Project Lore

After some of the dust from patch day, extended maintenence, and rolling restarts settled, I was browsing my Achievements pane (default key is Y to bring that up). The first thing I noticed was that I had achieved a couple of things when I logged on for the first time after 3.0.8 was implemented. One was The Winds of the North, for being exalted with the Alliance Vanguard and the other was Vampire Hunter, a feat of strength for having a Vampiric Batling from Prince Tenris Mirkblood. Intrigued, I looked around a little more to see if I could find any other new achievements. Now, I had heard about the 75 companion pet achievment with a tiny deer as a reward, but I don't even have the 50 pet achievement yet. Apparently there is also a new 100 mount achievement with a blue dragonhawk as a reward. Those ones are so far out of my reach that I tend to ignore them. That and the mount achievement is going to be very very expensive when I go for it. There were two achievements that I found that would be well within my reach, though. Both of them have to do with my favorite targets for undeserved violence - critters. Pest Control asks you to slay some critters while To All The Squirrels Who Shared My Life is predictably a follow up to another achievement which has you loving more creatures. To those of you interested, I managed to do a little research and I can tell you exactly where to go to find the critters you'll need. I found all except for one of the targets of To All The Squirrels Who Shared My Life in Northrend:

• Arctic Hare: These are all over, most easily found in Dragonblight
• Borean Marmot: Borean Tundra, all over. Mostly the orange sections of the map
• Tundra Penguin: Borean Tundra on the icebergs
• Sholazar Tickbird: When you see a Rhino, look for the bird on its horn.
• Glacier Penguins: Icecrown, in the far north, a bit east of the islands on the map.
• Huge Toad: Zul'Drak, in the Drak'Sorta Fields. Most people tell you to go to Swamp of Sorrows, but don't listen!
• Grizzly Squirrel: Grizzly Hills, all over
• Mountain Skunk: Grizzly Hills, all over
• Fjord Penguin: Howling Fjord, on the coast/icebergs
• Scalawag Frog: Howling Fjord, Scalawag Isle in the Southwest
• Fjord Turkey: West of Expedition League Outpost in Howling Fjord
• Lava Crab: Searing Gorge, all over the place. If you know of a place in Northrend where these guys hang out, let me know. I looked in a couple of firey places that I could think of but to no avail.

For Pest Control, you'll have to do a lot more running around:

• Underbelly Rat: Dalaran sewers
• Rat: Dalaran near Violet Hold or Naxxramas, also in many other zones.
• Maggot: Naxxramas or Ghostlands
• Larva: Naxxramas or Ghostlands
• Spider: Howling Fjord, Ghostlands, or many instances such as Naxxramas and Azjol Nerub
• Crystal Spider: The Nexus - run straight in and immediately in the final boss's room will be a spider
• Gold Beetle: Halls of Stone/Halls of Lightning - both should have a beetle at the entrance
• Zul'Drak Rat: Zul'Drak, lots of them east of the Argent Stand
• Roach: Howling Fjord in Gjalerbron
• Fjord Rat: Howling Fjord
• Devouring Maggot: In the crypts near Utgarde Keep at the very bottom.
• Adder: Hellfire Peninsula
• Scorpion: Hellfire Peninsula
• Moccasin: Swamps of Sorrow
• Snake: Westfall
• Mouse: Westfall
• Fire Beetle: Burning Steppes/Searing Gorge

Hope that helps any of you achievement lovers out there get a few more points!

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Patch 3.0.8 is now up on live servers, and the patch notes are long, especially for a "minor content patch." There are a multitude of changes that different people are bound to focus on including the Circle of Healing and Wild Growth nerf, the "Great Hunter Nerf of 2009," Slow Fall and Levitate castable on others, Paladin's new single target taunt and ranged pull spell, Rogue AoE, and more. Besides the changes to many class abilities, there have been some interesting game mechanic changes. One of the very first things I did once I got the patch installed and stopped staring at the pretty new launcher window was sell my items that summoned bosses to instances. This included my Blackened Urn, Mallet of Zul'Farak, and Scepter of Celebras. These three items netted me about 10g, but also freed up some much needed bank space. Other than that, one of the first things on my personal agenda is to grind up some reputation with factions that I've neglected due to their low rep gains. This includes most of the old world reps like Argent Dawn and Cenarion Circle, both of which will net me a new title once I hit exalted with them. Earlier today, Bastosa immediately hit me and a few other guildies up for an Azjol Nerub run to get the Gotta Go! Achievement and his Glory of the Hero red proto drake. So, it seems that different people see different things in the patch. What is the first thing on your agenda post 3.0.8?

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I don’t think I am the only one growing a little impatient for the promised patch 3.0.8. I really don’t know why I am so anxious, but I am. It is only a minor patch, and I shudder to think how fidgety I will be before the release of Uldar.

Maybe its just me, but it seems like think thing has been up on the PTR forever. While we are only getting some polish and a few changes there are 3 things that have me really excited about this patch.

1. Paladin single target taunt. Finally, this is something I have wanted for as long as I have been a tank, and I can’t wait to see how this fits into my rotation.

2. New enchants. Specifically new tanking enchants (edit: tanking enchant... sigh). As someone who strives to collect all available enchants, this is a big double dip for me!

3. Gotta Go Nerfed. Maybe I am being lazy, but this is the only heroic achievements I have not done yet, and I want my red proto-drake! Sure I could put together an extreme group and spend half a day and grind this out, but somehow it just seems easier to walk through.

There is much more, but those things alone have had me running to my computer every Tuesday morning for the last 3 weeks hoping to see some signs of a patch release. Signs seem to say that this coming Tuesday is likely, but that’s what I said last week. If not this Tuesday it would have to be the one after, right? I can only hope.

How about you guys? Are you looking forward to 3.0.8? I know there are mixed feeling of excitement and dread on class rebalances, and somethings that are minor, but none the less cool (repairing scrap bots!). So what is your take on the pending (we can only hope) patch? If you are not sure, take a look and the patch notes here.

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Blizzard Poster Wryxian added a wall of blue text to the official forums yesterday, dealing entirely with the upcoming patch. Being the first major patch since Wrath of the Lich King went live means we expect many changes, but the list is slowly leaning towards ridiculousness. As of yesterday, the up-to-date Player Test Realm notes for Patch v3.0.8 stands at a full six posts from our boney friend. Needless to say, it is a lot to digest and cover.

Not everything is new to the list, so if you have been keeping yourself abreast of the situation, then you will only have to add small morsels to your extensive knowledge. Every aspect of World of Warcraft will see some small changes with v3.0.8. Some of the most drastic changes target the newly added Wrath content, namely the Death Knight class. Most of that information is old hat, but tweaks to Wrath's PvP contributions aren't. Despite the laundry list of changes to Lake Wintergrasp and Strand of the Ancients, nothing comes off as earth shattering, except the change in marks. For some actual game changes we have to move to the professions.

Here are some of the highlights to the profession changes:

• All flasks no longer require an alchemy lab to create. (Alchemy)
• Reduced the cooldown on Northrend Alchemy Research from 7 days to 3 days. (Alchemy)
• Succulent Orca Stew and Shoveltusk Soup have been removed from the requirements for any cooking achievements as they will not be added to the game. (Cooking)
• Many high level enchantment recipes have had the amount of Infinite Dust and Greater Cosmic Essence requirements significantly reduced, but with Dream Shards being added to them. (Enchanting)
• Added a new recipe to convert a frozen orb and some green quality gems into several superior quality gems. (Jewelcrafting)
• Mining veins and deposits no longer require multiple hits to receive all the ore. Players will receive around the same amount of ore, stone, and gems they would have received from multiple hits. (Mining)

Personally, my two main toons are not too effected by any of the changes. My priest is in it for the money, thus she is a strict gatherer – Skinning and Herbalism. The rogue will love the change to mining, even though it is four years late, for its speediness.  The flip side is that he will miss the ability to Sap, ninja and go for a HK that he enjoyed so. Heck, even their class changes aren't worth mentioning.  Can't complain about cheaper enchants though!

Blizzard managed to squeak in some UI changes that no one specifically asked for, but are happy to see. The company has pledged to implement much needed anti-scamming measures into WoW and the first of such will come with this patch. MMO-Champion.com gave us the first details and screenshots the other day, and it is a valiant effort by Blizzard, but I am not sure how much scamming it will curb. In practice a GM chat request window will pop-up when a GM wishes to chat with you. Upon clicking it a self-contained GM chat window will show up on the screen.

This is all fine and dandy, but the biggest problem is the dissemination of the information. I doubt most players will realize the request feature has been added, so they won't expect it, leaving some of them open to the same type of scamming we see today. At least Blizzard is finally trying something though, even if it is just to cover their ass.  Naturally, the one thing Wryxian didn't update us on is when the patch is coming out...

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