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WoW beginner questions

Dunepilot

Dunepilot

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
I was picking up some records from HMV yesterday when I saw that they are selling a World of Warcraft 14-day trial DVD for £1.49 so I picked up a copy on a whim. I've heard so much abotu the game for so long, that I thought I should give it a try, at least.

My questions are these

1) Will it work well enough on any of my computers, and if so, which? Mac Mini Core Solo (stock RAM), 1Ghz 12" G4 Powerbook 512 meg of RAM, or Dual-867 G4 Powermac w/Radeon 9000 and 768 meg of RAM.

2) Is there a good site that covers information that experienced players wished they'd known from the start?
 
1) It will run OK in the mini, especially the first levels. I assume the dual 867 should perform OK as well, but I don't have first hand experience with it. Just don't be afraid of turning the graphics to low, its all about the gameplay 🙂

2) If anything, I'd wish I'd known less from the beginning; why ruin a game with spoilers? Its all about learning on your own and experiencing the fun. Players who read those guides tend to enjoy less the game. If you have the brainpower, just fend for yourself 🙂
 
1) Your G4 should handle it well with all settings turned down.

2) Make friends fast, make 1 extra char just to send your extra junk to that you cant hold in your primary bank or bags anymore. You'll find that saving junk can save you headaches.
 
Dunepilot said:
My questions are these

1) Will it work well enough on any of my computers, and if so, which? Mac Mini Core Solo (stock RAM), 1Ghz 12" G4 Powerbook 512 meg of RAM, or Dual-867 G4 Powermac w/Radeon 9000 and 768 meg of RAM.

2) Is there a good site that covers information that experienced players wished they'd known from the start?
Click to expand...

1) I'd guess that the Powermac will run it best, but I'm not sure. My 15" Powerbook with 1 gig RAM runs it fine at low settings.

2) Before you start really playing, spend some time looking through and experimenting with the interface options and the keybinding options. That will give you an idea of what's possible control-wise. Then just jump in. If you really get stuck, thottbot or wowwiki are good resources.
 
My old PC laptop used the Mobility Radeon 9000, and my Macbook replacement ran WOW much smoother with the Intel GMA graphics. Apparently the Intel integrated ranks higher in the performance stakes than Mobility Radeon 9000, although I'm not sure how it compares to the desktop version. Unfortunately I can't compare directly between my Macbook and PC laptop, which has since died a horrible death...
 
Here's an item that I've never seen written anywhere: Higher weapon speed values mean the weapon is slower.
 
Although I have no experience with the computers you listed, the comp in my signature was used from the public release to the expansion of Burning Crusade. It has an ATI video card with 32 MB of VRAM (ATY RV280M9+, if that helps). I quit playing because I was getting frustrated with my screen locking up, the case getting hot, and my frame rates below 10 fps. All my settings were at the lowest. I am waiting for an update to the Macs this summer before I resume playing *please give us a decent video card*. I had fun, but trust me, in busy areas of the game (there are plenty - esp. towns) you would get frustrated too. You can check your frame rates with CTRL R if you decide to try the trial. Although I agree with colocolo about gameplay being the best part of the game, I turned my settings up from time to time and waited for my video card to catch up, and was stunned by the difference. Considering how much fun I had enjoying the artistic visuals of the game from the low end of the settings, I am having a hard time waiting for the next Mac upgrades to view it from the other end.

This game is fun, addictive, and easy to start playing from the get go. My recommendation would be to max your RAM in which ever comp you pick to download to (if you haven't already). Your best ability to gain knowledge will be from Blizzard's own home page site for WoW, and once you begin aquiring quests and items thottbot.com, wowwiki.com, and allakhazam.com will help. Otherwise it's best to learn as you go and use the chat menus to ask questions of other players and become a member of the server community.

Also, while I'm at it:

-Dial up internet sucks for downloading patches 😡 hopefully you don't have that problem!
-I switched later on to a PVP server to get the full experience of the game (didn't try the RP servers tho) and did not regret it even with my poor comp performance.
-Play both Alliance and Horde, you won't regret it, though you may get flamed if you admit to it. 😀
 
A hint for better preformance

This was released on the blizzard forums, for all you WoW Junkies out there. It will boost your framrates about 50% I use it cause I have a 1.33 ghz iBook and only 32mb of video memory.


This setting is not recommended for Intel systems - they use a better mode of operation and do not need this tweak. Also, this is only recommended for PowerPC systems that have more than 512MB of RAM, as it may use a few extra megabytes of memory - but try it if you like anyway.

Here is how you set it up. Make sure you do not have WoW running first.

A. copy the three lines of text below onto your clipboard (select then hit Command-C). The first line is the "cat" command, the last line has the "4" on it.

cat > ~/Library/Preferences/com.blizzard.Internal.prefs
#Current User\Internal\VBBMODE
4


B. open Terminal.app (in Applications/Utilities) and it should provide you with a UNIX command prompt. What we're going to do is paste the text in above, which will ask the command line to create a file in your preferences directory named "com.blizzard.Internal.prefs", and will inject the two lines of text after it into that file. We're asking WoW to use "vertex buffer broker mode 4" which is the new code for PowerPC systems.

C. Paste the copied text into Terminal. (Command V).
D. Now hit Control-D (not Command-D). Control-D concludes the command we started in step C and closes the file.

E. All done ! Start WoW and see how it runs.

I averaged about 12 FPS before, now I get 25-40. It really helps older and underpowerd G4 systems play this great game.

Ta!

~Fallem
 
Fallem said:
This was released on the blizzard forums, for all you WoW Junkies out there. It will boost your framrates about 50% I use it cause I have a 1.33 ghz iBook and only 32mb of video memory.


This setting is not recommended for Intel systems - they use a better mode of operation and do not need this tweak. Also, this is only recommended for PowerPC systems that have more than 512MB of RAM, as it may use a few extra megabytes of memory - but try it if you like anyway.

Here is how you set it up. Make sure you do not have WoW running first.

A. copy the three lines of text below onto your clipboard (select then hit Command-C). The first line is the "cat" command, the last line has the "4" on it.

cat > ~/Library/Preferences/com.blizzard.Internal.prefs
#Current User\Internal\VBBMODE
4


B. open Terminal.app (in Applications/Utilities) and it should provide you with a UNIX command prompt. What we're going to do is paste the text in above, which will ask the command line to create a file in your preferences directory named "com.blizzard.Internal.prefs", and will inject the two lines of text after it into that file. We're asking WoW to use "vertex buffer broker mode 4" which is the new code for PowerPC systems.

C. Paste the copied text into Terminal. (Command V).
D. Now hit Control-D (not Command-D). Control-D concludes the command we started in step C and closes the file.

E. All done ! Start WoW and see how it runs.

I averaged about 12 FPS before, now I get 25-40. It really helps older and underpowerd G4 systems play this great game.

Ta!

~Fallem
Click to expand...

Sweet! Thanks man...I've had similar FPS when playing WoW on my 12" PB 1.33 and I've looked into getting a new video card etc. (not happening way too expensive). If this works when I resign up for WoW I'll be very happy. Now that I'm gradumicated I have a few weeks to blow playing video games before it's back to doing stuff to get ready for the real world.
 
Great tip - what does that actually do? I need to extend the life of my 12" 867Mhz PowerBook G4 for a while - last night I took part in my first WoW raid (about 22 people to kill the world dragons) and everything ground to a halt when the action started.

I know this machine is old and the specs puny, but I need to keep it going for WoW a while longer!

Zen
 
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