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World of Warcraft European Release Update
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Blizzard has recently released new information on pricing and server strategy for the European World of Warcraft launch.
- The suggested retail price for the standard edition, which contains the full game in English, French, or German will be 44.99€ (£29.99 in the UK). Included in the box is a free one-month subscription.
- The Collector's Edition, which will be available in limited quantities, has a suggested retail price of 69.99€ (£44.99 in the UK). In addition to the one month subscription, the Collector's Edition includes several unique, special-edition items perfect for any gamer's inventory.
After the initial free one-month subscription ends, players will be able to chose between three kinds of subscriptions:
- A monthly subscription for 12.99€ per month, or £8.99 in the UK
- A quarterly subscription covering three months of play for 11.99€, or £8.39 in the UK.
- A six month subscription that will cost 10.99€ per month, or £7.69 in the UK.
 In order to increase performance and support for World of Warcraft worldwide, Blizzard is establishing dedicated servers specific to each geographical location. At launch, European gamers can play on any of the European servers in English, French or German. Retaining players on their own geographical servers at release will help ensure that the game is as stable and enjoyable as possible, and will allow for the best customer support for players in their local language, at the local time. Consequently, European players will not be able to access the North American servers at the time of the North American launch.
For everyone in Europe wanting to play the game as soon as possible, the pre-order box for World of Warcraft contains an Authentication Key that guarantees entry into the European Final Beta Test. The Final Beta provides a chance to play World of Warcraft without a monthly charge in advance of the retail launch.
For those European gamers still wishing to play with their American friends on the North American servers, and vice versa, Blizzard will provide a means to make this possible after the European launch.
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Insider Interview: Jeff Kaplan on "Raiding" in World of Warcraft - Part 2
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| In this continuation of last issue's interview, Jeff Kaplan - Designer on World of Warcraft - reveals more information on how raid content is implemented in the game.
Since all of the raid bosses are going to require 40 players of 60th level, how are you going to ramp up the challenge from lower-tier raid bosses to higher-tier ones?
 This is fairly easy to do because of the power of armor, equipment, and other gear. Equipment makes a huge difference in our game. We can also tune the difficulty of creatures. We can make it so that the lower-tier raid boss is difficult, but once you learn the strategy, you can beat it quite easily.
One of the most powerful things a raid group can possess is knowledge. That's why we're trying to keep so much of the raid game confidential. We don't want to put a lot of this type of content in the beta, because the number one advantage you can have going into a raid is the strategy for beating it. We know that the first time people take on a raid encounter, they are going to wipe out and think it is very, very difficult. People will feel we've made it too hard, and that's with 40 people in the encounter. But a couple of weeks, if not a week, later that same group is going to be beating that raid boss with 30 people, and then 20 people by the time they ramp up in gear and discover the correct strategy.
That actually happens in every dungeon - not just the raid areas. I added Blackrock Depths to the current beta a while ago, and the testers went nuts. They said "This is the hardest dungeon ever. I can't believe how hard this is tuned. This is impossible. There is no way it can be done with a group of five".
So I posted on the forums and said, "Let me know how you feel about it in a week". Sure enough, a week later, groups of five were beating it. And now it's attacked regularly and beaten pretty easily. They'll figure it out, and I think knowledge is the best advantage that they can have. Plus, we can make higher-tiers harder just by playing with the numbers, and then players will have to ramp up in gear and resists to beat these higher challenges.
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| nVIDIA Graphics Card Tips for World of Warcraft |
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| NVIDIA - the recommended graphics card technology for World of Warcraft - have provided us with a series of tips to optimize graphics on machines running their cards. Over the next few Insiders, we will explain these tweaks and how they can improve the look of World of Warcraft and, by extension, your play experience.
NVIDIA Tech Tip #2 -- No more "jaggies"
NVIDIA GeForce cards include a feature called "Full Scene Anti-Aliasing" (FSAA) that can reduce "jaggies" most evident on the edges of objects. Here are the steps to achieve no more jaggies:
1) The FSAA setting can be accessed within the Microsoft Windows display properties of the video card (outside of World of Warcraft).
2) Within the advanced properties "Performance & Quality" tab, you will see a setting called "Full Scene Anti-aliasing".
3) Enabling FSAA with a 2x, 2xQ, or 4x setting will reduce the visual impact of aliasing, crawling pixels, or the "jaggies".
If you have a GeForce 6800, the card's horsepower will allow you to utilize the 4x setting with minimal impact on framerate. FSAA can significantly impact the graphics performance of older graphics cards--particularly if the screen is set to a high resolution. So if you have a card older than the GeForce 6800, it will be a trial and error process to balance the best graphics results with framerate.
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© 2004 Blizzard Entertainment. All rights reserved. World of Warcraft is
a trademarks and Blizzard Entertainment and Warcraft are trademarks or registered
trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries. All
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More information about the pre-order campaign
