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Kalgan dropped this little teaser for players. It seems as though a new PvP trinket will be only available through the heroic vendor, which of course has a few unhappy PvPers questioning the need to PvE raid.
There are a few new pvp oriented trinkets for 2.3. All versions of the trinket have a click effect to gain 1750 max health (kind of like the old lifegiving gem effect), along with a passive effect (your choice of 47 spell damage, 40 spell crit rating, 80 attack power, 40 melee crit rating, or 88 healing).
They cost badges of justice, which will also be available off Karazhan and Zul Aman bosses.
We did the clicky max health instead of resilience in this case (some players are at or nearing the resilience cap already). They're open to all classes. The click effects share a cooldown though, so you won't be able to stack that effect.
We like to encourage players to mix it up a little to a reasonable extent. Obviously, I can't argue that you personally will have more total fun if you also do a little PvE to go along with your PvP, but we do feel that for most players it adds up to a better overall play experience. That being said, you certainly can tank heroics in s2 gear.
The PTRs are offline and we should be receiving patch 2.2.2 on the live realms early Tuesday morning. For those of you that do not remember, patch 2.2.2 is the small patch in between the 2.2 Voice chat patch and the 2.3 Zul'Aman patch that brings Blizzard's new October event called Brewfest. Also included in patch 2.2.2 are updates to the Hallows End event, so don't expect everything to be the exact same as last year!
Read more on Brewfest here. Expect patch 2.3 to hit the PTRs sometime later this week.
IGN published a pretty good preview of the World of Warcraft Collectibles that are coming soon, go give it a read...
To be clear, these aren't "action figures" in the strictest sense. While there are some points of articulation, these figures are mostly about looking cool and making coworkers jealous. Which they most certainly will. With this line, DC Direct is giving every other toy company out there, including McFarlane Toys and Sideshow Collectibles, a run for their money. The pictures you are about to see are 100% indicative of the final product.
Keydar of Lightbringer is back with another edition of DL Comics. In this issue, we poke fun at those silly escort quest givers and their seemingly suicidal desires.
Kalgan had the following to say about Arena Gladiator set bonus changes:
As of patch 2.3 all items in the gladiator season 1, 2, and 3 sets will be part of the same set, so you can use those items interchangeably and keep the set bonuses (ie: you can wear the season 2 shoulders along with the season 3 helm, chest, legs) and retain the 4 piece set bonus. Many of the set bonuses have been updated. The new 4 piece set bonuses are also retroactive as a result of the above change.
No longer will you be able to stack two +35 resilience bonuses from the Gladiator sets, but hopefully the new 4-piece set bonuses will be compelling enough that you wouldn't want to.
Apparently Blizzard's new software-based sound system implemented in patch 2.2 has a number of Creative Labs users seeing sub par performance from their previously working setups. An administrator at Creative Labs responded on the issue with the following:
As many Creative soundcard owners are discovering, Blizzard recently made changes to the WoW client that have impacted the audio experience significantly. Our developer relations group were given minimal advance warning that these changes were about to occur, and our subsequent requests to Blizzard for clarification as to why the changes were made have gone unanswered.
The new audio implementation in WoW uses a 3rd party audio middleware system which offers a generic software mixer with some reverb effects. Creative has worked with the middleware company in question and already implemented a hardware audio path that enables 3D audio mixing and DSP based effects processing on Audigy and X-Fi cards. "Bioshock" uses this system to great effect, and it is relatively straight forward for developers to support. We have offered to help Blizzard enable this hardware audio path but they haven't taken us up on it.
Many Creative soundcard owners are pointing out that their audio experience is nowhere near as compelling as it used to be, which is a great shame. We will continue to seek a better resolution to the current situation with Blizzard. In the interim, we would encourage Creative soundcard owners to let Blizzard know that they would very much like to have their audio experience restored to its former glory.
View the original post on Creative Labs' forum here.
The melee meta gem Relentless Earthstorm Diamond, a favorite of melee damage classes, that gives 12 Agility and 3% increased critical strike damage is apparently bugged to only grant the critical strike bonus for special attacks. Drysc let us know a hotfix is in the works.
It is not working correctly at the moment, the change wasn't intended. It looks like it will be hot-fixable and we're currently in the process of working on one.
As with all hotfixes, server downtime is not expected. See the original post here.
As part of their special patch 2.2.0 event, Curse is reaching out to a number of the AddOn authors who have developed the AddOns we've all grown to love in World of Warcraft. Whether it's a Unit Frame, a bag mod, or a threat meter, you've probably used at least one of the AddOns these folks have developed. This particular interview is with Antiarc - the developer of Omen Threat Meter - one of World of Warcraft's hottest new AddOns.
When we gained CPU profiling in WoW, I noticed that KTM was eating significantly more amounts of CPU time than any other of my mods, even while idle. There was a bit of a flamewar going on over this issue already, but what it basically came down to is that Kenco (KTM's author) didn't have any intent to change KTM's design to be more efficient, so I decided that I could do it better. Omen is empirically, by design, more CPU-friendly, which should improve the user's framerates, though that point is contested by Kenco.
A hotfix is currently being deployed to fix the mysterious 15-minute timer on the Illidan Stormrage encounter deep within the Black Temple. It is Blizzard's current intention that this "berserk timer" be set at 25 minutes and exist more as an anti-exploit measure rather then a "dps check".
We're in the process of deploying a hotfix that will change Illidan's berserk timer to 25 minutes. I'll make a post when our server people tell me it's been deployed to the realms. We're also looking into what went wrong in our processes that led us to the 15 minute timer suddenly appearing.
As with all hotfixes, server downtime is not expected. Read the full post here.
Drysc took a few moments to answer a few questions about the upcoming season 3 of the arena. The new personal ratings are per person, per team and per bracket.
Your personal rating resets for that bracket if you join a new team, so you can't just pad your rating by joining new teams.
Personal ratings are not only suppose to help avoid team hopping to purchase the new rating restricted items, but also to determine end of season rewards.
To be eligible a player's personal rating on the team must be at least within 100 rating of their team's rating. This will take effect with season 3 (not season 2, since players don't currently have personal ratings).
Those of you discouraged to hear about the season 3 weapon and shoulder armor team rating requirements of 1850 and 2000 should remember:
Season 3 starts and season 3 gear has rating requirements. Season 2 drops down, no rating requirement. Season 1 goes to honor system.
Season 4 starts and season 4 gear has rating requirements. Season 3 drops down, no rating requirement. Season 2 goes to honor system, season 1 is lost to the ages.
The guys over at 1Up published their latest preview of the upcoming expansion Wrath of the Lick King. Go give it a peek...
The new continent will be slightly larger than Outland, though the landmass is divided into more zones. "One of the things we're not doing this time is adding a playable race," says senior producer J. Allen Brack, leaving more bandwidth for a larger endgame area. For transportation, a series of seaports connect points along the lower shore of Northrend, with boats leaving regularly to take you from one end of the continent to the other. The usual flight points will shuttle you between friendly cities you've already visited, but how flying mounts earned in Outland fit into Northrend is still up in the air.
Celebrated by both the Horde and the Alliance, the Brewfest is a time to enjoy the fermented fruits of the harvest: pretzels, cheese, and booze! The competing breweries Thunderbrew, Barleybrew, and the Ogres, all come together outside of all the major cities in a bid to outdo each other with their special ales, meads, and beers.
To celebrate the launch of the World of Warcraft Voice Chat feature, Blizzard will be giving away 40 Logitech Digital Precision PC Gaming headsets for each of the next five weeks. Each week's winners will be randomly selected from among players who have been World of Warcraft subscribers for a minimum length of time, as shown below.
We have some new daily quests targeting a random battleground each day. You'll want to keep an eye out for Alliance Brigadier Generals and Horde Warbringers near your faction's battlemasters in all major capitals. The battleground daily quests will reward gold, experience, and honor. You�ll be able to begin these as soon as you�re able to enter the battlegrounds themselves. So if it�s a WSG day, and you�re level 11, you can take the quest.
On Tuesday, Patch 2.2 hit the live servers. Patch 2.2.2, the one with Brewfest, is currently on the Player Test Realms (PTRs). Patch 2.3, the one with Zul'Aman, is done with internal testing and is being ramped up for a fast release. In 2.3, Blizzard also plans on implementing a personal arena rating and add requirements based upon this rating to season 3's arena weapons and shoulderpads. Read the full post here. Some unofficial patch notes seem to be circulation as well created by Blizzard posters. While you are waiting for the cash to show up from your auctions, be sure to check them out.
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