Interesting Blizzard Responses about WtLK

Quote from Blizzard staff

New Items Bag Types

• Your bags will be ok. I promise. Pets, Mounts, Heroic Badges, BG Tokens are all getting storage space. (Source)

New Mount Storage System (See this news)

• Spotted, Striped, Swift are all unique. Each color variation of a pet or mount is unique. (Source)
• Your pets and mounts are going away in the next build. (Source)

Achievements

• In regards to the Tabards, once the achievement has counted them, you can delete them or sell them back. (Source)
• Ingvar's death isn't recorded for the Utgarde Keep achievement, this is a bug and it will be fixed asap. (Source)

World

• Dalaran will be getting some huge updates in the next couple of patches. (Source)

Death Knight

• The bug preventing Death Coil from using any runic power when casted should be fixed soon. (Source)
• A lot of the existing quests are still being tweaked. We also have plans to do a few more at the end to make the transition to good old EP a little less jarring. We even have a new Ebon Hold that is a little smaller and easier to navigate. One of the best parts of WoW should be even better by the time we go live. If you haven't spent much time in Northrend, many of the quests there are of this caliber with equally interesting mechanics. It's hard to compress as many into such a great story as the DK start zone though. The good news is that some of the plot threads started in Acherus extend up into Northrend.... (Source)

Druid

• We have no plans to implement a "Dire Cat" form at this time. "Dire Bear" exists for the sole purpose of upgrading the Feral Druid's armor value to match the Warrior/Paladin etc. (Druids get no shield) We do, however, intend to allow Druids to be able to use items and enchants with procs in forms, which I believe will work in the next beta build (don't hold me to it though). (Source)
• I think what Kalgan meant was that we intend to do different texture variances for Druid forms, including Cat form. Which is true, though not sure how soon we're going to get that. They may come from a repeatable quest, or through inscription. Regarding the "Feral Range Bug," that really is not a bug. Have a Warrior, Rogue or any melee class play without using a snare and you'll encounter the same issue. The issue is that the server and client are not sync. When you try to do damage to the target, while your client shows him on your screen, the server disagree's and gives you an error. Snares help alleviate the problem, which is what we're giving Feral Druids in the form of "Infected Wounds" for the expansion. (Source)
• I just had a chat with our programmers and we do have some new tech for WOLK intended to help solve the melee range issue. The server will try to "predict" the range between you and your target, which we hope will make the issue less evident. This has not yet been implemented in beta, but I'll let you know when we do finally put in the change. (Source)

Hunter

• When your pet gains a level, it will automatically gain a new rank of Growl if one is available at that level. The only thing you really need to manage is which talents to choose... and keeping your spore bat fed and happy. You don't learn skills from (disposable) beasts any longer, and the only thing to do at the Pet Trainer is untalent your pet. (Source)
• We didn't want hunters to have spend a big chunk of talent points just to get pet resistance up to where it is in Burning Crusade. So pets will have some amount of inherent resistance. We're not sure how much that will be yet, but it should be enough that your pet doesn't feel fragile. If you want a truly magic-resistant pet, you can top it off with talents. For now at least the lower ranks of the old resistance skills are just free like Growl and Cower. (Source)
• There are talents in all 3 pet trees that you can invest in if maintaining happiness is a problem (or just annoying) for you. We're also trying to give you a few more options to keep your pet alive, such as more Avoidance and reduced spell damage, and even more ways to heal your pet. Of course you can always choose to focus directly on more damage and hope your pet survives long enough to make good use of it. (Source)
• Think of your pet bar as just shortcuts to your spellbook. It doesn't really matter if an ability is on the bar or not. It can be cast or autocast directly from the spellbook, and unfortunately all new abilities start with autocast defaulted on. This is something we might be able to fix, but in the meantime, peek at your pet's spellbook whenever it gains a level to make sure nothing has changed. Cower can surprise you, because it/si something a lot of players passed on before -- understandably, because even if effective it's not a very fun thing to spend points on, which is why we just give it away now. (Source)
• We haven't done a major pass on threat generation yet for any of the classes. We realize it was very easy in BC for hunters to pull aggro off of their pets. You can probably tell from some of the pet talents (including the ones that just grant more pet dps) that we want pets to be able to hold their own threat against a hunter. This is especially true when it's just you and Bitey out on your own, but ideally a tanking pet with the proper spec will be an effective offtank for 5-player instances, or even a main tank under some circumstances (say a group quest perhaps). (Source)

Paladin

• In terms of Blessing of Salvation and Defiance, we're turning away from requiring talents and spells to grant threat and instead just "bake" it into the existing threat generation abilities. (Source)

Priest

• We'll be removing the imposed cooldown on Circle of Healing in an upcoming beta build. We'll experiment with the ability having no cooldown, but it's still possible we may decide it needs it. We are indeed concerned with the impact AOE heals such as Circle of Healing, Chain Heal etc. have in endgame raiding, but we haven't decided the best way to address the issue. (Source)

Rogue

• Doing some changes to poisons, should see them in an upcoming build. (Source)
  Riposte - This mechanic is being replaced with "Dismantle" which you can use on demand instead of relying on a proc. (Source)
• Shaman
• The Lightning Shield being triggered without any cooldown is a bug. (Source)
  Maelstrom is resetting the swing timer, this is a bug and we hope to have it not reset your swing timer sometime soon. (Source)
• We'll be doing a polish pass of the Shaman soon. But yes, we do want Flametongue Weapon to be the "Elemental Shaman" weapon. Not sure yet if that is through passive spell damage or a different mechanic. (Source)

Warlock

• Haunt is currently not yet completely implemented, we hope to get the damage over time boost effect to work in a future build. (Source)
• We're doing a polish pass of the Warlock currently, you'll see some changes in the next build (sometime this week I believe?), and a little more after that until the end of beta. Keep letting us know what you think. (Source)
• Design of Demon Form is not yet complete, we're going to give him a strong melee attack and make the form a type of "DPS timer" for PvE purposes. It's texture is also not yet finished. (Source)
• Improved Soul Leech is bugged and should be working in 1-2 builds. (Source)

Warrior

• We have more work to do on the Warrior, yes =) Hang tight a bit longer. (Source)
  The goal is for Arms or Fury Warrior to be able to tank nearly as well as a Prot Warrior in terms of threat generation. Where the Prot Warrior is unique is in his defensive utility and playstyle. (Source)

What's DKP?

Ok this occured to me when I was writing the last post and so I thought I would write a small piece about it.

Loot Rules change between players and instances and guilds depending on your play style and the difficulty of the content.

Open Rolls are usually used in 5-man and 10-man instances. This just means that you are given the opportunity to press a button for either NEED or GREED for an item. Most players at the top levels know to press Need only when the item in question can immediately be equipped and benefit the player more than the item they currently have equipped in that slot. Greed is simply for, oh thats a nice item I might use if ....., or I want the gold for selling it if now one else needs it.

Now, when we come to the harder 25-man raids the items that drop are quite valuable to many people in the raid group and to help out with fairness and making sure that everyone gets loots that will benefit the whole group, we have a way of keeping track of who's been investing the time in the guild and should get priority. This is called DKP - or Dragon Kill Points. You can research how this came about elsewhere there is plenty written on the subject.

In my guild we use a zero sum way of tracking based on our timer. So basically, we've assigned values for the items based on their level and where they come from. Each week we count up the amounts spent on the loot that dropped, divide it by the number of hours raiding and the number of raiders then apply that number to everyone who raided a given night. The reason we break it into the whole timer is that some nights are 'farm' content (lots of loot dropping) and others are 'learning' (maybe nothing drops). We like to reward both equally for the time they're investing.

Bidding on an item simply means you whisper the Master Looter that you are interested in an item. He/She looks at the table to see who of the people interested, has the most DKP and assigns that person the item. Obviously it's more complex than that but that's the basics. So when the timer is calculated, the cost of an item is subtracted from the person who got it and distributed to the entire raiding group.

Loot Incoming!

Two new pieces for me this weekend. Of course my dkp took a real hit in this one.

• First and foremost Staff of Immaculate Recovery. This staff is probably the best healing staff save one, prior to Sunwell Plateau. Of course I then had to farm a few primals to finish gathering the materials for the Major Healing enchant. EEK, the cost of these in the Auction House is unbelievable. I'm certainly not paying those prices.
• Secondly I got my 3rd piece of T6 gear. The token dropped from the Council and I got the nod. Picked up my Mantle of Absolution in Hyjal from the token vendor there and then gemmed it with two Royal Amethyst our guild leader was kind enough to cut for me.

It was a nice end to a trying week.

Here's a link to a picture of the staff. It's truely a beautiful thing. /sigh

Is Season 4 Too Late...

I'd like to provide you with a link to this great article I found on Ten Ton Hammer. It's regarding PVP (Player versus Player) Arenas and the content currently available in World of Warcraft.

Personally I'm in love with raiding and that's where I want to be but this article is great for those who are more interested in PVP.
_________________________________

In the World of Warcraft player vs player (PvP) scene, there is nothing more competitive than the arenas. This is where players strive to out rank each other for amazing rewards. When a season starts players push to reach a high team ranking to earn enough points to get the items they need to upgrade to move even higher in the ranking system. After a while though they have all the pieces that they can upgrade and are left in limbo until the next season starts.

[Click Here] for the full article

We WERE Prepared.

We've finally done it!! We killed Illidan! Wow, what a great feeling. After suffering wipe after wipe, our strategies and efforts finally all came together and we took him down on our third try of the night.

Then, while everyone was rejoicing, the strangest thing happened that turned our joyous party on its ear. One of our most consistent raiders announced that he was leaving the guild.

I don't know about people sometimes. Maybe it was just the timing, but talk about stealing away our thunder! Not only that, but his departure came without warning, and he hadn't even discussed it with the guild leader... just "this is hard, bye /gquit."

Hmmm... well, he is now with the #1 guild on the server and I know they talk to our people all the time trying to recruit, so I guess it really isn't all that surprising. It just diminished the event ... somehow.

However...

We Killed Illidan!!!!

Closer to Killing Illidan

My guild currently takes two nights to clear the bosses in Black Temple where the final boss of the Burning Crusade awaits. The Lord of the Outlands; Illidan Stormrage, the Betrayer

We've been "working" on him now for a few weeks and I think he's killed me at least 30-40 times by now. We came much closer last Thursday getting him to phase 5! Almost there!

Hardcore raiding takes a certain mindset for bringing down a new boss. Don't think that you're just going to walk into the room and he/she will fall over dead at the site of you. These guys are difficult and everyone in the raid MUST do their job, whether its staying out of the fire, running to the right place when you have the debuff, or simply doing whatever it takes to stay alive!!

I'm not going to go into a treatis on how to raid, if you are at this level you already know. But for this guy you really have to Pay Attention like you did on Archimonde! I think our raid leaders must say that more than anything else but that really is the key... Pay Attention. Don't get so involved with your spell rotation or healing bars that you don't see the fire under your feet!

I really hate getting the question "Now what happend there?" with my name attached! It sends shudders down my back just thinking about it. Yet that is the way you learn to make sure you're doing your job and paying attention to your surroundings.

Just remember "You are not Prepared!" He's "Blind, not Deaf!"

Possible "Real" map of Northrend

The next expansion of World of Warcraft is due to be released sometime near the end of the year. While not yet in beta, some information has been revealed regarding this new area to be released to the games players.

Here is a link to the possible "real" map of what this new zone will look like.

Map of Northrend

For those of you who are unaware, Blizzard is working on a new expansion for WoW and releasing notes and information about what it will entail. I'll post more as information becomes available.

Death & Taxes... Dies

WoW!! I was going to post today about the 13 times we wiped on Illidan last night but this is big news!

Legendary and famous US Alliance guild Death & Taxes has decided to call it quits. No reason given for now except this vague message.

We'll update when they follow up with a full post..

The full post is up, here it is:

The End. Sounds strange doesn't it? The ship went down faster than the Titanic, but the rats were bailing out before the iceberg was ever even in sight. I'd love to be able to sit here and tell you this was a result of the casualization of the game, of feeding us easy encounters for mediocre rewards, while at the same time undercutting these meager accomplishments and upgrades with welfare epics obtainable by anyone who has a large quantity of time, regardless of their skill or lack thereof. Let's be honest the theme of TBC is sacrificing everything that was good about raiding on the altar of accessibility. Sunwell is an unmitigated success, but let's be honest here, it's taken us 18months to get back to a Naxx level of difficulty and encounter design and we got a meager 6 bosses, that's pretty pathetic.In any case that's not why you're reading this, is it. So if it wasn't lousy encounter design, shitty loot, cockblocks, etc, than what was it? The most fundamental currency there is in WoW. People. Somewhere along the line people got the idea that they were bigger than the guild. That what they wanted was more important than what was good for the guild. That somehow they deserved respect just for being around. And other people just stopped caring. Not only did they stop caring, but they didn't have the common decency to quit, they hung around for whatever reasons promising us they were going to be there, and we foolishly believed them out of loyalty for what we'd been through together. We had officers who couldn't take a stand any more and made decisions based on what was 'easy'. We had OFFICERS who disappeared with no notice, and would come and go as they pleased, yet still felt entitled to make decisions about where we were going. There is no 1 person's shoulder to place this on, it was a group effort.Let's talk about a few important words here.According to dictionary.com
Quote:
Progress - gradual improvement or growth or development
That's right GRADUAL. Progress doesn't happen all in 1 night, but apparently some people that we had here didn't understand that. They thought bosses just fell over the first night because of the tag over their head, and the most important thing was how much damage they could do at all times. Newsflash - it doesn't work like that. It's pretty ironic that the first people to jump ship when progress wasn't going fast enough, were the same ones jerking off in the 5man, and holding up the raid on the first day. Progress takes time, and world firsts don't fall from the sky, they're the result of a lot of hard work, and effort. The reputation of this guild was built on the backs of a lot of hard work and dedication from EVERYONE. The guild was bigger than any of us, and we knew it. Which leads into the second word.

Pride. Once upon a time we had pride. Pride in our guild, pride in ourselves, pride in what we'd done. Pride is showing up and giving your best effort, ESPECIALLY when you don't want to be there, because your guildmates deserve that. We didn't always get world firsts, it's impossible to always be first, that's just not how the game works, but we showed up every day, EARLY and busted our asses, and we were proud of what we accomplished, be it world first or world 1000th. We didn't whine or complain about our fucking groups, or worry about loot. We killed bosses. Period. We gave our best effort because those around us deserved it, because the guild deserved it. We had pride about what we had done, not what those before us had done. But we also didn't have false pride. Once upon a time when people couldn't or didn't want to keep up the raiding schedule, they had the guts and decency to let the rest of us know. Now they slink off into the night without even a word.Some people will say, they have no ill will towards those who neglected us during progress. Who stopped showing up once things got hard. Who left at the first opportunity. I'm not one of them. To anyone who jumped ship, I'm going to be honest. I have no respect for you. You all claimed you wanted to be members of this guild, you came here, we geared you, and that set an expectation down for you. That you were one of us, just like those who paved the way for you. You turned your back on that, and the last person is just as guilty as the first.A lot of you might think Death and Taxes died this week, but for those of us who have been here for a long time we know that isn't true. Death and Taxes died a long time ago. We still killed bosses every week, but the spirit was long gone. The swagger you all came to know and love from us had evaporated. Some of us still carried it, and the guild, but the new people never quite got it. In the end Death and Taxes turned into any other guild, a job for the mercenaries who came here. They logged in at 7, picked up their epics, and logged off until the next raid, and that was never what we were about. We were about having fun, and being irreverent, and being honest with ourselves and each other.What happens now? Well, that's not up to us, it's up to you. Those of us that have been here will always be members of DnT, our characters will disappear, but our memories will not. We didn't create our legend, we were just a group of friends who loved killing raid bosses. All the people who came to our website, and followed our progress, and cheered for our accomplishments, you created the legend, and ultimately you will have the last chapter in this story.
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This is a sad day... RIP... we'll miss chasing you.

My Start with WoW

Hello and welcome to the newest blog for Square TV. I love this idea. Of course there are several others who do as well.

Just for this introductory post I'll give you a bit of information about myself and my raiding history. Yes, I'm a WoW-aholic. It is my entertainment and my passion!

I've been playing the game since the beginning and unlike most players my first character was NOT a hunter... it was a Paladin. I loved the idea of a character that could wear plate AND heal... ok, well at that point I didn't know that, while they could stand there and take damage forever, it also took that long to kill something. Leveling was slow and I lost focus with her at around level 53.

During the time I was playing my Paladin I accidentally bumped into a great group of friends and became the token girl in their guild. They were a bunch of Marines who were all stationed together and they played together, as well. Their guild leader later went on to another guild and became the leader of one of the cutting edge guilds on the server. Very l33t.

Of course, when I was originally started playing the game no one believed I was really a girl! I have to say that I can understand why though... there are lots of guys out there playing girl toons, for various reasons. My friend Skip likes to play girls toons because he says "If I'm going to watch a toon run around all day I'd prefer to watch something I like to watch!"

Back to my original character, the Paladin. She was fun, but when the GM left the guild I felt lost... so one day I saw that a brand new server was up and I created my first Hordie!! Yes... this time it WAS a hunter! I leveled her all the way to 60 and in the pre-BC (Burning Crusade) environment this was the max level. I still knew nothing other than how to level at that point. I knew I loved to play and loved to group with others and kill the big bad bosses!

Guild politics can be a real killjoy, tho... I'll post more on that subject later.

-Svana