Damn you Blizzard... damn you to Molten Core...

Over the past few months, since the release of the World of Warcraft 2.3.0 patch, a lot of Mac users have had issues with the client software. Something changed, and it’s causing all kinds of graphical weirdness. Jagged lines, textures swapping or just plain disappearing, and even lockups. The problem is that no one at Blizzard seems to care – for one thing, OS X 10.5 (Leopard) was released around the same time (like, within a week of each other) so there was a lot of finger pointing. It didn’t help that the number of Mac players is still such a small percentage. (As if to say the Windows version is without its share of problems. Hah! I say unto thee… hah!) Shortly afterward, Apple released a graphics patch that made the problems worse for some, better for others. However, several patches later (of both WoW and Leopard) the graphics glitches persist. At times, you could clear the weirdness by toggling between full-screen and windowed mode, but lately I started getting lockups – either the system dies with a white or a black screen, or the graphics just stop rendering. iTunes continues to play in the background, and other applications are still working (such as people logging in and out of instant messenger) but nothing updates on the screen. In either case, the only solution is to hit the ol’ power button. Fortunately I grew up on Windows, so I am familiar with this maneuver.

The most bizarre thing about all this is that locking the entire system isn’t supposed to be possible. OS X is supposed to be a protected operating system, such that if one program crashes, it doesn’t take down the rest of the OS. Somehow, Blizzard found a way to do it.

Over the weekend I had five lockups in an hour and decided that I had enough. I grabbed my installation CD’s and reinstalled World of Warcraft. First I had to install WoW from the original CD’s. (I did not get a collectors edition, so no DVD install option. I did try to download the client from the website, since I couldn’t find my CD’s, but after an hour of watching it tell me there were four more hours left, I said screw this and looked for my discs.) Then I installed the Burning Crusade expansion (which I did have a DVD for.) Then it was two more hours downloading the infamous 2.3.0 patch. Then several more patches after that one. Finally, after about 5 hours, I was able to log in and actually play. No lockups. WOO!

Until this afternoon that is. Now, this is on the same day where my flatscreen monitor croaked, so I had just dragged my old 21″ CRT upstairs, connected that as my primary monitor, and played WoW for about an hour. I was just about to tell someone via IM that the lockups seemed to be gone – and then the game said “ya think so, eh?” and froze up. That was when I decided I was tired of the blame game. I, as a consumer, do not care who is at fault. After four patches and 6 months, I think someone would have said “maybe we should fix that.”  Since it appears more like “meh, there aren’t enough of them to concern ourselves,” I set about resurrecting my old Windows XP system. The motherboard had died on my old one, so I scrabbled through the parts I had lying around and managed to come up with enough pieces to make one working system. It booted, which is a good sign, and took about an hour to reconfigure itself for the new motherboard. (I probably should have reinstalled, and may do that anyway.) I cleaned off all the old outdated stuff from the last time I used it (Summer 2006.) This is going to be a game system, so I don’t need e-mail, Office XP, Photoshop, etc. I still have my MacBook Pro for that.

Fortunately I still had my WoW install discs handy. That was the easy part. Downloading the patches – ouch. I started downloading the 2.3.0 patch – estimated time 4 hours. I started it at about 7pm, then went to a friend’s house for a few hours. Got back and checked it at 9:30, said four hours remaining. (Four hours seems to be their normal response when asked how long something will take.) Yeah, okay, so much for their automatic updater. Went to a download mirror and grabbed it in about 15 minutes. It’s currently on patch 2.4.0, with two more small patches to go.

Sheesh. All this for a game.