WoW question: is this illegal?

[g-dogg]

Hi, i just had a question about WoW, i hear that you can buy the game and instead of paying $15 a month, you join a private server hosted by people outside the US (not sure though if its out or in) for free. Is this legal or not. and by the way i am not pormoting this in anyway i am just asking a question cuz i am thinking of getting this game but dont think my parents will accept me paying $15 monthly to play it over what i payed for the actual game.

and thanks
G-dogg

[Propain]

thoses are emulated servers and anyone can make one , illegal im sure , I tried a few last month and crap they are , not even worth the bother . The emu servers dont even come close to the real thing . 50cents a day to play this game is awesome in my opinion . Blizzard servers are always up and no lag. heres some plus parts to owning the real deal


1. no lag
2. no bugs
3. lotsa people (emu servers have 50 if your lucky)
4. all the quests work
5. just plain awesome :P

im telling you straight out , ITS a waste of Time .

cheers

[04nmr85]

I'm pretty sure those servers are illegal anyways. Just stick with the legal ones and u'll be sure to have a fun time. 14.99 a month for tons of content which is being updated constantly(well more like every now and then it seems like..lol). I've got 3 chars myself: Tyrilis, lvl48 Night-Elven Warrior, Noriong, lvl 35 Night-Elven Hunter and Maidi, lvl 3 Dwarven Paladin. All three are on the Dalaran server which is a PvE server with a low Pop. I'm part of the guild Lightning-Troopers. Were always looking for up and coming players to join our guild! Very friendly and helpful people there.

[Prew]

Originally Posted by Propain 1. no lag 2. no bugs 3. lotsa people (emu servers have 50 if your lucky) 4. all the quests work 5. just plain awesome :P im telling you straight out , ITS a waste of Time . cheers

No lag, no bugs, lol- are we playing the same game- or maybe I need to get on your server? The lag (particularly loot lag, auction lag, mailbox lag, and lag in general) is a well know problem. Blizzard's response to the loot lag is that you should log out and log back in. People are constantly complaining about the general game lag- as this makes it quite difficult to play because, after all, the monsterss don't lag- just you.

It's a great game and it has to be for people to put up with the lag and bugs.

[04nmr85]

I play on a low pop server and rarely experience lag. When i do, i just shrug it off because it is an extremley popular game so lag should be expected with so many people playing across so many servers.

[Propain]

Originally Posted by Prew No lag, no bugs, lol- are we playing the same game- or maybe I need to get on your server? The lag (particularly loot lag, auction lag, mailbox lag, and lag in general) is a well know problem. Blizzard's response to the loot lag is that you should log out and log back in. People are constantly complaining about the general game lag- as this makes it quite difficult to play because, after all, the monsterss don't lag- just you. It's a great game and it has to be for people to put up with the lag and bugs.

ok

[Markoman01027]

I speak from experience, it IS a waste of time.

[Techdec42]

What is WoW

[g-dogg]

Originally Posted by Techdec42 What is WoW

WoW is World of Worldcraft, a new mmorpg, its extremly popular and is made by blizzard (google it). i'll have to kind of get my parents to agree to this btw what are the minimum requirements for the game, the comp in my sig is out for now, i am now using this 2.4 ghz celery with 256 mb ram and 60 gb hdd plus a crappy onboard vid.

and thanks
g-dogg

[Markoman01027]

What onboard video controller do you have?

You will need more than 256MB of RAM to play World of Warcraft.

[g-dogg]

i have the intel integrated graphics with up to 64 mb shared ram (basically i end up with 192 mb of ram running at 100mhz fsb) and as for now i cant upgrade anything in it because i have no dough, plus its a compaq

[timbit]

well, i have some friends with wow, and i'm thinking you'll have difficulty getting it to run well. 256 ram is low for pretty much any new game nowadays, and a slow cpu and onboard graphics are only going to make it much worse. since it seems like the monthly fee might be a difficulty for you as well, you might want to look at guild wars. the system requirements seem to be a little lower, and there are a lot of people playing it on dial up. i'm really enjoying it, but it is more of a pvp oriented game than wow, so you'll have to decide if that's what you like. just a thought though. in any case, the intel onboard graphics chips suck for playing games. even if you can get them to run, more often than not you're going to have rendering problems.

[Prew]

The ram will slow you down- especially in high population areas (Oggrimar, Ironforge). I can play WoW on my laptop with a Geforce FX Go5200 at 800x 600; however, with 512 mg of ram it still slows down in the citites (but not so much on quests)- 1 gig of ram is needed to minimize this slowdown- even on my desktop.

[timbit]

the thing is, the intel integrated graphics are even worse than the go5200 (i believe). what chipset are you using g-dogg? i found a set of benchies on anandtech that tested out one of intel's latest onboard graphics chipset, the 915 set (it's from last august). my guess is that yours is probably a generation or two below that one. in every benchmark the 915 chipset was way slower than an x300se (one of the cheapest add on cards you can get) and had display/rendering problems in a couple of the games. unfortunately, wow was not one of the games they benched. You can read it for yourself here . they also review intel's latest onboard chipset, you can read it here . it doesn't do much better though.
if you're going to be stuck with that machine for a while, and it has an agp slot, you might want to think about a cheap add on card like a radeon 9250 or a fx5200... i think you can grab them on newegg for under $50. and they will both outperform the onboard chip... from the first anandtech article:

Originally Posted by Anandtech "The market for integrated graphics is focused much more on business and low cost computing. People who are interested in gaming should stay very far away from the Intel solutions. While some games are actually playable, and performance is head and shoulders above that of Intel Extreme Graphics 2, performance is too abysmal for us to recommend the GMA900 for anything beyond 2D computing and extremely rudimentary 3D."

and from the second article:

Originally Posted by Anandtech "For those who truly do not need or care about 3D, integrated graphics are fine. People who are nostalgic about Quake III and earlier 3D games will also be satisfied. If just running something with 3D is important, these solutions will get the job done. But integrated performance has still not reached a level where we can recommend it to anyone who wants to play the current generation titles."

anyways, just some stuff to think about...

EDIT: took a look around at a bunch more reviews/benchmarks... newegg has the msi radeon 9550 (128 bit) for 61 dollars... if you could scrape that together, you'd be back in the game, assuming that your comp has an agp slot. but you'd still be short memory.

[drew.]

you could go with guild wars which is what i play at my cousins and its awsomesame type game and free a month, in a year of wow your paying 180 bucks for a game youve already payed 50 for. With that 180 you could buy 3-4 new pc games.

[Siberian Bear]

1. no lag 2. no bugs 3. lotsa people (emu servers have 50 if your lucky) 4. all the quests work

I'll have to take issue with you there.

1) There is lag. Especially in Ironforge it can lag for minutes at a time.
2) No bugs? Have you not attacked a bugged mob? This is where you can attack a mob, you deal no damage, it deals no damage and is stuck. Also sometimes mobs can appear to be standing still while at the same time attacking you, they also appear to be taking no damage. This is most likely related to lag.
3) Yes there are a lot of people. Sadly there are a lot of childish, self centered people too.
4) Not always. On a druid quest I cured an animal with a quest item that I had a limited amount of (10), the amount of the cure decreased however the "cured animals" quest objective did not increase (I had to cure 10). I ran out of the cure (of course) and had to restart the quest.

I've played for a few months and I am still not sure whether WoW is actually worth the money I spend on it.

[Jaggannath]

I think Propain was making a comparison, and saying WoW servers are better than emu servers in those areas.

[Propain]

Originally Posted by Jaggannath I think Propain was making a comparison, and saying WoW servers are better than emu servers in those areas.

thanks for clearing that up m8

[xGame-GuruX]

I play on that server All my freinds do and seems pretty good 2 me, we call is the free server .