lasuther
Mar 28, 2005, 10:38 AM
Over the weekend my friend invited me over to his house to try World of Warcraft. He had a free 10 day pass and wanted me to try it. My friend was playing WoW on this system:
17” PowerBook, 1 GHz, 1 Gig Ram, 64MB ATI graphics card.
The game seemed to run fine on his machine. His video settings were max resolution 1440x900, max textures, but everything else was at the minimum.
It took over three hours to get it installed on my iBook
12” iBook, 800 MHz, 640 MB Ram, 32MB ATI graphics card.
I got a warning saying my machine didn’t meet the minimum specifications, but we installed it anyway. I had to run the video settings at the minimum resolution 800x600, and everything else was at minimum.
I decided on a human fighter because I wanted something straight forward and basic to learn the game. The game could get choppy in extremely high traffic areas, but overall I didn’t have any big problems. Combat was fine, and I found the game to be very playable. While graphics were turned to the minimum, it is still one of the best looking games I've seen on my iBook. I didn’t think to bring a mouse so I used the keyboard and trackpad. I got used to that quickly and had no problems without a mouse. I was able to get my character up to level 11 by the end of the weekend and now I’m completely hooked. I have about a week left of my free pass, so I hope to do a lot of playing. But my wife will probably have a problem with that.
While in my opinion WoW is playable on an iBook, I’m not going to buy the game until I get a better machine to run it on. If I had to buy a machine today, it would probably be a 15” base PowerBook at $1800 edu price. While I really want the 128MB graphics card, I can’t justify the extra $400+ to upgrade to the 15” Superdrive or $600+ to the 17”. Right now I’m going to wait and for the next iBook update. If it gets the 64MB NVIDIA, I might just pick up another iBook 12”. But I doubt that will happen because it would probably put the iBook too close to the PowerBook.
Right now all I can think about is getting to the next level. I need to feed my addiction.
lasuther
17” PowerBook, 1 GHz, 1 Gig Ram, 64MB ATI graphics card.
The game seemed to run fine on his machine. His video settings were max resolution 1440x900, max textures, but everything else was at the minimum.
It took over three hours to get it installed on my iBook
12” iBook, 800 MHz, 640 MB Ram, 32MB ATI graphics card.
I got a warning saying my machine didn’t meet the minimum specifications, but we installed it anyway. I had to run the video settings at the minimum resolution 800x600, and everything else was at minimum.
I decided on a human fighter because I wanted something straight forward and basic to learn the game. The game could get choppy in extremely high traffic areas, but overall I didn’t have any big problems. Combat was fine, and I found the game to be very playable. While graphics were turned to the minimum, it is still one of the best looking games I've seen on my iBook. I didn’t think to bring a mouse so I used the keyboard and trackpad. I got used to that quickly and had no problems without a mouse. I was able to get my character up to level 11 by the end of the weekend and now I’m completely hooked. I have about a week left of my free pass, so I hope to do a lot of playing. But my wife will probably have a problem with that.
While in my opinion WoW is playable on an iBook, I’m not going to buy the game until I get a better machine to run it on. If I had to buy a machine today, it would probably be a 15” base PowerBook at $1800 edu price. While I really want the 128MB graphics card, I can’t justify the extra $400+ to upgrade to the 15” Superdrive or $600+ to the 17”. Right now I’m going to wait and for the next iBook update. If it gets the 64MB NVIDIA, I might just pick up another iBook 12”. But I doubt that will happen because it would probably put the iBook too close to the PowerBook.
Right now all I can think about is getting to the next level. I need to feed my addiction.
lasuther
