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The Queue: The Duke swings the Nutcracker
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky be your host today. In the spirit of the holidays, I'm going to throw a little Duke Ellington at ya' as today's listening music. In my prolonged stint as a music major in college (saxophone FTW), I always wanted to play his Nutcracker Suite, but never got the chance. But nonetheless, it's one of my favorite pieces of music -- holiday or otherwise. Enjoy it as we delve into The Queue today, starting off with a question a lot of folks have been asking. Many asked... "What's happening to the podcast?"
Patch 3.2 background download begins
Here's another step in patch 3.2's slow march forward: the background download has begun. The first 273 MB chunk of the patch file is now available in a Blizzard Background Downloader app near you. Blizzard has been using this method to pre-distribute parts of patches as they get finalized for quite some time now, to lessen the bandwidth strain on patch day. What does this mean for the patch's ETA? Not much, I'm afraid. All we can surmise from this is that some parts of the patch artwork are ready to go. The time between the background download becoming available and the patch going live varies widely, from less than a week to over a month. We'll just have to wait and see. [thanks, Steve] Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
Reminder: Keep your patch files
Eyonix told us all when 3.0.2 was released that we'll need to keep the patch files we get. If you delete the patch files you'll need to redownload everything you got with patch 3.0.2 three weeks ago, and patch 3.0.3 which you'll get today.That's a lot of downloading, and potentially on clogged servers around the internet as millions of people rush to play Wrath of the Lich King as soon as it's released. Further, do not count on mirrors to be working when Wrath hits. Chances are they will be overloaded as well.The best thing you can do is to take all your 3.x patch files later tonight and copy them to a folder tucked safely away. Preferably someplace where your kid(s)/girlfriend(s)/boyfriend(s)/parent(s) can't get at them.
Don't delete your 3.0.x patches just yet
Most of you have hopefully managed to get patched up to 3.0.2 by now, and fortunately it seems like the servers are stable enough that we can often get some playtime in (with last night being an exception, at least for my realm). If you have installed the patches, I have a word of advice from you, straight from Eyonix: Do not delete your 3.0.x patch files. You will need them when you install Wrath of the Lich King. The reason for this is that the Wrath DVDs, having gone gold a week ago, contains an installer for patch 3.0.1, so after installing the Wrath client, you'll have to patch back up to 3.0.2 (will almost certainly be at least 3.0.3 by then, actually). So if you delete your patches now, you'll just have to re-download them on November 13th, and it's a good bet that that will not be a pleasant experience. Save your patches!
Inscriptions hidden in patch 2.4
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/First_WoW_Wrath_of_the_Lich_king_Inscription_spell_found'; Blizzard has included the first look at inscriptions via hidden entries in the patch 2.4 data files. Inscription will be a new profession that will be released with Wrath of the Lich King. We are treated to an early glimpse at the Demonic Runes inscription that will increase fire damage done by the Mage Fireball spell by 50 additional points. The data is courtesy of WoW Head. There are two important things to realize from this newly discovered information. First, it shows that Blizzard is hard at work on Wrath of the Lich King, and is already starting to include content in the patch files. We saw this same behavior in patch 2.0 with Jewelcrafting recipes. %Gallery-5525%
