If I have time later I’ll look up the ‘official requirements’ for you RickJay. Currently I’m running the game just fine on a 1 Ghz processor with 512mb RAM and a GeForce 4 4200 with 64mb RAM. Pretty modest system IMO…and it works fine for me. Someone told me that the ATI cards also play fine, at least the newer versions.
-XT (jr)
Blizzard has a stellar history of making games that are resource-friendly, games that run even on low-end machines while taking full advantage of higher-end machines. I fully expect they’ll do the same thing here.
Daniel
Also as to system requirements: Blizzard has kept up their stellar support for Macintosh machines, as I was able to install the alpha & beta on my Powerbook (1.2 GHz with an ATI something-or-other video card) and it runs adequately. It didn’t even require a separate download!
Of course, it wasn’t meant to run on a laptop; the hard drive is just too slow for all the data that has to stream off disk to make a seamless world. I’m just mentioning it to point out that the engine scales well and should have reasonable system requirements.
how about bandwidth usage (mb/hour)? the faq says it will be playable on a modem, i assume that means 56k? for a 3d mmorpg?
Man, i’m setting myself up for a big dissapointment (again… i’m looking at you shadowbane and star wars galaxies) if this game doesn’t end up being the hottest thing since liquid fuck. The main concern is that in this type of online game your enjoyment can easily be ruined by the people around you and if this game attracts the usual blizzard online game crowd its destined to fail no matter how good they make it.
Another big part of it is content, EQ has been out for 5 years or so, before that it was in development for 3 more years. There is no way WoW can launch with even 1/10th of the content EQ already has, and keeps pumping out with regular expansions every 4 months or so. Since it seems like most of the content is based on quests i hope they have some truly epic ones in there, an i dont mean p.o.s EQ epic weapon type quests, more like the ring war in thurgadim (for those who never played EQ the ring war quest involved leading an army of dwarves against an army of giants bent on destroying their city, commanding an army of dwarf NPCs and fighting off wave after wave of invading giant armies with my guild has been one of the most rewarding and “epic” things i’ve ever done in a game).
I’m an original alpha tester.
Not playing so much anymore (school time constraints), but I’m currently Cheese, a lvl 6 Tauren Druid. (Like everyone else on the server.)
No, not everyone is a Tauren Druid. Some of us are Orc or Troll Shamans (Shamen? Not sure of the plural in this instance).
I’m liking the Shaman class – it’s a good fighter/mage setup. Ranged damage spells to pull enemies and soften them up on the way in, buffs for weapon damage and protection, and the ability to wear leather armor right at the start. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops at the higher levels. Thus far, I am only to level 6 (not enough time to play, sadly).
This push is definitely the best yet IMO. I love the new rest system which discourages those power leveling geeks with no life (love that 200% exp bonus for being ‘well rested’ :)). The druid class also rocks IMO. I’m a bit bummed that my old characters got frozen (and will probably be wacked from what I’m hearing in the rumor mill) but they really made some good advances in refining the character classes. I also love the new hearth stones that let you teleport back to your ‘home’ once an hour. Man, what a great thing that is.
With this push I think Blizard really moved the game forward. I’m really getting excited about this game going gold now (though I’m sure the beta will go on for many more months).
-XT (jr)
Its probably ‘playable’ on a 56k modem, but I doubt it would be much fun, especially in the cities. That said, Blizard cut the memory space of all objects in the game by half this push and the game is flowing VERY smoothly for me now…even in Stormwind which was a nightmare for me before. When they finally put in the auction system and get rid of all that spamming (something they are looking at doing either next push or the one after if the rumor mill is right) that will help even more.
The biggest thing you need for this game is a really good video card with tons of memory. I’ve got an older GeForce 4600 with 128mb RAM, and I’m doing ok…but people with the next generation ATI or GeForce cards are really rocking from what I understand. Trying to talk my dad into letting me raid his store room for more RAM, faster (7200 rpm) hard drive and I’m planning on buying a GeForce 5600 as soon as I have the money for it.
-XT (jr)
Another Alpha/beta tester here…have about 20+ guildmates in so far, but I’d love to get a Doper group going!
My current chars are:
Swan- lvl 9 Tauren druid
Morrigania- Lvl 5 undead mage
Hekate- Lvl 1 undead warlock
My locked chars are:
Cerridanae- 26 human warlock
Cerri- 14 human warrior
Moonwind- 11 Night elf Priest
Aliandra- 8 human mage
Well, with this push Blizard has introduced some anti-griefing stuff that seems to be pretty cool. Now, the first person to hit a mob is the one who gets to loot it, reguardless of who does the most damage. I’ve already found this a great thing as folks that have attempted to grief me and steal my kills (and who were too stupid to actually read the patch notes) have tried their old kill stealing ways and been confused why I still got to loot. They also took away the ability of the paly’s and clerics to run into a camp, pop invulnerability and grab a chest…which was griefing a bunch of folks. Couple that with the new rest system which discourages power levelers and I think that even IF the normal BN crowd shows up, it should still rock as a game. And so far, even with this new extended beta, the number of complete asshole types is still pretty minimal.
My dad was in the alpha/beta for EQ (as well as for DaoC) and I used his accounts (same as now). This game is so much further ahead of either of those games its not even funny. Content wise, of course it won’t be up to EQ’s PRESENT standards…as you’ve said, they have had years of expansions by now. Even DaoC has had two (though the second one, ToA really sucked). But from a playability/fun perspective this game has it all over both of those IMO.
As to the quests, I find it interesting that DaoC has announced they will start ‘Instance’ type quests…taking a book straight from WoW. At a guess WoW’s later quests will be heavy on the instance types (like the Van Clieff quest in the human lands, or the Stockade, I’d guess) where an actual ‘Instance’ will spawn just for you and your party…a dungeon crawl or something similar. As the game revolves around quests I’m sure that this is where they will spend the majority of their time and effort. Hell, I’d love to see the upper level quests with actual Blizard employees running some of the monsters or traps or what have you on the fly. I think THAT would be really cool.
-XT
i’m holding off upgrading my pc till there is an official release date, hope it’s worth it. :anticipation:
This is a valid concern, but at the same time it’s a little like saying that a 3-hour movie is inherently better than a 1.5 hour one. You can pump as much content as humanly possible into a game, but if it’s as insipid as EverQuest’s “content,” then you’re not really accomplishing much.
After trying a few of these things (EQ, Earth & Beyond, Asheron’s Call 2, Final Fantasy XI, and now World of Warcraft) I’m starting to think that single-player style content and a massively-multiplayer game are directly at odds with each other. Of the ones I’ve tried, FFXI had the most content, and it was all genuinely interesting (esp. to FF fans) and given the presentation values and attention to detail that their single-player RPG’s get. But I quickly got tired of the game because the play mechanic itself is so tedious. What finally turned me off was when I finally reached the big climactic even that I’d been working for 10 levels to reach (killing a dragon), and the battle ended in about a minute giving us only around 10xp, because we had a character in our party who happened to be 5 levels higher than the rest of us. Extremely anti-climactic. It reminded me that there are so many variables involved that you simply can’t expect the same big dramatic moments from a single-player game (boss fights) to have the same impact in an MMORPG.
So far I’ve been encouraged by the approach Blizzard seems to be taking with WoW: Make sure you’ve got an engaging game even without “content.” All the quests so far are predictable “talk to X” or “bring me Y” or “kill n of Z.” And still it’s pretty interesting, because they’ve spent their time on the stuff you’re going to be doing 90% of the time (casting spells, using battle moves, practicing trade skills) instead of the remaining 10% (performing quests). Any cutscenes or dialogue they add now is just gravy. Granted, they’re definitely necessary, since the world as it is feels kind of dead, populated by dull NPCs who say nothing unless they have a quest for you. Even a “what do you want, Outlander?” would be appreciated at this point.
As for the typical Blizzard fans & battle.net obsessives, they’re what concern me most about WoW. I haven’t played much since the beta opened up, but even so I can see them making their presence felt. Blizzard is going to have to make a real effort to keep the game from getting overwhelmed by all the players. They’ve already started by the first-attacker-tags-a-monster rule that xtisme mentioned. They’re going to need a more robust chat system and better filtering, plus as I’ve complained before a dedicated auction system is going to be absolutely necessary.
I’m encouraged by the changes they’ve announced with this push; it sounds as if they’re focusing on keeping the game itself interesting without having to power-level or get all obsessive with it. The whole “rest” thing is kind of draconian and feels a little like a quick-fix instead of a well-thought-out-design, but at least I agree with the intention. Usually companies take the opposite approach; they put in draconian systems or hacks to force players to form parties, or to handicap them to keep them from being able to enjoy the game without spending a lot of time going through the level grind. In a sense, Blizzard’s approach is punishing players for doing the grind (while at the same time, reducing the load on their servers – clever).
Well, I haven’t had many problems yet from the usually Battlenet crowd, though they definitely need to do something about the spamming on /1 and /2 chat areas. I know they are working on a better, more developed chat system. I also know they are working on a dedicated auction system. Supposedly it won’t be in the next push but the one after that (along, supposedly, with the hero classes and mounts). I’m also dieing to find out how they plan on doing the end game Horde vs Alliance thing, and what cool things they plan for player/guild housing (which is supposed to be in place when the game ships). Also, I really want to see the hero classes and how they handle the upper level quests.
So far I’ve been nothing but pleased with this game. As I said earlier, I’ve played almost every MMORPG that has been out there so I came into this one a bit jaded to be honest. I just finished up and shut down my DaoC accounts when ToA shipped and was such a loser and really didn’t want to go into another Alpha which I figured would be another tin foil biting experience. But for various reasons I decided to give it a shot and am glad I did.
-XT
bump (asked first)
Just looking for some updates. I’m currently bored out of my skull and considering going back to Everquest to alleviate my boredom. If things are moving along nicely for the WoW beta I may just continue to hold off and wait for the final release. How have thing been coming along ?