World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

Chris Barylick — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:16:02 -0600

Say hello to my little Death Knight friend. (Click to embiggen!)

Four years ago, Blizzard Entertainment released World of Warcraft, one of the most absorbing, in-depth massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) to ever hit the market—it currently boasts a subscriber base of more than 9 million players. Now the company is casting more magic with Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion pack for the ever-growing fantasy universe.

Like the first expansion, Wrath of the Lich King (WOTLK) adds a new continent (Northrend) to explore, and it raises the level cap from 70 to 80. But that’s not all—WOTLK also introduces the playable Hero class, player-controlled flying mounts, a new Inscription profession, new mission and quest content, and even an improved graphics engine.

The highly anticipated Hero-class characters function as exceptionally powerful hybrids of previously available classes. The Death Knight, the first of this class, combines the damage-absorption of a warrior capable of wearing full platemail armor with elements of a magic-user through their ability to summon pets, raise armies of the undead to fight on their side, and use sigils to boost their own magic or fellow party members’.

Professions matter in World of Warcraft, and the new Inscription role in WOTLK doesn’t let players down. While a fireball spell was once considered powerful, players who take on the Inscription profession (known as Scribes) can use Glyph slots to add features such as a knockdown or daze effect to a spell or ability. This adds yet another layer of complexity, letting players customize the game to their style.

Some companies’ expansion packs contain little else but some new levels, items, and maps, but Blizzard goes futher:

WOTLK’s improved graphics engine augments the game’s flame and water effects and heightens the detail in the shadows to create stunning new environments. Plus, a terrific sound system makes the game and its storytelling elements as immersive as ever.

The terrain looks more realistic, and the overall scale of the game is heigtened—especially when you're routinely killing fairly gigantic enemies. Blizzard has put some top-notch work into the models, and the engine carries it over, adding some incredible detail without appreciably slowing the computer down. (We tested WOTLK on a 2.66GHz quad-core Mac Pro with 2GB of RAM and a 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT.)

The team-play aspects keep World of Warcraft interesting, and WOTLK brings additional 10-man content that makes it easy to gather a large, but still manageable, team to raid a dungeon, while coordinated guild play makes it fun to take down the most challenging quests. Our guild enjoyed dressing up in a Murloc suit (think of a weird anthropomorphic fish), and another tongue-in-cheek quest has you collecting ingredients to make Tasty Cupcakes to boost your stats and stamina.

But this is Azeroth, not Utopia, and so we found a few bugs too. While it’s convenient, the in-game voice chat system lags, which forced us to use alternative methods like Skype, Ventrilo, or iChat. The new Death Knight character’s strengths and weaknesses are strangely balanced, making it tough to figure out how to best customize it to your advantage. Still, overall Blizzard’s latest expansion is beautiful, imaginative, well thought-out, and challenging.

Chris Barylick would like to thank the fellow members of Team Awesome Force – Rachel Hoyer, Eli Sarver, Monika Grigore and Kimberly Hernandez – for their help in testing Wrath of the Lich King, and he apologizes for the sleep lost and caffeine ingested in the process.

Run Classic Blizzard Games Without the CD

Zack Stern — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 06:06:00 -0600

No optical drive on that MacBook Air, eh? No worries, after a little bit of setup, you can still rock some classic Blizzard gaming goodness—no disc necessary.

Few games are updated eight years after their release, but few games are as timeless as Blizzard’s classics. StarCraft, Diablo II, and WarCraft III all run on current Macs, even though all but WarCraft III launched before Mac OS X. You don’t even need to keep a pesky CD in the drive to play, making these low-system-requirement titles great for the drive-free MacBook Air. You can download new copies of the games from www.blizzard.com/store ($14.99 for StarCraft; $19.99 for Diablo II or WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos), or follow these steps to get your original game discs running on a current system--even when you don’t have the discs around.

Difficulty: Easy

What You Need:
>> Original CDs for StarCraft ($9.99 on Amazon), Diablo II ($17.99), or WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos ($20.99)
>> Internet connection

1. Download the Installer

Diablo II and StarCraft need a Mac OS X installer to extract the files from their discs. Visit www.blizzard.com/us/patches/ and click one of those two games. Download the Mac OS X installer (for the original game) on the following page.

Step 1: You can't install Diablo II on your modern Mac without grabbing the Mac OS X-compatible installer first. (Click to embiggen.)

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2. Install the Game

Run the installer you downloaded, or open the original, Mac OS X–native installer for WarCraft III. Have the original discs handy, and insert them when needed. If you’re on a MacBook Air, connect to a USB or networked drive.

Step 2: Diablo II, locked and loaded.

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3. Download the Patch

You’ve installed a classic game, but don’t bother trying to run it yet, since it’s exceptionally out of date. Visit the game’s page again at www.blizzard.com/us/patches/ to download the latest Mac OS X patch. Choose the full patch option, and be sure that the update says it’ll work on all versions and not just the most recent release.

Step 3: Click the link for Diablo II and grab the Mac OS X patch. (Click to embiggen!)

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4. Patch the Game

Run the update patch to make the game compatible with current Mac hardware and software. In addition to bug fixes, your game won’t check for the disc before launching, making these games great for portable players.

Step 4: Here’s the Diablo II patch in our Finder. After running this, we won’t need the disc to run the game.

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5. Copy Final Files

For StarCraft and Diablo II, you’ll need to save certain files off of the original discs before putting them in storage. With Diablo II, copy the D2MUSIC.MPQ or Diablo II Music file into your Diablo II folder on your hard drive. If yours has the former name, rename the file as “Diablo II Music”. In StarCraft, copy the StarCraft Archive from the CD into your StarCraft folder.

Step 5: Copy this Diablo II Music file from the game disc to Applications/Diablo II.

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Next: Playing these Blizzard games if you don't even have the discs available for the setup above. Plus, running non-Blizzard games without the game discs—sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't...

Keep It Footloose and Disc-Free

If you have a steady online connection, you can install these games without ever needing the original discs (as long as you recorded the game’s serial number somewhere, or you can dig up the original packaging). Blizzard has recently added a way to register ownership of its physical games, letting you download digital copies of those titles. Once you identify your old copy of Diablo II, for example, you can retrieve the latest version without any of these updating steps, clocking in at about 1.5GB.

Visit www.blizzard.com/us/registration.html to begin the process. Click to sign up for your account, and follow the registration instructions. After finishing, click the link to verify your email address, and click the link inside the incoming message to complete the setup.

Click the Games button on the Blizzard account page, select Add New Game, and enter the serial number. When you're finished, click the Apple icon in the download graphic to copy a small application to your Mac. Unzip that file, and run it; this program will manage downloading and installing the complete, multi-gigabyte transfer.

If you have your serial numbers but not your discs, you can re-download the games for free here. (Click to embiggen!)

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Run Other Games Without a Disc

Other game companies usually require you to have a disc installed before playing a recent title. The need ranges from annoying on a desktop computer, to a nuisance when traveling with a laptop, to an impossibility on a MacBook Air. While one developer has told us about tentative plans to phase out these disc checks, you still might be able to play those games disc-free right now.

Insert your game disc, and open Disk Utility in the Applications > Utilities folder. Click the disc icon in the list on the left, and click the New Image button. Change the first pop-up menu to DVD/CD Master, and click Save. When finished, eject the disc, and open the image file you just created before beginning the game.

This process admittedly works best on older games; we couldn’t get most of our favorite new games to work, and your results will vary by title. Additionally, try the same imaging process with a program like Toast, for potentially better results.

Making an image of our Drop Point: Alaska disc. You betcha we could run that game without the disc when we were done. (Click to embiggen!)

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World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

Run Classic Blizzard Games Without the CD