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Warlords of Draenor Alpha Patch notes for April 17
A new round of updates have been released for the alpha client of Warlords of Draenor. Included in the patch notes are new sections covering changes and adjustments with Itemization, Movement Speed, Raid Utility Balance, Reforging, and Combat Resurrection. There have also been updates to existing sections as well - many class sections have received a lot of updates and adjustments, as expected for such an early build. Haste % and Crit % bonuses have been streamlined -- no more spell/melee/ranged, it's a universal Haste and Crit % bonus for all. Druids, rejoice -- Ravage no longer requires you to be behind the target. Many glyphs have been removed, and a lot of new glyphs have been added, with some glyphs now being exclusive to a specialization. Movement speed enchants now increase Movement Speed by 10% -- up from 8%. Hunters, there has been a comprehensive sweep over pet abilities -- it's a major list! Paladins, there have been some major tweaks to both Holy and Protection specs. For the full list of updates, check out the official Battle.net site for all the details. New updates are denoted in red for easy reading.
Warlords of Draenor: Patch 6.0 patch notes
The patch notes for patch 6.0 have been released! Patch 6.0 is the pre-patch for Warlords of Draenor, featuring many of the changes and adjustments we'll be seeing in preparation for the next expansion's launch. Please note that patch notes can and often will change over time -- these should by no means be considered a finalized version. Highlights from the patch notes include: A new row of talents has been added for level 100, and Draenor Perks from levels 91-99. Racial traits have been rebalanced. All characters now learn a few important Major Glyphs as they level up. Garrisons, garrisons, garrisons! Read on for the full list of patch notes after the break.
World of Warcraft's 5.4 trailer features Orc on Panda violence, boats
It's been a long road for the Alliance and Horde, the perennially at-war factions that fuel much of World of Warcraft's lore (and PvP). Over the last few years, players waved the Alliance or Horde banner as they conquered old gods, dispatched massive dragons, toppled titans, and even crushed a walking constellation. But perhaps none of those battles will compare to the final showdown with the power-thirsty madmanorc Garrosh Hellscream, who seems to have angered pretty much everyone on both sides of the fence with his latest plans for world domination. Mists of Pandaria's patch 5.4, titled Siege of Ogrimmar, is almost here. With it comes new content, flexible raiding, a solo pet battle scenario, proving grounds, and one more raid to clear featuring the final showdown between Hellscream and those who would challenge him. Blizzard marked the approaching cataclysm (get it!?) with an all-new trailer, which you can watch after the break.
Flexible Raids come to World of Warcraft with patch 5.4
In the olden days of World of Warcraft, it took 40 dedicated people to down some of the game's toughest content. It wasn't easy to keep a guild stocked with the necessary number of people to make these raids possible, and Blizzard reduced raid sizes to 10- and 25-man encounters starting with the Burning Crusade expansion in the hopes of making raiding more accessible for smaller guilds and raid leaders working with busy real-life humans. It is with this same accessibility in mind that Blizzard has just announced Flexible Raids, a new form of raid content that will debut with the game's upcoming 5.4 patch. In the simplest terms, these raids automatically adjust their difficulty based on how many players are present, supporting any number between 10 and 25. The difficulty resets week-to-week; if 22 people come one week and 13 the next, the new raiders won't be locked into last week's numbers. A new tier of item that falls between the Raid Finder and Normal difficulties is being introduced for Flexible Raiders, and Flexible Raid lockouts will be separate from those of Normal and Heroic attempts. Blizzard has also promised additional rewards for those who participate in Flexible, Normal, and Heroic raids -- rewards that will be unavailable to Raid Finder groups. Flexible Raiding will be made available piece by piece as Blizzard tweaks the formula. It should be launching on the test realm Soon™.
Crowd Control announced on your screen in patch 5.1
In one of my earlier PvP addon posts here at WoW Insider, I talked about a fantastic addon, which was, and still is, called LoseControl. What LoseControl did was to bring up an icon in the middle of your screen whenever you lost control of your character, that indicated precisely how you had lost control, by displaying a spell icon, and for how long. This could also be modified by OmniCC to add a duration if you preferred that to the pie-chart method of measuring time, as can be seen in the header image. I always think that the mark of a really good addon is when Blizzard incorporates it into the game, and it looks like this is exactly what's happening with LoseControl. The Blizzard blog with the official 5.1 PTR patch notes had this to say: Blizzard A new banner will appear when a player is subjected to an effect that causes them to lose control of their character. The effect that caused the loss of control and remaining duration will be displayed. Configuration options are available in the "Combat" section of the "Interface Options" menu. source Additionally, new strings have been datamined that indicate that these banners will show the type of CC a player is subject to, as well as the effect itself, so, for example, Psychic Scream is a fear effect, and can be removed with Will of the Forsaken or a Tremor Totem, whereas Mortal Coil is a horror and cannot.
The Dragon Soul -- a post-mortem
Technically, as I write this, the Dragon Soul isn't actually dead yet, nor do raids really die so much as either become outdated or revamped. (Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman stand as examples of raid content that died to be reused, while Naxxramas was used again as an introductory raid.) But since we're closing in on our fourth month running the raid instance, I thought this was a good time to examine it critically. What were the Dragon Soul's main themes? How did it function both as a raid instance and as a platform to end Deathwing's story arc? And most importantly to me, did I enjoy the ride? Dragon Soul as an experience was fascinatingly diverse compared to previous raids. It eschewed the static finding of some dark cave or towering fortress to instead create a raid wherein we traveled the world, with different environments for the bosses to suit the locations and set pieces for our transitions. One complaint I've seen is that by reusing the Dragonblight and Wyrmrest Temple, Blizzard's design team was cutting corners -- but frankly, I don't find that criticism very accurate. First off, Wyrmrest is where the dragonflights typically meet, as demonstrated by Malygos' assault during the Nexus War, so it makes perfect sense for it to be where Deathwing sends his full Twilight's Hammer forces to try and crush them.
Patch 4.3 hotfixes for March 26
While everyone may be up in arms over various Mists news, we are still playing through Cataclysm, of course. Today, we've got a few more hotfixes for patch 4.3 posted by Kaivax over at the official Warcraft blog. It's a pretty short list, but there are a few important changes and adjustments being made. Healers coming back via Scroll of Resurrection will no longer find strength on their starter sets. In Madness of Deathwing, Burning Blood will no longer prematurely spike to 100 stacks if you happen to damage the Arm and Wing Tentacles quickly. Follow after the break for the full list of hotfixes.
The Queue: In space, no one can hear you scream
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Hey, get the Blu-ray transfer of this movie; the visual quality is great. Plus you'll own two of the finest movies ever made if you buy the Aliens Blu-ray too. If you have to pick one, though, get Aliens instead. TheBishop asked: With the change to achievements in MoP, specifically sharing mounts and pets towards collection numbers and them being useable by all toons, do you believe my warrior would be able to use and count my pally specific mounts? Or do you think certain mounts like the pally and lock ones may be class use specific? The mounts that will be shared between characters on your accounts are specifically ones that are granted by achievements, according to what Blizzard reps have stated. It's unlikely that your shaman will be able to use your dreadsteed mount or your warrior your charger, since those are granted by a class trainer, not an achievement.
The Queue: I'm on the bus
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. I follow a lot of people on Twitter, but one of my favorites is @beebee880, probably the nicest guy on the internet and a big fan of buses in general. My friend Satellite High made a split EP with Bert Smith that's all about Beebee's bus-related obsessions and it's pretty rad. You should go get it. Puntable asked: Why do you think they made the raid hit cap for casters more than twice as much as it is for melee? Easy answer! Melee classes also have to deal with expertise, so it balances out in the end.
The Queue: NO
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. I know Adam just used this image yesterday, but man, how could I resist? Image relevant to next question. Finneous asked: I wonder, if you create a character in the MOP beta, and later buy the game, will the character still be there to play, or do you have to start from scratch? You don't get to keep your characters from any Blizzard beta (or many online game betas, period). Expect that trend to continue with MoP when the beta ends.
Dragon Soul Power of the Aspects buff to increase next week
Starting at server maintenance next Tuesday, the Power of the Aspects buff will increase in Dragon Soul. This means that the health and damage output from enemies will be reduced by 10%. Remember that this only applies to normal and heroic versions and that it can always be shut off. The Power of the Aspects buff currently stands at 5%, which went into effect on Jan. 31, 2011. So it took about a month for the buff to increase to the next level. Blizzard has said the spell will continue to increase but not at a set interval, as was done in Icecrown Citadel. The full blue post is as follows: Blizzard Entertainment During the scheduled server maintenance on the week of February 28, the "Power of the Aspects" spell will grow more powerful, reducing the health and damage dealt of all enemies in the Dragon Soul raid by 10%. This spell will grow progressively stronger over time to reduce the difficulty and make the encounters more accessible. The spell will affect both normal and Heroic difficulties, but it will not affect the Raid Finder difficulty. Don't need the help of the Dragon Aspects? The spell can be disabled by talking to Lord Afrasastrasz at the beginning of Dragon Soul. We hope you continue to enjoy Dragon Soul, and that these changes encourage you to attempt a higher difficulty, or just keep pushing to down that next boss. source
Cross-realm raiding resource guide
Cross-realm RealID raiding has taken World of Warcraft by storm ever since the ability to enter old raids with RealID friends was introduced in patch 4.3.2. Fearing the end of server communities and the collapse of civilization, players were instead greeted with a quickly mobilizing mass of players on Twitter, Reddit, and other social media to form cross-server communities for raiding. Without server boundaries, these groups can recruit from a larger pool and have more time flexibility. BattleTags will make this all easier. Over the last few weeks, many cross-realm raiding websites and resources have popped up. If you're looking to get into a cross-realm raid, here's a handy list of many places out there that are putting together old raids without the hindrance of those pesky servers. Twitterland Raiding http://twitterlandraiding.com/ LFRaid.com www.lfraid.com Cross Raid www.cross-raid.com OpenRaid US http://www.openraid.us/ OpenRaid EU http://www.openraid.eu/
The Queue: The luckiest guy in the world
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mathew McCurley (@gomatgo) will be your host today. After complaining about archaeology never paying off and being a dumb, boring grind, I randomed three new rares, bringing me up to 19 out of 20 rares for my Professor title. Talk about a lucky change of fortune. This is where the trendy people would put something like #humblebrag, but we only put that in our tags. Nobar asked: Any idea if Blizzard ever will implement a native linux client? I know that we have workarounds but i'd prefer a native one. It is unlikely that World of Warcraft will get a native Linux client release. The numbers are just not there, most likely, and the development time for such a project could potentially be astronomic. Commenter JKWood made the point that the new 64-bit WoW client works very well with Wine 1.4-rc4 for Linux in a WoW64 setup, so that sounds like something you might want to try if your Linux WoW install isn't performing as optimally as you'd like. Maybe we can draw some attention to the subject matter here and get a discussion going in the comments, and you might even want to try the official support forums.
The Queue: Comeback Kid
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. The new Sleigh Bells album is almost out! Aaahhh! I've heard the whole thing and, minus this song and one or two others, it's a lot less raucous than I thought it would be, based on Treats. I still like it, though. Simpsons Rule asked: I have a question: Has the Daily Quest column been canceled? There hasn't been a post since January 27. Nope! Not in spirit, anyway. Some of you guys may have noticed slight changes in the format here, and this is one of them. Basically, we're trying to make sure that really cool stuff like interesting community blogs and fan creations doesn't get lost in our daily content cycle. To that end, we're spotlighting things more individually and not under a single banner like The Daily Quest. You'll note we've done this with other columns as well, like our roleplaying column, among others.
Ol' Grumpy and the crushing disappointment of roles
There are no pure DPS classes in World of Warcraft that use two-handed melee weapons to deal damage and only one pure DPS class that can even equip them. There are literally hundreds of two-handed melee weapons in this game. This has always annoyed me, because I love big weapons. I know you know this about me. One of the reasons I hate the argument that pure DPS classes should have dibs on top DPS weapons is that in order for me to play a character that uses a two-hander, I have no choice but to play a hybrid. In fact, in order to play as melee DPSer at all, I either have to play a rogue (all three rogue trees dual wield small, fast weapons) or a hybrid. Those are my options. If I wanted to play ranged DPS, I could pick from one of three possible pure classes, but if I want to melee, I'm forced to either give up the weapons I enjoy and take up a playstyle I don't like or accept that I will be forced to DPS at a penalty and be expected and/or pressured to tank. This to me is asking me to pay twice, and it's unacceptable. Last week, Ghostcrawler posted an excellent discussion on class and role that I highly recommend everyone check out, and it seriously has me pondering what design I'd prefer for World of Warcraft and indeed how I feel about classes and roles entirely.
Wouldn't this be cool? The Lost Islands of Draenor
One of the things we like to do at the virtual WoW Insider office is talk about what we'd like to see in the game. Sometimes it's something as simple as a winged Zhevra mount. Sometimes it gets more elaborate, like when Mat McCurley and I were talking about the lost ocean that once surrounded Hellfire Peninsula before Draenor got ripped inside out and dumped unceremoniously into the Twisting Nether, becoming what is now Outland. "Hey," I said, "Have you ever noticed that Deathwing's Lair isn't part of the part of Draenor that became Outland?" "Yeah, and the Warsong Clan's island is gone too." He pointed out. This got us to thinking about future content. We know we're going to Pandaria soon, but neither of us have given up on what Mike Sacco calls an outer space vacation expansion. We want it to happen, to seek out new life, to go where no tauren has gone before. And this got me to think that maybe, we can start the exploration off in 5-man content.
The Queue: You will die, we promise
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. It's pretty nice of Blizzard to make sure you know that its game will kill you. Coffee asked: With the arrival of account-wide achievements, do you think Blizzard will add something where our achievement points have some in game effect? For example, special vendors that will only sell to you if you have greater than 3000 achievement points, another vendor that will sell different items if you have over 5000, etc... Like I said on the podcast recently, I've learned never to say never about anything Blizzard could possibly do in relation to WoW, but the devs have stated several times that they never intended for achievement points to be a real currency. So, I doubt it, but with account-wide achievements and other systems changes coming with MoP, we'll just have to wait and see.
The Queue: Re-Vita-lized
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. I wasn't planning on picking up a PlayStation Vita, but then they told me there'd be a full-featured Uncharted game at launch, and welp. Philster asked: Very happy that they are going to allow achievements account-wide. It will definitely help me towards playing different characters more often. What achievement are you MOST proud of? Mine is still Loremaster, as it was pre-Cata, and took a very long time to do. Though once I get What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been in May for finishing Children's Week, that will be up there also. Personally, my favorite achievement is Glory of the Ulduar Raider (10-man). It was the first time I had really been involved with progression raiding when it was relevant; we had a dedicated group, and we all worked hard to clear that place every week until we did it, and we were still up there in terms of timing. It was my first and really only experience raiding at that level. I've raided before, but not really with a purpose. I saw that rusted proto-drake and knew it had to be mine, so I did it.
The Queue: Garbage Day!
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Hope you guys are as pumped for Skullgirls as I am. Any game that has someone yell "GARBAGE DAY!" when they shoot a pistol is a day-one purchase for me. Soulestream asked: Do you think they are allowing account wide achievements because they have decided to do the item level / stats squish? No, I think the devs' stated reasoning was honest: They know that, after seven years, you're probably going to have a bunch of achievements on a guy you don't feel like playing as much anymore, but you keep playing because that's the guy with all the achievements. Making achievements account-wide means that you don't need to play the guy you hate just to maintain momentum (and a title you like that you can't get anymore).
Patch 4.3 hotfixes for Feb. 7, 2012
A fresh round of hotfixes landed tonight, including a pair that will relieve the pain of many achievement hunters and event celebrants this week. The following fixes are included in this round: Players are now able to receive Lovely Charms while on the quest Test Your Strength, when the player's inventory has both the Darkmoon Adventurer's Guide and Lovely Charm Collector's Kit. Players now have the chance to receive both the Lovely Charm and Grisly Trophy from a single kill. Hit the break for the full list of tonight's hotfixes, including an Ultraxion trash nerf.
