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US' new stealth destroyer may finally have affordable ammo
To put it mildly, the US screwed up when it decided to carry on with its Zumwalt-class stealth destroyers when they depended on smart ammo the Navy couldn't afford. However, it might have a clever workaround. Officials speaking to USNI News say the Navy is looking at Raytheon's Excalibur, a GPS-guided artillery round, as a substitute for the custom LRLAP (Long Range Land Attack Projectile) shells the Zumwalt's main guns were designed to use. Excalibur has roughly half the range at about 30 miles, but it costs much less -- about a quarter of the $800,000-plus cost per round of LRLAP. It can also hit moving targets where LRLAP couldn't.
There's now a steel-reinforced bullet for 3D-printed guns
Despite all the hype surrounding 3D-printed guns (good and bad), they still haven't truly taken off outside of enthusiasts. A reason for this is, perhaps, the lack of powerful ammunition -- something that's not 3D-printed or, put simply, generally made out of plastic materials. But, as Wired reports, a gentleman from Pennsylvania has already started working on a solution, for those who were looking for one anyway. Michael Crumling, a 25-year-old machinist, recently designed bullets that use a rather thick, steel shell, strong enough to keep a hold of the blast from inside without spreading any force to the weapon.
The Daily Grind: Are MMO class consumables due for a revival?
While most MMO players are probably familiar with consumables in MMOs like food and drinks or even enchantments and gems, class consumables like spell reagents and ammo are now fairly rare but used to be a lot more common. Ultima Online, EverQuest, and Asheron's Call, for example, all included a reagent mechanic. For many years, Ultima Online's mages carried sacks of such reagents required and consumed by each spell they hoped to cast. High-end raid-related spells in EQ ate expensive gems, and AC1's reagents had a chance to go up in a puff of smoke each time your cast fizzled. Themeparks like Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft have veered away from this design path. In fact, WoW itself started life requiring reagents for special spells and ammunition for bow- and gun-wielding classes, but Blizzard removed them several years ago in the pursuit of both simplicity and class balance. After all, it wasn't very fair to require only some classes to spend extra gold and take up weight or inventory space on consumables. Still, such mechanics added a level of immersion as well as annoyance. What do you think -- do class consumables deserve to make a comeback in MMORPGs? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: Do you want to worry about ammunition?
Despite the fact that my thief in Guild Wars 2 carries pistols which appear to be capable of holding one shot at a time, I don't recall her ever reloading. Nor do I recall ever having to buy the oxcarts full of ammunition that she apparently has at all times, because it has to come from somewhere. Like many games, Guild Wars 2 does away with worries about ammunition and focuses instead on just giving you weapons that fire when you want. On the one hand, this makes sense -- ammunition in World of Warcraft was such a hassle that the designers eventually did away with it altogether. It's a break in verisimilitude for ease of play. On the other hand, removing the need for ammunition removes the possibility of special types of ammunition, and the ease of play issues could be addressed in other ways. So do you want ammunition in your game? Or would you prefer to just have an infinite quiver and focus on shooting arrows? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Gold Capped: Ask an auctioneer
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. For half-arsed, last-minute mailbag posts, tune in every Thursday after Basil forgot his deadline because he was buying his wife stylish side tables at large Swedish furniture stores. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! I have a bunch of questions and comments piled up in my poor neglected inbox, so today we're going to jump right in and address some of the good ones. Bernake (awesome name, by the way) writes: Previously you have established that it is not profitable it to transfer gold frequently across faction. While this is generally true, I play on a server where the Horde population playing at peak hours is no more than 600 people, less than 2,000 active on the server. I was wondering (if that) warrants a change in this policy, as the Alliance have over 9,000 active players with at least 600 on throughout the day and over 2,000 playing at peak hours on any given day. I was considering moving into the Alliance glyph market, as the Horde glyph market is quite small. I was wondering if you would support this move as well as give some insight? I believe you're talking about this post on cross-faction arbitrage. In fact, it can be extremely profitable to move money and products across the neutral AH. I may have sounded a little negative because it is risky; however, unless you're losing a chunk of your stock to snipers or 20 percent of your gold to the neutral AH cut, it's not a bad thing to do. You can just buy to resell, or if you're having trouble finding mats on your home faction, you can use stock from the other side to keep your costs in line.
Insider Trader: Selling arrows in singles for the price of a stack scam
Got trade skills? Want money? Insider Trader is the column to read. Whenever they let Basil write it, he'll do his best to fill your head full of ideas and your bags full of valuables and gold. I'm going to come right out and say it: Don't do this. I recently wrote about ways engineers can make money, mentioning (among other things) selling epic ammo to hunters. The problem with making the best raiding and PvP ammo in the game only available from players is that it forces hunters to either find an engineer with the recipe who is willing to do all the crafting by mail, or buy it off the auction house. What do I have against the auction house, you ask? Well, overall it's an excellent tool and far superior to the much nastier alternative of being forced to actually use trade chat for, you know, trade. It's not perfect, however. In fact, there's one massive glaring inadequacy that can be found.
Scattered Shots: Dreaming of awesome ammo
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. Currently hunter ammo is nothing more than an extension of our ranged weapon DPS. Perhaps our Stakethrower does 222.7 DPS in raw damage. Well, our Shatter Rounds just boost that by 91.5 DPS. So it's as if our gun was actually doing 314.2 DPS. It's certainly easy to understand, but it's just so... boring. Really, they could just boost the DPS of our ranged weapons and it'd be the same thing. But ever since Blizzard first told us they'd be removing consumable ammo we hunters have been dreaming of how awesome our ammo could be. It might burst into flame on impact, or cut through armor, or heal us, or heck, for all we know it would serve as a mount so we could fire gnomish rogues into the face of bosses! Join me after the cut for a discussion of the state of hunter ammo, and some speculation on just how awesome it could become.
Ghostcrawler on hunter ammo replacement
As you may recall, Blizzard announced their intent to get rid of consumable ammo in Patch 3.1, only to withdraw the change a short time later, with the promise of reimplementing it at a nebulous later date. Now, it's been more or less assumed that said later date is Cataclysm itself, or at least Patch 4.0. In a general forum post created to discuss ammo replacements, Ghostcrawler piped in to remind us that the only change announced for Cataclysm was the removal of ammo, with nothing else yet decided (or, more accurately, announced). While he did acknowledge the possibility of adding in new situational ammo, he did observe that the hassle of collecting and swapping different ammo types might grow old pretty quickly, especially for a class like the hunter that already needs to push a lot of buttons to play at peak potential, in addition to already having a pet to manage.
Hotfixes incoming for some DPS and tanks, not hunters or priests
Ghostcrawler has dropped information on the forums about a few incoming hotfixes to patch 3.3. The first three changes are posted over on the DPS role forum: Hunger for Blood will increase damage by 10% instead of 15%. Assassination rogues needed damage, but they got too much, and this will bring them back. Sorry rogues -- the tooltip, we're also told, might not change right away. Scourge Strike will crit only once, not on the shadow portion of the damage. "This change just proved to be too bursty in PvP and provide too much sustained damage in raids." He also gives lots more explanation of the change on the forums -- this one will be discussed quite a bit. Rolling Corruptions will no longer use the initial haste value indefinitely. More of a bugfix than a change, says GC -- the haste value should drop out to normal after a few ticks of the spell. Elsewhere, GC says that there are no changes planned for the new hunter epic ammo, so find a friendly engineer and stick to them like glue. There is a hotfix incoming for the bug that causes tanked mobs to move around randomly -- thank goodness on that. And SW: Pain's immunity from the haste change for shadow priests will probably stay right where it is.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Epic ammo
Here's some good news for hunters in the next patch that I don't think we've covered on its own yet. Huntsman's Lodge points out that there are two new types of craftable epic ammo on the PTR for us to load up. Iceblade Arrows and Shatter Rounds are both learned by engineers who rep up with the Ashen Verdict, the new faction to go along with the assault on Icecrown. Both add a whopping 91.5 damage to ranged weapon DPS, and of course they're BoE, so all you'll need is an engineer buddy honored with the new guys. One catch: arrows require Gnomish engineering, and the bullets require Goblin engineering. Interesting choice by Blizzard, but it shouldn't be too big a problem, especially since mats are pretty cheap anyway (two Crystallized Shadow for the arrows and two Crystallized Earth for the bullets). Sounds good to me. Still no sign of those great ammo plans we heard about way back when, but more damage (especially some so relatively easy to get) is never a bad thing. Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
The dying Hunter?
The folks over at Ten Ton Hammer have a post with some anecdotal data about Hunters -- they claim that Azeroth's ranged DPS pet class is on a decline lately, and they've got only some guild application numbers to back the theory up. Mem over there says that there are a few diehard Hunters still floating around, and lots of alts, but that as a class, it's fallen off in terms of popularity for sure.Is he right? Fortunately, there's a site that tracks numbers (as reliably as you'll find for public information, anyway -- certainly Blizzard has access to much more information) on exactly that. WarcraftRealms' list of classes over time does prop the "declining Hunter" theory up -- as you can see (from both Alliance and Horde totals), Death Knights took a nice bite out of all the classes for a little while, and Hunters have been on a pretty steady slope down since mid-January, when patch 3.0.8 hit the realms. That, of course, was the harsh Beastmaster nerf, and ever since then, Hunters have had some real trouble recovering (not to mention that all class playtime is declining in general -- despite their slope downwards, Hunters are still in the top three classes played anyway).Is this the end of Hunters? Not at all -- Blizzard has already said that they are cyclical about balancing classes, and a heavy set of nerfs on one side of the cycle is usually accompanied by a burst of buffs on the other. Not to mention that the most interesting Hunter changes, the ammo revamp, hasn't yet found its way to the game. Reworking of ammo (in addition to some likely buffs there), will probably bring lots of Hunters back to the stables, so to speak. But it's true, Hunters are on a downward turn lately.[via WoW LJ]
Insider Trader: Patch 3.2 profession change analysis
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Over the past few days, some upcoming professions changes for Patch 3.2 have been announced, and although they are not as detailed as they could be, several of the changes will have quite an impact. First and foremost, every profession-specific buff is being upgraded. This includes an Enchanter's ability to enhance their own rings, a Leatherworker's bracer enchants, and more. For a complete list of the current profession bonuses, check out Insider Trader's guide to Profession-Specific Buffs, parts one through three.These buffs also answer some of the concerns surrounding the upcoming Jewelcrafting nerf that epic gems might be introduced without a buff to the Dragon's Eyes, which, in combination with the fact that these gems will no longer be prismatic, would effectively squash the Jewelcrafting bonus.Jewelcrafters will also do well to note that they will be able to acquire epic gems by prospecting Titanium. Combined with a Blacksmith's two extra prismatic sockets, this powerful duo is one of the most popular profession combinations.In addition, Engineers will be seeing some welcome changes to their profession that may make it more appealing. Unfortunately, some of the details have not been made public, so the competitiveness of their self buffs, for example, remains to be seen.
The Queue: Soul Shard parade
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.In yesterday's intro, I mentioned WoW Insider's April Fool's joke. Sillily (it's a word now), I didn't actually include a link to it, and there were people writing that they had no idea that we even did a joke and couldn't find it. Well, here it is! Now, let's begin, shall we?Sorano asked..."In the Argent Tournament, is it possible to champion other cities than the ones attached to your race and faction? Could my Tauren Warrior try and earn the favor of Gnomeregan to obtain a sweet Mechano Strider? I've always wanted one of those for my tauren warrior."
The Queue: Strategery
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Good afternoon, everybody! I apologize for missing yesterday's edition of The Queue, I sort of forgot about it in my rush to get our April Fool's joke pieced together. The entire team got together to bring that little joke to life. Getting it all put together was like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. Fun, but it took awhile! Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. If not, oh well! We had a good time bringing it to life.I don't think you want to listen to me ramble about that, though. Onto the Q&A!Ghola asked..."Why would the Argent Tournament set up camp in Icecrown, at the back end of the glacier? This makes absolutely no sense to me. Crystal Song seems way better: no quests there, plenty of space, and much better weather!"
Ammo stacks in 1000, sells in 200
Whoo, boy. When the news came out that ammo was changing big time in the game, Hunters everywhere pretty much praised it -- no longer would we have to worry about carrying around tons of ammo, with one bag slot spent on just one consumable. But since then, things haven't been so peachy. First, we heard that consumable ammunition wasn't going anywhere, and then we noticed that none of the other changes were happening either. Then, ammo stacks were fixed to 1000 in a recent hotfix on the PTR, but now there's a whole other issue: while it stacks in 1000, it still only sells in stacks of 200. Which means you have to buy, and buy, and buy, and buy, and buy just to fill one slot. And what's more, Dresorull says it's not a bug -- we'll likely see this on the live realms.And as BRK points out, the "1000" stacks aren't even labeled on the PTR yet. He says you can fill your quiver with 28,000 rounds of ammo (of course, you'd have to hit buy 140 times just to do that), but what happened to the quiver changes? Aren't Hunters supposed to get that bag slot back in 3.1 anyway?It's all very confusing, and this smacks of a missed followthrough: the original Hunter changes as suggested were popular, but we're guessing something came up in their way (either the team was needed on another task, or some flaw in the system as designed kept them from turning consumable ammunition into a permanent item). Either way, we hope this gets fixed -- we know this is the PTR and everything is subject to change, but as it stands, it looks like we're getting a half-finished ammo system when patch 3.1 goes live.
Why now's the best time to run BC content
Spartonian over on WoW LJ has been running some old content, and he points out something that everyone should hear: now is the absolute best time to be running the old Burning Crusade endgame. He says the contest is laughably easy with current endgame levels and gear, and yet, because we're still basically at the beginning of this expansion's endgame, there are still quite a few items that can be picked off of the end bosses in Black Temple and Sunwell (not to mention you can pick up the achievements for those places if you weren't able to down them before.And he's right -- there are some nice trinkets still found in those old instances, and who wouldn't want to complete their Warglaive set or grab a Thori'dal from Sunwell? Sure, the stats may not be the best, but until the ammo changes go in, you can save money while soloing -- and own a legendary to boot.Of course, when Ulduar shows up, we'll all likely be too busy with the new content (be it the raids or the Argent Tournment or whatever else you got) to go back to Burning Crusade. But now, during the downtime post-OS and Naxx, is the perfect time to go back and clean up the old content.
Ammo changes MIA in the 3.1 PTR
We posted the patch notes as soon as they dropped, and our new Hunter writer, Jessica (a.k.a. Lassirra) did a great job of breaking down exactly what's new with Hunters, but you may have noticed, as a few of our tipsters did, that consumable ammunition was still in the game. There was no sign of the upcoming changes in the patch notes at all.Which isn't exactly unexpected (in fact, we have already heard that it wouldn't make the 3.1 PTR), but even the things that were promised to be in the PTR (no need for ammo pouches or quivers, bigger stacks for ammunition) still don't seem to be there. We still believe that Blizzard has this on the to-do list, but it looks like this change has been put aside for now.Too bad -- that was a pretty exciting adjustment for Hunters. But Blizzard seems hard at work on things like the Argent Dawn Tournament and the Dual Spec system. We'll get the ammo changes when they get around to them.
WoW Insider Show live this afternoon at 3:30pm EST
Today on the show, we're gonna have a good ol' podcastin' time. Michael Sacco, formerly known as "Belfaire," is returning to the show, as is Turpster, and we'll be talking all about patch 3.1 and all of the changes we heard about this week (there's lots of them, if you haven't been paying attention), specifically what we've been told about mana regeneration and what's up with all of the classes (no ammo?!?). We'll also chat about the Darkmoon cards, and about playing the Horde and why so many people are into it.Should be fun -- come visit us on the Ustream page this afternoon at 3:30pm Eastern (or just head right below the cut of this post -- I've embedded the stream below), and be ready to chat some Warcraft with us (both during the show and the usual aftershow). Don't forget that you can email us as well -- the address is theshow@wow.com, so hit us up if you've got a comment or question.We'll see you this afternoon at 3:30pm Eastern.
Big changes for Hunters in patch 3.1
No more quivers, no more pouches, no more bullets to make us slouches. Ok, so I'm terrible at poetry, but you get the picture. This has been on a lot of Hunters' wish lists for a long time, but it's finally here. No more ammo. Or rather, ammo will be an item more like a relic or a wand that modifies our ranged weapon damage without being consumed. Engineers, that means you better make hay while the sun shines. Soon, we'll be buying our last crate of Mammoth Cutters ever.This is far from the only changed announced tonight -- or this morning, depending on where you are. Let's look at them all one by one.
Patch 3.1 class changes for Mages, Hunters, Death Knights, and Paladins
As expected, tonight we're getting a sampling of the class changes for Mages, Hunters, Death Knights, and Paladins. This comes after a day of more 3.1 class changes.Big changes from this release include: Consumable ammunition removed from the game! Hunter's will get additional trap talents via the Survival tree Mages will now have a mana replenishment spell Paladin's Blessing of Kings is now a base ability Paladin's Exorcism will now damage all enemy types Death Knight's Pestilence will now only spread diseases The headline for tomorrow will be the line "Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game." In fact, that'll be the the headline for the next few days.After the break are all the changes released thus far.
