[This is part of a series of posts which started there: My Love-Hate Feelings For MMOs – Part I. If you didn’t start there, you probably want to.]
The Long Lull
Having felt the need to turn tail and run back to High-Sec space in EVE Online, I was dispirited. I won’t say “broken“, but certainly much of the allure of online gaming had worn off for me, and I also “retreated” to solo (non-online) gaming for boredom relief.
Fast forward several years in which, to put it mildly, “a lot of stuff happened“. And, then, one day, I found myself somewhat reminiscing about my early Warcraft adventures to one or both of my sons. This sparked a little nugget of curiosity in the back of my head along the lines of “Gee – I wonder what World of Warcraft is like now?”
Putting the Timeframe in Perspective
I had left WoW some time in 2007, leaving my face-melting Troll Mage during The Burning Crusade expansion to World of Warcraft. It was now early-ish 2016 and the “current” expansion was Warlords of Draenor. During this time, there had been three additional expansions in the middle:
Contemplating Returning
From doing some very minimal research, I learned some of the game changes which had occurred during my “absence” and aside from much of what many considered “silliness” from Mists of Pandaria (as well as a bunch of mixed player feedback regarding Warlords), it seemed like it was still going to be fun.
Around this time, the next expansion, Legion, had already been announced, although with no specific release date just yet, although it was very clear it was going to be “soon”.
I was … intrigued would probably be the best way to put it. My nostalgia had been fully tickled and was beating me up (combined with a whole bunch of free time and boredom). This combination was what, ultimately, pushed me “over the edge” (or, perhaps, it should be “back over the edge”)?
But – It’s Never That Easy
The big stumbling block at the time, however, was that I didn’t have any sort of Windows PCs on which to play the game. I did have a very underpowered Mac Mini down in my office … sharing a keyboard, mouse, and monitor with my regular Linux desktop computer, but nothing that would happily (and sufficiently) run the game.
First step was, of course, to build a computer capable of doing so.
Yes, You Read That Correctly
With the exception of modern Apple computers (which are impossible to “clone” and hand-craft), or laptops (same reasoning), I don’t believe I’ve ever owned any Intel- or AMD-CPU based computer which I didn’t personally order the parts for and construct myself.
To the best of my knowledge, in fact, aside from the same above limitations, I believe the same can be said for both of my sons. [My younger one even going so far as to having (re)built his own computer since then.]
Since I knew I would need a (ugh) Windows-based Operating System for this purpose, this also meant I needed a computer capable of running the game – and that meant building one.
In an attempt to not have it cost a fortune for a full on “Gaming PC”, I attempted to do some corner- and cost-cutting where possible. These were expressed through the following:
- Choosing to (re)use my living room television as the monitor – the resolution was more than enough for my purposes
- Selecting a Mini-ATX case and motherboard – saving on case, motherboard and power supply costs by using lower-end products
- A “middle-line” CPU – again, I wasn’t going to be playing any sort of First-Person Shooter or anything which was going to be CPU-intensive.
- A “middle-line” graphics card – see above regarding CPU
The end result as something I jokingly (and lovingly?) called the “shoebox PC”.
No, really – the case was approximately the same size and shape as a shoebox.
I did splurge ever so slightly on a new keyboard and mouse. One thing I’d learned from my years ago experience of playing Warcraft was: “You can never have too many buttons”. So, I got a “MOBA mouse”, which had additional buttons / button presses on the side of the mouse (the “thumb buttons”) which could be bound to numbers or keypresses or even keypress sequences.
I was now ready.
With this built, Windows (ugh) installed and running, I proceeded to buy the current version of Warcraft (Warlords) and a subscription.
Next – Back to Azeroth … and Beyond!
Continued in My Love-Hate Feelings For MMOs – Part V.
