The official Patch 3.3.3 patch notes have just been posted to the official site, so we’re likely to see the PTR incredibly soon, if it isn’t up right now. You can find the patch notes in full below. Do note, however, that this is Patch 3.3.3 and not Patch 3.3.5. This will not include the Ruby Sanctum raid dungeon.
Some highlights:
Death Knights: Icy Touch: This ability now causes a very high amount of threat while the death knight is in Frost Presence. Many aura abilities such as Unleashed Rage, Abomination’s Might, and Elemental Oath are now passive auras and do no need to be triggered by certain strikes. Frozo the Renowned has moved into the Dalaran Magus Commerce Exchange and will be trading your Frozen Orbs for various other trade goods. We do not yet know what these items are, but we’ll be sure to look as soon as we get on the PTR. Look behind the break for the rest of the Patch 3.3.3 patch notes.
These patch notes have been updated with the changes from February 24th, 2010.
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Castille World of Warcraft
The Lunar Festival runs this year from Sunday, Feburary 14th at 9:00 am server time through Sunday, March 7th at 9:00 am server time. That’s right, folks; you’ve got three weeks to get everything done. The basics of the holiday involve talking to a number of Elders to honor them, receiving Coins of Ancestry in return, and then using the Coins to purchase fun holiday items. The To Honor One’s Elders meta-achievement is also a requirement for What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been. In general, this is not a difficult holiday, but it is time-consuming; you’ll need to hunt down a lot of NPCs. Because of the mileage you’ll rack up doing this, it’d be a good time to do World Explorer if you haven’t already done that, or pick up flight paths that a character doesn’t yet have.
We’ve updated and expanded our 2010 guide to include exact coordinates for every Elder in the game, and I’ve also arranged them in what I hope to be the most straightforward way to reach them all. Let’s get started.
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MMOvalue World of Warcraft
Preparation
Before you start the raid, you must get clear of all mentioned below is a must
-Equipment gatherd from Trial of the Crusader.
-level 245+ gear for 25 ppl version
-level 232+ gear for 10 ppl version
All your tanks and tank healers should be as geared up as possible, as it is quite important.This is due to the first encounter in Icecrown Citadel introduces players to the Chill of the Throne. All Players will suffer an aura debuff which allow mobs to ignore 20% of an affected player’s dodge during melee combat. Also, Lord Marrowgar is a “gear check” boss, if you tanks are not geared enough, they will be easily killed by his Saber Lash will. Meanwhile, your healers will need to be at similar levels to ensure all ppl alive, especially tank.
Also, you guys need to pepare some miscellaneous consumabes:elixirs,buff food, potions ,etc.. These may increase the possibility to obtain the success.
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gmaxwell World of Warcraft
Blizzard has released a rather detailed look into a new feature coming in Cataclysm that we first heard about at BlizzCon 2009 — the mastery system. The system will “allow players to become better at what makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique.” Mastery bonuses are passive and are tied to each talent tree for every class. The more talent points you put in the tree, the more your mastery for that tree will increase. Each talent tree will have three mastery bonuses:
Bonus 1: Increase to damage, healing, or survivability Bonus 2: Increase to a stat that’s relevant to the given talent tree Bonus 3: A completely unique effect to the given talent tree The mastery statistic on gear you’ll get from 80 to 85 will increase the effect of bonus #3. Mechanically, the point of the mastery system is to remove talents like “6% more damage” and regulate those effects into the entire tree.
Kins World of Warcraft
Blizzard has released a rather detailed look into a new feature coming in Cataclysm that we first heard about at BlizzCon 2009 — the mastery system. The system will “allow players to become better at what makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique.” Mastery bonuses are passive and are tied to each talent tree for every class. The more talent points you put in the tree, the more your mastery for that tree will increase. Each talent tree will have three mastery bonuses:
Bonus 1: Increase to damage, healing, or survivability Bonus 2: Increase to a stat that’s relevant to the given talent tree Bonus 3: A completely unique effect to the given talent tree The mastery statistic on gear you’ll get from 80 to 85 will increase the effect of bonus #3. Mechanically, the point of the mastery system is to remove talents like “6% more damage” and regulate those effects into the entire tree.
Mustapha World of Warcraft
Sadly, the ultimate answer appears to be “very reluctantly” but it’s an interesting read anyway. J. Allen Brack talks to G4 about WoW, consoles, and the barriers to entry for an MMO. The usual suspects apply, of course. WoW was designed for keyboards, consoles tend to have a short lifespan compared to the development time of a MMO, and WoW currently takes up about 15gb worth of memory while consoles like an XBox 360 have at most 20gb worth of hard drive space without buying any additions. This is no surprise, of course… they’ve said all this before.
What I really found interesting was that this is supposedly something they think about a lot. “In the case of WoW, we talk about it all the time.” I’m the curious sort, so I find myself wondering why, given all the reasons Brack himself lists. Personally, I’d love to see a single player Warcraft property of some sort for consoles, perhaps a God of War style action game or even a Dragon Age/Mass Effect hybrid RPG. And who knows, perhaps Blizzard will come up with a way to do it despite their laundry list of reasons why they won’t, they’ve surprised me before.
Kins World of Warcraft
Remember when Blizzard first offered the Lil KT and Pandaren Monk pets on the Blizzard Store a few months ago? They mentioned that they would be donating half the proceeds from the sales of the Pandaren Monk in game non combat pet to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Selling at $10 per account, the Pandaren Monk managed to raise a whopping $1.1 million which was donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation on February 16. This figure was based on the November-December sales of the cute little pet.
The Make-A-Wish Foundation is a non profit organization that grants wishes to children with life threatening conditions. Blizzard has had dealings with the foundation in the past with the famous case of the late Ezra Chatterton. Chatterton, who passed away in 2008, was suffering from a brain tumor when the make-A-Wish Foundation granted his wish to be a Game Developer in the game that he loved the most. Chatterton is responsible for the Merciless Gladiator Crossbow of the Phoenix, named after his WoW character Ephoenix. He is also responsible for a quest in Mulgore involving an NPC that even uses his own voice. Since it’s the Lunar Festival now, you can also see him immortalized as Elder Ezra Wheathoof in Thunder Bluff!
So if you bought a Pandaren Monk in November or December, you can be proud to have contributed to this fine cause!
MMOvalue World of Warcraft
Deadlylupine of on Balnazzar snapped this shot of her drake rising through the mist in Terokkar Forest. “I happened to be flying in lovely Terokkar, and my Nether Drake was just so overwhelmed with light, he had to have a celebratory roar,” she wrote.
Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!
gmaxwell World of Warcraft
Big news for Final Fantasy XIV fans today, especially if you’re biting your nails waiting to get into the beta. The official PlayStation Blog has announced that the initial production run of Final Fantasy XIII on the PS3 will come packaged with a special offer for an in-game item, and an extra shot at a potential beta spot for Final Fantasy XIV.
While it doesn’t guarantee a beta key, anything that increases your chances of playing the game sooner is a good thing. But act now, because once those launch copies are gone, so is the offer.
Castille Final Fantasy XI
It’s been said many times that Blizzard is comfortable with Frost being the dual wielding tree for Death Knights from now on, to give a different flavor to the tree and to distinguish it from the other 2 trees. But we know that is wasn’t always that way as evidenced by the many Frost specced tanks back in the day wielding two-handed weapons.
Eventually dual wielding became more and more accepted for Frost and then Blizzard added the Threat of Thassarian talent to really support it. The small problem with dual wielding one handed weapons was that it never had any strength on them, a stat that was most desirable for Death Knights. Some of them had just attack power while some had agility and attack power but never strength. Basically they were making use of weapons that were intended more for hunters or even rogues.
This is going to change in the Cataclysm expansion, according to Ghostcrawler. Finally Blizzard is going to make dps one handers with Strength on them to fill this need for Death Knights. This is especially important because of the stats changes in the expansion. Right now Death Knights are making do because of the attack power on these weapons but that’s going down the drain in the expansion. Since Death Knights, along with Warriors and Paladins, will get their attack power from Strength this is really needed.
This brings me to another related issue. It seems to me that when the new stats system gets rolled in, these current dual wielding Death Knights could be screwed until they get new weapons with Strength on them. Logic suggests that with the new stats system, these weapons could be useless to Death Knights. The attack power that Death Knights want from these weapons will be gone and since they’re really hunter weapons, that attack power could turn into Agility instead of Strength. Unless they some flat attack power on these weapons just like they’re keeping some flat spell power on caster weapons, there’s really going to be a problem.
Castille World of Warcraft
We know that in patch 3.3.3, honor gain from completing Battlegrounds objectives is being increased. The patch notes also mention that experience gain while doing Battlegrounds will be decreased as a result of this change. You might be thinking that this is a bad thing especially if you’re the type who likes to level up by doing Battlegrounds more than questing. If you think that you’ll hate the next minor patch because of this decrease in experience gain, you actually won’t. This is all a misunderstanding!
Castille World of Warcraft
If you have been eagerly awaiting news on the top-secret Copernicus over at 38 Studios, you’ll be pleased to hear that 38 Studios broke the silence today. “Project Mercury,” a single-player title set in the Copernicus universe, will be coming to the PC, XBox 360 and PS3. 38 Studios signed a publishing deal with EA to bring the game to market.
“Project Mercury” is described as “an epic single-player role-playing game,” and is being developed by 38 Studios-owned Big Huge Games under the guiding hand of Ken Rolston (Morrowind and Oblivion). This will be the first Copernicus project launched by Curt Schilling’s team after years of anticipation and heavy speculation. As NASA’s Project Mercury set out to test the boundaries of space by putting a man into orbit, “Project Mercury” looks to be testing the waters of single-player RPGs before diving into the realm of MMOs, similar to the approach of fan-favorite Torchlight.
Castro World of Warcraft
Amidst all this GDC 2010 news is a great one-day-only sale over at Amazon, where you can pick up Star Trek Online at the low-low price of $27.99. If the mood strikes you, there’s also a one-day sale on the collector’s edition. While the CE may still be $47.99 it’s a good deal cheaper than the regular cost of $79.99 and it comes with a bunch of in-game items, too.
Whatever you end up deciding, the sale just goes to show that a patient gamer can save a lot of money in the end. Of course, missing out on five weeks of boldly venturing out into space may not be worth the wait, for some.
gmaxwell Star Trek Online
The background downloader has gone active tonight with a 77.5 MB partial file for the Patch 3.3.3 patching process. Don’t expect the patch to go live tomorrow, of course (if nothing else, scheduled maintenance isn’t long enough), but it looks like we may be within a few weeks of some nice new patch goodness, including the rise of DK frost dual wielding, Frozen Orbs, and the abolishment of battleground marks.
gmaxwell World of Warcraft
We see a fair amount of pining for “the way things used to be” in this community — rose-colored hindsight that is, by all accounts, horribly wrong. Maybe you enjoyed the sense of wonder upon going through the game the first time. That’s completely understandable. But no one really enjoyed running Molten Core. Or the old honor system. Or the horrible class balance and several patently useless talent trees at launch.
Speaking of, I wonder if there’s anybody that could shed some light on that last bit. Maybe Tom Chilton, the lead Game Director could, in his latest interview on the five-year anniversary mini-site.
As it turns out, Chilton was brought in in early 2004 to work on the PvP portion of the game, but ended up handling a lot more when the honor system was put on hold to handle more pressing concerns, like making gameplay interesting.
“From April until the game shipped, the vast majority of my time was spent working on the design for the auction house, the mail system, and implementing the talent trees for every class. I was the only person available to do that — our other class designer, Kevin Jordan, was mainly focused on ensuring that all of the classes had spells and abilities up to level 60, and managing the flow of when you’d get which ability. Kevin and I, and Rob Pardo, and Mike Heiberg from the StarCraft team, all worked on that part of the game. It was exciting, but it was weird — my experience with some of the classes was making a character of that class on an internal server, playing it up to level 10 to get a feel for how the class played, and starting to make 60 levels worth of talents. A lot of my early experience was trying to get familiar with every class.”
Kind of explains a lot, doesn’t it? Like Lacerate, for example. People who complain about balance nowadays really have no idea how bad it used to be, or how much Blizzard’s process for fixing it has improved. Chilton goes into more detail about WoW’s early development in his full interview on the Battlecry site.
gmaxwell World of Warcraft