Icecrown-Citadel
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Icecrown Citadel testing schedule for Nov. 11-14
Good news, everyone! Blizzard just posted the updated schedule for Icecrown Citadel encounter testing on the Patch 3.3 PTR. Looks like the US gets first crack at taking down Saurfang Jr., while the EU gets the exclusive on reenacting a Spin Doctors song. The full schedule is listed below. Bear in mind that testing times are subject to change with or without notice due to build changes, PTR stability, capricious developer whims, and So You Think You Can Dance results. EU Servers Thursday, November 12 at 19:30 CET – Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Rotface Friday, November 13 at 19:30 CET – Blood Princes, Professor Putricide Saturday, November 14 at 19:30 CET – Lord Marrowgar US Servers Wednesday, November 11 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Lord Marrowgar, Festergut Thursday, November 12 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Deathbringer Saurfang Friday, November 13 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Icecrown Gunship Battle Saturday, November 14 at 4PM EST / 1 PM PST – Sindragosa 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.
Officers' Quarters: Patch 3.3 -- An officer's perspective
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. Much as I've done with Patch 3.2 and other major patches in the past, I'd like to examine what 3.3 will mean for officers. All major patches require some forethought and adjustment, and this one just happens to be a doozy! Icecrown Citadel The ultimate raid of this expansion, Icecrown Citadel is poised to be one of the most exciting raids that Blizzard has ever released. As such, I can virtually guarantee you'll have long-lost players coming out of the woodwork to get back into the raiding scene for a chance to face off with the Lich King. Make sure you review your guild's policies for inviting players to raids to make sure that slots will be awarded in a way that's as fair as possible while still giving your raid a solid chance at success. One debate that's sure to rage among officers and raid leaders this time around is whether to extend lockouts until you beat the zone and unlock the hard mode toggle or to reset the instance each week to farm the early bosses. I'm still not sure how my guild is going to handle this. It will certainly depend on how quickly we can clear those first bosses and which bosses present more of a roadblock. If we're clearing quickly, we'll probably keep going until we hit a boss we can't beat. Then we'll reset and farm up more loot and Frost Badges.
Realm Championships and a 2010 preview for the TCG
The WoW TCG has just finished up their year with the World Championships, but apparently they're not sitting back on their laurels -- they've just sent word that their Realm Championships will be going down November 14-15, 2009, in cities around the world like "San Diego, Philadelphia, Helsinki, Manchester (England), Singapore and Melbourne." These are invite-only tournaments, but they're always accompanied by events that are open to the public, including lots and lots of TCG playing, giveaways and door prizes, and sometimes even special realms of the online game set up for players to join. If you've never seen a TCG event and one is headed to your city, it's worth checking out. Additionally, the TCG folks have outlined their plans for 2010 over on their website, and it sounds like it'll be a busy year. They're kicking things off with the Scourgewar release, including the TCG loot of the mini-mounts (finally, a pony!), the Tuskarr Kite, and a Spectral Tiger Cub. And later in the year, you can look forward to a Naxxramas dungeon deck, another expansion called Wrathgate (with likely more in-game loot to go after), and finally, an Icecrown Citadel raid deck release. Should be an exciting 2010 for the trading card game -- we'll definitely be watching for that new expansion and the loot items due out with it.
Icecrown Citadel testing for this weekend
Come, my tan-faced children. Follow well in order! Get your weapons ready! Because Icecrown Citadel raid testing is back on track for both the US and EU, according to Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer, AKA Daelo. His post on the official forums has scheduled the following encounters for testing on the Patch 3.3 PTR, barring any unforeseen difficulties, including build changes, server status, or capricious developer whims. US Servers Friday, November 6 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Valithria Dreamwalker Saturday, November 7 at 4PM EST / 1PM PST – Icecrown Gunship Battle EU Servers Friday, November 6 at 19:30 CET – Lady Deathwhisper Saturday, November 7 at 19:30 CET – Professor Putricide And be sure to let us know if you catch a glimpse of that legendary sharp-edged axe, pioneers, o pioneers! 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 the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Icecrown raid difficulty to be set on a per-boss basis
Blizzard is once again changing the way in which we trigger heroic modes of encounters. First there was Sarth, where you left up mini-bosses. Then there was Ulduar, where you (sometimes) triggered a particular event by defeating or leaving up particular bosses or objects. Then in the Trial of the Crusader you had four different raids to do depending on your difficulty setting. Now in Icecrown Citadel, Blizzard has appeared to reach a final solution of sorts -- potentially even going back and changing the way hard modes in Trial of the Crusader are triggered. Difficulty (hard mode on/hard mode off) of the upcoming Icecrown Citadel raid in patch 3.3 will be set on a per-boss basis. The full statement after the break.
The best of WoW.com: October 27 - November 3, 2009
That right there's a big ugly frost dragon named Sindragosa, and with the newest patch headed to the World of Warcraft (we expect it sometime this December), we'll be bringing her down. It won't be easy, but then again, WoW players have Joystiq's own WoW.com to guide them. You can read all about that fight, the new patch, and other popular stories in the World of Warcraft on our weekly roundup after the break.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Valithria Dreamwalker impressions
I have never been more excited about a boss in my life -- especially from a healer perspective! I do believe this is the first time an encounter has been introduced where DPS doesn't play a primary role in beating an encounter. The spotlight is on the healers! I'll elaborate more after the break as the mechanics for this are very interesting and are of high relevance for healers. %Gallery-76227%
Blizzard posts Quel'delar preview
Blizzard has posted a preview of the upcoming Quel'delar storyline that we'll be observing in Icecrown. Quel'delar, you'll remember, is the twin of the old Quel'serrar blade that we put together way back in the days of vanilla WoW. For those of you who are spoiler-sensitive, details are behind the break. 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 the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Chill of the Throne: Dodge nerfed 20% in Icecrown Citadel
In patch 3.3 Blizzard is implementing a 20% dodge reduction via a spell that will be present in Icecrown Citadel's raid called Chill of the Throne. As Daelo points out, if your tank had 30% dodge, he now has 10%. They are doing this in order to negate the spike damage that's become prevalent in raids lately. So while dodge will be nerfed, the ceiling on damage given to a tank will likely decrease. This will in turn, at least theoretically, make healing more about strategy (applying HoTs and planning heals) and less reactive (twitch response to apply the biggest heal at exactly the right time). This is interesting to note as it's a move towards the Cataclysm way of tanking, as has been explained by Ghostcrawler: less avoidance on tanks, less spike damage, and thus requiring smaller heals. Daelo's and Ghostcrawler's full statements after the break. This post is currently being edited.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Gunship battle impressions
I'm on a boat! That was the first thing that came to mind as I entered Icecrown for today's Gunship encounter that will be coming in patch 3.3. It was another fun fight against those foul Horde forces although there were a few slight bugs in the mix. Unfortunately, we weren't able to complete it because the Alliance cannons just didn't seemed to be working properly. The goblins must have sabotaged it. Either that or someone forgot to reload them. I added some screenshots of the event into the Icecrown gallery. Anyway, it's time to grab your sword and fight the Horde! %Gallery-76227%
Patch 3.3 PTR: Raid testing schedule this week
Daelo has posted this week's raid testing schedule for the patch 3.3 PTR, and we're going to get more looks at what the Icecrown raid has in store for us: US Servers Monday, October 26 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT – Festergut Wednesday, October 28 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT – Icecrown Gunship Battle Thursday, October 29 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT – Sindragosa Friday, October 30 at 7PM EDT / 4 PM PDT - Valithria Dreamwalker EU Servers Tuesday, October 27 at 19:30 CEST – Lord Marrowgar Wednesday, October 28 at 19:30 CEST – Lady Deathwhisper Thursday, October 29 at 19:30 CEST – Professor Putricide Friday, October 30 at 19:30 CEST - Rotface A little bit of analysis about the schedule after the break. 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 the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Ghostcrawler cleans up two dev chat questions
As you probably noticed if you watched along with us, yesterday's developer chat (with Blizzard's J. Allen Brack and Tom Chilton taking questions from Twitter and answering them on the forums) was a little light to say the least. Rather than answer questions about game balance seriously, the devs chose to make fun of hunters taming druids and do a lot of hinting and winking. Fortunately, we have Ghostcrawler -- he's responded to concerns about two of the questions yesterday over on the forums. The first is in response to some feedback about what the devs yesterday called "binary" hard modes -- they said that instead of providing multiple levels of difficulty (as in Sarth and his drakes), they'd prefer to have a hard mode either on or off (you'll be able to toggle between the two in Icecrown). This relates to what we just said recently, with different types of guilds looking for different types of content to play. GC replies that the "in-betweens" in terms of difficulty will come with later bosses in normal mode -- if you want to play a challenge without stepping into the hard modes, Blizzard will do their best to make sure that the last bosses on normal give you that challenge. Which makes sense -- bosses should ramp up in difficulty as the instance goes along, and no one would suggest, for instance, that Yogg was nearly as easy as Flame Leviathan. And GC also talked about one of my favorite (and missed) game mechanics: crowd control.
Breakfast Topic: Looking ahead to patch 3.3
There's another new build on the PTR, which means we're one step closer to seeing the new patch 3.3 drop. And while of course Icecrown probably holds its place as the biggest feature of the new patch, there's a whole slew of other changes to look ahead to, from updated achievements and a new faction to run, a brand new LFG interface with cross-realm instances, the Kalu'ak fishing derby, speeded-up Northrend reputation grinds, and lots of other things. Man oh man this patch is building up to be quite the event. So the question today is: what are you most looking forward to? Personally, I remain a fan of the 5-man instances -- I've already run two of them on the PTR, but fighting enemies co-op in a small group like that is really why I play the game. And of course cross-realm LFG will probably be a big part of the excitement for me as well. While I do expect there to be a few issues, hopefully it'll make jumping into a group as quick and easy as possible. And I'm looking forward to that fishing tournament, too -- the last one was a good idea, but hopefully a new implementation will help freshen things up. What are you looking forward to in patch 3.3? 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 the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Patch 3.3 PTR: New and updated achievements on the PTR
There's been a few achievements that have been added in the latest patch 3.3 build. As you can guess, taking down the Lich King has its rewards. If you manage to defeat Arthas in Icecrown Citadel in 10-player heroic mode, you will henceforth earn the title "Bane of the Fallen King." A new faction for you to earn reputation with will be established as well. The Ashen Verdict, if you manage to earn exalted with them, will grant you a title reward that adds "Of the Ashen Verdict." No serious details yet on how to grind out rep, but when I was on the PTR clearing trash to Festergut, I noticed I was gaining Ashen Verdict reputation by killing various mobs. They're similar to the rates players earned rep with when working through Black Temple for the Ashtongue. Arena players have a new title and a Frostwyrm pet to look forward to for season 8. Good luck on earning the Wrathful Gladiator title! The players who are more into battlegrounds will be experiencing change as well. The achievements to gain exalted with Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Alterac Valley factions have been removed from their Meta-Achievements. You'll gain special titles if you manage to reach exalted with the factions at least. Glory of the Hero Meta-Achievement has been slightly changed. The Party's Over achievement which involves killing Prince Taldaram on Heroic with under 5 people is no longer part of that particular meta. Although, personally I don't think it's that difficult to take out that boss with 4 players. Lastly, in case you missed the news earlier, Master Angler of Stranglethorn has been changed. It will be changed to Master Angler of Azeroth instead. You can gain this achievement by winning the Kalu'ak Fishing Derby or the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza. 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 the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Shadowmourne spell details
Everyone's favorite* dataminer, Boubouille of MMO-Champion, brings us more details on the upcoming legendary axe Shadowmourne this evening. I'm going to keep this intro brief, because I know many of you don't want to be spoiled at all regarding the stats of this item or the means of acquisition (that link is a spoiler, FYI). If you do want to know what the effects of this new legendary might be, read on behind the cut. If you don't? Skip the rest of this post.
Speculating at the patch 3.3 release date
All right. Nethaera says that Blizzard can't actually tell us the patch release date before it's out, because they don't want to be wrong. Fortunately, sites like ours don't have any such compunctions, so we're free to speculate on when we might finally see this patch on the live realms. Note that I said speculate -- this is not a guarantee, and we have no secret knowledge save lots and lots of experience at watching Blizzard create, test and release content. Don't use any dates we mention here to plan any vacations from work or family events -- as anyone who's ever tried to log in and do anything significant on patch day will tell you, you're going to be disappointed. And we don't want the patch to come early anyway, so Blizzard can delay as much as they want to. Anyone who complains otherwise has to go into the Octagon with Rossi. That said, testing is moving relatively smoothly on the PTRs, and lots of the content seems like it's pretty well put together. We aren't nearly done with testing yet, though -- we haven't seen most of the Icecrown raid, and we're still waiting on Halls of Reflection, the 5-man where we'll face Arthas. Gear still needs to go into the game and be tuned. There are around 15 different bosses and encounters in Icecrown (that we know of), and if Blizzard continues on the schedule of testing one or two per week, we're looking at six to eight more weeks of testing for just that content. The PTR itself went up just under a month ago, and it seems that we've got at least a month or, likely, more of testing and updating to be done.
The Queue: Naptime
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's (almost) daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. I'm going to kick off today's edition of The Queue with a question for you, the reader. It's a gravely important question, so read carefully! What should I order from the local Chinese joint for dinner tonight? Should I go with my usual, shameful choice of orange chicken? Or should I go a spicier route and go for the Kung Pao? Heck, maybe I should bring a little variety to the table with a Pu Pu Platter? Help me, WoW.com! Sindrow asked... "Remember how faction switching caused all AT progress to be wiped? Is it safe to say that race change will not have similar effects, since everything is occurring within the same faction? Can you guys think of *any* negative result of a race change?"
Icecrown Gunship testing cancelled (Update: for the EU)
Excited to jump in on the Icecrown Gunship battle today on the PTR? Too bad -- Daelo has posted on the forums that due to instance server issues, today's testing has been canceled. He posted that on the EU forums, so we're not sure if that means it's also canceled on the North American realms, but we'll presume so. If we hear otherwise (as this is the PTR, all testing and data is subject to change at a moment's notice), we'll let you know. As for what this means for the testing cycle, probably nothing at all -- delays and changes are pretty standard for the test realm, and even as they said in the original announcement, bosses can go up and down whenever the devs want. I do think we will see the gunship battle tested on the PTR at some point, though -- it seems like one of the more complicated encounters in the instance, and Blizzard will surely want to put it under a microscope sometime before the patch goes live. Update: Apparently the gunship battle is live right now (4:40pm Pacific) on the test realm. If you want to see what it's like, get yourself a raid and head on in.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Festergut impressions
I cleared out the tail end of my afternoon in the hopes of getting a glimpse at the latest raid boss to be tested in the patch 3.3 PTR. Festergut was open for testing on North American servers while the European servers had Rotface. There were some issues with Rotface earlier in the day (namely that the 25 man version of Rotface had health that was meant for the 10 man). Anyway, I managed to get in a few attempts on Festergut here while playing on my priest. First, let's talk trash. %Gallery-76227%
New raid testing schedule posted: Festergut, Rotface, and the Gunship battle
Blizzard has posted the schedule this week for testing of the new bosses in Icecrown Citadel on the patch 3.3 PTR. Here's what Slorkuz on the EU forums says is going down: US PTRs October 21 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT - Festergut October 22 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT - Icecrown Gunship Battle EU PTRs October 21 at 19:30 CEST - Rotface (this test is already over, unfortunately) October 22 at 19:30 CEST - Icecrown Gunship Battle As always, these schedules and everything else on the PTR is subject to change at a moment's notice. You can find short descriptions of what we know about the bosses after the break. 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 the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
