Thanks for the Rez!

The iBook G4 has received a rez from the apple depot in Tennessee and is up and running WoW again! We had a run scheduled at 8 pm EST last night and I got the computer home at 5pm. I started with Apple updates right about 5:10 pm and logged into WoW at about 8:15. My guildies already knew what was up, so don't think I was just dissing them. They hadn't seen me on for a week and knew that it was because my computer went /self destruct.

It took about 20 minutes to update apple software with a restart, then I started the process of reinstalling Warcraft. It took about 30 minutes to get the five disks for the original game to get plunked down onto the HD, and then took about another 20-25 minutes for TBC. Then, we knew it was coming: Patch time.

Patching was intense. The first download was from TBC 2.0 to 2.3 which was over 700 MB. That took about 20 minutes to download on my connection and then 25 minutes to install. I was watching that bar forever. ("Go blue bar, Go!") Then, once that was finished, it patched up to 2.4, which was another 250ish MB patch, with about a 10 minute download and a 15 minute install. Finally, we went all the way to 2.4.1 which was a measly 4.something MB. That took almost no time in comparison.

I was trying to ready myself in other ways while I was installing or downloading, so I downloaded ventrilo and set up my audio preferences, though I had to wait till I got back in game to get the server info for my guild. I also went to WoWwiki to look up some of the macros I was going to need to recreate. I knew that when I logged in, I would be playing Nar, so I HAD to get my focus sheep macro again. I can't group without that. I remade a set focus macro, an assist macro, a counterspell macro with a /stopcasting, (the only way to go, imo) and was good to go with those in a text document before I even started up the game so I could quickly cut and paste.

I also downloaded WoWmatrix once I started patching and used it to find and reinstall my addons. I don't know why I ever worked with addons without wowmatrix or a program like wowace. It's just so much easier to let an updater program do it for you. So, I reinstalled quartz, ratingbuster, recount, omen, and autoprofitx. I thought those were absolutely necessary if I was going to be functional. (Well, at least quartz and omen were).

Then I finally logged in. Do you remember the first time you played the game, and all those months/years you spent customizing your interface? Wow... I had forgotten about some of the default options. The common theme of my comments over vent during the runs were along these lines: "Hey, do you remember when you first installed wow and the camera would always snap back to right behind your character?" or "Do you remember when your quest text used to slowly write itself before you could accept a quest?" Here's a list of all the things that I had forgotten I changed in WoW:

Quick Quest Text
Camera Follow = Never
Scrolling Combat Text (with lots of options turned on)
Video Resolution = 800x600
Texture Detail = low
Click on all the stuff that improves performance
Run windowed
Music = off
Error Speech = off! (OMG!)
Show target's target (it's in the combat options)
Show cast bar, etc.
Middle mouse = auto run
Tab = auto run
Tilde = target nearest enemy
B = open all bags
Still need to redefine a lot of the action bar key bindings, but set a few:
ctrl-~ = focus spell (sheep on mage)
v = assist macro
shift-z = set focus

A lot of that I remembered before the run started, thankfully. Some of it I forgot until halfway through when I tried to do something and was like, "Oh... uh oh... ughm... Sorry, I'll fix that."

The good news is though, I'm back playing, we ran CoT: Durn and BM and nar got some sweet gear, awesome rep, went around and bought some evoker's silk gear for PvP, made her frozen shadoweave boots and is back in business. It's nice to be playing again.

Rahr is next on the list to recreate!