Project Lore

Big news on the content front, Content Patch 3.1 has hit the Public Test Realms and is now ready for testing.  This isn't entirely shocking, the PTR Character Copy went live on Friday so it was just a matter of time.  Unfortunately, if you didn't get the memo over the weekend then you are out of luck.  As of press time, you can no longer get in the Character Copy queue.  On the flip side, this is Blizzard, so they could open up additional slots at any moment. Once you manage to get on the queue, half the battle is won.  The wait time on the queue has dropped from a few weeks to a few days in the span of hours.  Fear not prospective testers of Ulduar, the controversial Dual Spec and all of those class changes, you should be tearing it up in v3.1 by the end of the week.  Players quicker on the draw than myself have already logged into the the PTR and given us some early information on the unnamed patch's changes. For starters, the poor toons out there better read up on our collection of gold generating posts.  As it stands now, the Dual Spec feature will cost level 80s 1000g to train, which should not be difficult to swing.  The big news of the PTR isn't these small kind of details in my opinion.  That would be reserved for the discovery of a previously unannounced feature, the Argent Tournament. The new world tournament will open up mounted combat to us and a whole lot more.  The super secret Argent Tournament - props to keeping the feature on lockdown this long - will unleash a new set of daily quests for the Argent Crusade, enabling players to score new items, titles, banners, tabards, pets, mounts, all new achievements and more.  Being a bit of a lore nut, I find the tournament a creative way to subtly hint to players that the Crusade is extending its reach into Icecrown , while becoming a powerful faction to the rest of the citizens of Azeroth.  This will make their move against Arthas more progressive - thus, realistic - than just having them pop-up next to the Citadel en masse. I have never been one to go nuts on the PTR.  For starters, I hate spoilers.  Past that, I tend to dislike having abilities or features, getting used to them, and then seeing them ripped away from my grasp when the patch goes live.  Perhaps SolidSamm will spend more time than normal, but I highly doubt it. Anyone lucky enough to get on the PTR already?  Like what you see?  Or, are you stuck waiting like most of us?  What are your thoughts on the new tournament?

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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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For those of you that haven’t seen it yet, Blizzard has posted a very nice description and screenshots of the new Ulduar raid on their EU web site. For the last while I have been rather impatiently waiting for this raid, viewing it more as something necessary to keep my interest, rather than something to look forward to. Well, after reading what Blizzard posted I must say I have changed my tune. I am excited! This raid sounds freaking awesome. The thing I grabbed onto right away was the size of the content. I have been telling people for a while that I hoped Ulduar would be a substantial raid. Well it sounds like I got my wish. The post says there will be 14 bosses. This makes it larger than all of Tier 5 in Burning Crusade which had 10 bosses (6 in SSC and 4 in TK). Furthermore it claims that 11 of those fights will have hard modes (think Obsidian Sanctum with drakes up). This should provide tons of new challenges, achievements, and most importantly replayability. If I am going to be grinding this instance night after night I’m glad to hear we will be able to change it up and keep it interesting. The post also mentions an interesting "preinstance" that players must fight through in order to reach the instance proper. It sounds as if this will involve the raid taking out an army on vehicles before a final showdown with a boss that must be taken down on the vehicles as well. While I have never been a big fan of the “vehicle fights” I am going to keep my mind open on this one. While not a big fan of phase 3 Malygos and the Oculus, I love Wintergrasp and this seems to be going more in that direction. I couldn’t be happier that Blizzard has throw this carrot out there. I will be feverishly checking out the Blizzard site, forums, and news sites looking for more details. But for right now, I feel this one will be worth the wait. Be sure to read the preview for yourself here, and tell me, are you as geeked as I am about this one?

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One of my favorite things about playing World of Warcraft has always been the sense that the game is unbeatable. There is always something to do, always ways to improve yourself, and always something to suck up your time if you want it to. Getting a bit of a late jump into TBC raiding, the sense of things I hadn’t done and bosses I hadn’t seen was overwhelming. I loved having far off carrots to chase after and drive me to work on my character day after day. Lately though, I have grown concerned. I know lots of people are saying it, but I am honestly starting to believe that the current amount of content is very inadequate. I have long ago downed every boss in the game. When I saw Malygos go down for the first time, it was bittersweet, but I knew there was lots more to do because of the achievement system. I was content with the fact that while there weren’t any new bosses, there were plenty of new and challenging ways to kill those bosses. The problem now is I’ve spent the time over the last month or so and earned a lot of those achievements. And now I’m faced with the feeling that there aren’t even enough achievements left to keep me very interested. Sure I will likely keep farming Naxx until I have my gear looking exactly how I want it, and I still have the matter of killing Sartharion with 3 drakes up, but I very much want a longer laundry list of things I could still be doing. I consider myself a fairly strong raider, but I am nowhere near as hardcore as a lot of people. If I am running into this issue, I’m sure there are many more than myself who feel the same. In my eyes Ulduar can’t come soon enough, and if Blizzard wants to keep its more dedicated players interested there isn’t a moment to lose.

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Everyone's favorite class designer hit the official forums during maintenance day to inform us that class changes for Patch 3.1 would be announced soon.  For those who don't already know it, Patch v3.1 will be Wrath's first content patch, with the main feature being the addition of an all-new raid known as Ulduar.  Popular speculation has Yogg-Saron - the second known "Old God" - or parts of him as the final boss.  Piggy-backing on the big content patch are numerous other tweaks, such as the classes changes discussed below. Making good on Ghostcrawler's promise, Eyonix threw up Part 1 of the upcoming changes.  However, only Rogues (yahoo), Priests and Shamans currently have a short-list of changes, every other class is "coming soon."  I am no Shaman, nor am I an expert Priest, but it seems pretty obvious that both classes have been buffed overall in the listed changes.  As for what my lovable little gnome thinks about his upcoming changes?  Awesome. PvP, that is the big change for Priests.  The notes specifically state that Shadow PvPers will see increased survivability thanks to a buff to Shadow Form which reduces magic damage along with physical damage.  Although no specific modifications were detailed, Eyonix notes that the developers are looking into making Holy have "additional PvP utility."  All the Discipline Priests shouldn't feel left out though, they get an entirely new ability, Power Word: Barrier, which is essentially a PW:S for their group.  Blizzard even through in some love for the whole class, adding Divine Spirit as a core ability. Shamans of the Elemental and Enhancement varieties also scored some additional, although undefined, PvP utility.  Following that, Dalaran's lag should be slightly lower come v3.1 thanks to the streamlining of Totems.  Mana Spring / Healing Stream Totems and Disease Cleansing / Poison Cleansing Totems have been combined. They are now two totems rather than four separate lag-inducing pillars of doom.  The nature-friendly class has received one modification that might be viewed as a nerf, Chain Lightning will jump to four targets, but do less damage.  The less damage could mean for the fourth jump or that the overall DPS output by CL will be lowered The number one change I was looking forward to for Rogues was how Blizzard planned to tackle the annoyance of keeping Hunger for Blood active.  For the none rogues out there, the spell had to be spammed three times, wasting two extra global cooldowns and 60 energy, to max it out.  Then it had to be refreshed every 30 seconds to keep it up.  While refreshing didn't break stealth - you could refresh while creeping to the next mob - it was incredibly annoying to worry about an ability with such a short duration that was so desperately needed.  The new HfB is a self-buff that can only be used when a bleed effect (anyone's bleed) is active.  While the need for a bleed is indeed a nerf, the 6% damage increase - from 9% with three stacks to 15% with no need for stacking - should help soothe that irritated skin. Like the other classes, rogues have also seen a selection of buffs beyond the HfB change.  Added haste, lower cooldowns and additional damage to various talents and abilities should make every rogue happy.  However, we do not know the exact amount these favorable changes will impact us, due to the numbers on a few of tweaks not being unveiled. The rest of the classes will be revealed in the upcoming parts of Eyonix's post.  Please hold off on the complaints until you see your own buffs.  Remember, these notes are not comprehensive and therefore do not list all the changes.  On the flip side, they can also be thrown out the window at a moment's notice. All of the changes do seem to be buffs, so perhaps Blizzard is saving all the nerfs for one giant post to get all the QQ out at once...Sly devils. In other news, numerous bugs have been found in WoW recently, but the developers are already hard at work on hotfixes. Update: Eyonix has posted more class changes.  Warriors, Warlocks and Druids should check out the post covering Part 2 of the changes.

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Initially, I was going to discuss the purported patch notes for Wrath of the Lich King's first content patch.  As it turns out, the "leaked" Patch 3.1 notes that began floating around this weekend are fakes according to most sources.  How fake?  That remains to be seen, but it is likely that the creator - Aurelius of Forlorn Legacy on Windrunner-US according to WoWInsider - got some changes close to correct. Thankfully there was another interesting topic to crop up late last week, BlizzCast Edition Seven.  The latest podcast of all things Blizzard focused on one universe for the first time since the developer began the series, Rock N' Roll Racing World of Warcraft.  The episode was designed as a wrap-up to Wrath's release with J. Allen Brack, Jeff Kaplan and lore master Chris Metzen, all stopping by to give their thoughts. The first part of the cast featured JAB and Kaplan discussing Northrend's creative process, things learned from the previous expansion, the hard choices and how they turned out.

• Northrend was one of the first lands to be prototyped for the MMORPG, during the development of The Frozen Throne.
• Northrend & Outland were both in the running for the first expansion.
• A group of five people, lead by Metzen took care of the awesome quests.
• Implement multiple starting zones for expansions.
• Throw the antagonist in everyone's face at all times, in as diverse a fashion as possible.
• Moving to 10- and 25-man raiding was validated as a solid decision in the first month.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things to be revealed in this section of the BlizzCast was the amount of Hero classes that were in the works.  Blizzard narrowed down the choices to 29 separate classes before beating that number down to just three.  None of which were the long-rumored Arch Druid.

• Rune Master - Melee archetype like a rogue or monk (Pandaren ftw!).
• Necromancer - Ranged caster with "a lot of corpse explode."  Many ideas incorporated into the Death Knight.
• Death Knight - Umm, well, I hope you know what this class does by now...

The second half of the Q&A has Cygil questioning Blizzard's Senior Vice President of Creative Development, Chris Metzen.  Being the creative mind that he is, Metzen's answers are incredibly long and descriptive.  Cygil leads the discussion in all sorts of directions and storylines, covering Illidan's demise, the distracted Dragonflights, Medivh and even the newly introduced Order of the Ebon Blade.  For the lore lovers out there, the second half of the podcast is incredibly interesting with future plot points being danced around by Metzen. If you haven't checked it out already, Episode 7 can be read, downloaded or streamed at the official BlizzCast site.  The total runtime is just under 40 minutes.

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Edit: Looks like Blizzard didn't want this video out there. If you didn't manage to catch the video, you'll just have to wait until Ulduar is public! Earlier this week we saw MMO-Champion's preview of Tier 8 Gear. Now, via the wonders of private servers and YouTube, we are given a glimpse of what Ulduar may look like on the inside. Sure, many people have checked out the Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning which are all a part of the same overall instance group, but the Ulduar raid is still somewhat of a mystery. None of the bosses are present in this ten minute run through but we're able to see how huge the instance is on the inside, which is one of the things I was worried about. I can't wait to experience this for reals.

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Wow, is my Google Reader ever full after my little excursion to the east and west coast of St. Croix. Good thing I took that little ski trip a few weeks ago as a warm up to the withdrawal. Otherwise, I do not know if I could have made nine days without a PC to entertain me and record my thoughts. Like a good little rogue (Irish to boot), I did my best to stay in the shadows at all times.

Boy, oh boy, do I have a lot of catching up to do. It will likely take a whole week to be up to snuff on everything that has happened. The prolific writers over at WoWInsider have over 200 articles for me alone – not that I will read it all – then there are all the blues to filter through and likely a good amount of in-game mail to round out the schedule.

I am sure I am not the only person who managed to sneak away for the holiday season, so just in case you missed them, here are some of the stories that perked my interest.

Donations to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society = WoW Subscriptions – A Blizzard Employee will be offering those who donate a chance at one of three one-year subscriptions to WoW. One lucky winner will score themselves a LIFETIME SUBSCRIPTION  ($_$).  This is still running, so be sure to donate.

2008 MMO Trends Analyzed – Get this, GamerDNA and Massively find out that WoW is the most popular MMO! They also believe that the title's reign is coming closer to its end, due to additional subscribers plateauing in recent months.  Me likey graffs!

FCC Commissioner Resigns – Deborah Tate, the commissioner that WoW players love to hate (...) decided to step down after getting made fun of on the Internet. Okay, that wasn't the real reason, her previous actions – like taking corporation opinions into consideration – probably had more to do with it.

Ulduar Won't Be “Hard” In The Normal Sense – PvEers have proclaimed Wrath to be entirely too easy, but Blizzard demands that available raids are just the beginning. Vaneras promised that Ulduar will be more difficult, but only if your guild is brave enough to try a more challenging encounter than the norm.

Mage Solos Naxxaramas Military Quarter – Just watch the video, Ms. Mage did some creative stuff to pull this off.

These are the items that jumped off the page for me, but I am sure there is additional interesting stuff that has happened in the last week and a half. For instance, the nerf to required enchanting materials is one. Anything big that I should make sure I speed read?

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