pandarens | After Dark Gaming

Still at 1% ?

School and work have been taking up quite a bit of my time and I have not been to Azeroth in a few months, but in anticipation of Blizzard’s new expansion coming in 4 days (Mists of Pandaria), I decided to take a gander at how my favorite online game is doing.To my surprise I was greeted with a “Mist of Pandaria Optimizer” download page. I thought, hey no big deal, it says it could take anywhere from 15-60 min. well, that couldn’t be futher from the truth. It reached 1% after about 10 min then it disconnected saying it was my internet connection, but everything was fine with my connection. I left it on all night. When I woke up all excited, it had again disconnected. I almost cursed the screen (in fact, I think I did). I searched online frantically and read forums on Blizzard’s site.It seems I was not alone. Many people were experiencing the same thing.

I contemplated installing everything again and deleting WOW from my laptop but I just did not have the patience for that. I thought to myself that it just might be some sort of file that was erased by mistake. I remembered installing and using CCleaner recently and it said it was erasing certain files. was it possible it took away something this patch needed? Possibly, or possibly not.

I decided to re-install only my Cataclysm CD which took about 20min. When it finished, I was again prompted to install the optimizer. I nervously clicked the button. I thought to myself, If this did not work, I don’t know what I was going to do?

To my surprise and relief the bar went from 0% to 8%, then on to 40% in less than 5 min. After it was done, the game still needed updates, about 15.5 GB of updates. It took too long, my connection was doing like 30-40 KB/s, after yelling at the walls and my sister’s cat for almost an hour I realized I was on WiFi. Maybe, just maybe if I used a direct connection it would help a little? Just in case anyone wants to know, I have cable internet (Road Runner) with Time Warner) I proceeded to unplug my PS3 and plugged the cable into my laptop, rebooted my PC and BAM! That baby jumped up to 145MB/s. I finished the whole download in about 2 hrs and kissed the cat, who now hides in a corner looking at me with strange curiosity. And to think I went through all this for a bunch of fury Pandas.

When it comes to MMORPG’s (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) or just online games for short, I’ve played quite a few, but my all time favorite and also for 12 million other gamers worldwide is World Of Warcraft. I started playing around 2005 and instantly fell in love with the Lore and the beautiful art style of the world. I followed through all 3 expansions and shed a tear for the last one” Cataclysm” which saw the Azeroth as we knew it ripped to sunder as beautiful cities and landscapes shifted and collapsed and formed new ones. Its a good thing I took plenty of screen shots of everything before Deathwing enforced her destruction on the world.

This month will see the 4th expansion for World Of Warcraft called Mists Of Pandaria. On September 25,2012 Blizzard introduces the Pandarens which in all honesty look like kung fu panda, but remember, Blizzards take on these characters came way before that movie.The major setting is the land of Pandaria, one of the continents of the world of Azeroth. The discovery of Pandaria is made after a naval battle between the Horde and the Alliance. It had been hidden by magic since The Sundering.

Mists of Pandaria will raise the existing level cap from level 85 to 90. It will introduce a new character class, the Monk, along with a new playable race, the Pandaren. The vanity pet system will be overhauled and will include a pet battle system. New PVEscenarios will be introduced, and Challenge Modes will be added for dungeons. The existing 41-point talent trees will be replaced by a new system of tiered talents that are awarded every 15 levels. Blizzard has stated that there are plans for nine new dungeons, three new raids, and four new battlegrounds.