Who's still playing WoW then?

[beanbandit]

For those wanting the WoTLK Collectors Edition, they have now appeared for pre-order in the UK £49.99

[Allen]

50 notes? Ouch... what extras do you get?

[beanbandit]

World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King Collector's Edition will come in a special box that contains many exclusive extras to enhance your adventure into Northrend, including:

* World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King on DVD-ROM.
* The Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, a 208-page book featuring never-before-seen images from the game.
* An exclusive in-game pet: Frosty, the baby frost wyrm.
* A behind-the-scenes DVD containing over an hour of developer interviews, the Wrath of the Lich King intro cinematic with director’s commentary, and more.
* The official soundtrack CD, containing 21 epic tracks from the game, along with exclusive bonus tracks.
* A mouse pad featuring a map of the newly opened continent of Northrend.
* Two World of Warcraft Trading Card Game March of the Legion™ starter decks, along with two exclusive cards available only in the Collector’s Edition.

The behind-the-scenes DVD will offer developer interviews and commentary on all aspects of the creation of Wrath of the Lich King, as well as trailers and cinematics from the game, and even footage of panel discussions from BlizzCon 2007.

Collector's Edition owners will also be able to take their adventures from the computer to the tabletop with two starter packs for the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game -- one for themselves and one to share with a friend. In addition, Collector's Edition owners will receive two exclusive tournament-legal World of Warcraft Trading Card Game cards to incorporate in their decks or trade with other World of Warcraft TCG players.

With the Collector's Edition-exclusive in-game pet, Frosty the baby frost wyrm, you'll be the envy of your guildmates and other players as you roam the expanses of Northrend.

A soundtrack CD with stirring music from the expansion pack, a beautiful coffee table book with exclusive concept art, and a Northrend-themed mouse pad round out the wealth of bonus items available in the Collector's Edition of World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King.

I like the art books that come with these sets

[Cichlidash]

As I am playing Eve less and less I decided to start looking into other MMO's and decided to try WOW along side a couple of freinds with the free trial.
Awful graphics aside the first thing that struck me was the fact that with a trial acount you can not even form a party. I really can not belive that they release even a trial of a MMO where you can not join with other players?
I was like whats the point in an online game where you have to solo should not being in a party be the thing to draw me to a online game rather than going for a single player off line experience?
Needless to say we quickly got bored and left the game for good.

[beanbandit]

As I am playing Eve less and less I decided to start looking into other MMO's and decided to try WOW along side a couple of freinds with the free trial.
Awful graphics aside the first thing that struck me was the fact that with a trial acount you can not even form a party. I really can not belive that they release even a trial of a MMO where you can not join with other players?
I was like whats the point in an online game where you have to solo should not being in a party be the thing to draw me to a online game rather than going for a single player off line experience?
Needless to say we quickly got bored and left the game for good.

Its a trial. 10 days. Max level 20. Can't group, can't trade. Good, it stops some of the gold seller. No need to party up for the first 16 levels, so its not really a big issue.

As for the GFX, its a 4 year old game, what are you expecting? Ground breaking state of the art? If you want shiney new gfx then go play Conan. WoW's visuals suit the game and have never needed anything more. Go whine elsewhere.

[kalniel]

Go whine elsewhere.

I didn't find his comments a whine at all. Actually they fairly closely match my own experience of the trial as well - it doesn't represent the games strong points at all well.

[beanbandit]

I didn't find his comments a whine at all. Actually they fairly closely match my own experience of the trial as well - it doesn't represent the games strong points at all well.

Its aimed at the GFX comment. Its the one constant thing that bugs me, its a 4 year old game, what are people expecting. Yet its one of the first things people mention when they come to make any sort of comment. Yes the trial is limited, but its stated as so.

[kalniel]

Well no-one expects the trial to be unlimited, it's just the fact that they really limit one of the main reasons for playing WoW. A trial should IMHO give you some of the experience of what actual play might be like - so something like the Eve trial for example.

On the graphics, they were bad even four years ago to be honest (6 years ago we had the likes of Morrowind, NWN etc. which all put the newer WoW to shame). But that's always the case with Blizzard - they use a stable graphics engine which is always badly out of date by the time the rest of the game is done. *Shrugs* I still enjoy text based MUDs, but if someone does like graphics then you can't blame them for being dissappointed with such a high budget game looking like it does.

[Allen]

To be fair, it's not designed to be a "pretty" game with state of the art graphics, it's Warcraft, it's always had comic-book style graphics.

And regarding the trial, well, tough... it's limited and the reason why you can't do those things is for fully paying customers to get less (well, a little bit less) gold selling spam. When I was playing, if I had my way, trial accounts would've been blocked of most communications to avoid gold sellers abusing them to promote their sites. As beanie said, you don't NEED to group up till almost the point where the trial "stops" anyway, so what's the problem?

[kalniel]

It's not about need, it's about fun. Soloing was quite dull. And it was just a shame because there was a group of us all trying WoW at the same time, and it felt like we weren't really playing together/couldn't get an idea how the group dynamics would work.

[educatedfool]

All the gold spam from trial accounts is nonsense. I've been playing since december 2005, and sure I get the spam but it's hardly annoying, it's maybe once every few hours.


Being a 'Massively Multiplayer'orpg you would like to think that you could party up in the trial.


Edit: And Ragefire Chasm is a level 13 instance, for many people the experience of playing their first 5 man, even at low levels could sell it for them. Playing alone is tedious and boring, I started up again last month for the first time in a year because several friends decided to aswell. If they didn't I wouldn't have bothered because the game is simply a much lesser one playing solo.

[Cichlidash]

I can understand the can not trade gold and stuff but to me a MMO is about what fun you can have in parties or with freinds. If I want a solo experience in a game then I will simply play a single player game which will have upto date graphics and playing mechanic's.
What the current trial really offers is probably the worse elements of WoW a chance to see how bad the graphics are how badly out of character the quests are if your interested in roleplay and just how boring a game it is as a single player experience.
I am sure that this is not the impression that Blizzard are aiming for with the trial but it is the one they are giving all the same.

[Geist]

Oh dear...

I just reinstalled and created a new trail account to see how things have changed...

I now have a lev6 shaman and I've only been playing an hour(including sorting all the settings/interface).

Annoyingly the trails only seem to allow US servers. I had wanted to mess around with some friends on the EU servers.

Well I am impressed. It has been over a year since I last played and a lot has changed. Very impressed with some of the addons that they have taken and made part of the game. But already found things that seem half done compared to the originals. Scrolling combat text is the best example. Why cant I fully adjust where it appears, font sizes and where is the damage that I take?

Must resist... losing life again...

[kopite]

Well im still holding off.

Just bought a new graphics card so want to play games that are gonna push it for a bit. when WOTLK arrives I might come back though

[listy]

heard rumors of 3.0 being out this week so make sure you all have it downloaded about 900meg iirc

also if you got to eu site for wow you should be able to get eu servers

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/index.xml?rhtml=y

[beanbandit]

Full patch is 1.57Gb. Have it all downloaded