World of Warcraft Launches

The last major MMOG launch of the year hits retail stores today. World of Warcraft finally goes live after years of debate, development, and a more than six month Beta test. The usual suspects have details on the game, with Gamespot already having details on upcoming content and Gamespy laying out personal experiences from the test and interviews with the developers.

Comments

Pseudo-BitTorrent

[Icarus1919]

Unfortunately I discovered that the WoW downloading client acts as a pseudo bittorrent client, which caused my school to shut down my internet connection for seven days. For anyone else out there who is going to a school with draconian downloading rules (such as University of Florida and their ICARUS client [previously featured on slashdot]), be warned.

CrazyJim here

[CrazyJim1]

I love Blizzard, but WOW is nothing new.

Its swamped with quests where you seek out an object/NPC, or kill a sequence of monsters which lowers the tedium some.

The combat system involves clicking on some action keys, but isn't too complex.

Graphics are nice.

This game is one big level grind with Warcraft Lore in it. It may seem fun to some, but I was bored the whole time I betaed it. Maybe they'll introduce fun stuff down the road, but this game isn't what the market is thirsting for.

Re:Expensive?

[jlaxson]

No, you don't remember correctly. Games are organized via XBL, but the actual in-game data is hosted "peer-to-peer" (i quote that because it's not strictly p2p. One xbox is in host mode and the others talk to it).

Have you ever noticed, playing on XBL, every once in a while you'll get a blue screen (i tend to die during these, so fitting) with a message that says "Connecting to Session", then "Setting Up Game"? This is when the host box drops out (or perhaps is voted to quit hosting because of lag) and all the boxes get together, decide on a new host, and sync up game data.

There's no reason XBL couldn't act like a firewall broker (ie. ultrapeer mode), but trust me, XBL does not host the Halo 2 games.