Dell's World of Warcraft Laptop

Psychor writes "Dell has released a high specification new laptop complete with World of Warcraft branding (Horde and Alliance versions available). With a starting price of $4,499 it's not cheap, but does feature SLI graphics and AGEIA PhysX technology (a laptop first). RAID and solid state storage are also options." Unfortunately for purchasers, the laptop won't boot on tuesday mornings until early afternoon, and some days you just won't be able to log in.

Is this really needed?

[RogueyWon]

Given that World of Warcraft used to run just fine on my old P4 2.0ghz with 512 RAM and a Geforce 4, why on earth would I want to spend such a ludicrous sum of money on a laptop to play it with? I know that Burning Crusade was a little harder on systems than the original game and that Lich King is likely to be slightly more so, but we're still not talking about a game on the cutting edge of technology here. Even cheap, off-the-peg PCs bought in the last two or three years should be able to run it just fine. World of Warcraft relies more on design than technology for its visual appeal.

Crysis? Sure, I can see that people could need an expensive upgrade to play that (I know I would - although after playing the first 2 hours, I'm not convinced the game is worth it)... but not World of Warcraft.

That said, I can see some redeeming value here, provided they design it so that the Horde laptop randomly crashes and reboots, mysteriously formats your hard drive at regular intervals, sends filthy e-mails to your mother and electrocutes your dog.

Re:Credit where credit is due

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the Internet, and your crappy ad-farm doesn't own the news story. Don't be so butthurt.

Hmmm

[scubamage]

Given that it basically comes with both collectors editions (either of which can fetch upwards of 1200-1500$ on ebay), as well as a beta ticket for upcoming betas, this is a pretty good deal. I wish I could afford it. Not just for WoW either, with a physics accelerator and the SLI'd graphics this a pretty beastly desktop replacement.

wow..

[seheart]

Are you kidding me? I like Dell's cheap machines and love Warcraft, but if you wanted to sell a lot of them, they wouldn't price them so high. You're trying to sell these to gamers not investment bankers. Way overpriced.

Apple not so expensive anymore...

[mnslinky]

So, I run WoW on my MacBook Pro CoreDuo (not the Core 2 Duo), and it's graphics are all maxed out in options, and I still pull around 39fps. My laptop only cost me a $3,000.

Seriously, fully spec'd, that Dell WoW lappy maxes out at around $6400! WTF?

Huh?

[gstoddart]

Unfortunately for purchasers, the laptop won't boot on tuesday mornings until early afternoon, and some days you just won't be able to log in.

OK, this might be an in-joke for you WOW players, but, honestly ... WTF???

Strange random stuff shows up in summaries, but this is probably one of the more arcane ones.

Cheers

Re:Hmmm

[scubamage]

*shrug* I see people spending tens of thousands of dollars "pimping their rides" when a gremlin or a pinto can do the job. I enjoy what I enjoy, and its not really important what anyone else thinks about it. Crackheads spend their money on crack, audiophiles spend their money on audio, movie buffs spend money on movies, I'm a gamer and I choose to spend my money on a game. To each his own.

Re:Yeah you are right...

[RogueyWon]

Or perhaps a Crysis/CoD4/anything-that-might-actually-challenge-a-modern-PC branded uber-laptop, mmm?

It's no secret that its the fps market that drives the top-end gaming PCs market. MMORPGs such as WoW are generally designed to be relatively undemanding, to maximise the player-base. A cynic might suggest that it is those who are time-rich but cash-poor (to put it euphemistically) who are the most reliable market for these games, so forcing an expensive upgrade doesn't make sense.

Re:Massive Overkill

[Chi Hsuan Men]

There's no reason other than bragging rights and honestly in computer games, It doesn't matter at all

Last time I checked the entire WoW community revolves around the concept of possessing the biggest, shiniest, chock-full-of-stats l00tz. Furthermore, WoW players will pay hundreds of dollars for a card containing an unlock code so an purple monkey with wings and horns that serve no purpose other than to follow their character around.

While there may not be any reason other than bragging rights to own this laptop, bragging rights matter a great deal to the community this technological terror is marketed to. While it may not sell like gangbusters, I'm sure they'll ship more than a few of these.

Good call!

[hemorex]

Right! We need physics acceleration for a game that doesn't even have hit-box collision... I think I'll keep playing on my dinosaur PC, thank you very much.

Re:Is this really needed?

[Blakey Rat]

"Is it needed?" - that's a really stupid question about any article in the video games topic.

No, it's not needed. It's designed to play a video game. Duh. And for the record, you're right, the hardware in this laptop isn't needed to play the current version of World of Warcraft effectively.

However, if you read the article, it also comes with a lot of WOW-related merchandise and swag and for many people I think it'll be worth the cost. Hell, you have WOW players who'll spend $4500 on monopoly money, why not on beefy hardware? (Remember economics: the product is worth what people are willing to pay for it. Dell's going to sell a lot of these for $4500 a pop, therefore it's worth $4500.)

One of the pieces of swag is a custom action figure designed around your in-game character... maybe it shows what a geek I am, but I'd actually be interested in finding out how much that costs. (The article mentions Figureprint, but that a Google search doesn't bring up anything that seems relevant... does anybody know where/how to order one of those?)

Re:This laptop makes a real statement...

[mrv20]

Q. Which one is more likely to result in catching a virus?
...

Re:The rell Dell WoW laptop

[ACMENEWSLLC]

Yea, that's the point. If you just want a decent laptop which plays WoW, and don't want to pay insane amount of money then that's your laptop. Throw some WoW stickers on it and viola.