Be Excellent To Each Other

I shall, thanks, but in the meantime TORCH CATCHING IS FUCKING STUPID.

Typical example of activities in sandbox games that don't suit the game's control mechanism. I know I'd have done this already on a joypad.

...and the disconnections are doing my head in. Not happening with any other software, there's no firewall or router issue at this end... if they want my money they need to cut this out more or less completely.

Taken a look at this?

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article. ... leId=21010

There are quite a few things that can cause disconnects.

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article. ... leId=21015

HNnngh.

I'm trying this:



I'm getting as far as clicking the hotkey Icon and she just says "I can't attack that target". Just fucking fish the fucking fish, for fuck's sake. Jesus.

/edit Right, I get an auto attack tooltip when hovering over this. It says 'this ability can be toggled on or off", which I might need to do to make the fishing rod fish, but it doesn't tell me HOW. It it this obtuse all the way through?

/edit and are these fucking dwarves in helicopters and dragons and shit going to fucking tea bag me every thirty seconds for the rest of the game?


I really want to like this, there's so many nice things about it, but I can't see how it's any....OH FUCK OFF WITH YOUR FUCKING FLYING BULLSHIT. GET OFF THE JETTY IF YOU AREN'T FISHING. Yeah, anyway, in Everquest this sort of shit 'just worked'.

GET OFF MY FUCKING HEAD. JUST FUCK OFF. Jesus

BTW, Entropia universe now has spaceships to travel in between planets. Lootable PVP like Eve, although you can get around this by not taking anything valuable with you.

Free to download (although its quite a big one now at 7+ gig and 4 planets) and tryout.

Real cash economy though so it doesn't suit everyone. Just done my 5th year now.

Sorted it. Apparently I have to plough down through a load of menus and equip an ability from those, not just put my rod in a slot and use it, as that makes it a weapon!

1) Make sure you have a fishing rod in your bag.



2) Drag it your main weapon slot to equip it.



3) Open your professions tab ('P' by default) - note the fishing icon.



4) Drag the fishing icon to an action bar (one of numbered ones if you just want to press a key).



5) Click on your new fishing icon. You're now fishing!

Cheers, so how come you have to not only have something assigned to a shortcut, but place it in your hand and open that other menu to do it every time you want to use something different? Surely having your favourite shortcuts there and just clicking on whichever one should put it in your hand, automatically? I assume there must be a reason to do with some more complex aspect of play but so far I can't see what the point of having hand slots is.

You'd write a macro for something like that, and then just assign the macro to the fishing icon.

Macros are an incredibly powerful tool in WoW, you can do all sorts of cool things with them.



For the character I used for the screenshots above, for example. On the first shift+click that macro will de-equip my main weapon and equip my fishing pole, on the second click it will start fishing, and clicks thereafter will also fish.

On a subsequent shift+click, it will de-equip my fishing pole and re-requip my main weapon (Jeklik's Smasher).

You could do far more simple macros than that of course, but that makes it super easy with no faffing about swapping items around.

You're quite right there are all sorts of reasons why the game works as it does, mostly to prevent macros becoming too powerful, and/or to not allow the game to become automated so that bots can play it, and also so that human beings can't automate their play.

Right, final question - how do I learn how to do things? I mean, I've gone to a herbalism teacher and trained apprentice herb thingy now, in my professions window I've got 2 things - 'lifeblood' which seems to be a healing spell and I can stick it in a slot to get +15 hp which is great, but doesn't seem to relate to the profession of herbalism... except that plants grow all about me when I hit it. I can't pick them though. I also have 'herb gathering' which also can go in a slot, I click it, and the outline glows for a bit, and fuck all happens. I've tried talking to this trainer again and she's not explaining anything, just has more levels for sale. How do I find out HOW to do herbalism? Where is this explained?

It's not like they keep this stuff secret man

(EDIT - It is a very big game, and as such, chunks of it are going to be confusing at first. The key is to ask other players (i.e. here at BEEX), have a Google, look at the official Blizzard guides, or even just ask out in General Chat in the game itself.)

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/game/

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/game/guide/

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/profession/herbalism

WoW does suffer from being a huge game, that has had more and more added to it over the years. That does make it great fun to play, but there is an assumption that people just know how stuff works.
It doesn't hold your hand throughout, which is good, but it goes too far the other way and can be a bit impenetrable for newbies. It's nowhere near as bad as Eve for that though!

Moolly is L19 now Deadmines done, which was a fair bit different to how it used to be. Unfortunately it seems that all the lower level instances are rushed through these days, so you don't get much chance to look around...
Wailing Caverns is basically the same as it always was, with one of the routes being a bit shorter. Didn't get to do the final creature, as the dreamer dude got killed on the way I had to leave anyway, so no bad thing.
I do really like that all the quest givers you need are right at the start of the instance now.

Got some nice kit, loads of 6 slot bags if anyone needs any, and my linen cloth has been selling on the auction house for about 8g per stack, so i'm relatively rolling in money so far, i've even upgraded a few bags to Netherweave 16 slot already!

12 hours play time to go from L1 to just under L20, for someone who is rusty but knows the game. I'd expect 15 hours to get to L20 for a newbie, certainly no more than 20. So that is how much you get for your free play

Boy, this is taking an age to download

Stupid thread. Stop talking about it. I'm not coming in here again. Itchy. Tasty.

What kind of speeds are you getting?

I know the Blizzard downloader is basically a P2P client so requires ports opening on your router and is susceptible to ISP traffic shaping.

I'd hope the initial client download doesn't work on that basis though.

Join the BEEXers on Draenor!

All two of us!

Huzzah Success

Undead Hunter Mortebaal created on Dreanor...right I'm off to now download Bad Company 2.

Unsure how often I'll be on as I start my new job in Amsterdam tomorrow...however there is wifi in the hotel I'm staying at.

Oh and I had exactly the same disconnect problems last night. Opening up the above ports on my router and in the Windows 7 Firewall, sorted it out.

I expect you to have caught me up by the time I get back next week

Oh yes, and it absolutely can't be emphasised enough when it comes to this game:

WOWHEAD IS YOUR BIBLE:

http://www.wowhead.com/

It's basically a searchable database, which is useful enough, but it's the user comments that make it indispensable.

Type the name of anything in the game into it, an item, a quest, a character, a spell, a weapon, a fish, a pet, a place, a dungeon, anything - and it'll bring back comprehensive details about the 'thing', what it's for, how to use it, where to go, how to complete it, how to find it (whatever's relevant to what it is you searched for, basically).

Ah, I think I was on a wiki and not the main site then. Cheers for that - it is what I was doing, however... are there no herbs in Stormwind then?

There are no resources of any kind in any of the cities.

You'll gather herbs and mine ore out in the world itself. Turn on 'find herbs' and/or 'find minerals' using the little microscope next to your minimap, and they'll appear on the minimap as a yellow circle when there's one nearby.

You'll generally find them in logical places, herbs tend to grow in fields, near trees, around lakes, that sort of thing. Different sorts of herbs tend to be found in their favoured locations.

Mineral nodes are usually on the sides of hills/mountains, or near rocks, or inside caves.

The other gathering profession is skinning, and of course you get the skins by skinning dead animals.

When you're levelling, having two of the gathering professions is a no-brainer TBH as they're really good money makers.

I usually go for one of herbalism or mining (having both is a bit crap as you can only highlight one at a time on the minimap) and enchanting. Mainly because you can disenchant greens and blues and sell the ingredients on the auction house I hardly ever actually enchant anything!

You can track them both at once now.

Pretty sure you can track both now, although I'd have to double check.

I think mining and herbalism is probably the best cash-making combo, herbalism and skinning probably the most efficient as you're skinning what you're killing and herbs tend to be more 'in your face' than mineral nodes.

Your plan of DE-ing everything you can might have some legs in it though.

This is pretty funky:

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/i ... cyFix.html



BEFORE:



AFTER:

How many ports????

Oh God *sighs* Blood Elf Paladin, created on Draenor, currently only Lvl 3, named Ziouk. Please don't drag me back to WoW again.

Blimey we'll have enough for a BEEX 5-man at this rate.

Just a note about the latency fix I posted above, it does actually change Windows' entire behaviour to TCP networking, and could potentially cause issues elsewhere, although I haven't come across any of them. (Slower downloads can be one result, apparently, and it's incapable of improving a fundamentally bad connection.)

It does have a simple 'remove' option though which completely reverses all the changes it made.

Don't make me rejoin

I played up to level 50 and found it a good game.

Started an undead warrior called....

Daddyspank!

I'm an undead warrior!

If we ever get as far as BEEX instancing we'll have to argue about who's going to tank and who's going to DPS

Warriors are the only class in the game with no magical attacks/defences/spells of any description whatsoever, which means they're a proper 'bash things on the head until they die' sort of arrangement - which may or may not be to your taste. They certainly don't have much in the way of tricks up their sleeves like the other classes do. (Mages for instance, are slippery little bastards.)

I got stuck on WoW for an hour once. I was wandering around the seaside at some cliffs then fell off. Into a bit of a hole. I couldn't jump out of it. "But!" I hear the ardent WoW players cry "You have a hearthstone to teleport you home in emergencies!" yes I know. I'd only just used that and it takes an hour to recharge.

I didn't like WoW much. I don't like Medieval Fantasy stylings and much preferred the teamwork style of City of Heroes.

Hearthstone is on a 30 minute cooldown these days, reduced to 15 minutes with the Level 8 Guild Perk 'Hasty Hearth'.

As for medieval fantasy stylings, yes quite a chunk of the original 'vanilla' WoW world is like that but in Burning Crusade, then again in Wrath of the Lich King, and then again Cataclysm - Blizzard have really let their imaginations run riot, some of the artwork and themes are genuinely stunning IMO.

http://youtu.be/cbaOUnP_Jr0?t=1m58s

The teamwork side of things, yes, outside of instances and raids the whole game can be pretty much soloed these days (although there's still plenty of room for collaboration helping each other out with items, professions, elite killing etc), but when you get to the 5/10/25 mans, it's as much of a teamwork game as you'll ever play.

Just questing a couple of zones on my warrior at the moment (getting him from 50 to 58 so I can bugger off to Outland, and I've tanked the instances in my level range and am not fussed about doing them repeatedly), anyway, it's hard to overstate how much better the olde worlde is to quest in now, absolutely everything has been refreshed, improved and streamlined.

Far more fun, far more interactive, far more story and humour, and grinding is gone for good.

Properly having a blast scything through Swamp of Sorrows on my warrior (he's fully instance geared so can happily quest as Protection spec and smash through enemies like the psycho Worgen nutcase he is).

Even zones that look superficially similar to how they were before (Swamp of Sorrows is a good case in point) have had their questing completely reworked.

Also far more flight points around the place, usually someone or something to give you a ride between zones/objectives, all that sort of thing.

Considering the game is now free to Level 20, you'd be daft not to give it a try in my humble opinion.

EDIT - Point being, especially so if you remember it from 'back in the day' - it's a totally new game from what it was 3 or 4 years ago.

I am a Troll Druid on Draenor, this place is empty compared to the last place. I also need to heal some one (I think) ands can't find anyone to heal

How's everyone getting on then?

I'm back with my guildies on Frostwhisper at the moment but I can level at a pretty frenetic pace when required, so I can always catch up to the BEEXers if needs be

I got bored. I didn't like being a troll, the world looked rubbish, and I got fed up of collecting stuff. Also it was empty - I saw about 5 "real" people in the game.

I'll put you down as a 'maybe' then

Trolls are a shit race though.

Real Horde are Orcs or Taurens really, Undead are OK too. Blood Elves are for girls, Trolls are for weirdos, and Goblins are for green people.

Just spent a pleasant half an hour down in Uldum fishing up Blackbelly Mudfish to cook myself a couple of stacks of Mushroom Sauce Mudfish, which is my preferred 'buff food' as a tank.

A Horde mage swooped overhead and landed nearby, as we're on PvP server we could have set about fighting to the death as soon as look as each other, but he seemed to be there for fishing too, so we just did a /wave to each other and enjoyed the scenery and the fishing.

I do like the different aspects of this game, especially the way you can just do entirely 'peaceful' stuff for hours at a time.

It's looking a bit pie in the sky at the moment but if I wanted to go paid account on this, how much would it cost? I am getting confused about packs and versions... I understand that they, on top of the monthly fee (which is about £8?) want me to buy the game in the first place as well - does this come with any game-time and is paying them online a better option that going mail order or grabbing one from Tesco? If a boxed copy is cheaper, can I just enter a code from it or something to 'unlock' the paid experience or must I cock about doing stuff?

Could you not have waited a while, to lure him into a sense of security, then smashed his head against the ground and nicked all his fish? ou'd have got twice as many fish then. And a head.

Not entirely sure if it the same as it used to be be, but...

Buying a boxed copy will be much much cheaper than buying from blizzard direct, and the original game comes with 30 days free playing time. This will get you up to the level of the free to play version.
Buying wrath and cata will cost extra and doesn't come with any free play time.
You do not need to buy burning crusade anymore.

Not sure about the code business, but I assume you just register the code you get in the box to your free account. Bit harsh if you can't!

Edit: nice one, you piece of shit phone.

Don't have time to rewrite all that. Will try again later.

Unlike this post...

Buying the boxed copy is certainly cheaper from Wrath onwards, Blizzard are fucking ruthless when it comes to maintaining prices on their digital downloads. That said, the digital downloads are certainly more convenient.

Remember you're not in any way paying for the 'game install', so all getting the boxed copy provides you with is install media - whether you go boxed or digital, what you actually need is the game-key, which comes with either flavour of purchase.

Classic + Burning Crusade are £9.99 as a digital download, TBH I'd go with that for the convenience, AFAIK you just put the key in and it'll upgrade your free account:

http://eu.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=210000091 - This includes 30 days of play time which is worth £9 anyway.

For Wrath and Cata, you're definitely better off trawling around for a cheap boxed copy, as Blizzard want £29.99 for each (Depends how you favour cash vs convenience, I do everything digitally these days and am totally Blizzard's bitch.)

Thereafter it's about £9 per month to play, (you can get cheaper if you do 3/6/12 renewals instead of monthly), or you can add time as you want with a game card.

I think it's a bloody bargain for the money in all honesty, to my mind this is the finest game in the world, ever.

Cheers. I suppose a boxed WoW might be <9 quid but as a month is that much in any case, I'll just press on to L20 and then upgrade if I don't hate it by then. Well, I already do hate it, but I also love it.

Bloody game.

Heh

What are your loves and hates with it?

It's always interesting to hear a new player's opinions, when you've been playing the game for a long time (as I have) it's easy to forget what it's like to be a new player.