Thanks for the advice.  I'm finding out how to install SFFT, downloading it, and looking at the MesaFX stuff.  Praying that I don't screw up my nVidia's drivers in the meantime, heh.

Alright, everyone's favorite masochist here.  My brother got World of Warcraft recently.  I'm inclined to join him.  My GeForce FX5600 256mb DT+ from ABIT died recently.  It's the third one they've sent me, and the third one I'll send back.  So, to summarize, no ABIT products will be used in the making of this gaming experience.  3dfx, you are my hero.  I had an old 3dfx Voodoo3 AGP that my brother used (I didn't have a motherboard with AGP back in the time that we used Voodoos, so my old Voodoo was a Voodoo3 PCI--almost as kickass) that I subbed in.

That makes my system configuration as follows:

AMD Athlon XP 2100+
512mb of some generic memory
3dfx Voodoo3 AGP
Creative Labs Sound Blaster

Great.  Keep in mind that the last upgrade was to the video card.  You know, to the dead ABIT card.  Shall I remind you that ABIT ships lots of defective products?  I shall.

I got 3d-Analyze.  I also downloaded the DirectX 9.0c redistributible AND the SDK.  The SDK says my operating system is unsupported and bails.  Okay, Microsoft doesn't like the fact that I still use Windows 2000.  Someone, please shove a rake up the management's ass and tell them to stop insisting that everyone phone home about their use of Windows.  Speaking of phoning home, the redistributable for DirectX 9.0c tries.  Repeatedly.  1200 blocked packets later, DirectX is updated to 9.0c.

Step two.  Install World of Warcraft.  I am handed an unholy packet of four little compact discs.  Each of them spews roughly 700mb of stuff onto my computer, since Blizzard is always efficient.  I install World of Warcraft, and watch Star Wars Episode 3 in the meantime.  Some of the writing in that movie was terrible.  Great, World of Warcraft is installed.

Next, I curiously try running World of Warcraft.  My video card is not supported.  Go to hell.  Unzip 3d-Analyze.  Run 3d-Analyze.  Open World of Warcraft's executable.  Check all emulation options (HW TnL, other DX8.1 caps, pixel shaders, bump maps, max sim. textures) and run World of Warcraft through 3d-Analyze.  Get to the login screen.  Realize that my brother just got a group.  Wait.

Brother's group finally breaks up.  Yay for a 175mb patch.  Seeing as Blizzard ripped off Bittorrent, this should only take 15 minutes or so...  Too bad that applying the patch takes longer than downloading it.  I read the patch news while it patches.  Twice.  I also organize a crapload of MP3s.  I break into a Blizzard developer's house and rearrange his CDs.

Okay, so I'm in World of Warcraft, pop into the login screen.  Log in.  That works.  Find a realm.  Check.  Use the realm I need to.  Yay.  Select a character.  Pop in.  Notice that there are no character models being displayed.  About 15 seconds later, as the character model probably should be popping in, watch as World of Warcraft freezes.  And that's where I'm stuck now.

Disabling textures doesn't seem to help--still crashes.  I'll try it again with an attempt at logging the crash and writing any shaders being used to a file, but somehow I doubt this will yield much.  Anyone here have input as to what might be occuring?

To try to elaborate: The 3d engine starts, and is rendering the world.  My character does not appear.  Ever.  I can run around for a few seconds without any incident, but after those few seconds are up, the game spontaneously crashes.  It is not a hard crash--something's stuck in a loop or something.  The game still responds to alt-tab, and the game still responds to "end task"...