World of Warcraft

If you’ve been around long enough, you probably know that before the last expansion, Burning Crusade, was released, Blizzard put the new talents into the game for players to toy around with and test. My guess is they were doing some final testing and tweaking to see how these talents fared on a large scale basis and in raid situations. Many players have wondered (and weighed in on both sides) if we’ll be seeing the new talents again in the expansion. Blizzard did come out with somewhat of an answer..if you want to call it that..from a CM post on the forums:

“We haven’t stated this as of yet, so it wasn’t me. I have said that it is a possibility much like Burning Crusade, but I can’t confirm this for you at this time. When the time comes, we’ll be letting everyone know more details about our plans.”

Blech. I don’t know about you, but I want to know for sure! There’s a surprising amount of resistance to Blizzard releasing them early, though. Some players worry that talents designed for level 80 play will seem overpowered at 70 because there hasn’t been an increase in health and other stats. Retribution paladins in particular, an apparently very powerful class in the expansion, worry that their abilities will be needlessly nerfed because they are overpowered at 70 but will balance nicely at 80. Personally I say let us have them! I’d like to take some of my mage’s new arcane talents for a spin (arcane barrage!) and see if they hold up well in comparison.

The WoW Insider show recently announced that they’ll be giving away a beta key tomorrow to one listener. Here’s the summary from the post:

“Yes, not only is the WoW Insider Show going live again tomorrow afternoon as usual, and not only will I be making a return to the airwaves (after being stuck in LAX during last week’s show), but Turpster is going to make the ultimate sacrifice and give away a beta key from the Worldwide Invitational to one lucky listener. How can you win this treasured set of letters and numbers? By listening to the show, of course — tune in tomorrow afternoon at 3:30pm Eastern over on WoW Radio, and we’ll let you know how we’re giving away the key.

*Note: We’ll talk about this on the show I’m sure, but please note that we’re giving you a beta key, not access to the beta — it’s up to Blizzard to actually let you in. And we’re giving you a WWI key, which means it’s for EU players only — the key won’t let you enter the beta on US realms. Sorry US players, but all of our other contests are for you, so karma evens out.”

I don’t know about you, but as a US player myself I got all excited and then got down to the note…clever! I’ll likely be listening anyway though.

I present exhibit A.

Having a mage myself but rarely, if ever, speccing fire (I prefer arcane, if you can believe that), I hadn’t given much thought to the new fire talents other than “I guess that’s kinda sorta interesting.” The more I hear about living bomb, however, the more I feel its in need of tweaking. Let’s be honest here, that doesn’t really look like a living bomb, more like…living butane lighter. It just doesn’t do much damage, and the fact that it lights you up like a Christmas tree pretty much guarantees that even if it was useful, it’ll get dispelled in no time flat.

Improvement suggestions? I like the concept, so I’m not going to say they should scrap it and come out with a new talent, but it definitely needs to be improved. I think a knockback effect would have some use, but it needs more damage. Also, it should detonate upon being dispelled. This would keep a use and purpose in pvp other than an instant “DISPEL ME” buff. It would also make dispel classes think twice about dispelling it if its a devastating enough effect.

Obviously its still early on in the beta to make firm judgments on anything. However, if the past is any indication, unless there’s an outcry for change before the talent is locked in place (lightwell, anyone?) Blizzard tends to be slow in improving talents, especially ones that would be more difficult to balance. I do hope they find a way to make living bomb live up to its name!

While WoWhead has had a beta talent tree tool for Wrath of the Lich King up for some time now, Blizzard has finally added an official tool of their own! You can find the whole slew of available talents here. Of course these aren’t exactly official since its in beta and serious changes to talents are inevitable, but it certainly gives you an idea of what’s in store for your class when the expansion hits.

Initial impressions are varied for me. On one hand there are some great talents. For my mage, I’m definitely looking forward to arcane barrage, but deep freeze really looks night on worthless except for a select few pvp situations due to the requirement that the target be frozen. Paladins are getting a much needed AOE heal for raiding and 5-man situations, a great development for them, I believe, even if it is a heal over time. This will allow them to combat situations where the group takes consistent damage to multiple party members (such as the fight with Kael’thas in Magister’s Terrace). Typhoon for balance druids looks particularly devastating in pvp, especially small combat situations like the arena. My warlock should be getting a number of new tricks too, and haunt looks interesting to say the least. There’s a pretty large number of knockback spells in the works, and I wonder how that will affect pvp. I don’t really feel like getting tossed into oblivion every time I cross a bridge or narrow passageway, but we’ll see how it all balanced out.

I’ll be keeping an eye on the talents and any changes that come down the line, until then be sure to check them out and start putting up your talent builds once the expansion hits!

Well I’ve returned from the sunny beaches of Emerald Isle, North Carolina, and I’m happy to be back. I returned to see the latest development in Wrath of the Lich King, the achievements system, and figured I’d throw my hat in the ring. If you’re curious you can read the nitty gritty right here.

At first I wasn’t even sure if this should be added as an additional feature. After all, titles are currently in game that signify player achievements through raiding, the old pvp system, or even reputation with Shattered Sun Offensive. Obviously, they are taking achievements to the next level though, adding in hundreds of achievements you’ll be able to unlock through a wide variety of means:

“World of Warcraft’s achievements system will launch with more than 500 individual achievements covering every aspect of gameplay, including world exploration, PvE, PvP, professions, and character development; from the purely whimsical to the truly epic, there will be something for everyone. Some achievements come with in-game rewards such as tabards, vanity pets, and titles. All of these rewards are purely cosmetic and just for fun, but you’ll certainly stand out when you proudly display them.”

I think its an interesting way to add variation and uniqueness to player characters without actually making them more powerful. Many lament that Warcraft doesn’t provide an alternate advancement system, much like Everquest did in its day, but don’t take into account the consequences that would bring about. Unlike Everquest, player versus player combat is an integral part of the game, and allowing people to “level” skills past the cap would mean that players who play the most would have even more of an edge over the average player than they already do with better gear. Achievements may not be the most groundbreaking thing Blizzard’s ever done, but I’m happy to see it and I hope there are some vanity pets to go along with it.

As the expansion inches closer to release (with Beta just recently opening, its going to be a long haul!), many Community Managers are taking some time to address current issues. While some are more insightful than others, it helps give a feel for what the developers are thinking and whether they plant o make any changes in gameplay from now until Wrath of the Lich King is released:

On Flying Mounts and PvP by Nethaera:

“I never quite get the running away part right. I keep staying and fighting. I also don’t /spit.

I rarely care for statements that act as if they are fact. You personally may feel that they have ruined your PvP, but others may not feel the same, so what you are stating is opinion (which you’re completely welcome to have and express.) For me, it’s just another aspect that allows for additional strategies to be utilized whether it’s avoiding a fight or getting into a fight much quicker.”

On Blizzcon Tickets, by Nethaera:

“We’ll let you know as soon as they go on sale. Sorry, but I don’t have an ETA for you on this as of yet, however.”

On The Scourge Invasion World Event, by Nethaera:

” Currently we’re focused on developing future events so the Scourge Invasion is a bit on the backburner though it may very well be back again at some point in the future.”

Its a real pity that they aren’t doing more with the scourge invasion. I really enjoyed the event and seeing as many holidays/festivals have been fleshed out quite a bit since their initial release, I figured the scourge event would get a similar make over, but it doesn’t appear to be the case. perhaps after the expansion they’ll revisit the idea, since that would be particularly appropriate for Northrend.

In an effort to continue to improve their beta testing abilities, Blizzard’s new program to test their latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, involves having to opt in to the Beta rather than being randomly selected. Here’s a full summary below:

“Today we opened the Wrath of the Lich King Beta Opt-In program, which gives players a chance to win an invitation to the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King beta. For The Burning Crusade beta, we randomly invited players from the entire World of Warcraft community. With the Opt-In, our goal is to strengthen the beta-testing process by inviting only those players who have expressed active interest in participating.

Keep in mind that opting in doesn’t guarantee you’ll be selected for the beta. And players who’ve previously been promised beta access through a promotion or contest (such as by purchasing the Dell XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition notebook) don’t need to worry — you’ll still be entered into the beta automatically when the time comes.”

This means that in order to test out the Beta, you’ll need to head over (right now!) and sign up via the link provided. I expected a flashy page with a bunch of WOTLK doodads and imagery, but instead the process is very straightforward. Just follow the link, login, and voila, you’re in. Of course this doesn’t mean you’re in the Beta, just that you are eligible if Blizzard decides you are worthy. Make sure you get the following message to confirm your acceptance:

“You have successfully opted in for a chance to participate in the Wrath of the Lich King Beta. In the event that your account is selected, you will be sent an email with further instructions. Good luck!”

Good luck, indeed.
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We’ve always wondered what’s going in certain places of the world where Blizzard has created the potential for content but hasn’t fleshed everything out yet. Think about the Caverns of Time before the expansion was released. I mean it was a giant cave guarded by dragons and a previously oddly named door (doodle.something if I recall). Curiosity has often driven players to try and get to places they weren’t suppose to, there’s just something alluring about the mischief and fun of being in a “forbidden” zone. From Ironforge’s airport, to the unused dungeon near Karazahn, players want to explore.

Blizzard has had to put up a variety of artificial barriers to prevent players from doing just that. They’ve employed fatigue, which exhausts even your dead character to death. Guardians, which were super-powered mobs that would kill anyone trying to enter a forbidden area. Also they’ve simply eliminated the means, such as when they took away wall jumping in a recent patch.

Not all of these places will remain unsed though, according to a recent statement by a Blizzard CM:

“There are several areas in Azeroth that have yet to be completed. This is not to say that we never intend on revisiting some of these places. It’s all a matter of timing and finding a way to fit in some of our older ideas with some of our upcoming content.

For instance, the Stormwind Harbor makes sense now to provide the Alliance quick access to Northrend beyond flying to Menethil Harbor. Just the same we’re opening the Orgrimmar Arena to put it to good use for some new challenges in Wrath of the Lich King.

You may well see other areas in Azeroth of which we’ve yet to make use come to life some day.”

I sure hope so. I want to know what the heck is going on in Uldum, and I want to take off from Ironforge’s airport! I want to explore the lower levels of Karazahn, and fight the denizens that may inhabit them. I can only hope that we’ll be getting some more details, if they decide to go that direction. At the very least it looks like we’re going to get access to Stormwind Harbor and Orgrimmar Arena, which should be a fun experience!

Well in typical Blizzard fashion, it looks like the ice-themed splash page was not in fact anything related to Warcraft or, as some expected, Wrath of the Lich King. I had assumed as much, as speculation about a release date would inevitably lead to a huge amount of disappointment to fans expected some serious news, especially given that Blizzard makes *ahem* their release dates very…flexible.

Instead we did in fact get a pretty important announcement. I’ve been a big fan of the Diablo series, and there appears to be pretty wide ranging support for the game, even in the typically venom-ridden forums. The game’s site has an impressive amount of fluff for a game still in relatively early development, and you can check out the slew of information here.

As per the usual, things never seem to go right in Diablo’s world. Once again the denizens of hell rise up to terrorize the world’s inhabitants, and those that rose up to defend them, such as the notable Barbarian class of the 2nd game, have had their home destroyed, and now apparently roam the world without hope or reason. If you’re a big fan of dark storylines, I’d definitely check it out!

If you’ve visited Warcraft’s home page in the last few days, you’ve probably noticed the new prominent splash page featuring a rather cryptic image of ice slowly cracking away. Speculation abounds as to what the page actually means or what it portents for the near future. Here are some ideas from the forums, some of which are pretty comical (I’m pretty sure that a splash page thread gets created every few minutes).

“Has anyone considered that the splash screen could just an announcement that WotLK beta is open?”

“If you’ll look very closely near the bottom of the picture you see a nose. Now obviously any picture of baal in lore or outside of the game that nose looks exactly or at least VERY similar to Baal’s nose indefinitely. ”

“You play as a law enforcement officer who has to get drugs off the streets. Notice how over time, the ice has been disappearing? Well, that is the aim of the game: to get rid of the ice.”

“The big announcement is a collaboration between Lucas Arts and Blizzard. Together the twin headed monster of sci-fi and fantasy will finally be melded in a new project.”

“All of you people screaming about it being Diablo 3, or new Starcraft 2 information, or Starcraft 3, or a Starcraft MMO, or Warcraft 4, are all wrong. It’s a message about global warming. They want you to stop global warming or else their servers will melt and WoW will shut down.”

What about you guys? Have any thoughts? Ideas?

It’s that time of year again! Season 4 in the arena has officially begun, as well as the midsummer fire festival. There are a lot of new additions to the festival this year, which really blows last summer’s tame by comparison rewards and quests. You’ll find a new summonable boss in the Slave Pens, Frost Lord Ahune. This unique boss is similar to the headless horseman and will only be available for a short time. I’ve heard he’s a bit of a pain to bring down, but he drops a pretty sick scythe as well as a noncombat scorchling pet, which has riled up all the pet collectors out there. You’ll also find some more benign fun quests, such as torch tossing. You can read the whole writeup at Blizzard’s site here.

The addition of Season 4 arena gear also means that season 2 is now available via honor gear. I much prefer the battlegrounds myself over arena, so this is indeed great news! They’ll also be doling out end of season rewards as per the quote below:

“The team and personal rating have simply been reset to the default 1500, allowing all teams to once again compete for top honors with a fresh start. Also, with the end of the third season, players on the top teams from each battlegroup will be receiving their end-of-season rewards approximately one week from today. These include Arena-specific titles that they can display proudly until the end of the new season, and, for the best of the best, an Armored Nether Drake.”

Best get in there and earn some new gear!

I’m sure you’ve been just as frustrated when it happens. There you are, happily waiting for the queue to pop up, and there it is! You quickly enter your Arathi Basin, buff yourself up and…realize you’re one of 3 people there. The clock is ticking, and you watch anxiously as the opposing side fills up to full, while you start the round with 5 people. Desperately trying to cling to your last node hoping for reinforcements in time, you get rolled by 15-5 odds, and the game ends within a minute.

Ugh.

Blizzard isn’t ignoring our plight, per se. From the sound of it, they’re not happy with the way the system currently works, either. Here’s what Zarhym, a Blizzard CM, had to say about it:

” The fact of the matter is that the queue system has been altered over the years since the implementation of Battlegrounds to be the most convenient to the most players with regards to selecting one’s preferred Battleground, as well as the amount of time one must wait before entering a match.

An equal number of players from each faction at the top of the respective queues are selected at the launch of the Battleground. Each player selected is given a grace period to enter the match before they are automatically removed from the queue. The issue you’re describing is a result of players not entering the match when selected, and not leaving the queue before this grace period ends. By the time new players from the top of the queue are offered the chance to join the match, it has already begun. Most of you understand this; I only mention this to acknowledge the primary cause of the situation discussed in this thread.

It can be very demoralizing when one team is forced to begin a battle with less members than the opposing team. I’ve been there and experienced that first-hand many times over.

There are inherent issues with both leaving the queue system as it is, and imposing further requirements before a match begins. For instance, if we keep the match from starting until each side has an equal number of players, everyone is forced to wait beyond the actual queue time to ensure enough players have accepted to enter the match.

The choice may well be between suspending a match indefinitely until both teams have the same number of players; and starting a match lopsided so players can get through the match and carry on with their gaming. I suspect not everyone would have the same preference given this choice, and the difference could greatly impact the style, reason, and enjoyment of the Battlegrounds for many.

That said, we aren’t completely satisfied with the queue system as it stands.”

So what it boils down is that they WANT to fix it, but they don’t want to fix it by breaking something else. Seems fair, eh?

A hotly contested match decided MLG’s PC Circuit Arena competition in San Diego. While a number of players lamented the term “e-sport” and have some choice words for the idea that Warcraft is balanced enough to have a tournament around, it actually had an interesting team setup in the final match.

Frag Dominant rolled in with a Rogue/Warrior/Druid

Nihlium went with a Priest/Druid/Hunter (Hunter? Really?)

After 8 matches, the teams were tied at 4-4 before Frag Dominant pulled out the victory, I’ve never been interested in watching video games, but even I thought it was kinda cool to see what the best arena team brought to bear on its opponents. Here’s a short summary from MLG’s website:

“San Diego’s World of WarCraft competition marked the dawn of a new era in MLG’s ever-expanding world. MLG’s first foray into PC Competition was a fabulous success, with nearly all of the world’s best teams in attendance. Frag Dominant took no prisoners as they ousted higher ranked teams and fan-favorites alike on their way to MLG’s first PC Circuit title. With literally hundreds of thousands of people tuned in to the live broadcast from over 100 different countries, it’s clear that WoW is here to stay and we can only expect it to get more intense as the season progresses.”

Personally I think it’s great that some players are able to be compensated for something they love to do. You won’t see me over at the pro circuit any time soon, but I think the increased competition will encourage balancing pvp combat and give WoW a higher profile.

There’s an interesting discussion over at the forums today talking about the role that badges will play when Wrath of the Lich King hits the shelves. Essentially a Blizzard CM, Bornakk, confirmed that they’ll be changing the way that badges are distributed and used. Rather than a system where all badges are created equal, they’ll have different instances drop different badge types, which will then be traded in for different quality items.

Needless to say, this has caused a bit of a stir among the playerbase given that badge rewards were seen as a way for casual players to progress their characters without being pigeonholed into doing content they don’t have the time or inclination to see. On other hand we have no idea how the badges are going to be dispersed, gear quality between badge types, or if you’ll be able to exchange badges for another quality type. I actually read a great suggestion over at WoWInsider as to an exchange rate that players could utilize to trade in their badges for different rewards:

“BitterCupOJoe and darian, in comments on the Blizzcast post, neatly addressed this issue through a simple mechanism: exchange rates. Let’s say there are four types of badges; we’ll call them A, B, C, and D for simplicity. We know (from this same Blizzcast interview) that they want the 10-man and the 25-man versions of the same raids to be separated by about a tier in terms of item quality. Therefore, it would make sense if:

* Naxxramas, the tier 7 raid, drops A-Badges on 10-man and B-Badges on 25-man.
* Ulduar, the t8 raid, drops B-Badges on 10-man and C-Badges on 25-man.
* Whatever the t9 raid turns out to be drops C-Badges on 10-man and D-Badges on 25-man.”

Ultimately I think different badge rewards from different areas could be a boon to raiders and 10 man warriors alike. I’m not so sure that this new system will be an artificial barrier for players, but unfortunately that is a possibility. Only time will tell of course, despite the usual widespread speculation on the forums.

I love reading new tidbits about the expansion. Collecting and piecing together what to expect once WOTLK hits has been a fun exercise in patience, considering Blizzard’s rather slow stream of info pouring out. The latest is an addition to the monsters and races we’ll see in Northrend, the Magnataur. These huge, hulking creatures are essentially like the hulk version of centaurs, combining the top half of a giant with the bottom half of a mammoth, as per the above.

My first impression was “eh.” After all, does it really take that much creative ability to fuse together a larger centaur? But after reading the background for these beasts and their symbiotic relationship with arctic kobolds they’ve really piqued my interest. First impressions aren’t all that and a bag of chips, as it turns out.

Here’s a nice summary from the Beastiary page:

“Magnataur have the torso of a giant attached to the body of a mammoth. This peculiar appearance has sparked speculation that their race might be related to centaur or even Keepers of the Grove. Many wonder if these races share a common ancestor, and some have even suggested Cenarius himself.

The notoriously long-lived magnataur are rumored to engage in cannibalism during times when food is scarce. Single males are known to control giant herds and produce sizable litters, but in the frigid, perilous wastes at the roof of the world, only the strongest and meanest survive.

Despite their hostility to most races, the magnataur have become tolerant of the arctic kobolds, who follow the herds for safety and mutual benefit during long hunts. Although the redoubtable magnataur lead solitary lives, adventurers who cross paths with them quickly learn that it would have been wiser to stay at a safe distance.”

Bring it on!