I've Been WoWed!

I took the plunge today. I held my breath and dove into the MMORPG juggernaut that is World of Warcraft.

A friend in my Guild Wars guild gave me a 10-day free trial code. She did so because several of the Rebel Dragons have been trying it out, a few have defected, and she understood my flagging interest in Guild Wars. Plus, if I sign up, she gets a free month of gameplay.

Pay-to-play is the main detractor to my involvement in WoW. I am unsure if our budget can handle the monthly fees. Not that the fees are staggering ... $14.99 a month is not too over the top. Though, when budgets are tight, any extra cash layout hurts, especially recurring ones.

We don't live frugally. We eat out quite often, go to movies, add to our staggering DVD collection (300+), and do other fun things. (The Bay Area Renaissance Festival, for example). I'll have to make choices on what to cut back on.

Until then, I have 10 days to enjoy the cartoony fantasy world of Orcs, Dwarves, Elves, and Undead.

I spent around 3 hours downloading the game last night. It was 3.14 GB. The download sped wasn't too bad. I think I was getting around 1 MB every 4-5 seconds. WoW uses a peer-to-peer process for their Downloader. My firewall had a little trouble at first, then it began to chug the data through easily enough.

While the game streaming into the hungry computer, I used most of that time to read about the game on the World of Warcraft website. Tons of useful info there. Enough that when I felt comfortable entering the game world without an actual manual. (I'm a firm believer in RTFM). It also was organized very nicely with beginner's sections and in depth FAQs.

After the download was complete, I began the actual install. This took around 20 minutes.

Then I created an Account. Even though it was a Free Trial, Blizzard wanted my credit card info. They claim no charges will be made. I certainly hope not.

Next, it time to Log In!

Whereupon it told me it needed to download an update and closed out of the game.

A 300+ MB update followed, taking about 15 minutes.

I was ready to play! I logged in again.

Another update!

Cripes, you'd think their patcher would read what you needed and send it all at once, much as other games do. But, nope!

A third update followed my subsequent attempt to log in, and thankfully it was the last one, allowing me to get in game and start playing!

I created a Tauren Druid named Moolasses. Sweet, slow, and just a little sticky. ~.^

It's going to take some time for me to get used to the controls. They are not so far off from most other MMORPGs, but they are different. I keep running places i do not want to, or backing off from my foes instead of attacking. There is a nice, in-game tool tip system which has helped quite a bit.

I've played a little over an hour and am enjoying the game. It is very engaging, even at the beginner levels.

So, um ... Expect short posts for the next few days. ^.^;;;

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Today's Penny Doubled Daily Cumulative Amount for 57 days is:

$1,441,151,880,758,558.71