You know, if you already have a WoW account you don’t need to reinstall from your original disks and work your way through the patches. Instead you can just download the latest version.
My wife and I went on vacation over New Years. I had WoW on my laptop, but she didn’t. We didn’t have the disks with us, so we downloaded the latest version over the hotel wireless.
Lucky bum! If I tried to bring WoW on vacation I’d get an earful.
It’s worth repeating that these patches aren’t just bug fixes - they’re massive content upgrades, including two new playable races, multiple new dungeons, a couple entirely new zones, dozens of new quests and class abilities, and literally thousands of new items. What kind of game requires a 1.2 gig patch? The kind that introduces an entire game’s worth of new content every six months or so.
Heh. I am amused at how, before, players would ignore content (non-combat pets, for example) because they provided no “benefit” to a character. Fluff, as it were.
But add this “achievement” system, and now tons of players are out trying to find the pets, catch fish, etc. 
I don’t think it’s just that they’ve added an achievement. The way pets used to work, having them was actually a drawback. You had to carry around an item to summon the pet, which took up an inventory slot. Having a pet was cute, but you eventually get to the point where you need every slot you can get your hands on, and a pet (let alone multiple pets) is just taking up space that could be used by something more important. Now that they’ve got that special pet screen on your character sheet, and you don’t need to waste a slot on the summoning item, it’s much more convenient to have a whole bunch of pets. The achievement adds to the draw, to be sure, but I don’t think many people would be running around with twenty of their inventory slots dedicated to pets just to get an achievement.
Ain’t that the truth? I can remember one of the (Penny Arcade?) (PVP?) (Whatever…) comic panels done specifically for WoW where the one toon is wearing a really funky hat and says something like, “I would wear a chicken’s ass on my head if it gave me another couple of bag slots”.
That quotation is absolutely accurate, just to inform those who haven’t hit the storage space wall yet on any of their toons. It’s…not pretty.
but now, it seems that the majority of the quests you get in Northrend require you to carry something around with you (“take this hyperfrabjic somnambulator and shoot the pigs with it; once they fall asleep, you can cut their tails off… oh, and bring me the tails”). If you leave a zone early and go adventure in another place because you’re bored, you’re likely to have five or ten inventory slots filled with quest gear that you can’t use in the new zone.
And, I had several friends, pre-pet patch, who did, in fact, have dozens of pets, mounts… it was kind of sad.
Well, yeah. That’s my point precisely. Most players aren’t going to waste inventory slots on pets, because they need that space for (among other things) quest items.
The name, and face, responsible for patches. Before that you either had to wait until your code was done to release it, or release a new version.
Enjoy,
Steven
Except that, as has been noted, patches for MMORPGs are fundamentally different from patches for OS’s or standalone games. They’re not (only) bugfixes…the majority percentage of most MMORPG patches is content additions or changes. As long as the world is changing, I’d rather be patched every two months or so than have to buy a whole new expansion every two months or so. Wrath of the Lich King is the 2nd expansion for WoW in the 4 years the game’s been live. That’s a pretty good ratio compared to Everquest, for one.
I think Mtgman was saying patches are in fact a net benefit over having to download a 5-10 GB game every time something new gets added.
One clever trick I’ve found is this: WoW doesn’t really require anything in your registry to run so you don’t need to “install” it so much as get all the files on your computer. Depending on your connection speed, it might actually be quicker to get the files from a friend (say, on a local network or an external hard drive) and throw them onto your own. I upgraded a friend to the LK beta client that way – his only internet connection was satellite. :eek: Don’t ask me how he managed to get to 70 like that!
It’s not terrible…as long as you are on a pve server and stay away from battlegrounds anyway.
Or just shovel broken code onto your customer and let them suck on it.
I guess the pets is a poor example, but I personally have seen quite a few players now striving for the exploration acheivements, the diplomat achievements, the “fall from great height and live” achievements, the "kill 15 turkeys in under three minutes achievement, the booze drinking achievement, etc, most of which don’t involve bag slots, either before or after the implementation of the achievement system. There are level 80’s going back and doing the classic instances for the achievement, not because they want gear.
I don’t think those are really examples of players “ignoring content” prior to the implementation of achivements. A lot of them aren’t content-based: killing turkeys, for example, or throwing yourself off a cliff, aren’t exactly exploring new content. For the others, the fact that they’re doing something with a particular character now, doesn’t mean they’ve never done it before. Before I decided to do the explorer achievement, my troll rogue had never been to Westfall - but my human mage and elven druid had spent hours and hours there. Same thing with the instances. I’ve done Blackfathom several times, just never with my highest level character, until there was an achievement for it, and therefore, a reason to run it with him, instead of one of my more level-appropriate characters.
Yet, a player with Main-A, who has done Blackfathom Deeps, and skips it with Alt-A ('cause there was no phat loot for that particular class), and later goes back to that instance for the sole purpose of getting a piece of an achievement done, is exactly what I find amusing.
(Folks are absolutely free to play however they wish. no sweat off my nose.)
Running BFD with Alt-A wasn’t important before, but the achievement system, and only the achievement system, changed that.
(Maybe it’s only a minority of players who are doing this, but that’s still more than were doing those instances pre-patch.)
My co-worker is roommates with some hard core raiders. Out comes the pet achievement, and suddenly the hard core raiders just had to get the 50-pet achievement. They didn’t do it because suddenly they didn’t have to carry around the pet-summoning item anymore, but because there was an achievement. 
Don’t forget that there’s now titles that can be earned via achievements, not to mention special pets, mounts and tabards. Owls (who is a lore buff and has been following the universe at least since Warcraft 2) has been doing a lot of the old world quests to get the ‘Loremaster’ title.
(BTW, that title also has the best. tabard. evar.)
Personally, I want the reeking pet carrier.
I guess I just don’t see why that’s amusing. Previously, there was no point in going back to a low-level dungeon with a high level character. Now that they’ve added achievements, there is a point to going back. Why is it amusing that, once they’ve added a reward to a particular task, more people are doing that task?
I’m not saying that no one tries to get achievements - obviously, they do, because they’re a fun extra. But you said specifically that people were ignoring pets before they added an achivement, and I don’t think that’s true. People were ignoring pets because pets were inconvenient. It happens that they removed the inconvenience in pets at the same time they added an incentive to get them, but if they’d removed the inconvenience first, I think a lot more people would have started collecting pets sooner.
The reward is… achievement points. (Which get you what? Bupkiss, as far as I know.)
I actually think it was a smart move on Blizzards part to get something going to motivate people back to the old content again. I’m surprised this Achievement System actually is working out as well as it appears to be doing.
It’s one thing to not get your pet Prairie Dog because you don’t want to spend a bag slot on that. (And I felt the same, after a while.) If, after the slot requirement went away, and you went “YAY! Now I can has my prarie dog with me all the time! </e cuddles Prairie Dog>”, I would say, “Cool. And about freakin’ time, too, Blizz!”.
But they are going for the achievement, not the pet(s). Plenty of these pets won’t ever be pulled out. 
Heh.
Which is vastly different than imgainary gold, made up swords, or better reputation with organizations that don’t actually exist… how, exactly? I mean, yeah, you can use that fancy blue sword to eventually get yourself a really fancy purple sword, but you’re still not actually accomplishing anything, you’re just chasing another incremental reward that has no ultimate significane other than indicating how dedicated you are at playing a particular video game. How is that any different from grinding for an achievement?
And having a prarie dog gets you what? Bupkis, as far as I know.