Project Lore

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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