Beta Theta Data

There is some cool stuff on the beta servers right now.

The new glyph interface is active, although a lot of new glyphs are still under development:

Cataclysm Glyph UI

Worgen can now customise both their Worgen and Human forms:

Worgen customisation screen - Worgen form

Worgen customisation screen - Human form

The Dark Phoenix mount is acquired through a guild achievement that requires completion of the first three raid achievements:

Dark Phoenix a guild achievement

A few tidbits:

• The vanilla raid instance Zul'Gurub is being removed (Source).
• Possibly due to popular demand or simply just efficient development, the heroic versions of Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines will now be released with the expansion, rather than in a later patch (Source).
• The patch notes have been updated for the newest beta build (12857: Source), and the level cap has been raised to 85 (Source), with Uldum and Twilight Highlands now accessible for testing.

A lot more has happened over the last couple of months. For some decent beta footage, check out the videos from TotalHalibut, aka Total Biscuit of Cynical Brit fame. He recently released one of a Stonecore dungeon run, and with the level cap now 85, expect end-game instance videos some time before the end of the beta:

Totalhobnob Stonecore run

Peace.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

My 41 Points

The first iteration of the new talent trees was released the other day. They are in serious beta mode, as Blizzard have not delivered what they have promised just yet. We can only hope that beta participants will be able to communicate clearly just what it is that should be altered, changed and adjusted.

Step 1: At level 10, choose your spec

Step 2: Other trees are locked as you fill out your chosen tree

Step 3: At level 70 the other trees unlock and more choices open up

There is a lot of work to be done on the trees. Let's take the priest ones as an example. Here is what I posted to the priest forums:

So many of these talents should not be options; they should simply be part and parcel of being that spec. Why should we be given the option of taking something like shadowform as a shadow priest? It should be there by default when you click "shadow" as your chosen spec.

There simply needs to be less choosing talents that no one in their right mind will pass over -- it defeats the purpose of having a tree in the first place -- and more taking things that really do seem optional, that you are sure not everyone will take.

Every single talent that you choose should offer the question: is everyone going to take this because it is a mandatory talent, or is this an actual option amongst all the other options I have?

Sure, a disc priest will play the same as a disc priest -- and the same for all specs -- but wouldn't it be cool if cookie cutter builds actually had half the talent points floating so that there were literally dozens of different specs to give a little different flavour. Makes it more personal. Makes it so you can look at another person's spec and go, "Wow, we have quite a few different talents but we are filling the same role, and neither one of us suffers for not having taken the exact same build as the other." And there you have many, many options.

What should be options (I'm not talking about what should be simply available) are taking damage talents as a healer, getting cool effects and bonuses added to key spells, and having a lot of options in each tree that really complement that spec in different ways.

If Blizzard do anything, it should be to approach the trees from scratch, offering each class specialisation the passives without spending talent points, and a whole heap of option when it comes to utility, boosting spells and doing cool stuff.

Right now, that is not the case. But it will be. I have faith.

Right, so why can't we have, say, a few shadowform boosting talents? Something like: Talent A: Improves shadowform by boosting mana by 5%/10% (2 points); Talent B: Improves shadowform by increasing shadow damage by an additional x/2x amount (2 points); Talent C: Improves shadowform by reducing stun and fear effects by 10%/20% (2 points); Talent D: Improves shadowform by increasing movement speed by 7%/15% and reducing the resistance to snare effects by x%/y% and reducing the time of snare effects by x%/y%.

And that's just one example of talents where people will have real options that really affect how they play their chosen spec, and there will be a whole lot more variety amongst players of the same spec, with a lot of utility and boosting options. Talents that are optional skills -- where you are having to choose wicked skill A, awesome skill B, intense skill C, or crazy skill D -- need to be a cohesively large part of each specialisation, as well as optional supporting talents that make you choose between multiple options; the benefits of which are not immediately apparent, but none of which will make you feel inferior to a different "build".

So for now, we wait. We wait until they dig out these trees at the roots and design a whole lot of new talents that will feel like they are worth taking; but that give you the option of taking. I really do want to be able to open up each of my characters' talent trees and feel that I am choosing more than simply mandatory talents with a couple of extras thrown in with leftover points. It has to feel substantial and solid and unique, with the cool, fun, powerful factor increasingly growing as you go down your chosen tree towards that big, bad talent at the end.

Peace.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Big Changes to Talents

The talent trees are getting a huge overhaul. You can read Zarhym's original announcement here.

The revamp will bring things closer to the original model of 31 talent points per tree. Players will choose a specialisation at level 10, when their first talent point is unlocked, and will then be locked to that tree until level 70. This will give choosing talents much more meaning as a. They make talents very cool and core talents available from level 10 (Mortal Strike, Stormstrike, Penance, etc); and b. Talents will be available about every two levels, with a total of 41 to spend by level 85, minimising confusion and giving much more meaning to choosing talent trees and the points themselves.

This means that only ten points will be available to give you the option of putting them in other trees from level 70. It will also mean that balancing each class-spec will be easier. People will know their role and have an expectation of filling that role from early on.

Dual spec will remain the same, as will being able to respec at any time. But expect to see a greater percentage of prot warriors and holy priests at the early levels, where levelling will be much easier as non-DPS specs and tanking / healing instances will be a lot more viable.

Because of the nature of how the trees will work, Mastery will be a learned skill at the high levels (around level 75), with the Mastery stat being on level 78+ gear. It will affect gameplay slightly differently now that the trees are being completely changed.

I'm excited about these changes. It seems to be moving more towards the design concept they originally had: removing bloat from trees; making the game more accessible to people; and making talents actually mean something for people. It sounds at first as if choice is being taken away from players, but the simplification of the talent specialisation process will make the game a lot more fun as people level and will give end-game characters a greater feeling of being the class-spec(s) they want to be .

It also means that in future expansions, expanding talents and skills will be much more flexible and allow for even more powerful and exciting changes without overhauling the tree system again.

On another note, I highly recommend checking out the following videos by TotalBiscuit at cynicalbrit.com:

• The Goblin starting zone (39:54)
• The Worgen starting zone (27:34); Part 2 @ YouTube (22:56)
• Blackrock Caverns instance run (19:06)
• Throne of Tides instance run (16:11)

For more, head on over to cynicalbrit.com. There are a lot of videos of changed areas from the air, such as Stormwind (7:20) and Stranglethorn Vale (6:50), not to mention new zones, such as Mt Hyjal (21:37) and Vashj'ir (9:36).

Peace.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Blizzcontinues

Blizzcon wrapped up today. There were a few interesting things, WoW-related. The Q&A that was recorded was interesting. Arena matches and tournaments don't interest me, but these Europeans won 75K and a replica Frostmourne each. How freaking cool is that?!

Read my Tokyo Game Show Review. It's not WoW-related, but it I was there all of yesterday while people in America were at Blizzcon. Seeing as it ran parallel to the other event, there is a connection -- of sorts.

I have been unable to play WoW this weekend. I go home tomorrow, and have Tuesday off, so that is plenty of time to spend levelling my warrior!

I also want to do some more mage testing. And, if fate smiles upon me, I wouldn't mind killing Kael and Vashj for the title, the achievement of which is being removed this week, with patch 3.0.2 going live on Tuesday. :o

The expansion draws closer -- and I still have not organised getting it upon release. :/

I spent a couple of hours today formatting my forum signature. I tweaked the animated gif a lot, ending up with a file that almost reached 400kb. I dumbed it down again and simplified it (at one point each toon's banner slid into place, which was a pretty cool effect -- but I have since removed this function), so that the file size is as small as I can achieve while it still serves its purpose: scrolling through each of my toons to display their various stats.

Read my thread here, for more info.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Build 9038

The classes continue to be tweaked as we draw ever closer to the release of the expansion. And the dilemma of getting my hands on a copy still plagues me. It will be disappointing if I can't pre-order locally and have to get a copy sent over from NZ.

Anyway, the latest release sees a handful of changes to skills and glyphs across the board. Head over to MMO-Champion for a summary of what this patch entails.

Recently, I have not played my warrior much. However, my druid reached exalted with Shattered Sun Offensive and I have been doing dailies with my rogue.

When 3.0 is released, I intend to do some oldschool content on my mage to aim towards some of the achievements before being able to level past 70. I am currently grinding Wintersaber Trainer rep.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Stormwind Harbor Update

I realised that I never put up the updated shots of Stormwind Harbor. So, here they are!

The entrance to the harbour

As seen from the top

A view of the harbour

From the docks looking back towards the city

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Build 8962

There is a new build with a few changes here and there. I won't list them all. However, I want to try and test out a few builds on a few classes. If I can get Recount to work or can find a replacement for it, I will do some testing on the beta realms and post results somewhere.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

To the Grave

And thus concludes my Death Knight testing. There really is no point in continuing to level him at this stage. I will wait until they go live. I will roll a premade level 80 one if there are many significant changes between now and when the beta ends.

Level 60, yo

I will stick with blood when I create a live DK. I like the tree in terms of DPS, and it is fun. I will look into possibly dual-wielding at level 80, but am not quite sure yet. I better understand the class dynamics now, though. It will be great to level one from 55 to 80. ;)

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Scaleable Items

Some items have been added to the beta that bind to your account (meaning you can mail them to your other toons), are not unique and scale according to your level. They are purchasable with raid tokens. This is a cool idea. I hope that they keep it in! First they change enchanting so we can make items to either auction, sell directly (or give to friends) or send to our alts. Now we get weapons and armour that are account-bound. Good stuff. ;)

Dignified Headmaster's Charge

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Beta Log: Lichdate 2008-09-11

I played the beta for a bit today. So far all I have really experienced is about as much as I did back in the alpha. I have only played my mage. It has been a mission to try and get addons to work, but quartz, pitbull and fubar all seem to work fine, so that is good.

I like Living Bomb. What I don't like is the mana inefficiency of fire. I also can't see the debuff on mobs so don't know the timer on Living Bomb.

Questing so far seems to be pretty straightforward, although I have had to check Wowhead for locations of certain things. I guess I just don't want to ride around aimlessly attempting to figure out where to go to complete any given quest. But then, once I've done them, when the expansion goes live I will zerg through them easily. :p

I have taken two screenshots. One didn't save. It was just the generic WotLK loading screen. The other one is of Stormwind harbour. I beg forgiveness for my lame UI at the time. I will take more screenies as time goes on, including replacing this one with a better shot of SWH, but I'm about as much of an in-game screenshotter as I am a photographer in the logged out world. That is to say, I don't take many pictures of what I experience. :/

Stormwind Harbor

Unfortunately, Murmer, the premade PvP characters realm, is down, so I can't log my premade mage. Hopefully I will get a chance to test a level 80 mage before the end of the weekend. XD

Edit: Northrend also appears to be down, which means I will be unable to play right now. I guess I'll be logging the live game now. :(

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Account: Activated -- Transfer: OK

I activated my WotLK beta account. I set up a premade gnome mage transfer (not much choice, really). It would have been nice to have been able to level my own mage from the start of the beta, but real life circumstances obviously prevented me from being able to play until three days ago.

I may yet transfer my mage (or maybe my priest) just to check out the new zones and quests. Either way, I will be playing the beta throughout this week. Who knows, I may even take some screenshots. :)

Edit: I transferred my mage and my priest to the PvE beta realm and my rogue to the PvP one. I'll check out Northrend tomorrow. I already saw a little bit of it in the alpha, but I'll be sure to play and see quite a bit more than back then.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Booya! Laptopzor!

Level 80 character transfers are live. My brother already set up a pvp warrior transfer to try it out on the beta servers.

And in headline news, I received my laptop tonight! I had to get two people from the office to come around and help me set up the Internet, because I live in Japan and my shiny new lappy is in Japanese. But I am now Internet capable at home, and able to set up WoW again! I should be able to log in as soon as it has updated. W00t!

I might even give the beta a shot. ;)

Edit: I adjusted my UI for widescreen. I will have to update all of my addons at some point. My, how time flies. It's almost 12am and I feel as if I didn't even do anything in-game yet. :o Oh well, two months to do everything I need to before the expansion. XD

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Beta Build 8820

It's here! The latest beta update. Changes to skills and talents. More class glyphs.

PvP Items
WotLK Arena Weapons Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3
WotLK PVP Necklaces | Rings | Cloaks | Trinkets

Lake Wintergrasp PvP Vendors
Epic Armor
Epic Belt/Boots - 24 800 Honor
Epic Bracers - 15 800 Honor
Epic Necklace - 19 000 Honor
Epic Cloak - 19 000 Honor
Epic Trinket - 24 800 Honor
Epic Rings - 19 000 Honor

Rare Armor Sets
Rare Chest - 6000 Honor
Rare Helm - 6000 Honor
Rare Shoulders - 4800 Honor
Rare Gloves - 3600 Honor
Rare Pants - 6000 Honor

Weapons
Off-hand items - 3600 Honor
Main-Hand (Healer Mace) - 10 000 Honor
Main-Hand (Melee) - 8400 Honor
Two Hands - 12 000 Honor
Ranged Weapon (Hunters) - 12 000 Honor
Throwing Weapons / Wands - 3200 Honor
Shields - 6000 Honor
Relics - 3200 Honor

New Professions Recipes
Engineering
Blacksmithing
Jewelcrafting

Level cap raised to 80 and new instances unlocked! Source.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

The Trailer is Here!

Another interview. We learn a little bit more about Icecrown and Arthas.


Quote

---

What can we expect from the currently closed zones in the Beta?
J.A.B: Icecrown is the home of the Lich King. So you'll see the seed of the scourge power. So there will be lots of different scourge things that happens there. Eventually there will be an actual raid to face the Lich King. That will not be when we release Wrath of the Lich King. That will be later on. In Storm Peaks we actually have two different dungeons, that are based on the titans, which are the creators of Azeroth. The next dungeon to open will be the Halls of Lightning.
T.C.: In Icecrown Glacier, theres something a little bit different that players may not have seen before, which is the Horde and Alliance quest hubs are actually gunships that are flying above the zone. Theres an Alliance gunship and a Horde gunship which are sorta the quest hubs.
J.A.B.: The idea behind it is, the Icecrown glacier is so full of the scourge, that neither the Horde or the Alliance have been able to get a toehold, and to create an actual base. So they've actually flown these goblin and gnomish engineering vehicles up and they act as the quest hubs.
The Halls of Lightning are also closed. What awaits us in there?
J.A.B.: The Halls of Lightning is the second of the titan dungeons that we'll be releasing with Wrath of the Lich King. I did a playtest of Halls of Lightning last week and its coming along real well, looks really cool. The art style for it is very good, very exciting. It looks other-worldy. It definitely has a lot of other worldy kind of influences. The architecture that the titans have is really different from the Horde and Alliance architecture. So it just looks very ancient, very powerful, very titan'ish.

---

Sindragosa -- The Frost Queen

See more.

The Wrath of the Lich King cinematic trailer is available to download from the official (EU) site. Download it using the Blizzard Downloader or Filefront.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

An Interview and Some Lore

On Lore. The OP was asking about NPCs / structures and their movement around the place according to Warcraft lore. The blue post addresses the movement of Naxxramas and Dalaran, as well as how Alliance get more Ashbringer / Arthas type lore than Horde. He also mentions the Warcraft fiction, such as comic books and such that have been written with reference to the worlds and their lore.

Quote

---

"By the way, regarding Naxxramas, I just wanted to confirm that this would only be moved to Northrend and the level 60 version will not be available anymore. It's likely there won't be any achievements relating to the old Naxxramas, except there might be something related to Atiesh."

---

Tom Chilton (aka Kalgan, Lead Game Designer) and J. Allen Brack (Production Director) were interviewed at gamona.de:

Quote

---

How is the beta going ? Is everything alright?
T.C. - Things are definitely going very well, we've got a lot of very good feedbacks through the beta process. We've been making a lot of changes and improvements based on the feedback but overall it's coming along very well.

The beta servers have been very unstable in the last days, is there any improvement ?
J.A.B - We've got our server team who is looking into all problems, the point of our beta process is to actually figure out what problems we have and get them all fixed before we do the big release.

Is there any plan to open more beta realms ?
T.C. - We do actually have plans to start up a realm that has premade characters at level 80, the reason being that we're going to want to give players another opportunity to test some of the end game content without having to go through the leveling process. We can probably do that near the end of the beta process but it might be on a different server, this isn't decided for sure.

When do you plan to open more instances and rise the level cap to level 80 ?
T.C. - Each time we do another patch on the beta we try to open up new content for the players. [...] I don't know if we'll be able to patch this week while we're being here in Europe but that should be coming very soon.
J.A.B - For each patch we try to evaluate how much content do we have, is it time to give players the chance to open that up ? We're talking internally about when it is time to rise us up to level 80 but we're getting close.

Why didn't you separate PvE from PvP more?
T.C. - We made that decision because prior to The Burning Crusade, what we found as people increase their gear they die quicker because PvE gear is specialized gear. For DPS classes as an example it is designed to do the most damage as possible in the shortest time as possible and it does not have a lot of survivability. If that's the best gear players have available, then what happens is they take that into PvP is that they die very quickly and there's not much time for their strategies to evolve. What we've found is that in PvP we had to create gear with balanced offensive capability and survivability and because of that we had to create this separate set of gear with the new stat called resilience to make sure fights lasted long enough so that they are interesting and have depth. [...] Well, certainly something that we want to do for Litch king is better crossover so that when you're doing PvE you are actually able to accumulate some PvP gear in case you decide to try out some PvP you'll have a good starting point. The same would go in reverse, if you're doing a lot of PvP, you might have a couple of really good items that you could use into PvE and do pretty well.

What about the paladin, is there any plans to nerf the DPS Paladin's damage from what it is on beta servers now?
T.C. - We are just now beginning on going through the heavy tuning phase, we really don't do that until the end of the beta generally, where we start going through all of the classes and finding the things that are way out of balance and there's no doubt right now that the ret paladins are doing a lot more damage than what we would expect.

Are you satisfied with how the death knight is going?
T.C. - Yeah, the death knight has been coming along very well, we've been getting a lot of good feedback from it, people seem to like the class, they seem to enjoy the starting experience very much, we really kind of put our heart into the death knight class, hopefully that's going to pan out.

What talent tree do you prefer on the death knights?
T.C. - Personally, I really enjoy the frost talents, but I believe all three trees are very strong, they all definitely all have a strong role to play.

What else do you plan? Are there any more instances coming?
T.C. - Well, certainly, there are a lot more instances we plan to release, CoT: Strath instance, Ulduar, a handful that we are play testing internally that are pretty much ready for players to see, should be one of the patches that come out any time now [...] but it should be rolling out there very quickly.

All the instances were very well designed, however, I consider it unfortunate that say, Azjol-Nerub only has three bosses, its very short.
T.C. - Most players would consider that a fortunate thing, we've been getting a lot of feedback in the past that some of the instances were taking too long, so we're going for the middle ground here, we want to have some diversity between the instances too, there are a lot of players that miss the old big dungeon crawls, like BRD, etc. We want to find ways to deliver that too, but ultimately I think the core experience is that players should be able to get through an instance in less than an hour. Its something that we're trying to be very conscious about in Wrath, unlike in Burning Crusade when we had the heroic instances, those take a very long time to get through, 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours depending on your quality of gear. We're trying to make sure when Litch King comes out that when you do the heroic instances, it doesn't take as much time going through it as you did before.

But, we need the epic feeling from the Blackrock Depths too.
T.C. - We're trying to capture that too as much as possible.

How do you plan to balance the 10 and 25 man raid instances? Are there any changes in boss design?
T.C. - There definitely are changes in boss design, for example, not only do we have to have changes in boss design even to get it down to 25 from the way Naxx used to work, certainly in the past at level 60, the four horseman boss took eight different tanks for instance. There definitely has been design change, but the integrity of the encounter remains the same, you still have the four horsemen, they all are still there. The mechanics of the fight are different, you will tank them in different ways, the horsemen will be tanked by different classes, even non tanking classes, kinda like what we have done in the past with warlocks tanking. We have some mechanics like that in place so that we can maintain the integrity of the encounters even though the actual mechanics will be different.

Will Naxx still be one instance?
T.C. - It is still a single instance, it still has that epic feel.

When will Wrath be released?
T.C. - When its ready. Specifically, the fifth of when it's ready.

---

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Mounts in Action

Check out these YouTube videos of beta mounts. XD

The Hog -- no doubt sped up.
Mammoth Mount -- just like a war elephant.
Frost Wyrm Flying Mount -- is it just for Death Knights? I hope not!
Bear Mount -- not quite as cool as an Amani War Bear.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

WotLK Cinematic and The Hog

Maxconsole.net reported the following mail from Blizz PR regarding WotLK. It has been widely circulated but has yet to be officially confirmed:

Just wanted to let you all know that Blizzard will be unveiling the opening cinematic movie for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King at the Games Convention in Leipzig. The cinematic will be shown at 1:00 p.m., Thursday 21 August at the Blizzard Entertainment booth (D01 in Hall 5). A Q&A session featuring members of the cinematics team will immediately follow.

Blizzard’s lineup of activity will also feature hands-on gameplay with StarCraft II and Wrath of the Lich King, Q&A sessions with members from the StarCraft II and Diablo III teams, and more.

Also, The Hog has been confirmed in-game:

• A few more changes have been or are being made to classes: Druid armour; Hunters' pet growl, boar charge and kill command; Shadow priests (I'm looking forward to seeing these changes); and Shaman totem tweaks and earth shock downranking.
• The recently added /cower animation is being tweaked. Source.
• Some passwords on the beta server may have changed to new ones when refreshed from live accounts. Source.

It seems that some players are excited about the release of the expansion. Even blues. XD

And finally, there is an update to the Blizzcon ticket lottery.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Flintlocke and Load

Good news for casters:

General
Spell casting and spell channelling pushback has been changed to the following:
When casting a spell:

• The first and second hit will add .5 secs each to the cast time.
• All hits after the second will have no effect.

When channelling a spell:

• The first and second hit reduces current duration by 25% of total duration each.
• All hits after the second will have no effect.

Read the full beta notes for the current build, updated yesterday.

Also, Fargo released the Director's cut of Flintlocke, a GameSpy WoW comic that originally ran from 2004-2007. You can read his comments below each panel in the comments section. With over 350 strips, the whole thing will take quite a while to get through; it might pay to take it episode by episode.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

The Beta Rolls On

There were a lot of beta changes over the weekend. More blacksmith craftable weapons and armours have been released; Lake Wintergrasp (PvP zone) was made available; Mages, Warriors, Rogues, Shaman, Druids, and Warlocks all had their talents updated; Naxxramas tokens can be used to purchase a healer shield and a tank shield; many new class glyphs for the inscription profession have been released.

I still yearn for a laptop to hook myself back into playing, grarghhh. :o

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore