World of Warcraft launches!

Cafe Society
61

Got the game tonight and love it.

I played EQ, or tried to, for a few months and , being a casual gamer, I was never able to lvl my char up past the first 10 lvls or so before I was bored to death with the game. Ihad a similar experience with Dark Ages of Camelot.

This is the first MMORPG that I have ever played that doesn’t make me feel like Im playing with an impotent parapalegic for the first lvls. Im at lvl 6 and have had alot of fun playing up to this point. I really like dueling. I have, what I consider to be, strong spells. I made an undead warlock BTW.

Its also the first MMORPG Ive played where I don’t feel as though I picked the wrong char/race /class after playing for a while. I picked an undead guy because they sounded cool. I picked a Warlock because he sounded cool. I guess I lucked out because I really like my char and I never had to “try” other ones. I must have tried 20 different new chars in EQ and they all felt weak as shit and were little to no fun.

Anyway, for other casual gamers out there, this is a great game. It has a decent story, cool graphics, cool characters and a cool community. Ive had no lag issues and was able to log into the server and stay there for 5 hours or so tonight with no problems.

Question though, whats this “que” I keep hearing people talk about?

62

Either you mean Cenarion Circle, or that Robocop asshole really gets around.

63

Apparently he gets around, because it was on Earthen Ring.

64

Yeah - when I had my G4 Cube, Diablo II was one of only about a dozen decent games that supported Macintosh. Don’t have it anymore, but it’s nice that they still support Mac.

It’s also nice that WoW doesn’t require a frickin’ mainframe to run it, unlike EQ2 and many other MMOs. :slight_smile:

George

65

I’ve got a level 20 NE Priest on Sargeras and I’m having a ball. We have a little guild set up with people from my website and it’s a blast doing quests together (also a fast way to level up).

Last night we had a little run in with some PVP action. I know a lot of people aren’t fond of PVP, but I’m lovin it!™ Keeps things all kinds of interesting.

I was roaming around with two guildmates in the Wetlands outside Menethil Harbor. I had just upgraded a lot of my enchanting stuff, so I enchanted both of their shields, bracers, armor, and cloaks. They were lookin’ pretty good. :slight_smile:

Of course, to do all that took a while, and we were standing there for probably 10-15 minutes. Right when I finished I said something like “Ok let’s hit some crocs” and suddenly I heard a loud (((CLINK))).

I closed the eleventy windows I had open and found my character doubled over stunned. Time to sound the alarm… “TROLL!!!”

It was a level 28 troll. I didn’t notice the class, but he could move while invisible so I’m guessing he was a rogue (that’s the only class that can do that right?). He proceeded to destroy the other two people (who were both around level 18 IIRC) while all I could do is sit there and watch. By the time he finished them off, I was finally able to move, and he gave me the same treatment.

So we head back to our corpses, revive, and park it next to a guard to recover our HP. At this point we haven’t seen him for a while so we go back to croc hunting. Suddenly… it happens again… “TTRRROOOLLL!!!”

This time he went after one of the other guys first, so I booked. :smiley: I ducked into some bushes and hit the shadow meld. It was a perfect hiding place - he walked RIGHT in front of me and didn’t notice me there. YES!

At this point Alliance people were roaming around the swamp. I didn’t think to hop in the localDefense channel but I bet someone reported the troll in there, because the good guys were looking for him. As I was watching, a level 24 NE rogue crossed the bridge I was near when the bastard jumped out at him. IT’S ON!

I stayed hidden as the two duked it out right in front of me. Both players were chipping down the other’s health pretty well. That’s when I jumped in. :smiley:

“SHOOOM!” I jumped out of shadow meld and healed the night elf! Then I buffed him with everything I had, and healed him again. Then I unloaded on the troll. (((STARSHARDS)))

By the time I started hitting him he was down to about a fifth of his energy, and knew he was owned, so he took off. At first he ran along the road, but obviously didn’t know how close he was to the city (and the level 50 guards) so he hooked right and dove into the bay. The rogue, myself, and a druid who joined the chase were all right on his tail.

He swam and swam. Eventually he hit the point where you can’t swim in the deep water without getting exhausted and drowning and turned back toward the swamp. That’s when we had our chance. I pulled out the (((STARSHARDS))) and the rogue fired away with the arrows. After not too long, we nailed him. :slight_smile:

When we got back to the road I was all like “WOO HOO! That was awesome!” The other two guys stood there and didn’t say anything. The strong silent types I guess. I didn’t care though - it was awesome getting rid of that griefer. We then safely returned to croc hunting, and a good time was had by all.

Love that PVP. LOVE. Can’t wait until we’re a little higher level so we can go hunting. :wink:

66

Drat! This thread got me all hotted up to play, and my realm is down due to daily maintenance! Arrrrgh!

G

67

Doh! I love the game, but this launch has been terrible. I really had high hopes too as Blizzard is a company who has dealt with enough high volume network gaming to know what it’s doing. I don’t think I’ve had a problem-free night yet on Sargeras.

Fortunately, the problems are decreasing. They finally got the postal system working last night (I don’t know if this was across the board or just on our server, but most players could not send mail at all). Made it a pain in the but to help each other in the guild out with tradeskills.

And last night I was lagging so I logged out, only to find I couldn’t get back in for a good 20 minutes. No queue or anything - just wouldn’t connect. I almost did the unthinkable and grabbed a book or something, but then I remember Half-Life 2 deathmatch was out so I played that for a while. :smiley:

68

This launch has gone better than some others. I really only had major problems on Frostwolf one day last week where I lagged out 7 times or so and looting was totally fragged. Other than that I’ve had few problems, a few lag spikes and a couple of bugs.

Apparently Blizzard added 2 or 3 more days to the guest passes yesterday. Frostwolf went down for a server restart (I was off and back on in less than 5 minutes) and several people were commenting on having days added to their time limit. There was no rollback on the restart either so I didn’t lose the quest I had just completed.

69

Can anyone explain the que to me please?

70

In the game’s launching days, tons of people were trying to get onto every server. Blizzard anticipated that if (for example) five thousand people made new accounts on a single server simultaneously, that would mean several hundred people running around every starting zone, making those zones extremely not-fun (as you tried to “tag” a spawning creature before any of the hundreds of other players did, so you could get credit for its death).

Blizzard therefore put a strict cap on each server’s starting population, increasing this cap gradually as players had time to move out of the starting zone. If you tried to get onto a server that had reached its cap, you were put in a queue, a line of people, waiting to get onto the server.

I only got stuck in a queue once, for about five minutes, but my brother got stuck in one for an hour.

As the game has continued, and they’ve added new servers and raised the server cap, queues have gotten increasingly rare. I’ve not heard any complaints about them this week.

Daniel

71

[ol]
[li]are contested areas literal? do they change hands? bummer if not…[/li]
[li]how big is the world roughly? 20km? a hundred?[/li]
[li]what happens if the horde were to raid an alliance town successfully? does it change hands? if not, can the horde stick around indefinitely while killing npcs as they spawn? what are the penalties for the alliance for losing the town?[/li][/ol]
thanks.

72

I’m almost certain that contested areas don’t change hands. This woudl be cool, but it’s not how it works. Which is probably for the best: right now, most servers have more Alliance players than Horde players for some reason, so this would probably end up meaning that all contested lands were de facto Alliance lands.

I’ve got no idea how big the world is. It’s definitely too big to explore in one character’s lifetime, though.

The penalties for losing a town are basically that you can’t use the town’s services, including (most importantly) getting or redeeming quests in that town as long as the opposition keeps killing the relevant NPCs. The other penalty is that your opposing faction will start gaining honor points, which will soon be redeemable for perks like better mounts, teleportation abilities, and superior equipment.

Daniel