http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/12/20061207152229.shtml



Just d/l'd the patch, and have been able to coax 180 FPS out of max settings when inside or looking at the ground

Apparently my G4 iBook isn't good enough to benefit from the GL upgrades, but at least the iTunes key-bindings work smoothly. (before they'd freeze the game up for several seconds and sometimes didn't actually do anything)

Indeed, the iTunes Remote is much smoother now. Even on my Mac Pro the previous version would cause a small pause in gameplay/music. It is now instantaneous, just like iTunes

This is somewhat old news now.

Still, the update is nice. If you'd like to talk to one of the Blizzard guys who worked on it, go to Macrumors and check for rbarris.

I was really happy that they got rid of dishonorable kills. I had cancelled my account a few months ago because PvP just wasn't any fun (battlegrounds are filled with idiots and you can't raid because of dishonorable kills that destroy your PvP ranks). Then I realized that they upped the guards to level 65 and each civillian spawns 1 guard for each person in a raid. They get rid of the raiding penalty in favor of making it entirely impossible to raid small towns and cities. If a server is designated PvP why the hell is Blizzard doing everything in its power to prevent people from participating in it? To all the care bears out there PvE is ----> that way. Oh well, I'll save my money and do something constructive instead, like play Redline.

The level cap was because this patch is really a preview of the expansion, where players are able to level to 70. Some content got released early, so it seems a bit unbalanced, but all the fine tuning is designed with level 70 in mind. You can (sort of) start attacking towns again in a couple of months.

Yeah, which, to put it plainly, is bad. Who cares about pvp-ing when you're not level 70 cause being 70 (which is now level 60) is all there is! It's hardly because Blizzard can't finetune for lower levels (to some extent, anyway), they simply chose not to. Thankfully, with a bit of luck we'll get BGs putting people with similar gear together.



That's nonsense. DHKs don't count anymore. Last week I raided UC with a group of 120 people (well, that's what we had when we started out in IF). And if DHKs aren't stopping you, what is?

Judgement dropped off Rag the other night. I play a Tauren.

That said, it's nice being able to get Warlord gear without having to shut down my life for months.

Now how about multi-threaded OpenGL on Windows? I got this extra core just sitting around doing nothing in most of my games...

Barefeats Real World Multithreaded OpenGL WoW: BC Speed Test

How nice of Apple, already screwing the people who bought PPC all those years... I'm not holding my breath for them to implement multithreaded OpenGL for PPC even in 10.5.

Well, it *does* say coming in 10.5, so who knows?

I managed to get up to 120 frames per second indoors once, but my outdoor framerate is around 25-30.

I have to admit I'm considering canceling my account once and for all because of the patch. I liked being able to get GM weapons on my rogue and mage, but they've made some really bad decisions since then, and while the expansion looks fun, I'm really getting sick of the lies and stupidity from the devs and CMs.

Apple's OpenGL isn't thread safe but with correct use of semaphores you can still use multithreaded OpenGL down to about 10.3.9 as long as you only blit from one thread.

Chromag dropped *2* pieces of ten storms crap for us last week. I have my Netherwind shoulders already.... but wow, our pallys, who have seen roughly, 1 judgement, were pissed.

I can't wait for 2.0.3, I want my NW shoulders fixed!

Yeah, my friends and I have all decided to cancel our accounts. That game just went more and more downhill with bugs being added in droves and Blizzard not seeming to care in the least. Class imbalances played a decent role too, but basically we're tired to all the bullshit. Blizzard will be rolling in cash next month when people buy the expansion, but they won't be getting as much as they would have.

Personally, I'll probably be playing WoW for a while longer at least. I'm not a raider or a hardcore pvp player, and I roleplay and explore a lot. And have lots of alts. Balance, therefore, affects me not as much as it does others. But yeah, I'm also wondering how long I'll stick to WoW.

I can handle class imbalances, I can handle Blizzard not seeming to care, but when they introduce so many bugs, blatantly lie to their customers, and generally make a mess of things, I hit the eject button. TFT, Halo, and Civ IV are more fun anyway, not to mention ASW games, plus there's always my roommate's Wii.

I actually quit WoW recently because it is weak *precisely* in the area I think has a ton of possibilities in MMORPGs: World PvP. That and EVERYTHING is based on item/experiance rewards.

First: You have to be max level. Sure, while you're leveling up you might meet people to randomly PvP with, but on an old server it will all be max levels ganking you while you're trying to level. Until you're max level (or near it) you can't attack most towns, and world PvP at any other level delays you from getting to the max level a whole bunch, since it's time consuming and you get no experience for it.

Second: You have to have good gear. Gear has such a huge effect on WoW it isn't even funny. Someone in Tier 3, because they have spent insane amounts of time raiding (9 months for most of them to climb the ladder I think), will just own face if they have half a brain or are one of the easier, cheaper classes (like warlock or hunter).

Until you accomplish the first and second of these things, no random fun world pvp for you.

The highest level I got to was 51, at which point the game just got unfun, since I didn't have many quests and all of them were too hard for me to bother with. Now, with the cap raised to 70, and taking into account the leveling curve, I had only gotten through *half* of the game. HALF. Sure, I had a bajillion characters and everyone other than me in the game who isn't a noob had 60s, but really. If what I thought was the most fun part of the game could only be fully enjoyed after two whole years of playing it (not counting raiding), screw that.


I'm not saying WoW is terrible. I'm just saying that after awhile it just wasn't any fun, because it just presented me a growing mountain and told me to climb it to reach the party at the top. Course, getting up there was pretty fun (or else I wouldn't have reached level 51), but still, most of the fun was at the top! Gah, I'm done with my tirade.

I played it using a Lenovo R52 laptop (512 meg ram, 64 meg vid card), which seemed to be fine so long as I wasn't loading anything and didn't set all the settings to the max. It's amazing how pretty and stylistic the game is despite its quite outdated graphics.

WoW sucks, but if you can find a good guild the people don't.

The whole "class balance" is a joke. Enough to make me quit playing my warrior just so that i could lvl a mage to have something that would make a better dent. Hunters and Warlocks can easily 1button IWIN everyone else, and in TBC its only going to get worse.

If it wasn't for the awesome people in my guild i'd have quit the game long ago.

Yeah, World PvP died the day the battlegrounds started to come out. The new honor system just reinforces that.

(1) Multithreaded OpenGL.

(2) ????

(3) Profit!