Kevin's Watch

I must be mad, because I've been feeling tempted by WoW recently, despite my intense dislike of the thought of paying a monthly subscription for a game (and despite being aware of my complete inability to socialise or interact at all through multiplayer games, which I just end up solo-ing).

I'm familiar enough with the game, having watched it played a lot, and having played for a day or so on a free trial.
I'm not sure I could afford to keep it up, though--and the effect on my life would be a toss-up between the game being an unplayed drain on my cash or it being murder for the rest of my free time.

All this chatting had me go out and get WoW yesterday. I have a friend who's been doing it for a while and knows his stuff so he's guided me some. It took about three hours yesterday to load it all up and get all the patches etc. This morning I've been playing.

So if you're in Dalaran realm, look me up. I'm a bald, on top, Dwarf Rogue with the long ponytail in the back.

oh come ON murrin!!! come questing with me an sorus and creator!!!
seareach is on board as well and building a character!! you know you want toooooooo!!!!

we are all in The Scryers, Damelon. how come you didn't get on our dang server?????

Yeah! Even if your main is on Dalaran to play with your friends there, you can create an alt to play with us.

Join ussssss.....

Hmm. Can European players play on US servers? There's no point trying to tempt me if I'll be completely cut off.

Edit: it can be done, by buying a US account. And it's cheaper than UK subscription. Hmm.

Murrin wrote:Hmm. Can European players play on US servers? There's no point trying to tempt me if I'll be completely cut off.

Edit: it can be done, by buying a US account. And it's cheaper than UK subscription. Hmm.

*luci cackles madly*

Heh, but I'm not sure how to get a US account. There's no option (unlike the EU site) to buy the authorisation key seperately from a physical copy of the game.

Hmm... some of the folks that recently started playing probably have some of those ten-day free trial cards, which have a starter key that can be upgraded...

Not 100% sure if that would work, but I can't see why it wouldn't.

Ah. That might be a good idea--it'd get me access to the "account management" page, wouldn't it?
Anyway, I'd have to wait for my new hard drive to arrive, because my current one is too full.
Not that I've decided to play. Like I said, I'd be mad to consider it.

Eh, madness is just a state of mind.

Heh.

Wonder what sort of character I should go for. When I played the free trial (it ran very slowly on the old laptop, so I barely played at all) I had a dwarf paladin.

You need a US copy of the game to start a US account and play on US servers, the retail boxes from over here will only get you on to the European realms.

There are quite a few different ways to get the game itself now. There are some good bundle offers for the WoW retail box with the Burning Crusade, you'd have to get to level 60 before you can get into the BC content but you also need it to start either a Blood Elf of Draenei character. Levelling 1-60 has been made a lot faster with recent patches which have increased XP gain and decreased level size, but it may be best to get another trial account and download the game, play through your 15 days and then decide if you want to continue.

As for the cost, I found that during the two years I was really active in the game it was saving me money. The £9 a month I was spending on it was easily outweighed by the number of games I wasn't buying because of it. Now I have the worst of both worlds; I keep paying the subscription but only play once or twice a week and probably spend more than ever on Xbox games!

Apparently you can make a tiny edit in one file and the UK client (no other european version--only english language ones are compatible) will access the US server list--you just need a US account then to play it. It's the same for US players to get european servers. I'm going to use the client download from the eu website and get someone's (US) trial pass to see if that works, and if it does I'll consider buying.

Interesting, I'd never heard of that. I wonder how different the US realms are to play on. The character of many EU realms is influenced by the makeup of different nationalities on it, like my old realm Runetotem EU had a lot of Danish and Italian people playing on it, who were generally less likely than Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish or Dutch people to speak English and thus tended to form big and often insular guilds of their own.

Sorus wrote:Yeah! Even if your main is on Dalaran to play with your friends there, you can create an alt to play with us.

Join ussssss.....

That's true... and I have another class in mind to play. I just have to get comfortable with all the different keys.

They pass out trial keys like candy, I'm sure I've got a few american ones in my hotmail inbox.

Nav wrote:Interesting, I'd never heard of that.

I found it out from a quick bit of searching on google. It seems the file realmslist.wtf (or something like that) has a lines like "eu.logon.worldofwarcraft.com", and you just change the "eu" to "us". You still have to have bought a US account, so I don't think it's a violation of the terms or anything.

As for the differences, I obviously can't say. But back when I played Guild Wars it wasn't uncommon for me to enter a city through an English language server and find the chat window full of people speaking another language (some sort of scandinavian language usually, but I wouldn't be able to identify it; but then, in GW you can just pick your server off a dropdown if you don't like the one you enter automatically, so if there was too much foreign chatter I'd just jump onto one of the others)--I assume that won't be a problem on the US servers.

The Dreaming wrote:They pass out trial keys like candy, I'm sure I've got a few american ones in my hotmail inbox.

You'd be willing to spare one? Can't get the game installed at the moment (new HDD arrives tomorrow or later), but I do want to give the game a go once I can.

*thinking with my addictive personality that this is something I best stay far, far away from*

Besides, it probably doesn't work with dial-up, huh...

OK, I've decided to reinstall WoW. I'd prefer to play a dwarf hunter again, but if you need a tank or a healer, I can go that route.

RIGHT ON SHERIFF!!!! heh.

well creator and i were talking today and realized HE'S the only one that can resurrect anyone (draenai shaman.)

i'm a draenai hunter, sorus is a night elf hunter, i don't know what seareach is yet.

ger is playing a draenai warrior but he's on my account so he can't quest at the same time i do. he's been lone wolfin' it.