Worldofraids News

Patch 3.3 - Icecrown Raid Testing Streams

Patch 3.3 - Icecrown Citadel Live Streams

This news will be updated with streams from the EU realms and later with streams from the US realms. The EU realms are testing Lady Deathwhisper today; US realms test Valithria Dreamwalker. For XFire streams you need to click pause and then play to get them to work. I disabled autoplay because otherwise an ad plays on them when you load the page which really slows down load times.

Streams

Apex

Eternal Gathering

Patch 3.3 Background Download, Shadowmourne - No Hunters, Blue Posts

Patch 3.3 Background Download

It looks like the background downloader for patch 3.3 is now running. This doesn't necessarily mean it's coming next week, but soon is a good way to look at it. A lot sooner than Blizzard's typical "soon" timeframe. This is the enUS version of the patch as you can see; players in Europe will see a download of around 482mb.

Shadowmourne - No Hunters

I guess Blizzard changed their mind since BlizzCon, because there is no hunter version of Shadowmourne.

Quote from: Valnoth (Source)

The quest requires friendly Ashen Verdict rep to begin. It may also only be acquired by Warriors, Paladins and Death Knights.

Blue Posts

Icecrown frostwyrm mounts (Source)

There will be a Frostwyrms up for grabs for Icecrown raiders, achievable in a similar way to previous rewards such as the Ulduar proto-drake.

Chill of the Throne (Source)

The "Icewell Radiance" is designed to account for very high avoidance levels. It lets us lower the damage bosses do per hit because their hits will connect more often, keeping boss dps the same but lowering spike damage.

However, I also know what that message says to some people. It says that if I go into Icecrown and wipe on a boss all night that Blizzard lied to me about boss damage. We're just sort of bracing ourselves for the inevitable "I couldn't beat Marrowgar because he hits so hard. I thought bosses wouldn't hit hard."

Bosses hitting less hard does not mean bosses can now be facerolled. It just means they hit less hard. To be fair, most of the folks posting in this thread understand the difference. But it's not uncommon for us to see our quotes misused in other forums where we can't necessarily bop in to correct the misunderstanding.

Druid

Feral items in Cataclysm (Source)

We talked about druids in bear form also getting AP from strength. Strength won't appear on leather and no piece should have Str and Agi together, so it's not like they would really double dip. That lets us still have tanking necks, rings and cloaks with strength on them that are attractive to all 4 tanking classes.

Almost all the items in the game are going to have to change. In many cases this is just a sweeping pass we can make on all gear, such as replacing the Agi + AP on leather with just Agi. So don't worry too much about what happens with old gear and talents mixed with the new stat system. The gear and talents in many cases must change.

Mage

Fingers of Frost (Source)

The Fingers of Frost issue is really challenging to solve. It it procs on hit then the procs don't get eaten but you may have to interrupt a Frostbolt. If it procs on cast, the procs can get eaten. Those are really the only ways it can proc though. Mixing travel-time spells and instant spells can muddy things up. Things also get more complicated when you have silly amounts of haste, which through no fault of their own, many mages do.

Fingers of Frost seems to work fine so long as you have Frostbite, but due to some technical limitations, the two talents don't play well apart. A long-term solution might be to make Frostbite a prereq for FoF or just merge the two talents together.

Letting Fingers of Frost display its charges is a good idea. We might not be able to get that in for 3.3 but we'll put it on "the list."

Rogue

Weapon swap addon in 3.3 (Source)

We also killed the addon, but we didn't want to do it without also trying to fix the problem it was trying to fix.

Shaman

Elemental tier-9 nerf (Source)

We don't want players to stick with older tier sets when new pieces become available. (It's one thing if it's a really good trinket -- it's another if it's your entire set..)

We balance some things around absolute values (we're shooting for a target) and other things around relative values (how X looks compared to Y). A lot of shaman were saying they weren't going to upgrade to tier 10 despite the, frankly, gratuitous stats on the new gear. We concluded that was because the T9 set bonus was too good and the T10 set bonus was too weak. We suspected the T9 was too good for some time, but didn't want to nerf it while the T9 was all that was available. We did the same thing with a few other sets (or relics).

We try to pick interesting set bonuses, but that means that they will sometimes end up being over or under-budget once players figure out the best ways to optimize their play style around the bonuses. A little of that is okay -- it's interesting when a new set changes your spell rotation a little bit. But when an older set is so good that players feel like upgrading is a bad thing (ignoring the pain of having to get new enchants and gems or whatever) then we think we have a problem.

From a player point of view, I can understand why the attractive answer is always just to buff the new stuff. But continually buffing an outlier instead of bringing the outlier back into the pack is a good way to lead to power inflation on gear.

Shadowmourne Discovered

Shadowmourne has been discovered on the 3.3 PTR! Apparently certain devs (or maybe GMs) had it equipped during the encounter testing. Also don't forget to check out the Shadowmourne preview. Thanks to Might for tipping me off on this. Click through on the image for a shot of the model too.

Icecrown Citadel Raid Access Progression

This doesn't come as a huge surprise since Ghostcrawler let slip of it in our interview with him, but check out the planned progression for raid access in Icecrown Citadel below.

Quote from: Daelo (Source)

Icecrown Citadel testing has been progressing very well over the last few weeks, and this has been a huge help to the encounter design team. I want to thank everyone who has logged onto the PTR and tried the encounters there.

As we're now getting closer to the release of 3.3.0, I wanted to talk about our plans for access progression within Icecrown Citadel. Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point I can't give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates are known with more certainty, I'll update the community so they can plan appropriately.

The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. Progress beyond that point will be prevented for several weeks. Then the Plagueworks will open with Rotface, Festergut, and Professor Putricide becoming available. After another period of time, the Crimson Hall will open and you can then fight the Blood Princes and Blood-Queen Lana'thel. The final Frostwing Halls unlock then occurs after that, making Valithria Dreamwalker, Sindragosa, and the Lich King available. We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace.

There are other elements that gate access along the way. Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. Similarly, players must defeat the Lich King in a 25 player raid before they can attempt a Heroic 25 player encounter. So players must master every normal difficulty encounter in Icecrown Citadel before attempting Heroic difficulty.

The Lich King may not be attempted until Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, and Sindragosa are defeated. Furthermore, the Heroic difficulty of The Lich King encounter may not be attempted in any week unless the three aforementioned encounters have been defeated in Heroic difficulty that week.

The Ashen Verdict provides reinforcements and material for players to assault Icecrown Citadel, but this support is not endless. Raids will have a limited number of attempts total each week to defeat the four most difficult encounters in Icecrown Citadel: Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. As these boss encounters are unlocked, the number of attempts available per week will increase. The initial number of attempts provided for defeating Professor Putricide is only five. When Blood-Queen Lana'thel unlocks, the amount of total attempts remaining will increase to 10. Then when Sindragosa and the Lich King unlock, 15 total attempts will be available to defeat all four bosses. After a raid has exhausted their attempts for the week, the Ashen Verdict must withdraw their support and the four most difficult bosses all despawn and become unavailable for the week. The limited attempt system is a feature of both Normal and Heroic difficulty.

There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity).

In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell's effect if they so wish.

World of Raids Interviews Greg Street and Cory Stockton

On Monday, to celebrate the 5-year anniversary of World of Warcraft, we had a chance to interview both Greg Street and Cory Stockton about how the game and its development has progressed throughout the years.

Many of you will no doubt recognize Greg Street as Ghostcrawler on the forums, but you may not know who Cory Stockton is, so hopefully this interview is a good introduction for him to players and how involved in the game's development he is. It doesn't hurt that he created one of my all-time favorite encounters either!

Kody: First of all, could you please introduce yourselves to our readers and what your role is on the World of Warcraft development team?

Cory Stockton: My name is Cory Stockton and I'm the Lead Content Designer on WoW, so I basically oversee the design and implementation of the zones, the dungeons, the cities, battlegrounds. Any kind of content that makes it in.

Greg Street: I'm Greg Street, I'm the Lead Systems Designer on WoW. My team oversees anything, pretty much with numbers in the game, so class designers, tradeskills, we also own the user interface, things like that.

Kody: Obviously not everyone has been on the team since the beginning. At what point in the development process did you two join?

CS: I joined the WoW team right about three months after WoW shipped. When I came in, the first thing I started working on was Blackwing Lair. The Vaelastrasz encounter, the gate door... all of that was happening when I came in.

GS: I think just after Black Temple shipped, but before Sunwell.

Kody: Cory, from a level design perspective what's your favorite area in World of Warcraft, dungeon or otherwise, and why?

CS: Oh wow, that's pretty good. Um, let's see... as far as dungeons go, to this day my favorite dungeon is Stratholme. And I think it's, the layout of that dungeon is great... it's got a front entrance, a back entrance. It's got the bastion so you're inside, outside areas where you're out on the streets. Wide variety of bosses, and beyond that it's just got an awesome story that fits in well with the universe. It's one of those dungeons I never really minded running over and over because it felt really great.

From a zone perspective it's really hard to choose a single favorite zone that I like. I'm pretty partial to the undead; I like a lot of the undead zones. Tirisfal Glades is one of my favorite starting zones in the game because it gives you an awesome sense of feeling about what it is, how the Forsaken came to be, what's happening. We really display it well there. It's definitely one of my favorite zones.

Kody: Greg, feel free to answer as well if you want to.

GS: Oh gosh, it's hard to... I was trying to think as Cory went through. There's so many. Upper Blackrock Spire always had a soft spot in my heart. Feels like a raid, plays like a dungeon, some really cool fights in there. Zone-wise, I always liked Zangarmarsh in Burning Crusade because it felt like it was a really well contained story.

In classic I guess, probably, the Plaguelands. Possibly something like Searing Gorge because I always liked having Blackrock Mountain hanging over the top there. Lich King, probably Storm Peaks which is such a really vertical zone with tons of story and lore, and just a lot of cool points of interest.

Kody: What would you say has been the greatest design challenge for each of your teams since you joined?

CS: Probably the biggest thing is trying to create enough variety of content that pleases everyone. I think that's probably the biggest thing because we're always looking to make sure that we've got raids for our high end players, you know, our capped players but we also want to make sure that we try to introduce something for people that maybe aren't raiding, like five mans.

And at the same point, when we look at the expansions we want to have something for new players as well. We want to have a new race that gets them going, or a reason to re-roll. That's the thing we're always challenged with, is how can we come up with enough things in one patch where we can have something for everyone. That's definitely always our goal, we don't necessarily hit it, but it's something we're always striving for is to try to deliver content for all the players. Definitely the thing we struggle with the most I would say.

Kody: Greg how about you? What about class design, or item design, or what have you.

GS: I think a similar answer is, we keep wanting to add new things to the game without it becoming too overwhelming. I mean we're looking now at Cataclysm, and thinking about... we want to add new spells to all the classes, but all the classes have a lot of spells already and they don't have a lot of free space on the action bar. So we think about, how do we keep adding new stuff to the game without overwhelming people, and kind of carving off a niche for each individual ability so we don't have a lot of like... oh, this is the ability that the class never uses.

Kody: I think you did a good job with that with the death knight talents, where certain abilities would replace your base abilities.

GS: Yeah that's not a bad way to go. We initially tried to avoid it, but the more I think about it, it kind of helps make an ability cooler without having another ability on your bar. It's kind of the same thing with the cat druid getting mangle instead of claw and things like that.

Kody: What are you most proud of seeing added to the game, or changed, since you joined the team?

CS: I would think that the biggest thing has been 10 man raiding. The changing from 40, to 25, and going all the way down to 10. As far as having a changing impact on the game overall, it's pretty huge about... it really reached the goal of that, which was to allow everyone to experience raid content in the game. That's a goal we've had for a long time, and we just finally started to see it come to fruition a lot more in Northrend. We saw a little bit of it in Burning Crusade, but in Northrend it's starting to happen, and we're really pushing for a ton of it in Cataclysm.

And it's huge for us, because we spend a ton of time on the raid zones and evolving the stories and doing, you know, custom events and stuff. And that's content that everyone should be able to see, so it feels great seeing that a lot more people are able to hit that content.

Kody: If you could name one feature or change made since you joined the team that you never expected to be done, what would you say it is?

GS: Looking for group is a big one, equipment manager, and dual spec. I thought all three of those were a real uphill battle, and they ended up working out really well.

CS: Yeah, dual spec was one that I had wanted forever. And we always talked about it, and we always questioned how we would do it. I think another thing that came through is the mount changes that recently went through. Finally getting mounts down to level 20, you know when you think about what a mount used to mean to the game, how big it was, how expensive, and then you didn't get your first one until 40.

Getting that change through was actually a pretty huge deal... it seems really easy to get into the game, we just like changed a number. But there's actually a ton of design behind that about when the carrots show up, and getting a mount is one of our biggest carrots to the players. So I think that change was definitely huge.

Kody: Going through Stranglethorn on a mount is definitely better than on foot.

CS: Ohh yeah. I mean you look back and wonder, how did I do this before a mount?

GS: Or the Barrens.

CS: Yeah, Barrens especially. Now people are going to be used to it, and people will be like "Oh, well I was oldschool and did this on foot."

Kody: If there's one thing you'd like to go back and change before it could be implemented, what would it be?

GS: This is not necessarily a decision I made, but if we could do it all over again I think we would structure the talent trees a little differently. So like, maybe you would actually have to get 5 points in one tier before you could advance to the second one. They're designed to be so flexible that it's really easy for players to pick and choose, at the expense of where they can just skip over a talent that's not appealing and kind of tier through the best DPS talents in the tree. Part of the changes with Cataclysm should get at that a little bit.

CS: I think one of the changes I would do, and we're not doing anymore, is never make one single entrance zone for an expansion. The lessons we learned from Hellfire were many. As great an experience as it was, from a technical standpoint having that many players hit that zone at one time did not equal the experience that we were hoping. *laughter* Splitting that out with Northrend we thought worked extremely well, and it's what we're doing again with Cataclysm. So there were definitely a lot of lessons learned there.

Kody: Greg, what is it like interacting with so many players on a daily basis, all of whom seem to have their own opinions on the direction of the game? Is that taxing at all on you to go so in-depth into the philosophies of WoW's development?

GS: It's only taxing when I get into like Q&A mode because I feel like... things might be taken out of context or people misunderstand. Therefore something I could ideally write in three to five minutes takes a lot longer because you look at this word and see how they might possibly misinterpret that. I don't mind at all interacting with people, it's awesome to get so many passionate guys out there. You know... they love the game, they want to see it improved, they get confused over things and have questions. All that is awesome.

Kody: Looking back at the evolution of the hybrid classes, how happy are you with where they are now, given recent changes to discourage multi-role playstyles in a given spec? Do you think it's about time to get rid of the hybrid classification entirely?

GS: I'm not sure. I think there's different ways you can design it from the ground up. We really don't see a way that makes sense, to say make mages able to heal or rogues able to tank. Given that, we have some classes that can only do one thing and so they feel like they should be able to do it really well, or why have those classes exist at all?

I think people are pretty happy with the way it is overall, we're certainly thrilled that we've been able to kind of bring to life some of those specs that were not taken seriously for a long time. We're not there yet, but we're a lot closer than we have been previously, and we're trying to get a good direction. I'd love to see in Cataclysm where there's like 30 specs and you can pretty much pick any one you want.

Kody: WoW's anniversary as a whole isn't the only thing this month; Friday (November 13th) marked a year since Wrath of the Lich King's launch. What are you most happy with in the expansion, and what do you feel could be improved upon?

GS: Let's see, improved upon... I don't think our badge system, in the end, really worked out as well as we wanted it to. It became kind of complicated with all the costs and like, upgrading and downgrading kind of thing. Another problem I think is the health pools are a little low across the board, which has created some problems with the relative power of damage versus healing and things like that. If I could go back I'd love to see health larger overall.

As far as stuff that worked out well, heroic dungeons are back which is really cool. They were kind of skipped over on the way to Naxxramas but now people are really running them again for badges. That's really cool. And like Cory said earlier, even fairly casual players feel comfortable raiding and talking about Kel'thuzad and Yogg. Things like that are really cool and they feel like they're part of the story.

CS: Things that I liked that turned out really well, the whole concept behind Dalaran... something I was intricately close with and connected with... Dalaran was kind of my baby the whole time, and we really learned a lot from the Exodar and Silvermoon in Burning Crusade. We really thought that we needed a new capitol city and we pushed it, but it turned out in the long run that they didn't work out anywhere near what we'd hoped. So we kind of put all our efforts into one central place where everyone could do everything and really feel like a thriving spot. So I think that was a huge success.

Another thing we've really worked a lot on, and you've seen the changes over the entire year has been Wintergrasp. Wintergrasp was a crazy expedition into designing a pvp zone that's non-instanced, and at the time the popularity of Wintergrasp. Obviously the rewards there are great for players, the pvp is there, there's a lot of things we've changed and we feel like we've improved upon. We're planning to do a lot more with that concept in Cataclysm with Tol Barad, the next kind of evolution of that. But that's something that I think Wintergrasp overall has been a success with players, that they really liked it. Seeing that work is something that definitely feels good.

As far as things that didn't work, I think that the biggest thing for us was having kind of two endgame zones, having two level 80 zones. From a story perspective it was awesome... Icecrown had some of the best questing in the game, but sadly not enough players make it there because they hit 80 before they started doing it and went straight into Naxx. So that's something we've learned from also that we want to move forward with knowing that when we build a zone and spend all that time, we want to make sure it ends up being in the level flow so that players go and get a chance to experience that content. There's too much good stuff in Icecrown for players to miss it. So there's definitely some lessons to be learned there.

Kody: Yeah I agree, the whole Arthas quest chain where you actually play as him is awesome.

CS: Yeah, some of the best phasing in the game is done there in Icecrown.

GS: The whole Shadow Vault, stuff like that.

Kody: Content gating has evolved quite a bit over the years, from the early attunements for Molten Core and Blackwing Lair to the more involved Black Temple version, and finally the Sunwell Plateau and Crusaders' Coliseum systems. What were the advantages of these systems, and which would you say worked best?

GS: In terms of what we're talking about for Cataclysm, since we're doing it over again we'll get a chance to, I think players got into Naxx a little too quickly... it let them skip over a couple of tiers of dungeons and kind of set the expectation that every time you go to a raid zone you're gonna get these gigantic upgrades.

We would like to see players ultimately spend a little more time in dungeons, I don't think that means going all the way to a Karazhan style attunement. You could do something a lot simpler and you'll see a little of that in Icecrown, kind of related to what we did with the coliseum.

While this is the end of the article, it's not the end of the interview! Stay tuned later this week for a walkthrough of the creation of a raid instance like Ulduar by Cory Stockton!

Patch 3.3 PTR - Build 10835

Stay tuned for more details on this build as the day progresses and the PTRs come up, as well as something else later tonight.

PTR Patch Notes Updated

The PTR patch notes have been updated to reflect this build.

Update: 11.17.2009

Paladins: Divine Intervention
Priests: Shadowform
Rogues: Deadly Poison, Improved Poisons
Shamans: Elemental Mastery
Warlocks: Improved Drain Soul, Destructive Reach
User Interface: Dungeon System now called Dungeon Finder
Graphics: Enabling D3D
Items: Shaman Tier-9 4-Piece Set Bonus (Elemental)
Bug Fixes section updated

Paladins

Divine Intervention: This ability now also removes Exhaustion or Sated from a target if the recipient is out of combat when the effect ends. In addition, the cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Priests

Talents

Shadow

Shadowform: This talent also now causes Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch to benefit from haste. Both the period length and the duration of these spells will be reduced by haste. In addition, the mana cost has been reduced from 32% to 13% of base mana.

Rogues

Deadly Poison: In addition to its existing effects, when a rogue applies Deadly Poison to a target which has already reached the maximum number of applications, this will also trigger the poison which the rogue is using on his or her other weapon.

Talents

Assassination

Improved Poisons: Bonus chance to trigger Deadly Poison from this talent increased.

Shamans

Talents

Elemental

Elemental Mastery: This talent now increases spell haste by 15% instead of critical strike chance while active.

Warlocks

Talents

Affliction

Improved Drain Soul: This talent now reduces threat by 10%/20%, up from 5%/10%.

Destruction

Destructive Reach: This talent now reduces threat by 10%/20%, up from 5%/10%.

Graphics

A new feature has been added to the D3D graphics engine to improve texture management (particularly for Windows XP users). If you are experiencing random crashes related to file read errors or out of memory, this new backend may help. To enable the new backend, add the following line to your Config.WTF file: SET gxApi "d3d9ex". For more information please visit our Test Realm forum: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=11572&sid=1

Items

Shaman Tier-9 4-Piece Set Bonus (Elemental): This set bonus now does an additional 10% of Lava Burst’s initial damage over time instead of increasing the size of the Lava Burst.

Achievements

A few achievements have been updated.

Fall of the Lich King

Boned - Changed to: Defeat Lord Marrowgar without any raid member remaining impaled for more than 8 seconds in 10-player mode.

It's a Trap! - Removed.

Lich King Heroic

Don't Look Up - Changed to only reward this achievement on the first try.

Raids and Dungeons

Looking For Multitudes - Now rewards Perky Pug for completing it.

Icecrown Citadel Testing - November 18-20

It looks like we can probably expect a new build today so stay tuned. The good news about this testing is heroic difficulty will be activated for it, so we should hopefully see some new loot (well okay, same loot with a heroic tag on it) and also learn about the hard versions of the encounters.

Quote from: Daelo (Source)

We are scheduling raid tests in Icecrown Citadel for November 18-20.

The schedule is as follows:

US Servers

Wednesday, November 18 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Lord Marrowgar, Icecrown Gunship Battle
Thursday, November 19 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Festergut, Deathbringer Saurfang
Friday, November 20 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Valithria Dreamwalker

EU Servers

Wednesday, November 18 at 19:30 CET – Lord Marrowgar, Icecrown Gunship Battle
Thursday, November 19 at 19:30 CET – Rotface, Blood Princes
Friday, November 20 at 19:30 CET – Lady Deathwhisper

Heroic difficulties will be available for testing!

The Icecrown Citadel raid test schedule will be very flexible, and can change at a moment's notice due to build status, bugs, and server issues. Remember that this is the test server, so things can, do, and will break from time to time. Check this forum for the latest Icecrown Citadel raid testing schedule information in the weeks to come.

Shadowmourne - Legendary Weapon Preview

Legendary Weapon Preview: Shadowmourne

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Before beginning his reign as the Lich King, Prince Arthas Menethil was first a servant, ruled by a sword he believed was the key to saving his people - the runeblade Frostmourne. Finding and claiming the blade among the frozen wastes of Northrend was an odyssey unto itself, and the search cost the prince his mentor, his relationship with his subjects, and his humanity. It cost the living of Azeroth far more.

With a tight grip on the blade that he traded his life for, Arthas ravaged the kingdom of Lordaeron and broke free from the control of the Burning Legion. By the time the former prince ascended as the leader of the Scourge, Frostmourne was already glutted with the souls of the numberless dead who dared to oppose him.

Now, Arthas has become so inseparable from his weapon that the sword's likeness has even found its way into the architecture of his fortress, Icecrown Citadel. Its hilt is never far from his hands; its ghostly whispers constantly ring in his ears. Frostmourne, as much as the Lich King, is the ruler of Northrend.

To challenge that rule, mighty heroes will need to follow more closely in Arthas's path than ever before.

In a relentless quest to arm the forces of the living against the Scourge, Darion Mograine has formed the Ashen Verdict, a union between the most skilled craftsmen of the Argent Crusade and the Ebon Blade. Though the peerless paladins of the Crusade wield the power of the Light, and their leader clutches Ashbringer, a few of Mograine's dark warriors have begun to question their hopes for victory.

These death knights insist that the Ashbringer and the skills of the Argent Crusaders, though potent, aren't enough to best Frostmourne alone. They swear that Darion Mograine has long been quietly aware of another legendary blade - one that could be the key to defeating the Lich King and cleansing Northrend... But it doesn't exist yet.

For the moment, the weapon is a formless idea, with no more killing power than an angry thought. When it is spoken of, it is spoken of quietly, and the Highlord has a habit of silencing those who discuss it in public.

But the hope of an artifact to rival Frostmourne is strong within the minds of the Ebon Blade. Just its name inspires the furnaces to burn late into the night, the bellows to pump air, and the darker half of the Verdict's smiths to swing their hammers until their fingers fail. While other craftsmen crafters lean over whetstones and gather pitted blades by the hundreds, these few dream of a single weapon to end the war for Northrend.

Shadowmourne... A great two-handed axe fit for a giant, born of sacred and corrupt powers, host of a thousand dead souls and able to be wielded only by the most stalwart armsmasters of Azeroth. Its creation seems nearly impossible; and yet, the rumors do not cease.

Some smiths claim that Shadowmourne must be nothing more than an ordinary axe, honed to unparalleled perfection, while others would shape it from a weapon of immense import in the world. Mograine, when he can be convinced to speak of it at all, is said to believe that only the hammer of Arthas himself will provide a worthy model - but such absurd ambition is just the beginning of Shadowmourne's creation.

To contain the energies that dance across its cold edges, Shadowmourne must be hewn from piles of impure Saronite: the hardened blood of the Old God, Yogg-Saron, treated only by master metal-shapers.

To fuel its power to kill, it is vital that Shadowmourne be drenched in the souls of the most potent servants of the Scourge as they are slain, one by one, with the unfinished blade.

To help break through the Lich King's armor, Shadowmourne is to be adorned with fragments of the Frozen Throne, originally crafted by Kil'Jaeden out of ice from the Twisting Nether.

Only with these mighty components, it's said, can Shadowmourne be finished. And, yet, even if the axe could be completed, questions and fears remain. Is forging the souls of the deceased into a weapon treated withblood and the essence of the Twisting Nether truly any different from the crafting of the Scourge's runeblades?

Who is to say that the Lich King wouldn't simply annihilate - or control - the maker for their impudence in mimicking his most treasured possession? If Arthas, one of the most dedicated knights of his age, lost his humanity to the whispers of Frostmourne, might Shadowmourne bring the same doom and misery tothe living as its sister blade?

Without knowing the answers to these questions, who would be bold enough to try and wield it?

PUG with the blues - Round 3, Blue Posts

Update: Added a clarification post on emblems in 3.3.

Getting the blue posts out of the way while I work on something cool for later tonight/tomorrow morning! It looks like we can expect a new PTR build either tomorrow or Wednesday as well.

PUG with the blues - Round 3!

Quote from: Motive (Source)

Since our first two tests went so well, we’d like to invite everyone out again for round 3! Come join the fun on the PTR and instead of getting the PUG blues, you could end up grouped with a blue. Members of the Development Team (including the encounter designers themselves), the QA team, and the Community Team will be on the PTR to test out the new dungeon system and want you to come join in the fun.

To have a chance to group up with one of us, just queue up for a random heroic through the Dungeon tool. We will be playing both Alliance and Horde and since the Dungeon tool allows players to group cross-server, it doesn’t matter which of the two PTR realms you join from.

Join us Wednesday 11/18/09 at 4:00pm PST.

Emblems in 3.3

The note about being able to do the same heroic multiple times a day is awesome!

Quote from: Zarhym (Source)

Bosses in Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum, Eye of Eternity, Ulduar, Trial of the Crusader, and all Heroics will drop Emblems of Triumph. Bosses in the Icecrown Citadel 10- and 25-player dungeon will drop Emblems of Frost. Choosing the Random Heroic Dungeon option via the Dungeon Finder (new in content update 3.3) and completing whatever dungeon is selected for you will award you with two Emblems of Frost the first time you do it (this is in place of the daily Heroic dungeon quests which are being replaced with weekly raid dungeon quests). Continuing to use the Random Heroic Dungeon option within that same day to complete dungeons will award you with two Emblems of Triumph each time in addition to those dropped in the instances. The random option can also select Heroic dungeons to which you may already be saved, so you can technically do every Heroic dungeon more than once in a day by continuing to use this option.

Blue Posts

Talent resets with patches (Source)

Refunding talents generally isn't something we do as a courtesy. Meaning, if we had our way, we would never refund talents. We only do it when the data would get seriously jacked up by not doing so. For example, you may still have points in a talent that no longer exists or something similar.

As to why we don't like to refund talents, part of it is avoiding the expectation that regular talent refunds are something that happens often. Another part is that while it may be exciting for very active players to get a talent refund, it can actually be a major bummer for the alt you play seldomly or even the player who only logs on every few weeks. Now you feel like you have to do a lot of research and action bar management before you can even jump in and start playing again.

It's quite likely everyone will get a talent refund when the Cataclysm data changes go in (which if history holds, will actually occur before the Cataclysm box is available at retail). I wouldn't expect any before then.

Stats for roles in Cataclysm (Source)

Unless I'm mistaken, the Cata gear stats will break down like this:

Melee: Hit, Crit, Haste, Expertise, Mastery

Ranged: Hit, Crit, Haste, Mastery

Caster: Hit, Crit, Haste, Mastery

Healer: Spirit, Crit, Haste, Mastery

You are not mistaken. Everyone also gets stamina, armor, and their primary stat (Str, Int or Agi). Resilience and Spell Pen will continue to be PvP stats.

This is not set in stone either. Cataclysm isn't finished.

Tanks will also have block (but not block value), dodge, parry and perhaps armor.

It isn't super important how many stats everyone has. Melee for example need hit and expertise, but casters need more hit. It only gets to be a problem if for example you can't piece together a set that has all the stats you need in the amounts you want. Many tanks for example will happily sacrifice hit and expertise for more armor and stamina.

Conversion talents that add a percentage of one stat to another (Source)

It would be nice to get rid of them for say mages and warlocks given that their gear generally won't have Spirit. We can't get rid of conversion talents completely. For example, Enhancement and Retribution will need some way to derive spell power from attack power and need a way to get mana back without Int or Spirit.

Why isn't WoW's development like StarCraft II's? (Source)

SC2 is being developed from day one as a multiplayer and single-player game. WoW added Battlegrounds and later Arenas after it had already shipped. That's a little bit about what Rob is talking about -- the difficulty we have had retrofitting WoW's PvP. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I don't think he is saying Arenas were a mistake. It's the way we introduced Arenas that has continued to cause ourselves a lot of work and occasionally caused frustration for players. We like the Arena gameplay though or we would have cut it or overhauled it long ago. We do think we have shifted the PvP attention a little too much towards Arenas and away from BGs, and yes we understand that loot rewards are a big part of the reason why. We aim to fix this with Cataclysm.

Starcraft is also just a fundamentally different game. You aren't taking your campaign character into competitive multiplayer. In fact, there is no multiplayer character per se in the sense that you can grant your character more power over time. You start every map with the same base and units as everyone else. Starcraft also isn't going to change over time except for whatever balance or design changes the team makes. There is no equivalent to the new gear or whatever that suddenly shifts the balance of power.

We make PvP-specific rules when we think it's appropriate. Resilience and diminishing returns are two obvious examples. SC2 does the same thing. Not everything works completely differently between the two halves of the game though.

Kirin Tor Rings (Source - Stats)

Item level 251 versions are currently planned for patch 3.3. I'm not sure what the cost to upgrade is but it will probably be similar to previous upgrades.

If tank balance is this bad now, what will it be like in Cataclysm? (Source)

On Sartharion +3, cutting-edge guilds who normally tank with a warrior would (perhaps somewhat begrudgingly) use a DK to tank instead because the benefit was so massive. The same thing happened on Vezax where good guilds replaced their warrior tanks with DKs. Death knights were overpowered at the time.

We are not seeing the kind of massive swapping one class of tank for another in ToC or the preliminary Icecrown testing. It's just not happening. If paladins or druids are too good or warriors or death knights aren't good enough, we're just not seeing them getting used for those fights to anywhere near the extent that DKs replaced other tanks on the encounters mentioned above.

As just one example (and I wouldn't put too much weight behind this), the number of paladin tanks used to test Icecrown on the PTR has been almost imperceptibly low. It's possible there were actually none this weekend, or else the numbers were so small that we missed them. Sure these are not the hard mode encounters generally being tested, and you can come up with your own explanations for differences between how players might approach PTR and "real" raiding. But these are the kind of lopsided datasets we have to deal with when we're looking at who is using what tank and how that relates to success.

I'm not talking about balancing around representation, as players often mistakenly claim. I am asking the question that I have asked before: if one or two of the tank classes have such a superior and unequivocal advantage in making a fight easier, why aren't more guilds using them, especially given the evidence that they have swapped tanks on previous encounters? I understand individuals of you may state it has happened to your guild. That's fine, but understand you are in a small minority. Overall, it's just not happening.

One conclusion you can draw (though certainly not the only one) is that whatever differences in survivability there appear to be "on paper," just don't make a significant difference in the actual fights, or at least not enough of a difference that guilds feel compelled to switch or are held back by not switching.

As an aside: there are some specific fights where the specific mechanics lead guilds to tend to use one tank over another, say a druid to tank Thorim hard or a shield-using tank on adds for Anub hard. Most players aren't as concerned about these one-off encounters because it feels like such an encounter-specific problem and doesn't feel like anyone's job as guild main tank is in jeopardy. (Individuals of you may feel differently of course.)

I know there are lot of threads on this topic right now. I avoided many of the ones that are doing a good job discussing numbers because I didn't want to derail them.

Death Knight

Why do our tanking cooldowns still have resource costs? (Source)

Honestly, the only thing I want to know is why the DK cool downs still have resource costs. For the life of me, I can't figure it out.

Slightly off topic, but you contribute a lot to these boards so I'll answer it. The original intent was that DKs press different buttons when tanking than when doing dps. Warriors definitely do that -- few Arms or Fury warriors incorporate Revenge or Shield Slam and then Shockwave and Devastate are talented. We needed abilities for a DK to use that sacrificed dps for survivability. (The alternative is you don't need a tank spec at all and can do as much dps while tanking as when not tanking, modulo gear.)

Given the realities of tapping for runes and the like, I don't think the reality ended up where we wanted it. It would be closer to the design if DKs dropped say one Blood Strike for a defensive cooldown while dps DKs did not. That would be a tough change to implement at this stage with all sorts of negative ramifications. However just taking the costs off with the intent of putting them on again in the future would be unpopular with players. We'll make unpopular calls when we think they are worth it. I'm not sure this is.

Mr. T's Night Elf Mohawk Returns

To tide everyone over in the afternoon, here's the latest World of Warcraft commercial featuring Mr. T: the mohawk grenade. The cool thing about this is you can get the mohawk grenade in-game and use it on other players -- placing a "night elf mohawk" head on their character.

Quote from: Nethaera (Source)

"You gotta choice, Jack. You can watch Mr. T's new TV commercial…or you can HURT." Mr. T, outraged that any fools would doubt his hacking skills, has returned to World of Warcraft to show off his latest invention in a series of nationally televised ads. Watch them here first at Blizzard's YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/worldofwarcraft) or click to Learn more ( http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/faq/mohawkgrenade.xml ) about the mohawk grenade and how you can claim your own in-game.

Mohawk Grenade (Source)

These should be available to get in game now and we'll be posting more information on it all soon, in the meantime you can get it at any of the Night Elf Mohawk NPCs camped outside every starting zone.

Mohawk Grenade FAQ

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Q. What is the Mohawk Grenade?

A. The Mohawk Grenade is Mr. T's latest invention: an in-game item that, when hurled at another character, gives everyone within the blast radius an instant T-riffic haircut. Don't worry, you and your friends will look gooooood.

Q. Where do I get it?

A. Quit your jibber-jabber and claim your Mohawk Grenades from any of the Night Elf Mohawk NPCs camped outside every starting zone.

Q. What regions are eligible to claim the Mohawk Grenade?

A. North America, Europe and Korea.

Q. Is this a permanent item?

A. Each Mohawk Grenade has five charges before exhausting its power, and you're welcome to claim another once the charges are gone.

Q. How long will the Mohawk Grenade be available in-game?

A. Claim Mohawk Grenades starting November 16th in North America and November 24th in Europe and Korea. They'll be available until... well, until the Night Elf Mohawk decides his work is done.

Q. Where can I see the Mr. T commercials?

A. The commercials will be airing on major TV networks throughout North America beginning on November 16th and in Europe starting on November 27th. You can also view the ads on the official World of Warcraft YouTube channel here.