Last July, I took advantage of a ten day free pass, and played WoW for the first time since Dec 2005.

The computer I used had a radeon 9700 pro - a five year old vid card, and it ran fine, even in Ironforge. The cpu isn't impressive, either - just an old p4 3.2 with two gig of wimpy 333 ddr ram.

Those specs are almost comical, and yet WoW performance was mostly smooth. This is - of course - one of the many reasons that WoW is so popular - you don't need an uber system to play it.

Maybe publishers can learn something from this - don't freeze out large numbers of customers with insanely high system requirements.

As far as competition, age is more of a factor than hardware, I would think, but I'd definitely want better specs for pvp.

Out of curiosity, do BG have more lag than IF?
 

Having smooth gameplay does help immensely, but that's why most hardware-intensive games since Wolfenstein 3D have some sort of detail level settings. WoW is no exception. If you look on the setups of competetive players on FPS games such as the Unreal Tournament or the Quake series, they have fast computers, fast network connections and still keep their details at a minimum. They even go to such lengths as to replace in-game textures with simpler ones to boost their framerate (and improve contrast between scenery and enemy players).

No, PvPing when people have different setups isn't fair. Tough. Ensuring equal opportunities is simply infeasible most of the time. Which is why the tournaments usually use standardized hardware in controlled conditions. WoW is not an exception.

Let's use marathon runners as a metaphor. We have runner #1 who trains with top-of-the-line ergonomically designed shoes, aerodynamic clothes, carefully controlled diet and a personal trainer. Then we have runner #2 who practices by running barefoot between two villages somewhere in Africa. Now both runners #1 and #2 hear that their respective countries are sending them to the Olympics, where they will be using standardized shoes, standardized clothing and running on a standardized track. Both get access to a personal trainer and go on a controlled diet. Even though runner #1 might have reached better times during training, runner #2 might win the gold medal now that his "handicap" has been removed.
 

Oh, and battlegrounds usually have less lag than Ironforge. There's lots of battleground servers out there so the load can be better distributed, and the worst-case scenario (40 vs 40 Alterac Valley) is much better than the worst-case scenario in Ironforge. In the old days IF might have contained as much as half (which is around 500 players) of the server's currently logged-in Alliance population. And probably some Horde as well. ;-)
 

Shalkis, I don't think you understand the settings of FPS players. If the machine is high end, players usually have their settings set high. In the big competitions, the computers will be sponsored by the hardware companies and the graphics will be turned on super high to promote the hardware as best as possible.

Also, the competitions for most e-sport games happen on LANs, so latency is not an issue.

You are really talking more about the minor league gaming competitions played over the Internet. Having participated in many of these, I can tell you that hardware setup has little to do with the outcome. The only time it has an effect is when the hardware is well below requirements. Matches comes down to skill and team work.

Part of the preparation for getting to that point is understanding how to set up your client (cvars) and optimize your hardware performance. Usually, that is determining your max sustainable FPS and mirroring your network connection to that. By the time a competitive match rolls around, every player on each team has their machine set to maximize their potential, which turns the emphasis onto skill, strategy, and execution.

Now if you are on some random public server, settings on your end can help you seem better, but that isn't really competition and really does not translate into competition. Most of the time, you are just taking advantage of casual players who are not maximizing their settings. Also, the server could be set up in a way that only people with the server information can optimize their settings.

My FPS clan regularly dominates as individuals, but since we rarely get to play together as an organized team, we get beat in scrimmages against other clans.

Translated to WoW, your hardware does have an effect since there is no control over the server performance in relation to every player participating. However, WoW has such easy to reach minimum specs, that hardware is not an issue for 75% of the player base IMHO.

Also, the recent news of Arena exploiting through the abuse of high latency, shows that the hardware aspect of the equation only matters when it is really really bad.
 

"Also, the recent news of Arena exploiting through the abuse of high latency, shows that the hardware aspect of the equation only matters when it is really really bad."

Latency exploits in PVP for wow have been going on since launch.
 

On the positive side going from a 19" CRT to a 22" wide format flatscreen was like taking the horse blinds off, my viewing angle of the game improved significantly.

Actually, WoW chops off the top and bottom of the screen instead of adding more space on the left and right, so it's more like you're putting on Robocop's visor. Details here: http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8292

You can compensate for it by using a zoomout addon like improvedcamera. http://wowui.incgamers.com/?p=mod&m=3108
 

Quite frankly hardware doesn't have enough effect to gaming that it would matter... atleast in World of Warcraft because the games tempo is so slow. You have plenty of time to react to everything especially since drawdistance maximum is pretty near your character. Wider view doesn't affect so much because of that.

About the topic in general, most eSport tournaments use standard setups for contestants eliminating this couple of percent difference you were talking about. :)

And Ran, according to my experience, world of warcraft adds to left and right so you get a wider view of the world with a 16:10 screen anyways. (And yes, I got access to 4:3 and 16:10 at the same time so I can confirm it)