Any libraries nearby (preferably one at a university you’re an alumnus of)? Other wired or wireless internet spots? A Panera?
I don’t really see myself sitting in a library or a restaurant for hours playing WoW. If I was going to do that, I could also use my office internet on weekends, just buy a laptop capable of running Wow.
My cell phone is from Sprint. Think I may investigate the wireless thing. At this point, I’d be willing to accept some non-perfect conditions. I suspect with random lag issues, PVP would be frustrating, but maybe I could still solo some stuff.
As the late, great Jerry Clower used to say, Y’all done flung a craving on me…
Your company wouldn’t block WoW?
Also, be very, *very *sure to check your data limits on any kind of wireless card. They usually come with pretty draconian ones; IME they’re intended for things like checking your email, not for something as bandwidth-heavy as an MMO.
I doubt it. We have a pretty liberal policy on computer use, especially after working hours. For WoW, I’d be buying a new laptop, and then just plugging it in to the office ethernet cable thingy. I would not be loading any of those files onto a work computer.
On the data limits thing—how much would I need per month, figuring that if I get back into WoW, I’d probably be doing 20+ hours per week…
No clue, other than “lots.” As in, “Anything with a bandwidth limit is probably going to fall woefully short.”
ETA: A quick Google for “WoW bandwidth” turns up a bunch of stuff I can’t read. One thread I could see from 2005 suggests maybe 10 megs an hour. That would be 200 MB a week, if you play for 20 hours. But note that that was for the very beginning of the game; bandwidth usage has almost certainly gone up since then.
Here’s a blue post from 2008:
That was two years ago, so if you estimate 30 Mb/hour down and 15 Mb/hour up, you should be fine.
OK, so I’m looking at Sprint coverage. I plugged in my address, and apparently I am not in the 3G coverage area, but I am in something called the Sprint Nationwide Network. It lists these numbers:
50 kbps - 70 kbps for both upload and download speeds. I have no idea what those numbers mean, but they look to be at the low end of what **Bosstone **posted.
Then I found this cite that says with a 5gb limit (I do not know what that means, either), I should get about 156 hours of WoW time. I guess that would be maximum, doing nothing else on the service. I could live with that, if the game was reasonably playable, and the service was affordable.
One concern I have is if I can even find my disks for Wow/BC/WotLK, it has been well over a year since I played, and had a computer die on me, so I would have to do a fresh install, including the patches. I’m afraid just doing that may use up my whole 5gb allowance for a month, and then I’d either have to sit here having everything needed but unable to play for a month, or take a second mortgage on the house to pay for overage charges. Don’t see me doing either of those things.
Also seeing some mentions of EVDO, which I think is something like the 3G/4G stuff they mention, and mentions of 1xRTT as possibilities.
Is this just hopeless for now, or should I explore this further? If I can find something workable, I’m willing to put some money into it…I’d buy a new computer, and could see dropping up to $100/month* total for the service/WoW cost…
*Yeah, I know that’s probably a lot to spend on a silly game, but I can afford it, and would get my money’s worth if I could just play…
Also found this thread on a website I never heard of, with a poster named Tweakbl suggesting Hughesnet may be semi-tolerable…never heard of him either, but damn…I wanna play!
Consider that in order to use all 156 hours per month, you’d have to play for over 5 hours every single day. There are precious few people who can do that, much less people who do do that. I would expect to be playing more like 3 hours a day at most. Depending on what else you use the connection for, that should leave you more than enough bandwidth.
I think that Hughesnet is satellite and from what I’ve heard there are latency issues, though I don’t know how severe they are.
I can tell you that I recently had to change from a wireless provider (fixed wireless, not the wireless you are considering) to DSL when the fixed wireless company had issues that drove latency from anywhere from 1 to 15 seconds. Seconds, not milliseconds.
WoW is frustrating at around 1 second latency, and unplayable at higher latency. I’d research the latency issue before going with a satellite service.
I’ve seen people mentioning a latency of about 1200 average, sometimes spiking much higher, but I don’t know what the 1200 means.
BossTone, do you think the 50 kbps - 70 kbps for both upload and download speeds would be enough?
And what about the clean install…would that burn up most of a month’s 5gb limit?
I’m starting to think maybe I can do this. Sprint says I’m eligible for a new phone anytime I want it, so I might just go whole hog and look at getting one of those smart phone things that work like a mini computer while I’m at it.
Wonder if I could try it with an option to cancel after the first month if it sucked?
Also, as I wildly google options, I find some people that will download patches on something like hughesnet, but play on dialup at 50.6 Kbs…which is what I have…how would this work? Better than the other options or no?
Yeeeah. The entire game is about 20gb. You don’t want to download it online. I recommend finding a physical CD if you can to install.
Well crap. Just called Sprint customer service. They say I can’t get mobile broadband, because there are no suitable towers here, and no known time such will be available. 
Guess I’ll look in to the satellite thing more. Kinda worried about that, think it comes with a 2 year contract…but I could probably watch videos and such on it without worrying about burning up my WoW time.
Milliseconds of ping time. Your client sends a test packet to Blizz, and it takes 1.2 seconds until the reply gets back to you. That’s pretty much unplayably high, if sustained.
But we Australians routinely play on US servers with latencies of 200-400ms with little effect on PvE play. PvP against someone with a 30ms latency is another matter …
Does that mean if I click to cast a spell, there’s going to be 1.2 seconds added to the casting time? Or more? I think I might could solo with that kind of delay. With Boomer, mobs are usually dead before they reach me. With decent gear (think it is mostly S3 Arena stuff, with a couple S4 pieces, and maybe something from a WotLK early instance—I can go back to the full PVP set) I can take a few licks even as a mage. Or solo lower alts in rarely used zones maybe?
Where the hell do you live, the middle of a desert somewhere? 
Well, technically, it is illegal to posses alcohol about 50 yards due west of my front door. I’m right on the county line between the biggest town in this part of the state…which isn’t saying much…and a dry county with about 20K residents in the whole county. The upside is the convenience store up at the main road (also barely on the wet side of the county line) has a huge beer cooler, and also makes excellent BBQ.
But it is an internet wasteland.
When I levelled my warrior (dwarf female, natch) I did it entirely as prot. Give her a sword and a board and once you get beyond about level 30 you are pretty much immortal to normal quest mobs, with the exception of magical ranged damage dealers like mages and warlocks - they are your severe weakness until you get spell reflect or the ability to charge in combat (or you deal with intercept and changing stance). I think prot is one of the best levelling specs - your shield slam does huge damage (as much as your sword often) and you have some sweet defensive skills that make you very hard to take down. Arms and Fury are great for damage, but until you get a huge health pool and really good gear you are pretty fragile. Pallies have it easier since they can heal from the start, but prot is the same for them - you can dish out potent damage and take on multiple enemies without dying.
I levelled my priest as holy, since it made her very handy for instances - lots of people need healers, and they are rare while levelling, especially specialised ones (ie, ones who are not healing from necessity but primarily set up for damage dealing), although the levelling instances are easier now and don’t really require a full-beans healer.
Definitely get bags - they should be the first things you buy after paying for skill upgrades when you can afford them. I used to give away smaller bags (16 slot etc) on my alts when I moved them up to 18 and 20 slot bags to newbie characters, and I’m not unique there. Ask in trade if anyone ha any cheap or free bags available for a newbie. You may get some abuse and told to go and look on the AH, but there will often be helpful people around in town who can spare the items.
I have given away gold and free enchants and equipment to newbies that I have run across before to give them a leg up. I also often stop to res dead people if I’m passing through a newbie area and assist with quests like clearing Moonbrook in Westfall with holy nova spam if I see someone solo escorting the defias guy, or dropping a giant heal on a newbie who has pulled a train. Nothing like putting a 20k GH onto a lowbie to attract the attention of the mobs they have aggroed.
Be careful when questing, although it is less dangerous if you are in a pair (especially with a tanking class) if you run across elites. An elite mob hits a lot harder and has about 3x the HP of a normal mob of its level. The first one alliance players usually see is Hogger (and he has since become legend), but the first one to seriously, seriously annoy alliance is Mor’Ladim in the cemetery in Duskwood - he is at least 5 levels above most of the stuff in that area that you kill for your quests, he is elite and he patrols which makes him a serious nuisance since his aggro range is enormous and he has a huge potential area of danger. The Horde have similar problems with the Sons of Arugal in the undead area - elite worgen that tear newbies apart.
See if you can find someone to lend you their CDs/DVDs. On the plus side, you only need to find the WotLK one–you should be able to install the entire game from it. You’ll still need to patch, though, which will probably be on the order of several gigabytes. Certainly enough that I’d recommend jacking in somewhere that you won’t have a download limit.
1,200 = 1,200 milliseconds. 1,000 ms = 1 second. So that’s 1.2 seconds–a very high latency. Trying to play with latency that’s consistently that high would be, at a minimum, frustrating.
ETA: There’s really no spec you can’t level at these days–they’re all reasonably viable. Some will be easier than others, but there’s nothing that’s really bad. Personally, I leveled as a Prot War back when doing that was hideously tedious and almost no one did it–but I still don’t regret it.
The way you can spot an elite mob at a glance is to look at the portrait when you make it your target. A gold, winged dragon around the portrait means the mob is elite. A silver, wingless dragon means the mob is a rarespawn but not elite. And a silver, winged dragon means the mob is a rarespawn *and *elite.
That’s the truth. I recently leveled my paladin from the ground up as Holy, and it wasn’t bad at all – but would have been very tedious a few years ago. Honestly I found that Holy pallies are very, very hard to kill even if they don’t kill things very quickly – and with the RDF you can do a lot of your leveling in dungeons now anyway.