Here are some virus free mirror sites to help out with the millions of people downloading WotLK content:

Patch File Part 1
2.4.3 to 3.0.1Place the downloaded file in the directory C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Updates\WoW-2.4.3-to-3.0.1-TBC-USMX-Update\

PC version:

FileFront.com RapidShare.com MegaUpload.com Allvatar.com
Mac version: FileFront.com RapidShare.com MegaUpload.com Allvatar.com
EU PC version: FileFront.com
EU Mac version: FileFront.com

Patch File Part 2
3.0.1 to 3.0.2Place the download file in the directory C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Updates\WoW-3.0.1-to-3.0.2-Update\

PC version:

RapidShare.com Arakkoa.com Allvatar.com
Mac version: RapidShare.com Arakkoa.com Allvatar.com
EU PC version: RapidShare.com
EU Mac version: RapidShare.com

Patch File Part 3
3.0.1 to 3.0.2Place the download file in the directory C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Updates\WoW-3.0.1-to-3.0.2-Update\

PC version:

RapidShare.com Arakkoa.com Allvatar.com
Mac version: RapidShare.com Arakkkoa.com Allvatar.com
EU PC version: RapidShare.com
EU Mac version: RapidShare.com

Vista users should download the patches to the following folder(s):C:\Users\Public\Documents\World of Warcraft\Updates\
or
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Blizzard Entertainment\World of Warcraft\Updates

The World of Warcraft folder will already be created from previous patches, so just find the correct path, and create 2 folders inside the Updates folder with the names
WoW-2.4.3-to-3.0.1-TBC-USMX-Update
and
WoW-3.0.1-to-3.0.2-Update

Save the 1st patch into the folder with the first name, and save the other 3 patch pieces into the 2nd folder.

I want to address a question that has been repeatedly asked over the course of the last few months. One of our customers’ biggest concerns is the possibility of an increased cost for Wrath of the Litch King guide updates. While some of our guides will have an upgrade cost associated with them, there will be a discount offered to anyone with an existing guide.

The guides most likely to see an cost for upgrade will be the Leveling Guide and the Instance Guide. This is due to the fact the changes are not simply updates to existing content but rather massive amounts of new content. The 70-80 leveling paths are nearly as large and complex as the entire 1-70 paths.

As for the discounts, assuming the current price of a product is $30 and we were to raise it to $40 to include the new content; anyone with an existing copy of the guide would be charged the difference in price for the upgrade, not the cost of the entire product. We have no intention of double-billing anyone of the same content.

We are also actively working on an in-game versions of our leveling guides, complete horde leveling guide, and an a set of recommended add-ons which will likely include an auto-update application to keep them current.

All of our guide content is scheduled to be updated and we are working hard to get it updated as quickly as possible. So far we have several hundred man-hours tied up in the WotLK changes and expect to have several hundred more before they are completed. I want to assure everyone that we are not neglecting the products and will have them fully updated just as quickly as we can.

Finally, to address the reason we will be charging for major content additions. Spugnort’s World and SWGN are both small businesses not unlike any other. We have direct costs and overhead associated with running the business. While some guides may be hobby projects for the author, ours are not. Our full time dedication to the business is the reason we have a multitude of our own, in-house written guides and can offer the level of customer service that we do. In addition, I personally write the software for our primary web site, the swgn.com billing and account management portal, and the member site software used to deliver content for the other guide sites on our network. This combined with the massive hardware and bandwidth costs associated with establishing the gaming network and sales/affiliate tracking systems requires us to maintain profitability or it all gets shut down. We can no more afford to spend hundreds of hours working for free than any other small business.

For those interested, I will make another post shortly with some pictures and details of what goes into the technology used by spugnort.com/swgn.com.

In the past week there have been a number of hotfixes and changes to report.  Below is a list of what we could find out there!

10/7
General Changes & Bug Fixes
 •Adjusted the run speeds of dungeon bosses to bring these encounters in line with their intended level of difficulty.
 Combat & Careers
 •Marauder- Terrible Embrace: Fixed an issue that was causing the ability Terrible Embrace to pull targets other than the original target.

10/6
Combat and Careers
   
Swordmaster
 •Heaven’s Blade: This ability now reduces resists by the correct amount and will properly display as a debuff. 

Realm vs. Realm
 •The Tor Anroc scenario now requires players to be closer the The Brimstone Bauble when attempting to pick it up.

10/5
Content

 •Made additional fixes to resolve issues with the final boss of the “Neborhest’s Vanguard” public quest.
Items

 •Sovereign Set items on the Renown Merchant now have the proper requirements for purchase.

RvR
 •In an effort to highlight more of the available scenarios, we have made a slight adjustment to the positioning of scenarios in the queue  window.  The Elf Tier 3 Scenario “Temple of Isha”  is now the first scenario players will see, followed by “Tor Anroc.”

10/3

Fixed an issue that was allowing players in the Phoenix Gate scenario to take the flag back to their spawn point, preventing the enemy from claiming it.
Updates 10/6
Quote from Mythic staff:

“The following improvements were made during today’s update (going live to Oceanic servers at 1:30PM EDT.) As always in addition to these we are continuing to work on performance and stability in game.
 •Pets and their ability bars will no longer disappear from a player’s screen at random intervals.
 •We have fixed an issue in which players were sometimes able to avoid the instance lock-out timers for certain 6-man instances.”

This week Blizzard released the system requirements for WotLK.  Some are “recommended” which means the game will run, just not at peak performance.  So, if you need to order that DVD drive or new video card now would be the time to do it!

• PC:
  • Windows XP SP3 or Vista SP1 (Windows 2000 no longer supported)
  • Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1.5 GHz (up from 800 MHz Intel/AMD). Dual-core recommended.
  • RAM: 512 MB/1 GB for Vista, doubled from same as previous. 1 GB/2 GB recommended.
  • Video: GPU with hardware transform and lighting and 32 MB VRAM, same as before. Recommended 128 MB VRAM.
• Mac:
  • Mac OS X 10.4.11 (10.3 no longer supported)
  • PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo. Big change here: G4s are no longer supported. This one actually affects me, since I do have some G4 machines hanging around the house. Intel 1.8 GHz recommended.
  • RAM: 1 GB, up from 512 MB. 2 GB recommended.
  • Video: Hardware transform and lighting, 64 MB VRAM. On the face of it, this rules out the integrated graphics found on MacBooks and Mac Minis, but there’s been no official word on it yet. 128 MB VRAM recommended.

This is a direct statement from AoC game director about the upcoming additions and changes to the game.

Quote from Craig Morrison:

Today I wanted to take the opportunity to go over some of the updates, changes and developments you will see in the game over the coming weeks and months. Hopefully this will give you a little insight into what order things are being addressed in and what sequence you will see the new content arrive in. There are two things on the immediate horizon that will very soon be on the test server for public testing in the shape of Ymir’s Pass and the second stage of the PVP update. There are a couple of things I want to address on these.

Firstly Ymir’s Pass is a large zone and has quite a bit of content to test. This may mean that it stays on the test server through several updates on live. We have the ability not to include a given playfield when we build new versions for live, which means that this testing won’t hold up the release of the other new content and Ymir’s Pass will still get the time on the test server that it needs. We want the experience to be as good as possible for its release and feel the public testing phase is important in that. We hope to be bringing the playfield to the test server shortly, and we all hope you will enjoy the many varied encounters it brings.

Then there is the second stage of the PVP update that brings with it the consequence system. This new system allows for players PVP actions to have real consequences in the world, and it will greatly enhance the entire PvP experience in Conan. As you know the system is meant to bring repercussions for repeated evil behaviour (i.e. killing players outside of your level range), so should you chose to “gank” other players, a whole new gameplay area opens up! For one, it will result in you no longer being welcome in many parts of the game-world, but in its place you will have to rely on a newly arrived network of camps and areas that function with a little more moral ambiguity. This is very true to the essence of the Conan lore, and a change I think many players will find intriguing. You will be able to access the same services as you can in the “orderly” parts of the world, but you might find your new ‘friends’ have a price for their services. We felt it was very important to make the system as immersive as possible and not just a purely mechanical system on top of the game-world to support PVP. So to that end, these new camps and NPC’s function as a kind of “shady network” for those with more nefarious reputations. Be warned though. It also means that those who hunt for such criminally inclined adversaries might find out where to look for you!

The other new content additions are all shaping up internally, and I’ll let you know the order in which they will appear after Ymir’s in my next letter.

Moving on to some things a little further out I mentioned in my welcome letter that we are working on the itemization and gem systems, as well as how the budgets for character statistics are going to be refined and improved. This is an area I wanted to elaborate on a little in this letter.

One of the issues we have been working on in that regards is the limited budgets that were originally assigned to the in-game items. It was always the intention that Age of Conan would not be a game where items would be the deciding factor in encounters. This meant though that the statistics available for items, and their actual effect on your character, was simply too slim. The items do scale within very limited ranges and have quite a limited effect on your characters abilities, and this I feel we need to do something about. When we sat down and analyzed the way this worked and the impact it had on players actual sense of progression through the game, so we came to the hard choice that something had to change.

With that in mind we have been working hard behind the scenes to prepare for a shift in the range and meaningfulness of character statistics and items. So what exactly does that mean? Well, firstly it does not mean that we are going straight to the other end of the spectrum and making items the ‘be all and end all’ of progression. We will though be making items and statistics more important to your characters.

Currently the items account for a maximum contribution of 25% of your characters total in any given statistic or ability (if you had all the stat modifications available for that statistic equipped, which in itself isn’t always practical). We are aiming to increase that so that your statistics from items contribute closer to 50% (although it will vary slightly from class to class), while also adjusting the formulas so that ability statistics (strength, stamina etc) contribute more meaningfully to your visible abilities, like health and Damage per Second. Items do have an effect on those calculations at the moment, but just in numbers, and that mean it isn’t always all that visible or impactful given the vagaries of an inherently random roll system. The most telling factor is probably that many players felt these statistics were ‘broken’ when in fact they were working correctly, they just didn’t contribute enough of a variance for players to see or feel it properly in combat. Evolving this part of the game is therefore something we deem very important, and something we are actively working on right now.

So what does it mean to the game-play? It means that items will have more varied and more meaningful statistics. Existing items will be modified appropriately and you won’t have to go and find new gear (of course it might mean you want to, once the statistics start to be more meaningful!). We are aiming for the conversion to the new system to feel like players have not lost any relative power in their game-play experience. The key difference will be that if you don’t have your items equipped, or relatively up to date with your level, you will start to notice the difference! We feel this is important for the ongoing progression in the game to be more meaningful andwe are not doing it lightly. It will go through extensive testing and feedback cycles (this letter being the start of that part of the process!). We genuinely want to ensure that we have the ability to deliver a much more meaningful feeling of progression and achievement for players, but without going too far away from the action elements that makes the unique combat system what it is.

It is currently coming together internally and will require a good deal of testing at our end. We will be letting you all know when the new system is ready for public testing. In the meantime your feedback will be an important part of the process, so please feel free to give your initial thoughts and reactions. I am certain that this change will improve the overall gameplay experience, and that items dropping from encounters will matter more than it currently does.

Next up I wanted to cover two features that were talked about previously that will change significantly from what was originally mentioned, and that’s ‘Powerpoints’ and ‘Kingship’. While both are great concepts I felt that we needed to go back to the drawing board a little with both of them. They will however make an appearance in some form in the future.

The ‘Powerpoints’ type of concept will appear first in some form of loyalty program, although I think we might try and find a more suitably ‘Conanesque’ title for it! (…and yes, for those who have asked in the forums, any loyalty program will in effect be ‘backdated’ and take into account how long you have already been subscribed since launch).

The ‘Kingship’ concept will be taken back for another design round internally, before we announce our plans for building the guild and conflict elements of the game. It’s an area that I believe is key to the ongoing success of any MMO and is an area that we really want to do well. This means that we are taking another look at how to best achieve it. This will include looking at building more, and better guild support functions inside the game. Also we most likely want to include some other forms of ‘lateral progression’ at the same time, an alternate advancement path for max level characters, for example. It is an area that I feel will bring some great new content to the game in the new year, but we have to address it properly and put something in that will have lasting appeal.

Another aspect which has popped up in the forums recently is whether we are going to do a server merge or not, and I can today confirm that we are actively working on an approach to merge servers, both in Europe and North America. It’s important for us to ensure the best gameplay experience for you all, and more healthy populations on each and every server will make sure we maintain healthy communities for the game in the future. Still, there are many complexities involved in this, and we want to ensure that everything happens as fair and streamlined as possible. That work has now started, and we are naturally making sure that guilds and players can get to new servers in the best possible way. We will come back with more info on this, but I hope that this will serve as a positive injection to the social scene in the game.

Lastly for today (I think I have taken a good deal of your time already, hopefully constructively so!) I also wanted to mention that we‘ve come very far with the DirectX 10 version, which we unfortunately had to keep on internal test-servers for launch. It’s now almost ready for the full test server. Once the next game-play update is out expect to start to see the DX10 functionality coming to the test environment. How long it will take to transition to live will depend on the testing of course, but it’s starting to shape up nicely. Having done some reviews of it internally over the last few weeks I can admit that a few of the features really do give some added visual punch. I know it’s a feature that is long awaited and I can assure you the technical folk here are working flat out to try and get the version in a state where it can be considered for live release.

Well, we all knew it was likely and now it is official, honor points and marks will not be carried over to WotLK, read the official blue post below:

Quote from Eyonix(Blizzard poster):

“As many of you know we will be featuring a new Battleground, a dedicated world PvP zone and all new PvP items in Wrath of the Lich King. In order to make the transition from The Burning Crusade to Wrath of the Lich King flow as smoothly as possible, all accrued honor points will be reset at the launch of the expansion. We do this to ensure select players do not have an unfair advantage at level 80 from stockpiling honor to instantly purchase the newest Wrath of the Lich King PvP rewards. For those with unspent honor points prior to the release of the expansion, we will be offering a few upgrades and special rewards in next content patch solely for purchase via the honor system.”

Hmmm….well I guess they’re not 100% evil anyways, hopefully they’ll offer up some decent stuff to blow that extra honor on!

Sounds to me like there may be some changes to the way we look at boss fights in the future, what do you think? 

Quote from Blizzard poster Ghostcrawler:

Blizzard announced in the forums this week that they are working on some DK changes to make them more viable tanks.

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Blizzard Poster):

We have been doing some more tests on DK tanking, this time especially on raid bosses. We think the DK design has some limitations, which weren’t showing up as much on tanking 5-player dungeons.Specifically, as many people suspected, the death knight really suffers when attacks fail to land, especially opening attacks. Having a Plague Strike dodged or parried can throw off an entire rotation, eventually leading to bad Obliterates because both diseases weren’t up at the same time. Missing attacks is a fact of life for all tanks since it’s hard to stack +hit and +expertise along with mitigation stats. However, existing tank classes have mechanics to let them “burn off rage” (or mana) to make up for those bad strings. The DK plays more like a rogue who can’t get enough combo points in play. This had a deadly effect on DK threat generation, which just didn’t compete with that of other tanks.

We didn’t want to just solve this with more free expertise because A) that has major PvP ramifications, and B) the death knights would start to hate expertise on their gear.

Instead we are making some fairly big changes:

• Blade Barrier now procs when your Blood Runes are inactive. While the initial implementation of this ability was fun, as we added Death Rune mechanics it became harder to use, and the fast recharge on missed attacks made it even harder. Now it should be up almost all the time.
• We also found a bug where a naked, untalented death knight only had 2.5% dodge instead of 5% like warriors and paladins. With these two avoidance changes, death knight survivability should be very close to the other tanks, recognizing that avoidance is more dangerous than mitigation for a tank. As an aside, death knights, warriors and paladins currently mitigate a similar amount of damage, and druids may very well be mitigating too much.
• Frost Strike can no longer be blocked, dodged or parried. Frost death knights were losing too much potential damage and threat when Frost Strike failed to connect, putting Frost tanks in the awkward position of wanting to skip Frost Strike and just use Death Coil.
• We changed Rune Strike completely. It is now mostly a tanking ability meant to dish out high damage (and therefore threat). Rune Strike can only be used after you dodge or parry an attack. It affects the next swing, so it doesn’t compete with global cooldowns and can be spammed to some extent. It hits for 200% weapon damage (remember 100% of that is the white swing you lost) plus a percentage of AP. It cannot be dodged, blocked or parried, and costs 10 runic power (for now). Think Heroic Overrevenge.
• I think we already announced these changes, but just to get them all in one place: Bladed Armor went back to attack power. It was changed only to match the warrior talent, which we changed back. Death and Decay got a decent threat boost to get it closer to the realm of Consecration and the new Thunder Clap.

Below are some hot fixes which couldn’t wait til the next patch:

Combat and Careers

• Fixed an issue with the Rune Priest spell Grimnir’s Shield that allowed it to stack with Guard to absorb 100% of incoming damage.
• Fixed an issue with the Zealot spell Embrace the Warp that allowed it to stack with Guard to absorb 100% of incoming damage.
• The Ironbreaker tactic Powered Etchings will no longer stack with other snare effects.

Realm vs. Realm

• Fixed an issue that would, in some cases, allow players to use the mounted speed buff in scenarios.

Players participating in the Black Fire Basin scenario will now receive the benefits of “Bolster

Preliminary Patch Notes for September 16th (Patch 2.0)
**These notes do not necessarily reflect the final version that will be deployed on Live**

COMBAT

• The issue with combat damage being delayed or lagged behind the animation has been corrected.
• Some changes have been made to the Charge ability. All Charge attacks now apply a combo attack to the target when you arrive and no longer increase your Damage Multiplier.
• Guardian feat Stunning Charge now requires 1H+Shield equipped to execute.
• Guardian feat ability Impale now requires a Pole Arm equipped to execute.
• Herald of Xotli ability Hellstep now requires a 2H weapon equipped to execute.
• Assassin feat ability From the Darkness’ charge combo attack now has 100% crit chance.
• Barbarian feat ability Finishing Blow now has a charge combo attack for bonus damage. Investing feat points improves the damage of the attack.
• Rogue General feat ability Ambush will hit for bonus damage against non-minions once more.
• Bear Shaman feat ability Ursine Rush now has a charge combo attack for bonus damage in addition to the bleed effect. The feat has been updated to improve both the combo and the bleed with further points spent.
• Herald of Xotli Hellstep ability now has a charge combo attack for bonus damage in addition to the burning effect.
• Guardian feat ability Impale now has a charge combo attack for bonus damage in addition to the bleed effect.
• Guardian feat Momentum has been updated to modify the charge combo attack damage.-KNOWN ISSUES WITH THIS-
• Charges can be performed while unarmed, but will hit for no damage. This will be fixed in a future update.GENERAL
• Fixed the cause of a server crash.