testrealm
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WoW Insider's PTR voice chat hands on
Voice chat is now available on the 2.2 PTR, so I downloaded the test realms, rolled up a gnome Warlock, and put on my Logitech headset to try it out. What I found was a pretty intuitive voice chat system that does most everything Blizzard promised to do, and will likely replace Teamspeak or Ventrilo for a lot of smaller guilds.Unfortunately, it's complicated enough that it probably won't be extremely widespread-- players who haven't found the need to join up on voice chat yet probably still won't feel a need to do so. But for guilds who don't want to pay for a separate server and friends who group together often, the ingame voice chat should work just fine.The rest of my impressions, including a complete walkthrough on how the chat system works, are after the jump.
Mount changes in 1.12.1
Hot off the test realm forums comes a big change to mounts and the way we ride them:Mounts now require only one, shared riding skill (blue mounts require level 75, epic mounts, level 150). Also costs of learning this skill are now significally increased. Previously, cost of learning riding skill was 20 gold for each kind of mount, without any discount. Now it will be 90 gold for level 75 and 900 for level 150. Level 150 of riding skills is required for epic mounts and will most probably include PvP mounts and all mounts that drop in instances (Tiger, Raptor, Baron mount, bug mount and maybe paladin and warlock mount too). For now I can confirm that it is required to ride Stormpike Battle Charger, rest of mounts require confirmation. In addition to the change of riding skills, the costs of Blue and Epic faction mounts has been significally decreased. Now blue mounts costs 10 gold and epic mounts costs 100 gold. As you can see from this screenshot we took on the European PTR, you'll need exalted to buy a mount (as you do currently), but the items have become bind-on-pickup. We can't tell just by playing on the PTR exactly what will happen to our existing riding skills and mounts, so here's hoping we find out more about this change soon.
Breakfast Topic: Testing!
The public test realms opened late Friday, and despite stability issues, are officially online. With lots of interesting changes, are you interested in checking them out? Perhaps exploring the new Naxxramas dungeon with a pick up group, or just enjoying playing a pre-made and pre-geared level 60 character. So let us know - will we be seeing you on the test realm?
Now Testing: Patch 1.10.2
In an unusual move, Blizzard has opted to bring the public test realm online for a round of testing for patch 1.10.2. To the best of my knowledge, it's the first time a minor patch has been put through public testing, and I suppose we'll see how it works out. The patch seems to be primarily bug fixes, so check out the patch notes - and, as usual, be aware that these may not be final. If you want to copy a character over, start here, but be aware that character copy hours are Monday through Friday, 3:00 AM - 3:00 PM PDT.
Breakfast Topic: Competition Over!
Another Tuesday, another maintenance day, and today's brings with it an end to the Public Test Realm contests as well as patch 1.10. For the last few weeks players have been frantically levelling, grinding, and PvPing in their quest to be in the top 1000. Did you take part, and how did it go?I popped on to the Honor Contest EU realm last night to gauge the atmosphere and I was surprised at how few players were online. When I visited, only one battleground was open, which makes me wonder if Blizzard will even find the 1000 players they need for their prizes. However, that puts anyone who created a character on the realm in with a good chance. Some players were definitely nervous, boasting about their amount of honour without explicitly detailing their achievements. I didn't get a chance to check out the other two contest realms; have you been watching the competitions unfold? Do you think you will win a spot in the Burning Crusade beta?
Character Copy Re-opened
Copies to the public test realms seem to be enabled again, so go ahead and copy one of your characters over to try out. And, while copies are limited to 2, you can copy unlimited numbers of pre-made test characters (nicely geared level 60s of all classes, with most of the necessary quest items to get started on the Dungeon 2 armor quests). Without having my own account, I can't confirm or deny whether the European test realms are up, but you can check the European character copy page and see. Happy testing!
Test Realm Character Copy Closed
Well, if you'd attempted to copy your character over or log in, you knew there were problems - though, considering the 5000 person login queues, the test server itself has been astonishingly playable. The character copy feature seems to have been particularly slammed today, giving a generic "service unavailable" message all day, and this afternoon, community manager Tseric has said that character copies will be disabled for the next 48 hours.
