Upcoming Changes
Well, just a quick note to say the site is not dead, I am working to split out all the WoW news into a different blog, and just keep this for personal\geek news… Well that and the holidays are taking up my time.
Where did the World of Warcraft dances come from?
I was looking at the Youtube system and found this interesting video that shows some of the history.
2.3 PTR Patch Notes Update
Wow, these are some interesting changes…
2.3 PTR Patch Notes Update
PvP
Arenas
• The top ranked team of each battlegroup for each format will receive a new unique title for the end of Season 2 called “Merciless Gladiator”.
Mages
• Arcane Missiles: Players will no longer get strange error messages when casting this spell at evading targets. The spell will simply fail.
• Spellsteal: It is no longer possible via this spell to get two Forbearance debuffs at the same time.
Paladins
• Divine Favor: When this ability is cast immediately after a critical heal, it will no longer be removed incorrectly.
• Fanaticism (Retribution) now also reduces threat caused by all actions by 6/12/18/24/30%.
• Judgement of Light: The combat log will now show the mana gained from rank 5 of this ability as Judgement of Light instead of Seal of Light.
• Precision (Protection) now increases spell hit chance as well.
• Seal of Vengeance: The bonus damage this ability dealt when the debuff is fully stacked on the target was incorrectly too low. It is now increased.
• Spiritual Attunement: This ability will now gain mana properly from Vampiric Embrace heals.
Priests
• Mind Soothe: This spell will now consume Inner Focus.
Rogues
• Blade Flurry: This ability now works correctly in all cases with shielded targets.
• Cold Blood: Fixed an issue where this buff was sometimes getting removed when an attack missed.
• Dirty Deeds now also increases damage against enemies below 35% health.
• Riposte is now subject to diminishing returns in PvP.
Warlocks
• Soul Siphon (Affliction): If a Warlock already has a particular spell cast on a target, reapplying before its duration ends will no longer grant an additional bonus.
Warriors
• Sweeping Strikes: This ability now works correctly in all cases with shielded targets.
Professions
• All primary profession trainers outside of capitals (Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Engineering, Leatherworking, Tailoring) have been changed to train up to Artisan level (skill level 300) in their respective professions.
• The capital cities now possess Artisan level trainers for the primary professions they support, and are surrounded by their newly-dubbed Apprentices where applicable. Please visit your local Master trainer when you wish to train.
Alchemy
• Added a new potion to alchemy trainers: Mad Alchemist’s Potion. This new potion requires Alchemy to consume.
Blacksmithing
• Sharpening Stones and Weightstones now last 1 hour.
Cooking
• Reduced the maximum skill obtainable from recipes between 200 and 300. This does not include Outland recipes.
Enchanting
• The Surefooted enchantment now requires Fel Iron Rod (was Runed Eternium Rod).
• Added a new enchant shield recipe to trainers that increases resilience.
Engineering
• Cogspinner Gearcutter in Ironforge and Sovik in Orgrimmar now sell the schematic for the Steam Tonk Controller in a limited supply.
• Materials required to create the Steam Tonk Controller have been reduced. To reflect the reduced requirements, the maximum skill gain has also been reduced somewhat.
• Plans for a new arrow making device can be found from Sunfury Archers.
• The plans for adamantite shells now create an Adamantite Shell Machine. The machine creates 200 high quality bullets at a time, with 5 charges per item.
Fishing
• You can now fish in Ironforge again.
Herbalism
• Fel Blossoms are now unbound, but have an additional requirement of 275 herbalism to use.
Leatherworking
• Increased the range at which you can gain leatherworking skill from crafting drums.
• Reduced the faction required to obtain Drums of Battle and Drums of Panic.
• Drums can now be used while shapeshifted.
• A new recipe is available from Grand Master leatherworking trainers to make a 20 slot bag to hold leatherworking supplies.
• The ogres in the barrier hills are rumored to have a pattern for a 24 slot bag to hold leatherworking supplies.
Items
• Atiesh: This item can no longer open portals in battlegrounds.
• Essence of Death now drops from level 57-60 non-elite undead in the Eastern Plaguelands.
• The Felsworn Gas Mask will now work when you put it on while mounted.
• Libram of Saints Departed: This relic now functions properly again.
Dungeons and Raids
• The Requirement for Heroic Keys has been lowered to Honored.
Tempest Keep
• The use of Ice Block, Divine Shield, Cloak of Shadows, and other similar spells and abilities will no longer prematurely detonate High Astromancer Solarian’s Wrath of the Astromancer spell.
Quests
• Quest givers who have available daily quests will have a blue exclamation point instead of a yellow one.
• The range of the Battery Recharging Blaster used in the quest, “Recharging the Batteries” has been increased.
Interface
• All players now have a tracking bubble on their minimap. From that menu you can select a specific type of vendor or npc to look for or you can select a specific tracking type if your character has tracking. Yes this means that hunters can take all of those tracking buttons off of their action bars.
• There are now options for displaying health and mana values on your health/mana bars for you/your party and to display that information either as percentages or as numbers.
• When you are possessing a target (Priest Mind Control, Eyes of the Beast, using a Steam Tonk, etc), you now get their action bar as your primary action bar rather than having a mini action bar above your normal action bar.
• When an item drops that you cannot loot due to uniqueness or other factor, you will get a chat message letting you know what the item was that you passed rolling on.
• The raid panels that have been pulled out into the gamefield should save their option settings between sessions now.
• If a player is looting a corpse and there are one or more items on it that player cannot loot, the player will still be able to see those items (although not able to loot them). This only is for green or better quality items. The cases this should affect are for the profession recipes that only a player of that profession can loot or when master looter is on and there is a threshold or better item on the corpse.
• NPC’s with level appropriate quests will now always appear on your minimap as yellow exclamation points. NPC’s that have quests that you have completed will now display as yellow question marks instead of yellow dots. In addition flight masters that you have not yet gotten the flight point for will display on the minimap as a green exclamation point.
• Npc’s will display an icon on mouseover that gives a more specific indicator of their function rather than just a gossip bubble. Questgivers will now show a question mark as their in game mouseover, Innkeepers will show a hearthstone as their in game mouseover and so on.
• You can now pull the list of players in a channel out into the gamefield by clicking and dragging the channel name onto the gamefield. This list will show all the players in the channel sorted by voice chat status.
• Voice chat will now display the nameplate for who is talking when you are in a chat group. Currently it only displays the nameplate when you are in a party/raid.
• When multiple people are talking in a voice chat session, it will show the names of up to four people who are talking at the same time.
• Many On Use items now display the cooldown in the item tooltip.
World Environment
• Creature AI has been changed to no longer prioritize attacking unfeared targets over feared targets.
Xfire: World of Warcraft hours drop??? No not really
There questions I have the the people what wrote the story I sited here, for example, it does take into consideration that most schools started but, does it take into consideration that maybe people stopped using that k-rappy Xfire client? Did they see a reduction in their own user base or just less of them on at a given time?
Statistics show an overall drop in hours played for top ten games
Average hours spent by Xfire users daily playing World of Warcraft have dropped by nearly 18 per cent from August numbers, according to data from the community and data application for the month of September.
WoW 2.2.3 Patch Notes
Here are the rather unimpressive patch notes for 2.2.3. Few important sound tweaks but…
- Clients utilizing OpenGL video modes will no longer experience graphical anomalies and missing textures after minimizing/maximizing the window.
- Fixed an issue that caused Fel Eye Stalks during the Legion Ring event to not despawn when the event is completed.
- Fixed an issue where zoning after mounting and summoning a pet was disconnecting players.
- Fixed an issue where the Shift key would get stuck in game.
- Using a /equip macro while affected by certain crowd control spells will no longer cause the items in the macro to be stuck in your inventory.
- Using very low values for SetScale() will no longer cause Mac users to disconnect from the game.
- Default sound channels have been changed from 12 to 32.
- Microphone resources will no longer be claimed by World of Warcraft when Voice Chat is disabled.
- Sounds will no longer stutter and pause if large amounts of creatures are being hit with AoE attacks from multiple sources.
- Sounds caused by spells cast on or by the player will now play more consistently.
Leveling Improvements for Patch 2.3
Scanning the blue posts today I found this major tidbit, the details and changes to the leveling system for patch 2.3. These changes will totally change how you level from 20-60, and is one of the coolest things done by Blizzard in a while.
As many of you already know we’ve been working on changes designed to improve various aspects of leveling for those making their way to level 60. These improvements, available in patch 2.3 will come in many forms and should significantly contribute to a more fluid and enjoyable leveling experience .
The first notable change was to simply reduce the amount of experience needed each level by approximately 15% between levels 20 and 60. Please note that when the patch is released, characters affected by this change will remain at their current level percentage. For example, if a character had exactly 50% of the current level’s total experience before this change went into effect, the character would still have exactly 50% of the current level’s total experience; only now fewer points would be needed to level.
Questing plays a very large role in World of Warcraft, especially while leveling and we felt that improvements to this front were necessary as well. Experience gained for completing quests (on average) between levels 30 and 60 is being increased. The increase becomes more substantial as you make your way towards 60. Additionally, many outdoor elite mobs will become non-elites, making many quests which were previously too difficult or required a group much easier and offer the same rewards (in some cases better!). A good example of this change would be Stromgarde Keep in Arathi Highlands, which will become a solo friendly environment when patch 2.3 goes live.
We’ve also added approximately 60 new quests in Dustwallow Marsh. This should help players who find themselves lacking quests in the 30-40 range. The Steamwheedle Cartel is building the new town of Mudsprocket in south-west Dustwallow Marsh, so you’ll have to wait until construction is complete to learn more about these changes.
We’re making other improvements to pre-bc leveling dungeons that players will likely find most agreeable. The level range for most every dungeon is being adjusted so that there is a much smaller range between the level of mobs found early in the dungeon to those found towards the end. For example, Shadowfang Keep is currently designed for levels 18-25 which means that right now, players who are towards the bottom of that range (18) will find it nearly impossible to complete the dungeon, while players towards the top of the range (25) will find most of the dungeon trivial. Using our new model (similar to what you’ll notice with Burning Crusade leveling dungeons), Shadowfang Keep is being retuned for levels 18-21.
We also want to make running a leveling up dungeon more worth while. In addition to increasing quest experience for dungeon quests, we’re also upgrading all pre-bc dungeon boss drops to blue quality items. Some examples are listed below:
Ragefire Chasm
Robe of Evocation old: +3 Stamina, + 4 Intelligence
Robe of Evocation new: +4 Stamina, +5 Intelligence, and +5 Spell Critical Strike Rating
Deadmines
Smite’s Reaver old: +2 Strength, +1 Stamina, +1 Spirit, 11.1 dps
Smite’s Reaver new: +2 Strength, +3 Stamina, +2 Hit Rating, 14.5 dps
Shadowfang Keep
Robes of Arugal old: +3 Agility, +5 Stamina, +9 Intelligence, +10 Spirit
Robes of Arugal new: +3 Spirit, +5 Stamina, +9 Intelligence, +12 Spell Damage
As you can see there is much in-store for the next major content patch, particularly a number of changes designed to benefit players who are leveling a character. Though we’ve given you a few examples of the things to come, we think everyone will pleasantly surprised when they see the full extent of the changes discussed above.
WoW-Europe.com Forums -> 08/10 Leveling Improvements for Patch 2.3
A Toyota & World of Warcraft commercial!
I found this rather funny, but there are no trucks in World of Warcraft!
Brewfst Live but with changes…
It seem some hot fixes were missed in the 2.2.2 patch that affect brewfest and ticket cost. Drysc quoted below claims this is being fixed. I hope so my mage needs a mount 
It appears that quite a few of the hotfixes originally intended to go out with 2.2.2 were not applied properly as the patch went out with the maintenance today. Many of these hotfixes are now being pushed out.
You should now get 2 tickets for each keg you return for the keg delivery quest.
“Bark for the Barleybrews!” quest reward should be 15 tickets.
“There and Back Again” quest reward should be 10 tickets.
“Pink Elekks on Parade” quest reward should be 40 tickets.
You should be limited to 25 “keg protector” buffs.
Webware : Rumor: AOL to turn Wow.com into ‘World of Warcraft’ social network
Ok, I not sure what another “social network” will do for the world, but if you must, then feel free. I do not really understand the why of a “social network” but I am neither social nor do I have any friends. Oh well, lost on me…
I’m a smidgen skeptical of this rumor, if only because it seems so darn obvious: TechCrunch reported on Tuesday morning that Time Warner’s AOL may have found a use for its Wow.com domain, which it acquired in 1998 as part of the offal of what had once been CompuServe.
The source’s big scoop? Wow.com has been transferred to the AOL Games division and will become a World of Warcraft social network. If this turns out to be true, expect plenty of level-28 half-elf mages to be typing “Wow.com” into their browsers soon.
It does indeed make sense for the newly Gothamized AOL to use the domain in such a way. Maybe even too much sense, considering some of the company’s faux pas in recent years.
TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington aptly points out, however, that there are plenty of other World of Warcraft social networks out there–then there’s also the fact that the wildly popular online role-playing game from Blizzard, famously lampooned in South Park, is really sort of a social network in its own right.
But you’ve got to admit that there are some much more heavily clogged niches that AOL could’ve chosen to dive into with a hot domain name like that. You know, like social news.
Rumor: AOL to turn Wow.com into ‘World of Warcraft’ social network | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone
