WoW Patch 4.0.1 on the PTR and pre-downloading

September 25, 2010 By DanO

The pre-Cataclysm class changing patch has landed on the PTR and is alreadyavailable via the background downloader on the live servers. Official patch notes are below, but the highlights are:

  • New launcher window that will stream patches allowing players to log in before patching is done
  • Reforging: New NPCs in major towns will be able to transform 40% of a stat on your items into another stat that isn't already there
  • Massive class, skills, talent and ability overhaul for all classes.
  • New mastery system implemented
  • Rage has been normalized
  • Ammo is no longer in the game

Full notes from official page:

General

  • Cataclysm Launcher Update
    • The new Cataclysm Launcher allows you to stream game data while you play. This will reduce the time you spend downloading, installing, and patching World of Warcraft. We'd like to get your feedback on the toolset and gameplay experience. Please head to the forums here for additional information.
  • Reforging
    • Players can now visit special Reforging NPCs in capital cities located near Enchanting trainers. 40% of any one secondary stat on an item can be can be allocated to add a new secondary stat to the item. The stat being added cannot already exist on the item. An item cannot have more than one reforged stat at a time, though the Reforging of an item can be undone and changed.
  • Copied Test Realm characters are not copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

Classes: General

  • Many class talents, spells, and abilities have been overhauled, added, or removed.
  • All spell and ability tooltips will now display damage averages rather than minimum and maximum damage potential. This feature is on by default but can be changed via the Display settings under User Interface options.
  • Ammo has been removed from the game.
  • The character levels at which classes gain new spells and abilities have changed.
  • Many item and class stats have been changed or removed.
  • Mastery rating has been added as a new stat which provides unique benefits for characters based on class and talent specialization. Mastery rating does not currently exist on items in the game, however, Reforging can be used to add Mastery rating as a secondary stat to existing items.
  • Rage has been normalized.
  • Spells and abilities no longer have multiple ranks and now scale with character level.
  • Talent trees have been altered. All player talent specializations have been reset, allowing for free re-specialization.
    • Each specialization has been reduced to a 31-point talent tree.
    • Players will now get a total of 41 talent points to spend.
    • Players will be asked to choose a specialization at level 10. Doing so will result in the unlocking of a spell or ability unique to that specialization, as well as one or more passive bonuses.
    • Once a talent specialization has been chosen, players may only place points in the primary tree until at least 31 points have been spent there.
    • The initial announcement regarding these talent tree changes can be found on our Cataclysm forum.

Death Knights

  • A dedicated tanking tree (Blood) has been implemented.
  • The effects of Blood Presence and Frost Presence have been exchanged.
  • The way in which runes recharge has changed.

Druids

  • A new Eclipse mechanic has been added for druids.

Hunters

  • Five pets can now be stored with the hunter at all times. Any one of these five pets can be summoned via the Call Pet ability.
  • Focus has replaced mana as a new resource.
  • Hunters now start with a pet at level 1.
  • The Stable will now store 20 pets. If a pet is moved into the Stable, its talents are wiped.

Mages

  • There is now a new spell fly-out UI feature for mage portals. Clicking on the Teleport or Portal buttons will expand the list of choices available.

Paladins

  • Paladins now have a new resource bar.

Warlocks

  • There is now a new spell fly-out UI feature for warlock pets. Clicking on this single button will open up the list of available pets to summon.
  • Soul Shards have been removed from the game as items. Instead, they now exist as a resource system necessary for using, or altering the mechanics of certain spells.

Items

  • Resilience no longer reduces the chance a player will be critically hit by an opponent.
  • Durability: cloth, leather, and mail now have as many points of durability as plate, making the repair cost on death much closer to equal for all classes.

Professions

  • The glyph system has been updated to now feature three different types of glyphs. Many class glyphs have been added, altered, or moved to different glyph types.

User Interface

  • Spell Alerts have been added to notify players when procs on select spells and abilities occur. A visual notification will display around the character and the activated ability will be highlighted on the action bar.
  • The Arena Teams pane has been improved.
  • The Character pane has been redesigned. Character stats can now be shown or hidden via the Show All Details/Hide All Details button on the bottom left. When shown, all character stats will be visible in a window to the right of the pane. Stat sections can be reorganized by clicking and dragging them up or down the pane.
  • The Professions panes now have more filtering and search functionality, as well as buttons to easily link recipes in the chat frame.
  • A Professions screen has been added to the Spellbook to better display the details of a character's primary and secondary professions.
  • Many of the yellow System Messages that would display in the chat frame when leveling up have been removed.
  • New text animations now alert players as they level up, also providing information on when new talents, spells and abilities are available.
  • Professions and Class Trainers windows have been altered to more clearly display available and upcoming purchases.
  • New Raid frames are now. They can also be used in place of the standard 5-player party interface via the User Interface options.
  • The Spellbook interface has been improved for greater ease-of-use and visual appeal.
  • For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.
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Cataclsym Beta build 12942 brings more achievements, titles and T11 armor sets

September 11, 2010 By DanO

MMO-Champion has datamined the WoW Catacysm beta build 12942 and has discovered a truck load of new player achievements, guild achievements, profession achievements, player titles, spell changes, a new Alliance lion mount and the long-awaited Tier 11 armor set bonuses for all classes. Complete details can be found on MMO-C's page.

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Ghostcrawler explains new Cataclysm profession Archaeology

September 11, 2010 By DanO

Since it's announcement at last year's BlizzCon, Archaeology has gone through a major rehaul followed by scraps of information coming out of datamined Cataclysm beta builds. To clear up confusion about how the new profession actually works, Ghostcrawler posted a lengthy exaplanation below.

Archaeology just went in this build for the first time and we don't yet have any of the support around it to teach players what to do. It has been informative to watch players learn to swim by drowning, but we thought it was time to offer a little more direction. :)

Digsites

Once you train archaeology, you can see digsites on your map (not your minimap – your map). There are always 4 digsites per continent. These will not change until you dig one out. Most of the time, you're probably only going to be concerned with the 4 sites on your current continent, but at higher character and archaeology skill levels, there will be 16 sites active at one time (4 each in Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, Outland and Northrend.)

You will only find sites in zones of your level or lower. A level 25 player will have all 4 sites per continent in level 25 zones. (This means Outland and Northrend will have no sites at this time.) A level 80 player will have all 4 sites in any zone. A low level Kalimdor player might have sites in Ashenvale and Stonetalon, while a level 82 might have Uldum, Ashenvale, Stonetalon and Silithus.

Sites are race specific. You can usually guess the race by the location. Kalimdor tends to have a lot of night elf ruins. Eastern Kingdoms tends to have a lot of dwarf ruins.

Some races are only available on some continents (such as orc and draenei on Outland). You need to have a minimum character level and a minimum archaeology level to use these. Currently you can see them if you are a certain character level but can't gather from them until your archaeology skill is higher. For Outland, the skill is 300. While somewhat consistent with other gathering skills, we think this is confusing and we will change it so that you don't even see the digsites until your archaeology skill is sufficiently high. Tol'vir artifacts are the most rewarding, but also require near max archaeology skill to recover.

Some players are reporting some issues with digsites not showing up correctly. We'll look into these bugs.

Unlike other gathering skills, digsites are player-specific. Other players will be searching in different locations. There is no competition for digsites.

Fragments

Each digsite can be searched 3 times before it despawns and a new site spawns. If there is a digsite somewhere too far away from you or otherwise inconvenient, just ignore it and hit the closer ones. You won't run out.

To search a digsite, use the Survey ability. The survey tool will spawn and point in the approximate direction of the artifact. Red means you're far away. Yellow means you're close. Green means you may be within 40 yards or so. When you discover your find, you'll get fragments specific to a particular race.

There are two main strategies to surveying. You can attempt to triangulate by moving around the outer edge of a digsite. (Like quest blobs, the digsites are not necessarily circular.) Other players just keep surveying, heading in the direction the tool points until they strike paydirt.

Remember, the thing you uncover is yours. There is no competition with other players and nobody can gank your node.

Artifacts

Whenever you get a new fragment for a race, you'll start a research project. You can only work on one artifact per race at a time. When you have enough fragments, click Solve to complete that artifact. You won't waste excess fragments — they will just start the next project. You can be working on one project for each race at a time.

Most artifacts are common. These give you a little bit of lore or flavor text and an item you can sell for a small profit (presumably to a museum!) The profit increases as the value of the artifact increases. You can estimate this by the number of fragments needed to finish the artifact. You will only find cheaper artifacts at low level, but you can find cheap and valuable artifacts at higher level (the reason for this is we want players to be able to find all the artifacts if they want to). You won't find a second copy of a common object until you have found all the artifacts of that race. If you get stuck at a certain skill level of archaeology or character level, you may find an artifact more than once until you reach the next tier.

Some artifacts are rare. These always make a blue or purple item. Many of these have no in-game power and are toys or for flavor. Some of them are actual weapons and armor. The latter items are all bound to account. They aren't heirlooms in that they don't scale, but you can pass them around. So if you are level 80 and you find a level 60 axe, you can always have another character use it when they are level 60. You will never get a rare artifact more than once.

The future

We designed archaeology to be easily expandable, so we plan to add much more content in future patches, including new races to research (though to be fair, there's a sizable amount of content already). We also have a feature that is not available on beta yet, that allows you to use your archaeology skill for a slight (think Fish Feast-level) bonus in the Cataclysm dungeons.

Filed Under: All WoW News, Cataclysm Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Ghostcrawler on tuning Cataclysm instances for healing classes

September 8, 2010 By DanO

Q u o t e:
What happened to the kinder/gentler damage vs. health model that we were promised in Cata? And presumably these are normal instances which shouldn't require the best possible lower level gear before entering an 85 instance. Are we expected to farm 83-84 instances before setting foot in 85 instances even on normal?

The normal dungeons require a little more crowd control than many LK players are typically used to, but they aren't intended to be brutal. You shouldn't need to farm a lot of gear before stepping into one. Keep in mind that feedback is going to be all over the place in a beta. Some players are heading into dungeons they know nothing about and getting frustrated when someone can't immediately explain the boss mechanics to them. Some just have no sense in investment since this isn't their "real" character (such irony). Some of the bosses are overtuned and some of the class abilities are undertuned at this stage. Because Uldum and Twilight don't have quest rewards yet, there are also some folks who are just really undergeared. Half your glyphs probably don't work. The new enchants aren't readily available. And so it goes. That sort of thing will all get ironed out over the next several weeks.

You shouldn't have huge mana problems in a normal dungeon. Your middle heal should get you through most of it just fine. You'll have to use more of your emergency heals in the heroics and raids, and you'll also be expected to gear up a little more for the heroics and raids. In Burning Crusade, players went and finished the Shadowmoon quest lines or got their reps to Exalted or maxed out their trade skills in order to have the best gear available for the heroics and raids. That is our model for Cataclysm.

Q u o t e:
They totally missed the mark when it came to tuning in WotLK. GC admitted that they caved in to QQ when it came to mana costs, for example.

I read every blue post most every day, and never recall him saying this. Feel free to post a source if I'm wrong. The devs have always held the stance that, while they do listen to feedback, will generally make decisions that are best for the game, not based on qq.

This is fairly accurate. Spell costs were more expensive when LK was in beta but we later backed off of it. That isn't the entire reason that the heroic dungeons and raids ended up a little easier than we intended. It was a combination of a lot of things: we got better at designing talents (fewer wasted points), glyphs offered a lot of additional player power, little things like the gathering skill buffs, most raid buffs going raid wide, every spec had access to mana-efficient AE, more survivability tools, specs that historically didn't raid much suddenly out there contributing their unique abilities, etc. etc.

Q u o t e:
I also remember us being told that ICC tank damage would seem less spiky so that tanks wouldn't always in such risk of near insta-death. Anyone else remember that?

I also remember being before the release of WotLK that Pallies would be fine without AoE heals because there would not be as much AoE damage. Then we got smothered in AoE damage. Remember that one too?

It feels like you're mostly just trying to play gotcha here, but I would characterize the above two statements as follows.

We added an avoidance penalty to Icecrown so that we could lower boss spike damage. It was still quite spikey. Now imagine would it would have been without those avoidance penalties. Bosses would have had to hit that much harder in order to compensate for missing so often. I even said at the time that a better long-term solution would be to boost health pools across the board (even for PvP), but that was such a big change that we worried it would take too many patches to get right.

On the paladin issue, our LK model was that healers were still pretty specialized. You want a paladin for tank healing and you want a Holy priest or Resto druid for AE healing. We thought that paladins had enough tools to heal when they were the only healer (i.e. in 5 player dungeons), and that was generally true, though paladin players did have trouble with heroic Loken early on. Since paladins didn't need to solo heal raids and since we didn't want to encourage raids to bring 2 paladins for their 2 healers, we thought that was sufficient. In Cataclysm we are backing off of that even more and trying to make all the healers more well rounded.

Filed Under: All WoW News, Cataclysm, Cataclysm Beta Tagged With: , , , ,

Blue Tracker: Heirlooms in Cataclysm

September 8, 2010 By DanO

Wryxian on Heirlooms in Cataclysm

We're adding more heirlooms in Cataclysm. Though I've not yet seen much evidence of tank specific items, development of the new expansion pack isn't completed yet and some of the new heirlooms we add might end up being of particular note for tanks.

However so far we haven't really focused on making heirlooms fill all the gear slots nor have we tried to completely replace all the items you receive from quests and dungeons as you level up. So it might well be that we decide to continue staying away from filling some slots and addressing some itemisation niches with heirlooms deliberately to maintain the value of quest or dungeon rewards, thus also maintaining the value of completing quests and participating in dungeons while leveling up.

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Cataclysm world events Operation Gnomeregan and Zalazane’s Fall are live

September 7, 2010 By DanO

Today after scheduled maintenance, the World of Warcraft servers came back online with a little surprise. Two surprises actually. The Alliance and Horde pre-Cataclysm world events were live. Operation: Gnomeregan has you running a number of light-hearted quests to prepare the troops for the retaking of the irradiated gnome capital. The final quest requires you to be level 75 and results in a Gnomeregan Drape.

Echo Isles & Zalazane's Bane prepares the Horde for the new Troll starting area coming in the expansion. Similar to the Alliance quest, Horde players must prepare for the taking of a homeland and get rewarded with a snazzy looking cloak, the Darkspear Shroud.

Remember, these are limited events and will disappear when Cataclysm launches so run them now for the Achievement as well as the fun.

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New L85 gear datamined from Cataclysm beta

September 7, 2010 By DanO

MMO-Champion has datamined new gear from the Cataclysm beta. This loot drops from level 85 instances in normal mode. The stats are quite impressive and may give you an idea of the kinds of creatures you will be up against that require these buffed items. Keep in mind that we saw this same kind of jump in gear stats from Burning Crusade when Wrath launched. This kind of mudflation is typical for stat progression-based MMOs.

Filed Under: All WoW News, Cataclysm, Cataclysm Beta Tagged With: , , ,

Ghostcrawler explains Glyph changes in Cataclysm

September 6, 2010 By DanO

Developer thoughts on Glyph functions in Cataclysm
Prime glyphs aren't going to be exciting in a "change up your rotation" style. We want primes to be unambiguous dps (etc.) increases so we figured they might as well be easy to understand rather than something so convoluted that everyone would just go to a fansite to see which 3 to pick.

The majors are more interesting, because they are either not dps increases at all, or dps increases in ways that are tricky to math out. We think players will debate and geek out more about which majors to use, and with the new glyph design, swapping them out once in awhile isn't very painful.

Minors are basically convenience or fun.

We don't want glyphs to change rotations. We feel that was a mistake in LK. Talents should affect your rotations, and glyphs should just provide a little bit of customization and power. We fixed some class problems with glyphs in LK, which was an easy solution to do at the time, but now is the time to undo all of that and let the classes stand on their own without the glyphs.

I'm not sure I agree with this. I can understand wanting to keep it simple, but like someone else said, if you're going to have 3 glyphs that we're always going to have with no variation, and none of them have any effect on the rotation… couldn't we just stick with minor/major glyphs, and just remove the prime glyphs entirely?

A few things:

First, it would be a weird world in which a warrior say could glyph Charge and Battle Shout but not Mortal Strike. It might make sense to savvy players who thought through it, but I'd wager you'd also see a lot of "Why don't they make glyphs that affect the buttons I care most about? Blizzard is dumb." (And to be clear, the point of that is not to defend ourselves against agitated forum posters, but that if something in the game is confusing like that in can get in the way of having fun.)

Second, gaining power when you level up is fun. Hitting a milestone where you get a noticeable damage bonus is fun. There is also some mildly interesting decisions about which prime glyph to use first. In other words, don't view everything through the lens of the maximum level player.

Third, not everything in the game needs to be a nail-biting decision. We don't for example really want Fury warriors to stress about whether to choose Raging Blow or not, nor we do we make it particularly challenging to choose your weapon enchant. Sometimes easy decisions make players feel more comfortable rather than every potential decision having a host of invisible pitfalls. This isn't an issue of catering to the dumb players — it's more about there being a few safe places in the game. [I feel nearly certain after re-reading that paragraph that it's going to be hard to understand and I will end up having to clarify it for months to come.]

Finally, I'd argue that the popular glyphs on live today already were the no brainers because in most cases they led to a consistent dps increase (for dps specs of course). When everyone uses those glyphs, then you aren't making some interesting decision about how to use your abilities — you're just doing what every other warrior out there is doing. The only way to deviate from that is to have two glyphs that affect your primary abilities in two totally different but equal ways. That's a very tall order, because more than likely we'll end up having to constantly adjust around that. "Encounter #4 in Grim Batol is unfair to warriors who use the Glyph of Furious Mortal Strikes instead of the Glyph of Meaty Mortal Strikes." What I mean is that we end up having to support multiple play styles within one tree. We're willing to do that to a limited extent (the TG vs. SMF Fury warrior for example, or the FFB mage), but it's hard enough to develop 1-2 viable rotations per spec. We don't want every important glyph bifurcating that rotation even more.

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Cataclysm Profession, Player and Guild achievements in Beta Patch 12857

September 5, 2010 By DanO

Last week WoW Cataclysm Beta Patch 12857 was discovered at MMO-Champion along with a very long list of new Player Achievements, Guild Achievements and Profession changes based on the new content. The Player Achievements were mainly new Realm Firsts for the new level cap and Heroic versions of pre-Cataclysm. The Professions Achievements were only four in number and relate to the new Archaeology profession.

The Guild Achievements are the most extensive. They range from the relatively easy Profit Sharing to the insanely time-consuming We Are Hardcore. Kills, loot, raid bosses, professions, PvP and more are covered by these achievements.

Professions got an update in this patch also. Archaelogy got a number of created items including the Fossilized Hatchling pet and various other components whose purpose is not yet clear. Inscription also received a number of new recipes including ones to recreate hard to find recipes for other professions.

Filed Under: All WoW News, Cataclysm, Cataclysm Beta Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Official Blizzard Cataclysm preview of Darkshore

August 11, 2010 By DanO

Blizzard interviewed two WoW designers about the approach they took to rebooting Darkshore. The short version is: Aubderine is gone. Naga, Shatterpsear trolls and those annoying Twilight Hammer cultists have taken over the region. Designed for Night Elf and Worgen players level 11-20, players will start in a new town, Lor'danel and eventually get their quests from Malfurion Stormrage himself. All the old quests are gone, but the new ones reflect on familiar places such as the Master's Glaive and Grove of the Ancients. Full text below.

Game designers Luis Barriga and Craig Amai sat down with us to discuss upcoming changes to Darkshore's landscape, the fate of Auberdine, and the challenges of redesigning an old-world zone from the ground up in this World of Warcraft: Cataclysm content preview.

Q. What was the original concept for the zone?

A. Darkshore was one of the areas hit hardest by the Cataclysm, so the main idea was to present a zone that had literally been shattered by those events. That was the approach we took for the revamp in terms of lore and aesthetics. In terms of gameplay, our goal was to take advantage of the changes to the environment and use them to help address previous issues with quest flow. It was an opportunity to streamline progression within Darkshore so that the overall experience for players would be much smoother and require less running back and forth.

Q. Who will be using this zone (what levels/factions)?

A. Darkshore is designed for Alliance players, primarily night elves and worgen, from level 11 through 20.

Q. What is changing about the zone?

A. Auberdine has been destroyed; entire species of creatures have been wiped out, and the land has been torn wide open in multiple places. The Cataclysm has also given the upper hand to a number of nearby foes, including coastal naga, Twilight's Hammer cultists, and opportunistic trolls of the Shatterspear tribe who seek to exploit weakened night elven settlements.

Q. What's happened to Auberdine?

A. Auberdine has been nearly razed to the ground, and what wasn't destroyed by the Cataclysm is now under assault by air elementals led by Twilight's Hammer cultists. The city is pretty much in ruins, but some survivors did make it out alive.

Q. With Auberdine in ruins, where do night elves go now?

A. Lor'danel. It's a small night elven town just to the north of the ruins of Auberdine.

Q. Without giving up any spoilers, what's the general storyline for this zone?

A. Darkshore has suffered immensely from the massive seismic ripples of the Cataclysm. The night elves are in survival mode, helping refugees and, wherever they can, fending off the advances of the Twilight's Hammer cult, the naga, and the Shatterspear trolls. Meanwhile, Malfurion Stormrage, recently returned from the Emerald Dream, has traveled to the epicenter of the destruction and called upon the ancient powers of Cenarius to contain it.

Q. What do you think is the most exciting new addition to the zone?

A. Without a doubt, the most exciting addition to Darkshore is the gigantic vortex in the center of the zone, where the devastating forces of the Cataclysm are being pit against the primal power of Malfurion Stormrage. Our amazing artists and level designers made us an epic energy vortex to serve as a visual centerpiece for the destruction, and it looks phenomenal.

Q. What goes into redesigning a zone like this?

A. Redesigning Darkshore required much more work than we originally anticipated. This was one of the first zones we tackled that centered on the effects of the Cataclysm, so we started out with the modest goal of adding a few themed quests and improving the general flow of the zone. As we piled on the visual changes, though, we soon discovered that a lot more manpower was needed to generate content that correctly reflected Darkshore's new landscape and lore.

Q. What was the most challenging aspect about implementing these changes?

A. At first we thought that we would be able to work with the majority of the original quests in Darkshore, but most of them just didn't make sense when viewed in the context of the zone's new storyline and direction. For example, chasing after corrupted wildlife and investigating washed-up threshers would seem out of place when everything around you is being ravaged by natural disasters, elementals, naga… and worse. Reaching the realization that we would basically have to scrap all of the old content and start from scratch — and then actually bringing that plan to fruition — was probably the hardest part of the process.

Q. What should players do or go see first?

A. Players should start in the town of Lor'danel and then play through the quest series naturally, slowly heading south. Higher-level players (levels 15 and up) may want to skip ahead and meet up with Malfurion Stormrage at the center of the zone, but Darkshore feels best if you experience the entire storyline from the beginning, as intended.

Q. What's happening at the Master's Glaive? The last time we saw it, it was mostly buried underground.

A. Twilight's Hammer cultists have recently begun to unearth the remains of Soggoth, one of the more powerful servants of the Old Gods, from beneath the Master's Glaive with the intent of bringing him back to life. Players will have to foil the cultists' plans before the new incarnation of Soggoth reaches full strength.

Q. Is there anything new at the Grove of the Ancients?

A. The Grove of the Ancients was shielded from most of the devastation caused by the Cataclysm, due in large part to the power of the ancient guardians residing therein. Protecting the grove required an enormous amount of energy, though, and as a result, most of the guardians have gone into a sort of slumber. Players will have to figure out a way to wake them and bring them into the fight to ensure the survival of Darkshore.

Thank you, Luis and Craig, for taking the time to talk about your involvement in reshaping Darkshore for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm!

Additional Darkshore Resources

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Screenshots of new Cataclysm underwater dungeon, Throne of the Tides

August 7, 2010 By DanO

WoW.com continues to post galleries showing off the new zones coming in the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion. Writer Matthew Rossi has posted a visual tour of the Throne of the Tides underwater 5-man showing off the naga, the new architecture and plenty of eye candy.

Throne of the Tides zone info

The Throne of the Tides is a level 80 underwater dungeon in the Cataclysm expansion. It is one of two 5-man dungeons included in the level 78-82 Vashj'ir zone, the other 5-man being Abyssal Maw.

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WoW Cataclysm closed beta has begun

June 30, 2010 By DanO

Today Blizzard has announced the beginning of closed Beta for its Cataclysm expansion. And confirmed that there is no more NDA so expect a flood of beta information over the next few days.

IRVINE, Calif. – June 30, 2010 – Blizzard Entertainment announced today that the closed beta test for Cataclysm™, its highly anticipated new expansion for World of Warcraft®, has begun. The company has started issuing invitations to participate in the testing process to a wide range of players from around the world who signed up via their Battle.net® accounts. While enjoying an early look at the game, beta testers will provide valuable feedback to help Blizzard Entertainment find bugs, address balance issues, and polish the new content.

"Our focus with Cataclysm has been to build on the knowledge we've gained through the previous expansions to deliver the best, most compelling World of Warcraft content for our players to date," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "Gathering focused feedback during the beta test will go a long way in helping us reach that goal when we launch Cataclysm later this year."

Cataclysm is the third expansion for World of Warcraft, the most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game in the world. The first two expansions, The Burning Crusade® and Wrath of the Lich King®, each shattered PC game sales records upon their release. In Cataclysm, the face of Azeroth will be forever altered by the return of the corrupted Dragon Aspect Deathwing. Players will explore once-familiar areas of the world that have now been reshaped by the devastation and filled with new adventures. In an effort to survive the planet-shattering cataclysm, two new playable races — worgen and goblins — will join the struggle between the Alliance and the Horde. As players journey to the new level cap of 85, they'll discover newly revealed locations, acquire new levels of power, and come face to face with Deathwing in a battle to determine the fate of the world.

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[Lore] Cataclysm book available for pre-order, release date August 31st

June 17, 2010 By DanO

Christie Golden's new book, The Shattering, is available for pre-order from numerous online retailers.  The book will be released on August 31st, 2010. The Shattering will cover the events leading up to Deathwing's return, acting a prelude to World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

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[Cataclysm] Official Guild system preview

June 15, 2010 By DanO

World of Raids has released a torrent of official Cataclysm information this week. Here's what they discovered about changes to the upcoming Guild System:

Guild Leveling

  • There are 25 levels in total.
  • Guild talents are not going to be implemented.
  • Instead, guilds will be automatically rewarded with perks.
  • Each time a guild levels up they will receive a perk.
  • Guilds gain experience through a member participating in dungeon or raid boss kills, winning rated battlegrounds, completing quests or unlocking guild achievements.

Guild Rewards

  • Guild currency has been scrapped.
  • Guild rewards will be unlocked by completing guild achievements.
  • Rewards will be purchased with gold, and anyone in the guild can purchase the reward once it's unlocked.
  • Examples: mounts, tabards, heirlooms.
  • Guild mounts will have a flag attached to them that displays the guild's emblem.

Guild Reputation

  • This is a newly announced feature; players will gain reputation with their guild similar to how other reputations work in the game.
  • As you contribute to the guild by completing quests, killing bosses, winning rated BGs or completing guild achievements, you will gain reputation.
  • The best guild rewards will require having exalted reputation with your guild.
  • Guild reputation is on a per-character basis, so you'll have to gain rep for each character you have in the guild before you can buy rewards with it.
  • Reputation is not wiped immediately upon leaving or being removed from the guild; this is to prevent losing all your progress in the guild due to someone jokingly kicking you.

Guild Achievements

  • These will be integral to the reward and level systems. Completing one can unlock rewards as well as give the guild experience.
  • Guild achievements are earned and owned by the guild, so once it has it, it never goes away — even if all members who participated leave the guild.
  • Even classic raids will help level your guild. A new version of the classic raid meta will become available that guilds can complete.
  • When viewing a guild achievement it will display the members who participated in earning that achievement.
  • To earn a guild achievement you must have 7 of 10 or 20 of 25 players in the raid be members of your guild.
  • There will be realm first achievements for guilds, as well as individual players.
  • Current raid achievements will NOT be retroactive. New guild versions of the achievements will be introduced. This is to start Cataclysm with a "clean slate," according to Cory Stockton.

Guild Window

  • The guild UI has received an overhaul and contains:
    • The guild xp bar and its current level.
    • An RSS-like feed of the latest news for the guild; boss kills, level milestones, etc.
    • Some news like major raid boss kills or level 85 will be "sticky" (this is determined by Blizzard) and will persist at the top of the feed for a while.
    • An upcoming events section that is a snapshot of your guild's calendar.
    • The most recent perk the guild has earned, and the one for reaching the next level.
    • The guild reputation bar (this is specific to your character).

The guild roster page has also been overhauled and now contains a professions display for each member.

You will be able to click on profession icons and view the recipes a guild member has, even while they're offline.

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[Cataclysm] Path of the Titans removed, major Blizzard press event

June 13, 2010 By DanO

In a very large and important press event given to official fan sites, Blizzard announced that Path of the Titans has been removed from the development of Cataclysm.  There are numerous additional details that everyone should be aware of.  Check out the coverage at WoW.com and at Wowhead.

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Official Cataclysm talent trees preview for Druid, Priest, Rogue and Shaman

June 11, 2010 By DanO

Blizzard released a preview of select Cataclysm talent trees on the World of Raids site today. Though these are not final, and some of them have little new information, you can get an idea of what direction the trees are going with the new expansion for the Druid, Priest, Rogue and Shaman classes. WoWHead has talent calculators available.

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[3.3.5] Vote Kick function changed

June 8, 2010 By DanO

Blizzard announced that In WoW Patch 3.3.5 the Vote Kick feature in the Dungeon Finder will lose its cooldown. But not for everyone. If you kick too many people, the cooldown will remain for you. Official statement:

We have found that most players using the Dungeon Finder don’t use the Vote Kick feature or abandon groups very often. For these players, we are removing the cooldown on voting to kick players from a dungeon party. In contrast, those players who tend to kick players or abandon groups more frequently will notice that the Vote Kick feature maintains its cooldown. The goal here is to make sure players who are generally patient can make use of the Vote Kick feature when they really need it, without giving a more powerful tool to those who try to kick others or abandon dungeon groups very frequently.

This functionality will adjust itself as a player’s behavior while using the Dungeon Finder changes.

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[3.3.5 PTR] Troll starter zone pre-quest preview on Test Realm

June 7, 2010 By DanO

In the Cataclysm expansion, the troll race will get their own starter zone. A questline is being introduced early, in WoW Patch 3.3.5, to introduce the new area. Zalazane's Fall is available now on the 3.3.5 PTR and WoW.com has a preview.

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[3.3.5] Ruby Sanctum raid not going live with patch

June 6, 2010 By DanO

Blizzard announced that due to Battle.net integration across the various international World of Warcraft regions, the Ruby Sanctum raid won't go live until a week after WoW Patch 3.3.5 goes live to ensure that international players get access to the raid at the same time as North American players. Official statement:

Due to the fact that we will be delaying the release of patch 3.3.5 in Europe, Korea and Taiwan in order to ensure the patch process in all regions is as smooth as possible, the Ruby Sanctum will not immediately be available on North American realms upon the release of the patch. Once patch 3.3.5 has been released in North America and we are confident about a time when we can open up Ruby Sanctum, we will provide an update here on the forums.

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Official Female Worgen models previewed

June 6, 2010 By DanO

The Escapist magazine has scored the first official screenshots of the Female Worgen model. Screenshots include the female worgen in cloth, leather, chain and plate texures.

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Reminder: BlizzCon 2010 tickets go on sale today

June 2, 2010 By DanO

Tickets for BlizzCon 2010 go on sale today at 7:00p PDT (4:00p ET) via the official BlizzCon ticket site. Each ticket will cost $150.00 and only 5 tickets can be purchased per billing address. Tickets for this event sell out within minutes. If you don't get any, there is a second sale on Saturday, June 5, 2010 at 10:00am. BlizzCon 2010 takes place on October 22-23 in Anaheim, CA.

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[3.3.5] RealID previewed on the PTR

May 14, 2010 By DanO

The writers at WoW.com logged on to the WoW Patch 3.3.5 test server to try out the new Battle.net RealID functions. They wrote up their impressions as well as posted a gallery of new UI elements.

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Cataclysm professions official preview released

May 13, 2010 By DanO

WoW EU blue poster Wryxian posted a preview of profession changes in Cataclysm on the official forums yesterday.

While the Cataclysm updates to many of the professions are still deep in development, we wanted to share some of the work that's been going on, as well as a high-level look at any lessons learned or changes to their underlying philosophies during the design process. Please be aware that not all professions have the same extent of information available right now, but each is receiving the same love and attention as the next.

Take heed of these teasers as you look forward to your new rank of Illustrious Grand Master!

Please enjoy!

General

  • Perks will continue to exist across all professions, and will upgraded appropriately.

Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Tailoring

  • Many of the green (and possibly some blue) items made during the process of leveling these professions will contain random stats. In most examples, two stats on these items will be set, and two will be random. The idea with these items is to mix up the skill leveling items so you're not just, for example, creating 10 pairs of boots that are all exactly the same.
  • Superior-quality items that require more materials than other recipes in the same skill range provide multiple skill-ups. For example, if a recipe takes three times the reagents, it will give you three skill-ups.
  • We didn't feel like we were getting much flexibility from specializations, so they have been removed for all three of these professions. The intent was to help people diversify their profession to feel different from that of other players, but through other professions we've found systems that work better to this end, such as simply making recipes available that you can earn over time.
  • To follow up the previous change, all items that required a specialization are now useable by anyone.
  • Tailoring the high-end Cataclysm items will center around a single cloth type that can be crafted through five different recipes — each with their own material components and a long cooldown.
  • All three professions will create their starter sets of PVP gear, which will be upgraded with new recipes every season. In general, these are meant to keep pace as an entry-level PvP set below whatever the current Hero Point set is.

Alchemy

  • New elixirs will be about 75% as strong as flasks. So you can get more total stat points with two elixirs, but flasks will still be the best at giving you a single offensive or defensive stat.
  • New unique material used by nearly all high-level recipes will be created by alchemists on a one-day cooldown.
  • New Mysterious Potion created with common materials restores health and mana in a massively random range, as well as sometimes granting the benefit of another potion. The health and mana range is from 1-20,000 and is able to crit. The minimum amount restored, however, is scaled upwards by the Alchemy skill, making it a great choice for alchemists to keep for themselves.
  • All potions and elixirs now use the same basic vial type. Flasks still use a fancy vial.
  • New Alchemist Stone.

Enchanting

  • In general, material component costs for most recipes are more moderate in how much they require, while the highest-end recipes will still require large quantities. The goal of this change is to make the leveling recipes more consistent and not create unintended roadblocks in getting to the higher skill levels.
  • An enchanter vanity pet is being added.

New Cataclysm weapon enchantment preview:

  • Avalanche — Chance to deal Nature damage on melee hit/spell hit.
  • Elemental Slayer — As expected, this enchantment helps players deal devastating damage to elemental creatures.
  • Hurricane — A stacking haste proc.
  • Heartsong — Mana regeneration through increased Spirit when chain-casting spells.
  • Many more maximum-level enchantments are still in progress.

Engineering

  • Engineering is still being designed, but expect new unpredictable gadgets to use on yourself or enemies. Toys, explosives, and even a new vanity pet or two. Oh, and powerful mechanical bows and crossbows in addition to guns.
  • In general, we want Engineering to remain a tradeskill mainly focused on creating fun or useful gadgets for the engineer, but we are exploring options for items that can be sold to other players for profit.

Inscription

  • With the large number of class changes coming with Cataclysm, many existing glyphs will see new functionality.
  • Minor glyphs are woefully uneven from one class to the next right now, so they're a focus for us to clean them up and try to ensure that everyone has minor glyphs they're excited about.
  • New Darkmoon Cards will be added, with hopes they'll all be as awesome as the Greatness card.
  • We'll be adding more major glyphs as well, but in the hopes of making them as balanced as possible, we'll likely wait until after the expansion ships to add any for the new abilities in Cataclysm.
  • New and more desirable off-hand and relic recipes will be added.

Jewelcrafting

  • Some gem colors have changed! Hit is now blue. Mastery and Dodge are yellow. Intellect is now red. These simple changes have created a much more diverse matrix of gem cuts.
  • New Jewelcrafting dailies will be introduced.
  • Many cuts are being added to support the new Mastery stat.
  • Some new Cataclysm jewelry recipes have completely random properties, and can sometimes create superior and epic versions.
  • Jewelcrafters will have some fun new (and potentially lucrative) vanity items, including fist weapons, rhinestone sunglasses, monocles, and stardust (sprinkle on players for entertainment).

Herbalism, Skinning, and Mining

  • All Cataclysm herbs have the chance of containing Volatile Life.
  • There won't be a new Lotus equivalent in Cataclysm. Alchemists will use the more reliably-found Volatile Life to create the new high level flasks.

Herb Example:

  • "Heartblossom — Named for its deep red color, this delicate flower grows close to the ground, and always in pairs. If one blossom is taken, the other flower begins to wilt immediately and dies soon after. It is considered very unlucky to disturb a Heartblossom without blessing it first."
  • Savage Leather, the basic Cataclysm leather, can be gathered from most creatures found in the expansion areas and can be converted to Heavy Savage Leather at a 6:1 rate.
  • Pristine Hide, the rare Cataclysm hide, can be found when skinning creatures in the expansion areas, or be converted from Heavy Savage Leather.
  • Obsidian is the new common mineral found when mining in Cataclysm, and can contain gems, Volatile Fire, and Volatile Shadow.
  • Elementium is the new uncommon mineral found when mining in Cataclysm, and can contain gems, Volatile Fire, Volatile Water, or Volatile Earth.
  • Pyrite is the new rare mineral found when mining in Cataclysm, and can contain gems and Volatile Fire.
  • Previous Elementium Ore and Bar used for classic quests will be renamed to Elementium Ingot and Hardened Elementium Bar.
  • We like the gathering perks as they are; not a game-changing bonus but something themed and fun. But as all tradeskills are in the design stages these are still being discussed to a degree.

Cooking

  • Cooking is still in the early stages, but we plan on continuing with daily quests, feasts, and some fun new recipes.
  • We liked the cooking dailies that had players picking up items that spawned in the world near the quest giver, so most if not all new cooking dailies will work similarly.

First Aid

  • Bandages will have a short cast time and put a heal over time effect on the target for 8 seconds. This effect is broken by damage.
  • Three new bandages! That's right: THREE!

Bandage preview:

  • "Dense Embersilk Bandage" Heals for 34,800 over 8 seconds. Requires 3 Embersilk to create.

Fishing

  • Lots of new fish and other fun items to catch! Fish are still used to make premium food.
  • New fishing dailies.
Filed Under: All WoW News, Cataclysm, Cataclysm Beta Tagged With: , , ,

[Cataclysm Beta leak] Female Worgen models

May 11, 2010 By DanO

Allison Robert at WoW.com has collected a few YouTube videos and links to screenshots of the current version of the Female Worgen playable race. These images are taken from the Friends and Family beta client and may not be the final form.

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[3.3.5] Notes hit test server for WoW Patch 3.3.5

May 10, 2010 By DanO

WoW Patch 3.3.5 has hit the PTR tonight and the Ruby Sanctum is ready for testing along with the new RealID functions and many changes to the UI.

General

  • The Ruby Sanctum, an all-new 10- and 25-player raid featuring normal and Heroic difficulties, is now available for testing! Players will find the dungeon entrance below Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight.
  • Copied Test Realm characters are not copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

User Interface

  • Chat Frame
    • Players can now right-click on any chat type (Whisper, Trade, General, Party, Raid, etc.) and choose the Pop Out Chat option. This will move that chat type to a separate tab in the Chat frame which can be undocked and moved anywhere on the screen.
      • Using the Pop Out Chat option on a Whisper will place the conversation with that player in a separate tab.
      • Any time a conversation with another player is put into its own tab, the tab will glow when a new message is received.
    • Hovering over the Chat Frame and using the mouse wheel will allow players to scroll through chat text.
    • Players can select Classic Mode under Interface Options to keep the Chat Frame functionality closer to what it was prior to patch 3.3.5.
    • The Simple Chat User Interface option has been removed.
  • Friends List
    • A new icon has been added to the top left of the Chat Frame which will open up the Friends list.
    • In addition to its current functionality, the Friends List will now allow players to add Battle.net accounts (Real ID). Players will have to confirm that they are friends in order for a Real ID to be added. Once Real ID friends, players can communicate cross-game, cross-faction and cross-realm.
    • A new Pending tab has been added where players can accept or decline a Real ID friend request, or select the Report Spam or Block Communications buttons.
    • Players can now select from three statuses which will be visible to their friends: Available, Away and Busy.
    • A Broadcast window has been added to the top of the frame. Players can use this to broadcast a message to all of their Real ID friends online. This message will also be displayed under the broadcaster's Real ID information in each friend's list.
  • For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros Forum: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?sid=1&forumId=11114
Filed Under: All WoW News, WoW Patch 3.3.5, WoW Patch News Tagged With: , , , ,
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