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Breakfast Topic: Testing, 1, 2, 3...
By now we all know that the PTRs are up and running (depending on your definition of "running" -- according to reports on the PTR forums they're crashing frequently) -- after all, the PTR client is where we got these lovely patch notes from! So, have you copied your characters over? Are you raiding the Black Temple to get the very first look at new content? In short, do you bother with all the tedious testing and bug reporting that's associated with playing on the public test realms? Or do you simply ignore the entire affair and continue playing the game as though nothing were happening?
Don't worry: it's called a "test" realm for a reason
I know that many of us read the new 2.1 patch notes and went into a panic. Paladin's illumination? Mage's sheep and ice block? Priest's shadow weaving? Shaman's elemental focus? There are plenty of changes here that could strike dread into the hearts of players who have picked their classes, talents, and professions for specific reasons that have suddenly vanished out from under them. But is it worth panicing over? I say not yet -- and Tseric agrees with me. The public test realms -- the only place where patch 2.1 is currently deployed -- are brought online for a reason. You guessed it: to test things. While the test realms are online, we can all log on and get a first-hand look at how these changes will impact our characters. From there, we can offer our feedback and opinions. And, while many of you will say that these are never listened to, it's not unheard of for Blizzard to make major changes to a patch in light of public outcry. But for those of you in the audience who are upset or angry about the proposed patch 2.1 changes, I advise you to try to post your complaints calmly and constructively -- all caps typing and angry flames will only serve to get you banned from posting.
PTR notes: Welcome to Skettis, Polly wanna cracker?
In every public test realm, there are those brave souls who go out and try to grind factions, kill bosses, and do long questlines for rewards that will not be transferred to their main characters. Aalhi of Kael'Thas is one of those brave souls. He's decided to head over to Skettis and start doing some of the Sha'Tari Skyguard reputation quests to see what they're like. So far, he's gotten a few quests involving killing mobs for reputation, feeding a nether ray, drinking a potion and killing named mobs, retrieving a prisoner's pack, assembling a book and turning into an arakkoa. Sounds like a pretty neat new place to quest, but the most interesting part of Aalhi's information is the reputation rewards. At exalted with Sha'Tari Skyguard, you get a nether ray flying mount (and yes, you do need 300 riding skill already. Sorry.) You can also buy two nice cloaks -- one for melee, one for casters -- that have decent stats and a use of reducing your fall speed for 10 seconds. There are some fun buyable foods at friendly reputation: one that restores 2148 health and 4410 mana and one that restores 7500 HP and gives you 30 stamina and 20 spirit for half an hour. The real prizes of Skyguard rep, according to Aalhi, are the two trinkets you can get at exalted: "Airman's Ribbon of Gallantry: Equip: Improves spell critical rating by 31 Equip: 30% chance to increase your spell damage and healing by 80 when you kill a target that gives experience or honor. This effect cannot occur more than once every 10 seconds. Skyguard Silver Cross: Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 31 Equip: 30% chance to increase your attack power by 140 when you kill a target that gives experience or honor. This effect cannot occur more than once every 10 seconds." Niiiice. What do you think? Will you be grinding Skyguard or Netherwing rep in the next patch, or trying to get to the Black Temple?
PTR notes: There's no such thing as a free Netherdrake
The announcement of a Netherdrake flying mount in the next patch was a beacon of hope to broke people like myself, who hoped we could quest for the mount while continuing to blow our hard-earned cash on epic gear and new recipes. Unfortunately, our hopes were in vain. The Netherdrake quest line apparently requires 300 riding skill to begin. Andrevv of World of Raids provides a nice guide plus screenshots of the quest line, which I'll summarize here. First, you have to swear yourself to the Netherdrake faction (which requires doing the Kindness questline for neutrality.) Then you get asked to disguise yourself as a Fel Orc and join the Illidari! Awesome! I always wanted to be Illidari. You then head out to Netherwing Ledge and get a couple of quests as an Orc. You can either gather 40 of some special ore/herb/etc. if you have a gathering profession, or pick up 40 crystals if you're not. Then you can head over to a goblin mercenary, who will give you some quests to help the Netherwing faction by sabotaging the Orcs. You can gather fel glands to poison orc peons or collect Netherwing relics from a skyway. There's no information on where the questline goes after that, but the ore/crystal/poison questlines are marked as "Daily," and Andrevv got 250 Netherwing reputation for turning in his first 40 ore. The Daily quests seem to be meant to limit the amount of grinding you can do in one day -- but since there are screenshots of PTR characters with drakes already, this may not be working as intended.
Breakfast topic: How's 2.1 treating ya?
Now that we've had a little time to digest the lengthy 2.1 patch notes, it's time to ask what you think of the patch so far. Of course, I imagine opinions vary a great deal based on what class you're playing. I, for one, am incredibly impressed by Blizzard's ability to make me want to play a healer a little less with every new patch. (And I like healing.) But are you looking forward to the new content? Eager to jump into the Black Temple? Or are you disappointed by class changes and trying to decide what to reroll?
2.1 PTR notes, continued
Here's the rest of them; first part here. Please leave comments back over on the first part.- Hellfire Citadel: Blood Furnace Shadowmoon Adepts on Heroic now double attack instead of triple attack on occasion. Laughing Skull Legionnaire no longer uses the "Sweeping Strikes" ability. Shadowmoon Technician's "Silence" spell is used less frequently. Laughing Skull Warden will stay engaged with his main target on Heroic difficulty. The Maker's "Exploding Beaker" damage and knockback radii have changed for consistency to both be 8 yards. The Maker's "Exploding Beaker" damage has been increased on Heroic difficulty. Shadowmoon Technician's "Throw Dynamite" ability damage has been increased. Nascent Fel Orc will Dual Wield properly now. Keli'dan the Breaker's "Shadow Bolt Volley" has had both its damage and range increased Shadowmoon Channeler's "Mark of Shadow" will have a longer delay before being cast at the start of the fight and now does more damage. Felguard Annihilators and Felguard Brutes will now do less damage.- Hellfire Citadel: Shattered Halls The "Resist Shadow" buff cast by Shadowmoon Acolytes will be dispelled from players if they leave the dungeon. Shattered Hand Reavers will do less damage in Heroic difficulty. The "Uppercut" used by the Shattered Hand Reaver now has a smaller combat range. Rabid Warhounds on Heroic will now do less damage. Shattered Hand Houndmaster's "Impaling bolt" damage and movement impairing effects have been increased. Warbringer O'mrogg now applies a smaller amount of threat to the target of his "Beatdown" ability and will now correctly disable his "Burning Maul" ability after a wipe. Warbringer O'mrogg and Warchief Kargath Bladefist can be seen from a farther distance. Warchief Kargath Bladefist can now travel slightly farther during "Blade Dance".
2.1 PTR patch notes [updated]
The PTR client is now available for download, and although the servers are not up yet, I felt I should relay the real patch notes as soon as possible. They are very long, and an analysis of the key points is forthcoming -- I haven't finished reading them myself yet -- although it looks like the Illumination nerf was correct. In fact, as far as I've seen, the fake notes from earlier today were correct in all aspects (though far from complete). Consider me very disappointed. Of course this is the PTR patch, and it may change before it goes live, but don't hold your breath. I've never seen a major change like this one reversed between PTR and live.Update: as the notes are too long to fit in one post, you can find part two of the notes over this way.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - World of Warcraft PTR Patch 2.1.0 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html The Black Temple The Temple of Karabor was the center of draenei worship until its priests were slaughtered by demonically corrupted orcs. In the massacre's aftermath the warlocks of the Shadow Council seized the structure and gave it a new name: the Black Temple. When the Alliance invaded Draenor after the Second War, the orc shaman Ner'zhul hastily opened several dimensional portals in order to escape. The resulting magical backlash ripped the world apart. Drawn by these portals, the pit lord Magtheridon arrived in what had come to be known as Outland and took the temple as his seat of power. His dominion over Outland remained unchallenged until the arrival of Illidan the Betrayer. The pit lord proved no match for the wielder of the Twin Blades of Azzinoth. Today Illidan occupies the temple, awaiting any and all who would challenge his rule. Druid Epic Flight Form Introduced The Druid Epic flight form will be available through a series of quests, similar to the Warlock and Paladin Epic mount quests before it. This quest series will also open up a new boss in Sethekk Halls, and ultimately lead to the epic flight form.
Raid hotfixes and 2.1 PTR ETA
Some of the changes from 2.1 are going in early. Specifically, Tigole announced that they are hotfixing some raid things:Because 2.1.0 is not yet on the PTR's (we're hoping by tomorrow or early next week), we're going to hotfix the base creature respawn in Serpentshrine and TK Raid to be 2 hours. We're also going to fix the bug that's causing the creatures to respawn after the boss for the corresponding section has been killed. These aren't all of the changes that we have for 2.1.0, just two of the ones that we will be able to hotfix. There are more changes coming in 2.1.0 that include creature tuning, better loot etc... Some examples: Lots of the creatures have fewer hitpoints Lots of the creatures are no longer immune to CC (The female naga in SSC can be poly'd, Skeletal Ushers in KZ can be shackled) Lots of bug fixesThe most interesting bit in this post, though, to my eye, is "Because 2.1.0 is not yet on the PTR's (we're hoping by tomorrow or early next week)." See? PTR next week! What'd I tell ya. Of course, now that he's said this, if we don't get a PTR by Wednesday the forums are going to explode in a fit of angst, which is why Blizz never gives ETAs. I hope they can meet their target on this one, since 2.1 looks like it will be a fun patch for most parts of the game. Once the patch hits PTRs it'll be at least a week or two before it goes live.Pictured above, by the way, is Al'ar the Phoenix God, a boss in the Eye (the 25-man "TK Raid" referred to by Tigole) who is suspected to drop a 310% speed flying mount called "Peep the Phoenix Mount."
Under development page updated with new end-game content
Blizzard has updated the under development page to include a bundle of new information about what we should expect to see in patch 2.1. So what's in the future, besides the Black Temple? Ethereum Prison: new quests, items, and content for the solo and small-group level 70 player in good standing with the Consortium. Skettis: the Arakkoa capitol city, perched high in the mountains of Terokkar Forest. Content is listed as for the solo or small-group level 70 player. Blizzard certainly has my attention with the suggestion of a "new type of flying mount." Netherdrake: the Netherwing faction and quest line will be completed, offering players a chance to obtain their own 280% speed epic mount through solo and small group play. Ogri'la: a new 5-player dungeon in the Blade's Edge Mountains. Blizzard's explanation leaves me curious, though. "...a repeatable and ever popular bombing-run, this time using your own flying mount but with a dangerous twist." What?! Tell me more! So patch 2.1 isn't just for raiders -- we can expect to see plenty of interesting new small group content as well.
The strange style of patch notes, real and fake
I don't know if you could call this "Guide to Writing Fake Patch Notes" hilarious, but I think it is at least chuckleworthy. Flibble of Draenor (the realm, not the shattered world) has put together a quick guide on how to trick sites exactly like this one into believing your patch notes. And in doing so, he hits upon some of Blizzard's more conspicuous quirks, i.e. that you should "at least try to glance at the Under Development page, so that you can convincingly lie about the things Blizzard convincingly lies about on their website."He also notes that every patch includes at least one change to a Mage spell icon (well, there are just so many of them), adding "several new items and recipes" that don't really exist, and has (faked, of course) bugfixes that "preferentially affect the 0.1% of WoW players who make no contribution to society [and] live in mom's basement at age 37." See what I mean? Chuckleworthy.Truth be told, I really like the way patch notes are written. I'm not sure who writes them (I doubt it's an actual dev, but it has to be someone associated with the dev team), but they are both formal and at the same time seem to have a lot of cool mystery and design behind them. Caydiem hit on this note to extremely comic effect with her fake patch notes (I like that the grass in enemy faction zones is "exceptionally green"), but even the real patch notes read like a kind of otherworldly poetry: "Cabal Zealots are now more threatening while under the effect of Shape of the Beast." To players who know what they're talking about, they import a very technical message. But for someone who doesn't know about that section of the game or the game itself, that's a pretty mysterious statement. As a student of audience and media, I find patch notes pretty fascinating.
Patch 2.0.12 now live on the PTRs
Yep, you read that correctly. We've got a new patch up and running on the public test realms. As you may have guessed from the patch number, the official changes in this patch are relatively minor (this isn't 2.1 or anything!), primarily consisting of bug fixes. (These patch notes are via a post on the forums by Drysc. However, official patch notes should show up here tomorrow.) Can't wait to find out what's in store? Well, don't get too excited, because here they are:Mac Improved memory usage and stability under Mac OS X 10.4.9 using multi-threaded OpenGL Bug Fixes Attempting to turn in a guild charter with a signature from a player that formed his own guild will no longer result in an inappropriate error message. Using the customer support "Auto-Unstuck" will now trigger the one-hour cooldown on the player's hearthstone. Arenas Players will no longer be able to see their opponents in the Combat Log of an Arena match-up before the game starts. Battlegrounds Eye of the Storm: Players should no longer be able to exit the bubble before the match starts. Mechanar The gate at the top of the elevator in Mechanar will now remain open while attempting the gauntlet and after Pathaleon the Calculator is killed. Caverns of Time: Old Hillsbrad The Escape from Durnholde event will no longer break during the church part of the encounter. Various localization fixes have been applied. See? Nothing worth getting too excited over.
No patch 2.1.0 notes, but the next best thing
So the patch notes that we've mentioned recently on WoW Insider have turned out to be fake. And Blizzard doesn't seem any nearer to giving us real patch notes. So how does a curious player know what to look forward to in the next major content patch? Fortunately, EU MvP Schwick has an excellent compilation of every little bit of patch information that's been confirmed by Blizzard. It's not much information, but it is all we know for certain just now.So for patch 2.1.0, you can expect the following changes: Feign Death fix New Rogue stealth animation More Humanoid Succubus CC PvP Matching system The Black Temple (aka the Black Citadel) Gruul's Lair changes Professions & Items Golden Hare fix Spellcloth fix Auction House Gem-section Flight path changes Blade's Edge Mountain graveyard Draenei quest drop fixes
Leaked 2.1.0 patch notes?
Without any official word, who's to say whether these patch notes, posted on MMO-CHAMPION are legit or not. However, they include a number of features that we know are planned for 2.1.0, such as: The release of the Black Temple A battlegrounds matching system The re-valuing of sockets on items The change to warlock's succubus pet's seduce ability An engineering revamp A new LFG system This adds some reliability to these patch notes, but, there are some quite unexpected things in these notes, as well -- read on for more details.Update: Keep reading if you like, but, yep, these are fake. (Some people clearly have too much time on their hands!)
Forum post of the day: Pet demands
Wow, who knew Hunters were so unhappy with their pet situation? Zolberserker, of H-Eitrigg-US, has made an exceedingly long list of improvements he wants for Hunter pets, to be included in what he terms a "pet patch." These aren't mostly new demands, nor does he pretend them to be so, but it is a nice compilation of ideas. Some of the ones that caught my eye: Pet armor, giving pets simple proc bonuses or whatnot, preferably appearing on the pet. Saddles to make some pets mountable. I'm heavily against this, for obvious reasons (there's already too many free mounts in the game, Hunters already get a movement speed increase). Foods that give bonuses to pets (the Sporeling Snack is one such that is already in the game). Rare pets, including some doing non-physical damage. "All beasts and beast like pets should be tameable." Most of these, I'm sorry to say, seem a bit off to me. Pets are already quite powerful enough in PvP and solo PvE, and none of these address the problem of pets in group PvE. Although come to think of, the pet armor idea could be adapted to help them in group PvE: have pet armor give them a large amount of damage reduction (via straight armor, or dodge, or whatever), at the cost of reducing their movement speed. This would keep the armor from being overpowered in PvP, although it might make the pets a bit too good of off-tanks in groups. What do you guys think, those of you with more Hunter experience? What do pets need? Are pets really broken enough that a full "pet patch" is warranted?
Live maintenance now semi-permanent
Hey, maybe I should complain about downtime more often. It looks like live maintenance is coming back for real, meaning mere rolling restarts on Tuesdays, but only every other week. This gives them the chance to do whatever it is they need to do when the servers are down, but minimizes downtime otherwise. This schedule will of course get disrupted whenever a substantial patch comes out, if it happens to come out on a "live" day, because they need to bring the realms down to apply the server-side patch. But the next week will reset to live maintenance again, and order will be restored. This is obviously good news, but I'm gonna sort of miss the downtime on "off" Tuesdays. It was nice to wake up, decide to play WoW, and not be able to, a bit. Still, kudos Blizz, and I'm glad this live thing worked out. Drysc's full post is after the cut.
LFG channel will have to wait
Lots of players logged on yesterday after the patch expecting to share their Chuck Norris jokes look for groups in a chat channel as promised, but it looks like the LFG channel Blizzard said was coming back isn't actually arriving until the next content patch, 2.1.0.Drysc also reminds us that the LFG channel isn't returning worldwide-- it'll only be available for those using the LFG tool. So while we haven't actually used it yet, that means you'll have to flag yourself as LFG, and then you'll get access to the channel.But what hasn't been answered yet is whether you'll get access to a worldwide channel, or just the channel for your instance. It seems like just talking to people LFG for, say, Hellfire Ramparts is pretty pointless-- we can see their names up there on the screen and we can tell them anything we want. So that points to a worldwide LFG channel. But that then lends itself to the kind of stuff that made Blizzard ditch the channel in the first place, not to mention that it seems likely that tons of people who aren't actually LFG will sit flagged for LFG, just to listen in on the channel.The problem here is that the best thing the LFG channel had going for it was the fact that it was an open area for players to listen in on LFG requests-- I could sit on my alt and listen for groups for my main, or on my main I could hear about a group, and then head to a dungeon that I had never planned to go to. I fail to see, however, how implementing the channel in the LFG tool, either local or worldwide, opens itself back up to that kind of ad hoc group forming. I guess we won't know until we get a chance to use it.
Druids get a hotfixy gift
From a hotfix that is now live on the servers: The Druid ability Lacerate will now land a small amount of instant damage, causing it to generate threat against bleed-immune creatures. The Druid ability Mangle (Bear) will now generate 50% bonus threat So good news for druids who tank. Blizzard isn't completely giving them back all of their DPS-- Lacerate's debuff doesn't affect "skeletal" creatures (as it shouldn't, since they can't bleed), and Mangle doesn't give any more damage, but Blizzard says they realize Mangle works best as a "snap aggro" tool, and with the bonus threat, it should do that. I'm sure droods will still have their problems, but these are two nice buffs for tanking druids, no question.More are on the way, too-- Blizzard says they plan to up the armor on many high end Bear Druid items, "particularly raid sets," as many druids felt that those pieces didn't scale as well as warriors' did. Those changes, says Blue, won't be coming until 2.1.0, but they are coming.
2.0.10 live [updated]
Patch 2.0.10 is now available for download. The patch notes look exactly like the last set of PTR notes, except without any mage nerf -- which I guess is to say they look exactly like the set of PTR notes before last. No word on whether the mage nerf was actually reversed or just inadvertently left out of the patch notes again, but stay posted. Full patch notes after the cut; let me know if you see a change I missed.Update: That didn't take long. Looks like the mage nerf is in:The chance Frozen effects are broken when the target is critically struck by a spell has been increased. This should only affect Frozen targets that are hit with a spell crit; the Frozen effect can be broken by a spell crit from any player, not just the player that created the Frozen effect. However, please keep in mind that this is already how the game currently works. Only the chance of the Frozen effect being broken has been changed; the types of attacks that can break the Frozen effect will not be changed. It is still possible to score Frostbolt followed by Ice Lance on a frozen target and get double crit, however the situation will still be closely monitored and may be adjusted in the future.
A fresh set of 2.0.10 patch notes
Another day, another set of revisions to the 2.0.10 patch notes! The only change in these appears to be the addition of the note on crit breaking mage's freezing effects, which is worded as Nethaera reported on the forums today (suggesting that frozen targets have a chance to break free on a crit), which is a little differently than Tseric phrased it this weekend (suggesting that frozen targets will always break free on a crit from anyone, not just the mage). Does new patch notes indicate that we'll be seeing a patch release tomorrow? Impossible to predict, but we'll find out soon enough.Full patch notes are below, with changes (just the one!) indicated in bold. There's the chance that I may have missed something, though, so if you see any changes I missed, please leave a note in the comments!
2.0.10 news for mages
As Blizzard would hate to leave anyone out of the joy of patch 2.0.10, we have recent news of a change for mages. And despite the fact that I don't regularly play a mage, I don't think it's good news for the class. Tseric informs us that you were never intended to be able to crit a frozen target and have the target remain frozen. So as of patch 2.0.10, any crit (and that is any crit at all, not just a crit by the mage) on a frozen target will immediately unfreeze them.So watch out, rogues -- you could be the next victims of patch 2.0.10!
