World of Warcraft Details Announced

Warcry has some final details as the World of Warcraft launch looms closer. Pricing for WoW has finally been nailed down, with discounts going to folks who purchase more than one month at a time. There are also sneak peeks available, including footage from the special edition DVD and images from the Brady Games strategy guide. The guide includes Penny Arcade strips that illustrate game concepts. On character names: "I'm really sorry, Xaxziminrax. I tried to warn you, but I couldn't type your name in time. - 'Oh look, it's a bear' might also have worked."

Comments

Why not link

[Anonymous Coward]

To the actual World of Warcraft FAQ than to some random news site that just quotes it?

A warning on the strategy guide!

[MWoody]

If you buy the strategy guide, make sure you do it for the Penny Arcade stuff. In terms of being an actual guide, it's crap. Information is incomplete or outdated, and typos are at a one-per-page ratio AT LEAST. And we're talking really obvious stuff, like sentences ending halfway through and such, or huge chart titles in colored title plaques being mispelled: "Enchanments". And boy was I surprised to learn, having played the open beta, that I was losing XP when I died and Tauren have to quest for Plainsrunning (both these features were taken out several versions ago), among numerous other inaccuracies.

In short: this guide was put together EXTREMELY quickly, long before the final version of the game, and it shows. BOY, does it show. Use http://worldofwarcraft.com for info on classes, races, etc., and avoid this book.

...unless you want the PA cartoons; those are quite funny.

Re:Latin American Servers

[prator]

According to some posts from Blizzard in the beta forums, you can use the beta client in retail. I've managed to find one of the posts.

-prator

World of Warcraft

[linzeal]

You can click on anybody's name in text chat and it will respond to them in a tell (/t). So long as you are communicating with them in the first place or at least hearing thme it is easy to communicate with them.

By the way, community-run guides usually do much better over the long term than paper guides anyways.

For those interested it looks like Blizzard has also brought the World of Warcraft world to the pen and paper set, for those old-schoolers out there.

Re:How does the '10-DAY GUEST PASS' work?

[_xeno_]

The friend will have to go out and buy the full retail pack. The information is on the World of Warcraft Community Site, but it's a ways towards the bottom, so scroll down a bit. It says:

Collector's Edition 10-Day Guest Pass

Players who will be accessing the game through the 10-day pass will create their account for that exactly the same way as a normal player, by visiting the account-creation webpage.

Those who wish to continue playing the game once the 10-day free period is over must first visit their local retailer or online store to purchase a copy of World of Warcraft. Once they have obtained a copy of the game, they can log in to WorldofWarcraft.com using their 10-day pass login information and then enter the authentication key that came with boxed copy into the field found at the bottom of their account page.

That's all that's required to activate a full-fledged World of Warcraft account once the 10-day free period has expired. Any characters that players have created during the 10-day trial, along with all their items, will be available for them to continue playing!

Re:Do they have server names published yet?

[AgentTim3]

Blizzard's stated reason isn't crap at all, it's perfectly legitimate. Of course you don't realize this, but you're proving that fact just by complaining about it. They want the majority of people, as many as they can, to select their server based on whichever one currently has the least population. Thus insuring a somewhat distribution of players across servers. The only way to make that happen is to have people pick their servers when they first log in and see the screen. If you're already arbitrarily chosen based on server names they've released it completely defeats the purpose.

If they release the names early, then l33t guild A gets to tell everyone they know that they'll be playing on the Sargeras server because it's uber. Guilds B and C want to be allied [with|against] guild A. The effect snowballs and suddenly Sargeras is unbalanced -- not a good thing.

Sorry but what they're doing is entirely justified. What they're doing is in your and everyone else's best interest, as it will keep lag down. Quit whining about it.