At the request of one of my readers who wanted to know some basics on battlegrounds, here is the first part of what I hope to be a couple of posts on this subject. I certainly make no claims to be a battlegrounds expert by any means, but I've played quite a few and I put together a guide that I sort of wish I'd had when I was starting out.
Warsong Gulch:
The Basics: Capture-the-flag. Horde and Alliance each have a base, and you have to run into the enemy's base, grab their flag, and bring it back to your own (with your own flag still intact.) Capture the flag three times to win a match.
General Strategies: This varies. Different people have different ideas. Some people like to leave a couple people on defense, others like to group up and rush en masse to the other base. After you have played the game a bit, you will sort of get an idea for what types of things are common, where the typical hiding places are, that sort of thing. Stealthed classes, for example, like to hang out in your base and capture your flag when you least expect it (like five seconds after the flag has been returned to your base). Ranged classes or casters will get onto the roof and shoot you; fortunately we hunters can usually shoot back. *grin*
Your Role as a Hunter: Again, this will vary. But I think that hunters make very good members of the defensive team. You have freezing traps to lay down in front of the flag (if you're Alliance, the blue trap sort of blends in with the blue flag, so it works out awesomely), you have Track Humanoids so you can see who's coming and announce it to the team, and you have Concussive Shot and Wing Clip to slow the enemy down. You also have Hunter's Mark, which you can pop onto whoever has your flag, so your entire team can see that person on the minimap. If you are a night elf, you can hide your pet in the corner behind a wall (or have him use prowl), and then shadowmeld yourself, so you can catch any intruders by surprise.
Hunters also make good offense and are good flag-capturers, largely in part to Aspect of the Cheetah, since when you have the flag you cannot mount. Aspect of the Beast can also be useful so their own hunters (and druids) won't see you coming! Again, crowd control really shines here (it's good for essentially this whole battleground), if you're being chased just throw down a freezing or frost trap or fire off a Concussive Shot, then turn on Aspect of the Cheetah and make a break for your base. Keep Track Humanoids/Track Hidden on (pesky rogues!) so you don't inadvertently run into any members of the opposing faction on your way there.
My honest opinion is that druids often make the best flag-runners, as they can stealth in and then travel-form out. They can also heal if they have to. But really, anybody can do it, and hunters are very capable of it.
Capturing the Flag!: To capture the flag you run right up to your own flag and it "caps" automatically. Do remember that if your own flag is AWOL, you can't capture the enemy one. In that case your best bet is to find a spot to hide, hopefully with some people guarding you, while the rest of your team goes out and tries to hunt down your flag.
No matter what you are doing, as a hunter, be sure that you are aware of your surroundings and that you are able to broadcast these to the team. If you are on defense, use Flare a lot to check for rogues. If you look on your minimap and see people coming to the base, announce it: "[number of people] inc", (where "inc" stands for "incoming"), or something along those lines. If you see the flag carrier on your minimap, click on them so it will do that little circle thing that shows the other people in your party where they are.
Arathi Basin:
The Basics: King of the Hill. There are five areas on the field for you to capture (they are captured by clicking on a flag, and waiting a bit for it to change colors). If you capture one, your faction starts earning resources. The more you have captured, the faster you earn resources (and if you manage to capture all five, you earn resources at a ridiculous rate and you've pretty much won.) The first faction to 2000 resources wins.
General Strategies: Again, like Warsong Gulch, there are people who like to group up and steamroll all the flags one at a time. Typically I think it's best to leave a few people at each flag for defense.
If you get into this battleground for the first or second time and don't know what's going on, defense is almost always appreciated. Plant yourself down by a flag, preferably with a teammate or two, rotate between Track Humanoids, Track Hidden, and Track Beasts (for those druids), pop a Flare every so often, and be on the lookout for the other team.
Your Role as a Hunter: As with Warsong Gulch, hunters will be good for defense for all the same reasons. Although in this battleground, I think it's less about slowing the enemy down as it is about actually fighting them and beating them. The other team will try and capture your flag that you're guarding, but because it's a static flag-- it doesn't move-- they can capture it, and then if you manage to kill them afterwards, you can recapture it very quickly. So there's not the whole run-in-run-out thing that goes on with WSG.
You will be good for offense because you can shoot people from far away. It's what we're for, afterall! =P Eagle Eye is another great tool here, if you're at some high ground and want to see if, say, there are people at Blacksmith (the middle area of the map), use Eagle Eye on it and then report to your team what you see.
General PvP: The lower level battlegrounds... the 10-19 bracket and the 20-29 bracket, in particular... will be full of twinks, or players who spend hundreds of gold to deck themselves out in the best possible gear for their bracket. If the other team has a lot of twinks and you are just wearing normal questing gear, be prepared to spend a lot of time in the graveyard, waiting to rez. I'm not saying you'll be 100% useless against a twink, but... you won't have an easy time.
A really good healer can often make or break the game. I always, always try to compliment good healers when they show up, because they seem to be rare and I want them to know that their skills are appreciated.
Stamina is good. Honestly I don't have dedicated PvP gear (not right now, anyway), but if you want to get some, be sure it has lots of stamina. You will live longer, and thus do damage for a longer amount of time.
Spec is a matter of personal preference. Marks/Surv seems to be the perennial PvP favorite, and for good reason; there are all sorts of helpful PvP talents in those trees. Furthermore, if your pet dies (this seems to happen the most often in AV) you can still do a lot of damage. But a really good BM hunter is a truly frightening and awe-inspiring sight, and as my brother is fond of saying, "There's nothing scarier in battlegrounds than a Beast Mastery hunter." I have seen BM hunters just devour the rest of the field like nobody's business. However, it's a lot harder to be BM in PvP than it is in PvE, because you have to spend a lot of time watching your pet and keeping it alive. Anyways, I think a lot of dedicated PvPers choose to spec MM/SV instead, and that can be a very deadly combo.
What you do with your pet is another matter of personal preference, personally I like to keep my pet on passive in battlegrounds (most of the time) because he has a tendency to disappear otherwise-- chasing somebody across the field.
While we're on the subject of pets-- in battlegrounds, if your pet dies and you die later, you will both be rez'd together at the graveyard, with your pet at full happiness. Use your judgment on whether you want to self-rez your pet yourself, or wait until the next time you die. I find myself self-rez'ing my pet more often in AV, which I didn't discuss in this particular post-- a lot of times your "lifespan" is a lot shorter in the other battlegrounds.
Alright, that does it for now! I have begun writing my Alterac Valley guide but as it's the "deepest" of the battlegrounds so far, it's certainly shaping up to be a very long article, so I'm going to post it separately.
These guides are not supposed to be all-inclusive but hopefully they have just provided a brief overview to BG newcomers about what to expect and what they can do to help out their team. Enjoy, and I'll see you next time for our next installment!
(On to Part 2)
Monday, November 12, 2007
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Answering Questions (Mostly of the Linux Persuasion)
I got a couple positive responses to my Linux guide (thank you for the shout-outs, Lassirra and Kestrel!) as well as a couple questions that I would like to address:
Think it's possible to dual boot a Linux distro onto a macbook? Although I haven't had experience with this, a google of "dual boot linux macbook" brought up some promising looking links and Pelides mentioned this: "With Paralells installed on an Intel Mac, you could run Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and any other X86 operating system within the Mac OS X environment. You could theoretically run WoW under WINE in Linux through Paralells on your Mac. You'd be working about 2 virtualizations deep at that point, but it should work." So I'd say the answer is a yes!
Just for fun, I'm going to say the screenshot used in your wallpaper is a character overflying Mulgore, north side somewhere. Hehe, that particular wallpaper is available here and yes, I'm going to say it's Mulgore too. (I actually find myself wanting to say they're headed southwest through Mulgore from the direction of the Barrens, but that's probably just me being a geek, as usual.)
Did you use the RPM based Wine or did you get Cedega? Because I use a Debian-based distro I do not use RPM files which are for Red Hat based distros. To install Wine I would either use a Deb file, compile the thing from source, or do it in the terminal via a sudo aptitude install wine. As for Cedega... a lot of people swear by it and say it works a lot better than Wine. I prefer to use Wine for two reasons: one is that it simply works for me, so why fix it if it ain't broken ;P and secondly because it is one of the few Linux programs I have run into that you have to pay for, and I would rather keep my stuff as "free" as I can. But if you are having issues getting Wine to work and you really want to play games on Linux, then Cedega might be worth a shot, and your money.
"World of Warcraft is unable to start 3D acceleration." *sad panda* Sucks, because other than that, it feels like I'm SO. CLOSE. I got that same message when I tried to install WoW (via Wine) on my laptop. Now I didn't spend too long trying to figure this one out because firstly I don't know if my laptop can even adequately run WoW =P And secondly because I've got it working fine on my desktop. But from my quick research I was able to determine that it is possibly a driver problem. You may want to try seeing if you need to update your video drivers at all. (This would also be a good place to mention that as far as Linux is concerned, Nvidia is the clear winner over ATI.) Otherwise I would recommend asking around for help on the many Linux forums out there; if you use a 'buntu then Ubuntu Forums is an invaluable resource.
Alrighty, that does it for now, as far as Linux is concerned. Please let me know if you have any more questions or comments, I love getting them! Also, I want to mention something. I seem to have inspired some people to try installing Linux or even just consider it. I think it's great that a lot of people want to try it out and that I have inspired some people that way, but I also want to remind the adventurous reader that WoW and Wine are not a foolproof combination and that while there are a lot of people like me who have managed to get it working with little problems, there are also a lot of people who haven't got it working at all, for whatever reasons. There is truly a lot of luck involved in what kind of hardware you've got and how Wine reacts to it, and things like that. But don't let that deter you from giving it a try if you want! You will gain a deep satisfaction for "getting it working" if you are successful, and of course you will be using a very fun new operating system ;) But I wanted to lay the cautionary note out there too. Back up your stuff, and be prepared to revert back to your previous operating system if it doesn't work out right.
Lastly, I got this question in my previous post...
"More information on BG's would be cool, it sounds like you enjoy them and spend quite a bit of time there. I have not found or read much information about them but they sound interesting. Any guidance you can provide would be appreciated."
Firstly thank you very much, TazButane, for your faith in my PvP abilities, which are in my opinion still rather meager. Your question is a rather "large" and open-ended one as opposed to a more specific one, and as such I will probably have to think on it for a bit and see if I can come up with a good satisfying post for you. So stay tuned =)
Patch 2.3 next week! My alts are quivering with excitement.
Think it's possible to dual boot a Linux distro onto a macbook? Although I haven't had experience with this, a google of "dual boot linux macbook" brought up some promising looking links and Pelides mentioned this: "With Paralells installed on an Intel Mac, you could run Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and any other X86 operating system within the Mac OS X environment. You could theoretically run WoW under WINE in Linux through Paralells on your Mac. You'd be working about 2 virtualizations deep at that point, but it should work." So I'd say the answer is a yes!
Just for fun, I'm going to say the screenshot used in your wallpaper is a character overflying Mulgore, north side somewhere. Hehe, that particular wallpaper is available here and yes, I'm going to say it's Mulgore too. (I actually find myself wanting to say they're headed southwest through Mulgore from the direction of the Barrens, but that's probably just me being a geek, as usual.)
Did you use the RPM based Wine or did you get Cedega? Because I use a Debian-based distro I do not use RPM files which are for Red Hat based distros. To install Wine I would either use a Deb file, compile the thing from source, or do it in the terminal via a sudo aptitude install wine. As for Cedega... a lot of people swear by it and say it works a lot better than Wine. I prefer to use Wine for two reasons: one is that it simply works for me, so why fix it if it ain't broken ;P and secondly because it is one of the few Linux programs I have run into that you have to pay for, and I would rather keep my stuff as "free" as I can. But if you are having issues getting Wine to work and you really want to play games on Linux, then Cedega might be worth a shot, and your money.
"World of Warcraft is unable to start 3D acceleration." *sad panda* Sucks, because other than that, it feels like I'm SO. CLOSE. I got that same message when I tried to install WoW (via Wine) on my laptop. Now I didn't spend too long trying to figure this one out because firstly I don't know if my laptop can even adequately run WoW =P And secondly because I've got it working fine on my desktop. But from my quick research I was able to determine that it is possibly a driver problem. You may want to try seeing if you need to update your video drivers at all. (This would also be a good place to mention that as far as Linux is concerned, Nvidia is the clear winner over ATI.) Otherwise I would recommend asking around for help on the many Linux forums out there; if you use a 'buntu then Ubuntu Forums is an invaluable resource.
Alrighty, that does it for now, as far as Linux is concerned. Please let me know if you have any more questions or comments, I love getting them! Also, I want to mention something. I seem to have inspired some people to try installing Linux or even just consider it. I think it's great that a lot of people want to try it out and that I have inspired some people that way, but I also want to remind the adventurous reader that WoW and Wine are not a foolproof combination and that while there are a lot of people like me who have managed to get it working with little problems, there are also a lot of people who haven't got it working at all, for whatever reasons. There is truly a lot of luck involved in what kind of hardware you've got and how Wine reacts to it, and things like that. But don't let that deter you from giving it a try if you want! You will gain a deep satisfaction for "getting it working" if you are successful, and of course you will be using a very fun new operating system ;) But I wanted to lay the cautionary note out there too. Back up your stuff, and be prepared to revert back to your previous operating system if it doesn't work out right.
Lastly, I got this question in my previous post...
"More information on BG's would be cool, it sounds like you enjoy them and spend quite a bit of time there. I have not found or read much information about them but they sound interesting. Any guidance you can provide would be appreciated."
Firstly thank you very much, TazButane, for your faith in my PvP abilities, which are in my opinion still rather meager. Your question is a rather "large" and open-ended one as opposed to a more specific one, and as such I will probably have to think on it for a bit and see if I can come up with a good satisfying post for you. So stay tuned =)
Patch 2.3 next week! My alts are quivering with excitement.
Monday, November 5, 2007
You know you're a Beast Mastery Hunter when...
...you're fourth in the healing charts at the end of an AV match:
Ahead of druids, pallies, shammies and priests. I found it rather amusing, but I guess that's what comes from spamming the Mend Pet button!
This particular AV match was a very good one, too. Highlights included a rogue and I taking on and successfully capturing Frostwolf Graveyard by ourselves (thanks to sap, some cleverly placed traps, and Tux amazingly managing to tank the 61 elite for a very long time), a very close race from both factions to killing the final boss, and my personal favorite part, ding'ing 61 mid-game in the 51-60 bracket (you'll notice my level in the screenshot, heehee).
It's moments like those when I really love battlegrounds.
I was asked a couple questions regarding Linux (and my desktop wallpaper too, haha) and I will be addressing those in my next post. Thank you giving me the questions and the opportunity to answer them, and do feel free to keep asking them!
Ahead of druids, pallies, shammies and priests. I found it rather amusing, but I guess that's what comes from spamming the Mend Pet button!
This particular AV match was a very good one, too. Highlights included a rogue and I taking on and successfully capturing Frostwolf Graveyard by ourselves (thanks to sap, some cleverly placed traps, and Tux amazingly managing to tank the 61 elite for a very long time), a very close race from both factions to killing the final boss, and my personal favorite part, ding'ing 61 mid-game in the 51-60 bracket (you'll notice my level in the screenshot, heehee).
It's moments like those when I really love battlegrounds.
I was asked a couple questions regarding Linux (and my desktop wallpaper too, haha) and I will be addressing those in my next post. Thank you giving me the questions and the opportunity to answer them, and do feel free to keep asking them!
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Linux and WoW - a Q&A
Mirsh recently wrote up a little Linux guide over at his blog and since Linux is my operating system of choice, I figured it would be good for me to write some stuff about it as well.
As you may or may not be aware, I play WoW exclusively on Linux. I have never logged into any of my characters on a Windows or Mac machine; they have all been leveled exclusively on an unsupported operating system. It takes both some work and some luck to get WoW running well on Linux-- fortunately I was willing to do the work and I had luck on my side.
So let's begin:
What is Linux?: Linux is a free, open-source operating system based on UNIX. By free and open-source, I mean that everybody can use it and its components for free, and you can also modify them to fit your liking if you so wish.
Why do you use Linux?: Many reasons. For starters I wanted to support the free/open-source software movement because I agree with much of the philosophy. Secondly, I wanted to learn more about computers, and let me tell you, I have never learned more about computers in my life than I have since I installed Linux about a year ago. Oh, and of course, the "free" bit is a huge plus. I got sick of having to call Microsoft and explain to them why I was installing their software again after a reinstall, I got sick of the way certain music formats that I downloaded would only play on certain media players and then on certain mp3 players, and I got sick of having to pay to use so much software. Linux is free to install as many times as you want, supports free and open music formats, and has all sorts of good quality software completely for free. I'm all over that.
How come more people don't use Linux, then?: Although Linux is pretty big in the server market, I believe the current desktop Linux usage is 1.3% or something, possibly less. There are a few things holding this back, I think... one is that it's very hard to find computers with Linux pre-installed on them, whereas you can easily buy computers with either Windows or Apple software installed on them. (Note: Dell very recently started marketing computers with Linux, so this is changing.) Secondly, a lot of people see Linux as being difficult to use and firmly in the realm of computer geeks. I think that while this used to be so, this is changing as well. The most difficult part of using Linux in my experience has been the fact that because so few people use it, not a lot of things are officially supported for it. So getting stuff like your scanner, your printer, etc. to work can take some doing. But even then if I can do it, I think most people can. =P
The Linux geek readers want to know... what distro do you use?: Kubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake, currently. It is the only OS installed on both my desktop and my laptop computers. I originally was going to dual-boot with Windows but it messed up somewhere along the way, so I said "screw it" and went completely Linux. I haven't looked back. ;)
Now on to everybody's favorite MMO...
WoW isn't officially supported on Linux, correct?: That is correct. WoW is supported on Windows and Mac. If we Linux users want to play WoW, we have to install some other software to help us. I should also mention here that the Blizzard response to Linux-WoWers seems to be unofficially positive; that is to say, people occasionally post "Linux and WoW" guides on the forums and "Blue" will respond with stuff like "great guide" and "thanks for helping the Linux users".
But didn't some guy get his account banned for playing on Linux?: From what I have been able to gather, he was also using a unique keyboard and that is what got him banned. There have been stories of a "mass banning" of Linux players, but this later turned out to be a mistake and Blizzard apologized to everybody and gave their accounts back.
Okay... so what software do you have to install to use WoW?: There are different programs you can use, but I myself use Wine. From the Wine website: "Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL , and Unix. Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available."
How do you get it set up?: At its core, the idea is that you install Wine, and then install Windows software through Wine and it will run for you. WoW requires some special tweaks and configuration, and I should also mention here that it seems to be very hardware-dependent: some people can't get WoW working at all and for others it runs flawlessly.
I followed this guide basically to the letter.
Some people have framerate issues which can often be solved by trying the methods offered here.
Any further questions can be posed in this thread on Ubuntu Forums and answered by very helpful people.
(Note: the above guides are tailored to Debian-based distros such as Ubuntu. Directions will be slightly different on certain other distros, but still follow the same basic idea.)
Do you encounter any problems while playing WoW in Linux?: For the most part, my WoW experience has been a very smooth and enjoyable one. We have to thank the Mac people here really; Mac and Linux are both built off of the same UNIX core so because WoW includes components that help it run on a Mac, we can also run it with very little problems in Linux.
Occasionally I have run into quirks but these have inevitably ended up being Blizzard problems or occasionally Wine problems.
An example of a "Blizzard problem" would be the recent "voice chat patch" where sound was suddenly messed up for a lot of people, myself included, not just Linux users. Blizzard released a mini-patch not long afterwards that fixed this problem.
An example of a "Wine problem" would be a recent Wine update that caused the game to crash on exit. This was worked around either by downgrading your Wine version or by alt+tab'ing out of the game and closing it via a script. This bug has been fixed in newer Wine updates.
Is there anything about WoW that flat-out doesn't work in Linux?: At the moment I can't really think of anything. Voice chat still has some issues but I know of some people who have gotten it to work. You used to not be able to change video settings in the game because it would crash, but Wine has fixed that since then.
There is/was (not sure if it's still there) a bug that caused the game to lose sound when you alt+tab'd if you were playing fullscreen. This was easily worked around by setting the game to "Windowed Mode" and then maximizing it.
Okay, but the game works better natively in Windows/Mac than it does in Linux, right?: Maybe it does, but not to a discernable degree for me. People who are into having THE ULTIMATE BEST FRAMERATE POSSIBLE™ may very well be better off sticking to playing the game natively. But the game still seems to run at about 50-70 frames per second for me, dipping lower in the cities of course, and this is very, very playable. The only time I have played WoW on Windows was for a few minutes when my sister was playing on her computer and she asked me to take over for a bit. So I did, and I really noticed no difference in graphics quality or framerate between WoW on Windows and WoW on Linux. But then again, I was only playing for a few minutes.
Any lag you experience will be lag you would have experienced on Windows anyway. My boyfriend plays on Windows and he actually experiences far more lag and slowdown than I do. I am inevitably always the first person to get out of the new-continent-loading-screens, and my game does not slow down at all when I alt+tab to check WoWhead or Thottbot, whereas it does for him. =P
And you named your pet after the Linux mascot as a tribute?: Yes.
Wow, you are a geek. And awesome.: Why, thank you, on both counts =D
Alrighty, that does it. Hopefully I covered a lot of frequently asked questions there or gave you a general idea of what it takes to run WoW on Linux. Also, hopefully I didn't bore you, I realize this was a rather long post.
Please, if you have any comments or questions, ask away! If I get a lot of them I might make a "part two" to this series with actual reader questions, rather than ones I made up on the spot.
And here is a rather old screenshot of me playing WoW on Linux. Normally I play fullscreen, but this screenshot was taken to show that I am, in fact, playing on Linux (or at least a KDE-based UI.):
The game runs just as smoothly windowed as it does full-screen. And as you can see, add-ons work just fine in Linux. I believe there's even a Linux version of the Ace2 updater, though I haven't looked into that yet.
Happy questing, and as always, thank you for reading!
As you may or may not be aware, I play WoW exclusively on Linux. I have never logged into any of my characters on a Windows or Mac machine; they have all been leveled exclusively on an unsupported operating system. It takes both some work and some luck to get WoW running well on Linux-- fortunately I was willing to do the work and I had luck on my side.
So let's begin:
What is Linux?: Linux is a free, open-source operating system based on UNIX. By free and open-source, I mean that everybody can use it and its components for free, and you can also modify them to fit your liking if you so wish.
Why do you use Linux?: Many reasons. For starters I wanted to support the free/open-source software movement because I agree with much of the philosophy. Secondly, I wanted to learn more about computers, and let me tell you, I have never learned more about computers in my life than I have since I installed Linux about a year ago. Oh, and of course, the "free" bit is a huge plus. I got sick of having to call Microsoft and explain to them why I was installing their software again after a reinstall, I got sick of the way certain music formats that I downloaded would only play on certain media players and then on certain mp3 players, and I got sick of having to pay to use so much software. Linux is free to install as many times as you want, supports free and open music formats, and has all sorts of good quality software completely for free. I'm all over that.
How come more people don't use Linux, then?: Although Linux is pretty big in the server market, I believe the current desktop Linux usage is 1.3% or something, possibly less. There are a few things holding this back, I think... one is that it's very hard to find computers with Linux pre-installed on them, whereas you can easily buy computers with either Windows or Apple software installed on them. (Note: Dell very recently started marketing computers with Linux, so this is changing.) Secondly, a lot of people see Linux as being difficult to use and firmly in the realm of computer geeks. I think that while this used to be so, this is changing as well. The most difficult part of using Linux in my experience has been the fact that because so few people use it, not a lot of things are officially supported for it. So getting stuff like your scanner, your printer, etc. to work can take some doing. But even then if I can do it, I think most people can. =P
The Linux geek readers want to know... what distro do you use?: Kubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake, currently. It is the only OS installed on both my desktop and my laptop computers. I originally was going to dual-boot with Windows but it messed up somewhere along the way, so I said "screw it" and went completely Linux. I haven't looked back. ;)
Now on to everybody's favorite MMO...
WoW isn't officially supported on Linux, correct?: That is correct. WoW is supported on Windows and Mac. If we Linux users want to play WoW, we have to install some other software to help us. I should also mention here that the Blizzard response to Linux-WoWers seems to be unofficially positive; that is to say, people occasionally post "Linux and WoW" guides on the forums and "Blue" will respond with stuff like "great guide" and "thanks for helping the Linux users".
But didn't some guy get his account banned for playing on Linux?: From what I have been able to gather, he was also using a unique keyboard and that is what got him banned. There have been stories of a "mass banning" of Linux players, but this later turned out to be a mistake and Blizzard apologized to everybody and gave their accounts back.
Okay... so what software do you have to install to use WoW?: There are different programs you can use, but I myself use Wine. From the Wine website: "Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL , and Unix. Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available."
How do you get it set up?: At its core, the idea is that you install Wine, and then install Windows software through Wine and it will run for you. WoW requires some special tweaks and configuration, and I should also mention here that it seems to be very hardware-dependent: some people can't get WoW working at all and for others it runs flawlessly.
I followed this guide basically to the letter.
Some people have framerate issues which can often be solved by trying the methods offered here.
Any further questions can be posed in this thread on Ubuntu Forums and answered by very helpful people.
(Note: the above guides are tailored to Debian-based distros such as Ubuntu. Directions will be slightly different on certain other distros, but still follow the same basic idea.)
Do you encounter any problems while playing WoW in Linux?: For the most part, my WoW experience has been a very smooth and enjoyable one. We have to thank the Mac people here really; Mac and Linux are both built off of the same UNIX core so because WoW includes components that help it run on a Mac, we can also run it with very little problems in Linux.
Occasionally I have run into quirks but these have inevitably ended up being Blizzard problems or occasionally Wine problems.
An example of a "Blizzard problem" would be the recent "voice chat patch" where sound was suddenly messed up for a lot of people, myself included, not just Linux users. Blizzard released a mini-patch not long afterwards that fixed this problem.
An example of a "Wine problem" would be a recent Wine update that caused the game to crash on exit. This was worked around either by downgrading your Wine version or by alt+tab'ing out of the game and closing it via a script. This bug has been fixed in newer Wine updates.
Is there anything about WoW that flat-out doesn't work in Linux?: At the moment I can't really think of anything. Voice chat still has some issues but I know of some people who have gotten it to work. You used to not be able to change video settings in the game because it would crash, but Wine has fixed that since then.
There is/was (not sure if it's still there) a bug that caused the game to lose sound when you alt+tab'd if you were playing fullscreen. This was easily worked around by setting the game to "Windowed Mode" and then maximizing it.
Okay, but the game works better natively in Windows/Mac than it does in Linux, right?: Maybe it does, but not to a discernable degree for me. People who are into having THE ULTIMATE BEST FRAMERATE POSSIBLE™ may very well be better off sticking to playing the game natively. But the game still seems to run at about 50-70 frames per second for me, dipping lower in the cities of course, and this is very, very playable. The only time I have played WoW on Windows was for a few minutes when my sister was playing on her computer and she asked me to take over for a bit. So I did, and I really noticed no difference in graphics quality or framerate between WoW on Windows and WoW on Linux. But then again, I was only playing for a few minutes.
Any lag you experience will be lag you would have experienced on Windows anyway. My boyfriend plays on Windows and he actually experiences far more lag and slowdown than I do. I am inevitably always the first person to get out of the new-continent-loading-screens, and my game does not slow down at all when I alt+tab to check WoWhead or Thottbot, whereas it does for him. =P
And you named your pet after the Linux mascot as a tribute?: Yes.
Wow, you are a geek. And awesome.: Why, thank you, on both counts =D
Alrighty, that does it. Hopefully I covered a lot of frequently asked questions there or gave you a general idea of what it takes to run WoW on Linux. Also, hopefully I didn't bore you, I realize this was a rather long post.
Please, if you have any comments or questions, ask away! If I get a lot of them I might make a "part two" to this series with actual reader questions, rather than ones I made up on the spot.
And here is a rather old screenshot of me playing WoW on Linux. Normally I play fullscreen, but this screenshot was taken to show that I am, in fact, playing on Linux (or at least a KDE-based UI.):
The game runs just as smoothly windowed as it does full-screen. And as you can see, add-ons work just fine in Linux. I believe there's even a Linux version of the Ace2 updater, though I haven't looked into that yet.
Happy questing, and as always, thank you for reading!
Friday, November 2, 2007
I've been recruited...
...well, that's what the people in Stormwind are saying, anyway:
Ah, it felt good to finally see my name up there. I remember being level six, having just arrived in Stormwind for the very first time after a long and harrowing journey through places like the Wetlands where level ?? crocolisks wanted to eat me for dinner. There I was, completely lost, standing around, and these two people by the tree were recruiting the Alliance's bravest heroes. That's awesome, I thought, I wanna be a recruited like that someday. And now... here I am! =D
One thing I have been wondering for a while, though, is exactly what determines who is mentioned in this little dialogue and who isn't? I know it's people who walk by, but only higher-level people. I started /who'ing everybody it mentioned to see if I could figure it out. At first I thought I had it narrowed down to Level 58 and higher, "Outlands levels", but no, I've seen a few level 56 and 57 people mentioned. I thought maybe it was dependent on PvP kills, but nope, my boyfriend, who never PvPs, has now been "recruited" as well. Hmm. Anybody have any ideas?
Anyways, currently I have a huge WoW patch downloading-- a whopping 222 megabytes, and it tells me it's patch 2.3. I don't think it's actual "patch time" yet, but I do think it must be getting closer if we're downloading it or parts of it. I've been thinking I should make a post on "my thoughts on 2.3" but I keep forgetting, and a lot of other blogs have gone through them already. =P I will mention that the part I am probably the most excited for is actually the new tracking thing, where we can choose what we're tracking from the mini-map and I'll finally be able to free up something like ten action bar slots. Haha, yep, the dead-zone is going away and leveling is getting faster and yet I get excited about action bar slots. I'm kind of a dork, but oh well.
Regarding the leveling thing, I must say that while it's great for my inner alt-oholic, I sort of wonder about new players. Is the leveling going to be a little too fast for them? Will new players still have time to learn and practice the mechanics of the game and of their class if they're leveling so fast? I think about myself and the way I just hit level 60 "the traditional way", and I wonder if I would have learned so much and had as much practice as I needed if the leveling had gone faster like it will in the new patch. I think I'm glad I hit 60 before the new patch. I know I needed all the practice I could get before Outlands.
I guess we'll have to wait and see how it goes, though! I'm excited to give my alts some more love.
Ah, it felt good to finally see my name up there. I remember being level six, having just arrived in Stormwind for the very first time after a long and harrowing journey through places like the Wetlands where level ?? crocolisks wanted to eat me for dinner. There I was, completely lost, standing around, and these two people by the tree were recruiting the Alliance's bravest heroes. That's awesome, I thought, I wanna be a recruited like that someday. And now... here I am! =D
One thing I have been wondering for a while, though, is exactly what determines who is mentioned in this little dialogue and who isn't? I know it's people who walk by, but only higher-level people. I started /who'ing everybody it mentioned to see if I could figure it out. At first I thought I had it narrowed down to Level 58 and higher, "Outlands levels", but no, I've seen a few level 56 and 57 people mentioned. I thought maybe it was dependent on PvP kills, but nope, my boyfriend, who never PvPs, has now been "recruited" as well. Hmm. Anybody have any ideas?
Anyways, currently I have a huge WoW patch downloading-- a whopping 222 megabytes, and it tells me it's patch 2.3. I don't think it's actual "patch time" yet, but I do think it must be getting closer if we're downloading it or parts of it. I've been thinking I should make a post on "my thoughts on 2.3" but I keep forgetting, and a lot of other blogs have gone through them already. =P I will mention that the part I am probably the most excited for is actually the new tracking thing, where we can choose what we're tracking from the mini-map and I'll finally be able to free up something like ten action bar slots. Haha, yep, the dead-zone is going away and leveling is getting faster and yet I get excited about action bar slots. I'm kind of a dork, but oh well.
Regarding the leveling thing, I must say that while it's great for my inner alt-oholic, I sort of wonder about new players. Is the leveling going to be a little too fast for them? Will new players still have time to learn and practice the mechanics of the game and of their class if they're leveling so fast? I think about myself and the way I just hit level 60 "the traditional way", and I wonder if I would have learned so much and had as much practice as I needed if the leveling had gone faster like it will in the new patch. I think I'm glad I hit 60 before the new patch. I know I needed all the practice I could get before Outlands.
I guess we'll have to wait and see how it goes, though! I'm excited to give my alts some more love.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Happy Hallow-Ding!
Happy Halloween from Tawyn (aka Pike) and her little menagerie of pets. I hope you all enjoy yourselves, whatever you're doing.
Oh, and in other news:
DING 60!
The pre-BC big one!
Ten more levels to go, but I'm really in no rush to get there. I really enjoy the whole process of questing and leveling up and exploring, and I don't want to just rush through Outlands to the finish line. Although with nearly 500,000 XP to go until level 61, I don't know how fast I could "rush through" anyway... heehee.
If you haven't noticed, I enjoy posting a lot of screenshots. I think they make things more interesting. And I have fun posting them, so it works out!
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Random Ramblings!
So my Sitemeter tells me that I've had like 100 new visitors just in the past few hours thanks to a link on Big Red Kitty. To coin a term, I have been BRK'd. Wow! Thanks BRK! And welcome to any new visitors. Please feel free to browse around my little blog, and pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable if you so desire. *passes out cookies and tea for the readers, and a variety of pet foods for their pets*.
(Edit: And a link on Mania's Arcania too? Wow, thank you!! I might just have to make another "shout-out" post sometime soon.)
Now then, Outlands:
This screenshot was taken shortly before heading through the Dark Portal to get to Outlands. Yes, I've had my hearth set to Shatt since level 50 or so, but there was no way I was going to miss out on going through the portal.
The irony is that the screenshot is already "outdated", so to speak, since in the short time between then and now I have already managed to replace two pieces of gear as well as my ranged weapon, all with stuff that is better than my old-world gear to a ridiculous degree. I already love Outlands though-- it's fun, it's challenging (the "yellow" mobs are more like "orange" mobs, and I love that challenge), and of course, there's all the new gear!
So here I am, on the fast-track to level 60 (ooh, remind me to do more farming... need epic mount cash) and enjoying every bit of it.
Other bits of interest: My teal kitty has been christened Locke. This name has a double meaning for me; firstly, John Locke was a 17th-century English philosopher, just like Thomas Hobbes... so there is an in-joke there, a nod to both the Calvin & Hobbes comic and to BRK. Secondly, Locke Cole is a character from the Super Nintendo game Final Fantasy VI, which is one of my favorite video games. Locke the kitty and Tux the owl have been taking turns playing in Outlands with me, all the while being lavished with roasted quail.
Also, I have decided that I'd like to improve upon my PvP skills. I've been doing a lot of battlegrounds recently (since once I hit a level ending in 8 or 9 I hightail it over to the battlemasters... you might say I have a bit of an addiction) and while I would call my self an "okay" PvPer and I tend to be towards the top of the damage charts at the end, I still am not a "good" PvPer. A lot of times in PvP I'll get caught of guard or people will sneak up on me, and then I seem to spend the duration of that duel trying to get back to range and doing very little non-pet damage. It's definitely time to practice my technique here.
I do have an interesting PvP story to share. I was in Alterac Valley the other day, and was somewhere out in the middle of nowhere when I ran across a lone orc warrior. He was level 51, and I was level 59. Now I know it's battlegrounds, I know player-vs-player combat is the whole point here... but I couldn't bring myself to attack him. Not with eight levels separating us. Besides, since we were both out in the middle of nowhere I figured he must have been doing a quest or something. So I hopped on my mount and rode right past him. Not long after this I paused to catch my bearings and decide where I wanted to go. And who should come jumping on me but that level 51 warrior! We fought, and obviously Tux and I triumphed. But I have to say that little incident left me admiring the orc player's courage and mindset. He knew what PvP was all about. He was willing to try taking on a player that was eight levels higher than him. Whereas I, well, I love a good battlegrounds game but I'm really just a carebear at heart. It was an interesting juxtaposition of two different playstyles and I /salute that orc warrior, wherever he is.
Alrighty, enough pseudo-philosophical rambling. Back to Outlands!
(Edit: And a link on Mania's Arcania too? Wow, thank you!! I might just have to make another "shout-out" post sometime soon.)
Now then, Outlands:
This screenshot was taken shortly before heading through the Dark Portal to get to Outlands. Yes, I've had my hearth set to Shatt since level 50 or so, but there was no way I was going to miss out on going through the portal.
The irony is that the screenshot is already "outdated", so to speak, since in the short time between then and now I have already managed to replace two pieces of gear as well as my ranged weapon, all with stuff that is better than my old-world gear to a ridiculous degree. I already love Outlands though-- it's fun, it's challenging (the "yellow" mobs are more like "orange" mobs, and I love that challenge), and of course, there's all the new gear!
So here I am, on the fast-track to level 60 (ooh, remind me to do more farming... need epic mount cash) and enjoying every bit of it.
Other bits of interest: My teal kitty has been christened Locke. This name has a double meaning for me; firstly, John Locke was a 17th-century English philosopher, just like Thomas Hobbes... so there is an in-joke there, a nod to both the Calvin & Hobbes comic and to BRK. Secondly, Locke Cole is a character from the Super Nintendo game Final Fantasy VI, which is one of my favorite video games. Locke the kitty and Tux the owl have been taking turns playing in Outlands with me, all the while being lavished with roasted quail.
Also, I have decided that I'd like to improve upon my PvP skills. I've been doing a lot of battlegrounds recently (since once I hit a level ending in 8 or 9 I hightail it over to the battlemasters... you might say I have a bit of an addiction) and while I would call my self an "okay" PvPer and I tend to be towards the top of the damage charts at the end, I still am not a "good" PvPer. A lot of times in PvP I'll get caught of guard or people will sneak up on me, and then I seem to spend the duration of that duel trying to get back to range and doing very little non-pet damage. It's definitely time to practice my technique here.
I do have an interesting PvP story to share. I was in Alterac Valley the other day, and was somewhere out in the middle of nowhere when I ran across a lone orc warrior. He was level 51, and I was level 59. Now I know it's battlegrounds, I know player-vs-player combat is the whole point here... but I couldn't bring myself to attack him. Not with eight levels separating us. Besides, since we were both out in the middle of nowhere I figured he must have been doing a quest or something. So I hopped on my mount and rode right past him. Not long after this I paused to catch my bearings and decide where I wanted to go. And who should come jumping on me but that level 51 warrior! We fought, and obviously Tux and I triumphed. But I have to say that little incident left me admiring the orc player's courage and mindset. He knew what PvP was all about. He was willing to try taking on a player that was eight levels higher than him. Whereas I, well, I love a good battlegrounds game but I'm really just a carebear at heart. It was an interesting juxtaposition of two different playstyles and I /salute that orc warrior, wherever he is.
Alrighty, enough pseudo-philosophical rambling. Back to Outlands!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)