Avian Gamers Network

hi!
how is everyone doing?
i have a couple of questions regarding WoW - i might pick it up once its released in europe:
is it true that its fun to play even if you only have like half an hour or so? i mean, that was one of the reasons for me quitting swg - i always wanted to play again but then i didnt bc i didnt have enough time since i felt like it wasnt worth playing less then one buffed session at a time. i hope thats not the case with WoW.
since i believe you are playing on a US based server - have you been talking to people from europe about how stable and fast their connection is?
is the connection stable at all? - the other day i read that blizzard was asking amazon and the likes to stop selling the game since their servers couldnt handle all the players.

hopefully cya soon...

I'm playing from Norway and my connection is rock solid. About once a week I get a single disconnect but that might be due to complications across the line and not at Blizzards end. My ping is usually around 250-350 and I don't notice any lag except for the heavily populated areas where everyone have the same problems.

As for playing half an hour at a time; it's perfectly possible but speaking for myself I know it's too little as I always get caught up in quests and stuff and just can't pry myself away. Playing through the entire game in half hour intervals isn't viable though, since you need to spend quite a lot of time doing instances; they aren't possible to complete in a short time. If you however pick up some "kill X# of Y creature" you can get away with short sessions.

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"It's sort of a philosophical question...if a tissue fails to modify a skill that doesn't exist, and no one is around, will any devs hear you screaming?"

what kind of connection do you have?
is the lag in those heavily populated areas about as bad as in cnet?
do you notice any difference in the community compared zo swg? (friendlier? less focused on becoming uber?)

good to hear that there are smaller things you can do in half an hour...
i didnt plan to play though the whole game in 30min intevalls
just when i come back from university and dont want to wait 20min to get a buff, then with all the lag wait another 10 to get from cnet to dant, only to play like 20min with a buff that would have lasted for hours...

I think there are many things you can do in 30 to 60 minutes. I would say that 90% of the game could be played that way. I however love playing over the weekends. On Monday I look forward to the weekend when I can get in a 2, 3, 4 hour play session. But when I do that I am completing 10 or so missions. You can easily do one missions at a time, or parts of one missions in a short game session.

There are huge dungeons. Gnomeragon for example took a group of five Avians 5 hours to complete it. However I have only played through 2 dungeons on the past 2 months. And I am level 33.

Most everything else can be completed a little bit at a time. You can hold 20 missions at once, and you can complete the requirements of each missions at your leisure. Your buffs stay with you even after logging out for weeks at a time. You missions will stay with you too…. So you loose nothing by logging out.


/edit
I have got to be honest with you. The game is so popular that Auction House lag (WoW Bazaar) can be laggy at peak times. I have no lag what so ever, but my wife experiences graphical lag when she passes through the Dwarven city of Iron Forge. Her problem is her Video Card... or really I should say her lack of video card. Hers is integrated into the Mobo.

can you predict how long it will take (or whether it gets to that point at all) untill the missions might become boring like in swg where at some point it would always be the same (getting buffed, going to other planet, lfg, running to the next terminal and browsing for missions untill you get the 2 you want in similar directions)? from what i hear from you and other sources it seems to me that the devs (do they call them devs in wow as well?) have put much more thought into creating the missions and building a neat story around them (did anyone ever read the story around a mission in swg?). can you confirm that? to me it seems that there is a lot more of what would be considered a theme park in swg. are those missions more exciting than the them parks in swg?

I've tested on a few connections, right now I'm on 1.2 Mbit ADSL but a couple of weeks ago I was playing on a 64 kbit ISDN line; there wasn't any difference.

Now at lvl 53 the quests still aren't boring. Yes, they are very often a variation of the same thing (kill X# of Y creatures) but they have a background story, sometimes amuzing, sometimes interesting and they always give good XP and even great items now and then.

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"It's sort of a philosophical question...if a tissue fails to modify a skill that doesn't exist, and no one is around, will any devs hear you screaming?"

The major difference is most WoW mission have a story to tell. And cause you to explore the world.

You get a few paragraphs of story with each mission. Then once you complete the mission you are given more info, a reward, and usually a chance to do another mission which will continue the story.


There are so many plots going on. I wish I could buy a book that I could read for entertainment detailing all the things that are going on with all the factions and subgroups. There are so many stories going on, that I have forgotten over time what I had done in the past.


The missions are the same as far as mechanics go. You will have to do one of the following:

Kill X number of Y monster
Gather X number from the world
Gather X number from looting monsters
Bring X item to Y NPC
Kill X Boss monster, and bring back proof.
Bring item X to location Y, perform action to item, return item to Z

The thing I love is the WoW devs have woven a story around each mission mechanic that you don’t realize the missions can be the same. Plus the missions are linked to other missions, so that you end up doing a chain of missions, continuing the story, and mixing up the mission mechanics.



MISSIONS ARE NOTHING LIKE SWG

http://thottbot.com/?f=q
Go to that link and choose any zone on the list to see the missions in that zone. Then click find Quest. The site will return you a list of all the missions in that area.

This link takes you to a early zone called Loc Modan http://thottbot.com/?f=q&title=&obj=&de ... ol=&maxol=

Here is a link that takes you to another early zone called Westfall http://thottbot.com/?f=q&title=&obj=&de ... ol=&maxol=

Hope this is a good example of the missions in Wow. Maybe someone knows of a better location for missions.



/edit

this was a good series http://thottbot.com/?q=956

so was this one http://thottbot.com/?q=546

Look how many are in this serise http://thottbot.com/?q=1544

uh uh....
i have been exploring this site for some time now... i feel slightly hooked but i am not going to buy that game BEFORE my exam
oh well, maybe i am . but i am not going to unwrap it before that... or at least not install it....

or at least not play it for longer than 30 minutes....



I usually play for about 1 hour at a time... I've found that I don't level quite as fast as others, but I do have fun knocking out a quest or three in that time. Also, when you don't play for a while, the next time you play you get double the experience for a while... which is very nice. It rewards you for taking a break now and then.

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--The Hermit

If he would pick up the euro version when it release could he even play on the same server as us or wouldhe need to get a US version

I think it's still not sure what you'll be able to do..

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Flyoc,
Farm with attitude.

huh?!
i didnt even bother catching up on that - but are you saying that it wouldnt be possible to play on a us server with a euro version and vice-versa? what about the character transfer system?
does anyone have a link to an official FAQ or something like that to clarify that ??

not sure if there is a character transfer system in yet.
Question: Why can't you just buy a US Release copy?

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Moge

the way the servers are now i really don;t see them doing a transfer for a while like that

This newest "unnamed" dev chat hints that they're working hard to get a character transfer feature to help load-balance servers... though I'm not sure if it'll let you go from Euro -> US, or from any server -> Busy server, or even if it's real at all...


http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/35373

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--The Hermit

thats not a big deal - but its just easier and cheaper to get the euro release

What about the issue of having a US mailing address to get into a US server? What ever happened to that? Did they drop it or is it still in effect?