Archive for the World of Warcraft Category

Rog on MMOROG has an interesting discussion of World of Warcraft’s old raid content. Some of the original Azeroth raid content has excellent encounters and interesting world of warcraft story-lines, but adding another ten levels to the game hasn’t made them any more accessible to more casual players. “But Elizabeth,” I hear you say, “I’m level 70 now! Surely Ragnaros, in his puny level 60 dungeon, holds no real challenge!” But that, dear readers, is where you go wrong, because raid bosses do not have set levels — all of them have a skull displayed where their level should be, which means that their level is 3 levels above the highest level player in the instance, and that no matter how many levels are added to the game, they’ll always be tough fights - and you do not have to buy all the wow gold you farm there. While this adds some sense of realism to the world (from a lore point of view, Nefarian, son of Deathwing, should never be soloable, duoable, or even 5-man-able — though his smaller sister Onyxia is getting there), it also means that more casual wow players will never be able to check out some of the game’s coolest content and  earn their wow gold there. Any above-your-level boss requires some decent +hit wow gear (maybe you can get it only by buying wow gold) for you to be able to touch them, and if you’re geared out well enough to tumble with level 73 monsters, why not just do existing WoW raid content?

From my perspective, the old Azeroth WoW raid content was great fun and should be as accessible to players as possible. It’s not like a level 70, even wearing only quest rewards (wow gold) and green drops, is going to be getting any gear upgrades from Molten Core or Blackwing Lair, so why not let them have the chance to experience the content for fun?

8 Parts armor sets
No more of them are scheduled atm. (Anyway, I think they will replace the 8 parts sets in level 80 -Naxxramas with 5 parts and tons of non-set items) Blizzard’s Bornakk:

The problem with a big 8 piece armor set is that it may cause someone to ignore an item that would be great for them as they are focused on the specific items that will get their set bonus. With the 5 piece sets, players are able to mix and match pieces to fit their style of play better or even help out for the specific encounter they are at. At this time we are happy with the itemization that the 5 piece armor sets offer and plan to continue implementing them.

Arena Season 3
In all probability the next WoW Arena Season will start with the release of the Patch 2.3 , but anyway it could change. Blizzard’s Drysc:

We haven’t posted word on this yet. We would like to give at least a couple of weeks advance notice, but giving notice on the timing is contingent on several factors. We’ll do our best though.

Q: Is season 3 currently scheduled for the same patch as 2.3 or not?
A: That’s the last I heard. Again, that could change.

Bigger bags in WotLK
It seems as if Blizzard has worked on a solution for new bags. Hopefully, WoW Gold farming would be much easier then… Drysc again:

We’re mindful of space concerns, and increasing the base backpack size is certainly a possibility for the future. We have other space and storage increases currently in the works for release before Wrath though, and we’ll be talking about those soon.

Q: Can you give us those Super Backpacks from the PTR the 36 slotters i still has space issues even using those XD.
A: Probably not. But don’t worry, there’s better stuff in the works.

Updates to the Tigole interview, since yesterday the full interview is available here.

Updates In Short on wow gold blog:

  • “Arthas is actually luring the Horde and the Alliance and try to pit them against each other. The reason: Arthas wants to bring them into his hold and take them under his power. He has things that cannot be defeated with his current sort of mindless, brainless minions, and he needs you”.
  • Right now they are thinking any weapon can be inscribed by the Death Knight, but they might do some Death Knight specific weapons at a later stage.
  • Ulduar is going to be one of the raid instances.
  • There will be several instances taking place in Azjol’Nerub, an underground zone populated by the Nerubian (spider race).
  • Malygos, the blue dragon, will be a singular raid encounter (Onyxia like) in the Nexus (located in the center of Coldarra).
  • Naxxramas is going to be retuned for level 80, 25 people, and make it the easiest raid instance for 25 people in Northrend - easy raides = cheap wow gold
  • Alterac Valley is being changed to correct some balance issues, also they are not planning to introduce siege weapons in AV. Damn, I would have loved siege weapons in wow
  • They got an Azshara battleground called “Azshara crater”, they halted development of that and they might go back to that at a future date. Why die they halt it - not enough wow gold to get there?
  • “The Nexus is going to be the dungeon in Borean Tundra. It has 3 wings to it.” That instance looks like a floating cone of rings, so it cant really be categorized as a winged dungeon:

* A 5-man instance for level 70-71 (Ice Caverns )
* A level 80 instance that leads to the last wing and raid instance.
* The third and last wing is a 25-man raid instance where you will fight Malygos.

Enough world of warcraft gold for each level I would say.

  • Mal’ganis will be the final boss of the Cavern of Time instance: Stratholme.
  • Sunwell Plateau will come in the patch after Zul’Aman, and Sunwell Plateau will feature a 6 boss 25 person raid dungeon (a lot of wow gold) along with a 5 person normal and heroic instance.
  • “the Sunwell is the place where Arthas marched the Scourge through Quel’Thalas and raze Quel’Thalas, raze Silvermoon City and then trashed the Sunwell. Well our storyline’s gonna turn back as someone, a famous character, I can’t say who yet, re-ignites the sunwell and summons Kil’jaeden back for the players to fight.”

The latest chapter of the Rise of the Lich King story “Shattering the Frozen Throne” is now available on the official Wotlk site, you can read about it here.

Jeff Kaplan aka Tigole in an Interview with Curse:

Nexus
In the Borean Tundra (2nd starting zone with Howling Fjord) there will be the Nexus. Here you will be able to find the blue dragons splitted between 3 instances :

  • A level 70-71, 5 players instance (Ice Caverns).
  • A level 80 instance that will let you fight on/against big magical rings that float above the grounds (o_O)
  • A rift in the open sky where you can fight against Malygos in a 25 person raid. (Like Gruul or Onyxia, it will be a rather short raid)

Dustwallow Marsh
A new goblin town will be added to Dustwallow Marsh with new quests may be even before Wrath of the Lich King - many new quests to get more wow gold.

Faster leveling for Twinks
In a future patch (also before the expansion), levels 20 to 60 will have the experience required per-level xp reduced and quests will yield 30% more experience.  This may help china farmers actually. Farming for wow gold starts with level 60. When blizzard bans all the accounts of the wow gold farmers they will need less time to level up new characters so the price for world of warcraft gold should stay at a more constant level.

Heroic Badges
A long with the tons of new cool items added to the heroic badge vendor in patch 2.3, they’re considering the possibility to add armor sets as heroic badges rewards. Only wow gold wont help you here^^

Utgarde Keep
The first dungeon of World of Warcraft WotLK will have two wings. One being Utgarde Keep, a level 70 instance for 5 players. The second one is Utgarde Pinnacle, this one will be level 80 for 5 players. Both instances will have heroic modes.

Inscription profession
They don’t want a profession to just do spell improvements like +100 damage, instead they want it to be something that let you increase the radius of your frost nova, or increase the root timer of the spell, etc …

Hunters

  • Hunters may get a “woodworking” profession in the future, to let them create arrows. (But it will be released much later, don’t expect it for WotLK)
  • They’re trying to improve the desirability of hunters in arenas, one of the idea is to give them a mortal strike-like shot that reduces the healing effectiveness on the target.