Echoes of Doom Is Almost Upon Us
iTZKooPA on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - 47 Comments Tags: Achievements, Addons, Addons, echoes of doom, patch 3.0.2, specs, wotlk, wrath, wrath of the lich king 
Late yesterday afternoon the Player Test Realms were finally closed, marking the end of testing for patch 3.0.2. At the same time, players were met with the typical “Breaking News” window at the login screen. The latest in “Breaking News” was a message telling everyone that maintenance would be longer than normal. Gee, what could possibly make maintenance longer than normal. Oh, I know, Blizzard Entertainment is finally putting the Echoes of Doom patch live!
Just because we can't play World of Warcraft right now doesn't mean we should put it out of our minds. There is plenty to worry about and do while waiting for Blizzard's techies to finish their job. Hopefully most of you managed to empty out your inventories and cash out while you could. If not, be sure to do so right away. I expect that once the servers go live, the market will start its steady decline on those soon-to-be-replaced items. The patch may make many items relatively worthless, but it will also allow many players to get some epic quality gems on the cheap.
Thanks to the removal of BoP and unique-equipped tags on PvP gems, those epic stones can soon be purchased by your PvP-dominating main and socketed into your whimpy alt's gear. The change in PvP items – initially added because Blizzard was going to wipe Honor points and Battleground marks – is just one of the cavalcade of changes coming with Echoes of Doom. There is another thing you can do, put on your reading glasses and hit up the latest official PTR patch notes for 3.0.2.
Done reading that ridiculous amount of class changes? Well, then it is time to go lay out your new spec for your main and handful of alts. I am actually still working on that myself, although I am kind of stuck with dagger builds for the moment.
Last but not least, and this one is often torture, it is time to start collecting 3.0.2 ready addons. Many addons will be broken with the launch of 3.0.2, so updates will surely be needed for a handful of your mods. The most popular mods have already been updated for the beta of Wrath of the Lich King itself, and therefore work fine in 3.0.2. WoWWiki has a comprehensive list, complete with funny little icons, to keep us informed. Most of my favorite addons are ready such as the Auctioneer suite, FuBar and tons of its plugins, Bejeweled, Itemrack, Rating Buster. Some of my other favorites are in limbo right now, including the popular BankItems, AutoBar and Omen Threat Meter. To make matters a little less time consuming, you may want to install the BLASC Client, which will keep your mods up-to-date via WoWAce's database.
Oh, and how could we forget the Achievements. Which ones are you shooting for on day one?
Reader Comments (47)
Can't wait to get home from work and respec my priest. This is going to be a good day.
Ah yes, time to update an epic amount of mods and addons again...so fun. You mentioned the BLASC Client, which is pretty good, as there is also WoWMatrix which is basically the same deal.
Looking forward to the patch, and the wonderful crap that comes with it, it's gonna be fun, and (hopefully) a great sneak peek of Wrath of the Lich King.
Keep it up Project Lore!
P.S. You spelled "wimpy" wrong, just to clear that up.
Thankfully I started the dowload & instal before I left for work this morning, so it will be waiting for me when i get home.
I have been playing with different spec's for my Rogue main (I use swords, but real rogues use daggers).
As for which achievement. Gosh I don't really know. I think I will look at some of the gold ones as my goal is to get my damn epic flyer. Ug it sucks to get that. I was up 2 3000, but spent a chunk on some good AH deals and mats to make as much stuff as I could to put back into the AH so hopefully that will turn around for me.
Rep grinding is getting so borring I have been more than happy to run guildies thru anything just to get away from area's.
Man.. glad I've been patching in bursts over the last couple of weeks..
Today's patch was another 1.2 gigs.
I am achievement ready! at least 1600 points worth already, huzzah
I cant wait to get out of school to play, nothing can make this day go wrong now.
Just installed the patch..
WOTLK login interface now.. pretty slick!!
/I'll tell you what can make this day go wrong, going online to see that your class has been severly nerfed into the next dimension...
Woot!!! Tenth!!!
That's exactally how lame announcing that your first to leave a comment is.
ok for a mage im not sure what to respec can any1 comment on this?
dont say that, cus you know. it will be your cloass that get hit first : P
well what spec are u?
I haven't paid any attention to the new spec tree changes and its probably time to..
Prot War here, looks like there's a lot to consider
WEWT!
Downloading the new patch at this moment I'm sooo excited about this!!
As far as mages go if your going for raid spec, it looks like its going to be going deep frost. They have totally changed that tree to add + Crit and +SD or now know as Spell Power =/ Although i am unsure of How this is going to work its a good thing i have 3 70 mages so ill try all the specs out at once while tri boxing. I just cant wait to see how things go. This is going to be an interesting day Kara ZA and Hyjal With no Addon's This has bad news written all over and repair costs out the Wazoo. Oh well Its still going to be fun
~-~-~The Seven Deadly Sins~-~-~
I hope it's today.
We retadins will be laughed at no longer!
Until they nerf us.
My Mage was frost for being able to kite things to death without getting hit, but I played both frost and Arcane specs on PTR and injoyed Arcane more where as before this patch arcane was the one I didn't like at all. Not sure on fire because that is one I didn't have time to really test.
As for the person talking about SP and crit for frost, no frost has not really changed from what it was it was always about snaring and kiting with "big" crits which aren't really that big because frost damage is mediocre compared to the others and their is no +spell spower talent in frost, only "+SP" there is is for frostbolts not general +SP.
Arcane is the one that increases you general +SP and haste and though not as much crit% still does increase it a nice chunk.
Before this patch I would have said frost all the way, but now, now Arcane has some nice stuff in it.
Umm Naasuk, have you not tried logging in yet? if not you should do so, so that the patch finishs downloading and installing before the servers are back up.
i got another thing that go wrong you cant get in to the game like me
damn i cant axcess my char now
anyone allse have teh same problem
drats
what the hell i cant axcess the once i made
@Egma: I didn't know that you could do that! Thanks.
http://wuu.vagabonds.info/ is another fabulous way of updating all mods at once :)
iv used it for the last year, and i regularly update my 168 mods :)