here together, and in points beyond. To the north, their territory abuts night elf lands, and to the south, it becomes hostile to all life.

The capital city of Orgrimmar is currently undergoing revision. It's a huge city nestled in connecting valleys. While it was very impressive visually, a lot of players (including me) found it confusing and frustrating. Blizzard has been fairly impressive in how well they've done in revisions at other times in the alpha test, so I'm expecting things to be significantly improved.

Orc mounts are enormous shaggy savage wolves. They can be purchased from a pen in Orgrimmar.

Trolls

The Darkspear island trolls share Durotar with the orcs, and start off in their same starting village. Lean predators, they're as tall as night elves when they stand fully erect, but normally bob along, hunched over, coiled and ready to spring. While Warcraft players know them by their Jamaican accents, voodoo-flavored culture and wild hairstyles, the trolls are also cruel, sadistic and evil, the sort of creatures who would trap the soul of an enemy's loved one to use as a bargaining chip. Reflecting the culture of the nearby Echo Islands, they bring a funky, hippie feel to the World of Warcraft.

The Echo Islands, now controlled by a rival tribe of trolls, are a fetid jungle full of wild animals and angry headhunters. Troll and orc characters visit the troll's home base of Sen'Jin as their second stopping point in the game, helping to get some payback for the trolls and put some ghosts of the past to rest, literally.

Specific troll mounts were not found in the alpha test. It is not known whether they will simply ride the wolves the orcs use or not.

Tauren

The closest things to true "good guys" in the Horde †“ perhaps in all of the World of Warcraft †“ the Taurens go far beyond just a simple Native American vibe to be true lords of the plains. Enormous and powerful, they're imposing figures, whether as friends or enemies, and that makes their cultural obsession with the wind sweeping across Mulgore, expressed in windchimes, kites, windsocks and ubiquitous windmills of multiple shapes and sizes all the more intriguing. They are a spiritual people who put new Tauren player characters through a series of rites of passage, including following the path of a spirit wolf. Yet another of the moments in WoW that just feel intensely RIGHT, Taurens have a quest requiring them to chase a kodo herd across the grass fields of Mulgore, as close to a fantasy game recreation of a buffalo hunt as you'll ever come. It's a heady moment in the game, and one that transcends just being about leveling and XP to feel like something more.

The Tauren homeland of Mulgore is "big sky country," Montana to the Africa of the Barrens. Taurens prowl under pine trees for pine cones, visit the wells dotted around their plains and work to keep the rapacious goblin-run Venture Company from encroaching on too many of their sacred sites. It's a beautiful area of the game, and it's incredibly peaceful, with an extremely expansive feeling while still being a convenient area for newbies.

The capital city of Thunder Bluff sits atop a number of stone rises, a defended city of tents and lean-tos, grouped thematically on different pillars, with an enormous hollow totem pole that serves both as the city's principal landmark and as the local station for the windriders (wyverns) that the Horde flies in Kalimdor.

Taurens will not be getting mounts of their own, but will have a plains running ability that will presumably let them run as fast as other races' mounts.

Gnomes

At first glance, the gnomes of Warcraft seem too tiny and too cute. It doesn't take long for them to win you over. Even if you don't want to play one yourself, they're hilarious to have around, like technologically savvy killer rabbits. And, in keeping with the way EQ players have portrayed gnomes, to the vague horror of everyone else, they're a lewd bunch with a funky "booty dance" /dance emote that makes some folks crack up and outrages others.

Gnomes share Khaz Modan with the dwarves, who predominate there, but they have their own enclaves sprinkled about, with their own building style and interests. Gnomes also turn up in places far more random than the dwarves do †“ typically, a dwarf abroad is on an archeological dig. A gnome might be there for anything.

While gnomes share engineering know-how with the dwarves, they feel an intense rivalry with the goblins, and although it's mostly friendly †“ goblins and gnomes race steampunk hotrods in the Shimmering Flats salt flats in southern Kalimdor †“ it's not always.

The gnome capital of Gnomeregan has fallen to the troggs who have burst forth from the bowels of the planet in recent years, and a gnomish attempt to fight back has backfired horribly, mutating countless survivors into crazed leper gnomes. Gnomeregan was not open during the alpha test, and is apparently intended to be an instanced dungeon later on.

Gnome mounts were not available during the alpha test, and it is not known whether they will simply be using dwarven rams or whether they will get special mounts of their own. It's worth noting that none of the mounts found in the game so far are flagged as being usable by gnomes.

Night Elves

Not your father's elves, night elves are enormous, the largest race in the World of Warcraft, with ears that flop and bounce when they move and lambent yellow eyes. The night elves have a wonderful presence about them, but have a feral hyperactivity about them, like restless cats. Of course, every mangina around will love their women, who have a /dance emote that goes through a routine that would look right at home in the sexiest of night clubs. Male night elves also have an eye-popping /dance emote, but in a different way.

Night elf lands are beautiful fantasy forests, glowing as though it is all being seen under a black light. Their homeland is the new World Tree, Teldrassil, which is the new focus of their race. Beyond the island-tree and the capital city of Darnassus, the night elf lands in the north of Kalimdor are in the process of being reclaimed from the ravages of the past. Darkshore is as gloomy as any of the undead lands, but its taint is a legacy that goes back 10,000 years, to when magic was first discovered in the world of Warcraft, the elves split into two factions over it, and the Burning Legion first arrived. Other regions in the forested north are tainted to a greater or lesser degree, and the arrival of the Horde has displaced some of Kalimdor's native races, all of whom are now jockeying for a new place on the continent. Night elves are militant about restoring harmony to their lands, and aren't afraid to use deadly force to achieve it. People looking for cuddly elves should look elsewhere. This is nature, red in tooth and claw.

Darnassus, in the branches of Telradrassil, is a new city that already looks majestic and ancient. Rich in delicate hues of blues and purples and pinks, it feels very ethereal and otherworldly. The last capital city to open during the alpha test, Darnassus is still somewhat unpopulated and empty, although it's definitely beautiful and striking.

The night elf frostsaber riding cats were not found in any area open that I could find during the alpha, although I did see some large white tigers in Darnassus itself.

Tradeskills

Tradeskills in WoW will be loved by some, hated by others. On the one hand, they're more simple †“ you will never gather rare or expensive components together, hit Combine and fail to create what you're after.

On the other hand, tradeskills are directly linked to level †“ you cannot buy one of the three levels in a tradeskill (which each unlock how far your skill can advance in the tradeskill) without skill points, which are earned by leveling. You simply will never find a low level player character mastering any of the tradeskills, and you will also never find someone with enough skill points to master even a third of all available tradeskills on one character.

Also something of a love it/hate it aspect of the system is the fact that resources must be manually gathered. Herbs have to be found and picked, ore has to be discovered and mined, and hides have to be skinned off of animals. It's an extra step in the process that some find frustrating. Some folks also complain about "tradeskill Ksing" where some idiot tries to race to the resource you're fighting your way to in order to mine there first (poofing the resource for a given amount of time, and it may reappear randomly some distance away). I've gotten both of the more competitive gathering tradeskills (Mining and Herbalism) to the Expert level, and I honestly have encountered very little of this †“ it seems to be a problem that a few people who have encountered a few frustrating incidents are blowing up into a bigger stink than it merits. Honestly, as surprising as it seems, I find there to be something incredibly soothing about roaming the hills, mining for ore. Bringing back a sack full of copper ore to smelt into bars at the smithy is somehow intensely satisfying to me, much more so than any tradeskill in EverQuest ever was for me.

Mining

I got to Expert Mining on my dwarf paladin. Buying the ability at the Apprentice level, you gain a Find Minerals ability that makes nearby ore deposits show up on your minimap for one minute (at higher levels, you can buy an upgrade to the Find Minerals activity that makes the ore show up for five minutes). With vendor-purchased pick on you (in your bag is fine), you track down the ore, right click it, and mine away. In addition to ore of the appropriate type, you also get various grades of rock (used in smithing and engineering) and occasionally gems of various sorts. Higher level ore deposits, up to gold, are found in higher level areas.

Engineering

I picked up this tradeskill in my first push to test it out for my dwarf hunter, and got it to Expert level and got nearly all of the recipes available in the game. The skill is mostly of use to hunters, to be frank, as the best items available through the skill are guns and ammunition. The guns are superior to anything you can buy off a vendor at the appropriate levels and often superior to drops you find. Engineers can also create scopes of various levels to improve the damage of the gun in question.

Most other engineered items can only be used by an engineer of the same skill level or higher, so most thrown dynamite and bombs will only be in the hands of engineers (there is a dropped recipe that lets engineers create a stick of dynamite even technologically useless people can throw). The skill also allows the creation of various goggles, the ability to blow simple locks, the ability to create practice locks for novice lockpickers to practice on, mechanical squirrel toys, exploding sheep bombs and even miniature harvest shredder robots.

It's a lot of fun, but it is not high on the day-to-day utility list. The goggles are typically the first head slot item players can use (head, neck, shoulder and ring slot items are all higher level equipment, of various levels), so you do see a fair amount of powergamers getting to Journeyman Engineer for that reason.

I intend to get this again on my dwarf hunter †“ where it'll be a great skill to have †“ but I do not see buying the skill again on other characters.

Cooking

I fooled around with this a bit in dwarf push and briefly in other pushes, although I ended up turning in the skill points invested and switching my dwarf paladin over to blacksmithing as his third tradeskill in the final push of alpha. I was a grandmaster baker as my main focus in EverQuest long ago, and wanted to compare the tradeskills.

The good news is that there are a ton of quests in human and dwarven lands (and to a lesser extent in Kalimdor Horde lands) for recipes, so an Expert cook can be making soothing turtle bisque, while others might know how to make everyone's favorite, dig rat stew, based on their adventures. Food is crucial in the World of Warcraft, as you replenish your health after a fight by chowing down, and higher level food gives you back more health more quickly. Relying on Pedi's summoned food †“ which is now almost at the upgrade level †“ my paladin sometimes has to eat twice, which is a Somewhat Dangerous Thing if we're in an area where I need to be on my feet and healthy most of the time.

Like all WoW tradeskills, you have to use the tools of the trade. Instead of a mining pick or an engineer's wrench, you need fire to cook with. Many NPC camps have fire, so slaughtering the quillboar and then cooking at their campfire is practical, and you can also find fires at inns and taverns, or create your own with the Survival skill. In addition to Survival, Cooking works well with Fishing, for obvious reasons.

While not an amazing skill †“ the amount of food created per success probably needs to be upped a little †“ it's a very practical one that I can definitely see investing in again after getting Mining and Engineering to Expert level on my dwarf hunter.

[Jerrek]

Herbalism

I picked this gathering tradeskill up on my undead mage. While the sight of characters running around from flower to bush to shrub is a little funny at first, it feels very natural (so to speak) and it produces the materials needed for a number of tradeskills. That's the only downfall of Herbalism, really: Alchemists, enchanters and poisoners all are looking for those same plants. Plants tend to grow in predictable areas (silverleaf bushes under trees, snakeroot on hills, etc.), though, so once you've learned your way around WoW botany, all you really need is patience.

Alchemy

Alchemists create all the potions Warcraft players are familiar with †“ healing, mana, and so on †“ as well as a number of new ones, including quirky ones that make you race away from battle at very, very high speed †¦ but in a random direction in your drug-induced panic.

Potions offer a lot of utility, but moreso than other tradeskills, the temporary nature of the effects meant that a lot of the players in the alpha push didn't want to pay a lot for them. Until or unless the yield of potions created goes up (and I wouldn't bet against it), this is mostly a tradeskill to benefit yourself and your group, not get rich off it like, say, smiths can.

Having said that, though, the wide range of abilities potions offer the alchemist make this a tradeskill worth looking at, in my mind.

Enchanting

This was added to the game in the undead push, and that's when I tried it. Magical effects can be added to various pieces of armor †“ the effect and the target depend on the recipe †“ using herbs, magical dust and copper and silver rods. In order to keep things balanced, permanent enchantments use a lot of herbs, and most of the skilling up recipes are temporary imbuing recipes.

I tended to discount the imbues when I first tried the tradeskill, but in the all-Alliance push, I had two of my pieces of armor imbued for a tough fight with a named for a quest and I think it may well have made the difference in the fight.

In any case, this is a relatively resource-intensive tradeskill to raise, and you won't find a lot of Expert enchanters. In fact, I'd expect every guild in the retail version of the game to have just one or two, but a lot of guild Herbalists supporting them.

Tailoring

I messed around with this some on several different characters on several different pushes, and it was fairly similar to the other crafting tradeskills (see Leatherworking and Smithing below): You gather level-appropriate materials (mostly linen, wool and silk in this case, gathered off of humanoid enemies), weave them together into bolts of fabric, and assemble clothes and bags.

In WoW, there is one slot †“ the "shirt" slot †“ that's purely decorative, so this tradeskill has a number of very involved looking shirts it can create. Caster armor is also created with this skill, including for the much sought-after head slot. Tailored items at the high end tend to be comparable to dropped or quested armor, and the tailors are the ones who have the earliest access to bags and access to the bags of the largest sizes.

Leatherworking

I did Leatherworking on my troll shaman, and while I didn't find it as fun as Smithing, which I did later, I did enjoy putting together my own armor. Horde characters can also quest for a unique (so far) recipe to create a leather bag in Mulgore, which added to the fun of chasing down kodo herds. The higher end recipes here are split between gear that adds to Agility (the primary damage stat for rogues and hunters) and other stats that might benefit shamans or druids more, like Intellect. While there were some slow patches, and it's a little frustrating that there's only one quested bag recipe of the smallest size, I felt that Leatherworking was well on its way to being a nicely rounded tradeskill.

Smithing

Using ore and gems and sometimes other materials, smiths create armor and weapons, including some of the best items available at the levels played in the alpha test (1-30). After turning in my points for Cooking on my dwarf paladin, I picked up Smithing and found it a lot of fun. While there's still pre-combines to do †“ mined ore has to be smelted into bars (using skills learned via Mining) †“ it's not nearly as tedious as the 10,000 pre-combines used for EQ smithing, nor are the parts so difficult to come by. A friend needed a full suit of mail and an axe for a gnome warrior alt, and I was able to get the materials and produce the goods in relatively little time, and produce gear that would keep her for a fair number of levels.

Of course, the very best items available with this crafting tradeskill, as with all the crafting tradeskills, requires higher end materials as well as drops from higher end zones.

Skinning

The gathering skill that goes with Leatherworking, this skill was added in the final push, and I did not get a chance to try it, as my leatherworker, my troll shaman, wasn't available in the all-Alliance push. But everyone noticed regular leather and hide drop rates dropping off, while practically every animal would be flagged "skinnable" after it died. (I want to watch a person try and skin a dead giant tortoise in real life, just for the record.) Pop out the skinning knife and go. The good news is that most people fighting animals aren't skinners, so there's a ton of corpses around for skinners to check. The bad news is that sometimes you have idiot skinners wandering around after you, which is irritating, and I'm told that most of the time, skinners are just receiving the most common skins (light leather), although that was also true prior to this tradeskill being added. I'd expect tweaks on how many skins and what kinds are available †“ mining has gone through several such tweaks already, for instance.

First Aid

Pedi did this on her undead warrior (yes, it's sort of ironic). The skill lets players roll bandages from linen and wool dropped by NPCs and apply them to the wounded. I believe that at higher levels, you can also cure poisons and diseases, but don't quote me on that. The tradeskill has had a very lukewarm perception, between the long cool-down time for applying bandages (since they didn't want healers to be replaced by a tradeskill) and the fact that eating food to restore health outside of battle is so easy. Pedi liked the ability to help folks out and to do emergency healing, but she was one of the few who really dug it. Honestly, this should be combined with Survival, in my mind.

Survival

The good news is that Blizzard has found a way to make fantasy RPG characters carry torches with them down dungeons and to huddle around camp fires, and did it by providing in-game effects that players want, and once more people are educated about the effects of the buffs provided by torches and fires, I expect the tradeskill will get even more popular. Unfortunately, that's all Survival really does: Provides a moderate buff to Spirit, and lets you create cooking fires. It's most commonly used by jackasses who like to stick campfires in funny places, like the middle of the bank. This is a joke that, oddly, stops being funny after the 200th funny guy discovers it. Anyway, this needs to be merged with First Aid, so that two half tradeskills add up to one with more versatility.

Cartography

This tradeskill was never available in alpha, although the trainers for it were around from the beginning and survived even when trainers for furniture building (no, seriously) and others vanished. It's been suggested that cartographers will be able to mark up the world and minimaps for group members, but no one outside of Blizzard really knows at this point.

Foraging

The only trainer for this appears in Darnassus, the night elf capital, and the tradeskill was not available in that final push.

Brewing

Trainers for this were around at least since dwarf push, but they never were open for business. Rumors suggest this one may be scrapped or rolled into cooking.

Final Comments

Let's see, general stuff †¦

Travel in WoW is greatly enhanced by the flight paths, as expected. Some folks want it still faster, but for the most part, you can get to anywhere you want to go in a short period of time. If you insist on running back and forth across the world each time you finish a quest, you're going to be frustrated, but the quests are clustered together by level, so you rarely need to do that †“ taking a flight is typically reserved for moving to an area or winding up at the end of a night. Griffon and hippogryph rides are both spectacular, windrider (wyvern) flights are decent, but I found the bats to be a little stiff.

Boats and zeppelins weren't working in the alpha test, but boat captains would warp you across the ocean in the all-Alliance push to get you where you're going.

Mage ritual spells to teleport whole groups were likewise not in the alpha test, but mages could teleport themselves to capital cities once they'd traveled there to buy the location's port spell. The level on this was raised from 20 to 30 in the tri-Horde push, which was a little surprising, but not the end of the world. (Mages who got their port spells in previous pushes were allowed to keep them, though, so Pedi was still able to blink back to the capitals and take the flights out from that hub while I was still hoofing it across the world just trying to get to a flight station.)

The game interface is already very clean and simple, although I expect EQ players will take a day or so to get used to the movement keys (QWEASD) and to using the mouse for swimming. The interface is also evolving, so don't be surprised when changes are coming. While most of the interface is at least functional, all guild commands have to be typed in with slash commands, but a guild tab on the Friends window is coming, we're told.

Overall, I think WoW is going to be a tremendous success. Folks with realistic expectations (i.e. it's still just an MMORPG, with leveling and a focus on hack-and-slash, as befits the setting) are really going to like it. The game is both more fast-paced than EQ, with a greater ability for EVERYONE to solo (although that doesn't mean that all quests are equally soloable for all classes at all levels) and to be able to find something productive to do with 15 to 30 minutes of free time, as well as more mellow, since the consequences of failure are much, much less than in EQ. I don't think WoW is going to drive EQ out of business, which is sort of a ridiculous standard to set for any product, but I do expect it to take the #1 or #2 position in MMORPGs worldwide (yes, I'm looking at you, Lineage) within the first two months and hold it for the foreseeable future. But like all Blizzard games, it is more of a triumph of an evolutionary game process †“ everything you like about previous MMORPGs, without the added suck †“ rather than a revolutionary process. Having said that, the PVP system sounds pretty interesting, and wasn't available in the alpha test, so maybe a revolution is coming after all.

[Chris W]

urm.... any reason why this huge amount of information has been posted... i started to read it, but then started to wonder what the point was! :confused:

[Jerrek]

It tells you about the game... A game that is only in beta right now. I would link to the original, but the server is taking massive hits due to being linked to from to many sources.

[Bifta]

I would have sold my own grandmother to get on the beta for WoW :( As soon as it's released I'll be cancelling Biosfear and spending it on the monthly subs for this instead.

[downquark1]

I've been following this game. The initial beta that started yesterday only accepted N. American and S. Korean entries. I understand there will be a European one in a few months, I will apply for that.

Jerrek if you get a spare CD key, I'd be happy to play with you ;)

[downquark1]

Oh my! http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/03/20/korea.main/index.html (http://www.angelfire.com/art2/mostharm/koreanwar.html)

[Jerrek]

Oh my! http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/03/20/korea.main/index.html (http://www.angelfire.com/art2/mostharm/koreanwar.html)
You linked to a different, fake web site. Good one though.

I did get into the beta, but I have not gotten the CD yet. I can't wait.

[SOSAGES]

i had quick go fo teh alpha it looked pretty ..hopefully the eu beta will be out soon you can play it now i think as some website has set up their own private beta server - i bet blizzard aint happy.

[downquark1]

The european beta sign up commences on Monday:

http://www.blizzard.co.uk/

Even if you don't want to play you could sign up and give the account to a friend (if you get in) as there is a very limited number of accounts being given out.

[TheShadow]

Yah, I'll sign up.

Played Warcraft III and FT. Good fun.
Should be good as a MMORPG.

[SOSAGES]

it looks a bit cartooney - but hopefully will be good if not play something else plenty of options this year in the mmorpg market

[dilli-theclaw]

I'll have to see if I can get in.... It'll give me something to do at work :) Just as long as my laptop can play it that is.

[downquark1]

it looks a bit cartooney - but hopefully will be good if not play something else plenty of options this year in the mmorpg market
I've tried Lineage 2 and Star Wars Galaxies.

Lineage was very exciting but slow leveling and not much to do. Took an entire day to level :( and quests were 5 levels apart - only dwarfs had trade skills.

Galaxies has lots to do but wasn't very exciting.

WoW looks like it has both elements in a nice balance. IMO the only other MMORPG that could present a real rival is everquest 2, but info on that is scarce ATM

[SOSAGES]

i only tried the beta of linage 2 and it was ok but not worth paying for it was pretty boring

SWG has a lot of pottential but the problem is its too "big" and also combat is dull as ditch water.

CIty Of Heroes is what i play now and im more than happy i wouldnt think id like it as i tend to like fantasy rpgs but its fun and thats the main thing

[downquark1]

Go go go!!
http://www.wow-europe.com/signup/en/

[SOSAGES]

lets hope it is actually any good

[downquark1]

http://www.fileplanet.com/ are handling a stress test of the game, however an ip blocker seems to be in place denying those not in north america.

anyone got an anominious proxy?

[downquark1]

Well, the stress test was very impressive, there are so many quests there is nearly no level grinding, the quests are way more interesting and intimate than SW:G.

The test ends tomorrow and I find I've been excepted in EQ2 beta, but I need to read the NDA before I say more ;)

[Graham M]

The beta of this game is now open to ALL European users, its limited numbers signup on their site!

[Bifta]

Ive signed up, avoided using the P2P client download tool and found an ISO of the Euro final beta client on Easynews, which is now downloading at 225kps :D

[downquark1]

Ive signed up, avoided using the P2P client download tool and found an ISO of the Euro final beta client on Easynews, which is now downloading at 225kps :D
:Yikes: bifta u do know that game has sub standard graphics ;)
Here's some shots
http://img172.exs.cx/img172/2580/wowscrnshot0122051418268fd.jpg

http://img187.exs.cx/img187/5029/wowscrnshot0122051354555ku.jpg

I love blizzard games. I've had a few goes with it, any questions?

[SOSAGES]

im just waiting for them to confirm if they will delete beta characters currently stopped playing after getting various dudes to 20 and will wait for retail

[Graham M]

Im gonna try and find the beta client elsewhere cos this is coming down at poo speeds

[downquark1]

Im gonna try and find the beta client elsewhere cos this is coming down at poo speeds
try this press en torrents

These link to the official swarm
http://www.wowtorrents.de.vu/

[Graham M]

Nope they dont work :confused:

[downquark1]

Nope they dont work :confused:
why what does it say?

[Graham M]

One says 404 on tracker, the other says Bad Tracker Data.

[downquark1]

One says 404 on tracker, the other says Bad Tracker Data.
That could just be an overloaded tracker. Try looking for an unofficial one like bifta found.

[Bifta]

Apparently the realms aren't up yet, so a slow client download isn't really a problem.

[downquark1]

Apparently the realms aren't up yet, so a slow client download isn't really a problem.
The closed beta is still running, I don't know how many realms they are adding for this stage.

Its quite nice they are giving out the client before the opening, otherwise its a mad rush and they get flooded with complants.

[Bifta]

The closed beta is still running, I don't know how many realms they are adding for this stage.

Its quite nice they are giving out the client before the opening, otherwise its a mad rush and they get flooded with complants.

Alledgedly the realms for the final EU beta will be up in a few hours, being a HUGE Warcraft fan I can't wait to get stuck in.

[Plonking]

I still can't wait til feb 25th... ahh my next new blizzard game to get addicted to, added to Warcraft 2 and 3 (with expansions), Diablo 2 and Starcraft. I've never played a bad game made by blizzard, so hopefully it will be good.

P

[Graham M]

well ive got 18% so far, gonna leave it running over night(s) until ive got it, if ive not got it by Tuesday, one of my mates will bring it into college on DVD for me, hopefully ill have it by then tho :rolleyes:

[Bifta]

The auth. servers are back up and running and the new patch is available but still no realms.

[Graham M]

38% about 24hrs to go the downloader reckons.

[TheShadow]

I've been in the beta since closed Euro. It's a superb game I can tell you that, especially with raids and stuff.

[hawkseye000]

i wish i had known about it back then... it looks amazing.

i'm downloading it using azureus right now.

if someone needs the torrent i used, i'm sure i could upload it to my ntl webspace...

so what races and classes have you guys been using... i must say, i'm tempted to choose a human priest...

[Graham M]

Ive got 67% of it so far, hopefully have it by the morning :)

[Bifta]

I've been playing all day and I've only reached level 9 .. it's getting a touch tedious now.

[downquark1]

I've been playing all day and I've only reached level 9 .. it's getting a touch tedious now.
When you hit level 10 you get spellls more essential to your class. Also you get to start using your talent points.

I've had a level 20 human mage(recently), 16tauren shaman, a level 16 NE druid (v early stages of beta) and I've started an undead priest (at lvl 8 at the moment).

What class and race are u bifta?

[Graham M]

93% Downloaded, gosh this had better be worth it, lol :D

[Bifta]

When you hit level 10 you get spellls more essential to your class. Also you get to start using your talent points.

I've had a level 20 human mage(recently), 16tauren shaman, a level 16 NE druid (v early stages of beta) and I've started an undead priest (at lvl 8 at the moment).

What class and race are u bifta?

I'm a human paladin atm, apparently they're a bit of a mob magnet, there's a chest on the "darking bank" or whatever it's called but there are loads of spiders and dire wolves patrolling it ... no matter how far away they get, as soon as I get near that chest they all descend on me :(

[downquark1]

I'm a human paladin atm, apparently they're a bit of a mob magnet, there's a chest on the "darking bank" or whatever it's called but there are loads of spiders and dire wolves patrolling it ... no matter how far away they get, as soon as I get near that chest they all descend on me :(
As with most MMORPG the difficulty depends on whose online at the time. If other people are killing spiders it makes your job a lot easier. You could ask for a group in the /4 channel.

The paladin is a very powerful class if not a bit tedious. The mail armour and healing spells make them excellent tanks and the invincibility giving spell 'divine shield' lets them get out of trouble easily.

If you find that enemies aren't going down as fast as you like put your talents in retribution (once u are level 10). Use the talents page here to find study the best combinations http://www.thottbot.com/?ti=Paladin (spoiler site)

[Graham M]

Woot im just installing now. Hopefully the patch wont take too long.

[downquark1]

I've uploaded some fight scenes using my undead priest here:
http://downquark1.freeprohost.com/WoW/

[Bifta]

As with most MMORPG the difficulty depends on whose online at the time. If other people are killing spiders it makes your job a lot easier. You could ask for a group in the /4 channel.

The paladin is a very powerful class if not a bit tedious. The mail armour and healing spells make them excellent tanks and the invincibility giving spell 'divine shield' lets them get out of trouble easily.

If you find that enemies aren't going down as fast as you like put your talents in retribution (once u are level 10). Use the talents page here to find study the best combinations http://www.thottbot.com/?ti=Paladin (spoiler site)

Nice one, thanks. I've just started mining and blacksmithing, pulling gems from underwater seams, far more rewarding than (why I chose it I don't know) skinning animals. I was wondering if Paladins can use swords as I picked up a rather tasty one yesterday. The only sword trainer I can find is in Stormwhatsname and his prices are extornionate.

edit: If there are enough members from here playing when the game goes retail, we should get a guild together or something.

[downquark1]

Nice one, thanks. I've just started mining and blacksmithing, pulling gems from underwater seams, far more rewarding than (why I chose it I don't know) skinning animals. I was wondering if Paladins can use swords as I picked up a rather tasty one yesterday. The only sword trainer I can find is in Stormwhatsname and his prices are extornionate.

edit: If there are enough members from here playing when the game goes retail, we should get a guild together or something.
The paladin can learn to use swords either one handed or two. But it will cost 10silver and you will need to find the appropriate weapons master.

Enter a city and ask a guard for the weapons master, use the map to find him, if he doesn't do swords ask him for someone who does. he will direct you to the right city. If he's in ironforge u can use tram in the dwarf quarter to get there for free. If he's in darnassus (unlikely) it will be a much more difficult journey at that level.

[Plonking]

Thought you might like to know:

European Street Date Announced
02/02/2005

Blizzard Entertainment today announced that World of WarcraftÂÂÂÂ ® will officially release in Europe on Friday, 11th February, 2005. The game will be available for Windows ® 98/ME/2000/XP and MacintoshÂÂÂà ‚® in English, French and German. There will be a standard edition, containing the game on four CD-ROM disks, and a collector's edition with a plethora of included World of Warcraft memorabilia. Both versions will be fully localised into English, French and German, and will also be available with a Spanish or Italian box and manual.

sweet :D two days after my birthday as well!

P

[Bifta]

The paladin can learn to use swords either one handed or two. But it will cost 10silver and you will need to find the appropriate weapons master.

Enter a city and ask a guard for the weapons master, use the map to find him, if he doesn't do swords ask him for someone who does. he will direct you to the right city. If he's in ironforge u can use tram in the dwarf quarter to get there for free. If he's in darnassus (unlikely) it will be a much more difficult journey at that level.

The weapons master is in Stormforge (trade district), I got to level 16 and got a bit bored, then when they announced they were going to wipe all the beta characters I've decided to not bother levelling any more. I've tried out some other character classes and warrior seems to appeal to me the most so far.

[downquark1]

Summary on Classes:

The Holy Trinity
Warrior - The damage taker
Armour: Mail
Best tanking class (taking damage). Learn a variety of skills to increase damage delt and the odd strategic skill. Later on learns different stances to either take more damage or deal more damage depending on your situation.
In my experience warriors are lacking and thus will always be welcome in a group as they are the best tanks.

Recommended trade skills:
Mining and blacksmithing - to make your own armour
Bandages - to heal quickly in battle
Cooking - to heal between battles

Priest - the damage healer
Armour: Cloth
In WoW the priest is probably the most challenging class to play. The cloth armour means you will be going down quickly if caught unprepared. The healing spells are the best in the game and also best rezer. You have a variety of damage spells, although these are nothing compared to other classes. Your shielding spells can be cast on your self and others in your group. When you are fighting alone these are essential. You also learn strategic spells for getting out of trouble, but not as many as the mage.
Priests are quite rare in some areas of the game and are usually welcome in groups, good thing as priests depend on groups.
Recommended trade skills
Tailoring - making your own "armour"
Herbalism and alchemy - make potions to augment your self and others
Enchanting - Augment your armour - this skill is best used when you have a guild to send you items. It is also extremely costly as it involves destroy expensive items to extract the magic essense.

Mage - the damage dealer
Armour: Cloth
The mage like the priest, will be easily defeated when caught unprepared or out of mana. But he has a lot more trick up his sleave. The mage has the best damage dealing spells in the game. Will also learn area of effect spells for large scale battles and portal spells (at higher levels) for easy transport between cities. By level 20 a mage will have a good deal of get away spells, to help with retreats.
When soloing mages have a lot of down time as, their health and mana will be used every battle. Fortunally they can conjure food and water to recharge quicker. These can only be used between battles.
Recommened skills:
Same as priest

Other classes - mixed abilities
Rogue - stealth damage dealer
Armour: leather
It i said that the rogue can deal more damage one on one than the mage at higher levels, but he lacks the area of effect abilities. He can turn invisible to avoid damage or take a little with his leather amour. He also has combo moves and can poison or trap the enemy. He is very effective when a healer is nearby as he is not mana dependant and can go straight from battle to battle.

Warlock - Self interested mage
Armour:Cloth
Although his spells lack the same power as the mage, he makes up for it by being able to summon demon pets to fullfill a role that he is lacking.
Pets include: imp (small thing shoots fire balls), Voidwalker (large tanking melee unit, usefull when soloing as it takes the damage and not you) Succubus (damage dealing melee unit similar to the rogue). At higher levels you can summon and control higher demons but you risk them turning against you.
He has a variety of skills that involve making things from the souls he sucks from his enemies.
Although the warlock in designed to be a loner, he's pets can come in handy in a group when a tank is missing and he can also summon team members who are too far away.
You can spot a warlock by the pet following it

Hunter
Armour: Leather
This class has some ranged abilities and can tame a beat and then control it (provided you keep it happy). The hunter lacks tanking ability, but his pet can fill this roll. He has many trips and traps like the rogue, but can't turn invisible and isn't as good at close range combat.

Paladin - Holy warrior (alliance only)
Armour: mail
The Paladin is a mix of a melee fighter and a secondary spell caster. The Paladin is ideal for groups due to the Paladin's healing, Blessings, and other abilities. Paladins can have one active aura per Paladin on each party member and use specific Blessings for specific players. Paladins are pretty hard to kill, thanks to their assortment of defensive abilities. The Paladin can also heal with Holy Light, unlike other combat classes. The Paladin is an Undead specific fighter as well, with several abilities designed to be used against the Undead.
Paladins can fill the most needed holes in groups (Tank and healer). Very powerful but battle is a bit repetative.

Shaman - healing mage
Armour: Leather
The shaman is a good mix of abilities, he is able to carry a shield and wear leather making his able to take some damage, he is also able to heal and ressurect, making him able to help in groups. The shaman has a variety of damaging and weapon augmentation spells letting him deal a damage quickly.
The most different thing about this class is his totems. He can place a variety of different totems on the group that can do anything from attacking the enemy to increasing the amour of your group.
He can also turn himself into a ghostly wolf allowing him to travel quicker.

Druid - Jack of all traits but not all at once
The druid can do anything but not as well as the counterpart. He is a better healer than the shaman but he's ressurection spell has some disadvantages. He can deal damage with a variety of spells, put animals to sleep and entangle enemies in roots. The druid can also transform himself in to a bear to allow him to take more damage, a panther allowing him to stealthly deal damage like the rogue and a seal letting him swim faster in underwater zones.
In a group the druid can change to fill a gap accordingly. When he's on his own he must ultalize all his skills at the right time in order to succeed.

[SOSAGES]

got the game just need them to let me in :)

[Graham M]

Im wondering if youre going to be able to just buy the account on their website, im really not bothered about a retail box?

[SOSAGES]

u would think it would be an option but not many games like this offer that option :(

[Bifta]

I refuse to buy this game, I don't mind paying a monthly subscription but I'm not paying £30 for the client.

[Plonking]

it does seem to be really pricey! you would have thought that they would have made that an option, but I guess they realise how much money they can make out of it, so don't give you the choice :dozey: although you do get 1 month's subs with the retail box, so that means you are really buying it for about £20-odd....

[Nor]

Arrived this morning from Gameplay. Hoping the servers open tonight at 11 as expected.

Mmorpgs are well worth the subscription btw. Can always sell your account at some stage anyway.

[Acathla]

Arrived this morning from Gameplay. Hoping the servers open tonight at 11 as expected.


11? wheres that been said? i heared 1am (midnight cet)

[Graham M]

We are behind CET!!! Its 11am GMT/ Midnight CET

[Acathla]

We are behind CET!!! Its 11am GMT/ Midnight CET

we are?

lol :blush:

i assume you mean 11pm :)

[Nor]

Okay I've unconfused myself now :) Yeah 11pm.

http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/time-zone/europe/european-union/central-european-time/

[Graham M]

we are?

lol :blush:

i assume you mean 11pm :)

I do indeed :)

[Plonking]

d'oh I won't be getting mine til tomorrow! any thoughts on having a guild / clan / loose association of item-swappers? :D what side are you thinking of being on?

[Acathla]

signup servers online. good luck getting in :)

or not :(
__________________

can auto download the patch now if you want, pretend to login and itll download

[Acathla]

woo hoo signup working

sorta - ill just wait

[Nor]

Security image is fecked unfortunately :) I'm sure they'll sort it before too long.

[Acathla]

Security image is fecked unfortunately :) I'm sure they'll sort it before too long.

try https://signup.wow-europe.com

defaults to http://signup.wow-europe.com

[Nor]

Thanks yeah tried that and it worked, but then the server went down :) Probably best just waiting till tomorrow like you mate :)

[Acathla]

weeeeeeee signed up

[Graham M]

Ive just ordered my copy from Play.

[Plonking]

currently installing... keeping my fingers crossed I can at least have a brief play on it once installed!! :)

EDIT: installed now, trying to create an account but having no luck :confused: pages keep dying, plus i almost got through the creation process but it went and timed out on me :rolleyes:

[xcdtowg]

Plonking created his account last night, and has been playing it none stop and won't let me have a go! :cry:Looks good though! :D

[Charlie_Bubble]

Ive just ordered my copy from Play.

Erm, it's £5 cheaper at amazon.co.uk!

[Graham M]

yes but they dont have any in stock.

[Charlie_Bubble]

yes but they dont have any in stock.

Funny, says dispatched in 24 hours on the site, and having ordered it yesterday it says it's going to be dispatching soon. Plus having just come back from town, HMV, Game, and a couple of other places are all selling it for the same price as it is on play, £29.99, so I don't see the point buying it from there unless you live on a remote scottish island and are a long way from any game shops. :)

[Graham M]

When i looked at Amazon, before i ordered it from Play it said something to the affect of "This product will not be shipped for a couple of weeks after it is ordered due to a high call for it"

None of my local games shops had any left in stock by Friday afternoon :confused:

[Charlie_Bubble]

When i looked at Amazon, before i ordered it from Play it said something to the affect of "This product will not be shipped for a couple of weeks after it is ordered due to a high call for it"

None of my local games shops had any left in stock by Friday afternoon :confused:

Shame. Probably underestimated the demand. There were loads in the stores in Guildford. Haven't seen any of the collectors edition anywhere.

[Plonking]

the collectors edition is hard to find :( i've been told its going for arounf £200 already on ebay... lots of people have it, in game i've seen them wandering around with their mini-diablos and panda cubs scuttling around.. not fair!! ;)

[SOSAGES]

i was playing thursday night/friday morning and general chat was full of CE people moaning that the pets look rubbish and out of place while the rest of the chat was full of people asking how to get the pets :)
it was nice to nip round and do all the lvl 1-10 quests with only 4 people on the server :)

[Charlie_Bubble]

I don't believe it. Someone on Ebay is bidding £30.99 + £3 postage for a normal edition of the game!?!

Checked out the collectors edition, seem to be around £110 - £120 for a copy on ebay.

[downquark1]

How you seen some of these fan movies?

http://www.fileplanet.com/wow/ :D
Some people have too much time

[downquark1]

Are people going to post which server (realm) they are using so people can join the same one, this will eliminate problems when creating a clan in the future.

[Charlie_Bubble]

Are people going to post which server (realm) they are using so people can join the same one, this will eliminate problems when creating a clan in the future.

I'm on Thunderhorn. Lvl 14 Dwarf hunter.

[Plonking]

I play on azjol-nerub, with a level 15 (soon to be 16 i hope :D ) tauren shaman..

[downquark1]

k, perhaps it would be it would have been better to co-ordinate servers before. I'm unsure if I'll get the game, it's too addictive.

[Charlie_Bubble]

k, perhaps it would be it would have been better to co-ordinate servers before. I'm unsure if I'll get the game, it's too addictive.

Yep, it's bad. I have hardly played UO since I got WoW. Now I have 2 online game addictions. It's like choosing between heroin or cocaine! :)

[Plonking]

it is truly very very addictive, i used to post here quite regularly, and now im hardly ever on!!

[Alan Waddington]

I gave in & bought a copy last week and am a gnome warlock on PvE server Emerald Dream. The game's sucked up most of my 'spare'* hours this week. Once the 'newness' wears off a bit, hopefully this will decline. (It has to) This really precludes joining a guild, although joining ad-hoc parties for specific quests is fine.

Game graphics are quite good, but response suffers when many players gather together, particularly in IronForge. Checking my logs shows the data bandwidth is quite low, probably to cater for 56k dial-up & suspect that some degree of throttling occurs in a high player density environment. With my programming hat on, this looks like an interesting optimisation problem.

The big issue with this game is spending too much time on it. Fortunately I tend to play most games heavily for a couple of weeks after purchase & then only occasionally. Hopefully this will also prove the case here, the question being how much play time is required to justify the subscription.

Alan.

* 'spare' means hours I'd normally be doing things like housework, socialising, sleeping and other things enjoyed by normal well balanced human beings.

[OinkyBoinky]

I don't believe it. Someone on Ebay is bidding £30.99 + £3 postage for a normal edition of the game!?!

Checked out the collectors edition, seem to be around £110 - £120 for a copy on ebay.

lol yeah.. i've seen some mad prices on ebay... even just for the standard edition... apprently its sold out everywhere? my mate seemed to obsessed with this... can't see the attrcation personally he... he was bidding on one last night... but gave up after it went byond £40...

[Charlie_Bubble]

lol yeah.. i've seen some mad prices on ebay... even just for the standard edition... apprently its sold out everywhere? my mate seemed to obsessed with this... can't see the attrcation personally he... he was bidding on one last night... but gave up after it went byond £40...

Tell him to send me £40 and I'll get him a copy! ;)

Haven't had chance to play over the weekend. Just got back about 30 minutes ago from 4 days in Paris! :)

[OinkyBoinky]

lol mangage to buy a couple of copies today... £24.99 from sainsburys...

[Bifta]

Anyone having trouble connecting this afternoon?

[Charlie_Bubble]

Anyone having trouble connecting this afternoon?

Probably because they said the servers would be taken down for extended maintenance today.

[Bifta]

Probably because they said the servers would be taken down for extended maintenance today.

They also said that all realms would be working by 3pm, note the time of my post. (unless they meant GMT+ whatever)

[Charlie_Bubble]

They also said that all realms would be working by 3pm, note the time of my post. (unless they meant GMT+ whatever)

I got the impression that in the UK it would be until 4pm, which I was ok with as I'm at work! :P

[Plonking]

My other half just got a copy of WoW, and, agonisingly, the wow-europe site seems to be down.. can anyone else get to it?

otherwise we can't sign up :(

[downquark1]

My other half just got a copy of WoW, and, agonisingly, the wow-europe site seems to be down.. can anyone else get to it?

otherwise we can't sign up :(
Works for me http://www.wow-europe.com/en/

[Plonking]

hmm ok, i'll try restarting my CM :D

tried lots of proxies, and two different OSes, and two different browesers, so hopefully this will make a difference! :)

[downquark1]

hmm ok, i'll try restarting my CM :D

tried lots of proxies, and two different OSes, and two different browesers, so hopefully this will make a difference! :)
Does using the ip address help?

http://80.239.174.201/

[Plonking]

you are truly a genius! yes it does help :D i can't get to it at all, but with the ip it worked instantly.. any ideas why that might be?

[Plonking]

ok i can get to it, but now the signup pages are dead.. can anyone else get to them?

[downquark1]

ok i can get to it, but now the signup pages are dead.. can anyone else get to them?
Again it's working for me, I don't know what could be wrong, maybe some routing trouble, this is the address for the sign up pages:

https://80.239.174.202/

[Plonking]

hey cheers,

managed to get there in the end, no idea why i was having so much trouble, but just downloading the patch now :)

just gonna create some new horde characters on dunemaul, so if anyone wants to come along, let me know :D

[smicer07]

Is there a monthly fee for this?

[OinkyBoinky]

yeah lmao... another silly game u have to pay for... then keep paying each month :S can't say i'll ever plan on doing it...

[downquark1]

As silly as it sounds, yes there is a monthly fee. On the bright side there is constant development and new features. Except when they launch large new parts of the world in which case it will be released as an expansion pack.

MMORG's are very well defined and popular at the moment.

[Graham M]

The point i think is a good thing about MMOs. They have to think ahead, how long are they going to be running the servers for and providing support, etc? When you go and buy any normal game, you expect a certain amount of playtime out of it. Once youve finished it, youre happy and you shelve it, maybe play it once more. With MMOs such as World of Warcraft you get so much more play time out of it than a standard game. The games have so many angles from which to play, for instance when you have played the game through with your Dwarf Warrior to Level 60 (the max) then the game not only opens up to you (you can go pretty much anywhere) But you can then create a new character, with a new race and class and different traits and play the game through again and it will happen differently as you can play it all in a different order, only some parts are Linear.

I was going to write more but ive lost my train of thought :rolleyes:

[Plonking]

lol, I'm with Zeph here, the choices you can make are endless, plus it's like 7 or 8 quid a month, which is hardly anything considering that I spend a tenner every day just getting to university! I too was a bit concerned about the price, then put it into perspective, and realised it wasn't so bad at all. That belief was then further confirmed by how amazing the game is - worth every penny of the monthly subscription, and, if it's anything like all the other blizzard games I've played, I'll be playing it for years to come! :)

[Charlie_Bubble]

Anyone know if I get a copy of the Collectors edition, is there a code that allows me to use the In Game Pet with an existing account, or is it tied to an account code?

[Bifta]

Anyone know if I get a copy of the Collectors edition, is there a code that allows me to use the In Game Pet with an existing account, or is it tied to an account code?

The collectors edition is extremely rare (and very expensive), you're better off being a hunter and training your own pet at Lvl 10, I went for a Prowler (lvl 9) who's now up to lvl 12, it only took me and the wolf to kill hogger too :D

[Charlie_Bubble]

The collectors edition is extremely rare (and very expensive), you're better off being a hunter and training your own pet at Lvl 10, I went for a Prowler (lvl 9) who's now up to lvl 12, it only took me and the wolf to kill hogger too :D

Yeah, got a hunter, but fancied one of those ickle Diablo guys + some of the other stuff in the package.

Have 2 chars now Lvl 18 Dwarf Hunter and a Lvl13 Gnome Mage! :)

[ryo2dx]

I'm nearly level 28 (NE hunter), questing in Duskwood at the moment
server crashed earlier when a raid of over 100 horde attacked Stormwind
:xmas:

[Charlie_Bubble]

My mage is now level 18 and the hunter is level 20. Time consuming to raise 2 chars! :)

[Bifta]

My dwarf hunter is finally up to level 20 but it seems the only quests I can find atm are WAY above my level :(

[Charlie_Bubble]

My dwarf hunter is finally up to level 20 but it seems the only quests I can find atm are WAY above my level :(

Just been down in that valley near the dam with those big fat Mo'grosh fellas! :) Finally got the Mo' gosh crystal for a quest I had.

[ryo2dx]

My dwarf hunter is finally up to level 20 but it seems the only quests I can find atm are WAY above my level :(

Where you questing? Darkshore is good for around level 20 IIRC, and Westfall too. Lakeshire if those two are too easy.

[Bifta]

Where you questing? Darkshore is good for around level 20 IIRC, and Westfall too. Lakeshire if those two are too easy.

How do I get to Darkshore? I tried venturing into Duskwood, less than a minute later 3 black widow hatchlings killed me, Westfall is ok, I might head right down and get that big b*stard Murloc that parades around, need to find a party to do the Defias Traitor first as he likes to steam into the first Defias he see's in Moonbrook, my pet and I can only kill so many at once.

[SOSAGES]

i got to 42 last night havnt played much but in a good guild
anyone on alliance bladefist ? :)

[ryo2dx]

How do I get to Darkshore? I tried venturing into Duskwood, less than a minute later 3 black widow hatchlings killed me, Westfall is ok, I might head right down and get that big b*stard Murloc that parades around, need to find a party to do the Defias Traitor first as he likes to steam into the first Defias he see's in Moonbrook, my pet and I can only kill so many at once.

Darkshore is on Kalimdor, you can get a ship there from Wetlands.

[Bifta]

Darkshore is on Kalimdor, you can get a ship there from Wetlands.

I'd have to actually get through the wetlands first, I accidently slipped down a mountain into it once and promptly got killed by this big blob. What level mobs are there? Anything above L20 and I'm a bit stuffed.

[xcdtowg]

where are the wetlands? I have an undead warlock and wanted to do the succubus quest but i need the heart of some guy in the wetlands. I've tried looking at maps on the net, but i could with an idiots guide on how to get there i think! lol! :)

[Bifta]

where are the wetlands? I have an undead warlock and wanted to do the succubus quest but i need the heart of some guy in the wetlands. I've tried looking at maps on the net, but i could with an idiots guide on how to get there i think! lol! :)

I found Wetlands by going through the gateway tunnel things in the North Eastern corner of Dun Moragh trying to find my way up to Loch Modan, I accidently slipped down a mountainside after going through the second gateway, all very annoying as my thingy stone was still set to take me back to Goldshire.

[Charlie_Bubble]

where are the wetlands? I have an undead warlock and wanted to do the succubus quest but i need the heart of some guy in the wetlands. I've tried looking at maps on the net, but i could with an idiots guide on how to get there i think! lol! :)

If you've been near the Loch, the road to the wetlands is in the north west corner. Not the one right in the corner, but slightly east of the guard tower. then just follow the road. Wetlands has some spiders, blobs and crocs all around level 20 - 23. Don't go in the water though. Id did once and this indescribable thing got me in a second! :)

[downquark1]

Ah the wetlands, I remember I had to run through that as a level10 to get to the harbour to the night elf lands to meet my friends. With level 20s everywhere is was a matter of dieing rezzing running dieing etc.

I'm going to get the game in a few months when I'll have more time.

[xcdtowg]

Ahh y'see if i had read this earlier i would have had no idea still, but i created a gnome rogue earlier and ive been playing that this afternoon, because i've only played horde so far...

Dun Moragh is where i was earlier, all snowy there! So used to the desert in the Barrens! I might level up my gnome and have a nosey first!
Hmm dont think my poor warlock would last long going all the way over there, i wandered into night elf teritory once and i was killed by a giant bear thing! I learnt my lesson! :S
Think i'll level her up a few more first, i've left it for a bit due to getting stuck with all elite quests that are impossible on your own, like the pyrewood village quests and shadowfang keep! I dont last long there! :S
Thanks for telling me though, its been bugging me since i finally got the quest!! :D

[Bifta]

Don't go in the water though. Id did once and this indescribable thing got me in a second! :)

Soap?

[ryo2dx]

If you've been near the Loch, the road to the wetlands is in the north west corner. Not the one right in the corner, but slightly east of the guard tower. then just follow the road. Wetlands has some spiders, blobs and crocs all around level 20 - 23. Don't go in the water though. Id did once and this indescribable thing got me in a second! :)

Also murlocs and raptors, it's pretty safe on the path though (as long as there's no horde)
Just make sure you don't go north, there's level 28+ mobs there

What does everyone do for professions? I've got 227 skinning now, and level 162 leatherworking (the only artisan leathworker is in Darnassus, pain in the arse)

[Charlie_Bubble]

Also murlocs and raptors, it's pretty safe on the path though (as long as there's no horde)
Just make sure you don't go north, there's level 28+ mobs there

What does everyone do for professions? I've got 227 skinning now, and level 162 leatherworking (the only artisan leathworker is in Darnassus, pain in the arse)

I started herbalism and alchemy on one char, but junked that yesterday and have taken skinning and leatherworking instead. Got up to 128 skinning in about an hour and about 78 leatherworking in the same period. :)

The other char has mining and engineering.

[ryo2dx]

I started herbalism and alchemy on one char, but junked that yesterday and have taken skinning and leatherworking instead. Got up to 128 skinning in about an hour and about 78 leatherworking in the same period. :)

The other char has mining and engineering.

You'll be able to make toughened leather gloves soon then, they sell for around 1g in the AH :D

edit: oops thought that said 128 leatherworking
at 130 (i think) you can make the toughened leather gloves

[xcdtowg]

the skinning and leatherworking skill is the best by far and really useful! My troll is a leatherworker and i make all my armour and sell the rest for loads of money!
I have a warlock with herbalism and alchemy, its ok for healing potions, because shes a wuss! But to get to herbs you have to kill eveything, but with skinning its already dead so lots and lots of leather! I keep selling my skinning knife by accident though...such an eejit!

[ryo2dx]

Also, when others are exping they often leave their dead (don't have skinning, or skinning not high level enough) which you can farm all you like on!
the raptors just accross the lake from Menethil Harbour are excellent for this, there's always tons of dead raptors laying around, also the excavation site a bit east of that has a ton of dead raptors cos there's a quest to kill like 20 of each kind or something

[xcdtowg]

True, I'm always stealing dead bodies that are left around! Also when in a party and no one else has skinning, much experience gained from that!

[xcdtowg]

*grumble* wow wont let me login, but Plonkings pc on the same network and everything works fine! All i wanted to do was auction my things i got from a wailing caverns trip yestrday! :(

[downquark1]

*grumble* wow wont let me login, but Plonkings pc on the same network and everything works fine! All i wanted to do was auction my things i got from a wailing caverns trip yestrday! :(
http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-server-status-en&t=71&p=1&tmp=1#post71

We are aware of the connection and login issues affecting certain players at the moment and are investigating the cause of these problems. We will correct these issues as soon as possible and apologise for any inconvenience caused. We thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter.

[xcdtowg]

Yeah i saw that after id written the post :) i just dont understand why plonkign can log in and i cant? strange goings on i tell ye!

[Plonking]

haha yeah it's fine for me, but not for others :D i did create my account on the first day it was released, so maybe they are rewarding me for being loyal :D

[xcdtowg]

Is anyone else having problems logging in, because mine was still down a few hours ago?

[xcdtowg]

its back up now, for me anyway! :D yay!

[Bifta]

So, how many CF players have we got? What class and level are you? What's your DPS etc?

[smicer07]

Is this game worth getting? Worth paying the subscription for?

[Bifta]

Is this game worth getting? Worth paying the subscription for?

Absolutely!

[Raistlin]

Ok.....

So.....

If I buy this, and pay my monthly fee, will I find myself dead every time I log on after not having played for a few days?

What happens to my character if I don't do anything for a couple of days? Does he/she just stand around doing nothing or what? Can I be attacked/eaten/killed/plundered/drowned/catch a cold?

[ryo2dx]

When you log out, you disappear. Unless it crashes during a fight, then you'll most likely log back in to find yourself dead :D

[Raistlin]

Ok, thanks for that.

[xcdtowg]

So, how many CF players have we got? What class and level are you? What's your DPS etc?

I have a level 36 Troll Hunter at the moment, as for DPS Melee - 39.9 main, 17.7 offhand....Ranged - 54.5... I don't really do much damage but my critical shot chance is great, plus I do extra damage on it, so all good! :D

Just saving up for my level 40 mount :p:
__________________

Absolutely!

I agree :D, I felt the need to level last night so now im very tired having stayed up, the game is very addictive! But sooo good!

[SOSAGES]

lvl 60 last night only a shame it was off a mob as i had 7 quests to cash in ..grrrr

[Bifta]

I have a level 36 Troll Hunter at the moment, as for DPS Melee - 39.9 main, 17.7 offhand....Ranged - 54.5... I don't really do much damage but my critical shot chance is great, plus I do extra damage on it, so all good! :D

Just saving up for my level 40 mount :p:
__________________



I agree :D, I felt the need to level last night so now im very tired having stayed up, the game is very addictive! But sooo good!

Cool, hunters are top! My lvl 34 Dwarf Hunter does 41.5 DPS main hand and 20.5 off hand but only 45.5 ranged, all my talent points went in marksmanship, seem to end up doing >250 damage with most bolts. What pet have you got? Mines a tiger from stranglethorn, lvl 33, has growl lvl 4, claw lvl 4, bite lvl 5 and cower lvl 3.

[Plonking]

haha nice one! one day, far from now I may get to lvl 60, lol!

all you guys need to start characters on dunemaul, then come and join our guild :D or better, we can start a new guild even :p:

raistlin - when your character spends time in an inn or a city, or spends time logged out, it means that, when you log back in again, you get twice as much experience as you normally would for killing monsters for a period of time. one of my spare characters I have has about a week's worth of boosted experience, so it can make grinding way easier.

i should also just say one more thing:

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2005/04/23.jpg

[Bifta]

haha nice one! one day, far from now I may get to lvl 60, lol!

all you guys need to start characters on dunemaul, then come and join our guild :D or better, we can start a new guild even :p:

raistlin - when your character spends time in an inn or a city, or spends time logged out, it means that, when you log back in again, you get twice as much experience as you normally would for killing monsters for a period of time. one of my spare characters I have has about a week's worth of boosted experience, so it can make grinding way easier.

i should also just say one more thing:

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2005/04/23.jpg

We've had a few horde raids in the last few day's (Runetotem), IF, Stormwind and South Shore, I guess when you get to lvl 60 there's not much else to do.

[Plonking]

Cool, hunters are top! My lvl 34 Dwarf Hunter does 41.5 DPS main hand and 20.5 off hand but only 45.5 ranged, all my talent points went in marksmanship, seem to end up doing >250 damage with most bolts. What pet have you got? Mines a tiger from stranglethorn, lvl 33, has growl lvl 4, claw lvl 4, bite lvl 5 and cower lvl 3.

hunters are really cool, it's true.. I have a mage and always party with xcd, it's far far safer for me to do that, lol :D the other night two lvl 40+ night elves (both hunters) picked on us.. i died almost straight away, but her hunter survived long enough for me to come back to life, and then die again, lol!

being a mage, i don't think that DPS counts (I've had the same melee weapon for 15 levels), but I've put all of my talents into boosting my fire spells, and they all do a good few hundred damage each shot :)

have you done /played ?? just interested :)

P
__________________

We've had a few horde raids in the last few day's (Runetotem), IF, Stormwind and South Shore, I guess when you get to lvl 60 there's not much else to do.

apparently, you can pick up spellbooks to learn new abilities that trainers can't teach you in some high-level areas. plus, there's always onyxia to kill :D

lol south shore.. that place is always a killing field, although on our server its always the horde being murdered at tarren mill!

P

[Bifta]

have you done /played ?? just interested :)

What's that?

lol south shore.. that place is always a killing field, although on our server its always the horde being murdered at tarren mill!

It was a joke last night, I didn't get involved for obvious reasons (until I saw a lvl 39 undead mage, and that was far too good an offer to pass up, he died very quickly) but the horde all piled into south shore, lost some units and ran back to tarren mills with the alliance in hot pursuit, then the alliance lost half their units and ran back to south shore with loads of horde in pursuit, this carried on for hours, back and forth.

[SOSAGES]

yes blue time helped a lot :) i got a 22 priest with max blue time gotta start playing him

took 17days 5 hours to get to 60 so not to bad lot faster than other games

[xcdtowg]

What's that?



It was a joke last night, I didn't get involved for obvious reasons (until I saw a lvl 39 undead mage, and that was far too good an offer to pass up, he died very quickly) but the horde all piled into south shore, lost some units and ran back to tarren mills with the alliance in hot pursuit, then the alliance lost half their units and ran back to south shore with loads of horde in pursuit, this carried on for hours, back and forth.

Type /played into your game when your playing and it tells you how long your total played time is for that character. Mines about 8 days I think.;)

Lol, yep thats sounds like Tarren Mill alright, but on Dunemaul its just the allaince kill a horde, a horde kills them back, then a mass allaince raid come and slaughters everyone at tarren mill...lol, far more high level Alliance on dunemaul than horde, far more allaince players on dunemaul i think too!

One raid lasted about 8 hours, i left after 2 because i got bored but eevryone was still talking about it later in the night! Its crazy, back and forth all evening!
__________________

Cool, hunters are top! My lvl 34 Dwarf Hunter does 41.5 DPS main hand and 20.5 off hand but only 45.5 ranged, all my talent points went in marksmanship, seem to end up doing >250 damage with most bolts. What pet have you got? Mines a tiger from stranglethorn, lvl 33, has growl lvl 4, claw lvl 4, bite lvl 5 and cower lvl 3.

Man what are you holding in your hands??? I have the best axe i could find, i treated myself last night. :D

Yep all my talents are in markmanship too :) my critcal strikes are about 400, and ordinary hits about 250 too.

I have two pets i wanted a new pet but i cant be arsed to travel to stable my old pet, i have an ashenvale bear same level as me, with growl and claw, and a new tiger because i left my bear behind once so got one to use for the moment, its a lion thing from near tarren mill, i couldnt be without a pet round there!

[smicer07]

Can someone advise me please- I'm looking to get this game... Game have it on their site at the moment, but will it become more widespread very quickly, or will it be one of those games that will always be hard to get hold of? Cheers.

[downquark1]

Can someone advise me please- I'm looking to get this game... Game have it on their site at the moment, but will it become more widespread very quickly, or will it be one of those games that will always be hard to get hold of? Cheers.
At the moment the company won't release anymore copies until April 15 (not long now). So you may be lucky with game or you may have to look around in some shops. Maybe a tesco or smaller game store with have it.

[Bifta]

You can also get it on ebay

[OinkyBoinky]

You can also get it on ebay

yeah that true... the day the game came out... i went to sainsbury, bought a copy of it.... 10 min later it was up for sale on ebay lol... the game didn't appeal to me one bit, my who spends all his wages on MMORPGs every month and playes like everyone that comes out live online.... and he told me it was gonna be a rare game lol....

wot i don't see was tho... why didn't the company just makes loads of the copies that game when it was releaseed rather than only making a few limited copies.... I know this gives the game a "highly sort after" status.... but it just means people will buy it and sell it on for tons of profit... surly if the company just loads fo the game, it's be them that get the money, and not just the people that buy it in bulk and selling for ridiculous ammounts tom dum people on ebay....

[downquark1]

yeah that true... the day the game came out... i went to sainsbury, bought a copy of it.... 10 min later it was up for sale on ebay lol... the game didn't appeal to me one bit, my who spends all his wages on MMORPGs every month and playes like everyone that comes out live online.... and he told me it was gonna be a rare game lol....

wot i don't see was tho... why didn't the company just makes loads of the copies that game when it was releaseed rather than only making a few limited copies.... I know this gives the game a "highly sort after" status.... but it just means people will buy it and sell it on for tons of profit... surly if the company just loads fo the game, it's be them that get the money, and not just the people that buy it in bulk and selling for ridiculous ammounts tom dum people on ebay....
The regular copies are now rare, purely because the game is entirely server reliant and they don't have enough servers to cope with the initial demand.

On April 15 more servers are coming online, hence more copies.

[smicer07]

May as well wait til Friday then eh?

[Bifta]

yeah that true... the day the game came out... i went to sainsbury, bought a copy of it.... 10 min later it was up for sale on ebay lol... the game didn't appeal to me one bit, my who spends all his wages on MMORPGs every month and playes like everyone that comes out live online.... and he told me it was gonna be a rare game lol....

wot i don't see was tho... why didn't the company just makes loads of the copies that game when it was releaseed rather than only making a few limited copies.... I know this gives the game a "highly sort after" status.... but it just means people will buy it and sell it on for tons of profit... surly if the company just loads fo the game, it's be them that get the money, and not just the people that buy it in bulk and selling for ridiculous ammounts tom dum people on ebay....

And the award for crimes against grammar and spelling goes to ....

Did you play the game? If so, afaik the CD key is then tied to your billing details, how did you get anyone to buy it? As for paying a monthly fee, I'm fairly confident that £9 or so won't break the bank.
__________________

May as well wait til Friday then eh?

Make it Friday afternoon ;) realm maintenance always takes place on a friday morning so you won't be able to play until after lunch anyway.

[ryo2dx]

They made a fairly huge number, 380,000 were sold in just the first few days of it going on sale! If they made too many copies, the servers just wouldn't be able to handle it (that's why they're staggering the releases)

[OinkyBoinky]

And the award for crimes against grammar and spelling goes to ....

Did you play the game? If so, afaik the CD key is then tied to your billing details, how did you get anyone to buy it? As for paying a monthly fee, I'm fairly confident that £9 or so won't break the bank.

play the game?? don't be silly... i didn't even remove the protective plastic, only took it out the bag to photograph... bought it with full intentions of selling it on... i know all about the way it ties account/cd keys etc, cos i have got a couple of friends who play this and others MMORPGS...

[smicer07]

Can't buy it til Friday afternoon :( Some of us have work to do ;)

[Plonking]

definitely worth buying :)

anyone wanna make a CF guild? I don't get much time to play but may manage to start a new char on another server, or we could all get new chars on an entirely different server altogether.. let me know what you all reckon :)

with regards to the limited copies, there have been a few server hiccups at various times so far, so it seems like a good idea that only a limited number were released initially. they are releasing new servers on april 15th too, so maybe a CF clan could start there- those of us who know the game could level quickly and own the economy at the auction houses :p:

P

[ryo2dx]

http://soundtest.org/ryo/yell_s2.jpg

made this as a sig for another forum :D

hit level 36 today, night elf hunter
oh 40 you are so close...

[Bifta]

definitely worth buying :)

anyone wanna make a CF guild?

So long as you make it on Runetotem ;)

[downquark1]

So long as you make it on Runetotem ;) How's the population on that server at the moment?

We need to think of a name and a faction (alliance/hoarde).

[Bifta]

How's the population on that server at the moment?

We need to think of a name and a faction (alliance/hoarde).

"Low" (and alliance pref. ;))

[downquark1]

I like plonk's idea of starting on a new server but, I've leave the server to you lot who already have characters, I'm getting the game next week (to shut my brother up).

My alliance character is going to a NE druid. If I make a hoarde alt (I still have limited time so I may get left behind at first), it will be a troll mage.

[Plonking]

runetotem looks good, as it's a pve server.. I've been playing on pvp and it gets really annoying after a while... especially in the holidays when lots of pumped up kiddies play to high levels then only attack horde who are 20 levels below them. sometimes you can be bothered to join in, but other times, you just want to quest, and not engage in 6-hour battles across a big field, or have to contact your friends to come and rescue you from a group of level ?? chars who are perpetual corpse-campers.

the new battlegrounds thing they are developing will hopefully sort some of this out, as will (i hope) the honour system.

if anyone is after creating a horde char (I prefer horde personally), make one on dunemaul and you can join my guild. we have some highish level people, most of whom spend 18hrs a day every day of the week playing the game - including one guy who is obsessed with fishing.. me and xcd have been trying to work out if he ever sleeps, because it doesn't seem like it to me! :Yikes:


PS : ryo2dx, that is truly a cool image :D

[Graham M]

Here is a short vid clip of my Lvl 7 Elf Hunter, I managed to get into Searing Gorge (an area usually reserved for lvl 50+ people) by following a level 54 guy on a Horse in, just for kicks, I went and attacked a Level ?? Elemental which was probably about Level 50, possibly higher! Quite amusing:

http://www.zeph.co.uk/videos/Squashed.wmv (about 1MB) - Streams fine on 2MBit.

[Saltank]

Can anyone help me out please, I need to know if Cable or DSL is better for playing WoW on the US servers. Right now I have the BlueYonder 1mbit and I get 300+ms :(
Generally, what is better for gaming cable or DSL?

[Bifta]

Can anyone help me out please, I need to know if Cable or DSL is better for playing WoW on the US servers. Right now I have the BlueYonder 1mbit and I get 300+ms :(
Generally, what is better for gaming cable or DSL?

Cable normally gives you lower pings. I get around 90ms on ADSL on the EU servers, couldnt possibly comment on ones in the USA but I certainly wouldn't expect less than 100ms.

[Saltank]

Is it possible you could do a tracert us.logon.worldofwarcraft.com please?

Here is mine:

Tracing route to us.logon.worldofwarcraft.com [12.129.232.115]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 10 ms 8 ms 7 ms 10.171.128.1
2 8 ms 7 ms 8 ms gsr01-ca.blueyonder.co.uk [62.30.144.161]
3 10 ms 8 ms 7 ms 172.18.28.45
4 7 ms 7 ms 12 ms tele2-har-pos.telewest.net [194.117.136.26]
5 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms 206.24.169.169
6 97 ms 95 ms 98 ms 204.70.192.121
7 96 ms 99 ms 97 ms 10.10.1.101
8 83 ms 83 ms 82 ms dcr2-so-0-1-0-500.Washington.savvis.net [204.70.192.165]
9 82 ms 82 ms 83 ms cw-gw.wswdc.ip.att.net [192.205.32.45]
10 87 ms 86 ms 83 ms tbr1-p014001.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.123.9.82]
11 105 ms 107 ms 106 ms tbr1-cl4.sl9mo.ip.att.net [12.122.10.30]
12 151 ms 152 ms 150 ms tbr1-cl2.sffca.ip.att.net [12.122.10.42]
13 150 ms 151 ms 150 ms gbr5-p100.sffca.ip.att.net [12.122.11.74]
14 150 ms 150 ms 151 ms gar3-p360.sffca.ip.att.net [12.123.13.157]
15 158 ms 159 ms 163 ms mdf1-gsr12-2-pos-7-0.lax1.attens.net [12.122.255.254]
16 159 ms 161 ms 159 ms mdf1-bi8k-2-eth-1-2.lax1.attens.net [12.129.192.46]
17 * * * Request timed out.

[Bifta]

Is it possible you could do a tracert us.logon.worldofwarcraft.com please?

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms . [192.168.2.1]
2 31 ms 32 ms 32 ms loopback1.ar1.gs1.systems.pipex.net [62.241.161.
247]
3 31 ms 31 ms 155 ms ge-1-0-0.cr1.gs1.systems.pipex.net [62.241.161.9
4]
4 31 ms 30 ms 32 ms ldn-b1-geth6-1-11.telia.net [213.248.100.41]
5 32 ms 32 ms 33 ms ldn-bb1-pos1-1-0.telia.net [213.248.64.97]
6 103 ms 102 ms 103 ms nyk-bb1-pos0-2-0.telia.net [213.248.65.90]
7 103 ms 102 ms 102 ms nyk-b1-pos6-0-0.telia.net [213.248.80.62]
8 106 ms 105 ms 108 ms telia-gw.n54ny.ip.att.net [192.205.32.49]
9 107 ms 107 ms 107 ms tbr1-p011601.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.1.122]
10 129 ms 128 ms 128 ms tbr1-cl1.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.10.2]
11 171 ms 170 ms 172 ms tbr1-cl1.sffca.ip.att.net [12.122.10.6]
12 170 ms 169 ms 170 ms gbr5-p100.sffca.ip.att.net [12.122.11.74]
13 169 ms 169 ms 169 ms gar3-p360.sffca.ip.att.net [12.123.13.157]
14 178 ms 183 ms 178 ms mdf1-gsr12-2-pos-7-0.lax1.attens.net [12.122.255
.254]
15 174 ms 174 ms 174 ms mdf1-bi8k-1-eth-4-2.lax1.attens.net [12.129.192.
122]
16 * * * Request timed out.

[Saltank]

Thank you very much :)
I think you would have probably gotten higher latency than me in the game :(

[Bifta]

Thank you very much :)
I think you would have probably gotten higher latency than me in the game :(

Quite probably, I seem to get higher latency than just about everyone in every game.

[Saltank]

But do you think that is the fact with all DSL users?

I am going to be moving house soon and I am just starting to research what to get. I will want to get the Vonage service for landline calls and really fast internet but I need excellent pings to US WoW servers :)
I've posted on so many different websites with the question :shocked:

[Bifta]

But do you think that is the fact with all DSL users?

I am going to be moving house soon and I am just starting to research what to get. I will want to get the Vonage service for landline calls and really fast internet but I need excellent pings to US WoW servers :)
I've posted on so many different websites with the question :shocked:

You're always going to be restricted by the amount of hops it takes to get over to the USA, I've played with a >250ms ping on the EU servers and it's perfectly playable. Mind you, the lag last week was incredible, nearly 10 seconds to do anything, skin, shop, mail .. each action took just as long for everyone on loads of realms.

[Plonking]

I think it may have been a bit slow the last few weeks as the schools were all on holiday, so everything was waaay busier than normal. Orgrimmar was especially bad.. I kept regretting that I had logged out in the auction house, lol!

Just a question for Saltank : why do you want to play on the US servers? They have been plagued with difficulty from the time the game was released, and the european ones don't seem to fare so poorly.

P

[Saltank]

Long story, I'll explain :)
I got the game for EU and I made a char on supposedly a PvP server, I made a guild and at lvl 20 I realize that it's PvE because of a bug. (Aszune). I get to lvl 36ish then a friend gives me his US account and I have a great guild to play with there on Sargeras. And I am still having doubts thinking "oh maybe i should play in EU i get better ping!" but then I think "no way I like my guild on Sargeras and all the content gets released first there!".

I think guilds are generally better in US. That's probably the biggest reason. They're buying me a mount and give me money for training (if I need it, which hasn't happened yet!) :)

Oh and I forgot to say, people are actually English there :)
All the Swedish, Italian, Spanish people etc ruin the game sometimes.

[ryo2dx]

Have you bought an American copy of the game too? If not, how are you playing on US servers? I have friends playing on a US server, I want to be able to play on that one as well as my EU one :<

[Saltank]

I'm Canadian, some of my friends don't play any more and gave me an account.

[Plonking]

ahh ok, i'm not sure that if you have a UK version of the game, that you will actually be able to get into the US servers - have you tried it yet? I read in the past that it was impossible to play across different continents, and that Blizzard were considering changing this (over time).

P

PS: what's so bad about pvp servers? I didn't like the idea of them at first, and its painful once you enter contested territory, but after a while, it can be quite good fun :)

[SOSAGES]

no point playing unless your on a pvp server - just dont read the forums and u never have to hear the crying :) my guild found a horde guild with nearly the same name as us we kill on site ;)

[downquark1]

The new realms have been announced:

Bloodfeather (PvP)
Darksorrow (PvP)
Frostwhisper (PvP)
Ragnaros (PvP)
Sylvanas (PvP)
The Maelstrom (PvP)
Vashj (PvP)

Hellscream (PvE)

And for the guild name "acolytes of frank" *hints at people to make better suggestions.

[ryo2dx]

I'm Canadian, some of my friends don't play any more and gave me an account.

Your location says London, I assumed you lived here :D

[Bifta]

Your location says London, I assumed you lived here :D

Could be London, Ontario ;) (horrible place)

[smicer07]

Just ordered it :)

[Saltank]

I study in UK :)

[Earl of Bronze]

Well, got an email from game telling me that my copy of WoW was in the post. Hopefully it will be here Monday or Tuesday. :D

[Saltank]

Anyways, an update on my situation:

I am not going to play in US because I get high latency and prime time is just really rough. So, instead of going back to my PvE 38 char on Aszune I am looking for a new server/guild.
I've seen some people start a UK guild on Frostwhisper, I will look there :)

[ryo2dx]

you'll need to buy a European copy of the game then

[Saltank]

I already have an EU copy, I've had it for almost two months and I have a 38 NE Hunter on Aszune (PvE) but I don't want to play on PvE anymore :P

[downquark1]

Ok which server should I start my druid on?

[Bifta]

Went from 35 to 37 today, hard work :(

[Saltank]

I am playing on EU-STORMREAVER. This is THE BEST PvP server around. I've been going insane wasting my precious time like a lunatic rerolling on various servers for the past two weeks or so while playing in the US. I made my final decision to play on Stormreaver. It is a high population server that never has any performance issues and is well populated.

My name is Decado and I am a Paladin :)

[Charlie_Bubble]

Anyone else have problems getting in today? I get to the point where it says, "Connected", but it just sits there. It won't get my characters. If I press the cancel button it comes up with the list of realms and shows I have 2 chars on my realm, but when I select it, it goes back to the "Connected" popup!

[xcdtowg]

Anyone else have problems getting in today? I get to the point where it says, "Connected", but it just sits there. It won't get my characters. If I press the cancel button it comes up with the list of realms and shows I have 2 chars on my realm, but when I select it, it goes back to the "Connected" popup!

Yep the same prob here, Dunemaul is down, i got booted, but Plonking character is still in and his latency is 4904 and still rising!

wow-europe is also down, sooo what shall I do now *whistles* I had nothing else planned for the afternoon :(

[Charlie_Bubble]

Yep the same prob here, Dunemaul is down, i got booted, but Plonking character is still in and his latency is 4904 and still rising!

wow-europe is also down, sooo what shall I do now *whistles* I had nothing else planned for the afternoon :(

Yeah, apparently most of the servers are fecked at the moment. They said it would be fixed by 5:30pm..... I suspect wow europe is down due to the number of anti-blizzard postings on there last time I looked from people who weren't too happy about their sunday's playing time being scewed.

[xcdtowg]

Yeah, apparently most of the servers are fecked at the moment. They said it would be fixed by 5:30pm..... I suspect wow europe is down due to the number of anti-blizzard postings on there last time I looked from people who weren't too happy about their sunday's playing time being scewed.

Dunemaul has only just gone down, its been perfectly fine all day, then it just kinda stopped...
Yeah I remember all the people complaining last time it all went down :erm:
Well I guess I'll do some work or something...:( I expect it will be down for a couple of hours at least, well at least i managed to get to 38 before it crashed :D

[Plonking]

haha yeah the whole of europe seems dead at the moment, on he wow front of course :D

the official forums are always funny to read, so many, many, many thousands of angry posts... they make it all worth it, lol.

i was in ogrimmar, i cast blink, and it didn't work so I went around jumping about with glowing hands for a while... ;)

P

[NEONKNIGHT]

Just bought this game this afternoon.. can't connect to set up my character because of the server problems. While I'm waiting, has anyone got any good advice for a newbie to this game. Any help/tips would be appreciated.

Thank's. ;)

[Saltank]

Yeah they screwed up again.
BTW I post as "Demonblade" lvl 38NE Hunter on the WoW forums (when they work that is!)

NEOKNIGHT: go play on Stormreaver :D

[xcdtowg]

Well its all back up ok now, some servers before others, but it all seems fine. :)

[martikus]

here's a quick question for all you wow fans. is anyone subscribing with a solo card? and does it work for you? it says on their website that you can but for the last month it keeps refusing the card. yes there's money in the account and yes the card is valid. i even phoned blizards helpline and all they said was they are having problems with cards from certain banks. i cant even buy a time card as game keeps saying they havent got any in stock. so i've paid £29.99 for a game, got the free month and now im stuck with a piece of software i cant bloody use

[xcdtowg]

here's a quick question for all you wow fans. is anyone subscribing with a solo card? and does it work for you? it says on their website that you can but for the last month it keeps refusing the card. yes there's money in the account and yes the card is valid. i even phoned blizards helpline and all they said was they are having problems with cards from certain banks. i cant even buy a time card as game keeps saying they havent got any in stock. so i've paid £29.99 for a game, got the free month and now im stuck with a piece of software i cant bloody use

I subscribed with a solo card. It worked all fine, I registered for my free month with it and had to re-entered my details to subscribe and pay for the second month and it was fine and came out of my account when it was meant to.

I registered mine for my second month only on the 5th of April, so I'm not sure why it isn't working for you... which bank are you with?? I'm with HSBC, dont know if that would make a difference.

Do you know anyone that could register a different card for you? I have had problems in the past with solo and no one accepting it, but it has defiantely improved. I used to have to steal my mams details and give her the cash instead.;) I think you can change you card detail, so maybe register someones card for your free month and try yours again later, its a shame that you have it sat waiting for you and you cant play it!

I heard there was some problems with solo cards and i was crossing my fingers when i entered my details, good luck though, hope you get it all working soon! :)

[Saltank]

I used switch, it works.

[downquark1]

Patch tomorrow can someone tell me how long it's usually down for?

[Charlie_Bubble]

Patch tomorrow can someone tell me how long it's usually down for?

Depends. Like all MMORPGs, if the patch goes well it should return from maintenance as normal and go ok, but if it doesn't it could be either down for a lot longer or go up and down throughout the day.

[martikus]

I subscribed with a solo card. It worked all fine, I registered for my free month with it and had to re-entered my details to subscribe and pay for the second month and it was fine and came out of my account when it was meant to.

I registered mine for my second month only on the 5th of April, so I'm not sure why it isn't working for you... which bank are you with?? I'm with HSBC, dont know if that would make a difference.

Do you know anyone that could register a different card for you? I have had problems in the past with solo and no one accepting it, but it has defiantely improved. I used to have to steal my mams details and give her the cash instead.;) I think you can change you card detail, so maybe register someones card for your free month and try yours again later, its a shame that you have it sat waiting for you and you cant play it!

I heard there was some problems with solo cards and i was crossing my fingers when i entered my details, good luck though, hope you get it all working soon! :)
Hiya actually i have used the free month i bought the game 2 days after it was released. its a problem im having paying for following months after that. it wont accept the card. its strange because its a hsbc card as well and blizzard recon they are having major problems with hsbc cards so your one of the lucky ones. will just have to bite the bullet and either keep trying the card or wait till some time cards finally come in stock

[Plonking]

the patch may go well, or it may be painful.. depends on a lot of factors really.

i'm not looking forward to it, as mages will be nerfed, and warriors too - plus the honour system comes in, so if you're on a pvp server, make sure you go around in groups, especially on servers like ours where alliance out-number horde by almost 2:1...

[Bifta]

Level 39 and a half and over 130 gold to spend at level 40, can finally ditch the leather armour and get a cruddy ram to ride about on.

[martikus]

I tried downloading the last patch and it corrupted my whole instalation but i found that www.fileplanet.com (http://www.fileplanet.com/) hosts wow patches as well and i downloaded it from there. It worked perfectly so i shall see if i can get it from there tomorrow
Also gonna retry my card tonight to see if i can bloody well get back in the game...lol

[Saltank]

My US account still being active I monitored everything on Tuesday. THere was chaos, as usual login servers were down for an extended period of time. Then everything was laggy for the rest of the day. Expect massive pvp battles in Southshore/Tarren Mill.


By the way Bifta, how did you get so much gold? :P

I thought I'd level up my NE Hunter on Aszune, got to 40 today and spent all money to train up, so I could have some fun in PvP tomorrow.

I think I will go on EU-Stormreaver later though. Not too fond of this server.

[xcdtowg]

Level 39 and a half and over 130 gold to spend at level 40, can finally ditch the leather armour and get a cruddy ram to ride about on.

MY GOD! Where did you get your money from??? I'm level 40 and can no where near afford my cuddley little raptor :(

Me and Plonking still need 40 gold between us, so we've been farming SFK this evening, but looks like we'll have to do quite a few times to get what we need! I'm so poor! The level 40 skills and my new mail armor stole quite a bit of what i saved up too though! :D

Please tell me your secret! ;) I won't tell anyone else, just keep it between you and me! :p:

[martikus]

here's a link to show you how to get 5 gold in 5 minutes. as soon as my account is reactivated and im a high enough lvl i'm gonna try it
http://www.fileplanet.com/152261/150000/fileinfo/World-of-Warcraft---5-Gold-in-5-Minutes
__________________

and just another quicky for you all here's what happens when you find love in world of warcraft
http://www.fileplanet.com/152447/150000/fileinfo/World-of-Warcraft---Online-Matchmaking-Service
bless em aint it sweet
__________________

yey according to the account page they have finally accepted my card. i can play again. woohoo im so happy.....lol

[NEONKNIGHT]

here's a link to show you how to get 5 gold in 5 minutes. as soon as my account is reactivated and im a high enough lvl i'm gonna try it
http://www.fileplanet.com/152261/150000/fileinfo/World-of-Warcraft---5-Gold-in-5-Minutes


Can't download the above as subscription is needed for this. :(

[Bifta]

MY GOD! Where did you get your money from??? I'm level 40 and can no where near afford my cuddley little raptor :(

Me and Plonking still need 40 gold between us, so we've been farming SFK this evening, but looks like we'll have to do quite a few times to get what we need! I'm so poor! The level 40 skills and my new mail armor stole quite a bit of what i saved up too though! :D

Please tell me your secret! ;) I won't tell anyone else, just keep it between you and me! :p:

I have no secret, other than grinding humanoids constantly.

Just looked for the 1.4.0 patch on Fileplanet and they've only got 1.3.0 for enGB, P2P isn't too bad at the moment though.

[xcdtowg]

I have no secret, other than grinding humanoids constantly.

Just looked for the 1.4.0 patch on Fileplanet and they've only got 1.3.0 for enGB, P2P isn't too bad at the moment though.

Ahh the art of grinding, yup thats what we've got planned for today! But probably not in a contested area, I dont fancy like being peoples honor points yet :(

To SFK!:D Plus Plonking still wants the Robes of Arugal ;)

[Plonking]

we've nearly finished downloading the patch - as always it is taking ages - but luckily only one of us need to d/l it, then we can transfer it across to the other pc.

dunno if any of you know about them - but if you get a cooking recipe for savory deviate delights, the savory deviates you can cook go for quite a bit in the AH. they can also turn you into a blob of goo, a ninja, or a pirate :D

P

[Bifta]

Damn realms are still down, why can't they just overestimate the time it takes for them to do the friday maintenance instead of giving BS times every damn week.

[martikus]

Can't download the above as subscription is needed for this. :(
just choose the free option. its in smaller writing but all you need is a valid email address. No subscription required

[SOSAGES]

doing it on a friday morning is silly sunday night .. well monday morning say 3am-7am is what ya want

[xcdtowg]

doing it on a friday morning is silly sunday night .. well monday morning say 3am-7am is what ya want

I think there a slight money issue involved, im sure its cheaper to do the work now than 3am in the morning, also less people play on a friday morning than at 3am at night i would say, i often play more in the wee hours of the morning anyway ;) and their always seems a lot of people on still.

I remember when i was ill and off college once and went on to play in a morning and there was no one around at all and all my quests needed parties really, esp. because i was a warlock :rolleyes: but there was no one to party with! I was the only person in the undercity pretty much, quite scary!

[xcdtowg]

Soo what we thinking of the new honor system then? :)

[downquark1]

Well at level 17, the only help I was, was healing the guards, then running before they spot me. I was heading towards ironforge and a band of level ??? hoarde where picking off the guards one by one. Thankfully the night elf shadow meld ability let them pass straight through me without even seeing me (I had my pvp flag on).

[Plonking]

lol, a lucky miss then :) i nearly have enough money for a mount, and once I have one, I'll go around and rack up some HKs.. got about 25 so far, whilst yesterday some people already had 500!! I expect they have at least a couple of thousand by now.

on the downside, it will make questing virtually impossible for quite some time, but it's still good fun, as all-out raids are insane, but much more fun than the higher-level quests where you have to kill about 1,000,000 enemies to get 10 skulls/necklaces/ears/whatever just for one bar of experience and a 40s reward :D

P

[ryo2dx]

I've mostly been playing my level 16 rogue, but even the few hours I've spent as 36 hunter have been pretty uneventful... maybe I'll go to some lower horde area and rack up some points :P

[Plonking]

lol, good plan :) there were two level 24 NEs by the crossroads yesterday trying to pick on lower levels.. needless to say they didn't last long!

pvp servers are a bit chaotic still, but I hear that pve servers have problems with all the NPCs being picked on for HKs... apparently though that battlegrounds thing will come out with the next patch, and they will treat battlegrounds like instances, to reduce server lag and stuff like that.

P

[xcdtowg]

On Dunemaul there have been constant raids and counter raids, I havnt done any questing since the system has come in! But I do have quite a few honour points from defending the crossroads on my new raptor :D

I dont find it to bad yet but i'm sure if i feel like questing i wont be too happy, we tried some questing but were murdered by a high level paladin doing the same quest with some people he was helping :( but we had killed a few low levels on the way so i suppose we deserved it :p:

[ryo2dx]

got my first 4 honourable kills today \o/
also hit 37

[SOSAGES]

i have to say that the new patch honour system isnt my idea of fun - life was pretty bad before but now everyone jumps everyone :( i dont see the honour of me killing a lvl 48 player while he is at half health attacking a mob....
__________________

I think there a slight money issue involved, im sure its cheaper to do the work now than 3am in the morning, also less people play on a friday morning than at 3am at night i would say, i often play more in the wee hours of the morning anyway ;) and their always seems a lot of people on still.


if your IT dude at your work said to your boss "right every friday im taking the servers down from 7 till sometime in the afternoon" im not sure he would stand for it :)

[Richard M]

Found an odd bug in the game tonight when playing as Night Elf.
I logged out when a ghost last night and when I logged back in I was no longer a spirit but I was sort of half-way, it showed my full body but still in the ghost mode, like when an Orc dies.
After going to my corpse with no luck I ran all the way back to the graveyard but there was no angel there so I ended up jumping in a lake to drown myself so I could respawn. :confused:

[xcdtowg]

The game is full of bugs, each patch seems to fix some and introduce new ones. Never heard of the one you described before though :S lol
I find the most annoying is going for the zepp and as your nearly about to get to the loading screen to change continents, the zepp dissapears and everyone falls into the water and has to swim all the way back and wait again. :mad:

[Richard M]

I can imagine that, must be pretty funny to see everyone cursing. :rofl:

[Ignition]

I was flying around the wetlands yesterday on a gryphon. Actually controlling the thing, thanks to a weird bug I was attached to the gryphon just above the ground, had to log out to get rid of it as I couldn't control it properly and could only go along paths as per normal!

[Bifta]

Found an odd bug in the game tonight when playing as Night Elf.
I logged out when a ghost last night and when I logged back in I was no longer a spirit but I was sort of half-way, it showed my full body but still in the ghost mode, like when an Orc dies.
After going to my corpse with no luck I ran all the way back to the graveyard but there was no angel there so I ended up jumping in a lake to drown myself so I could respawn. :confused:

I didn't know you had WoW, what lvl are you? If you're still fairly low, create a character in Runetotem and join our guild!

[Damien]

Theres a CF WoW Guild?

[Richard M]

Found an odd bug in the game tonight when playing as Night Elf.
I logged out when a ghost last night and when I logged back in I was no longer a spirit but I was sort of half-way, it showed my full body but still in the ghost mode, like when an Orc dies.
After going to my corpse with no luck I ran all the way back to the graveyard but there was no angel there so I ended up jumping in a lake to drown myself so I could respawn. :confused:

I didn't know you had WoW, what lvl are you? If you're still fairly low, create a character in Runetotem and join our guild!

Sounds like a plan to me. :tu:
I'm only a n00b, level 9 Night Elf on Hellscream. :)

[Damien]

I take it is an alliance guild?

[downquark1]

Theres a CF WoW Guild?
It's not a CF guild, it's just a guild bifta joined and then I joined it. (I don't know if bifta knows them personally or not).

Runetotem is not a bad server for alliance, it just seems to be full of incompetant players :mad:. PS: avoid being a hunter, we have too many ;)

[Richard M]

Any suggestions what I should be?
Warrior, Rogue or Paladin?
Human or Elf? :scratch:

[Raistlin]

Paladin

Elf

(Note: I'm just guessing here, never played it, but I think I would like to :) )

[ikthius]

what is this game world of warcraft?

I keep seeing it in thses forums.

I think it is an online game, cause someone is selling an account, but can you play the game at home without an account to internet community?

ik

[downquark1]

Paladin

Elf

(Note: I'm just guessing here, never played it, but I think I would like to :) )
You can't be an elf paladin. - Not in their culture.

Rogue are very common (to the point of being pests), and moderately useful in groups. Paladins are usefull but also quite common. Warriors are hard to play but very useful when played well.

My main problem with groups is that the warriors don't understand that he is suppose to protect the rest of the group by taking damage and keeping the enemies attention on him instead of the others.

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warcraft can ONLY be played online with an account. Game is useless otherwise. - unless you like the pretty log in screen.

[xcdtowg]

Paladins noooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!! Got to love the way they never die and can be invincable....:mad: So damn annoying, all the little annoying kiddies tend to roll for paladin, guess im a little tainted by it ;)

I have a level 60 rogue, if you want an easy life be a rogue :p: And i must say I am a pest though :) Especially now i have my Piccolo (http://www.thottbot.com/?i=13652) I spent most of last nice making people in the auction house dance :D Mwahahaha

I've played all horde so far, but just made a night elf preist, due to horde always being outnumbered, thought I'd have a looky on the dark...erm light side. ;)

[downquark1]

Paladins noooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!! Got to love the way they never die and can be invincable....:mad: So damn annoying, all the little annoying kiddies tend to roll for paladin, guess im a little tainted by it ;)
Funny, I thought kiddies rolled hunters and rogues ;).

Paladins are a common class on most servers yeah, hard to kill but they kill things slowly themselves - similar to druids :D.