Over the Holiday, I ran across the new World of Warcraft demo and decided to give it a shot. Now, my computer isn't the hottest thing out there, but it's got decent statistics and I've never had a problem with a game until now.

First it's a DVD install disc, my DVD player didn't particularly like it and it took a few "hours" for it to install. Once installed, it asked to create an account and download the rest of the game which turned out to be something like ... 3.8 gigs that installed to about a 5 something or other gigs worth of files.

Even with my DSL connection, you can't imagine downloading a 3.8 gig "demo" of the game. Needless to say, I was a bit frustrated, especially after I found out my video card (which is good) was inadequate to play the demo.

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Photons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic.

Those files you were downloading are the cumulative patches to bring your installed client up to date with the current version as upgraded periodically by the development team.

Most patches, even major ones, tend to top out around 15mb.

The first install patch is ALWAYS a backbreaker.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

Sounds like you basically downloaded the demo all over again, checking their site the demo is 2.8 gigs. Could have probably saved time and not bothered with the DVD you got and just downloaded the demo.

Hehe... not to make fun of you. I can just sympathize. It sounds exactly like my guild wars experience. Loaded up the cd's, fired up the game, was notified there were files to download first.

4.5 gigabytes later, I was playing the game...

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"Those are the people that wonder how a thermos knows whether to keep something hot or keep something cold." ~ NeoWatcher

Yeah, the game takes well over 5 GB on my computer. I have The Burning Crusade beta, and that takes an additional 7 GB.

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"4th Law of Modern Thermodynamics: Where Mihoshi is, Chaos Reigns." ~W. Hakubi
"Gun control is hitting your target; Recycling is reloading your brass." ~ Lex of Dirty Work.

I checked the size for the normal game:
4/5 cd's at about 2.6GB plus the 1.12.0 patch at 456MB plus the 1.12.1 to 1.12.1 patch at 3MB plus the 1.12.1 to 2.0.1 patch at 697 MB

Edit to note that it's currently downloading a 2.0.* to 2.0.3 patch at 186MB, probably made in preparation to the release of the new expansion.
It says something about the testing they put the game through that it's already been patched twice before the real release.

Install is a multi-hour endeavor, especially the last patch seems to take forever even if you downloaded it manually before starting.

It's possible you where trying a Burning Crusade demo(upgrade that comes out sometime this month), for which it does make sense that you have to download what is essentially the whole game again, since it's definitely not the original one.


You didn't tell which graphics card you have so I can't comment on that specifically, but the minimum specs for the graphics card as given by Blizzard is:

32MB 3D graphics card with Hardware Transform and Lighting, such as an NVIDIA GeForce 2 class card or above.
(Recommended: 64MB 3D Graphics Card with Hardware Transform and Lighting, such as an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 class card or above.)

In support fora it's been mentioned that essentially no onboard video cards live up to this, it seems like there's some of the hardware assisted operations that are saved off those.

I have a NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 card which works quite well with WoW and was fairly cheap(~45$), though it did fail miserably with Oblivion, and from comments here I expect it to be useless with NWN2 as well.

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"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

My nVidia GeForce 7900 GTO makes WoW runs perfect at any res...and almost makes Doom 3 run perfect with everything maxed, at high res...

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"4th Law of Modern Thermodynamics: Where Mihoshi is, Chaos Reigns." ~W. Hakubi
"Gun control is hitting your target; Recycling is reloading your brass." ~ Lex of Dirty Work.

Well, I guess I've been so happy with some older games that I've still been playing, like the many versions of Age of Empires, the various Star Crafts, Baldur's Gate series and NWN that it's been awhile since I've tried some of the newer online games.

It was just a bit of byte shock.

I work as the online content producer for a large newspaper and I don't think any of my work programs (besides my XP OS) comes near to that.

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Photons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic.

It will be...

Even my ATI Radeon x1600 Pro doesn't meet all of NWN2's specs. I can still play it fairly smoothly with some things turned off, but...

gah, lemme drop it now, I'll roll all day on that game's shortcomings.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

The Baldur's Gate series of DnD games was the best ever IMO. Could never get into DnD 3+ rules. The spells and combinations that you could do with them just couldn't be matched.

I downloaded the DnD Online MMO about a month back, and then downloaded the updates for it. Downloading the install demo wasn't a big issue, but when it came to doing the updates, it downloaded each and every file individually. Have the developers not heard of packaging their files together? Downloading the updates took about 4-5 times longer than the install demo itself. How incredibly lame!

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Obedience brings victory
Victory is life
That is the order of things

DDO was something of a disappointment to my guild. It was almost too much like a D&D module. Gameplay was extremely linear, and we bored of it very quickly.

I do agree with you. Baldur's Gate, and Baldur's Gate II, along with the Icewind Dales, were probably as good as D&D gaming ever got.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

I've got a Philicorda organ here that looks like it's seen thousands of gigs, but I don't think we're talking the same kind of gigs

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Talking about downloading demo's and specs: I used to be able to play Half Life 2 quite well, just had to decrease some killer settings such as AA and AF. Now I've downloaded the Lost Coast demo, and the computer cannot cope with these coastal scenes at all. I wanted to keep some nice HDRR, so I had to cut on other factors. AA and AF were primary victims. I also had to step down to 1024*768. My monitor is 1280 native, but it isn't too blurry so that was OK for me. Still, these new demo's and games make a 2 year old PC look prehistoric...

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