Wrath of the Lich King launch!

[Max Stone]

Ah, it's that time! A new WoW expansion.

It's been a pretty smooth launch so far, at least when it comes to the realms being stable. (For those joining in, I work tech support for Blizzard).

The main problem we have is that the DVD of the game is dual layered and most older dvd drives are running on older firmware that can't read it properly.

They've actually consolidated the installations into a single disc, so if you don't have WoW or Burning Crusade installed you can install from the LK disc and it will install everything up to 3.0.1 which is about time!

I actually haven't gotten a chance to play myself, I worked 6pm to 5am for the launch, went home, created a Death Knight, immediately passed out, and now I'm working 2pm to 1am. We've already been hearing that some European players have been hitting level 80.

Maybe I'll get to play after I work Friday, Saturday, Sunday.....the massive amounts of overtime is nice. and my collector's edition signed by the dev team is even nicer!

[Brugdor]

So did you sell your soul all at once to work for Blizzard or is it some kind of payment plan?

No offense 

And obviously I won't be returning to WoW. 

[Doombot]

[Sylvee Bee]

I've actually started to miss WoW - been over a year and I miss it. 

[Max Stone]

I finally got to go to Northrend, we've been pulling 7 day a week, 10-12 hour shifts. I also got to finish the Death Knight starting zone which was a lot of fun.

Now to finish Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Mirror's Edge, and those few other games I can't even think of now.

I can't wait until 2009 when I finally get a chance to play any of these.

[Tank]

I'm having a load of fun. The launch (EU here) went far, FAR smoother than TBC or even Vanilla.

Currently been leveling my druid like a madman- would've been server first Tauren + Horde druid, but partys and shit mean I'm gonna be around 3 hours behind the winner instead. *grumbles* Damn you, real life!

Apart from that, really enjoying Northrend. Was  fun being back on mounts for a while, but once I hit 77, I squealed with glee for getting ym flightform back- flying is good, but when you're a druid, you truly become addicted to it. Now, another 40% to 80 and I can go gank lowbie deathknights >

[Petrarch]

As well as someone making it to lvl 80 in 27 hours, a clan called TwentyFifthNovember has now claimed to have cleared every raid in the expansion.

All I can say is I'm glad my WoW days are over, though it was the backstabbing, laziness, attitude and lies from other players that got me in the end rather than the time sink involved.

[lara]

I  lost my ex- boyfriend to Burning Crusades, so Im glad the guy I'm dating now doesn't know what a Lich King is
I never understood why anyone would pay a monthly fee to play a computer game, when Guild Wars exists for just the cost of the original CD and is exactly teh same as WoW but prettier. It would really stress me out - every day that I didnt play would make me feel guilty for wasting money!

[Doombot]

I  lost my ex- boyfriend to Burning Crusades,

Eeeep. Sorry to hear that. =|

[Solwyn]

I  lost my ex- boyfriend to Burning Crusades, so Im glad the guy I'm dating now doesn't know what a Lich King is

My personal opinion is that if you lost someone to a game they were a douche in the first place, the game just sealed the deal. It's like blaming the inventor of beer for your spouse being an alcoholic.

I never understood why anyone would pay a monthly fee to play a computer game, when Guild Wars exists for just the cost of the original CD and is exactly teh same as WoW but prettier. It would really stress me out - every day that I didnt play would make me feel guilty for wasting money!

The way that guild wars works is vastly different (from an infrastructure standpoint): you're actually just on a matchmaking service that has everything broken into instances. You're not in the public world unless you're in a town, and even then you're broken into "districts" which are the equivalent of a variety of load-balanced instances, so essentially a visual chat room. It takes a LOT less money to maintain, because the servers don't hold nearly as much information, and don't do nearly as much on the server end with keeping synchronized with the client, and they don't have a huge staff of online guides and tech support available 24/7 in-game and by phone.

But I totally agree, every day I don't play I feel like I wasted that much money.

[Brugdor]

I  lost my ex- boyfriend to Burning Crusades, so Im glad the guy I'm dating now doesn't know what a Lich King is
I never understood why anyone would pay a monthly fee to play a computer game, when Guild Wars exists for just the cost of the original CD and is exactly teh same as WoW but prettier. It would really stress me out - every day that I didnt play would make me feel guilty for wasting money!

Sorry about the boyfriend but if he was willing to give you up for WoW then he was a loser anyway. 

I do have to say that I don't agree with your take on wasting money. I look at an MMO monthly fee and it's about as much as going to see a movie once you factor in gas, popcorn, drink and such. Now I can go to that movie and be entertained (maybe) for about 2 hours or I can pay for this game which can keep me occupied for many hours if I want. So an MMO is actually cheaper entertainment than many other things. *shrug*

[lara]

lol i dont mean i lost him because of WoW - i mean i lost him as in he would play a lot but much later we broke up because of unrelated stuff  - its like when women say  'i'm a football widow' just for a season - not meaning 'my husband actually died'

I played WoW for a few weeks once on his buddy key, but i just didnt like the grind (kill 6 of this and 8 of that and 12 of the other) so i never got to level up to what i hear is the good part. Also - I'm interested to hear from experts - what's good about NOT being instanced? How is the fact that youre with other players all the time LESS like a visual chatroom than if you get to play on your own when you actually adventure?

I remeber being told to kill some rats but i had to run around longer cos other people kept getting to my rats first - it was like looking for parking when people keep nipping in and taking our spot!


Edit: I've heard the argument about how the fee is necessary for the awesome support etc before, but I have to say I dont get it. In Dec I'll have played Guild Wars for two years and I havent once ever needed support, online or otherwise.

[Thanatos]

lara, I have a 100% foolproof unstoppable argument for why I pay a monthly fee to play WoW:

I like WoW. 

That's pretty much it.

[Thanatos]

I like my previous post's brevity so I don't want to edit it, but I want to talk some more, so I'm going to reply to myself.  awwww yeah narcissism

Azjol-Nerub is like the shortest instance in the history of instances, but that's no big deal.  It's trippy as hell on my new box.  Last night I was listening to a bunch of my (drunk and high) guildmates run it, and apparently our GM is afraid of spiders.  He was tripping balls.  It was a pretty funny thing to listen to.

[lara]

Was it this funny?

http://www.kontraband.com/videos/3713/Onyxia-Wipe/