Project Lore

Alright, I’m just going to come out and say it. I am dreading the new expansion, yes dreading. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very much looking forward to exploring Northrend, unlocking achievements, and charging into a new end game, but lately I have been looking to Wrath with a sense of impending doom. The reason is pretty simple; I still have too much to do in TBC! I’m sure there are many of you that couldn’t disagree with me more, but as someone who got into the whole raiding scene a little late, I have a whole list of goals and not enough time to do them. This sense of doom was only amplified by the recent announcement that the Amani War Bear will no longer be available after the next content patch. Yes, one of my goals was to set up my guild with a nice cavalry of bears. Other goals included downing a few choice bosses and earning the Hand of A’dal title, another privilege that could be taken away when WotLK hits. I understand why Blizzard is taking all this away, in fact I approve of it. These things need to stay special. Because of this, I’ve had November 4th marked on my calendar for a while now as the big due date. It is the drop dead deadline for me to get all this done (assuming Wrath hits when people think it will). What I don’t approve of is the news that the new content patch may eliminate my chances even sooner. My time frame just went from a defined date to “within weeks.” My hopes of riding around on my bear with a new title above my head are quickly slipping away. Now, with the update to the launcher earlier this week, the chances of the patch hitting soon seem to be getting better all the time. These titles and prizes should be special and would be much to easier to earn at level 80. I understand why they must go away, I’m just worried they are going away a little sooner than I would like.

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Oh sweet jumping Jesus.  Patch 3.0.2 is apparently creeping up on us sooner than I expected.  Blizzard Poster Zarhym announces that the bridging patch is going to be a large one.  Not that we expected anything less, considering the size of the pre-TBC “Before the Storm” patch.  I already touched on some changes that were announced when the patch was first revealed but the news of the impending download calls for an update. For starters, Zarhym warns us that this patch will be big.  So big that the flying skull wants all users to activate their Background Downloader to prepare to download the data that has been finalized.  It is also mentioned that the downloader should be downloading faster in general now.  Seems that they tweaked their torrent system a bit. The process should be enabled shortly. Even though we received the warning, Blizzard has still not added any patch notes to their site.  It's likely we will see some patch notes this week to elaborate on all the known changes. We also have some anecdotal evidence to hint at how soon the patch may be coming.  First off, the PTR forums have been wiped, which usually occurs before a patch heads to them.  I should mention that much of the new stuff has been tested on the beta realms extensively, meaning a PTR session could theoretically be skipped.  Secondly, the Launcher is now displaying a Wrath of the Lich King splashscreen.  Nothing groundbreaking or concrete, but evidence nonetheless. Here is some of the stuff we already know is coming with the new patch:

• Massive alterations to the way raid buffs/debuffs work
• A built in Guild Calendar
• New class spells and talents
• Stormwind Harbor
• Barbershops
• Two new Arenas
• Inscription profession
• Hunter pet changes and additions
• Zul'Aman bears no longer awarded

Get to work on those bear mounts guys.  I will be content with waiting for a Polar Bear though.

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As you may have heard, this week we are starting three weeks of Wrath of the Lich King beta coverage! To kick things off, we're releasing the first part a couple of hours early for you guys. In these episodes, we'll be talking about some of the new things that are in the WotLK beta and of course running one of the instances in Northrend. We're diving into Utgarde Keep in the Howling Fjord, and of course the game is still in beta, so things may change before it goes live. Here is what you can look forward to this week! Project Lore WotLK Beta 1.1 - 10AM PDT on Monday, September 8th Project Lore WotLK Beta 1.2 - Noon PDT on Tuesday, September 9th Project Lore WotLK Beta 1.3 - Noon PDT on Wednesday, September 10th Project Lore WotLK Beta 1.4 - Noon PDT on Thursday, September 11th Project Lore WotLK Beta 1.5 - Noon PDT on Friday, September 12th Remember to look at our subscribe page to find us all over the web, and use the Episodes RSS feed or follow our Twitter to find out when new episodes are out! You can also find us on MySpace and Facebook, so friend us up.

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I have spent the last two days poring over the various confirmed changes and future additions to World of Warcraft.  Eyes glassy and tainted with blue, I have finally been able to come up for a breath.  Blizzard Poster Gamnin kept most of us busy during Tuesday's short maintenance by posting an update to the Rogue changes and some new information on the Warrior class.  As with all changes, people are sure to be up in arms about something or other so I will avoid being 'that guy'.

Courtesy of Mick Stephenson

First we will discuss my favorite class, the rogues.  As mentioned in the comments of my previous Rogue post, Tricks of the Trade is the new level 75 ability and has been confirmed by Gamnin.

• NEW - Tricks of the Trade: The current party or raid member becomes the target of your Tricks of the Trade. The threat caused by your next attack and all actions taken for 6 sec afterwards will be transferred to the target. In addition, all damage caused by the target is increased by 15% during this time. 30 sec cooldown.
• Relentless Strikes moved to Tier 1 Subtlety tree and made 5 ranks, 4/8/12/16/20% chance.
• NEW – Overkill (Assassination Tier 7): Abilities used while stealthed and for 6 seconds after breaking stealth cost 10 less energy.
• Hunger for Blood duration raised to 30 seconds.
• Mace spec ignores 3/6/9/12/15% of target’s armor.
• NEW - Blood Poisoning (Combat Tier 9): All physical damage caused to enemies you have poisoned is increased by 1/2%.
• NEW - Filthy Tricks (Subtlety Tier 9): Reduces the cooldown of your Tricks of the Trade and Distract abilities by 5/10 sec.
• Shadowstep will no longer be usable while rooted.

The new abilities and talents sound interesting but choosing a good build seems more difficult than before.  I will reserve my anger and judgments for when we get closer to launch however.  I have never seen a point in A) getting angry over stuff that will likely be changed and B) spending so much time making a build when the trees aren't finalized.  Of course, I just had to end the list with something to piss off the PvPers.

Also of note, is that Blizzard plans to do something about five rogue Tricks of the Trade rotations.  Currently, there is no stacking protection but they are working on some way to avoid the need for it.

The Warrior changes and additions are interesting, just not as lengthy:

• Enraged Regeneration: You regenerate 30% of your total health over 10 sec. This ability consumes all Enrage effects and prevents any from affecting you for the full duration. Must be enraged to use. Cost 15 rage, 3 min cooldown.
• Improved Charge generates 5/10 rage.
• Mace spec ignores 3/6/9/12/15% of target’s armor.
• NEW - Warbringer (Protection Tier 9): Allows Charge to be used in combat.
• Furious Attacks modified to use procs per minute to nullify weapon speed differences.

I like what I heard about Blizzard's take on Shields in WotLK.  The developers hope to make the shield more of a weapon instead of just a defensive tool.  Adding that utility would make them more accurate to how they were used back in the day (see 300).

Oh and Warriors regenerating 30% of their health over 10 seconds...that is gonna be annoying in PvP.

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We at Project Lore are excited to announce that on Monday, September 8th, we will be kicking off three weeks of daily Wrath of the Lich King beta episodes. That's right, we've got Blizzard's blessing to show you a full instance run in Northrend straight from the beta to your desktop (or laptop). The guys went into Utgarde Keep with nothing but the epics on their backs and returned with tons of juicy info on a bunch of new talents, features, and areas that will be coming in the new expansion from Blizzard. Each week of our special will cover a full, real time trash mobs section, boss strat, and boss kill, as well as bonus footage and other features from the beta of Wrath of the Lich King. If you want to see what Blizzard has in store for the future of WoW, tune in! Remember, you can always find out when new episodes are out by subscribing to the episodes RSS feed or following us on twitter. You can also find links to Project Lore all over the web on our Subscribe Page.

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Oh BlizzCon, how I wish to be a part of you. Yes, that is right folks, another episode in my on-going saga to join the masses at BlizzCon 2008. I am not simply going just for World of Warcraft either. Yes, I was a hardcore raider during vanilla WoW before turning casual with The Burning Crusade but that is only part of my addiction to Blizzard Entertainment's products. My first Blizzard game was actually their epic Rock N' Roll Racing. But it is hard to be addicted to a racing title from that generation for too long. It was really Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness that drew me into Blizzard and StarCraft that had me addicted. But I was by no means a great StarCraft player. Great in my high school, yeah, but nothing special outside that. Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos/The Frozen Throne was a different story though. I was an avid AT (arranged team) player, even winning a few tournaments with my brother. You won't find my name on any replays or in the Worldwide Invitational so stop looking. Just small local tournaments and one regional appearance. And like many of my generation, I learned to mouse click thanks to Diablo II. My point is, I really want to goto BlizzCon, not only WoW but all of Blizzard's properties...and the goodie bag. Despite asking for all your luck I missed out on the lottery drawing. The drawing was my last chance at receiving a ticket through the more official channels. When the BlizzCon e-mail failed to appear in my mailbox I turned into a new man. More grouchy than Oscar in Azeroth. My girlfriend was not amused. This morning at breakfast I started looking at the grey market once again. I refuse to pay the ridiculous eBay prices for my entry into Valhalla so I have found some other alternatives:

• Pixelated Executioner is offering a BlizzCon ticket for the best, original 700+ word story related to Wrath of the Lich King. However, the goodie bag is NOT included.
• Blizzard and its partners are offering an all expenses paid trip for two to BlizzCon. All you have to do is enter some information to be eligible. 25 runner-ups will receive a mix of SteelSeries (they make the Zboard line), UpperDeck Entertainment, Brady Games and J!NX swag.

So far I have only found those two contests, if anyone knows of any others please add them via the comments. Personally, I will likely enter both as they have to have better odds than the lottery system! Can't wait to read some of those stories. The WoW community is so creative that I expect some gems to come from it.

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Mmm, finally Rogues have received a nice blue post from Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard Poster Gamnin updated the stabbing community on changes they can expect to see in the near future. Gamnin admits that these are changes that are currently being worked on, as well as future goals. Therefore, some of these changes may not come for some time. Nevertheless, many of them have me in a twitter. Got me in a twitter:

• Removal of numerous reagents (Thieves’ Tools, Flash Powder).
• Poison skill removed – poisons available via vendors.
• Level 75 unannounced ability designed and teased as adding group utility.
• Fist weapon spec merged with dagger spec.
• Mace Specialization will now grant armor penetration when using a mace.

Much hotness:

• Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes on Evasion, Sprint, Vanish.
• Subtlety Tier 1 redesigned to be more attractive
• Fewer dagger specifics talents in subtlety to allow more diverse build options
• Hunger for Blood will remove any harmful physical effects. No longer just Bleed or Magic.

I have always fancied the dagger specialization more, just because I felt that it required more “skill”. In actuality, it just requires that you move around a lot more (and have more patience) but I will keep telling myself that that equals skill. Unfortunately, raiders have claimed that dagger builds were doing less DPS than the other specs for some time, a statement which Blizzard owned up to.  With that in mind, the merger of maces into the dagger spec and armor penetration instead of a stun proc make maces much more attractive to me.  Maybe it is time to give up my trusty blades? The removal of the poison skill makes sense, as it was simply as waste of time to create them so often. On top of that, its not like it was difficult to do or troublesome to locate the materials. For those reasons, the switch to a vendor item makes a lot of sense. But seeing as I never carried around poison mats, just a few stacks of crafted poisons, I don't see how it will help bag space. As for the hotness changes?  I did not note that Cloak of Shadows' cooldown is being raised to two minutes since I was focusing on the good.  But that makes the changes to Hunger for Blood look more enticing for the PvP players out there.  And should I make that jump to maces, it is nice to know that Blizzard will try to make the subtlety tree a viable option. Be sure to check out the blue post though. Gamnin mentions a lot of other changes and future additions that I did not touch upon.  Sadly, there wasn't enough to convince me that daggers will be taking over as highest DPS again – and I feel they should be the highest.

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Some more details have been coming out about the pre-Wrath of the Lich King content patch. As you know, the upcoming patch will act as a “bridging” patch. What this means is that Blizzard will use patch 3.0.2 to introduce a chunk of the Wrath changes, before Wrath is launched. This is the same thing Blizzard did with patch 2.0.1, introducing some aspects of The Burning Crusade into vanilla World of Warcraft. That addition came just a little over a month before TBC's release. Eyonix mentioned as part of patch 3.0.2's announcement that the notes would be coming shortly. However they still have not been posted. Nevertheless, Blizzard has posted additional information through alternative means. First we have a promise from Bornakk that the game won't be broken by the patch. I still remember the horror of “Assault on Blackwing Lair” or patch 1.6.0. I never wanted to use add-ons again after how long it took for all of my add-ons to be repaired, and then the time it took to go find them.  One by one.  Thankfully, we have tools like BLASC now. Bornakk also mentions that the patch should arrive “in the coming weeks”. To back up that statement the PTR forums have been wiped. An act that always happens shortly before a new patch is tested. Zarhym brought us the first list of detailed changes yesterday, the long promised changes to raid buffs/debuffs and stacking. The changes are drastic and the post is long, so it is worth the read for the hardcore PvE players out there. The Summation:

• Most buffs/debuffs will be raid-wide (ie Warrior shouts, Shaman totems).
• All buffs are categorized in one or more of 30 categories. Most categories have only a few buffs in them.
• Buffs from the same categories will not stack, with the most powerful buff taking precedence
• Mana regeneration buffs to be assigned to 10 players with the least mana
• Numerous existing buffs and debuffs have been reworked for the new system

Blizzard hopes that the changes will allow raiders to bring whomever is available to a raid – within reason - instead of requiring a concrete template be filled. Zarhym noted that Blizzard will be fine tuning the system and changes as needed based on internal testing and community feedback. So start the feedback process.

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So I've had some time to reflect on my feelings about Season 4 PvP Arena gear and I gotta say I'm not sure it's worth it to me. Really. While the gear is quite epic, it's a lot of time commitment, and as I've said before, I'm not sure I want to spend all weekend in AV or EotS or any bgs for that matter just to get some gear so I won't get my squish cloth butt kicked as much. Sure, the extra stamina would be nice and the pretty new dress/armor would be fun to show off standing on the bridge in IF, but why? I already have a sweet little mount that gets enough attention when even I ride it. But the game has never been an e-peen for me. While I am all for gearing up and having fun, it's just a time commitment thing. I got lots of RL stuff to do and seeings as i don't think I'll be able to spend time doing my oh so favorite bgs AV, I may just wait to WotLK to gear up any further... unless you know anyone who wants to run me through SSC and TK to kill Vashj and Keal'thas. Seriously. Do you know anyone? I got the macros.. I know the fight... I got the gear... uhh, I.. oh sorry. What was I saying? Oh yeah. So I won't be busting my butt to get S4 Arena gear anytime soon. :( Besides Alexis already beat me to it. Oh well. It's sill a fun game. Besides, my favorite outfit is my formal wear. I prefer a tux and some nice Dress Shoes. Nothing says digital toon class like a tux. Others like the casual Friday's look like Adrale here. He seems to prefer the Stylish Black Shirt while others I know prefer the Black Swashbuckler's Shirt. What's your favorite outfit? Let me know. After all the game is all about the pretty dresses. LOL

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Yesterday at the Leipzig Games Convention, Blizzard gave the world the first look at Wrath of the Lich King's cinematic trailer. The trailer initially blew me away with its fantastic animation, beautifully crafted landscapes, epic music and spot on narration by Arthas' father, King Terenas Menethil. Then a friend and I began discussing it and finally, comparing it to previous Warcraft trailers. We decided that it's lacking in content. I have seen all of Blizzard's cinematic trailers, for all their titles - heck, I even own the Blizzard Entertainment DVD Collection. This allows me to see the progression of their craft. Since the release of Diablo II, the technology, art, and design of their cinematics have always been groundbreaking. Especially the technology. But what is a cutscene without story? Arthas' turn in Warcraft III still resonates in my mind as one of the coolest things I have seen from the game industry. Was it an original twist? No, but the video's presentation made it amazing. But that comparison isn't entirely far. After all, that cutscene was just that, a cutscene. What I am actually discussing is a cinematic trailer, so let us compare apples to apples. In the original World of Warcraft trailer Blizzard introduced us to everything. The classes, the races, the setting, the landscape. The trailer told players what to expect - an epic struggle. The Burning Crusade cinematic featured a cocky Illidan Stormrage daring us to come out and do battle with him. Shortly after being told that "You are not prepared" the cinematic shifts gears, introducing the new playable races. What does the Wrath of the Lich King offer us? It shows Arthas crossing a frozen lake in Northrend shortly before he plunges Frostmourne into the ice. We see the release of a large dragon (probably Sindragosa) that then stirs Arthas' undead army as it passes overhead. An epic presentation but it doesn't lead us, or the story, on, as previous trailers did. Heck, even the Sunwell Plateau trailer (basically machinima) pushed the story forward. And where is the action that the other two presentations had? Sorry Blizzard, but for all you put into the presentation, you left the story at the door. I don't enjoy or expect the formulaic movie plot of build up, climax and close in my video game trailers. Your previous formula of slight build-up and a lot of climax always had me on the edge of my seat. Ultimately, those previous trailers lead me to want the game (which would present the close) that much more. Stream the trailer here, download the high resolution version for PC or Mac or an alternate mirror for streaming and download can be found at FileFront.

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