Good news, everyone! Blizzard just posted the updated schedule for Icecrown Citadel encounter testing on the Patch 3.3 PTR. Looks like the US gets first crack at taking down Saurfang Jr., while the EU gets the exclusive on reenacting a Spin Doctors song.
The full schedule is listed below. Bear in mind that testing times are subject to change with or without notice due to build changes, PTR stability, capricious developer whims, and So You Think You Can Dance results.
EU Servers
Thursday, November 12 at 19:30 CET – Blood-Queen Lana’thel, Rotface
Friday, November 13 at 19:30 CET – Blood Princes, Professor Putricide
Saturday, November 14 at 19:30 CET – Lord Marrowgar
US Servers
Wednesday, November 11 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Lord Marrowgar, Festergut
Thursday, November 12 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Deathbringer Saurfang
Friday, November 13 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Blood-Queen Lana’thel, Icecrown Gunship Battle
Saturday, November 14 at 4PM EST / 1 PM PST – Sindragosa
Kocherberg World of Warcraft patches, Wrath of the Lich King
The WoW TCG has just finished up their year with the World Championships, but apparently they’re not sitting back on their laurels — they’ve just sent word that their Realm Championships will be going down November 14-15, 2009, in cities around the world like “San Diego, Philadelphia, Helsinki, Manchester (England), Singapore and Melbourne.” These are invite-only tournaments, but they’re always accompanied by events that are open to the public, including lots and lots of TCG playing, giveaways and door prizes, and sometimes even special realms of the online game set up for players to join. If you’ve never seen a TCG event and one is headed to your city, it’s worth checking out.
Additionally, the TCG folks have outlined their plans for 2010 over on their website, and it sounds like it’ll be a busy year. They’re kicking things off with the Scourgewar release, including the TCG loot of the mini-mounts (finally, a pony!), the Tuskarr Kite, and a Spectral Tiger Cub. And later in the year, you can look forward to a Naxxramas dungeon deck, another expansion called Wrathgate (with likely more in-game loot to go after), and finally, an Icecrown Citadel raid deck release. Should be an exciting 2010 for the trading card game — we’ll definitely be watching for that new expansion and the loot items due out with it.
MMOvalue World of Warcraft wow-tcg, Wrath of the Lich King
I like this post over at Tank Like a Girl that raises the question of just when your guild should make the big step to move on up the raiding ranks. Just last night, my very casual guild headed into Ulduar for the first time, and even though we’d never been in there before (we’ve been doing Naxx, OS, and EoE with some regularity, though when I say we’re casual, I mean we’re really casual), I think we did it at exactly the right time. We made it up to Kologarn — enough to know that we didn’t go in too early (and come out empty-handed, unable to down any bosses) or too late (and breeze through the place).
Now obviously, every guild is in a different place raiding-wise (and most guilds are way ahead of ours, I know), and TLaG is dealing with a different dilemma: whether to take down Yogg-Saron before moving on to ToC or not. And in her case, she’s got the added “gotta catch ‘em all” thinking. But it’s a tough thing as a raid leader — you don’t want to move on past content you know you can do eventually, and progression always beckons. In the end, you’ve got to figure out what’s best for the guild. And of course, the content’s not going anywhere — if you can’t drop a certain boss this week, there’s always the next raid reset.
Catalans World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King
One of the best changes in patch 3.2.2 comes from Trial of the Champion, the Argent Tournament’s 5-man. If you’ve run the place more than once, you’re probably really sick of all of the fanfare that precedes the actiony bits of the instance. Do we really need to listen to an announcer rattle off everyone’s names every single time we step into the ring? As of Tuesday’s patch, no. We don’t. When you talk to Arelas Brightstar or Jaeren Sunsworn, you now have the option to tell him to stop yammering on and just get the show started already. To be more specific, the dialogue option is, “I am ready. However, I’d like to skip the pageantry.” I think we can all appreciate that.
Trial of the Champion polish also comes in the form of the first encounter working a little differently. How many of you said ‘forget this’ and started running out of the instance after you won the mounted phase, just to work around all of the odd little bugs? Most of you, probably. There’s good news on that front, too: You don’t need to run out anymore. The battle ends after you win the mounted portion. The NPCs reform over by the gate and you can start the next phase of the encounter at your leisure. I’m pretty happy about that, because I was getting a little tired of Mokra being a big pansy and not getting off of his mount after we won fair and square. Typical cowardly orc, you know?
Castres World of Warcraft instances, Wrath of the Lich King
Once again, our friend Boubouille over at MMO Champion has been a busy boy. With the surprise announcement that the PTRs were up for the testing of the WoW Anniversary Patch (aka patch 3.2.2), he’s been digging deep into the patch files and guess what he found?
Well the big news is aptly summed up in the image above. Yes, it’s the Onyxia mount (though not actually the Broodmother herself). A picture really does say a thousand words, doesn’t it? However that’s not all he’s found by datamining. There are yet more mounts, including a Spectral Tiger cub! I suspect this little cub may well be from a future TCG expansion. After all, where did this little guy’s parent come from? Ditto the rather awesome Tuskarr kite.
On top of that there are some regular mounts in the form of a Little White Stallion and yet another dino-centric mount, this time a Little Ivory Raptor. Boubouille also found the Onyxia Whelping, which is the pet everyone who logs in during November will recieve (think the Blizzard Bear). Ain’t it a cutie?
However the oddest thing he uncovered was a collection of Mohawk themed spells. These relate to the now memorable TV advert in which Mr. T creates his own class, the infamous Night Elf Mohawk. From the spell descriptions, I can’t help thinking this is not some hint towards a new class in the next expansion but, rather, will be some kind of NPC or quest-related summonable pet. Either way, it sounds awesome.
dreadmage World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King
The Egotistical Priest has a good series of posts up attempting to somehow quantify whether Wrath has been an overall success or not. Of course, it’s definitely a financial success, but has the game’s second expansion delivered what both players and Blizzard expected it to? Vonya sets out to find out in what has turned into a three part post: you can find parts one and two on the site now, and part three is set to come out tomorrow.
So far, the answer is yes: while the area of Tradeskills is noted as less than a success (it seems to me, too, that tradeskills had more variety and options in Burning Crusade than their current state in Wrath, though that might be because we’re only partway through the expansion cycle), everything else is noted as a win for Blizzard: they’ve really beefed up questing, balance has been intriguing since Wrath (and even if one class has rubbed you wrong, consider how many players came running back with the expansion patch to re-try their class), and of course, Achievements have (predictably) brought the game to new levels of addiction and given players of all kinds new things to do.
Vonya still plans to tackle instancing and raiding as the other two criteria for Wrath’s success (and there are probably a few other ways you could test it — lore? setting?), but by the reasoning so far, Wrath is a win no matter how you slice it. Blizzard has outdone themselves with the second expansion — the only question is where they’ll go from here.
admin World of Warcraft Blizzard, Expansions, raiding, Wrath of the Lich King