Spugnort's

Posts Tagged ‘Beta’

Racial Abilities

• Arcane Torrent (Blood Elf) global cooldown removed.

Death Knight

• Death Knight spells that cost runes will now display the rune cooldowns on the spell buttons.

Mage

• Arcane Blast effect duration reduced to 3 seconds, and now increases damage by 15/30/45% instead of reducing cast time.
• Arcane Impact renamed Spell Impact and now affects Blast Wave, Fire Blast, Cone of Cold, and Ice Lance.
• Arcane Potency now applies when Presence of Mind is active, talent prerequisite changed to Presence of Mind.
• Conjured mana gems no longer disappear from your backpack after being logged out for more than 15 minutes. Higher ranks of Conjure Mana Gem will recharge an existing mana gem to maximum charges.
• Empowered Arcane Missiles renamed Arcane Empowerment and no longer increases mana cost. It now also increases damage caused by Arcane Blast. Read the rest of this entry »

Well I found some HUGE news this morning on the WoW forums.  It was a thread started about the pains of the current talent respeccing system. 

The argument that was brought to light was comapring PvP to PvE.  They said for a raider to get the most out of raiding they have to be a certain spec, but they have off nights and may enoy to PvP…so they have to spend 50 gold to respec PvP in order to get the most out of it.  Then the next raid comes the following day and its another 50g down the drain for a respec again.

Its really time consuming to have to remember where every single talent point goes, and I know I usually go work it out on Wowhead before I put any points in.  One mistake and you just cost yourself another 50g for no reason at all. This also works both ways, if a Harcore PvPer were to try and get the most out of PvE they would also need to respec.

So in response to this “problem” Bornka (A Blizzard Community Poster) said this:

“We talked about this recently at the Worldwide Invitational actually. We are looking into allowing players to basically have two talent specs that they can switch between but we are still working out the exact details so we will have to wait and see exactly how it will function in-game.”

At first this sounds great, and to me it is fine, but there are drawbacks to this too!  If you take away the respeccing costs then there will be more gold in the economy and we will see a significant rise in prices over a short period of time… much like when the mass amounts of daily quests were introduced.  I know I am sick of paying 15-20 gold for Shards now…can you imagine 35g?

Don’t get me wrong I absolutely love the idea of being able to respec on the fly, and have a second talent spec waiting in the wings.  However there must be some sort of sunk cost associated with it.  Will they charge players 5,000g or more in order to have that switch on the fly talent spec?

Secondly, how will they restrict the changing of the talent specs?  Will you need to be in a major city to do it… will they allow you to simply switch in the middle of an instant or raid?  All things are left to ponder right now as Blizzard is being extremely vague about how this will work.

In the end I love this idea, and I really hope it can be implemented in a way that is proper for everyone involved in the game.  I trust that Blizzard will keep all these things in mind as they move forward with this great idea!

I was doing my usual browse through the Blue posts found on the WoW forums, and stumbled across a very interesting “predicament”. Here is the Original Post from a concerned Beta player over the Death Knight Starting Zone quest lines.

Original Post by Orophino:

“I don’t want to give out all the cool parts of the death knight starting area. But at the same time I think people need to be aware of something.

Unless the quests change radically, I won’t be rolling a death knight in the expansion.

The problem is that the quests are unambiguously evil. And you have no option to make moral choices. What I’m talking about here isn’t the usual Warcraft. You are forced to steal, murder, and torture, and it is presented as such. The quest text goes out of it’s way to make sure you don’t misunderstand what’s going on.

There were several quests last night in beta where I almost decided not to continue. Specifically -

- The quest where I am forced to murder civilians who don’t fight back.
- The quest where I am forced to torture people to extract information.
- The quest where I am forced to murder my unarmed friend.

I understand that it’s called World of *Warcraft*. And I understand that for the last 3.5 years I’ve been slaughtering creatures who did nothing other than carry loot I wanted. But this seems to have been designed with the sole intent of making sure I’m evil. Well……. I’m not evil. If the bridge will explode if I don’t torture someone, then the bridge will explode. If the mission fails because I won’t murder civilians who don’t fight back, then the mission will fail. Read the rest of this entry »

Well the flying mount questline has become available to players in the Wrath of the Lich King Beta Test right now.  Its really a pretty simple questline, and not nearly as long and drawn out as I would have expected it to be.

First you will have to have met a few prerequisites found below:

1. You must be level 77.
2. You must have completed the entire quest line from Weslex Quickwrench, who is found in the Hemet Nessingwary camp.  By level 77 you will have most likely completed this quest line so its really no big deal.

Now you are ready to start the short questline to obtain your flying mount abilities for Northrend.

1. First talk to Professor Calvert found next to Weslex, she will offer you the quest “Aerial Surveilance“. Accept that quest.
2. Then you would fly to Lakeside landing.  Talk to Pilot Vic and take the next quest, which requires you to go into the lake to find the keys to the airplane. This quest is called “An Embarassing Incident“.
3. Get the keys and come back then he will have you take a flight with him, for the follow up quest “Reconaissance Flight“.  While in the plane he will get hit, then you will have to take control of the airplane and finish the flight.
4. Then you will be rewarded with Cold Terrain flying, which will allow you to use your flying mount in Northrend.

Sounds easy enough, but it really does suck that we will have to wait until level 77 to fly again.  I have gotten so used to flying, or even just hopping on my mount and going up in the air while being afk. I am not sure what running through mobs that will actually attack me is like anymore!

Oh well at least it won’t cost me 10K gold for another epic flying mount!

Obviously Blizzard isn’t going to simply hand you a bunch of 24 slot bags just for buying the new expansion when it comes out. Instead they are finding other ways of doing a similar feature.

Mounts Now Learnable

No longer will you need to take up at least two bag slots with your mounts (one land and one flying). Lets not kid each other though, most of us carry around at least 4 mounts or more right now. I mean you never know when you might want to ride the Cenarion War Hippogryph instead of the Netherdrake; or when you might want to ride the Skeletal War Horse instead of the Black War Kodo.

In WotLK none of that will matter at all. You will learn all of your mounts along the way. Meaning you can “carry” all of them with you. Mounts will no longer be taking up bag space or in your bank space. They will be included on a new chracter tab that will allow you to summon the mount.

I know this is going to save me all of these bag slots on my main character:

1.Nether Drake
2.Nether Ray
3.Regular Epic Flyer
4.Cenarion War Hippogryph
5.Those silly Scarab Mounts from AQ40…in every color of course!
6.Black War Kodo
7.Black War Raptor
8.Regular Epic Land Mount
9.Big Giant Chicken (BE Mount)

So thats a total of 9 free bag slots…and they aren’t stopping there!

Summonable Vanity Pets Too!

Thats right players will be to carry every single vanity pet with them also without taking up a single bag or bank space. Now I wish I didn’t throw all of my vanity pets away…I am just always so pressed on back and bag space taht my wealth of epics seemed more important! Read the rest of this entry »

I tell you one thing about Wrath that I am really liking right now…Profession changes!  I am actually glad for once that my Druid and Warlock are both enchanters, now I get more than just ring enchants! Scrolls of enchantment are the saviour of the enchanting profession.

What are Scrolls of enchantment?

Scrolls of Enchantment are the future of enchanting…duh!  Now instead of having to find an enchanter while they are online, the enchanter can simply gather the materials and then craft the enchant.  The enchant will be in the form of a scroll that anyone will be able to use to enchant the specific item with that specific enchant.

What does this change?

Everything pretty much.  This means Enchanters will now be able take materials form them into scrolls of enchantment and then place them on the Auction House, mail them,etc.  In fact you will even be able to pass rare enchants through neutral auction houses to the opposing faction. 

This is truly an amazing change that will benefit everyone single person in the game, and not just benefit the enchanter. 

Then why didn’t Blizzard do this sooner?!?

I have no idea, it really doesn’t seem overly difficult to implement.  I really wish it had come sooner, but that is looking at the glass half empty.  I am a glass half full kind of guy, so I would rather be extremely happy that they do finally plan to implement it after talking about it sinc the launch of the Burning Crusade.

The day I sell my first enchant via a scroll will be a very happy day for me.

What other new things are out there for Enchanters?

Well you know those low level wands you were able to craft before.  It seems that they will finally create an epic maximum level wand for enchanters to craft.  I mean it only seems logical to me that enchanters should be able to make some really nice magical wands.

These are more great changes by Blizzard, and the more I hear about the expansion the more excited I get!  I can hardly wait for the release… hopefully I may get a Beta invite yet!

Now that everyone has had a chance to sift through the Patch notes that were posted yesterday, I thought today I would talk about some of the new items, quests, professions, and talent trees in Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK).

Items

After months of listenting to Blizzard tell us that our hard work in raids would not be wasted, it looks as though they have truly followed through on this promise.

Here is a few items as examples:

 VS.

A quick comparison by numbers (expansion axe versus the Torch):
DPS – Only 91%�
Top End – Only 86%
AP(1str=2AP) – Only 73%
Crit Rating - 113%�
Haste > Hit for 2-handers

So overall the Torch, which is a mid-level Black Temple Item is much better than the entry level blue from the expansion. I like this idea, as more becomes availbale though I would like to see myself replacing som items in the 76-78 range.  With only a few of my items being holdover level 70 epics when I reach level 80, I think this is the same scheme Blizzard is shooting for.

Professions

A couple of things jumped out at me, one it seems blizzard is trying to make the gathering professions a bit more worthwhile.  For example:

This is from skinning and has 6 ranks for 3/6/9/12/15/25 crit rating.  Not much but hey 25 crit rating…is 25 crit rating.  Mining gives stamina per level of 3/5/7/10/20/35, and herbalism doesn’t seem to have anything yet. Extra spirit seems reasonable…for being in touch with nature!

Well thats all for tdoay… if I have some time I will get some more up tomorrow!

Well the NDA has been lifted, and tons of information is pouring out to the public.  Some of the most useful, but often boring to read, are the patch notes.  You will find tons of good info here though so read on!

Welcome to the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Beta Test. The list below contains information on the current available content for testing and general information. This information is subject to change. Alpha testers should note that your characters have been temporarily locked out. In a few weeks time, we will unlock these characters and you will be able to continue to level them. Please visit the Beta forums to submit feedback and discuss the expansion development with others.

General

• The continent of Northrend is now available! To travel there, visit one of four transportation masters in either Orgrimmar, Undercity, Stormwind Harbor,or Menethil Harbor.
• The floating magical city of Dalaran is now available!
• The Barber Shop has been implemented and you can now visit one of the Barber Shops in the major cities to change your appearance.
• The all new Achievement System has been implemented.
• Transportation between Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra can be found at the Tuskarr villages in those zones.
• The level cap is currently set to 77.
• Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating, and Haste Rating now modify both melee attacks and spells.
• Spellpower:
  • All items and effects which grant bonuses to spell damage and spell healing are being consolidated into a single stat, Spellpower. This stat will appear with the same values found on items which grant “increased spell damage and healing” such as on typical Mage and Warlock itemization.
  • For classes which do not heal, they should see no change in the character sheet other than new tooltip wording.
  • Healing characters will see their bonus healing numbers on the character sheet decrease, however, all healing spells have been modified to receive more benefit from spellpower than they received from bonus healing, with a net effect of no change to the amount healed by their spells. Some talents have had to be rebalanced to accommodate this change, but the amount healed will remain roughly the same. In addition, some talents will provide only healing spell power.
• NPC Transportation Locations
  • Horde:
    • Undercity to Vengeance Landing (Howling Fjord)
    • Orgrimmar to Warsong Hold (Borean Tundra)
  • Alliance:
    • Menethil Harbor to Valgarde (Howling Fjord)
    • Stormwind Harbor to Valiance Keep (Borean Tundra)

Read the rest of this entry »