Spugnort's

Archive for April, 2009

Algalon, the hard mode only end boss in Ulduar, has still not been defeated by anyone!  Why you might ask?  He can only be fought ONE hour per WEEK!  If your group does not defeat him in that hour, you have to wait an entire week to even try again.

While surfing around the web this week I was able to come up with a couple of posts you simply must check out for all the goods available on Algalon at this point.  Warning:  If you want to be surprised by the encounter with this boss, then clicking on the links below is not for you as the sites you will be taken to contain MAJOR spoilers!!

• MMO Champion has an entire page dedicated to explaining all of his abilities, achievements associated with him and screenshots submitted to them by Wraith, which is one of the guilds who have engaged this boss so far.
• You Tube also has a video posted by Underground Kosmonavts of their encounter with Algalon.  Although the boss’ intro takes up a good portion of the video, you do get to see a bit of the fight mechanics.

This fight looks like it will be pretty brutal, but I can’t wait to see more information about it as more guilds make it to this content and put more screenshots and videos out there for us to admire.  We will definitely keep you updated right here when the World First kill happens!  Good luck to all who are far enough to have a shot at it this week!

As of 12:01 am Pacific on Sunday, the Noblegarden celebration was live on all US servers.  I spent some time over in Bloodhoof Village collecting up eggs and eating chocolates on Sunday.  Something’s kind of not right for me though, I mean Easter was weeks ago so I am having a hard time getting into the whole egg-hunting, chocolate-binging, playing dress-up spirit.

These activities are usually better when done while everyone is still in the Easter holiday spirit, but I will say I don’t think this has stopped most players as the starter areas were all very crowded and many of the egg spawn locations were camped by rotten cheaters!  lol

I’m just saying that I am not enjoying this quite as much as in years past but, because I am such an achievement hound, I will hunt the eggs, eat the chocolate, find friends for my bunny and annoy female players of all races (I’m so glad my main is a male) for the achievement points!

Let me know what you think…are you into the Noblegarden celebration or are you just there for the Achievement points?

Re-speccing is something we have all been doing a lot of lately, whether by choice or due to necessity.  I know that re-specs (even free ones) can be a bit irritating when you can’t really remember where those darn points were to begin with.  Well, we can help or at least the Talented mod can help!  Talented is an addon for managing talent specs on all your toons.  This is especially nice for people like me who have a couple of 80’s and several lower level alts.  Without this addon, talent resets would be a big pain in the you know what!  Some of the convenient features of Talented are:

• You can import/export to or from Wowhead and official Blizzard talent calculators.  Which means, this integrates very nicely with the Spugnort PvP Guide since we use Wowhead for all our talent builds!
• In-game talent calculator which can be used to build and save your own templates.
• Talent builds can be applied from all sources with one simple click.
• You can set a build as your “goal” spec and the mod will remind where to put the skill points as you level.
• The addon will display all three talent trees at once so you don’t need to switch tabs at all, it’s all right in front of you!  Pretty slick, huh?
• Full support for dual specs and pet talents has been added to comply with 3.1 updates.  The SpecTabs plugin also makes swapping specs a bit easier.

So, really I don’t see areason not to have Talented.  Some people don’t like the idea of an addons setting their talents, but this mod has been widely used since the release of TBC and I have not heard of any major problems.  So when talents get wiped again and again all you have to do is load up a teplate and click “apply” and voila…good to go!

Check it out!

There were some in-game fixes applied during the past week that were not part of the most recent patch.  They range from fixes to the Yogg-Saron encounter to small player ability and spell fixes.  The complete list is below:

• The time between Mole Machines spawning in the Razorscale encounter has been slightly increased.
• The Yogg-Saron encounter has received the following changes: Guardians of Yogg-Saron in phase 1 and Immortal Guardians in phase 3 have had their health reduced by 15% in heroic mode, the Destabilization Matrix cast by Mimiron will now correctly hinder the casting speed of Crusher Tentacles in both normal and heroic modes.
• Psychic Horror will now properly disarm targets at all ranges.
• The Razorscale encounter has received the following changes: the mole machines should now spawn closer together, Razorscale’s Fireball damage has been decreased in normal mode only, and Dark Rune Sentinel health has been reduced.
• Players can no longer summon the Black Knight unless you are riding an Argent Warhorse.
• Some of the trash mobs in Ulduar have received the following changes: the Molten Colossus should do less damage in normal mode, the Superheated Winds cast by Magma Ragers should have a smaller radius, and a slightly slower periodic damage, and Faceless Horrors have had their health reduced.
• Freya’s Gift will now properly contain Emblems of Valor or Emblems of Conquest as appropriate for the completion of the encounter.
• Kologarn should no longer permanently despawn without being killed.
• Some creatures in the Conservatory of Life have undergone the following changes: the health of Guardian Lashers has been reduced, reduced the number of charges of Elder Stonebark’s Petrified Bark ability, the healing of the Forest Swarmer’s Pollinate ability has been reduced, the frequency of the Forest Swarmer’s Pollinate ability has been increased, the healing of the Misguided Nymph’s Bind Life ability has been reduced in heroic mode.
• Ignis the Furnace master has had his melee damage reduced.
• Shadow Mastery and Improved Scorch will no longer stack with each other.
• Critical strikes from the Hunter ability Explosive Shot should properly trigger Thrill of the Hunt again.

This the most recent list of hot fixes applied to WAR:

General Changes & Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that could in some cases prevent players from interacting with the supply crates associated with the Beyond the Sands Live Event.
• Fixed an issue where players who had completed all 12 Live Event tasks for Beyond the Sands were only receiving credit for completing 10 tasks. Please speak to your Event Herald in The Inevitable City or Altdorf to correct this issue and receive credit for the two remaining tasks.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the Beyond the Sands Live Event not to be active in Avelorn on the Dark Crag server.
• Nehekharan Treasure chests revealed by the Aviator Goggles will now drop their intended loot upon death.
• Depot Crates for the Live Event located in Ekrund, Marshes of Madness, The Badlands, and Thunder Mountain will now appear in greater numbers.

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The official patch notes for 3.1.1 have been released!  Ther are just a few official changes to report and keep in mind these do not include all of the changes already made over the past week, some of which will not be effective until after the servers come back up today.  For a link to those see my previous post.

General

• In order to address issues with the dual talent specialization system, all players will have their talents points refunded. Players who have purchased dual talent specializations will have both specializations reset. Glyphs will not be affected by this reset.

Bugs

• Characters who are not of the same race or class are once again able to view each others’ professions linked in chat.
• Fixed an issue in which player and pet nameplates were appearing larger than normal.
• Thrall’;s throne has been adjusted back to its proper size and the base replaced. He will no longer need to defy gravity.
• Fixed an issue with a display error on druid leather helms.
• Corrected an issue for GeForce2/ATI 7 series card users that would result in critical errors for select actions in game. As a result certain projected textures, like spell effects and targeting circles, will no longer render on some terrain objects.
• Achievements:
  • Corrected an issue preventing players from earning the achievement, “Storming Stormwind.” Players who were not properly awarded this achievement for completing the objective should retroactively be granted completion.

Warlock

• Demonology:
  • Fel Synergy (Rank 1): Corrected the tooltip to now display the proper healing amount.

Dungeons and Raids

• Caverns of Time: Culling of Stratholme
  • Fixed an issue with the outside map not appearing correctly.
  • Fixed an issue where an incorrect skin was being applied to certain classes/races when the Human Illusion buff is cast upon them.
• Ulduar
  • The mob packs in the XT-002 Deconstructor encounter can now be engaged separately and are no longer linked.

Today there will be some extended downtime from 3AM – 11AM PDT.  Blizzard will be applying a content patch to fix some issues that could not be resolved via hotfixxes.

With this players will be getting a full refund on their talent points, so don’t forget to re-spec as soon as your server is back online.  I also anticipate that with this patch we will see the start of Arena Season 6, however that has not yet been confirmed.

Now, I’d love to actually have official patch notes to share with you, but they have not been released at the time of this post, so the forum thread over on the official WoW site with a list of all the recent changes will have to suffice for now.  We will get the patch notes up as soon as they become available.

So, fire up your game launcher and start the patch downloading before you leave for work or school and you’ll be all set to play when you get back.  That is if they get it all right this week! 

Patch 1.2.1 hit live servers on the 16th.  This patch brings with it many changes and upgrades so I have included the final patch notes below:

Highlights

Keep Upgrade System

Own a Keep? Want to keep it? Want to get more out of it? Then the new Keep Upgrade system is perfect for you! Guilds that own a Keep can now purchase upgrades to bolster their hold’s utility and defenses in a variety of ways.

Once a Keep has been claimed, a guild member with sufficient permission can speak to the Guild Keep Agent on the upper level of the Keep to choose what upgrades to purchase. These upgrades require a periodic maintenance fee and some are available in multiple levels. Once purchased, upgrades will take time to be completed. This process can be monitored via the new Keep Upgrade Interface. Upgrades will decay if funds are unavailable to pay their maintenance or if a guild member chooses to stop paying for the upgrade.

Combat Responsiveness Improvements

We are always working to improve the overall responsiveness of our game client and server. With version 1.2.1 players will see some significant improvements including the following:

* Casting times have become more accurate under normal play conditions, and players should no longer see a significant “stretch” or “pause” when casting spells in low or moderate latency situations.

* Accuracy of the spell cast UI has been improved. The display will now show 1/2 second increments and will no longer “stretch” time to compensate for latency. Instead, players will see a pause after the bar has filled completely if they are in a high-latency environment.

* Continued improvements to animation and visual effects performance have been made. Players will see smoother transitions between animations and significantly less stuck visual effects, especially when chain-casting abilities.
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This is a feature I missed when 3.1 hit the live servers, but I think it is a great idea!  Purchases made with “alternate currency” (currency other than Gold) in the game are now refundable for 2 hours after the initial purchase was completed.  This goes by game time, so it will only count for time you are actually logged in.  This is pretty sweet because in the past if you made an accidental purchase with alternate currencies you were just plain stuck with whatever you got and out the badges or emblems you were saving up for what you needed.  Now, this does come with some stipulations (of course):

• Stackable items like frozen orbs or uncut gems are not eligible for refund using this system.
• Items that grant achievements upon purchase are also not eligible for refund.
• Any enchantments or effects applied to to an item will not be returned if you sell it back to the vendor so it is a good idea to be completely sure you would like to keep the item before enchanting or altering it in any way.
• If you trade in your Emblems or badges on other alternate currencies, this is also non-reversible.

That’s a basic summary of how the system works, but for the full blue post and the FAQ about all of it, you can click here.  Even with the limitations, this is still a really nice new feature…thanks, Blizz!!

Talent bugs have plagued many players since the release of patch 3.1 and the new Dual Spec. option hit last week.  Blizzard is well aware of the ongoing issues, but it will take a small content patch to fix the problem, which is whay things have not been “hotfixed” at this point.  The good news is that they are working to get said patch out the door as soon as possible.  With what I’ve been reading, I would not be surprised to see it on Tuesday (4/21) or at the latest 4/28.

Eyonix made a post addressing this issue saying that “In the next upcoming minor content patch all talents are going to be wiped, but not glyphs. So, make sure you put the right talents with the right glyphs, or you’ll have to respec/reglyph to fix it.”  So, if you were thinking about a respec I’d wait and see what happens tomorrow as you just might luck out and get it for free!