ok, so i recently went back to the US for a short visit, where i was able to play Wrath.

I will be goddamned if i have to sit here and wait for The9 to pull up its pants after the butt raping it took and own up to the fact that they suck at wooing the govt for approval of the expansion and stop suing Blizzard.

I thought i read that the ping to US/Euro servers is back to a "minorly" playable level. Can someone confirm this?

My other question is this.

I want to install 2 versions of wow. One being the current (US client patched to Chinese servers; pre Wrath) and on a separate drive, the Us client patched to the most current US version, so i can play wrath on US servers.

IS there any special info i need to know about how to do this? i dont want to mess up my current version in the event CWOW is opened relatively soon

in the meantime, gogo Crysis and bars

Hi booty,
Wow don't need to be on an install path to work, you can install it on your c:\ and copy it on your z:\ removable harddrive it will still work the same. So duplicating your client and patching it separatly won't be a problem(I did it recently), but! as long as one of the version can be on an unplugged harddrive.
When lauching the patch you can't choose the game folder, so if you have 2 who can be patched it can be a little messy. I had some troubles patching a chinese client with a chinese patch caus it would try to patch my english client... weird I know.

And as far as ping is concerned, I'm not from US so I can't comfirm, it seems it's ok for solo(below 500ms) but if your client start to brew other players info it can be a little laggy.

Over a year ago, I tried playing on Oceanic US servers and the ping sucked. I even chose a Warlock specifically cuz if I went link dead, at least I had a chance of surviving if I was in the middle of a fight. But eventually, it got too frustrating and I quit. That's when I picked up on Chinese WoW and it was a wholly different experience. I could actually enjoy the game as it was intended... I think if you raid consistently, you'll be phenomenally frustrated with the game performance and therefore your personal performance.

On the other hand, some people I've heard have been able to play US servers, but none that raid high end encounters. I would probably opt for Taiwan servers if I were to jump off the mainland. However, I've also heard it may take hours for you to login due to the queues...

I remember when TBC launched in China, I'd often have to wait up to 30+ minutes to login... sucked.