Peter's Blog

Reading about World of Warcraft (hereafter known as WoW) on slashdot left me interested. It is apparently the most addictive game there is which to me is some kind of recommendation, if it is addictive it must be good. If I followed this logic to the extreme I would end up a drunken, drug addled, cigarette stained gambler but since I am none of those I say "Bring it On".

Found it in PC World for £15 but when I got to the checkout they charged me £10.

Comes on five CD's and installs very slowly. Left the last one installing and went to bed. This morning I create my account (free for 30 days which should give me plenty of time to get bored with it) and try running.

First thing it insists on doing is downloading a 450M patch at about 5k/sec using the wonderful Blizzard Downloader. Looked in faq and found I'm supposed to unblock a clutch of incoming ports in the firewall to allow it to work properly. Have to wonder what is so wrong with the http and ftp protocols that these people need to invent their own poor download protocol. Unblocked ports and no difference. Gave up.

The patch can also be downloaded from conventional web sites so I'll be doing that.

If you don't hear from me again then it is probably because I managed to get it going and would rather spend my time grinding with Warlocks than posting here.

UPDATE: downloaded patch via http and it's the US version and it won't install. UK http sites all want me to register so I'm using the blizzard downloader. This turns out to be a bittorrent-esque peer-to-peer affair. Right now it's downloading at 30kb/s and uploading at 31kb/s: yes other people are getting it quicker than I am!!

It reckons it'll take another four hours to finish so that's another overnight job. If you install WoW, plan on losing one of your 30 free days patching the damn thing.

By pure coincidence there was something on the news tonight about chinese peasants being paid £2 a week to play WoW and earn goodies to sell to sadder people than me. I was shocked and appalled that they were doing wasteful things like this and not gainfully employed making cheap consumer goods.

UPDATE 2: next morning and two more patches to install before it will run. Each patch requires rebooting game and logging into server. Ready to go now. Takes a while to think of character name as the naming rules are pretty strict. Cannot call character Colin or Loretta

UPDATE 3: Fantasy Name Generator