Wanting to give WoW a Shot!

[Eaglestrike]

It MIGHT be slow because the PTR was just released, so it's possible Blizzards download servers are busy so you aren't getting much bandwidth from them, while also not downloading data most people do so there's no Peer transfers.

Actual patches work MUCH quicker when downloading since it works like a torrent. Chances are you're downloading a torrent with 1 seed and no peers to leech from.

[Despain]

Yeah, I finally just started downloading the patch. This shit has downloaded 6% in 3 hours. This is really turning me off. Hope its worth the wait lol

[Correction]

If it's going slowly make sure you're not stuck behind firewall settings that block their p2p downloader system. There's a lot of articles about it if you just click the links in the downloader itself.

[Jodwahh]

Mez dwonwload the patches via the wowwiki patch list. When I reinstalled recently I downloaded the patches at about 500kb/s from some of the links there.

[Jodwahh]

Patch mirrors - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

[Despain]

Patch mirrors - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Thanks but its already at 95%. I just took a nap, checked it again, and its almost done. Too bad I have to work soon haha

[Bus]

You should check your ports if you have a router, my wow patches used to download horrendously slow until I figured out most of the ports were blocked on my router. If you don't have a router, maybe your isp just sucks. :\

[Despain]

Took me 2 full days to completely download everything, including patches. (minus expansions... don't wanna buy them until I give WoW a full spin)

I'm hooked. This game is pretty bad ass if you can get through the trial period. From playing the actual game and not being so limited, I'm enjoying it a ton. I get horrible lag from time to time... hopefully that goes away.

[Correction]

Make sure to stock up on the blossoms and buy the +haste/+hit food for the midsummer event and charge up the +10% exp bonus regularly while you level, it seriously helps bigtime.

[solsirt]

Make sure to stock up on the blossoms and buy the +haste/+hit food for the midsummer event and charge up the +10% exp bonus regularly while you level, it seriously helps bigtime.

I just started a few weeks ago... where/when/how/what?? details?

[Bus]

Midsummer Fire Festival 2009 (June 21 - July 5) - The Wowhead Blog

[Noobta]

Blossoms are from the midsummer event that ends July 5. If you click a Ribbon pole(?) near any of the bonfires and spin for 10-15 seconds, you'll get an hour buff for 10% exp.

[Correction]

I just started a few weeks ago... where/when/how/what?? details?

The blog post is a bit much to chew so I'll tl;dr it for you.

At every capital city there is a vendor who accepts Burning Blossoms in exchange for 'food' items which are really one-time use elixirs that grant combat bonuses. As of last year these all stacked with each other and regular elixirs but I haven't checked this year. Near that vendor is an NPC who gives out daily quests that involve minigames and reward blossoms so basically if you spend 10 minutes there doing the quests you can stock up on a few hours worth of great buffs.

Most anywhere there is an Innkeeper there is now a bonfire and a ribbon pole. The bonfire hosts an NPC who gives you blossoms and exp and gold, so talk to them whenever you see one. Clicking the ribbon pole channels a buff on you. Every 3 seconds you spend 'dancing' you get 3 minutes of +10% bonus exp up to a maximum of 60 minutes. Refreshing this buff is pretty useful if you're levelling in the area so every time you head back to the inn you should max it out again.

Snuff horde bonfires at your own risk, it flags you for PvP if you're on a PvE server.

Both the blossoms and food items decay in real time (i.e. the expiration timer doesn't pause when you're logged out) so if all you care about is keeping your food just buy enough for the day, use them up, then buy more to reset the 14 day timer. Check your calendar for when the festival ends and try to have a 14-day timer on the last day you buy your food items so at least the combat bonuses will last you two weeks after the event has ended.

[Despain]

Just gonna update this thread.

So far I've been playing WoW for a week (still playing vanilla WoW, but gonna get the expansions pretty soon), and here are my first impressions.

First, I just dinged 30 today and got my first mount as a Human Paladin on the Grizzly Hills realm, which is pretty sweet. My first impressions of the game were that basically I'll be doing most of anything solo, with some help here and there... which were pretty accurate, aside from instances. At first everything started out slow, joined a guild that wasn't all that exciting.

After communicating with Lexa here on BG, she invited me to join her guild, and this is where the game got really exciting. The guild introduced me to a group of very nice people that were welcoming to a newbie, so I decided to ditch my old guild and call this one home.

At first, I thought getting gold in this game was going to be extremely difficult. I was completely wrong. I chose to do mining/blacksmithing, and am currently sitting @115 for both of these professions. I started selling out copper ores, which net me 1~2g per stack. As I advanced in skill level, I went ahead and started doing bronze bars. This is where the cash started to flow. Ten copper and tin ores was pretty much all I needed to make a stack, and bronze bars sold for almost 3g on Grizzly Hills. So money has not been an issue for me yet.

Instances pretty much made me cream. This is something that FFXI lacked and was something that I thought made WoW far more superior in certain aspects. The idea behind instanced zones were phenomenal! Finding groups isn't hard at all, and these zones granted me with tons of great gear... of course I'm sure you already know that lol.

But anyway, definitely gonna become an active player now. Thanks everyone for your support and I guess I'll see some of you online D: very fun game, I'd recommend it to anyone.