Project Lore

I know my good buddy Bastosa already covered WoW-Europe's preview of Ulduar, but I can't contain myself.  Forget about the fact that my toon is a bit further behind his raiding accomplishments, this is new content we are talking about here!  Unlike my controversial post on Dual Spec yesterday (that it is a band-aid feature), I am pretty sure everyone is incredibly excited to learn more about the Titans and Old Gods as we battle through new encounters. Feature list:

• Fourteen boss encounters.  Eleven of these will have a "hard" mode for players who want more of a challenge - and extra, high item level loot.
• The area is split up into two sections, an entryway and then the dungeon.  Via the preview, an army lead by the first boss guards the rest of the dungeon.  The fight will involve vehicular combat, and yes, the vehicles will scale with gear.  The initial skirmish will be one of the eleven encounters with a hard mode.
• Confirmed bosses include Flame Leviathan, Freya, Thorim, Hodir, and The Iron Council.
• Yogg-Saron, the second known living Old God, is alluded to being the final boss.

You may have noticed that there is no mention of Freya, Thorim, Hodir, or The Iron Council in the preview post.  That information came out thanks to a post on the official North American realms detailing the planned testing of v3.1 and the raid.  Blizzard will be changing up their testing from here on out, possibly in an attempt to stop World First Kills from happening shortly after the content goes live.  Patch v3.1 will be tested in chunks (the above bosses being the first batch) that are only available during a strict timeframe.  Adding to that, the North American and European playerbases will be given different content to test at different times.  Furthermore, the territories may not even be allowed to test some content at all. With over a baker's dozen worth of encounters, immense scope and scale, Old God and Titan lore, possibly an Old God itself and stories based on Norse mythology, Ulduar seems like a can't miss.  Here is to hoping that the fights come out as fun and distinct as the first one sounds.  One question did immediately pop into my head after reading the preview, "Why are we fighting against Thorim and Hodir after we have done so much for them?"  Ideas? Also, Voltron reference...awesome!

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In this interview with Nethaera, Ghostcrawler has revealed a lot of the specifics about the upcoming dual spec system. Up to this point we've been given hints about how the system will work and what will be included, but this time GC has unveiled much more specific information. Some of the key points from the interview:

• Only level 80 characters will be able to purchase a second spec. This may be changed based on feedback.
• The Lexicons of Power located in major towns are required to switch specs. Additionally, scribes can create an item that allows a group of players to summon a temporary lexicon of power. The only other restriction (so far) is that specs cannot be swapped in combat or in arenas.
• Paying for a respec will only clear talents from a character's active spec.
• A Gear Manager is going to be added into World of Warcraft. This will not automatically change the character's equipment after a spec change, but will be configurable to quickly change weapons, trinkets, or entire outfits. Sounds like an integrated Outfitter or Itemrack.
• Hunters will no longer have to pay a trainer to respec their pets. Blizzard didn't want an extraneous step for hunters to have to go through to change their pets' talents. Hunters will also be given a new spell (on a long cooldown) that will allow remote access to the stables.
• As we've heard before, glyphs and action bars will both be tied to the talent spec, changing along with the talent switch.
• Talent points will be configurable before the get saved. This allows players who are respeccing to allocate talents with the ability to double check and avoid having to respec again just to move a couple of points.
• It is indeed Dual Spec, not Tri or Quad spec, for now. In the future, they may allow for more than two specs to be used in the system.

All of this is pretty exciting news. With a lot more of the details hammered out, it seems like this may be coming even sooner than I had thought. We'll still have to see how the whole dual spec system has shaped up when it comes up on the PTR, but I am very enthused about the idea of having more than one talent build available.

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Fing classic.

Patch v3.0.8 had many of us at ProjectLore a bit excited. Heck, you could get away with calling us downright ecstatic at all the changes the first Wrath of the Lich King patch would bring. We all all had our owns reasons for the anticipation, new achievements, cheaper enchants, one-shot mining, knowing that Dorkins will never stop complaining, it was all there. Blizzard finally dropped the patch on us this Tuesday, but not all was well in the lands of Azeroth. Actually, the whole ordeal has been quite a clusterfrak.

The first major bug to rear its ugly, beady-eyed head was a Death Knight related bug. The non-gameplay issue basically nullified one of the “features” being added by v3.0.8. For many, the ability to make Death Knights on any realm, so long as you had a level 55 character somewhere, was unavailable. Not a big deal, and it didn't affect a majority of the players directly. However, the hotfix forced a series of rolling restarts, the first of many to come.

The next two issues were huge, game changing problems that brought major features of WoW to its knees. A bit more troublesome than some lag and server restarts for sure. Lake Wintergrasp, a highly touted feature for Wrath's release, had a moth in it so bad that it crashed servers or at least Northrend (depending on  reports). I was indirectly informed that Wintergrasp's issue had something to do with zone population. According to the informer, the zone was not stress tested heavily enough on the PTR.  This allowed the bug to sneak into the live code and wreak havoc.

The next major $#*() is far more upsetting than Lake Wintergrasp being disabled. Blizzard silently modified the way Arena matching and rating was calculated in the patch with disastrous results. The modifications allowed teams to shoot up to 2000+ ranking in no time flat. This was caused by the fact that a losing team did not see a reduction in Arena points. Following the Wintergrasp debacle, Blizzard pulled the plug on Arenas as they attempted to correct the bug.

What's worse (to some) is that the developers decided that everything gained during this time frame was “illegitimate.” Do to their stance, the company reset team and personal ratings to pre-weekly maintenance levels, removed all awarded gems, points and enchantments. I for one agree with them on this entirely, but it still sucks when people waste their time.  Kalgan also has a post up that goes into more detail on the rollback.

Hopefully we can have an uneventful weekend after this morning's emergency maintenance “to resolve current In-Game issues,” but at this point who knows. I guess I may have been lucky as none of these bugs really bothered me. I have avoided Wrath PvP so far, as I am still working on my gear.  On my server the Alliance was stuck with the Wintergrasp buff. So that was cool. In fact, my buddy who plays the game for the Arena actually ran some rare instances!

Oh geez, I almost forgot this non-patch related dozy. Despite my best efforts to warn them about the pitfalls of ads on their official forums, Blizzard got a little greedy and did it anyways. As the screenshot shows, an unapproved group of ads slipped through their filtering process. Someone over at Microsoft (who owns the ad provider) is getting canned. At least the banner managed to stay on topic!

Tell me Bastosa, was this the mess you were “so anxious” about?

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Mages, Death Knights and Hunters definitely need to be aware of Ghostcrawler's most recent posts. The face of the forums has tore it up over the last two days, announcing changes to all three classes that are sure to upset some, but will having others jump for joy.

Some of the changes he listed are now part of the just posted v3.0.8 PTR notes, which include a new mount-based Achievement, complete with an exclusive mount as the reward. Although this probably isn't exactly what the people QQing in the comments of this post had in mind, it is a start. An expensive start considering if you bought ground epic mounts for half of the required 100 mounts, you'd be dropping something like 5000g. And I don't think there are even that many available.  So let's just call it a crapton of gold.

I will just start this off with the bad news. Dorkins, prepared to be nerfed to the ground. Ghostcrawler's notes specifically mention that Hunters, PvE Beastmastery Hunters to be more specific, are doing too much god damn damage for Blizzard's liking. While the designers hoped other classes would catch up to them, they haven't, thus comes a series of nerfs. The developers figured the best way to hurt PvE damage, while skirting the PvP balance issue, would be to heavily modify Steady Shot and Volley. Ouch!

From the blue:

• Steady Shot – now only gains 10% of attack power as damage (down from 20%).
• Volley – reduced the damage by about 30% for all ranks. Note that AE damage from many classes is very high right now and we are looking at all of them. Volley in particular had reached the point where some hunters were using it to the exclusion of most other attacks.

Death Knights are getting the opposite treatment of Hunters. The changes to the newest and most populous class - for the moment – revolve around modify tanking a good deal, while reducing their defense capabilities for PvP. Those PvEers out there, specifically the ones who rolled a DK for tanking, should be excited. From my understanding of the changes, and the class, the PvP modifications aren't nearly the nerf that Hunters received on the PvE end.  Blood Aura doing double the healing...think I may go Blood when I return to my DK.

As for our faithful Blinkers out there, some of you will be happy to hear that you have a buff coming your way. I quantified that previous sentence with 'some' because the buffs only apply to those mages that are Arcane spec. To be honest, I do not know, and possibly have never known, a mage that was Arcane spec. Nonetheless, Blizzard will has decided that that particular spec needs a hand, going so far as to completley redesigning the Arcane Blast ability.

• Arcane Blast – overhauled. Will now increase the damage of your next Arcane spell by 15/30/45%. However using Arcane Blast itself does not consume the charge, but instead increases the mana of your next Arcane Blast, up to a maximum of 3 stacks (and a 45% buff). You can alternate Blast and Barrage to keep buffing Barrage, or you can build Blast up higher for a heavy mana cost.

To sum it up, we have Hunters' PvE being super-nerfed with a buff in survivability for PvP. Death Knight's Blood spec is more attractive for tanking, with tanking mechanics relying less on cooldowns and a small nerf to their defense in PvP. Arcane Mages get a nice bump in damage, however, Blizzard is keeping a close eye on them to see if they become too powerful in PvP, or the class in general taking the lead in PvE damage output.

As for me, my two main characters have barely been touched. Fan of Knives is now better, but my rogue lacks the ability, so blah. Circle of Healing now has a 6 second cooldown, instead of just the global cooldown. That sucks, but I hated spamming it so much anyways.

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