Romm's Progress

I have been concentrating so hard on writing about addons for World of Warcraft here that I've completely neglected to report on Romm's progress through Azeroth. He's obviously been pretty busy leveling up and getting his trade skill's sorted out. I'm going to talk about trade skills in a later post, this topic is a going to be a bit fluffier today - hooray!

After the jump, a few experiences of a Bovine Druid who only seems to come out after dark.

WoW Addons: Part 2

 

So yesterday we took a look at the new improvements to the core UI in World of Warcraft from patch 3.3. I realise there's a whole heap of things I didn't mention and screenshots I didn't use for example the new quest log panel which now has move of the look of Bayi's Extended QuestLog had when I used to use that. Also there's quest colouring for difficulty ranges (this option is turned off by default - you can find it in the interface options menu).

Let's have a look today at some nice little addons to make our lives in WoW much easier. Now addon configuration can be a complete pain in the proverbials, especially if you are in the habit of getting a bit carried away. My advice is first go and get the Curse Client then think long and hard about which aspects of the UI you'd like to improve.

In the true parent style of "do what I say not what I do" (hell I need the practice with the first one on it's way) after the jump we'll leap into installing addons with reckless abandon.

WoW Addons: Part 1

No posts this weekend as it has been pretty busy, however as promised here is the first in what I've decided to make a two part posting about addons for the World of Warcraft.

Now I have alway been a complete addict when it comes to addons in the past to the point that I actually couldn't have named every single one I was using and to be totally honest probably didn't even make use of about 25% of those I actually had installed anyway. With my lovely new installation I dumped my /interface directory and headed over to the Curse Downloader Client. But more on what I actually installed later on in part 2, this post is all about what Blizzard have actually done to the interface attempting to catch up with some of the more successful addons.

After the jump we'll have a look at a breakdown of some addons and the updates Blizzard have made to the UI and discuss whether the standard UI meets up to the addon.

Moo!

Meet Romm, he's part Cow.

So just at the point last night when I though I was going to have to write another blog post about how unpredictable the Blizzard Downloader was in its speed, the damn thing sped up (unpredictably) and completed the patch.

It's the last time I'm going to mention this as I think it's possibly time to "Leave it Be" but checking chat logs with friends from yesterday I inserted that first Vanilla WoW disk at 11.21am and I'm pretty sure I was logged in at about 8.20pm. I still have trouble imagining what it must be like for a first time user to actually have the patience to install a game for 9 hours.

So what's new for me? Pretty much every damn thing! I thought the whole process had gone wrong again and was on the verge of going straight back to Blizz and cancelling when I realised the message on the login screen was about Battle.Net - so that had to be changed, accounts merged etc.

Read more on the first tentative bovine steps of rebirth after the break.

A bad start

I believe that is what they call a bad start. But more on that in a while.

As a brief explanation as to what the hell is going on around here I should explain where this blog is going. Some months ago now I decided that the time had come to deactivate my World of Warcraft account. I'd been bored of all my characters for who knows how long, I had three in the mid-70's and had no inclination to see any of them through to 80 let alone start raiding with them afterwards. Suddenly a few gazillion alts started appearing in a vague attempt at regaining some interest - but alas to no avail. Interest waned, I moved house and found myself very busy and then, to cap it all off, back on tour so cancelled my subscription.

Well I'm back from tour and happily settled in front of my trusty old computer merrily tapping away at a new website commision and having a good ol' chat with some of some very close friends who are also ex-guildmates from EU-The Venture Co. As usual the pressure mounts and not for the first time in my life I find myself crumbling - ok! ok! I'll come back, but there has to be something else, a reason. Well here it is. This blog will follow my return to the World of Warcraft bare hours after the release of patch 3.3.0.

I ain't gonna be charging around Icecrown anytime soon that's for sure so don't get too excited. Instead, it's going to be a fresh start. I'm not going to remove the old characters but I'll be creating a new main, not sure where or what just yet, and progressing through the game right from the start (again!). How could I not with all the new and exciting things in the patch notes?

A bad start? Glad you asked! I got all set up last night and after a tedious amount of time downloading the new patch (during which time I learnt how to do port forwarding on my router - quite handy) I couldn't resist a quick login before crawling off to bed. What do you know - the pesky thing's only gone and got corrupted... tried all the repair options etc etc etc and to cut a long story short I've been re-installing all morning. We are now 7% into Wrath of the Lich King install then I think it might be time to "Run Away and Hide(tm)" while downloading the patch... grrr.

I'm approaching it with excitement and trying not to have any expectations - though it had better be worth it after all this faffing about. Makes me wonder what new players must think when presented with a several hour install followed by a massive patch download - I can't say I'd be too impressed.

More soon, look out for the inevitable noobzone screenshots from wherever I choose to get born this time.