Spugnort's

Posts Tagged ‘Wrath of the Lich King’

This week the comic corner is back…in full force!!  I have managed to find several great comics…some new some old for your enjoyment!

First up is one from newcomer Sparkly Doom.  I love this one because it’s just putting out there what I know we all thought when we started doing our Sons of Hodir dailies!  Haha!

Next I found a few from Daily Quests that tickled my funny bone.  The first, called Goblin Ingenuity, shows the possible result of improperly installed rocket packs!  The next one called All’s Fair in Love and Warcraft is just plain funny…boys can be so gullible! The last one from DQ teaches us a valuable lesson…to Always Listen to Your Elders.  Love it!

The next couple for this week are from another newcomer, K’s Grab Bag. The first one from this artist shows a triumphant pair looting their kill, it’s amazing what forest animals carry on them sometimes! Next from this artist we have Insults to Injury which teaches a valuable lesson…do NOT pick on your healer before a major fight!!  HAHA

Next up is one from Complex Actions that is a great showing of just what desperate players might resort to when farming mats. Neckrokleptomania is simply hilarious…oh and I love the word!!

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Now, I know that the holidays are rapidly coming to a close here, but I did find some holiday-related machinima this week that I thought truly worthy of sharing with everyone, so here goes!

• First we have one from NinthBatter, which is part of his ever popular “Nobody Like You” series.  This one is all about Hanukkah…and I have to say, I had NO idea Arthas was Jewish!! 
• Next up is a pretty cool one from Oxhorn that is part of his Christmas for Geeks album that we featured here last week.  It’s called It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like This Raid Isn’t Going to Happen (longest title ever) and I had to include it this week as I know it’s one we can all relate to on some level!
• Lastly we have one for  you from Firebolt Productions called Northrend Wonderland.  This one is hilarious as it shows a loyal servant of the Lich King trying to cheer him up…the way he does it is pretty great!  And anytime I get to hear the Lich King sing is WIN! in my book!

Ok, well that’s what we have for you this week in our belated holiday version of Movie of the Week.  See you next year!

This week’s movie is one from Silverlined Productions and I think it’s quite suiting considering the proximity to the release of 3.3.  Revenge Act 2 is another teaser vidoe for the Revenge movie which will hopefully be coming soon!  In this video, our hero is finally getting the chance at a show down with the Lich King, which is truly appropriate since patch 3.3 is releasing to day to live realms.  This is an excellent video just like the first one and I love the way our main character, Nixxiom, is idealized into the perfect hero!  I cannot wait to see the final film once it is all done…but isn’t that the point of the trailer?  To keep us wanting more?  Well it has worked!

3.3 is releasing today to live servers!  Below are the latest patch notes available at the time of this post!  Enjoy!

General

• Icecrown Citadel
  • All three wings of the 5-player dungeon are currently available for testing.
  • Select encounters in the 10- and 25-player raid dungeon are available for limited testing.
  • Additional Icecrown Citadel raid content will be made available in future test builds. For more information and testing schedules please visit our Test Realm forum: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=11572&sid=1
• Quel’Delar Quest Chain: The Battered Hilt, the item needed to start this quest line, can now be purchased from all glyph vendors on the public test realms.
• Character Creation: The descriptions for races, classes, and race/class combinations have been improved to provide new players with a better idea of the roles and advantages of each class and race.
• 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.
• Knockbacks no longer dismount players. If on a flying mount, you will be knocked back a short distance before being able to resume flying.
• The existing /welcome emote now greets/welcomes targets (character says “hello”), while the new /yw is for saying “you’re welcome.”
• Many of the tail sweeps with knockback effects will no longer hit players’ pets.
• Level 1 characters no longer start with food or water in their inventory.
• Attack is now called Auto Attack. The tooltip has been changed to reflect that the player will continue automatically attacking a target.
• Meeting Stones: To use any Meeting Stone, it is only required that the character’s minimum level be 15. There is no maximum character level requirement for any Meeting Stone.
• Copied Test Realm characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

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These notes and updates are filled mostly with bug fixes (158 if I counted right!) but there are some cool things happening here,too.  Oculus is seeing some nerfs and they’ve tweaked a couple of classes.  Read on for the full list of changes!

Oculus

• Many bosses and creatures have had their total health reduced.
• Several bosses and creatures have had cooldowns on specific abilities increased, effect durations reduced, and damage on some of these abilities reduced.
• Ring-Lord Conjurers and Sorceresses now hang out in packs of 4 instead of packs of 5.
• Vehicle scaling on the drakes based on the rider’s item level has been increased to make them more powerful.

Paladin

• Divine Intervention: This ability now also removes Exhaustion and Sated from the target. In addition, the cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
• Lay on Hands: This ability will place Forbearance on the paladin if used on his or herself. It will not place Forbearance on others.

Items

• Haris Pilton now sells a new 24-slot bag! She has stubbornly decided to remain in Shattrath City, so those interested should seek her out there.

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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.

In the Path 3.2.2 PTR files, a number of new race/class combination NPC have been discovered by data-mining WoW enthusiasts.  The data mined seems to indicate that several races will have the ability to roll classes previously unavailable to them.  I have included a list of these new possible combos below:

• Human Hunter
• Orc Mage
• Night Elf Mage
• Dwarf Mage
• Blood Elf Warrior
• Dwarf Shaman
• Undead Hunter
• Tauren Paladin
• Tauren Priest
• Gnome Priest
• Troll Druid

Now unlike our confirmed addition of the new races, these class/race combos are merely speculation at this point, but man this sounds great!  Another Shaman for the Alliance, another Paladin for the Horde, two more Hunter capable races, another Druid for the Horde, a Gnome healing class, fire slinging Dwarves and bad-ass Blood Elf Warriors!

I have but one comment…Holy Cow!  Ya know…Priest/Pally plus… Tauren…equals…oh never mind…bad joke…!

Warning!! The information in this post and the associated links contain MAJOR spoilers regarding WoW’s next expansion!  If you do not want to know this information, we suggest you skip  this!  So, that being said…here goes.  Many details about the new expansion have been leaked over the past week and while none of the included information has been verified by Blizzard at this time, we feel all sources from which it is coming are reliable and have not steered us wrong in the past!  Much of this will likely be announced at BlizzCon this weekend, but you can say you heard it here first!

So, the first thing I’d like to talk about is the raise in the leveling cap.  This is likely only going up five levels to 85.  This suggests that Blizzard wants these five levels to be quite a big deal that gaining even one level will really mean something instead of having a one down four to go feeling about it.

Next up is, of course the new races.  Goblins will be joining the Horde while the Alliance will have the Worgen joining their ranks.  These new alliances will be formed as a result of the events of the Cataclysm.  Each new race’s allegiance will be explained through lore and questlines in much the same manor as the arrival of other races and classes in the past.  With this we will also see some new race/class combos we have never before seen in Warcraft.

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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