Feral attack power will be removed. Instead, attack power in feral forms will scale based on weapon DPS. As with the armor change, this should make no actual difference to your performance - the conversion will be such that your DPS remains the same. What it does do is make it so some staves might be useful to both hunters and druids (for instance), or some two-handed maces might be useful to feral druids. In Ghostcrawler’s words: “This does not mean we are no longer going to create bear and cat weapons, just that those weapons will be slightly less niche than they are now.”
These changes will be coming sometime before 3.1 (Ulduar), which I’ve been referring to as 3.0.4 (though perhaps 3.0.x would be more accurate).
Both great changes in my opinion; the armor change should give us more viable options for tanking jewelry and weapons, instead of being forced to hold on to whatever has armor. And the FAP change will just mean we don’t always have to DE a feral piece if the one or two ferals in the raid already have it; and conversely, there won’t necessarily be only one weapon in a given raid that’s of use to ferals (I’m looking at you, Stranglestaff). Read the rest of this entry »
“The Scourge” has the same high-end production values we saw in “Revenge of Akama.” The action is distinct and effective. Fal Bulon uses the lighting in his scenery to lend urgency and intensity to his characters. Overall, it was definitely fun to watch to buy cheap wow gold.
The trailer doesn’t have a lot of plot indications, which is probably fine for a trailer. We know that the Scourge are attacking, and the orcs and humans are both caught up in it. We have epic indications of leaders making hard choices, and we have a whole bunch of fighting. (Knowing is half the battle, but the other half always comes down to fighting.)
Fal Bulon has a new, upcoming series called The Scourge. In case you don’t recognize the name, Fal Bulon is the same German author who brought us Revenge of Akama. Like his previous work, “The Scourge” is spoken in German, and subtitled in English. We only have a trailer to look at right now, but we can be hopeful for the upcoming movie.
In Wrath, Blizzard implemented a new UI and system for their vehicles, and some bar mods haven’t been updated to reflect these additions. Or they have, and players haven’t updated on their end. As far as mod updates go, this is one of those things that counts as a big deal. If your bar mod is suppressing the vehicle UI or preventing your action bar from switching over to the vehicle’s abilities, you’re not going to be able to complete a lot of quests, and those ones tend to be the most fun and unique. Naturally, some quests are buggy, but a vast majority of them aren’t. If you’re consistently running into issues with vehicle combat, please, check your mods for your sake. A lot of the quests are way fun, so before writing them off, check things on your end first.
If you absolutely must have a bar mod and yours isn’t Wrath compatible yet, you might want to check out Dominos. There are other updated bar mods, absolutely, but this one seems the most popular recently. If you’d rather stick with something else, just hit Curse or whatever and check for updates. You’ll be glad you did. Read the rest of this entry »
I don’t want to spoil the mechanics of the encounter, so I won’t. Saying something is going to happen is kind of a spoiler in itself because saying “Hey, watch this!” sets off all kinds of alarms, so it’ll dull the edge a little. I think it’s worth to make sure people actually do this dungeon, though. Do it! Go! Right now! You can start doing this dungeon at level 73, maybe a little earlier if you have good gear from The Burning Crusade.Wrath of the Lich King has a lot of new dungeons, and hopefully you’ve been running them all as you level. Personally, I find them all pretty awesome, but Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom is the first one that completely blew me away. Overall, I’d say it’s not as good as Halls of Stone or Halls of Lightning, but Ahn’kahet has certain elements that make it one of my favorites.
Not only is Ahn’kahet visually stunning, but it gives you a glimpse into the story of Yogg-Saron and his relation to the Scourge and other forces. It’s a little repetitive in some places (the first boss is a bit boring), but it also houses some of the best 5-man bosses we’ve seen yet. The final boss, Herald Volazj, is the embodiment of the technical advances Blizzard has made with the gameplay in Wrath of the Lich King. I almost feel bad mentioning him at all, because I’ve been running Ahn’kahet repeatedly with people who have never done it before. Seeing them wig out the first time they do the boss is awesome.
While I was at BlizzCon, I met someone who worked at Blizzard in their IT department, and the stories he told me (all off the record, unfortunately) about how gigantic and powerful their systems are were just mindboggling. I had to ask if he knew of anyone or any other industry shooting information around at the scale that Blizzard does, and with the one possible exception of Google (who also run digital information around at a staggering rate), we couldn’t think of anyone doing things at this scale. Not even financial networks and health care information (things, you’d think, that would be much more important than your level 73 Hunter and his gear) have these kinds of systems running.
Very, very interesting. I’d imagine that much of what Blizzard does consists of secrets they’d like to keep (hence the reason the Blizzard employee asked me to keep much of what he told me off the record), so it’s not likely we’ll be able to know all that much about how they do what they do (until it’s all turned off, anyway — maybe someday we’ll see a tell-all detailing how WoW was played). But man — everything I’ve heard about how the game is run involves unbelievable amounts of information running inside lots and lots of servers and wires. The architecture of what Blizzard has done in terms of size and scale rivals anything Arthas has constructed in Icecrown. Read the rest of this entry »
The CGS featured five games during its two seasons, Counter-Strike: Source, Dead or Alive 4, FIFA 07, and Project Gotham Racing for Season 1; with FIFA 08 and Forza Motorsport 2 taking up the latter two slots in Season 2. Although not included in seasonal coverage, the CGS also recently promoted World of Warcraft Arena tournaments, with Europe’s Nihilum winning the 2008 Championship. Arenas were also included in the CGS-run College Gaming League. A full statement from the league can be found on their site.
In a (not so) shocking announcement on their website, The Championship Gaming Series revealed that they will be ceasing all operations immediately. The International gaming series, which expanded to every continent except Antarctica this year, is shutting down after only two seasons. The professional gaming league, which aimed to promote eSports in a flashy, televised format, was patterned after professional sports leagues with player drafts, team managers, and city-based teams.
That’s right — Activision’s own Call of Duty: World at War beat out Wrath for the number one spot, but before you start worrying whether WoW has lost its charm, don’t: not only was Wrath an expansion pack (expansion packs obviously don’t sell as well as standalone games, sequels or otherwise), but the Call of Duty game has already outsold its prequel, the extremely successful Call of Duty 4, by a 2:1 ratio. Unfortunately, we don’t have numbers yet, but all indications are that, in the UK alone, Wrath did almost as well as a game that outsold last year’s best selling game. That all make sense?
If not, hear this: Blizzard made a lot of money last week, and pretty soon we’ll hear how much. Even more amazing, Activision Blizzard, who owns Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, and World of Warcraft, accounted for a full 25% of all UK game sales last week. The merger has already paid off.Unfortunately, as of this writing, Blizzard hasn’t yet released actual numbers for Wrath sales last week (we were expecting around two million, but we’ll see what they say eventually). But that won’t stop us from guessing — the list of top ten games sold last week in the UK is out, and Wrath… is number two.
How does Blizzard account for all the wanton slaughter of Dalaran folk by the Horde? How would a hordie get into Dalaran because of this?
Elizabeth answers: Not being Chris Metzen, it’s tricky to answer this question. Dalaran was not treated kindly by the Horde in the Second War and even today in Silverpine Forest and Hillsbrad Foothills, Horde questlines encourage the killing of Dalaran’s mages. So how exactly is Blizzard working around this minor problem? WoWWiki claims that Dalaran has been neutral since the Lands in Conflict RPG sourcebook, but provides no additional details. How Blizzard is going to make lore mesh with reality? We aren’t sure yet, but we’re keeping out eyes open.
Allie adds: On the live realms there’s really no reference that I’ve seen to the old Horde’s treatment of Dalaran, or the current Horde’s dispute with the Dalaran mobs wandering Silverpine. Either the Dalaran mages of Northrend are pragmatists and know they can’t do anything about Malygos without Horde assistance, or they’ve forgiven and forgotten, or — well, I dunno. They’re certainly aware that the vast majority of the current Horde had no involvement whatsoever in the previous wars, and that the Kirin Tor would not have existed without the contributions of the Blood (formerly High) Elves. So it’s complicated. Read the rest of this entry »
As much as I appreciate keeping the epics on, it is a little disappointing that I may not actually get new gear for ten levels (indeed, many of the folks who cleared the PvE content already were dressed in their old gear as well). Dressing yourself in clown greens is embarassing, but having no upgrades at all is a problem in the opposite direction. Bornakk says to be patient and that we’ll find upgrades soon enough (and I have, to his credit, already seen a few nice rep items that I’d want, even if I don’t have the rep to buy them yet). There are upgrades out there.
But so far, I’ve only hit a few sidegrades and hardly any clearly better gear than what I had before. How about you? I have to agree with Lowangel: where’s the upgrades? We all knew that the gear dropping in Northrend wasn’t quite going to be as huge a jump as it was when we headed off to Outland, but I was only dressed in late Karazhan gear, and at this point, close to 73, I’ve upgraded one thing. I thought I’d get a little upgrade — time and time again, I’ve picked up soulbound quest items, only to have to vendor them off because they don’t have the hit I worked to get or the extra Agility on top of the Stamina I’ve already got.
15 Minutes of Fame: Congrats on 70! How did you find yourself finally at 70? Was it the end of a long, hard campaign, or did you make a concentrated push once you neared the home stretch?
Noor: A long campaign. I’ve pretty much played every day. Some levels took a month, if I had to do most of it by doing Battleground dailies. Leveling this way is really daily-limited — I can’t decide to go out and push for XP because I can’t kill mobs for XP, and I’ve done every quest that I can do at my level.
Naysayers opined that Noor would give up the ghost of the tedious task of leveling without killing long before he reached level 70. But lo and behold, here we are just post-Wrath launch – and Noor’s ticked right past 70, plugging steadily along toward the new max level cap of 80. 15 Minutes of Fame caught up with him to see how he was holding up on the long, slow climb to the top.
The diminutive subject of 15 Minutes of Fame’s inaugural profile, back in January of this year, spent a good chunk of change longer than a mere quarter-hour in the limelight. The life and times of Noor the Pacifist, who levels without experience from kills, garnered widespread attention not only here at WoW Insider but in an onslaught of hits from Digg, Stumble Upon, Fark and even the very cool people at Boing Boing. It seemed like everyone wanted to talk about the guy who plays World of Warcraft without actually killing anything. Read the rest of this entry »