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General

• Icecrown Citadel
  • The Pit of Saron in the 5-player dungeon is currently available for testing.
  • Additional Icecrown Citadel dungeon and raid content will be made available in future test builds.
• Dazed: Creatures attacking a player from behind can no longer cause players level 1-5 to be dazed, and have a reduced chance to cause players level 6-10 to be dazed.
• Copied Test Realm characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

Classes: General

• Default Equipment: Starting weapons are now more uniform. Rogues now start with a pair of daggers equipped. All other classes except shamans start with a 2-handed weapon equipped and the required skill already known. Shamans start with a 1-handed weapon and a shield, as they benefit more from the shield than they would from a 2-handed weapon.

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This week Blizzard deployed patch 3.3 to the PTR and released the official patch notes. These notes are full of cool changes and additions and of course the PTR now has part of Icecrown Citadel (The Pit of Saron) available for player testing with the promise of more to come in future test realm builds. There are also some significant changes to class specific spells like Hunter’s misdirection, Rogue’s vanish and Shaman’s fire totem just to name a few. With this patch we will also see changes to health and mana regeneration, racial attribute bonuses and some bug fixes. You can read the PTR Patch Notes for all the information. Please keep in mind these are test realm patch notes and are subject to changes and additions prior to the patch’s release to live servers.

Along with the release of patch 3.3 to the PTR, Blizzard released more details on the Icecrown Citadel. This massive, sprawling instance will include the opportunity for players to battle their way through three separate wings in a progression style, meaning you must complete one before moving on to the next. Each wing will be considered it’s own separate instance, have it’s own lockout timer and items new and unique to reward it’s conquerors. For the full Blizzard post and more detail about the separate wings, check out their post about the upcoming Citadel instances.

We have posted an update for Spugnort’s Horde Leveling Guide and the Ultimate Guide Pack to add support for the 3.2 patch. This updates all of the included mods to their latest revisions. To download the latest versions of the guides, please visit the members’ section of the Spugnort’s World web site at http://www.spugnort.com

If you continue to receive errors from the mods included in the guide pack, please let us know. We will be keeping an eye on the mods used in the guide packs to make sure we keep them current with any additional 3.2 patch bug fixes.

Blizzard has released the new bear form models and graphics that will be added in the next major patch. New graphics and models are being added for both Tauren and Night Elf animal forms. The fur color for the animals can be changed in the barber shop just like the character hair styles and colors. The official Blizzard development page is available here: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/druid-forms.html. In addition to the minor shape and color changes, some new animations will also be added. A noteworth animation addition will be to allow the bear to close its mouth – no more slack-jawed bear. Click on the graphics below to view the full size images.

If nothing else – it will at least be a change of colorings when staring at the bear butt at the front of the raid

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Blizzard has announced that tickets for Blizzcon ‘09 will go on sale May 16th with a second batch going on sale May 30th. Ticket prices are set at $125. The convention will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center on August 21 and 22. For those unable to make it, DirecTV is once again selling a pay-per-view of the event for $40.

This year they are making some real changes to how the ticket sales will work in order to avoid the horrid experience customers had last year attempting to purchase tickets. This year, a new queue system will be used to purchase tickets. This system functions much like the dreaded login queues seen when attempting to log into WoW during heavy usage periods. The basic purchase process will be as follows:

1. Create a battle.net account. This should be done ahead of time to avoid having to spend the time doing so while “competing” for tickets.

2. You will enter a queue and taken to a page that will display your position in the queue and the estimated amount of time before you will be able to make your purchase.

3. If you make it to the front of the queue before tickets are sold out, you will have a limited amount of time to complete your purchase. Once at the head of the queue, you will have 15 minutes to complete your purchase.

Hopefully the new queue system and major upgrades to their online store will allow for a much less stressful process of trying to get Blizzcon tickets. The official page detailing the new purchase queue system is available here.

Blizzard is testing  a series of nerfs which will be applied to Ulduar which fit in with their philosophy on raiding in World of Warcraft. I have to say that I have mixed feelings about this set of changes. Our guild has cleared the majority of Ulduar 25 so far and we are hardly one of the world’s “elite” guilds. While I can understand their desire to allow the majority of the players to experience the game content, it is going to turn Ulduar into the gear-fest that Naxx had become prior to the 3.1 patch.

While I’m all for getting new gear, I’m not sure I am willing to obtain it at the cost of becoming sick of the new game content. With the Wrath of the Lich King expansion only 6 months old and Uldar considerably younger; will Blizzard have time to develop and release new content before a very large number of us get tired of having the latest raid instance on “farm”?  At this point, I can only hope that the never-ending loot train that is Ulduar will keep us entertained until Blizzard gives us another set of instances to beat our heads against.

To read more about the philosophies behind the incoming nerfs, you can visit the WoW Insider post about the topic or the original Blizzard forum post.

After nearly a full day of waiting for the realms to come back up, I managed to log in only to be presented with the following:

I’ve seen some hefty queues before, but that one definitely took the cake. Luckily it only took about 1/2 hour for the queue counter to run down and then I was able to log in. First order of priority was to recall to Moonglade (Spugnort is  a druid) and purchase dual talent specialization. Dual talent specs is really slick and will (hopefully) make putting groups together a lot easier. Spugnort is spec’d feral/resto to serve as both a tank and a healer. I couldn’t help but think that triple spec would be nice so I could also have a laser-chicken spec… but at that point they might as well just make it so you could adjust talent specs on the fly without seeing a trainer.

By the time I had finished distributing talent points, invites were already going out for our first run into Ulduar. Upon setting foot into the instance, you get a sense of how massive the areas occupied by the Titans are. The following is the awesome view just inside the instance:

View inside Ulduar

The first encounter in the instance requires the use of vehicles to clear large amounts of trash and to kill the first boss, Flame Leviathan. We downed the first boss on our second attempt and mainly just required that people learn how to drive the vehicles and operate the weaponry. The vehicles’ power is proportional to the *quality* of the gear you are wearing. If you have a set that has higher item levels, it should be favored over whatever gear matches your current spec. Just remember to switch back to your proper gear set once the boss fight is over and you are ejected from the vehicle.

The second boss was a different story. We spent the remainder of the evening working on the trash leading up to and on Ignis the Furnace Master. Ignis is an unbelievably healing intensive fight. Imagine Malygos 25 vortex raid damage coupled with Patchwerk’s ability to beat the hell out of the tank. Throw in a bunch of adds and erupting lava jets and you have the Ignis fight. We managed to get him down to 60% and we are going to make additional runs at him this evening. I have to say – I am actually really enjoying wiping to yet unseen content. It’s refreshing to have the challenge of learning new bosses again. I’m sure I’ll be sick to death of Ulduar by the time the next raid dungeon is released, but for now it is a blast learning the new content.

Ignis the Furnace Master

Blizzard has recently changed their policy on what is permitted for World of Warcraft addons. For those of us that have legitimate businesses built around offerings to the World of Warcraft community, it is quite a slap in the face. According to their UI Policy Page, it is no longer permitted to sell addons, request donations for an addon (within the addon itself), or use an addon to promote any product or service. In particular, the following rule is causing us some headaches:

1) Add-ons must be free of charge.
All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create “premium” versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on.

I am not a lawyer, but I don’t see how in the world they can make this statement. If your addon is not a derived work which includes code, images, or data written by Blizzard themselves, I don’t know how they can put a restriction on the distribution of a unique work which was developed by an external company or individual. While they can certainly restrict the use of a particular addon when it is used in conjunction with WoW, they have no rights to restict what an author can write or do with their own web site. Unless Blizzard has been given the power to write laws or restrict free speech,  this seems like a load of bull to me.

I would love to hear from someone with the legal expertise to validate or invalidate their statements. As it stands, we are in a position of needing to adjust how we distribute our mods. While I am not concerned for our own sites and services, what does concern me is that they could decide that people using a particular addon that violates this policy can have their account suspended or banned.

Blizzard’s in-game population now exceeds that of many States in the US. They have nearly as many players as the State I live in has residents. When they start to make claims about what is permitted and what is not permitted, they need to carefully examine these statements when they impact individuals or businesses outside of their own company.

Last, but not least, as the owner of the market place that hosts and sells several of the more popular commercial Warcraft guides, I am also forced to examine what we will be able and/or willing to host for others. Again, this is not so much an issue for the authors themselves as it is a potential problem for the nearly 250,000 customers that have purchased World of Warcraft related products from us over the last couple years.

I am also the author of several free-use, open-source products and this sort of restriction makes my skin crawl. While it enforces a free-as-in-beer rule, it is the exact oposite of free-as-in-speech. 

Spugnort’s World and the SWGN Marketplace have employed several people over the last few years to provide the various services and products that we offer. As of late, we are having serious problems getting products updated and new services put online for various reason. Primarily, the overall reduction in “disposable” income within our economy has cut the gross sales of our network by nearly 90% in the last 6 months. This obviously leads to a shortage of employees when you can’t afford to pay them. This latest action from Blizzard threatens to take another big chunk out of our business’ ability to remain viable.

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We have created a Facebook profile in order to keep our fans up to date on what we are working on and the progress of our various project. If you are a Facebook user, add yourself as a fan to receive automatic updates when we post new information. To visit our profile, Click Here.

We are currently looking to hire someone interested in working with us on the development of our guide content and the content of our public web sites. Qualified individuals will have extensive experience in World of Warcraft, able to work as part of a team, able to communicate information and ideas in writing so that other can easily understand. Candidates will also need to have a broadband Internet connection, a computer capable of running World of Warcraft, Microsoft Word 2007, and Adobe Acrobat. HTML, CSS, WordPress experience is a plus, but not required.

This position is temporary, part time to start but could become a full time position depending on the work produced. If you are interested in such a position, please send a resume to support@spugnort.com.