I found a post on the Official Forums that was referenced on Thottbot, about Patch 2.2 of World of Warcraft and how it is not only going to have voice chat built in and a new guild bank feature to better support guild needs, but it’s also going to introduce video recording capabilities for Macintosh users.

Here’s the full patch notes for patch 2.2 which has moved into the Player Test Realms very very recently.

If you’d like to participate in the player testing portion of the patch releases to help find bugs or odd behaviors before it hits the main realms and causes extended shut downs and maintenance periods (or outright crashes), check out the information Blizzard has provided here.

Why Video Recording Only On Mac?

Windows users are able to use a Freeware? Shareware? version of FRAPS to make game videos but Mac users have only paid options ($79 for software for example) and thus the WoW game designers are motivated not only by the Mac users of the game, but the internal software testers within Blizzard that use Macs and are submitting bug reports to the developers.

Why I Care

Cuz I’m playing on a Macintosh of course! And I’ve got aspirations for my WoW future that include taking video clips of my play time! And I’m super glad I might actually have an option that doesn’t require me paying for software I have no idea if I like or if I hate!

Go go Blizzard.

So, for a week I’m visiting my parents who live on a beautiful piece of lake-front property 30 minutes drive from the nearest town of 4000 and two hours drive to the nearest city of 100,000.

In other words, I’m out in the (civilized) boonies where high speed Internet is a rare find. While there may be options for bringing Satellite internet connectability out here over the summer for a chunk of change, right now my brother (who I am staying with in the guest cabin) and I are sharing a 56k connection.

I’m quite impressed, actually, about how World of Warcraft operates under these conditions.

Sure, I can tell when someone’s active on the network (browsing, up/downloading) as it lags my connection a few seconds, but playing itself is only infrequently laggy, especially when only one is playing, and the other is hopping worlds checking auctions, etc.

Warsong Gulch With My Bro

My brother and I started new toons together on my main realm and we’ve advanced to 15 in the first week of play time. Last night we ventured into WSG for the first time, as my brother enjoys the player-killing aspect of online games and has twinking aspirations (especially since he’s earned 50g in the first week of playing from tips I gave him).

For the first while we played together, but we got split up having died seperate times, and after a bit of us both being lagged in casting or shooting our bows, I logged out to see how much more responsive his connection would wind up being. I was quite satisfied with the result, fully expecting that 56k isn’t really meant to support more than one player of such a rich-environmented game like World of Warcraft.

In other words, brother moved from dying without getting a single spell off to at least getting a spell off before he died, and dying mainly because he gets way too close to the action for his level of interface, targetting and casting familiarities. Exactly the way it should be as he continues on his path of the learning curve.

That being said, I haven’t tried a 5man dungeon or anything more complex than two of us questing together or trying out that battleground… not sure how well one of us could perform in a dungeon, nor am I sure whether the fact that I have Burning Crusade and my brother does not would affect anything.

Hmmm… :) I have a few more days to test!