WoW: Wrath of the Lich King Release Date Announced 281
Mini-Geek and many others tipped news that Blizzard has announced the release date for Wrath of the Lich King , World of Warcraft's second expansion. It will be in stores on November 13th in the US and Europe. They've also released details about the contents of the Collector's Edition. Wrath will be preceded by a large content patch, which will expand the talent trees and include many of the gameplay changes set for the expansion (including the consolidation of spell damage and healing into 'spellpower,' achievements, and a new profession). The patch was installed on the public test realm yesterday, and the current patch notes are available.
First Quest! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:patch notes? (Score:3, Informative)
Test Patch Notes Disclaimer: The test realm patch notes only apply to features that exist on the public test realms. We provide these patch notes to players who wish to know what features and changes exist in the test environment in order to more effectively test these features.
To learn more about the Public Test Realm, visit our Test Realm Page.
World of Warcraft PTR Patch 2.4.3
The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/ [worldofwarcraft.com]
The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html [worldofwarcraft.com]
General
* Dispel effects will no longer attempt to remove effects that have 100% dispel resistance.
* Parry Rating, Defense Rating, and Block Rating: Low-level players will now convert these ratings into their corresponding defensive stats at the same rate as level 34 players.
* Haris Pilton has launched a new line of bags and jewelry. Check her out in the World's End Tavern!
* Mounts at 30?! Yes, it's true: Apprentice Riding and mounts are now available at level 30. Training costs 35 gold.
* Blood Elf flightmasters outside of Silvermoon City and Tranquillien have traded in their bats for glorious fire-breathing dragonhawks.
* Alcohol cooldowns have been rolled into Drinks: All 10-second cooldowns have been removed and replaced with the 1-second Drink cooldown.
* Numerous flying non-combat pets have had their flight height modified to no longer skim along the ground: captured firefly, dragonhawk hatchlings, moths, owls, parrots, phoenix hatchling, spirit of summer, sprite darter, and tiny sporebat.
* Nether Ray Fry (a non-combat pet) is now available from the Skyguard Quartermaster. This requires an Exalted reputation with Sha'tari Skyguard.
* Equipping an item will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress.
* Placing an item in your bank will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress if the spell was cast by that item.
* You can no longer move backwards to stop racing rams.
* When a stun wears off, the creature that was stunned will prefer the last target with the highest threat, versus the current target.
Druids
* Barkskin: The cost of this spell is now reduced by Tree of Life Form.
Hunters
* Growl: Pets will no longer generate additional threat from this ability based on attack power buffs cast on them. Attack power buffs on their master will still indirectly increase the threat generated by the pet's Growl.
* Pet Aggro: Pets will no longer generate threat immediately from being summoned.
* Scare Beast: This spell will now be limited correctly to one target.
Mages
* Frost Armor, Ice Armor, Mage Armor, and Molten Armor are no longer Magic effects and cannot be dispelled.
Paladins
* Greater Blessing of Light Rank 1: This spell will no longer overwrite Greater Blessing of Light Rank 2.
* Summon Warhorse is now available at level 30.
Priests
* Mind Vision: This effect will now be cancelled immediately on targets who use an Invisibility Potion or Gnomish Cloaking Device.
* Spiritual Healing: Ranks 2-5 of this talent will no longer prevent refreshing Prayer of Mending.
Rogues
* Cheat Death: This talent has be
Re:That soon? (Score:4, Informative)
I've been playing WotLK on and off for 4 months now (alpha/beta) and seen it come a long ways in that time. When they first made it "public" only a few classes had new talents and abilities, some of which did not even work. Much of the landscape was unfinished (Dalaran barely even existed in the early patches).
They need to clean up some talents/abilities, finish some content, but there really isn't a whole lot to finish. At this point it will be a lot of tweaking of all the changes they made. They know they can't get it right the first time so they will try to make it as balanced as possible with 3.0.2. Within a week or 2, 3.0.3 will be out to fix the critical issues. They are close, and I think it will be ready to go.
Re:First Quest! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:patch notes? (Score:4, Informative)
PTR 3.0.2 Patch Notes
The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html [worldofwarcraft.com] The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/ [worldofwarcraft.com]
General
- All players will have their talent points reimbursed and will have access to new talents throughout their trees; this includes the 51-point talents. Several new spells and abilities have been added for all classes. Players will need to visit their class trainer to learn new spells. /spit off of the towers. .5 secs each to the cast time.
- The Kirin Tor have made their move and so has Dalaran.Please watch your step around the crater that has been left behind!
- The Barber Shop has been implemented and you can now visit one of the Barber Shops in the major cities to change your appearance. Be sure to get your Shave and a Haircut!
- The all new Achievement System has been implemented and the Achievement panel can be accessed via the interface. While many achievements are not retroactive, we have done our best to credit as many as possible. Gamemasters will not be able to grant achievements for past accomplishements.
- Stormwind Harbor is now open for business.
- New towers have been added outside Of Orgrimmar and in Tirisfal Glades. Crews are currently at work to establish a new Zeppelin route to Northrend for your travel pleasure. Please no
- A new entrance is now viewable in the Caverns of Time.
- Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating, and Haste Rating now modify both melee attacks and spells.
- Spell casting and spell channeling pushback has been changed to the following:
- When casting a spell:
+ The first and second hit will add
+ All hits after the second will have no effect.
- When channeling a spell:
+ The first and second hit reduces current duration by 25% of total duration each.
+ All hits after the second will have no effect.
- Spellpower:
+ All items and effects which grant bonuses to spell damage and spell healing are being consolidated into a single stat, Spellpower. This stat will appear with the same values found on items which grant âoeincreased spell damage and healingâ such as on typical Mage and Warlock itemization.
# For classes which do not heal, they should see no change in the character sheet other than new tooltip wording.
+ Healing characters will see their bonus healing numbers on the character sheet decrease, however, all healing spells have been modified to receive more benefit from spellpower than they received fr
Re:patch notes? -- PTR 3.0.2 Patch Notes (Score:2, Informative)
These are the Proper 3.0.2 patch notes...
PTR 3.0.2 Patch Notes
The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html [worldofwarcraft.com] The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/ [worldofwarcraft.com]
General
- All players will have their talent points reimbursed and will have access to new talents throughout their trees; this includes the 51-point talents. Several new spells and abilities have been added for all classes. Players will need to visit their class trainer to learn new spells. /spit off of the towers. .5 secs each to the cast time.
- The Kirin Tor have made their move and so has Dalaran.Please watch your step around the crater that has been left behind!
- The Barber Shop has been implemented and you can now visit one of the Barber Shops in the major cities to change your appearance. Be sure to get your Shave and a Haircut!
- The all new Achievement System has been implemented and the Achievement panel can be accessed via the interface. While many achievements are not retroactive, we have done our best to credit as many as possible. Gamemasters will not be able to grant achievements for past accomplishements.
- Stormwind Harbor is now open for business.
- New towers have been added outside Of Orgrimmar and in Tirisfal Glades. Crews are currently at work to establish a new Zeppelin route to Northrend for your travel pleasure. Please no
- A new entrance is now viewable in the Caverns of Time.
- Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating, and Haste Rating now modify both melee attacks and spells.
- Spell casting and spell channeling pushback has been changed to the following:
- When casting a spell:
+ The first and second hit will add
+ All hits after the second will have no effect.
- When channeling a spell:
+ The first and second hit reduces current duration by 25% of total duration each.
+ All hits after the second will have no effect.
- Spellpower:
+ All items and effects which grant bonuses to spell damage and spell healing are being consolidated into a single stat, Spellpower. This stat will appear with the same values found on items which grant âoeincreased spell damage and healingâ such as on typical Mage and Warlock itemization.
# For classes which do not heal, they should see no change in the character sheet other than new tooltip wording.
+ Healing characters will see their bonus healing numbers on the character sheet decrease, however, all healing spells have been modified to receive mo
Re:That soon? (Score:3, Informative)
They need to clean up some talents/abilities, finish some content, but there really isn't a whole lot to finish. At this point it will be a lot of tweaking of all the changes they made.
Right, talents, spells, etc. are all things that are not actually part of the expansion, which consists of new content (new zones, factions, items, mobs, and a class). Everything else will be addressed via the Test Server and the patch that will precede the expansion, kind of like The Burning Crusade. Now that the new patch is on the test realm, I'm sure the talents and things will come along nicely.
Should the talent changes and things like "spellpower" have issues, they'll know and push back the release date until some point after the patch goes out. Speaking of which, we can probably expect the 3.0 patch to go live around the end of Oct. early Nov. all things being equal.
Either way, the only thing that will be on the CD's in the box will be the content files. The mechanics will all be mostly implemented through the patch. Pretty common practice now-a-days.
Re:That soon? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not positive, but from what I've heard you have to do quite a bit of stuff before you're allowed to leave the Deathknight starting area. I've not played it, but most people I've talked to said that you'd generally make it from level 55 to level 58 before you could get out.
I may be mistaken there though.
Re:That soon? (Score:3, Informative)
You aren't. You have to do the intro quests to get out into good old EPL, much less the wider world. Until you finish the final quest in the chain, for example, all the NPCs in your capital cities are unfriendly to you, and jeer at you, throw things at you, etc.
Fortunately, given how they implemented the starting area, it shouldn't be that bad. Crowded, but manageable.
Re:That soon? (Score:3, Informative)
I was in both the Alpha and Beta of Burning Crusade. Even up to a couple weeks from release I thought they still had work to do, but they pulled it off pretty well. I see no reason why WotLK will be different. I would certainly expect there to be a patch after you install the retail game for obvious reasons.
Scalping by Major Store? (Score:2, Informative)
In a seemingly sleazy move, GameStop has added a $15 "Handling Fee" to the WotLK Collector's Edition. Not a SHIPPING and Handling fee mind you, shipping is extra. This is just straight grafting in the style of:
"Oh HO, it seems some of you WANT this product do you? And we're the only one with the Collector's Edition right now! Weeellp, the box is all the way over there on the shelf and I'm kinda tired... maybe an extra $15 could motivate me to lean over there and get it for you. If you don't, I'm sure someone else will pay extra for the LIMITED SUPPLY of these! You've made the right choice."
http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=72700 [gamestop.com]
Re:First Quest! (Score:2, Informative)
unfortunatly, most of that was lag ;)
but the OP is right, it is FANTASTICALLY well done. the fact that the game changes with you and unlike those lazy carpenters in Lakeshire, you can see the changes happening. Plus the fact you actually feel like a participant in the story rather than the observer. I especially like the reaction you get when you come to Stormwind and have to make your way to the king while being pelted by rotten fruit and eggs, and being threatened with hanging.
So far, Blizzard have out done themselves with this expansion, despite all the QQing about servers being down and beatings with the nerf hammer.