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WoW Archivist: 3.0.8, the "disaster" patch
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? Any game that survives for 10 years and counting will have its growing pains. There will be moments when the urge to deliver the best possible content gets the better of the developers, when they reach too far but only figure that out after it's too late. Wrath of the Lich King was so ambitious in scope, as originally conceived, that Blizzard simply couldn't deliver what they announced. Blizzard cut major features before the expansion even went into beta testing. Wrath's systems went live with patch 3.0.2 in October 2008, and the expansion hit live realms two months later. As with most expansions, there were early problems. In patch 3.0.8, Blizzard tried to fix those problems. Instead, they made them worse. Far worse. WoW Insider called the patch a "disaster." Read on to find out why! Wintercrash Rebalancing the popular Wintergrasp outdoor battle was one of the patch's biggest features. Blizzard buffed vehicles and turrets to make them less fragile. The keep walls also became sturdier, while the final door received a nerf. Other adjustments and fixes went into effect. So did a bug so catastrophic that players couldn't believe it ever found its way to a live realm.
All the World's a Stage: Player housing, interactivity, and other possible features
All the World's a Stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. They have their stories and their characters; and one player in his time plays many roles. Playing Warhammer recently has made me think of more features that WoW could add in order to create a better roleplaying experience. Far and away the most important one, to my mind, was the Tome of Knowledge. WoW players really need an in-game resource they can refer to as a standard for information about the Warcraft universe, and having this at hand, roleplayers could do a lot better than they can today. Knowledge is the most important thing, of course, but there are other features Blizzard could add to the game that would help roleplayers too. I'd like to address a few of these things, and see how much they could really do for us. Player housing is a possible feature that gets talked about a lot, but I have my doubts as to whether or not it would really help roleplayers all that much. Another issue is one that is more important to me personally, and is another feature inspired by my trial with Warhammer Online: looking at interactivity between characters.
Breakfast Topic: Awesome animations
There have been some truly spectacular visual moments in Azeroth; scenes that make you gasp and glee. I'm thinking of occasions like the Scourge Invasion of Stormwind and Orgrimar or Kael'thas blowing up his room in Tempest Keep. Who can deny Wrathgate was incredible. However, there are also some awesome little animations that really add so much to the game. It's these little things that we can take for granted but sometimes jump out at us as something wonderful.Even on a hard night of raid wiping in our guild, if someone chugs a stack of Pygmy Oil and /cower's it's bound to bring a laugh. Many a machinima has featured a /dance, from one race or many, with variously spectacular and humorous results.Who's /flex is better, Draenei or Blood Elf? Have you ever left one of your characters alone for a while and then had their idle-animation surprise you? Are there any actions or animations you wish were in the game? What animations bring a smile to your face?
Searching for the Vanish bug
Are you sitting down, Rogues? Ghostcrawler finally addressed the Vanish bug over on the forums, but not in the way you'd want him to: he says that while it probably is a bug, they can't seem to find it. According to Mr. Street, every time they sit down and try to recreate the bug issues with Vanish (aggro isn't lost when it's supposed to be), they come up short, like a mechanic who never hears that rattling in your car.I'll echo what many players in the thread say: it is there. I've had it bite me many times -- given that I don't Arena much, it's usually when I pull aggro from multiple mobs while soloing, and try to Vanish away: one of them will strangely keep attacking me. But in terms of reproducing it, GC's got me -- I don't know when it happens, or what circumstances make it happen, I just know that it happens. And when it does, it's annoying.He also says that like Onyxia Deep Breath-ing more, the Vanish bug has moved into a kind of legendary perpetual problem, so much so that they can't tell the real complaints from the jokes. So maybe for your favorite bug in the game (ahem, someday I'll get a Cower bug fix), it's not so much a matter of Blizzard just fixing it, as Blizzard finding out why it's happening in the first place.
Scattered Shots: Autocast bugs and other animal handling issues in 3.0.2
Welcome to Scattered Shots, where Daniel Whitcomb loves his Hunter Judgement, but wishes he got the cool looking shoulders too. So between 3.0.2, the Scourge Invasion, and Hallow's End, my Hunter's seen a lot of play as I've been going after the title and the undead armor and playing with all the new changes on a live server and all, and in that time, I've had some chance to see how stuff works out when it's thrown into the crucible of live server playing. Most of my observations have ended up focusing around pets, which is probably to be expected. After all, they've changed quite a bit. Here's what's I've learned from 3.0.2 in the last few weeks about managing your pet:
Blizzard updates emote list, you applaud. Bravo!
We knew that Wrath was going to bring new emotes (and some of them were even suggested by players), and now Blizzard has posted the full list, complete with which emotes have animations and voices, and none or both. The /cower is the most hilarious one I've seen so far -- the Night Elf /cower is just terrific. And some of these are old and just not very well known -- /nosepick, I'm pretty sure, has been in there since the beginning, but I don't remember ever seeing anyone use it in game.Unfortunately, they don't mark which are new and which aren't, but I believe /incoming is a new one. I've never tried out /sing or /ding. and /doh looks new to me as well. But odds are that there are at least a few you haven't tried yet, and we do know that lots of the animations are new for sure.So get in there and try out some emoting -- if there's an especially funny one you find, let us know for sure.Update: Commenter Jason M. nabbed this cache of the page from the Wayback machine so we can see what's old and new for sure. Thanks!
Scattered Shots: Pet talent trees in the Wrath Beta
Welcome to another edition of Scattered Shots, the other WoW Insider weekly Hunter column. Daniel Whitcomb is your guest host again this week. So, we theorized about talented pets a bit quite a few installments of Scattered Shots ago, but now we have the actual trees live and testable on the Wrath Beta, and they seem to be firming up nicely. There's a few promised changes yet to come, such as the removal or lowering of focus costs on many major abilities and talents, and it's still very possible that Blizzard may make changes here and there before live, but I think they're solid enough at this point that we can look at each tree and make some solid predictions about how people will use them and how various talent builds might look.
Wrath Beta Patch Notes: Hunter
By now, I am sure you've heard that the Wrath of the Lich King Beta is going live and the patch notes are up. There's a rather extensive section devoted to Hunters on this iteration. We have a few more insights into the pet talent trees that were announced at the Worldwide Invitational, as well as a few changes to existing talents and a nice Steady Shot buff.
