WoW - so far i'm unimpressed

Well, I started installing it at something like 6pm, it may have been earlier but I reckon I was at it by 6. It's now nearly 10 and I have yet to get into the game!

The auto patcher takes AGES. After I got tired of waiting I went to 3d gamers and downloaded the patches myself. They took 15 minutes to download and an eternity to install. Why I wonder do 300Mb BF patches take a couple of minutes if that to install yet WoW ones (ok a bit bigger) take more like 20 minutes? I managed to epilate both my legs waiting for the bloody things.

Now I'm in the queue for Alonsus, which is slowly going down. I don't mind queing but what I do mind is my position in the queue going up (what???) every so often and the estimated time jumping between 4 and 54 minutes. I know timers are hard to make, MS ones aren't very reliable but this one seriously sucks.

So: 4 hours and a lot of messing around and in somewhere between 4 and 72 minutes I might actually get to play the freaking game.

Edit: just tabbed back in and I've gone from 61 to 66 in the queue. What the **** is this **** all about?

 

I hate the way they handle patches. It would be much better if they provided direct download options AND bittorrent options. Plus patch options to go from retail/download to current version.

Heres a hint, don't get into a high pop server. Choose a low or medium one. The reason they have queues is because the servers can handle only so many players, so you have to wait for other players to get logged off. This was a major pain back a long time ago, when their servers would easily drop you if you had a not so premium connection. Then you'd have to wait another 30 min - 1 hour sometimes. Total pain.

The queue timer/counter isn't accurate either. I've seen it do some crazy things as well. I sure wish I had time to play it again!

 

The WoW patches are all done through P2P, so yea its slow. For first time users, its an annoyance due to the size, but its avaliable trough ftp and http from sites.

Their new patching system is quite innovative, let users download it weeks before the release so there is no massive lineup.

As for servers, hard to say, the older more popular ones are obviously larger and lineups isn't that common. I've been playing for a little under a year, never experienced lineups, there has been server hiccups but Blizz is usually very generous in giving back free gametime

 

Yeah, they have gotten much better since a year ago. I stopped playing at the start of fall semester. But man... when I played on warsong last year... constantly 100+ person queues. Plus that server had constant hic ups and other problems. But Twisting Nether (my last server) didn't have nearly as many problems.

 

Just been playing the game for the last 4 and a half hours and... well it's pretty good. A lot of running and fighting right now but I'm still on newbie island!

 

you should get xfire.... it auto dl's the patches for you and then you just have to install them. also if xfire doesnt have it on their site file planet normally has them all... and ive never waited over 1 hour to get anything

 

Haha, yeah, they use Bittorrent to distribute the patches. Or more accurately, they use Bittorrent to save their own bandwidth costs.

It would have been a brilliant idea if they provided the usual amount of download bandwidth for users, but did it over the bittorrent protocol. Then there would be enough bandwidth for people to download from their servers, but they'd be able to further boost download speeds by letting users download off each others. That would make good sense.

Instead they just use it to cut their own costs. "Hey, we upload 256kb/s, and then let the users share the bits they manage to get from us until they've got the full patches"

The entire fact that you have to queue drives me mad. It just shouldn't be neccesary. I know WoW is a popular game, but they only have like 3000 players per server. Eve Online can handle 20,000 players per server, and I've never had to queue there!


That said, WoW is a nice enough game once you get in. I don't find it as addictive as many people do, but hey, it's nice to mess around in for a weekend.

Could it be because you alt-tabbed out?

 

Welcome to WoW!

Good time to join, with BC comming soon. If you aren't planning on playing a Blood Elf, it's best to wait until 60 or so to get the expansion.. Not really anything in expansion for the low levels other than Jewelcrafting and the Races.

Outlands is pretty much 58+

 

Yea the installation and the patching takes forever. But the game itself is fun. I do kinda have to say though that the game has become somewhat boring though because of the anticipation for the expansion.

 

The patches for WoW can be found on Filefront.com and also Fileplanet, so manually downloading the patches is far more efficient than using the WoW patch client.

But then again, it's their game so they should have focused on making a dedicated distribution server rather than a P2P protocol.

 

I think I need to play a bit more before deciding if the expansion is worth it. Will one still be able to play ok without it?

Still, it's already in my head. I couldn't sleep the other night afyter playing it for 4 hours as my head was still in WoW mode! At least leaving my partner's wont be so bad tody as I have something to look foprward to when I get home! A return to gaming for jess_paws?

 

The expansion won't be that big of a change, its mostly the Outlands and end game, with a few early game changes.

I'm terribly bored right now, I have a 60 Warlock in Tier 1 with a few Tier 2 pieces, and my guilds on stop mode because of BC.