Newslist For MMOValue

When I’m not playing WoW, I’m usually found indulging in manga and have been devouring the Warcraft series ever since the Sunwell Trilogy came out. Of all the characters introduced through comics and manga, the most tragic next to Anveena has to be Trag Highmountain. I’ve watched over the last year as more characters from the print franchises began to appear in-game, and there’s something about seeing them translated into the game which gives me an amazing thrill.

We’ve met Anveena and her soul mate Kalec, Tyri and Jorad as well as Broll and that Blood Elf chick whose always hanging around Varian, so I’ve often wondered when Trag would turn up. It’s inevitable given how his quest to Icecrown is in keeping with Wrath of the Lich King. Imagine my surprise when I logged on to the PTR for the first time this morning to find one Tauren Death Knight standing guard over one of the incapacitated forms of one of the Coliseum bosses.

Yes, it’s our old friend Trag, now a level 80 NPC. While seeming hostile, he makes no move to attack the Alliance or speak, he just seems to stand near Gormok the Impaler. I’m sure he’ll get some lines by the time Patch 3.2 goes live though. Having not yet read Warcraft: Legends’ final volume, I’m curious to find out what happened to him but it’s nice to know he’s finally free of the Lich King’s thrall.

Catelet World of Warcraft Comics, Lore, News items, NPCs

Man, what a crazy news day this has been, and the day’s not even over yet. Blizzard just rolled out a new PTR build, so we took a quick trip to the Patch 3.2 PTR and discovered a whole new mechanic that Blizzard hasn’t mentioned yet. It’s yet another change to how raiding works, and it’s pretty cool.

We killed Venoxis in Zul’Gurub and, upon being saved to the instance, noticed that we now had the option to extend our raid lockout — that is, to make it last twice as long or until the next week’s lockout would end.

This means that, if your casual guild is a scrappy bunch working on Ulduar, but you can only get to Mimiron each week before the lockout expires, you can extend your current lockout into the following week to get more practice on the bosses you don’t get to see as often.

Now — ostensibly — once you’ve done what you need to do with your lockout, you can actually remove the raid lockout extension and use your current week’s lockout too. We haven’t gotten to try it yet, but it looks like the functionality is there. Pretty cool!

We’ll wait to see what Blizzard has to say about it, but this is great news for smaller or more casual guilds who really want to clear instances and don’t mind less loot per week.

More shots of the functionality after the jump.
 

Koeningsmark World of Warcraft extend, extending, wow-patch-3.2

Despite his sometimes-crass way of getting his point across, Ming is one of the best PvP bloggers around these days. When the Patch 3.2 patch notes revealed the upcoming change to resilience, I was hoping to hear his take on it. He delivered! If you haven’t seen the patch notes, Resilience in Patch 3.2 will lower incoming damage across the board in addition to its protection against critical strikes. By Ming’s estimates, after all other factors have been taken into consideration, the change will bring a net difference of an added 10% damage reduction in the upcoming Season 7.

That number probably doesn’t seem like a lot to people who don’t set foot into the arena at all, but for people who arena seriously and competitively, it will be a game changer. The developers’ stated goal is to slow down the pace of the arena, and this change will do exactly that. An extra 10% buffer on survivability has the potential to absolutely be the difference between a one minute game and a five minute game. It has the potential to be the difference between a gib and a last second defensive save. As has been stated, it’s possible to die in the span of one GCD, and that’s not fun. If this change can extend one GCD to two or three GCDs to allow for reaction time, the arena just might end up more balanced than it has ever previously been, unless you pretend Mace Stun didn’t exist in the middle seasons of The Burning Crusade.

You really shouldn’t take my word for it, though. I PvP, but I’d never claim to be a highly rated anything. There’s a reason I was waiting for Ming’s take on it. Go read what he has to say, and be bolstered by it. The arena might actually be truly fun again.

Castres World of Warcraft Arena, PvP

I was pleasantly surprised to see the maintenance announcement for tomorrow morning available fairly early today. Most of the time, we don’t actually know whether there will be maintenance or not until pretty late in the evening. Or I’m imagining that and this is the time we see it every week, who knows!

Daytime players will be happy to hear that most realms are only getting rolling restarts. They’ll be started at 5:00 AM PDT on North American realms and 10:00 AM PDT for Oceanic realms. There are a fair number of servers being hit with a real maintenance period, but it’s only expected to take a few hours: Starting at 5:00 AM PDT and lasting until 8:00 AM PDT. Those realms are: Area 52, Arena Tournament 1, Arena Tournament 2, Auchindoun, Azuremyst, Blade’s Edge, Blood Furnace, Coilfang, Dawnbringer, Exodar, Fizzcrank, Galakrond, Ghostlands, Grizzly Hills, Shattered Halls, Terokkar, The Scryers, The Underbog, Velen, and Zangarmarsh.

If you’re not sure what those times are in your time zone, the World Clock is a pretty simple tool to help you figure it out.

As always, MMOVALUE.com will be here throughout the morning and afternoon should anything come up during maintenance. It’s not a patch day, so we can be reasonably sure nothing will come up, but you never know.

MMOvalue World of Warcraft breaking, maintenance

Brilliant. Just brilliant. If you’ve been keeping up with the many changes in Patch 3.2, you might get an inkling that PvP is going to change drastically and for the better. Adam has already gone through the whopper announcement that Blizzard hinted at some time back: players can now gain experience from the Battlegrounds. It’s something I’d wished for since the days of vanilla WoW and the developers have finally gotten around to implementing it in the next major patch.

Does this mean the death of twinks? Not necessarily. Players can opt to toggle experience gains on and off by going to Behsten in Orgrimmar or Slahtz in Stormwind (best-in-slot, get it?) and ponying up 10 Gold. But wait, there’s more! Players who turn off experience gains will only be placed in the same Battleground queues as other players who opt not to gain experience. That’s right — twinks will be facing off against twinks. Twinks who have always contended that it wasn’t about the unfair gear advantage will finally get the opportunity to test their mettle against equally geared opponents. Enjoy.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though. After the jump, we’ll take a look at a whole bunch of changes that will impact World of Warcraft PvP from the obvious (Arena and Battleground changes) to the not-so-obvious (item and ability changes). Let’s hit it.
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MMOvalue World of Warcraft Battlegrounds, PvP

Vaneras has just released the details for the Isle of Conquest, the new battleground that will be appearing in Patch 3.2, Call of the Crusade.

You can read the complete details over on the official forums or check ‘em out after the break. There are some key things that everyone should be aware of:

IoC will be a 40-man battleground. Yes, you read that right. This is the first 40-man content released since Naxx 1.0. That is going to make some old school players very, very happy. I know I’m already giddy with excitement.
There will be significant use of siege and vehicle combat. This includes going on The Airship Hanger and using parachutes to drop teams onto the enemy keep from above.
You will need to kill a general held up in the enemy keep, much like Alterac Valley.
Reinforcements will be used. Capture resources to boost your strength.
This looks like an amazing new battleground, and one that I’m sure many of us cannot wait to try out on the PTR. There has been a ton of new information about Patch 3.2 released in the last few days, so it looks like PTR might be soonish. Keep your fingers crossed.
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Catalans World of Warcraft call-of-the-crusade, patch-3.2, PvP

A very big announcement this evening from Zarhym. In the “next major content patch” (which means Patch 3.2) the mount system in WoW will be having some significant changes to it. The highlights are as follows:

Regular land mounts trainable at level 20 (was 30)
Epic land mounts trainable at level 40 (was 60)
Regular flying mounts trainable at level 60 (was 70)
Regular flying mounts speed increased to a 150% gain (was 60%)
The costs for all the training and mount purchases has been decreased outright, with the exception of the artisan riding skill (epic flying mounts). For all mount costs, faction discounts now apply.

This means that when you hit 60 you’ll be able to fly around Hellfire and finish all those quests. Leveling from 60 to 68 is going to become easier and more relaxed. You’ll hit Northrend much sooner with this change.

Read more…

Catelet World of Warcraft breaking, mount-changes, patch-3.2

There is a set of server maintenance announcements tonight from the login screen.

First and foremost, the authentication systems will be undergoing maintenance from 3:00 a.m. PDT until 5:00 a.m. PDT. While Blizzard’s announcement on the issue seems rather optimistic that you’ll be able to login during that time, don’t count on it.

Secondly, all realms not listed after the break will be undergoing rolling restarts beginning at 5:00 a.m. PDT, with Oceanic realms being restarted at 10:00 a.m. PDT.

Finally, the realms listed after the break will be going under maintenance from 3:00 a.m. PDT until 9:00 a.m. PDT.

Those affected realms include:

Area 52
Auchindoun
Azuremyst
Blade’s Edge
Blood Furnace
Coilfang
Dawnbringer
Exodar
Fizzcrank
Galakrond
Ghostlands
Grizzly Hills
Shattered Halls
Terokkar
The Scryers
The Underbog
Velen
Zangarmarsh

Koeningsmark World of Warcraft tuesday-maintenance, wow-realm-status

You have probably seen the new Night Elf cat forms by now, the last of the four feral forms that are going to be revamped in patch 3.2. Reaction to them has been mixed; many players love them, while many think they leave something to be desired in the ferocity department. As our newest columnist Eddie put it, “You have to love the little ‘bells’ on the colors. Just like a nice little kitty cat.” I fall on this side as well – they look more delightful than dangerous.

Evidently Anik of Rexxar agrees with me and Eddie, because he was inspired to make the above image showing the logical extension of the direction the cat forms seem to be taking. What gets me is how little editing really needed to be done – they really look like that already, for the most part.

Of course, several of our writers are extra-excited about these newest forms; Zach and Manda both promise that they are rolling druids just to get access to them. Sailer Moon Cosplay Cat and Scene Kid Cat are their picks, in case you were wondering.

gmaxwell World of Warcraft Druid, Humor, patches

The dominance of Rogue/Mage/Priest continues as SK Gaming defeated eMazing Gaming’s faceroll Unholy/BM/Holy comp in the Major League Gaming Columbus Grand Finals 6-3 (best of 11 counting previous matchups). SK Gaming took home the $9,000 Grand Prize in the first leg of the MLG 2009 pro circuit, proving that the US still has a competitive RMP team. Europe’s RMP contingent, Ensidia, barely missed the Finals after dropping to eMG in the prior round.

Some of the teams didn’t do so well despite expectations, such as two-time MLG winners Fnatic, who were playing without their Warrior, Rhaegyn. Fnatic did rather poorly, playing a Rogue/Warlock/Shaman comp that simply couldn’t match up against the dominant RMPs or even eMG’s Death Knight/Hunter/Paladin. Evil Geniuses also played below par, but there really have to be teams that occupy the bottom of the standings. The good news is that teams collect points through all MLG legs to tally at the end of the season, so we might see some changes in the next MLG stops.

All the matches were streamed through three different sites via Octoshape, but the streams were choppy and often stalled more than it did in the first two days of the tournament. It came to the point where the matches were simply unwatchable, which is a shame because there were some pretty good games on the last day. The shoutcasters did an excellent job commentating on the matches but camerawork and the pace of the games were just too fast at times to appreciate. Arena Tournaments could benefit greatly from instant replays, slow motion, and camera angles beyond the third person view. Replays should be available on GotFrag soon.

Kocherberg World of Warcraft Arena, Events, News items, PvP

Spinksville, following up to an earlier post concerning a great lore moment in Vengeance Landing, concludes that as a Horde player, Howling Fjord has emerged as the single best overall zone in Wrath. The more I consider it, the more I’m inclined to agree with her. The Fjord has a mostly unified questline that slowly splits off into sub-plots concerning the Kalu’ak and Taunka, and the farther you get, the more you realize the impact your previous actions have had on that little slice of the world (and most of it’s not good). As Spinks observes, it’s a very immersive experience that does a great job of conveying both the moral ambiguity of the Forsaken’s position, and the fact that Northrend’s a continent without a lot of good options. “Forced to choose between the lesser evil and the greater evil,” she writes, “… you had better hope that the greater evil is very bad indeed because it is the only way to justify the things you have had to do.”

That said, I have to admit that Icecrown is also pretty tough to beat lore-wise (with the Matthias Lehner quests being a particularly good touch, and please don’t click that link if you haven’t run into him yet). I haven’t yet played an Alliance toon through Northrend, and Spinks is also a Horde player, so I’d like to get some input from Alliance-side players too. Is the Fjord as good for Alliance as it is for Horde, or are your best questlines elsewhere? If you’re Horde, do you agree that the Fjord was your best questing experience?

Castro World of Warcraft Analysis / Opinion, Lore

Yes, Druids, it’s that time again! After eking out their reveal of the Tauren and Night Elf bear forms and the Tauren cat over the past fortnight, it’s finally time to see what your Night Elf Druid cat form is going to look like come patch 3.2. We told you earlier how Zahrym let everyone know they would be announcing the final revamped druid form today, but it seems Allison is nowhere to be found so you get to hear my impressions instead. However the rest of the team really don’t seem to like the new look at all.

My first thoughts are actually quite positive. I love the cat versions of the Night Elf tattoos and the shiny gem collars are a lovely touch, even if the leather bracelet/anklet/pawlet seem a little weird and out of place. When did Night Elves get a leather fetish exactly? The colours are nice, all a variation on Night Elf skin tone but I confess I prefer the colouration of the old cat design. Over all it’s quite a nice selection of designs and I think players are going to be rather pleased come patch day to be able to stand out in a crowd of druids, even if not everyone is going to like the new look. My only question is: what’s the deal with the different coloured eyes? It’s nice but somewhat creepy looking.

Castro World of Warcraft Blizzard, Druid