Hardware for Wrath

[Ynir]

This worked for me no problems on my Win2k machines.

On my Vista machine it worked until I needed to download a patch, then it would download the patch, but then tell me it couldn't install it.

I fixed the issue by changing the name of the directory, then installing from the original WoW CDs, then changing that directory name, then changing the other directory name back, then deleting the directory of the fresh install.

When I installed the expansion last night, the process first moved the World of Warcraft directory into the Public directory. Install then downloaded and ran the 3.02 and 3.03 patches, so this might be Bizzard's way of handling permission issues.

I romped through Howling Fjord, doing entry quests and nosing around. The graphics are more detailed than before, very pretty. Latency was a bit high, 200+ ms, even though player load was light between 3 - 7am. Framerates varied between 40 - 59 fps. I seem to hit a wall at 59 fps: I never saw frame rates at 60 fps or above.

If I came upon a crowded scene and turned suddenly, the motion would stutter for a moment while the scene loaded. I may turn down some video settings if this becomes a problem. Intermittent fan noise from the video card seems more annoying than constant fan noise, so I will tinker with the fan control utility.

Apart from these issues Alar seems stable and robust, and might take me through to the next expansion.