I want to take a spot of a breather from Cataclysm information just for this week. Mostly because I’m slightly frothy at the mouth, which I’ve been told isn’t a good health sign, but more so due to the fact that so much is in the process of being changed right now that going into an in-depth discussion on a topic that’s likely to have every scrap completely altered tomorrow is silly. Perhaps silly is the wrong word, after all that’s never been something to stop me before, so let’s just consider this to be an isolated case — promises that next week will be a real Cataclysm discussion. In light of that, if there’s anything specific that you’d like to see covered, shoot me an email and I’ll see what I can do for you.
Focusing on the here and now, which is actually what this article is about, I’d like to quickly go over the more recent raiding addition Ruby Sanctum. Although I’ve seen mixed reviews of the instance from others, I at least think the instance is a nice little dash of refreshing. It doesn’t hold the same sense of urgency, the same notion that you’re going to be stuck in here for hours upon hours, days upon days (even though many guilds, particularly those working on hard mode, will be) that I get from going into ICC. RS is a nice little cooldown raid; it’s light, fun and refreshing like a cool glass of lemonade. To start us off, we’ll take a quick look at the shiny loots, since that’s what everyone really wants, and then we’ll look into a brief little guide on how to slay the giant purple/pink dragon at the end.
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Over at Mordor or Bust, Lord of the Rings Online’s new executive producer Kate Paiz sat down to talk about what’s on every hobbit’s mind: the transition to LotRO’s free-to-play version this fall. Paiz took the reins of LotRO just as the F2P change was announced and is bringing her experience from DDO Unlimited’s transition over to LotRO’s team.
In the interview, Paiz spends a considerable amount of time both praising the community and reassuring it that these changes will benefit the game as a whole. One of the issues she addressed was the lack of Player versus Monster Player (PvMP) combat for non-subscribers, saying that it was necessary for now, but that may change in the future: “While we plan to introduce [PvMP] at some point in the future to the rest of the playerbase, we wanted to first focus on delivering the quality PvE game that we have to players in a way that continued to drive great interest and fun in the game.”
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With the state of pretty much every class on beta in limbo thanks to the forthcoming talent revamp, we’re taking a break from beta stuff to ransack the Ruby Sanctum. Hopefully, we’ll see the new trees on beta in the next week or so, so we have more to work with than speculating on exactly what “signature abilities” everyone will get. In the meantime, we have shiny new loot and a new boss to tackle in the here and now.
The Ruby Sanctum is ostensibly the last major raid of the Wrath expansion, and as such, ostensibly your last chance to get a few extra pieces of gear and uber yourself out before Cataclysm comes along and replaces everything with level 81 quest rewards. There are definitely some pretty prime upgrades to be had here, including a few straight-up best in slot drops, so let’s get going and check out what you can grab.
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Every weekend, Dawn Moore enjoys drinking her tea English style and writing Spiritual Guidance to the pleasant sound of birds (this is quite fortunate, since she lives in an aviary.) This weekend however, Dawn’s soundtrack is being interrupted by the sound of explosives. What could be the root of this?! Fox Van Allen must have finally teamed up with goblin engineers to foil Dawn’s Sunday column. How will she write for healing priests with that incessant racket?!
This week I’ll be writing about how to traverse the Ruby Sanctum as a healing priest. I know, I know, I promised you all a leveling guide, but for the sake of being timely we’ll have to push it back a week. Forgive me, please?
In the guide I’ll be covering Halion, as well as the three mini-bosses you’ll have to defeat before you can face him. I will also examine priest appropriate loot in the instance and compare it to a few pieces we’ve seen in Icecrown Citadel. Hit the jump and we’ll get started.
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The patch notes for the newly-opened Cataclysm beta test have been updated as of build 12319. Full notes are available after the break.
Cataclysm Beta Patch Notes 6.30.10World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Beta Patch Notes
Welcome to the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm beta test! Patch notes listed here are not comprehensive and will be changed throughout the testing process.
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Last week, CCP Games announced that the EVE Online server was heading for a move and a bit of an upgrade. Hidden within a few cabinets in a single datacenter is everything that makes up the EVE universe, from characters and ships to planets and the market. The cluster of hardware has been expanded over the years and now exceeds the limitations of the hardware cabinets it occupies. Moving the cluster to a new location within the datacenter should help support future upgrades to keep up with the game’s growing subscriber-base.
The shuffle began early yesterday morning at 09:00 UTC and was planned to be completed by 15:00 UTC the same day. Unfortunately, the transition to a new locale has had some unforeseen side-effects for Tranquility. After a long day of server work, final testing of the cluster revealed database issues that must be corrected before the game can go live. At 03:00 UTC this morning, the estimate for restoring Tranquility and the EVE website was mid-day today. With that time having now passed, CCP has released a new estimate of 16:00 UTC. If necessary, further delays will be announced on the official EVE Facebook page, the CCP Games Twitter page and the game’s main website.
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“SGDCZ DUZGZ RKZMC DCVHS GRDQU DQLDQ FDZMC BGZQZ BSDQS QZMRE DQCDS ZHKR” was the mysterious message posted by Aion’s Andrew “Tamat” Beegle yesterday. The jumble of letters on Twitter and the Aion notice page was decoded pretty quickly by players: “THE DAEVA HAS LANDED WITH SERVER MERGE AND CHARACTER TRANSFER DETAILS.”
Aion confirmed the server merge and character transfers today with more details as well as a comprehensive FAQ covering all the details. The merge will happen on July 7th, and character transfers will begin on the 8th. Players can take advantage of free unlimited character transfers until August 18th, and then they will continue to be available for a fee. Once the server merge happens and transfers begin, there will be a number of contests and events coming both in and out of game.
Check out all the details on the Aion site.
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The funny thing about Final Fantasy XIV is that even though it’s going to be notably different from its predecessor, most of the previews we’ve seen have focused on points of similarity to Final Fantasy XI. But the most recent new release of information should help silence some of the comparisons — it’s a video of character generation. While accompanied by something of a silly spy motif, the focus is clearly on creating a character — and even just with a single Mito’qe, the creator clearly has a great deal of power.
Some of the hairstyles on display will be recognizable to veterans of Final Fantasy XI, some will not — but the comparisons end there. Characters have a number of different values to adjust, ranging from the obvious (hair styles) to the subtle (you can have separately colored highlights for your hair, if you wish). The YouTube video is embedded after the cut, and it should be an entertaining seven minutes for anyone anticipating Final Fantasy XIV.
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When EVE Online’s Tyrannis expansion went live last month, its main planetary interaction feature was initially disabled. The command centre structures required for planetary interaction weren’t released as more time was needed for testing. This had the unfortunate side-effect of causing havoc with the starbase market. Until now, players were only able to scan planets for resources and train the required skills in preparation for the inevitable planetary gold rush. Today the markets in EVE were seeded with command centres, opening the flood gates on planetary exploitation.
To help you get to grips with planetary interaction, several helpful guides and instructional videos have already been made. EVE University have produced an impressive and thorough guide, along with a handy chart of what you can produce with each of the planet materials. Similarly, EVE player Korai Iarok has taken the initiative and produced a great flow-chart style PDF showing the manufacturing processes for each item. With these helpful guides and CCP’s own video tutorial, even new players should have very little problem setting up their own planet-based industrial networks.
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Blizzard has provided a number of fansites with a talent preview for four classes: druids, rogues, priests and shaman. While the talent trees are not complete yet, these four talent trees are the closest to complete of all classes. Some highlights from the new talents include:
Rogues: Vendetta (1 point) Marks an enemy for death, increasing all damage you deal to the target by 20% and granting you unerring vision of your target, regardless of concealments such as Stealth and Invisibility. Lasts 30 seconds.
Druids: Nom Nom Nom [Name Not Final] (2 points) When you Ferocious Bite a target at or below 25% health, you have a 50/100% chance to instantly refresh the duration of your Rip on the target.
Shamans: Wrathful Totems [Name Not Final] (1 point) Causes your Fire totems to increase the spell power of party and raid members within 100 yards by 10%.
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If you had planned to spend the summer mowing lawns and scraping together enough dough to attend BlizzCon this fall, you’re already too late. After going on sale this past Wednesday, all 20,000 tickets to the event were snatched up quickly. ZAM reports that the first batch of tickets on Wednesday were sold out in 23 minutes, and the second batch on Saturday in 28 minutes. The official Blizzard Store page simply notes now that “BlizzCon 2010 Tickets Currently Unavailable.”
This is certainly no surprise considering that past BlizzCons proved to be one of the most popular conventions of the year, with ticket scalping at a premium. Currently, some desperate Blizzard fans are combing through eBay for scalped tickets, although high prices and Blizzard asking eBay to crack down on such sales make this a difficult alternative. Blizzard is also requiring photo ID this year to match tickets as a way to limit these transactions.
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Every Wednesday, Fox Van Allen locks the well-meaning but misguided Dawn Moore in his basement so he can once again take control of Spiritual Guidance. It’s hard work undoing all the “good” that Dawn inflicted on his poor readers the weekend before, but he sure does his best. Hugs and sunshine are out. Plague and pestilence are in.
Let’s face it: We’ve all got Cataclysm fever. We’ve seen the images from the alpha. We’ve Googled it. We’ve YouTubed it. We already have the name of our worgen picked out. We want to live it.
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New around here? See all our collected tips, tricks and how-to’s for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide.
It ain’t over ’til it’s over — and in World of Warcraft, it ain’t over ’til every player has used the last resurrection cooldown and trick. Death is far from permanent in Azeroth, and over time, the available methods of resurrection (”rezzing”) have multiplied. Some classes can resurrect only outside of combat; one class can rez even in the heat of battle. Some classes have rezzes that work only on themselves. Now that the dungeon finder makes running instance groups so easy for a leveling player, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with all the alternatives for coming back to life. There’s a specific etiquette that’s risen up around rezzes, as well, so take note and don’t get caught looking like a chump.
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Blizzard poster Turrit announced yesterday that free realm transfers are being made available to address faction imbalance and overpopulation issues on the following PvE realms:
Aggramar (Alliance only)
Area 52 (Horde only)
Blackhand
Hellscream
Stormrage (Alliance only)
Thrall (Horde only)
Undermine
Destination realm:
Drak’thul
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Final Fantasy XI’s Chains of Promathia was a bit polarizing for the players — you either love it or hate it. No one can argue that it raised the bar considerably on the game’s cutscenes and storytelling, but it was also restrictive in many ways and limited player access to new zones (which were the only non-storyline elements added). It’s a sign of its nature that there are still many players who want to finish the storyline, even though the option has been there for several years. Lucky for players, the June version update is addressing that.
Although the removal of level caps was mentioned in passing at VanaFest 2010, the most recent news gives a specific list of what areas will be affected — all four Promyvion areas, Pso’Xja, Riverne Site #A01 and #B01, the Phomiuna Aqueducts, and the Sacrarium. The announcement goes on to confirm that mission battlefields will also be uncapped, and the monster layout and strength will be adjusted in some of the areas to facilitate characters at 75 and above. It promises to spark new interest in Final Fantasy XI’s most unique expansion and the corresponding zones, which is good news for anyone in the game.
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