World of Warcraft is a pretty hot topic around this blog. I haven’t written anything about it in awhile, but as I just put together a new gaming system and decided to take the plunge into the world of 64-bit Vista, I thought it was high time I do an update about playing World of Warcraft on Vista.
For starters I didn’t “install” World of Warcraft, so I can’t comment on how it installs on 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate. I copied the entire “World of Warcraft” folder from the Program Files folder on another machine into the “Program Files (x86)” folder on the the new machine and added a shortcut to “launcher.exe” to the games folder to start it.
I wanted to get the most of this new video card so I changed the settings to as follows:
- Resolution 1920×1200
- Vertical Sync Un-Checked
- Hardware Cursor Checked
- 60Hz Refresh
- 24-bit color, 24-bit depth, 8x multisampling
- Use Desktop Gamma checked
- Terrain Distance: Far
- Terrain Detail: High
- Spell Detail: High
- Environment Detail: Far
- Ground Clutter Density: High
- Ground Clutter Radius: Far
- Texture Resolution: High
- Texture Filtering: High
- Weather Intensity: High
- Specular Lighting Checked
- Full-Screen Glow Effect Checked
- Character Shadows Checked
These settings result is slamming out over 130 frames per second. Not to shabby! The game just looks absolutely gorgeous. I could be smitten with the 24″ LCD, the color is incredible, but it runs amazing. I flew around from a few places, went to Orgrimmar to the auction, rode the horse, engaged in combat and not one single second of stutter.
If you are wondering wether you are ready for World of Warcraft on Vista 64-bit edition, I say YES!
Disclaimer: This is being ran on a 2.66Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB Ram, 512 MB GeForce 8800 GT @ 1920×1200 resolution.
As funny as the title sounds, it’s a serious question. Dawngrrl is rapidly approaching level 58, the magical age in which she gets to hop along to the new zones and really start to see the Burning Crusades expansion.
I have still not even purchased the expansion. My Undead Warlock, Philoboy, has been marred at level 41 for months…and months. I have logged in, even got almost to 42, just a shade away, but I just can’t get back into it. I have tried, honestly I have tried. I guess to me World of Warcraft is a lot like Poker. If I am playing well, and I have a big stack, it’s so much fun. If I am the small stack, and everyone else is pushing around big stacks of chips, I just lose interest. I am not a grinder. I never have been.
When there were quests abound and many new places to explore, I had so much fun. When the places started to become contested, and I couldn’t finish a single quest without getting raped by some 14 year old level 70 punk, I lost the love.
I really do want to play. Dawn is having so much fun and the excitement is infectious. I want to get farther. I just can’t get into it. It’s hard to solo as a Warlock, one mob and I am toast. Collecting Soul Stones feels like doing the laundry. Even traveling from one continent to the next and watching the flight paths carry out the most hideous excuses for good flight planning (is there no air traffic control in Azeroth? Why would you fly left to go right?) has just driven me to a lack of desire to play the game.
So I pose these questions to my WoW playing readers:
- Would starting a new character on a non-PVP server help?
- Would a different class be more fun to solo?
- Do you have any tips to just help me kickstart the fun again?
- Should I just stick to the Xbox 360 and forget this WoW Stuff?
I would love to hear your answers, I’ll be waiting.
Dawn and I have had all of the work we can imagine done and still we are having problems with World of Warcraft. It’s come to our attention that Kel’Thuzad is so over populated that the network outages and problems are totally common.
It looks like we are both considering a paid server switch, probably also to a non-PVP server as the same son of a b%$ch that was hanging around Tenaris ganking me last night was back tonight to kill me for fun.
I think I will enjoy the questing side of the game much more without having to worry about stupid adolescents running around ganking me left and right.
Do you have a suggestion of a lowly populated non-PVP server? Please comment if you do.
