Voice chat latest news and some other news

We have the exact list that will have the voice chat enabled on patch day. The following realms will be the pilot study and then each week new lists will be opened up to the voice chat. The first set are these from enchish and german realms.

 

English: Earthen Ring Ravencrest Runetotem Shadowmoon Shadowsong Shattered Hand Silvermoon Skullcrusher Spinebreaker Stormrage Stormreaver Stormscale Terenas Thunderhorn Turalyon

German: Aegwynn Alexstrasza Alleria Antonidas Baelgun Blackhand Destromath Die Silberne Hand Eredar Frostmourne Frostwolf Gorgonnash Gul'dan Kel'Thuzad Kil'Jaeden Madmortem Malfurion Mal'Ganis Mannoroth Nathrezim Nozdormu Perenolde Proudmoore Zirkel des Cenarius Zuluhed

 

For further info you can visit here:. (Info)

Further more the Death knight will be made available to all races currently in the game. The death knight will be a new class just as There is Human Mage there could be Human Death knight, as an example. The revered reputation to get heroic keys and attunement will not change. the conflagrate bug will be fixed in patch 2.2 As it is the icon is still being displayed and conflag is not being consumed at all.

 

As a last note, at some point in the future we should see Surnames as well. However this could take long to implement :)

 

 

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Daily blues posts.

20% of all trojans on the internet are aimed at WOW. This was revealed yesterday by Kapersky labs where they Produced a list with the Top games targetted by trojans. Wow came second place with Lineage II coming first. As a reminder I would advice a good Antivirus program to stay safe with your wow accound. At the moment I have Avast which is free and updates daily. I got hacked once by a keylogger and believe me - it was a painful fortnight sending emails to blizzard to settle my account back.

 

There will be an increase in backpack size and bag space. Not long ago there was the rumour that players will have an Extra bag for resistance armour sets. The items that can be put on like Onyxia Neck  etc will not be considered as keys. Most probably Season 3 Arena is scheduled for patch 2.3

 

The 8 piece armour set (like Naxxramas) is probably never to be seen again. In a way it is a good approach because players would definitely choose to get an set item instead of a random thus making the raid grow stronger slower. Blizz are happy with the 5 piece armour set and I also vote for that. More over the set bonus is at 4 items so you have a larger leeway to mix and match.

 

Voice chat feature will not go live for every realm on patch day 2.2 Instead they will selectively implement it on some realms and open it up on furthere week maintenances.

The initial set of realms that will have voice chat enabled on patch day: Aerie Peak, Altar of Storms, Alterac Mountains, Andorhal, Anetheron, Anvilmar, Archimonde, Arygos, Black , Dragonflight, Blackwing Lair, Dalaran, Dalvengyr, Deathwing, Demon Soul, Dentarg, Doomhammer, Duskwood, Executus, Gnomeregan, Haomarush, Icecrown, Jaedenar, Kel'Thuzad, Khadgar, Lethon, Mal'Ganis, Norgannon, Onyxia, Scilla, Sentinels, Steamwheedle Cartel, Tanaris, The Venture Co, Thrall, Turalyon, Uldaman, Undermine, Ysera, Ysondre, Zuluhed.
There are no plans for classic realms in the future. classic realms are servers that players can only progress till lvl 60 and don't raid further than naxx.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blizzard third title codename Hydra

Starcraft II was codenamed Medusa and there is rumour about what the new game would be that has it's codename Hydra. Most probably they are working on another MMO project or a possible WOW 2. Also Blizz is hiring for it's next generation MMO. The channeled spells are working as intended another blue post explained. He argued that when a fireball has to be cast one needs to be in line of sight but with channeled spells they intended to give a bit more leeway cause of PVE. Otherwise players using channelling spells would be penalised when compared to cast spells.

 

There will be also be new PVP mounts for Blood elves and for Dranei . As always no ETA was announced. The WSG and AB battlegrounds (not so popular nowadays) because as said they are symettrical. AV is a different story however because there are many exploits to be tackled. We will soon see a revamp in AV with patch 2.2 or possibly 2.3

Release of Patch 2.2

Patch 2.2 will not go live 13 September 2007. This was revealed yesterday late night in the warcraft forums. It seems that some blue admin is having fun writing the phrase "It's not tomorrow" and then warcraft players write a 12 page topic full of moaning posts. Some of them just moan about the fact that the patch is always delayed by weeks and some even explore the philosophy of Warcraft Delays and False promises on ETAs.

 

Some other Blue arguments that this is not a question of keeping people in the dark but not giving ETAs simply because they do not want to give false promises. He says that things can happen and ETAs are not respected. Indeed things DO ALWAYS happen at blizz :)

 

There will be tweaks for WoTLK but no radical changes. Blizz do not want to alter the UI because many players are accustomed to the old UI anyway. If they need to change it all there are addons on the topic. At blizz con they also talked about the FREE damage to healers (I actually need that for my priest) and this will be simply a fact of so much +healing will be also an amount of +dmg. Obviously the +dmg will be a lot less otherwise healers will run around with +2k dmg :)

 

 

More 2.2 changes

Ashtongue Talisman of Lethality now works with Kidney Shot for rogues and the Night elves shoulders have been shrinked drastically.

 

Wood working should be a future crafting skill but it is definitely not imminent. Some changes about evocation have also been made to prevent occasional timing issues which returned less mana than it should.

Possible change on character transfer cooldown

At the current moment you need at least 3 months playing in a server before being able to transfer your character to a different realm. There is the possibility about changing this to 1 month which on one hand would give players more freedom to move and more income to Blizz - but at the other will disrupt the normal behaviour and progress of guilds more. Everyone knows how hard it is to get a core number of players and progress through content. Some classes more than others like Tanks and healers are much cared for in guilds and having one or two leaving the guild at any time to transfer to  a new server could prove a big step back to the guild progress. From my point of view in my guild we lost 2 main tanks this week. We are trying Kael thalas and you can imagine how hard it is to train the new tanks their roles.

Season 3 weapons, quivers and pvp titles

Most probably they will lower the weapons rating so that there is not so much difference between 1300 rating team and 1800 rating teams. This is a bit awkward because the ladder is there for competition and once you work hard you should obtain a good weapon. Blizzard is concerned that some people just join arena teams to get the weapon and then disband and use it for PVE - which for me is more than fair because you worked hard in pvp. On the contrary one that Raid All week for a good PVP weapon should not be allowed to use it in PVP ?

 

Something about the the hunters quiver bag slot problem is being discussed at blizz atm.

 

New PVP titles will be introduced in the game at some point, because at the moment the Gladiator etc titles will not be enough for the Arena Season 3. Also more tabards will be added further more to the game - quest tabards and also crafted ones.

Warcraft Manga: The Sunwell Trilogy and the Sunwell Plateau Dungeon

The article at http://www.blizzplanet.com/content/727/ gives a very detail account of the story unfolding with the new Sunwell Plateau instances, to be introduced in patch 2.4

 

Blizz Planet explain why the blood elves chose to return to the sunwell plateau and that the final boss will be Kil'jaeden.

 

Back in time the high elves created the sunwell from a vial taken from the well of eternity. In Knaak's trilogy we see how Sargeras was defeated by Malfurion, Illidian and their conterparts but Illidian takes some vials from the well of eternity with a good target in mind. However when he pours a vial into the lake atop the mountain, the other elves see this as a threat to future peace and stabiity and turn up against him. Already traitor to sargeras Illidian feels no ties to his people neither, now that he has done so much to rescue them. With his natural eyesight lost and with a greater sight gained from sargeras powers, he goes mad and secludes himself in the Black Temple (story continues in  BC)

 

Now with the Sunwell plateau blizzard continues on with the sage of the blood elves and their need of a new home, promised by Kel Thalas and never given. Malygos also comes into the equation with him gone mad after 10 000 years of a lonely life secluded in his lair. He no longer protects magic, a role once given to him by the Titans.Possibly we will find Dalaran floating above Northrend fighting the blue dragonflight and plotting to destroy the Lich King once and for all.

Upcoming patches and timeline.

Patch 2.2 is the upcoming patch (long time awaited too). This patch will feature mainly the voice chat and item and enchanting changes. The Zulaman patch will be 2.3 as well as guild banks. After that we willl see Sunwell Plateau in patch 2.4. the ETA for patch 2.2 is Early September 2007 but this could vary by weeks, the number of which is unknown but surely cumulative.

 

A guy called Jonathan Driscoll coded an online database that people could use to search AH items directly from their browsers. Time will tell if this feature is useful or not. Certainly it is cool.

Alterac Valley changes

As it stands right now, AV is the queen of PVP rushes. At the start both Alliance and Horde rush to the other side to cap a GY as quickly as possible and then push on to the general. Most of the time there are like 5  - 8 that try to capture towers but that is not a necessity. Horde as a general rule kill Belinda straight away as it happens to be on their path but few Allies bother with  Galvanagar, which btw can be killed with a 5 man group.

 

There are plans to change this situation to encourage people participate and PVP more. the npc locations will be changed and also change terrain exploits that make players advance faster. Some of the earlier NPC's will give less honor when killed while the end ones wil reward more. Also they are increasing the amount of honor gained when a side win the battle. The resurrection system of spawning back in the starting point will be reworked.

 

As AV was in the beginning we used to spend 5-6 hours in a good fight and it was nice but long. As it is now sometimes battles are won in 10 mins and few bother to kill the other faction and that makes it a boring grind of honor, particularly on AV weekends. Somehow players from opposing side seem to mutually agree not to engage in combat so that they will get the most honor in the least time, no matter how.

 

A way in between must be find to revive AV.

 

 

 

 

More information on Patch 2.2

Nothrend:

Utgard Keep will have several wings and feature the popular heroic version as well. The Nexus will be very much like Hell fire peninsula Instance with Malygos as a last short 25 man raid much like Magtheridon.

The New PVP zone with siege weapons and destructible buildings , Lake Winter Grasp, will feature siege weapons that are specific to an objective and event rather than items owned by players.

 

Legendaries in Wotlk

Legendaries will be powerful enough weapons that players would acheive a very great accomplishment but not a one off weapon that never be replaced. As it stands right now Thunderfury is very much popular  with tanks still and very little players got their hands on the Atiesh. Also There are plans to put in more legendaries in the game. They will be more available to players not as it stand now really impossible to own one.

 

Looks and new features.

There will be barber shops that will offer new hairstyles, tatoos, colours and earrings. The player will have a very much larger degree of changing the toon.

 

Level 1 to 60 will be made easier to go through. As it stands right now players find it very slow to level as opposed to Burning crusade. From lvl 60 to lvl 70 it is fast and enjoyable leveling with a story that progresses. They will revamp old zones, add quests adding COT old stratholme and also a new 10 man dungeon still to be announced. Sunwell plateau will be released before Wotlk as a 25 man raid with 6 bosses as well as a 5 man instance.

 

With Wotlk we should see another 2 -3 10 man instance given the Karazhan formula is so popular. Players with an old PC fear not. There are no plans of new graphics engine etc. they are only tweaking the current one.

 

More daily quests will be added and a new aspect of randomisation should make them less repetitive to do.  With regards to guild banks they are still pretty much as last interviewed. Most importantly is that there will be an online website that everyone can see who is donating and who is withdrawing , for transparency and fairness purposes.