It seems like every pet hunters can tame so far have nothing that caters to players who love cute and cuddly things… at least no until Wrath of the Lich King comes out. The Artic Grizzly Cub shown in the videos above is such a cute little thing that it makes me think that’s what a gnome druid bear form should look like if only gnomes could be druids. I’m actually getting thoughts about playing a hunter because of this cub. Nothing beats the panda cub non combat pet in terms of cuteness but for me this takes the cake as the cutest tamable pet ever.
The race to be the first do achieve something has always been a popular one. Soon the game will place the recognition to those who deserve the honor and make it official. According to Tigole/lead designer Jeff Kaplan, the latest Realm First achievements that will be implemented in the next beta build are just that.
Realm Firsts are implemented in the next beta build although they will be slightly broken due to the fact that we have data issues with existing beta testers. For now, here’s the list. We’ll probably add more.
Realm First to 80
Realm First to 80
Realm First to 80
Realm first to 450
Realm First 10/25 end-boss kills
Keep in mind, this will be broken on beta realms slightly. For example, in the current build, Realm First Mage to 80 is actually implemented. Well, Daelo, our Lead Encounter Designer, was testing something and leveled a Mage to 80 instantly and got the achievement for the server. On live realms, this will never happen. On live realms, all blizzard employee accounts are not counted toward server-firsts. But this part of the technology was not yet implemented.
Also, when those Realm First achievements go live, they won’t be accurate on the beta realms. But on live realms, the data will be pure and the information will display correctly.
Something to note about Realm Firsts:
A Realm First window stays open for 1 minute after initial completion of the Feat Of Strength. This means if 25 people kill Malygos as a Realm First, they’ll all get credit. But what this also means is that if two players reach level 80 within a minute of each other, they will both get credit as well. source
This isn’t like a World First but it’s still great to be able to display that you achieved something cool in your realm. It must really suck to belong to the guild that did a realm first kill on a certain boss but you weren’t there when they did it. At least you’ll get some glory by association hehe. I wonder if the raid boss realm firsts are going to be something guilds will look at when considering someone for an application. For me, it’s definitely something worth taking a look at.
Being able to use your flying mount everywhere in the Outlands is a nice thing especially since you can’t use them anywhere in Azeroth. This is why it’s definitely a nice thing that you can still use them in Northrend after doing the quest to unlock the skill at level 77. It’s quite shocking to find out that Dalaran is a no fly zone, according to Tigole/lead designer Jeff Kaplan.
For the time being, it is intended that you cannot fly within the city of Dalaran. We want you to be able to fly into Dalaran and fly out of Dalaran (via mounting at the flying landing or in the sewer pipe) but we don’t want people flying around the city streets. We do want people to be able to mount on their ground mounts in the city (but not indoors).
This isn’t entirely set up properly yet and not all things are working. Most of this will be implemented over the coming weeks. If it’s horrible, we’ll change it. But that’s what we’re trying out right now.
A big complaint of Shattrath was that it did not feel like a city. A goal of Dalaran was to re-capture the bustling street feel of places like Stormwind and Orgrimmar. Flying mounts work contrary to this goal. source
After being able to fly around in Shattrath, not being able to in Dalaran is certainly going to feel a bit different. Of course it’s nothing new since never get to fly around cities like Orgrimmar and Ironforge either until now. For me, as long as Dalaran isn’t doesn’t have death traps like accidentally falling off the Aldor Rise, then not being able to fly around is just fine. One bad thing can see about not being able to use flying mounts is that the epic flying mounts are faster than the epic ground mounts so people can get around faster if they use their flying mount.
What do you think about this? Do you think it’s a right decision to not allow flying in Dalaran?
All this talk about the WoTLK beta has me really really excited for the real thing to come out. I’m even leveling a druid to 70 right now because I think the new balance and restoration talents are interesting. It’s also my insurance to have another healer toon just in case my fears about holy pallies being underwhelming for the expansion are realized. I definitely agree that the suckiest part about all this beta testing is that I’m not in it to experience the fun new stuff. Of course I also read somewhere that being in the beta isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be since the server is down often, abilities don’t work as intended and stuff like that. but at least the beta testers get to see the new content and have an idea on how the new abilities work.
The good news is that CM Eyonix announced that there will be a pre-WoTLK content patch coming soon similar to the one that was released before the Burning Crusade expansion was released. So we’ll be able to experience some of the stuff the beta testers are experiencing right now, especially the new talent trees.
With the release of Wrath of the Lich King approaching, we wanted to provide you with some important information. In preparation for the expansion, we will be issuing a new content patch in the coming weeks. Much like the patch made available shortly before The Burning Crusade’s release, this content patch is designed to bridge current game content with that of the expansion and will contain some exciting changes and additions.
We have outlined some of the larger features scheduled to release with the patch below:
New class spells and talents
Stormwind Harbor
Barbershops in capital cities
Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades
Two brand-new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles
Guild calendar
Hunter pet skill revamp
New profession: Inscription
As mentioned above, this is not a comprehensive list, just some of the major highlights. We’ll post the full patch notes as soon as they’re available. Regarding Inscription, please note that all Burning Crusade players will be able to select Inscription as one of their two professions and level up to a skill level of 375 with it. Upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King, players who purchase and install the expansion will be able to continue leveling in Inscription and the other professions beyond 375.
It’s definitely nice that we’ll be able to learn inscription already even before the expansion comes out. Players weren’t given access to Jewelcrafting until after Burning Crusade came out. Being able to pick up Inscription will give players a head start and even possibly take it to 375, ready to go to the next level once WoTLK comes out. And in case you were wondering about the zeppelin towers outside Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades since those already exist, Eyonix mentioned there will be new ones that will eventually take players to Northrend.
Blizzard poster Ghostcrawler wrote a pretty long piece about how raid compositions will be different in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The Burning Crusade expansion made a lot of changes so that more classes and specs could be viable like feral druids and prot paladins being able to tank and shadow priests being more than just for PvP. But such changes aren’t enough. Ghostcrawler mentions a lot of things about what you can expect in terms of raids and their composition. Some important points are listed below.
# A lot of specs that were viewed as inferior for PvE are being improved to be more PvE viable
# The improvement of these specs as well as the addition of the Death Knight hero class while raid sizes staying the same at 10 and 25 men are enough reason to improve the way raids are set up.
# Most buffs are going to affect the entire raid.
# Blizzard wants raids to rely on having the right buffs to succeed on an encounter. Rather, they want the encounter itself to be the real challenge.
# This is why Blizzard is making classes more flexible is giving the raid the buffs that they need.
# This is to prevent the need to have a specific class for a specific encounter to succeed.
# No two classes will have the exact same buff but you can get the same effect from more than one class. For example Melee crit can be offered by a fury warrior with Rampage and a feral druid with Leader of the Pack but both classes offer something the other class can’t.
# The idea is to make the raid more flexible so you don’t need X number of Y class and so forth. If you have good players, chances are they won’t need to sit out just because they are a specific class and not another class that can fulfill the same role.
Honestly this news is really great for me to hear. For one thing I hate the idea that you need a specific class or a specific number of a certain class for the encounter to succeed. This presents the raid with a logistical problem that could be avoided, instead of worrying about the strategy on the encounter itself. One thing I can see happening because of this change is that guild recruitment will most probably be more flexible in terms of the classes needed. We’ll see guilds take another good mage if they can’t find a good warlock or something like that.
Engineering has always been known to be the “fun” profession because of its ability to make a lot of cool stuff like gadgets, bombs, goggles, guns and a lot more. About 30 new schematics were added to the latest beta build and judging from those, it seems like engineers will have a lot to cheer about when the Wrath of the Lich King expansion hits.
We’ve already learned about the engineer crafted motorbike called The Hog, but it’s not included in the build yet. Even so, I think engineers will have quite some stuff they find cool. The following are what I find interesting:
MOLL-E (Mobile Oversized Letter and Literary Extractor)
I’m pretty sure this was inspired by the film Wall-E. Basically it’s a portable mailbox that you can use for 5 minutes. I’ve always had this annoyance of receiving mail in the middle of a raid and not being able to retrieve it. With this, engineers will be able to get their mail anywhere they are.
Nestingway 4000
There’s nothing new with an engineer made gun. But this epic quality gun is still different since it’s made for warriors. The +42 stamina and +21 defense rating easily tells everyone that this is not a hunter weapon. It also has a blue socket with a +6 stamina socket bonus and +18 hit rating. Read More
The Official Wrath of the Lich King opening cinematic was just unveiled by Blizzard recently. I have to say that while the animation lived up to the standard of the past World of Warcraft cinematics, the content was very disappointing. It was quite nice for it to have more of the Arthas story woven into it but it took too long before any kind of excitement started to happen. Even so, the action was more of the the Lich King rounding up his forces of Scourge. Where is the action involving the actual character classes fighting these members of the Scourge? For that matter, where are the Death Knights in action? I expected that there would be something about the Horde and Alliance arriving in Northrend. I know this is the Wrath of the Lich King but the cinematic shouldn’t be all about him and him alone
The German gaming website Gamona.de had a chance to talk to Lead designer Tom Chilton and Production Designer J. Allen Brack about the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft. This interview focuses more on the beta testing that is currently on-going.
The following topics are touched on in the interview:
# Plan to make level 80 premade characters available in beta.
# PvE gear being more PvP viable so players can have an easier time accumulating PvP gear when they start out
# Ret paladin dps will be toned down.
# Dungeons will take a shorter time to clear but they’re trying to retain the epic feeling.
# Balancing 10 and 25 man raids e.g. non tanking classes being able to tank the Four Horsemen encounter in Naxxramas.
I just came across a situation earlier where I had to log in a bit earlier than I usually do just to tell the guild I was going to be a bit late for the scheduled raid. Given the current disappointments due to some no shows for raids, I wanted to at least tell them I was there, I was going but I had to do something first.
This made me think of status messages that Facebook or instant messengers like Yahoo Messenger or AIM use. You could create a note to tell the guild or your friends what’s going on with you. You can use it as a way to tell them that you’re afk since you’re just out for a smoke or washing the dishes and that you’ll be back really soon. You can also set these messages to tell your friends that you got that cool piece of gear you’ve been eying for weeks. Wouldn’t it really be cool to have these messages work while you’re offline so you can tell your guild that you’re on your alt on another server and that you can be contacted there if they need you? Or perhaps you can tell your guild and all your WoW friends you’ll be out for the whole week.
These are only some of the things I’ve thought of you can use status messages for and already I feel that the idea has some potential. Wouldn’t it be great to gave a tool like this available to you in WoW?. I can already think of certain instances where I could have used this to make life easier in communicating in WoW.
While we’re at it, I want to re-propose the idea of an actual WoW Instant Messenger that works even while not in the game. It should be really cool!
I decided to try out playing a shaman after seeing some of the nice talents coming for the expansion, especially for the elemental tree. I figured that since I have so many horde characters in the server I play in, it’s a nice opportunity to try out the Alliance once again (I’ve had some failed attempts in trying out the Alliance in the past). I find that the combination of having a flexible character that can fulfill several roles if geared and specced properly and playing an interesting race as a Draenei would help in making the experience worth trying out.
As I was leveling up in the lowbie zone, I eventually noticed something that really bugs me. I really don’t like seeing errors in spelling and grammar whenever I read something. I tolerate “1337 speak” because it is what it is. But generally, I hate seeing wrong grammar and spelling especially when it’s made by Blizzard themselves.
Shaman totems always have the name of whose totem it belongs to. The model of
’s totem is fine for most cases except for when the player’s name ends with an S like my draenei shaman. In that case, basic English grammar tells us that only an apostrophe is necessary. I know it takes extra work to program some sort of If,Then command into the code for totems to distinguish between players with and without S as the last letter of their name but I really think it’s something that should be done.
Right now I’m actually thinking of recreating my character so I can rename her so I won’t need to see that annoying grammatical error all the way until the level cap.
Read and discuss the joys and frustrations of playing World of Warcraft. WoW Obsessed is here to jab at everything WoW--from the latest news to personal experiences in the world’s biggest MMORPG.
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