Thanks for all of the replies! It sounds like I’ll probably give it a try and just avoid the official forums. I really need to get caught up on games. I still need to play Doom 3, which is sitting at home. I have the last NWN expansion, Thief 3, and KotOR all half complete. Half Life 2 and Pirates are also on the list. It’s a good thing that winter is just about here.
Got any good links for class sites or the like for WoW? What is the status on the server lag issues?
Ah, Warcraft…my newest addiction. This topic finally compelled me to pay my subscription fee so I can post. Sad, huh?
I managed to get accepted into the Friends and Family Alpha test waaay back when it first started but unfortunately didn’t have a computer that could run the game. Several months later, we shelled out some cash for some serious gaming PCs so I was finally able to play.
That’s when the addiction started.
I was blown away by the graphics/content/depth of history/quests. Absolutely amazing. I’ve been playing Ultima Online for the past five years so you can imagine the difference. The two games can’t even compare. During Open Beta, I managed to get my night elf rogue up to level 47 and even with all that game time, there were quests I never got to and vast areas I hadn’t even explored (some areas aren’t healthy to explore if you’re a low level).
There’s some great information to be found in the forums, IF you can avoid all the nimrod fanbois. Yes, it’s annoying and off-putting. There are idiots on the forums as well as in the game but in my experience, I found that the good players far outweighed the idiots, just like all MMORPGs.
I think that the launch went fairly smoothly, aside from some major lag issues. I was fortunate enough to find a server (Dalaran, east coast) that’s been very, very stable. I think that Blizzard vastly underestimated the interest they’d have in a RP shard, giving us only two nationwide (one pacific, the other east) and consequently the servers are way overburdened. I logged onto Argent Dawn (RP east) last night and my queue was over an hour long. I’m hoping that things will smooth out in a few more days, though. It’s frustrating when you’re trying to play and you get lagged trying to loot your kills.
One really nice feature that Blizzard put into the game is what are called “instances”. It’s basically a private dungeon instance that you and your party enter and have to yourselves. No kill stealing, spawn camping, etc. Very cool.
Over all, my experiences with the game have been very positive but even more so, I feel that Blizzard pays attention to their customer base (this based on Beta feedback, etc.) especially when compared to other gaming companies (coughSonycough). They’ve given us an outstanding product and once we get past the launch week lag (I hope it’s just a few more days of instability), the game will be even better.
Aren’t there two RP servers in the Pacific region? Cenarion Circle and (IIRC) Silver Hand?
Yes, you’re right, Miller. There are two in Pacific. I guess they added another one when I wasn’t looking.
I’m not playing right now because of lag, but it’s a holiday weekend. Schools out, you know?
Kel’Thuzad, horde group. Lankester the Undead Priest.
I also have a Tauren hunter on Doomhammer. Lovin’ it. (Mountain time so we can split the difference with our buddy in Oregon.)
Oh… sadly, you can’t tame giraffes.
Been playing since Family and friends Alpha in February, stopped playing for Open Beta (was getting a bit burnt out), and back in full swing.
I’ve joined my guild on the Elune server (East Coast) on the Alliance side, and we’re on the Uther (PST) server for Horde.
I tend to ignore the “b.net bastards” as I like to refer to em as, and it’s not hard. Find and join a good guild, and you’re set IMO. A good guild, is everything in games like these, especially for those of us who are more mature gamers/casual players/family-guild type people.
I’ve been with my guild for over 3 years, and they’re amazing. We’re a multi-online game community, that’s evolved into so much more over the 6 years of the guild’s existence. These people really have become family to me. One of them has even become my RL fiance/live-in mate. 
We’ve supported each other in private forums/phone calls/e-mails during births, marriages, divorces, graduations, job losses, home-buying, personal tragedies, you name it…two of em recently got married IRL, and webcast their wedding for those who couldn’t fly to Vegas for it! We have all sorts of RL get-togethers all over the country, we’re doing a Secret Santa gift exchange this year, we even have an Annual Guild Camping Trip!
We’re all adults, plus a couple older teens that are very mature for their age, don’t put up with the “drama” you get in so many guilds, and we’ve all become very close. It takes a long time to get into our guild, because when people join us, it’s generally for good.
And we’re not even a small guild either, there’s probably about 100 of us on the roster, spread out over EQ, EQ2, WoW, as well as other games, and some retired MMOers who don’t play any games at all anymore and just keep in touch over our boards or come to RL meets. There’s a ton of us in WoW atm, though, it’ll be our biggest guild concentration in one game in a long time.
I lubs my guild. 
I was on the alpha and beta as well, but I haven’t touched the thing in a few months. At the time, it seemed like they’d fixed pretty much everything wrong with MMORPG’s – you can play as much as you want and still make progress, the game’s as fun solo as with a party, and there’s actual creativity and exploration going on instead of just regurgitating all the standard fantasy stuff.
The audience is still the biggest problem for me. It’s a generalization, sure, but Blizzard fans tend to be so rabid and “powergamer” oriented and just juvenile I’m not sure how much of that I could tolerate. I’m sure the message boards just attract the dregs of the internet, and the better crowd’s going to be in the game itself, but I dunno. I’d like to hear more about how annoying the other inhabitants of the world turn out to be.
I’ll have to pick it up and start up again when I’m done with Half-Life 2.
Oh gah. 
Well at least I’m happy with Lettuce the crocodile, although I want to catch an assortment of exotic pets and stable them.
I find that about 70% of the general chat is complaining about lag, and the other 30% is people asking for quest help or trying to sell items. Most of the talk happens during lag, I guess because people have nothing to do. When everything is running fine you don’t get much general chat at all.
Well, all the people with yellow punctuation over their heads give quests, and lots of the things that drop can be used in quests - and get you killer xp points, some upgrade gear and money. In general if a dropped item has a grey name it is good to sell to vendors, if the name is green or another color check to see if it is an upgrade for you before selling it=) The quests sort of also give you a framework of a story, and serve to get you out and about getting to learn about the otehr areas. You also get xp for exploring a new zone for the first time=)
=( never go to the official boards, that is the first thing to learn…I am on khadgar, and there are not a lot of b-net babies left. In general there was a few idiots whinging about the lag, but a number of us made our own chat channel and ignored them. Oddly enough, they just took the servers down to work on them, but if you understand how the lag works you could manage to do just fine with a minimum of lag. Apparently thelag problem has to do with items, anything that changed the inventory caused lag. You could loot cash, and anything that stacked that you already had one of with no lag problems. If you looted something you didnt already have one of, lag. Tradeskilling was laggy because it involved changing inventory. The lag basically started about 330 - when lots of kids get home from school and log in. If you want a friendy face to help you, make an alliance person on my server - khadgar, will be glad to help you out=)
I turned of ooc in eq a lot, especially in some newer zones.
On the other hand, there is no kill stealing [per se] the first person to tag a mob with damage gets it, nobody else can loot it or get xp or quest count credit from it. Another spiffy feature is if you are grouped with 3 other people looking to loot a head or other quest item, they put the correct number of quest items on the mob [first time i ever saw a mob with 4 heads=)] They also boost the spawn rate if there are a lot of people in the zone hunting =) I dont pvp so I cant address those questions, but when you runback to your body, you have an area around your body that you can rez in, so you can sneak around a corner and rez out of sight=)
Keep in mind, most of the boards were written when it was open beta with all the damned b-net babies in the game. General chat is no where near paludal levels…
The trouble I’m having is that I can’t pick up quest items all the time. I just lag out. Right now, I’m dead… and standing at the spot I died. My body isn’t here, or anywhere to be found on the mini-map.
I would be playing right now, but I’m currently at my mom’s house out in the middle of nowhere with no broadband access. I told her I made a big sacrifice coming out here, but she remains unimpressed.
As for the merits of this game, let me put it to you this way: available light isn’t the world’s biggest gamer. When I was still playing City of Heroes she was mildly interested in the costume creator but not in the game itself. We played Diablo II on a private network game, but she wouldn’t play on battle.net because it was too fast paced and full of dumbasses for her. But when I convinced her to create a character on my beta account for WoW, I had a hard time getting to play my own characters afterwards. When the retail version came out, I discovered that her laptop is not really up to the task of running the client, even with all the graphic options set to the lowest level, so now we’re looking into a new computer. I can probably get one for cheaper out here in Idaho than back home on the edge of Silicon Valley.
Well, the lag spikes have stopped, at least on Frostwolf. Got my mage up to lvl 11 now.
That reminds me – I have to say Blizzard kicks much ass for their continued support of Macs and OS X. When I was on the WoW beta, I played mostly on my PC, but I downloaded the Mac client just for yuks. To my surprise, it ran perfectly on my PowerBook G4! There was a little bit of stuttering because of the hard drive access, as laptop drives are always going to be slower than desktop ones. But I was amazed that the game was actually playable.
The lag problems have completely disappeared for me; is that everyone else’s experience?
Having a blast with the game!
Daniel
I was catching a bit of lag on Medivh yesterday, but it didn’t last long. I love how huge and quest-oriented this game is. And there are even quests just for your class and profession!
I finally broke down and opened the box on Friday. It’s not bad. I had no lag issues until last (Sunday) night. Everyone in my zone was complaining then.
I picked a RP PVE server (earth ring?). Even with it being a RP server, there are still some idiots picking names like tracylords, robocop, etc. Other than that, it hasn’t been too bad in regards to dumbasses.
Yeah–I think that what with the server problems and scads of bug reports about the lag, GMs haven’t had much time to enforce the naming conventions. Hopefully they’ll start soon.
Daniel