WoW Questions

Professor S · 12-03-2004, 04:43 PM

This one is definitely on my Christmas list this year, along with a month or so of online charges. A few questions about the charges...

What are the monthly charges for WoW?
Does it come with 1 month free?
Can you use pre-paid cards instead of a credit card? (I don't put my card online anymore since getting companies to discontinue service and payments is difficult to the point of being near illegal)

I also have a question about individuality. My biggest fear is that there won't be enough options for the appearance of your charcter. Are there plenty of ways to differentiate yourself from others online, or do you end up looking exactly like a ton of other people online?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Once last question. Can you use a headset with the game and talk to friends while playing or is it strictly text based communication? Sorry if some of my questions are obvious, but I've never played an MMORPG before.

GameMaster · 12-03-2004, 04:49 PM

Quote:

Yes. When you purchase World of Warcraft, you will get a one-month free trial subscription to the game. At the end of that month, you will have to choose from three subscription plans to continue playing the game: a month-to-month package at $14.99 per month, a three-month plan at $13.99 per month, or a six-month plan at $12.99 per month.

Quote:

Yes, we plan to support a range of payment methods. In the initial launch regions of North America, Australia, and New Zealand, customers will be able to pay their subscription fees by major credit card, PayPal, and pre-paid game cards. Payment methods in other regions will be announced at a later date.

Quote:

We don't want to overwhelm players with too many choices when they start off. That's why we are concentrating on features that players will notice right away. This will include things like hair style, hair color, skin color, and facial features. Players will of course also get to select their race, gender, and class. The remaining elements of character customization will be done in-game, when players have a better understanding of how the choices they're making will affect their characters.

I couldn't find a direct answer to communication but I believe it's only text based. As are the other WarCraft games.

Jonbo298 · 12-03-2004, 04:54 PM

Monthly fee is $14.99
It does come with a free month
Not sure on the pre-paid card thing. Some MMO's do it (City of Heroes and Lineage II do but not sure on WoW)

From what I gathered when I played the beta, there are VERY minimal options when it comes to clothing/the way you look. You can change some colors but your gonna look quite similar to everyone else unfortunately.

WoW, AFAIK is text chat only. But if you get in a good guild or whatever, there are 2 more known programs for voice chat. Ventrilo or TeamSpeak. Both are good programs but I prefer Ventrilo.

DeathsHand · 12-04-2004, 04:52 AM

Yeah there aren't toooo many ways to customize your character.. 8 different races, male/female, maybe 10 or so different faces, hairstyles, and skin tones (slight variations... night elves are different tones of purple, etc)... And then of course what you wear effects your appearance a bit like in Diablo II...

Paypal is currently not a payment option, they apparently ran into some troubles getting it to work right, but it's supposed to become available eventually...

And pre-paid game cards cost 30 bucks and come with 2 months of play (so it's the full 14.99 a month, not a discounted rate like the 3/6 month plans)...

And about discontinuing payments, blizzard makes it sound really easy... There's an account management page where you can easily change your payment method, subscription length, or simply cancel your account (although there's a little picture of a sad, crying orc next to that link... Do you want to make an orc cry?)...

DarkMaster · 12-04-2004, 04:38 PM

Where do you purchase pre-paid game cards?

edit: is there a WoW benchmark? I know my computer can run it, I'd just like to see how well.

DeathsHand · 12-04-2004, 09:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkMaster

Where do you purchase pre-paid game cards?

edit: is there a WoW benchmark? I know my computer can run it, I'd just like to see how well.

Well I havn't been to a game store since the game came out, but supposidly they're sold at any game store... I dunno about Best Buy and stuff like that though...

Dunno about benchmarks...

Canyarion · 12-05-2004, 01:36 PM

Some races look more like eachother than others. I found that the Tauren all look quite the same. Probably because they're so big, you don't pay much attention to the face/horns/skin color...

The undead for example are very diverse. You can give them crazy hairstyles, different face features (no lower jaw, no eyes,...).

All the other races are pretty diverse IMO. You'll have to find clothes in-game, which might be hard.

If you want voice options, you should probably run another program like Jonbo said. But you'll need to add friends first..
Blizzard decided not to implement that because it takes up huge bandwith. And probably more reasons.

You'll enjoy this game.

DarkMaster · 12-05-2004, 01:37 PM

ok, various questions.

1) Can you pick the server you want to be on? if not, how can you get your friends to join your server?

2) Can you pick the city that you live in? (I'm trying to relate this to FFXI) And if you can, do you have to live in the city of you chosen race's home? For instance, if I be a night elf, does that mean I must live in the night elf home? or can I choose to live in ironforge or something? (again, just trying to relate this to my ffxi experience)

3) is your chosen job set in stone? can you change at any time? any penalties to changing jobs?

4) I'm thinking along the lines of something in FFXI... is there anything like sub jobs or advanced jobs? how does your job evolve? are you encourage to stick with that one job the whole way through, or can you switch around and learn different abilities?

5) for the love of God, please tell me there are no level cap quests.

6) Does it cost extra money to make multiple characters?

7) I'm thinking of being a Hunter. Can anyone tell me how they're respected by other players in the game? such as, do they get a lot of party invites? are they valuable? etc.

any extra info you feel like throwing in, have at it.

edit: one more question I forgot... do you need to use a CC in order to play the free month you get? like, can I just go out, but WoW, install it, and start playing right away on the free month?