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5-man dungeon leveling is pretty good for Protection (tank) specs

Mmmmkay, you might want to read this rather amusing forum thread first, and ask yourself : Can my sanity handle this?

  -- A former WoW tank

If you suffer from this, get a bt client (any decent and recent one) that can automatically throttle down upload speed

The problem is that the clients built in to large software packages (e.g. WoW) often lack such options, or make them hard to find. See (e.g.) this thread on the WoW forums for users complaining about the lack of such a feature in the WoW updater.

Are you stupid or something?

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/downloads/client/index.html

The only thing of value inside of those retail boxes is the CD key which allows you to make your account, what you paid for is that CD-key(and to some extent the paper and plastic to make up the boxes) not the client.

but you already bought WoW, you just aren't choosing to keep a subscription to blizzards servers going.

Go here

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/downloads/client/

download client. Go play on a private server (after modifying the client so it points to a private server instead of the official ones). Pay nothing to Blizzard. And that's what most likely most private server players do. Why should they pay for the box (which only costs money because it includes one free month of play time), when they can get the client for free.

There is a client people pay for that has all of the content. There's also a client people do not pay for which limits the amount of content they can consume.

No. You can download the FULL, unrestricted client for free. Because that is what you do when you buy the game online without getting the DVD. Why should the client be restricted? The restrictions come from your account. There is an official download page for it, for example here: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/downloads/client/

Just scroll down, click e.g. on the "English - PC" button, and you get the bittorrent downloader for the full client.

That's the way World of Warcraft (and most other MMORPG) work, download the client for free, pay via monthly subscription. If you buy the game box in a shop, you get in addition to the client one month's game time on the official server, that's what you pay for. But you can also just download the client and then register (and pay for) an account on the Blizzard website.

Or you can download the client and pay Blizzard f all, and play on a private server.

I wish I was checking /. on Tuesday instead of posting on the WoW forums. As far as I can tell, Slashdot has completely missed the point here.

The forums have virtually nothing to do with it. Blizzard could delete the forums tomorrow and it wouldn't affect the community much, aside from having no way of talking with developers / tech support / customer support. We'd all happily migrate over to mmo-champion overnight--it's not that big a deal. Forcing real names on the forums to "prevent trolling" is a total red herring. What this is really about is Activision's recent deal with Facebook. Face-Lizzard-Vision is not something that people want to see.

Of note: In the past when Blizzard has announced major changes to this game that they felt would make this game better, official posters have been very active on the forums posting to clarify concerns, and outline why they see this change as being beneficial. Aside from a couple posts clarifying major misunderstandings, there have been *NO* posts from official Blizzard posters in the last 40,000 posts in the official threat (plus probably at least 10,000 posts in threads that have been locked and/or deleted).

What does this tell you? Blizzard is not behind this change. This change has been forced down the pipe by Activision to attempt to monetize the player base with ad revenue from the facebook deal.

If you're interested, here's a rough timeline of the changes:
September 2009 interview with Activision's CEO where he says that he will attempt to exploit all Activison's franchises for maximum revenue
May 5th, Blizzard announces a deal with Facebook for Facebook integration with WoW
Two weeks ago, RealID is introduced as an optional feature to chat cross server with close friends and family only
On Sunday, an exploit is discovered which makes anyone with an AddOn installed (virtually everyone) vulnerable to have their name identified in game by anyone.
On Tuesday, Blizzard announces that RealID is no longer an optional service, and will now be required for forum use.
A few hours later, a Blizzard poster on the EU forums clarifies this has been in the works for over a year, and that outrage was expected and planned for.

Can you connect the dots? Here's a hint: the purported purpose (slapping down trolls) could be just as easily be handled by requiring forum goers to select a unique handle, or only one WoW character, with which to do all their posting... you know, like, every single other major forum on the planet? The only reason that first name and last name specifically are required are if you make the connection to Facebook!

Additionally, in the patch two weeks ago, changes were made to the Terms of Use (unannounced) to include a subsection on gathering user data for use with a third party advertising partner.

This Real ID changeover has also been planned for over a year, and Blizzard posters have made no attempts to clarify how this proposed system will improve the forums (after all of two minutes it took forum posters to suggest the alternative solution of merely requiring a unique forum moniker.) Blizzard is clearly not behind this change. This is a done deal, by Activision, to sell out WoW players to advertisers, sharing their personal information with the world, through Facebook.

One WoW fan has co

I wish I was checking /. on Tuesday instead of posting on the WoW forums. As far as I can tell, Slashdot has completely missed the point here.

The forums have virtually nothing to do with it. Blizzard could delete the forums tomorrow and it wouldn't affect the community much, aside from having no way of talking with developers / tech support / customer support. We'd all happily migrate over to mmo-champion overnight--it's not that big a deal. Forcing real names on the forums to "prevent trolling" is a total red herring. What this is really about is Activision's recent deal with Facebook. Face-Lizzard-Vision is not something that people want to see.

Of note: In the past when Blizzard has announced major changes to this game that they felt would make this game better, official posters have been very active on the forums posting to clarify concerns, and outline why they see this change as being beneficial. Aside from a couple posts clarifying major misunderstandings, there have been *NO* posts from official Blizzard posters in the last 40,000 posts in the official threat (plus probably at least 10,000 posts in threads that have been locked and/or deleted).

What does this tell you? Blizzard is not behind this change. This change has been forced down the pipe by Activision to attempt to monetize the player base with ad revenue from the facebook deal.

If you're interested, here's a rough timeline of the changes:
September 2009 interview with Activision's CEO where he says that he will attempt to exploit all Activison's franchises for maximum revenue
May 5th, Blizzard announces a deal with Facebook for Facebook integration with WoW
Two weeks ago, RealID is introduced as an optional feature to chat cross server with close friends and family only
On Sunday, an exploit is discovered which makes anyone with an AddOn installed (virtually everyone) vulnerable to have their name identified in game by anyone.
On Tuesday, Blizzard announces that RealID is no longer an optional service, and will now be required for forum use.
A few hours later, a Blizzard poster on the EU forums clarifies this has been in the works for over a year, and that outrage was expected and planned for.

Can you connect the dots? Here's a hint: the purported purpose (slapping down trolls) could be just as easily be handled by requiring forum goers to select a unique handle, or only one WoW character, with which to do all their posting... you know, like, every single other major forum on the planet? The only reason that first name and last name specifically are required are if you make the connection to Facebook!

Additionally, in the patch two weeks ago, changes were made to the Terms of Use (unannounced) to include a subsection on gathering user data for use with a third party advertising partner.

This Real ID changeover has also been planned for over a year, and Blizzard posters have made no attempts to clarify how this proposed system will improve the forums (after all of two minutes it took forum posters to suggest the alternative solution of merely requiring a unique forum moniker.) Blizzard is clearly not behind this change. This is a done deal, by Activision, to sell out WoW players to advertisers, sharing their personal information with the world, through Facebook.

One WoW fan has co

For expressing your opinion:

US SC2 Thread:
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25626109041 (337 posts atm)

US Forums Thread:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25712374700&sid=1 (4517 posts atm)

EU Forums Thread:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=13816838128 (858 posts atm)

One thing I'd say is that from a UK / EU perspective on WoW this requirement IS NOT very well known.

Most players don't read the forums, and quite a lot don't visit the http://www.wow-europe.com/ homepage (the EU equivalent of the www.worldofwarcraft.com page)

You'd expect them to have an annoucement on the wow login page - but no there's just Free-Server Transfers there.
You'd expect them to have an in-game notice - but no there's just stuff about fake/hack alpha-beta for Cata.

Come Nov 12th Blizzard are gonna have a heck of a lot of players going "WTF" "why have you locked me out" etc etc on the forums and a shed-load of phone calls.

tl;dr: my computer -> my code -> my rules; blizzard, circumvent my balls.

Actually, it's not your code just because it's on your computer.
Read the EULA.

Blizzard grants you a license to install the code, As seen in point 1 of the EULA.
Blizzard still own any and all rights to the code, as seen in point 4.A of the EULA.

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/legal/eula.html The EULA for your reading pleasure.

They are not missing. You should check online databases like thottbot and wowhead first before blaming blizzard for your missing collection. I know multiple guildies who have completed this achievement. Proof? It's easy, in this day of achievement-enabled armory.

Unless you're in Europe, or indeed anywhere other than North America. That'd be 3/4 of the subscriber base.

http://www.wow-europe.com/ is the official European wow site.

WoW doesnt even support SLI...
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=1610471297&postId=16099064527&sid=1

In the US. Add in the European servers plus the rest of the world and the number of servers will likely be close to the magic 1000 number.

Actually there IS a need to install the CDs, as not all TBC content came with the patches (I suspect mainly the Outland regions). Don't know how it is in the US, but it's like this in the europe. It is true it will re-run a few patches after installing though.

And yes, you can play the non-TBC regions with a normal unupgraded client even if you have activated TBC.

Try posting a link to this site on http://forums.wow-europe.com/ and http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com./ See how fast it gets deleted - I posted a link to it twice and both deleted within a flash. The story they want you to believe: The Warden caught the cheat. It looks the reality is a slightly less sophisticated piece of anti-cheat software.

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=8 2369804&pageNo=1&sid=1#9

If you speak german, you should read the german version, it sounds like it was translated by Babelfish or worse.

Yesterday I found this on WoW Europe forums: http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow -dungeons-en&T=53911&P=1

It's quite a sad story, poor guy even broke his WoW cd:s and deleted all items from his chars, but still managed to get back playing.

Besides, Blizzard employees have stated in a blue post on the EU forums:

"We have looked into this matter and haven't found reasonable cause to disallow usage of its functions for use in world of Warcraft. We do, however, reserve the right to come back to this statement at a later point, at which we will inform our players."

The link to this post is http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow -general-en&T=705675&P=5

... by a player on the same WoW server as I. Here are the forum posts.

IMHO, this article, while well written doesn't really paint an accurate picture of the way DRM will likely be implemented on the PC, and how that will affect security. But before I go any further, let me state for the record, I am apposed to the concept of DRM in every way, and everytime I think about how bad the issue can get, I feel sick in my stomach.

About the only good line in the article is "DRM technology is sometimes described as security technology when it is really licensing technology -- something very different.". This is of course marketing at work, people rename things to make them less ugly sounding, just like Microsoft's "Genuine Advantage Validation Tool" could far more easily have been called something along the lines of "Windows Anti-Piracy Validator", however the latter just has such bad implications, even though that is exactly what it is. So the author demonstrates in the second sentence of the article exactly what it is he is trying to say, but then proceeds to use IMO very bad examples of what he means.

I have been diligently reading all DRM mentioned articles on /. over the last few years, and I feel I have a fair idea of what the industry envisages happening. Let's look at Microsoft's software activation technology, which is there primarily to prevent piracy of their intellectual property, I believe it's consequences are similar to what we can expect from DRM, a pain in the ass, but the majority of people accept it, and more importantly, it works pretty well, without creating security problems.

What I personally hate about software activation is that Microsoft made a far more secure way of protecting their software from casual piracy, but did not take the time to make it easier for their customers to keep track of their paid for software. Our company often has the task of fixing computers, which occasionally involves reloading Windows and or Office, and if the client doesn't know where their Office Product key happens to be (Windows key is normally stuck on the box), we end up "legally" having to tell the client we are unable to reload Microsoft Office onto their machine until such time as we have a valid CD-KEY. What I would like from Microsoft Activation is something similar to the way the WoW (the US release is the same or similar I would think) authorisation key system works. When one buys a copy of the game, they get an authorisation key with it, they then logon to their respective regional website, and create a new account, during the account creation they are required to input their authorisation key, once the account creation is complete they will NEVER require the authorisation key ever again. If their house burnt down, they could copy their friends WoW CD, use it to install the game on their new PC, and carry on playing. Obviously, Microsoft Activation has to work a little differently, seeing as we don't have to pay a monthly subscription to use it (yet). But it should work the same, the customer should to create an "account" with Microsoft, once done they can authorise copies of Office or Windows or whatever onto it, if the computer needs to be reloaded, they will always have access to their paid for software.

Right, now onto DRM, to get back to the attached article's point about security, I believe that when and if Microsoft's codename "Palladium" technology is released, if done right, will not negatively impact the integrity of the host computer's security, all that Palladium will do is prevent other programs of that computer from accessing the memory of that program, which is why DRM advocates like the idea of Palladium, it should be practically impossible for hackers to reverse engineer software which utilizes Palladium, as they have no way of seeing the memory of that active program. Assuming Palladium works as intended, everything is protected with the help of encryption, so it is still *possible* for the hacker to work out the private key, but unlikely, and the only other wa

Please bump: http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow -general-en&t=603870

An expansion is on its way, it's official. Nothing else is known about it though. There's some rumours on http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow -general-en&t=481612

I'm so sick and tired of these warlocks outright dimissing obvious class problems just because the've either got better gear, specced around it (Demonology) or chosen a helpful profession (Engineering).

The rest of us have serious problems gaining any sort of distance to any type of melee class in combat. Just look at the recent post Blizzard made regarding what warlocks want the most. Just count the number of times "Escape capability" and "Shard solution" show up.

What do you want us to do? Drain-tank them? We can't even get a 1.5 sec Fear off, and even if we did, almost everybody can break it or become immune now.

How do you think the priests would like it if their shield were an end-tier talent into the Holy tree?

Or what about mages? Make Blink, Frost-Nova and Polymorf talent based, and when they whine you just say "Learn to play your class"? "Spec for it you noob!"?

People are not asking to be overpowered - they simply want to be at the same level with other classes. Where does it say in the class description that warlocks aren't supposed to survive a rogue, warrior or any undead unless they spec demonology, pick up Engineering and buy potions from the auction house?

"Escape Spell: You have more hit points than any given mage or priest COMBINED, unless you have really exceptionally bad gear. I routinely have almost 5K, unbuffed, with my PvE gear on. My PvP gear has more stamina on it."
Looks like you have some epic gear! Congratulations! On top of that you're probably Demonology specced too, right? Good for you!

"Here's your escape spell to keep from getting ganked by rogues: Team up with a rogue. Be bait."
Aaahhh, the priceless "outnumber them if you can't beat them" argument! We're talking class balance here, not zerging. You do think classes should be somewhat balanced, don't you?

"Then, at some point, explain to me how ice block saves a mage from a rogue"
It doesn't. But the cooldown on Frost-Nova and Blink is now over, so...

"Or an 8 second easily dispellable polymorph that fully heals it's target helps a mage with a rogue"
This definately helps a mage escape. Besides, I thought this was more than 8 seconds.

"Soul Shards: Please go read the class description. You should have known what you were getting into when you signed up. Your lack of ability to RTFM is not my (or Blizzard's) problem."
I'm sorry, I must have missed the part saying "Once you hit lvl 60, you must travel 2 flightpaths and then spend 40 minutes farming shards."

And these issues are "just" class-issues - don't even get me started on the list of current bugs (incomplete list) plaguing us.

Didn't bother reading the forum, did you?

I don't play World of Warcraft, and given many issues with the game I probably never will, but please... at least check your own links.

Exactly! For example: If you check the WOW Server Status page now, you will see that ALL of their servers are currently (21:10BST) down and have been that way for quite some time now, yet there is no sign of any activity on their message boards here.
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Exactly! For example: If you check the WOW Server Status page now, you will see that ALL of their servers are currently (21:10BST) down and have been that way for quite some time now, yet there is no sign of any activity on their message boards here.
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We appreciate and share players' concerns about a possible dupe exploit, and we're continuing to investigate the matter thoroughly. However, at this time, we do not show any legitimate evidence of duping currently taking place or having taken place for as far back as we've checked.
Should any actual duping methods be confirmed, we will take the appropriate action in regard to the game and to any characters and accounts found to have been used with such an exploit.

Concerning a possible rollback: This is just a rumour!

I bet they hotfixed the problem and now are acting like it never happened... please look into this pen, it will emit a short flash...

*Flash*

The exploit never happened. Nothing of the sort was ever possible...

I wonder if they'd mind donating some bandwidth to the European WoW signup servers =p
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/

On a related note, the european version of wow opened today, see http://wow-europe.com/en/.

Everything went smoothly when i registered in the morning, but i hear the servers are totally bogged down now, especially the registration-server.