This isn’t the biggest news in the world, but for those of you that really dig World of Warcraft’s extended universe, it might be pretty exciting. Medievaldragon over at BlizzPlanet has an incredibly hi-res picture of the artwork that will grace the cover of the upcoming novel Stormrage, courtesy of Pocket Books.
I can’t help but notice Malfurion’s rather feral appearance there. Despite how much Blizzard loves the whole “falling from grace” thing for their characters, I somewhat doubt they will take that road with Malfurion, even with everything going on in the Emerald Dream.* Is he stalking some prey? Is he running from whatever gave him those scars? Is he pissed that Tyrande went Shadow and made him respec Resto, hence the foliage? Who knows, but I’m curious to find out, even if my least favorite Warcraft novelist is tackling this one. Maybe we’ll get an excerpt to read in our swag bags at BlizzCon? We can hope, right?
*If they do, I assume it will be temporary. Chris Metzen seems awfully attached to Malfurion when he talks about him, so I don’t expect they’ll kill the poor guy off.
MMOvalue World of Warcraft blizzcon, Druid
Bornakk has just announced that the end of Season 6 will come as early as Tuesday August 25th. You’ll want to be sure that if you’re eligible for arena rewards that you don’t transfer your character or generally screw with your arena team. Just relax and let the rewards happen.
After Season 6 ends, there will be one week of downtime where no rated matches can happen.
Season 7 will begin after this week of downtime, at which time all team and personal ratings will be wiped, along with your arena points. According to the announcement matchmaking ratings will remain (as well as honor points). None of this should come as too much of a surprise, as we’ve known about it all for a while.
This roughly places the start date for Season 7 at Tuesday September 1st. However these things can change, so just pay attention to the news and watch out for the exact date.
Kocherberg World of Warcraft Arena, News items
Eurogamer has a nice long look at the early days of World of Warcraft, way before Northrend and Outland and even Molten Core, back when the question wasn’t just how big the game would get, but whether Blizzard, a company known for their polish rather than their size, could pull off an entry in this new MMO genre. They’ve interviewed some of Blizzard’s luminaries, and the piece offers a really good look at what it was like at Blizzard even before WoW’s release, when they were hashing out some of the ideas and mechanics that have now set the bar with World of Warcraft: the stylistic Warcraft look, and questing as storytelling (originally, they thought they’d only do quests through the starting levels, and then have the game move to a grinding, monster-killing stage towards the end, but players said the game was boring without quests).
There are all kinds of great little tidbits in here: originally, Warcraft III was planned with the over-the-shoulder look that WoW now has, and that’s one of the reasons they wanted to create a more straightforward RPG game. Tom Chilton showed up on the team about a year before WoW’s release, and to his surprise, the game was almost completely unfinished — the level cap was only 15, the talent system wasn’t implemented, the AH or mail systems weren’t in, PvP wasn’t in at all (of course, even at release it was pretty barebones), and endgame raiding was nonexistent. Most of the things we think of as intrinsic to the World of Warcraft — even things like the Horde and Alliance not speaking to each other — were debated and almost not in at all as they moved towards release.
And this is only the first part of a larger series, so we’ll look for part two next week. Great read, and very interesting to see that the developer team on this game is as times as split up and unorganized as their forums. Even before we started QQing and arguing about gameplay
Catalans World of Warcraft Blizzard, chris-metzen
This is great — it’s probably more WoW playing than I could do in one day, but maybe I’ll try it this weekend anyway. loztaylor has designed a heck of an instance run that rolls through thirteen Heroics and will nab you 53 Emblems of Conquest (along with all of the other spoils of war) in one day. Basically, you’ll be sweeping across the land of Northrend, hitting every Heroic you come across, and if by some chance you’re able to keep the group together the whole time, and keep from passing out from all the WoW playing you’re doing, at the end you’ll end up with 53 Emblems, more than enough to purchase most of the Emblem gear, and almost enough to pick up a Tier piece.
Of course, if you’re wearing a rep tabard, you’ll also rein in a ton of dungeon rep. And if you hit the new Trial of the Champion, you’ll pick up your Champion’s Seals as well. And you’ll have 13 Frozen Orbs to divvy among the group, a few extra Emblems and gold from doing the daily quests, and if you’re good and/or lucky, you might even be able to clear up a few of the achievements or snag that blue proto-drake. Of course, doing this much of anything in the game will probably nab you plenty of rewards. But here’s a tuned route to follow all the way around the world of Heroics. If I can find a willing group of suckers guildies, I think I’ll give it a shot.
Kins World of Warcraft bosses, instances, Making money
If you’ve been hiding under a rock these past few months (and who doesn’t do that every now and then, really?) you might have only just noticed that Patch 3.2 recently went live. For some of you, it’s as good an excuse as any to log back into the game while for others, it might’ve been a surprise to find yourself suddenly downloading upwards of 300Mb of content. If you fall under the category of surprised, lost, or surprised and lost, have no fear! WoW.com is here to hold your hand and guide you through the wild and wacky wonders of the Call of the Crusade. Let’s take a look at what the latest patch holds for you – and there’s something for you no matter what kind of player you are – after the jump.
Raiders
If you’re a serious raider you probably won’t need this guide. But since you’re reading this far, I’m assuming you’re waiting between trash pulls or just got back into WoW after some form of hiatus. It’s most likely the latter because, surprise, the newest raid has no trash! But really, raiders can look forward to:
Really easy raid content in four crazy tiers! 10-man, Heroic 10-man, 25-man, and Heroic 25-man! Although you might need to wait a bit before Blizzard unlocks the heroic modes.
Tier 9, the first faction-specific tier armor, which is only available through tokens that drop from the new raid bosses and for loads of Emblems of Triumph.
Alright, there’s not a lot going on for hardcore raiders. I guess you can crawl back under that rock until Icecrown comes out in Patch 3.3.
Read more…
Kiuperli World of Warcraft Daily-Quest
In an official press release, Blizzard announced today that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the first installment of the Starcraft II trilogy, previously indicated to be released in the last quarter of this year, is delayed to the first half of 2010.
The release cited the massive amount of work necessary to overhaul Blizzard’s online matchmaking service, Battle.net, as the main culprit for the delay. Since the new BNet will be part of every new Blizzard game from here on in — including World of Warcraft, as players with BNet accounts have seen — it’s vital that the service be working properly before the game’s release.
StarCraft II was never officially dated — only an on-the-sly indication — and multiple financial sites have reported the now-official release date as the first half of 2010 following this announcement and Activision-Blizzard’s quarterly financial report.
What does this mean for the WoW player? Well, it means that if you were expecting the focus of BlizzCon, or one of the focuses of BlizzCon, to be a StarCraft II release date, you’d be incorrect.
Castille World of Warcraft Blizzard, News items
According to the in-game announcement, there will be two hours of maintenance tomorrow August 6th on all realms. The maintenance announcement has changed throughout the evening, but seems to have settled on this downtime.
The downtime will happen from 5:00 a.m. PDT / 8:00 a.m. EDT and last until 7:00 a.m. PDT / 10:00 a.m. EDT. This of course assumes that there’ll be no extended super-fracken-duper maintenance put on top of that. And we know just how much Blizzard loves to increase their maintenance periods. If there is you’ll hear it here.
While the maintenance is going on, you can check out WoW.com’s Guide to Patch 3.2 and read up on all the things you missed, or think you missed. There is also the beginnings of a list of bug fixes; a list that’s sure to grow over the coming days.
Kocherberg World of Warcraft News items, Realm Status
Included with the patch update is a fresh copy of the patch 3.2 patch notes. These notes come directly from the updater that you’ll download to update your game.
Please be aware that Blizzard has lately been releasing an updated version of these later in the day. We’ll update these notes, in this post, if that happens.
There are some major highlights to patch 3.2 that we’ve known about for awhile. They include:
A new battleground in the Isle of Conquest
A new 5, 10, and 25 person dungeon/raid in the Crusaders’ Coliseum
Significant changes to mounts requirements
Class changes
A major update to the Argent Tournament
Arena Season 7 (which will begin sometime soon)
The full patch 3.2 patch notes are after the break, and don’t forget to check out WoW.com’s Guide to Patch 3.2 for all our patch coverage.
Update: The notes have been updated to the latest notes released by Blizzard this afternoon.
Castres World of Warcraft patch-3.2
There’s a detailed server maintenance announcement for tomorrow, Tuesday August 4th. And off the bat: we still don’t know for sure if Patch 3.2 is dropping tomorrow. You can bet that we’ll be burning the midnight oil waiting to find out, though. (Note, that would be inadvisable. If you attempt to ignite a petroleum product on this ship at zero hundred hours you will activate the fire suppression system, which would seal off this entire compartment.)
All realms will be down from at least 3:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 a.m. EDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT tomorrow. However a large group of special realms will be down from 12:00 a.m. PDT / 3:00 a.m. EDT until 12:00 p.m. PDT / 3:00 p.m. EDT.
Those special realms are those in the battlegroups Emberstorm, and Whirlwind.
Check after the break if you need to see a listing of which realms belong on those battlegroups, and stay tuned to WoW.com tonight and tomorrow for all the patch 3.2 goodness.
Minor update: The service alert, which is obviously suffering from a typo, now reads in part: “..we expect all realms to be playable by approximately 11:59PM PDT on Tuesday, August 4.” Emphasis added. Hey, at least they’re honest, right?
Update: Blizzard changed their announcement to indicate that only Emberstorm and Whirlwind would be going offline for an extended period.
All the realms which will be offline for an extended period tonight include:
Emberstorm Battlegroup:
Antonidas- Normal
Drenden- Normal
Farstriders- RP
Hydraxis- Normal
Mok’Nathal- Normal
Moon Guard- RP
Nazgrel- Normal
Nordrassil- Normal
Quel’dorei- Normal
Rivendare- PvP
Shandris- Normal
Tortheldrin- PvP
Whirlwind Battlegroup:
Anub’arak- PvP
Blackwater Raiders- RP
Bladefist- Normal
Cenarion Circle- RP
Cenarius- Normal
Darrowmere- PvP
Echo Isles- Normal
Hyjal- Normal
Lightbringer- Normal
Maiev- PvP
Misha- Normal
Ravenholdt- RP-PvP
Sisters of Elune- RP
The Forgotten Coast- PvP
Uther- Normal
Vashj- PvP
Castro World of Warcraft News items, Realm News, Realm Status
It’s entirely possible that my French is failing me (it’s been a while since I studied it, and it might be getting rusty), but as far as I can make out, this blue post on the French customer support forums claims that patch 3.2 is coming “next Wednesday.”
This is in the course of answering a routine question about where to get patch files and so forth – a surprising place for a patch release date confirmation, but I’ll take my info where I can get it.
I’m not sure whether “next Wednesday” (“mercredi prochain” in the French) means August 5 (in which case the North American realms would get the patch tomorrow), or whether it means August 12 (in which case we’d get it the 11th), but I’d lean towards the former. So get your ducks in a row, faithful readers, and get ready for the Call of the Crusade.
Castille MMOPRG News, World of Warcraft europe, patches
Blizzard has announced that they’re streaming most of the tournaments at BlizzCon this year yet again — even if you don’t sign up to the DirecTV feed, you can still watch most of the Arena, Starcraft, and Warcraft III matchups online on the BlizzCon site. And this year, for the first time, you’ll be able to watch them in full HD quality (assuming that your connection can hold up). There will be one full stream dedicated to Arena matches, and one stream split between Warcraft III and Starcraft tournament coverage.
And what you see should be some of the best players in the world — all of the qualifiers from North America, Korea, Europe, and Taiwan will be in attendance to vy for the top spot and the $25,000 per-player prize. The stream will be running both days of BlizzCon, coming up in just a few weeks on August 21st and 22nd.
MMOvalue World of Warcraft Arena, blizzcon