Did I like the new WoW expansion? Defenetively! But let start from the beginning … and forgive me if I will be brief (very brief), but it is the only way to get back in shape on writing for this blog.

Questing and Leveling

The first and most obvious addition of this new expansion are the new 10 levels to rise and therefore new spells and talents.

Personally I always liked the leveling part of WoW as I like to do quests, but for me Wrath of the Lich King surpassed at least TBC and maybe even the vanilla WoW (that probably is still holding the first position on the leveling fun rank as it has been my first MMORPG). What took me so much? In this expansion the player is walked to accomplish many more lore-wise chain-quest than the past.

One great example is the Wargate chain-quest in Dragonblight: it starts with Into Hostile Territory and it end with The Battle For The Undercity … well, I can’t spoiler it too much, but I can tell you that there has been some very intense scene (and for the first time, cinematics too).

Mechanic

Between all the new additions that this expansion brought, there are two nice new mechanics.

The first is the possibility to drive “vehicles”. Vehicles are very similar to mounts, but they provides abilities that can be used while driving them. Know that most of the vehicles (all, as far as I noticed) are actually provided during specific quest and they can be used only to perform the given quest (as a matter of fact some of them will automatically dismount you  if you drive to far from the relative questing area).

The other peculiar thing is the zone-phasing: the first feature introduced to the game that allow your surrounding to evolve as you proceed with questing. Basically there are zone in Northerend that at the beginning are either not inhabited or they controlled by the scourge and through some chain quest you can help a faction to establish an encampment there.

There is one important thing to know and keep in minds about phasing: it is character based; this means that if there are several players on the same zone, but they are on different level  of progression on the relative chain-quest, they will see and can interact only with mobs and npc of their phase status and not the other players’ npc/mobs. So if you intend to play the expansion with some friend, be sure that you both are on the same level of the chain-quests.

Raiding

Wrath of the Lich King is currently offering four raid instances:

• Obsidian Sanctum;
• Vault of Archavon (in order to enter it, the raiders’ faction must currently controlling the PVP area of Wintergrasp);
• Naxxramas;
• The Eye of Eternity;

The Patch 3.1 will will release a new raid instance: Ulduar.

With the above raid instances, Wrath of the Lich King introduced two important changes to raiding:

First, each raid instance is actually available in two versions: “normal” for raid groups  up to 10 players and “heroics” for raid groups up to 25 players. The binding to these two versions are separate, so if a player engage the “normal” version with a raid group, he/she can still play the “heroic” version with another group. With the availability of two raid instance versions, there are of course two separate “Tier” armor sets:

• the “normal” version is offering the Heroes’ Scourgeborne Battlegear set;
• the “heroic” version is offering the Valorous Scourgeborne Battlegear set.

Second, Blizzard introduced the concept of “Hard Mode”; the feature is currently available only to Obsidian Sanctum, but Ulduar will offer it as well, as soon as it is released. “Hard Mode” means that the raid group can decide to engage a boss with a different condition compared to the “standard mode”; the boss will become harder to defeat, but then it will also offer more loot if downed. Obsidian Sanctum, for example, has Sartharion as main boss and three drakes (Shadron, Tenebron, and Vesperon) as side bosses: on “standard mode” the raid group would kill the three drakes separately and than engage Sartharion alone, but if they want to face it in “hard mode” they have to skip one or more drakes; in this case the drake(s) left alive will join Sartharion during the combat and if the raid group can win they will receive additional loot based on how many drakes were left alive.

I am playing with Genei Ryodan, an Italian guild on Hakkar EU that raid three nights a week. Through the weeks we have been able to clear almost all the 10-men raid content starting with Obsidian Sanctum (with no drakes up yet), than followed by Naxxramas, and finishing with Malygos on March, 10; we are planning to deal with Sartharion (Obsidian Sanctum) with some of the drakes left alive.

Many veteran raiders complained that Wrath of the Lich King’s raids have become too easy to confront and Blizzard always claimed that it is intended because it wants to give the chance to more players to experience them. Personally I want to thank Blizzard about that since I am one of the target players that enjoy this “easiness”.

Final notes

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King bringed many more additions than I mentioned in this review, like the first “Hero Class” introduced to the game: the Death Knight (of course I have created mine, but I have yet to play him seriously to report any personal opinion) and the PVP zone of Wintergrasp … but as I have been so late with this review, you have probably read everything there is to know about them.

For now this is it … I know, I know it is not much, but again … I am trying to and I will coming back to be more regular with posting.

As I did for the Fedora 9 review, I will write this guide as I will proceed through the installation and the first configuration. Therefore if you are interested on the topic, bookmark this page and check back daily.

Installation
This time I started to write the guide while I am still installing the system thank to the fact I am using a Live CD version (therefore while Gentoo is being installed I have access to a desktop and the internet connection).

On the Live CD there are two kind of installers: a graphical version, in GTK, and a text-based graphic version.

I have originally attempted to use the text-based graphic version twice and the GTK graphic version once, but with disappointing results. On the first attempt the installer quited without any explanation, the installer window just disappeared with no error message. On other two attempts I reached the end of the installation, but when I attempted to boot the system the boot loader (Grub) failed to load anything and it shown a generic command prompt; actually for the last two failures I am positive that there is a pretty clear explanation (and definitively something new I learned about Linux): the booting partition must start at the beginning of the hard disk (I was trying to place the swap partition first).

Now I am trying to install the system for the fourth time (the second with the GTK graphical installer). Let’s see what happen.

Click to better see the image.

Obviously the first thing being asked is to set up the partitions. As I have two hard disk I decided to use the first to contain the root partition (the equivalent of c:) and the swap partition and the second hard disk to contain data. This kind of setup is useful because if in the future the user (me in this case) decides to reinstall the system, or another Linux distribution, he/she just need to format the first hard disk and he/she can preserve the data stored on the second hard drive (very useful especially when the system cannot longer boot and the users has not made a backup for a long time); actually I was already using a similar setup in both Kubuntu e Fedora, but the swap originally was on the second hard drive.

The installer proceeded by copying some installation file on the hard drive, and then it continued by asking to set up the password for the ‘root’ account (the equivalent of the Administrator account in Windows). Then it asked for the timezone.

Click to better see the image.

The next preparatory steps were the setup of the network card and the activation of the user(s) account.

After the initial configuration the installer show a list of installable packages. Contrary to other Linux distributions that provide to the users many bundled application packages to immediately install during the OS installation, Gentoo offers just few basic packages (mainly the graphical interfaces, few configuration tools and Firefox, as a browser will eventually be needed in case the user needs to find informations on how to proceed for the post-install configuration). That is probably due because, as I mentioned in the earlier announcement, this distribution is based on the concept that every application has to be compiled from scratch from the source code in order to achieve the maximum optimization for the user machine and since the source code for all the various packages available to Gentoo Linux cannot be contained on the CD, their installations are left to do after the system is installed.

After the packages are installed, the setup asks which services need to be activated on boot and finally what graphical interface (either KDE or Gnome) to load as default.

The reason why I opted for this distribution is because it is designed to be optimized for the user’s machine. That means that every time the user decides to install a program, through the “Package Manager”, instead of getting the precompiled binaries, he/she gets the source code that it will be automatically compiled for the targeted machine.

This procedure will make the actual installation slower, especially for big programs like OpenOffice, but it will have the benefit that the software will run much faster than the version compiled for a generic i386/i686/amd64.

Of course after the first two/three days necessary to set up the system, I will be back with a report.

Stay tuned!!!

Links
Gentoo Linux: http://www.gentoo.org/.

Installation
Lets start obviously from the beginning. Maybe I am too used to install an OS (as I had an average of 3 months between reinstalls in both Windows XP e Kubuntu — for Windows ME it was 3 weeks ), but I found the install process very straight forward.

It started with few text-based graphic windows with an option to check if the CD/DVD is clean from reading errors (very important since most Linux users burned these install CDs from the home computer). My install DVD passed the test, but immediately after it somehow the install program bugged out and it kept ejecting the DVD without any chance to continue the installation. The quick and dirt solution was to reboot the computer, restart the installation process from scratch (fortunately that check was just the first step, as I said) and skip the test.

CD/DVD Check

After that, the installation program switched from text-based graphic windows to real graphic windows. The various steps were the usual: the user preferred language (for both the displayed text and for the keyboard input), the hard drives set up and partitioning, the set up of the network card, and finally the selection of the packages to install (something that I always missed from Kubuntu install).

Well … I claimed to have experience with OS install … actually, during the installation I must have miss-clicked something because when the computer rebooted at the end of the install, I have been asked to do some more configuration, but the windows had a text-based graphic (the same style of the CD/DVD Check); more importantly after that I was unable to log in, neither as root nor as regular user. I had this experience a couple of time in the past even with Kubuntu. I never understood the cause of the problem, but I always resolved it with the quick (no really :-/ ) and dirt approach of repeat the installation from scratch (with the due setting to format the main partition to be sure to reset all the installed settings); fortunately the second installation worked well and upon reboot I have been able to log in for the first time to Fedora 9.

Initial Configuration
During the “original” install (I will explain later why I call it “original”) I have chosen KDE as Desktop Manager. I want to clarify something on KDE 4 before I continue (since I joked on remember to being neutral on this): personally I am not happy with the graphical changes made in this version compared to the look of KDE 3.5.x. I have to admit that my aversion is limited mainly to the task bar and the K Menu (the counterpart of the Start Menu if you are more familiar with Windows), as I find them “bloatware” (while I like the look of the actual applications).

The first thing I always do when I re-install the OS is to immediately update the entire system.

A feature I find great in Linux is the “Packet Manager” (generic name for a generic type of software, each Linux distribution has its own program with its own name); basically it is an application that act as front-end to online repositories that can provide the users with not only the updates for the system, but also for all the software installed. If you are familiar with Windows you should know about the existence of Microsoft Update, the Microsoft site that allow you to update both Microsoft Windows and all the Microsoft applications (Internet Explorer, Office, etc); a Linux “Package Manager” is conceptually similar, except from few major differences: it is not limited on the software provided by the Linux distribution vendor, but it covers all the software from any vendor and more importantly it is not limited to the updates installation, but it also cover the initial installation and the eventual uninstall.

The only limitation (that existed also in Kubuntu and I think also on other Linux distributions) is that it can be only one instance of the “Packet Manager” open at any given time. Therefore while the user is installing the updates, he/she cannot install other software. This limitation only apply for software installation through the “Packet Manager”, the old way of downloading the source, compile it and install it can allow parallel installation.

After the first batch of updates I noticed that KDE has not been update to 4.1 despite the release happened weeks ago. After some reading on various post on Fedora’s forums, I learnt that KDE 4.1 has not yet been approved for official update and to get it the user has to enable the Livna repository; in order to do that, the following command is necessary (from the terminal with root privileges):

rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm

And then from “Menu” – “Administration” – Software Sources” it is necessary to enable the above repository. Then it is necessary to run “Menu” – “Administration” -”Update System”.

Now it is time to clarify why I spoke about “original” install. I have enabled the Livna repository and I tried to apply the updates, but the process complained about some missing dependency; I tried to deselect the update packages that required that missing package and then I tried to re-apply the updates, but unfortunately my Internet connection died during the process; once I restored the Internet connection I tried to repeat the update process, but when it got half way in downloading the updates it stalled (it shown no error, but it was not proceeding no matter how many minutes I waited); of course I tried to clean the cache with the following command from the terminal:

su (in order to get root access)
yum clean all

but without avail. I then tried to reboot, but I eventually ended up to hell: somehow� upon the opening of the KDE session I got into an infinite loop where the update process automatically kept trying to resume itself, but it kept failing because of some failure to fetch the meta-data of the updates.

Now, a good user would have reported the bug (and I should also made some screenshot to post), but for the sake of brevity I rushed to re-install the whole system. This time with Gnome as default Desktop Manager.

After that all the updates proceeded smoothly; I have been able to get KDE 4.1, but for the moment I prefer to keep using Gnome, at least until I finish the system configuration and in the following days I will give to KDE 4.1 a second try.

Once I finished install all the updates, I tried to install the NVIDIA drivers. They are not available through the default enabled repositories, but they are present on the Livna repository (Livna for Fedora Core 9 – x86_64 – Base). Once installed, it is necessary a reboot.

A more complicate thing was the installation of the Adobe Flash plugin.

First it is necesssary to configure the official Adobe’s repository for the “Package Manager” by downloading the file “adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm” from http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/ (select YUM for Linux) and installing it with the following command from the terminal:

sudo rpm -i adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm

After that it is neccessary to use the following command to install the Adobe Flash Plugin:

sudo yum install flash-plugin

Then for enabling the plugin in Firefox:

mkdir -p $HOME/.mozilla/plugins
cd $HOME/.mozilla/plugins
ln -s /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so .

The users of the normal 32 bits of Fedora 9 are done. Those that use the 64 bits version need further steps. The first is to enable the Livna’s repository (see above). Then it is necessary to install “ndiswrapper”:

sudo yum -y install nspluginwrapper.{i386,x86_64}

And finally the i386 version of libflashsupport and pulseaudio-libs:

sudo yum -y install pulseaudio-libs.i386 libflashsupport.i386

And then restart Firefox.

I am having some issues with Wine since World of Warcraft is crashing as soon as it is started; I will investigate on this.

I found some problem in updating the location of the Document, Pictures, and Videos folders (as I keep them on a separate location from the /home folder); actually I found that the bug is similar to the one I found on Kubuntu 8.04, so basically it is necessary to open the file “$HOME/.config/user-dirs.dirs” with any text editor and make the changes.

Conclusion

Beside the Wine problem and some eye-candy details (screensaver, desktop background, menu’s items order, etc.), all my system is configured and working.

Off course it takes days to have an idea on how Fedora 9 is working and I may to used to use a Linux distributions, but from what I can see in this minutes and including the experience I had with Kubuntu I can tell that once the difficulties of the installation and the first configuration are be simplified, Linux will be totally ready for the desktop market.

Links
Fedora Project: http://fedoraproject.org/.

The reason is that I am going to test Fedora 9 on my main (and only) computer. The reason is that I desire to test a different Linux distribution since I have always used Kubuntu (from 7.04 to the current 8.04) since I migrated away from Windows more than a year ago).

After the new OS is set up we will see where my (poor ) writting skills will lead me, but expect at least a short feedback within a week (BTW I will be back with some daily news before I will ever finish the review).

Stay tuned.

The first thing to say is that this time Kubuntu has been released in two flavors: the plain Kubuntu 8.04, that is based on the stable KDE 3.5.9 (and it is the version I am using), and the Kubuntu 8.04 KDE 4 Remix, that include KDE 4.0.3.

The first peculiarity of this new version of Kubuntu is Wubi, a feature for those who want to test (and learn) Linux without leaving Windows (… yet); basically this feature allows the user to install Kubuntu under Windows as it was a normal application – “There is no need to modify the partitions of the PC or use a different loader”. Personally I did not tested this feature since I was already using Linux, but I think it is immensely useful for the beginners.

Another useful installation option, available only on the “Alternate Installation CD” for now, is the possibility to install an encrypted file system; every partition can be encrypted, except for the the /boot partition. I did not tried this feature because, even if it was announced, I personally did not discovered it until the actual choice during the installation; what stopped me on using this feature is that, by not knowing how it works I was afraid that if later on (may be days, weeks, or even months) some setting get screwed up I may be not able to access my data; but since encryption is one of the cornerstones of security (even for the end users), I will investigate more on this.

Beside these two features I found the installing procedure quite easy, and similar to the one I encountered in the 7.04 an 7.10 versions.

Another peculiar aspect of this version is that this time even KDE has its own application to manage the “Desktop Special Effects”, a feature that Ubuntu (that uses Gnome) had available still in the 7.10 version. For the new users will be easy to enable 3D Desktop Effects such as a spinning cube, true transparency, wobbly windows and other special effects. Personally I preferred to keep using the Compiz’s native “CompizConfig Setting Manager” as it offers more advanced options for configuring the effects.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzCL0TocBvg]

Most of my hardware has been already configured automatically during the installation. The only two things that required manual installation were the printer drivers and the video card drivers.

In the first case the process has been easier than usual; the interface was the usual, but this time KDE did not give any problem to find and install the printer even if it is not conntected directly to the computer, but shared from a Windows machine in my workgroup. To install the printer you have to go either to: K Menu –> System Settings –> Printers –> Add –> Add printer/class, or more easily use the dedicated task bar applet ( right-click on the task bar –> Add Applet to Pannel –> Print System).

For the video card the system will immediately warn you that there are the native drivers available and it ask you if you want to install them (since they are proprietary and closed-source they cannot be automatically included during the OS install). Once installed “Adept Manager” is capable to handle them so, as it happens for all the software installed through it, you will be automatically prompted if a new version is available. Just to be clear: this feature was already available on the past versions of Kubuntu (but since this is the first time I make this report, I want to give notice about it).

Regarding the rest of the software in general I noticed two particular things: OpenOffice.org were automatically installed instead of Koffice and it was the 2.4 version (on Kubuntu 7.10 I never got the update from the 2.3 version even if the 2.4 version has been released weeks ago); the second things is that in “Adept Manager” if you select to install the generic package of Firefox, you get the latest beta version of Firefox 3 instead of the stable Firefox 2; I tested it for a couple of hours and I noticed that is stable enough to deserve to enter the Release Candidate stage (as announced), but many third-party addons are not updated yet for it (and since I cannot live without them I decided to downgrade to Firefox 2).

Everything great? Well I found some problem, but fortunately not insurmountable.

The first problem is that the option to change the location of the Document, Desktop, and Autostart folders (found on System Settings –> About Me –> Path) seems bugged and it does not save the modifications; until this is fixed if you need to modify the path of the Desktop, the Documents folder, and the Autostart, you have to modify the content of the configuration file “$HOME/.config/user-dirs.dirs” with any text editor (Kate for example).

Wine 0.9.60 was unable to run World of Warcraft: when launched all the graphic of the login screen was screwed up and eventually it crashed after 2 seconds with an (Windows) error message; I still don’t know if it is a problem specific of the new version of Wine or it is an incompatibility with some stuff new from Kubuntu 8.04, but for the moment the only workaround (that I found) is the following:

• purge Wine (with “Adept Manager”);
• remove the “$HOME/.wine/” folder;
• download and install the version 0.9.58 of Wine (download link — do not use version 0.9.59 since it had a bug with SHIFT/CTRL/ALT + Click combintations);
• reinstall World of Warcraft.

Compiz (the program responsible for the 3D desktop effects) somehow has reversed the meaning of the Num Lock’s light (the num pad gives numbers if Num Lock is disabled and it gives the arrows functions if it is enabled) and it seems it interfere with some keyboard shortcut (configured in System Settings) even if they are not configured to do anything within Compiz’s configuration (for example I cannot use Win+R to get the Run Command dialog and Win+F for KFind).

Well … as I stated, I solved the problem with World of Warcraft and the other two issues are more nuisances than real problems and I have to recognize that is common for every new release of any new operative system (even for those that you have to pay for, like Windows and Mac OS) to have some inconvenience in the early period.

Discounted for these problems I can say that this new version Kubuntu is quite a good (even if minimal) upgrade compared to the past and this can only means that there is still hope for the Penguin to reach the desktop market.

Why didn’t I wrote any news about it (and any news in general for the last five days)? Simple: I rushed on the download an install.

Actually the real test started only yesterday because I had long week-end vacation out of town (here in Italy April, 25th is a national holiday), but I have almost finished with the configurations and by tomorrow I should be able to give you my first personal report.

Stay tuned.