Traveling with WoW
Posted by pixiestixy on Monday, April 20, 2009 - 26 Comments Tags: Patch, cable, content patch, desk, desktop, dsl, lapdesk, laptop, latency, mouse, setup, touchpad, travel, vacation, zboard
My long-awaited vacation has finally arrived. And one of the top items on my priority list (although I'm sot sure yet whether it will happen) is playing more WoW and getting a feel for all the 3.1 patch changes. The only problem: I'm more than 800 miles from home and in a much different atmosphere than usual.
Here, there's no permanent desk setup, which isn't a huge deal since I normally play on my laptop anyway. It's just a bit less comfortable playing from a hard, wood chair than in my much softer desk chair. But since I need my mouse accessible, I can't exactly sink into a couch. I wish I would have remembered to bring my lapdesk - that would have solved that issue beautifully.
Thankfully, latency isn't much of an issue. The DSL here versus cable back home both have me hovering at about 200 ms. But I doubt we'd have enough bandwidth here to run two (or three) windows of WoW simultaneously. Needless to say, my escapades with dual-boxing have temporarily halted. I'm just glad I'm not staying with someone who still runs dialup!
So it's not quite the same as back home, but I'm able to squeeze in a bit of WoW in between fun vacation-esque stuff. Enough to feed the addiction.
For any of you all looking to leave town for spring break or whatever reason and still hope to get in some gaming on a laptop you can travel with, I recommend: find a comfortable spot - bring a lapdesk (do as I say, not as I do). Don't forget your mouse - touchpads are incredibly difficult to use in-game. And if you have anything like a Zboard that you can fit in your luggage, bring it along, too. Even if you can't fit your entire desktop, a keyboard doesn't take up a ton of space. Of course, if you CAN bring a more powerful desktop, that also would be nice. Though it may limit your options for a spot to play. And no matter what the case, remember: You're on vacation! Don't forget to run some RL quests for fun, too!
So what's your WoW routine while on vacation - do you still find the time to squeeze in some playtime? And do you have any more tips to offer for those traveling?
Here, there's no permanent desk setup, which isn't a huge deal since I normally play on my laptop anyway. It's just a bit less comfortable playing from a hard, wood chair than in my much softer desk chair. But since I need my mouse accessible, I can't exactly sink into a couch. I wish I would have remembered to bring my lapdesk - that would have solved that issue beautifully.
Thankfully, latency isn't much of an issue. The DSL here versus cable back home both have me hovering at about 200 ms. But I doubt we'd have enough bandwidth here to run two (or three) windows of WoW simultaneously. Needless to say, my escapades with dual-boxing have temporarily halted. I'm just glad I'm not staying with someone who still runs dialup!
So it's not quite the same as back home, but I'm able to squeeze in a bit of WoW in between fun vacation-esque stuff. Enough to feed the addiction.
For any of you all looking to leave town for spring break or whatever reason and still hope to get in some gaming on a laptop you can travel with, I recommend: find a comfortable spot - bring a lapdesk (do as I say, not as I do). Don't forget your mouse - touchpads are incredibly difficult to use in-game. And if you have anything like a Zboard that you can fit in your luggage, bring it along, too. Even if you can't fit your entire desktop, a keyboard doesn't take up a ton of space. Of course, if you CAN bring a more powerful desktop, that also would be nice. Though it may limit your options for a spot to play. And no matter what the case, remember: You're on vacation! Don't forget to run some RL quests for fun, too!
So what's your WoW routine while on vacation - do you still find the time to squeeze in some playtime? And do you have any more tips to offer for those traveling?
Reader Comments (26)
weirdo? i can live with that :)