bornakk
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Arena Season 6 details revealed
Blizzard Europe poster Ancilorn posted the lowdown on Arena Season 6 (Bornakk posted the same on the US forums), which is slated to begin at around the same time that Patch 3.1 is released. There will be some key changes to this season, the biggest of which will be that all teams will start at 0 rating instead of the traditional 1500. This way, players will generally have an upward progression throughout the season before plateauing at their estimated skill level.Another change is that Blizzard has reevaluated the item requirements, feeling that many of them were too difficult to obtain. The lowest rating requirement for an item is currently set at 1250, which may seem low but considering players will be progressing from 0, that's a 1250 point spread. In Season 5, the lowest rating requirement is 1615, which is a mere 115 points from the starting point of 1500. It remains to be seen how much of the continually changing Arena system will award points and how easy or hard it will be to move upwards from 0. More details on the ratings after the jump.
Authenticators to be optional for the Forums and Armory
Many of the people who are actually allowed to surf the official World of Warcraft forums were a little unhappy with the change to Battle.net accounts simply due to the fact that it meant that if you had an authenticator attached to your account, you now had to use that authenticator to log onto the forums, which wasn't needed before. Even if you're allowed to surf at work, and even if the authenticator has a ring on it to so it can be attached to your keys, not everyone feels comfortable carrying that thing around all of the time. You lose it, you're out of luck for awhile.The other day, Bornakk announced some good news that I think a lot of those individuals may have missed: They've temporarily removed the requirement to use an authenticator for the forums and the Armory. In the future, they'll be making this feature optional. You'll be able to choose whether or not you want to use the authenticator on the forums. Why would you want to do that? Well, if your account uses an authenticator, it's going to keep keyloggers and hackers/scammers from stealing your account or characters, but if the authenticator isn't attached to your account on the forums, it can still be used for spamming keylogger links since all that's needed there is your password. If you have your authenticator turned off, it's going to do a whole load of nothing to stop that from happening.It's nice that it will be optional, but if you frequent the WoW forums and don't plan on using your authenticator there, keep in mind that you'll still want to be very careful about where you surf and what you click if forum access is something you enjoy having. In my experience, the forum mods are much less forgiving and not nearly as quick to respond as the in-game GM team.
A random pet macro for your noncombat buddies
This is pretty simple (I know there are a few versions floating around), and just a few minutes with the macro API will probably get you something just like this (or probably better), but if you, like Bornakk, have so many noncombat pets that you don't know what to do with them, this macro that a guildie gave me a while back might help. Plug this text into a macro, save it as "Critter" and throw it on your toolbar./run CallCompanion("CRITTER", random(GetNumCompanions("CRITTER")))As you've probably surmised, it'll choose a random critter from your noncombat pets and bring it out for you to play with. As I said, this is super-simple -- you could add /dismount on to the front of this and use it as a one-stop "dismount and summon pet" macro, or I'm sure our commenters (who are much better at this macro stuff than I am) will have lots of other ways to play. We posted a more complicated one a while back, and you can still replace CRITTER with MOUNT, but this one's even easier than that.But like Bornakk, I tend to collect way too many noncombat pets and I can never choose which is my favorite. A random macro like this helps pull out a friend I haven't seen lately.
Bornakk winks at new Children's Week content
Bornakk, you sneaky little... Over on the forums, when someone brings up the PTR achievements we've seen for the newly revamped Children's Week, he just kind of snickers and avoids the topic. And while that may mean that he's just ignoring the issue, I'll take to mean something a little more exciting: there's more in store for Children's Week than we think this year. Which isn't much of a surprise: we already know that there'll likely be a Gurloc and a Wolvar orphan added to the game (along with pets for each of those groups), and there's no mention of any quests involving those guys on the PTR yet. The original complaint in the forum was about "good" RP characters having to do evil things for achievements (haven't we made it plenty clear that achievements are optional?), so maybe we'll even see some more quests for all kinds of players.At any rate, expect new things to do during this year's Children's Week. We're sure Kisirani and her team are dreaming up all kinds of crazy things for us.
Level restrictions hotfixed into Wintergrasp
In an interesting note over the weekend, Bornakk updated the list of recent in-game fixes.The Wintergrasp PvP zone now has two level restrictions in place: You must be level 70 or higher to count towards the tenacity tally, obtain the tenacity buff, and get credit for a victory or defeat. You must be level 50 or higher to be able to use the portal of Wintergrasp. The immediate implications of this is that players cannot leave a low level alt sitting about collecting honor and Wintergrasp marks before level 70. While I don't know anyone personally who has done this, I have heard it talked about around the intertubes a bit.For the majority of us however, this change won't have any real effect. Interesting nonetheless. Don't forget that there are several upcoming changes to Wintergrasp in Patch 3.1; including a world wide timer and a new raid boss.
No current plans to let you spend Achievement Points
Every now and then, I hear through the grapevine that in the future, we will be able to spend our Achievement Points on, most likely, novelty items. This rumor has been around since Achievements were announced, and has even been mentioned by a blue or two. Unfortunately, it seems that implementing this is far from being in the works. Bornakk has confirmed that Achievement Points are "simply a marker of progression in the game" and that there are no current plans to work in a way to spend them. How do you feel about this? Personally, I was hoping for the eventual vendor selling items like walking canes, pinwheel hats and walking-speed pogo sticks. Still, not being able to spend my points will not stop me from collecting them!
Shorter Arena seasons in the future?
Bornakk announced over at the forums that Arena Season 5 is nearing its end. He notes that the current season is slated to end "with or shortly after" Patch 3.1 is released. Season 5 kicked off in December 16 last year and has run around 12 weeks to date. In comparison, the shortest Arena Season was the pre-Wrath Season 4, which lasted for 17 weeks while the extremely lengthy Season 3 dragged on for 29. Season 1 lasted for 20 weeks and Season 2 lasted for 23, so all seasons thus far except for the Wrath-preempted Season 4 have run for a good length of time.The reason for the extended Season 3 was because Blizzard had wanted PvP progression to match PvE progression, so were waiting for more guilds to gear up with Sunwell-level items. Considering how difficult Sunwell Plateau was, this took some time, delaying Season 4 considerably. PvE content in Wrath, on the other hand, was so accessible that by the time Season 5 started a month after release of the expansion, players were decked out in the best PvE gear -- which changed the balance of Arena play for the first few weeks.Blizzard is looking to address that by starting Season 6 simultaneously with the "first tier of raid content" or essentially make PvP gear more accessible to prepare for the next season of Arena play, according to Ghostcrawler. Although Blizzard hasn't given a starting date for either Season 6 or Patch 3.1, the new Arena seasons are looking to match the shortened Season 4 in length and might indicate a trend in PvP season progression. That is an exciting change of pace and a comforting message to PvP enthusiasts that Blizzard is committed to keeping PvE and PvP progression at a similar pace. And if the development of Ulduar is any indication, that seems to be a fast one.
New Cooking recipes coming in patch 3.1
I was excited to hear the other day that leveling cooking will be a little easier, as more recipes are likely to go grey a little later, but Bornakk has more good news for cooks after patch 3.1. He confirms that new recipes are going in as well, and he can think of two off of the top of his head (so hopefully we'll see even more than that).That will, as he says, make the Chef de Cuisine achievement that much easier as well -- it'll probably still be a pain, but at least there'll be a few more options to pick up new recipes. And I'm curious to see what the new food does, too: I like cooking the usual stat food as much as the next culinary expert, but I'm almost more interested in the fun stuff like Last Week's Mammoth (what a bummer) and the good old Delicious Chocolate Cake. Those cosmetic items make cooking much more fun than just the usual stat buffs that most food give.So we'll keep an eye out for new recipes. Completists will have at least two more to grab with the new patch.
Noblegarden will apply to What a Long, Strange Trip
So remember last week, when we reported that, to the tune of relieved sighs from Violet Proto-drake seekers everywhere, the Noblegarden achievements wouldn't apply to the What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been meta-holiday achievement? Not so fast, says Bornakk. While the achievements didn't appear in the meta one on the PTR, they will eventually apply. If you want your Violet Proto-drake, you better start getting your egg-searching eyes ready.Sacco actually posted about this in an update on Saturday, but it was overshadowed by the news about the Brewmaster achievement changes, and it's a pretty big deal: we thought we were getting a break on this one, but apparently not. Though it makes sense that all the holidays should be in there (and this explains, of course, why the holiday was extended to a full week), it still is kind of a bummer that we've suddenly got a whole other holiday to do.But Violet Proto-drakes should be tough to get anyway, and we're sure that, as usual, Blizzard will end up removing any achievements that they figure are unfair (or at least that people whine about until Blizzard doesn't want to hear it any more). And there's one more thought to take away from this: considering that all of this Noblegarden talk is going along with the 3.1 PTR, does that mean we'll see Ulduar on the live realms by Easter?
Arena Season 5 to close soon
We've been hearing an awful lot about Ulduar and patch 3.1 lately. As such, this announcement is really not a surprise. Vaneras and Bornakk posted on the forums today to warn us all that Season 5 is drawing near an end. The current season should close at the same time 3.1 drops, or very shortly afterward. (I'd guess "very shortly afterward" means "the following Tuesday.") Your Arena points will reset with the season transition, though your Honor points will remain banked. The announcement doesn't set a specific date. He just says "soon." Since we traditionally get at least two weeks' warning before an official season ends, that does mean that the patch probably won't drop for at least three. And since Noblegarden has been expanded on the PTR, then I expect the patch to hit and season to wrap up in the beginning of April.We haven't heard details about season-end rewards yet. That's important because we don't demonstrably know whether those rewards are going to be based on personal rating, team rating, or even the Match-Making Rating. The details of season-end rewards tend to fluctuate a little, but the best Arena teams can probably expect a title. The very, very best can expect the Arena mount. However, we don't know if it'll be a Nether Drake or maybe even a Proto-Drake. We'll let you know as we find out more.
Why too many currencies actually helps progression
Badges of Justice, Battleground marks, Marks of Honor Hold and Thrallmar, Spirit Shards, Stone Keeper's Shards, Emblems of Valor, Emblems of Heroism, and now Emblems of Conquest: Ulduar will add yet another currency item into the game and Cypruss of Draka wonders, rightfully, if it's all just too much. The good news is that since the currency system was introduced, all of this stuff is out of our bags, but wouldn't it just be easier if instead of creating a whole new token system, Blizzard just charged a lot more for the gear?Bornakk says no -- he says that if they just kept the same tokens and charged more per item, people would end up doing Naxx, Ulduar, OS, and any other instances that dropped that token every single week rather than actually moving up through the content, which is what Blizzard wants us to do. He also says that the Emblem exchange mechanic is designed to help this -- you can do Ulduar and go backwards for the gear, but you can't do Naxx ten extra times to get Ulduar gear.Which, we have to give it to Blizzard, is actually pretty smart. Yes, it does keep players from farming up the tokens (Blizzard knows that if you could run all the instances per week just to get one kind of token, there'd be lots of players who would), but it also keeps people progressing to get gear they can upgrade to. As Bornakk says, they've been trying to improve the Badge system ever since it was introduced in BC, and this method of introducing new currency to send players up the ladder is a result of their work there.
An Immortal in Ulduar and other troublesome achievements
Here's an interesting Ulduar request from Hugner on Hyjal -- he wants to ask that there be no "Immortal"-style achievement in the new raid instance. He says getting the achievement has been super frustrating for his guild, not only because, you know, it's hard, but because with one simple disconnect at the wrong time, the whole week's attempt is wasted.Of course, an achievement like that isn't meant to be easy. Some people in the thread suggest making it more like The Dedicated Few (so that not all the bosses have to be flawless in one run), but Bornakk says it's an achievement -- it's not required and if you really want to get the meaningless points, you'll just have to work around the disconnects. He's also shoring up discontent on the other side of things -- people are complaining that the Gonna Go When the Volcano Blows achievement is messing up their Sarth runs, because they're dodging insignificant damage rather than actually downing the boss. In fact, the easiest way to do that one is just to suicide in the very beginning (because the AoE can't hit corpses), and lots of people are doing that. Bornakk says change isn't likely -- the achievement is designed to be separate from gaining loot from the boss.Bottom line on both of these is that they're achievements -- if they're hard or random or waste time, that's kind of the point. Blizzard may have caved on a few of the holiday achievements, but these endgame achievements aren't meant to be gotten easily or even without a little RNG help.
Plagued and Black Proto-drake rewards to be removed
Bornakk had some news today that might send a lot of raiding guilds into a frenzied rush to get those raid Achievements. According to him, Blizzard will be removing the Plagued and Black Proto-Drake rewards from the Glory of the Raider and Heroic: Glory of the Raider meta-Achievements respectively. Blizzard believes that with guilds progressing into Ulduar and getting significantly better gear, those Achievements would be trivialized. So the 310% mounts are sadly going the way of the Amani War Bear.With Patch 3.1 already on the PTR -- although without Ulduar yet -- the clock is ticking for aspiring drake riders. All hope isn't lost, however, as Blizzard is introducing two new reward mounts to go with the 10- and 25-man Ulduar raid Achievements. Pictured above as mined from the PTR files by MMO Champion is the Ironbound Proto-Drake, which I suspect is the reward for the Heroic Ulduar Achievments. There's also a Rusted Proto-Drake, which is likely the reward for the 10-man meta-Achievement. For those of you working towards the Plagued and Black Proto-Drakes, you don't have long now! Hop to it and don't die! Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.
Several hotfixes now live
I caught this a bit late, but Bornakk wrote into the Service Status forums Wednesday night to provide a list of hotfixes concerning Jewelcrafting, Shamans, Rogues, and Death Knights that have been applied to the live realms: Icy Prisms are now unique; they cannot be mailed but can still be traded. The Rogue ability Mutilate now does its appropriate damage based on talents. Raise Dead now properly detects the presence of Corpse Dust in your inventory. The Glyph of Windfury Weapon will not apply additional attack power. A Grounding Totem is now properly destroyed even if the grounded spell did not do damage. Tremor Totem now properly pulses every 3 seconds. Crippling Poison now has a PvP duration of 10 seconds. Wound Poison now has a PvP duration of 10 seconds.
Top five toughest and easiest raid bosses
Jinzuku over on Hyjal has a fun idea: list your top five toughest and easiest raid bosses. C'thun, M'uru, Kil'jaeden and Sarth 3D are appearing on most of the lists -- the old Four Horsemen and even C'thun's trash are also getting called out by Bornakk. Personally, I haven't raided much of the hardest content, but on the hard side, I'd have to say that General Rajaxx gave my guild a rough time, Ragnaros didn't go down easy, and Twin Emps didn't play well with us (or a lot of other guilds, either).Easiest? Chess (duh), I always found Baron Geddon to be pretty easy (though no less fun), Attumen the Huntsman, and Venoxis was a knockover, too. But as you can see from the thread, people are all over the place -- some of the hardest bosses in the game for some were simple for others. And while some guilds fly through content, others can bump their heads on bosses for quite a while. I wouldn't put him on the hard list, but I know a few guilds I've run with had quite a bit of trouble with Moroes while they were first starting out.And it's no surprise that most of the hardest bosses in the game came near the end of expansion cycles -- AQ40, Naxx, and Sunwell. A few people in the thread predict that we'll eventually see the Lich King on these lists, and given that Blizzard goes tough when you get a couple content patches into an expansion, that wouldn't be a surprise at all.
Rolling restarts on all realms
Bornakk broke the news earlier today that all realms will be going down, saying that Blizzard needs to perform urgent rolling restarts today, Thursday. He notes that all realms will be down for approximately 15 minutes and that the procedure, slated to start at 10:30am PST, will last approximately one hour.However, reports indicate that restarts have taken on a different form than expected, as many realms went down several times for a short period several hours earlier. These rolling restarts, lasting no more than a few minutes per realm, occurred much earlier than Bornakk's announcement. Blizzard did not indicate what problems they will be fixing with these emergency restarts. We'll keep you posted as we learn more.
Arena matching system changed in patch 3.0.8
There's a new matchmaking system out in 3.0.8 for arenas, and the change (surprise surprise) did not make it into the patch notes.Update: Please see this post for further information.The system is thus:There is a rating, one that you cannot see, which will match you "against others of equal skill." This rating is different for each of the arena brackets. At the end of each match, the internal rating, the one you cannot see, is changed. The cycle then repeats itself when you queue up for your next match.There isn't any more information that that, which was released by Bornakk late last night. Bornakk warns that you might notice some odd behavior in arena matches.
Patch 3.0.8 bug roundup
My favorite time of the patch day is here – looking at all the bugs! At the time of this writing, we're about six hours after the patch and the majority of bugs have been found. We've counted six of them, and will go over each and when the fix is expected after the break.Obviously some are more important than others. The Wintergrasp bug that is currently crashing servers left and right needs to be fixed "nao," as people are clamoring about in trade channels. The game is nearly unplayable for most people.Interestingly there are no bugs about missing mail or other missing items, nor are there reports of extreme lag and other difficulties (other than the severs crashing). The full list of 3.0.8 bugs, and information about their status, after the break.
New PvE realm open for character creation
On top of free transfers for both North American and European servers, a brand new realm has opened up for the US! The vital stats: Name: Borean Tundra Type: PvE Time Zone: Central Battlegroup: Emberstorm As a non-transfer realm, you can't transfer characters to it (duh) or create Death Knights on it (unless you have another level 55+ character on that realm) for the next 3 months. AQ gates are closed. Reroll locusts, get ready to swarm. When I was on a few hours ago, the highest level was 13 (a hunter); it seems like the realm opened around when Bornakk did his post (9:30 PST/12:30 EST). There is also, apparently, a new RP transfer realm planned to open at some point; we'll let you know as soon as we find out anything more. P.S. Hi to Justin, Nerdan, and Healinator.
"Gotta Go" getting easier
I like the heroic dungeon achievements a lot. They give you something to strive for if you're bored if the instance, or just want an extra challenge. I recently had a great time getting Zombiefest! in what would have otherwise been a pedestrian CoS clear (not enough DPS to try for the timed boss; we were running with some fresh 80s and a Holy paladin DPSing). However, some of the achievements are currently though to be near-impossible. One that is often talked about is Gotta Go!; typically, it's Anub'arak's burrowing that throws attempts off. Good news to those of you working towards your Red Proto-Drake: the time limit on Gotta Go! is being doubled to four minutes in 3.0.8. Many groups were getting quite close to two minutes before, so this change ought to make it relatively easy.
