Need a ride?

Now that WOW 3.2 is out level 20 characters can buy mounts. This looks like an effort by Blizzard to speed up the level grind at mid range 20-40. Getting to a quest destinations faster can really speed things along. The low level mounts cost 4 gold and move you 60% faster than walking. You will also need Apprentice Riding skill.

If you use carbonite, the quest coloring on the maps really speeds things up. Also the 3.2 update makes the quest log two panes for easier browsing . Nice.

I spent about a day and a half reloading tons of stuff. My download folder is gone. Lots of fun stuff there.

My birthday was Sunday, so I managed to get online and visit with some nice folks. We all waited to do a run in the Underbog, but we could not get the group together. Oh well.

I got an iPod touch 2g 16GB – I’ll be posting and commenting on the wow apps i’ve found soon

yeah!

Kurn out!

Well, so far, I’ve had decent success talking to FireFox. This is largely thanks to the LifeHacker article by Adam Pash. If Speakable Items is turned on, it will create a Speakable Items folder for you when you open an application that you want to give voice commands to. My observations show that it can take a minute for the system to notice. (It probably depends on how many apps you have running.)

So far, I have not had success with WOW. I know it’s possible because  Sean Forsgren over at Wowinsider.com has written a fantastic article on it. I don’t know for a fact, but I suspect that I have a problem becuase I am running WOW from an external drive. I will be investigating this.

One poster, Nakos, claimed:

I suggest checking the Mac Tech Support forum for details, if you’re not a tester, you can’t post, but you can still read: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?sid=2000&forumId=7573591

Radoslawn is the Mac Q&A person and has been very helpful.

He’s said that he has not yet been given the technical specs for what the final release will require, but he will pass them on when he has them.

In particular, the most recent beta builds have included some corrupted models which cause the client to crash, those are still being tracked down.

Additionally, WotLK will have a new, vehicle interface, people using older Macs have been disconnected when using some aspects of this interface. This appears to affect PPC Macs, but not Intel Macs.

Radoslawn has said the graphics requirements of WotLK will probably be higher than the existing ones.

At this point, it seems that the beta client has not yet been optimized to run on the Mac, so some issues may be related to how the port is being done. It’s still early in the beta test, much will change prior to the expansion going live.

I looked into the issue of people having trouble installing patches on the Mac. Here is what Radoslawn suggests:

Seeing more of this issue as well, so let me list a few of the basics:
( but please post about the issue if these following steps won’t help, I’ll keep adding any procedures I missed )

I. Game has been moved

- if the game was moved from the initial place it was installed then the patch can’t find it

Possible solution:

1. go to Macintosh HD => Users => Shared => Blizzard
2. delete the file : com.blizzard.World of Warcraft.prefs
3. start WotLK

II. Permissions have gotten corrupted

Please use the steps below to repair file permission settings
on the hard drive you have installed World of Warcraft.

1.) click on the Finder icon in the Dock
2.) open the Applications folder
3.) open the Utilities folder
4.) double click on the Disk Utility application icon
5.) select the hard drive the game is installed on
6.) select the First Aid option
7.) click on the Repair Disk Permissions button

- or -

1. Select the Wrath of the Lich King Beta folder
2. press Command + i
3. in the Wrath of the Lich King Beta Info box, go to the Sharing & Permissions section
4. click on the lock and unlock it
5. make sure you have Read & Write permissions
6. click on the Burst icon ( cog wheel ) and select Apply to enclosed items

III. Patch is corrupted

- Please, please, please do not use wireless if you can use a wired connection. Too many issues with wireless to list.

- delete patch and start download again

IV. Hard Drive Directory is corrupted

Repair Directory Procedure:

1. (re)start the computer
2. right after the computer starts press Cmd(Apple)+s until you get a black screen with white type
3. let go of the keys when this screen comes up
4. at the cursor please type the following: fsck -f -y and press return
5. please be aware that some of the procedures will look like they are frozen,
but are actually taking a long time i.e checking hierarchy
6. if anything had to be repaired, repeat step 4
7. once things are repaired type exit and press return
8. computer will boot into Mac OS

IV. Game is corrupted and cannot be overwritten ( last resort fix )

In order to remove World of Warcraft safely from your system, you will need to:

1. go to Mac HD/Applications folder and move your Wrath of the Lich King Beta to the Trash
2. go to your Mac HD/Users/Shared folder and move the Blizzard folder to the Trash
3. empty Trash
4. Install Wrath of the Lich King Beta, then download and install the patches

The offical link to this issue is: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8557028338&sid=2000

Well, you can. There are two simple tools that will help you out. Both are found under the Video options in-game.

1. Your first option is the ‘Resolution’ menu. It will allow you to make everything more detailed an reveal more items on the screen. The higher the setting, the more screen real estate you get.

2. The second tool is ‘Use UI Scale’ check box. With this marked, you can move the slider to the left and shrink all user interface elements. This includes your mini-map and your toolbars.

You must close the Video options window to see the results of your changes.

Video Settings

Most of Blizzard’s programming is done on Macs. I read an article on the subject a long time ago and the comment the person made was along the lines of “we don’t know why more games are not released for Macs. Most programmers that we know of write their scripts on Macs for gaming.” I always found it to be an interesting comment on the gaming industry.

I have NEVER heard this before, but it’s one hell of a cool rumor.

Well He’s become completely adicted and we are now racing to level 70 like a couple of cats with our tails on fire. I talked him into joining the Lothar Realm and switched to my NE Druid to give hime time to catch up.

He rolled a human Paladin named Geoffrey, which he runs via his MacBook Pro. I recently asked Geoffrey if he wanted to post some entries here for you folks. He said sure. (We’ll see how that goes).

If you want to see how our characters are progressing here they are at Eillebill (my Druid) and Geoffrey.

Now that we have two pair of eyes on the site, I will be opening up comments soon.

Finally an easy way to manage your add ons. It’s Wowmatrix .

Imagine a world where you can automatically check for, and update all your add ons. Now imagine that you can search all available plugins and add the ones you want – with out surfing the web!

That’s Wowmatri. Best of all it’s free.

It runs on macs and pc’s (but if you are using a pc, what are you doing here?)

If you are planning to upgrade to iLife ’08, you will be getting a copy of iMovie ’08. There has been quite an uproar over the features that Apple removed since iMovie HD 6. iMovie ’08 was re-written from the ground up – and it shows. The most obvious change is the interface has been significantly changed. The new iMovie is more of a side-grade rather than an upgrade.

There is a helpful article at macworld.com: First Look: iMovie ’08

Important note: iMovie HD 6 does not get removed. Also, Apple made iMovie HD 6 free to the public.