Author Archive

More pre-Cata spoilers, so therefore another split post. Read on to see what else Gav has seen in the events that will lead up to the Cataclysm.

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It’s the Brewfest! I stopped by the Brewfest outside of Ironforge with Gav this morning and did all of the available quests. They included catching Wolpertingers, slaying Pink Elekks, and racing Rams around to deliver beer. I also slayed Coren Direbrew, who was an absolute wuss. We showed up, the tank attacked him and we DPS’d him down. No big deal. The fun part was that I got Direbrew’s Remote. I immediately summoned my personal borer and went to the Grim Guzzler.

I’d never been there, so a couple of nice goblins got the band L80ETC to rock out for me.

That just made my morning.

The PTR is now host to the first pre-Cataclysm event right now, and I sent Gav to check them out and report back what he found.

This post, no bones about  it, includes spoilers from the Cataclysm pre-release events. If you are averse to spoilers, don’t read the full article. If you don’t mind, click through to hear what I saw.

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At 6:05 EDT, the World of Warcraft launcher gave me this:

I don’t know what it is yet, but I wager – due to it’s art – that it has something to do with the upcoming Cataclysm update (which I will expand upon in a future post). I’ll keep you updated if anything comes of this.

The latest PTR patch includes a rest ability for boars and bears. This ability increases your pet’s happiness some, but also makes them inactive for 15 seconds. I was aware that bears had this power, but when I took Lug out on the new PTR and Pig refused to attack – opting to take naps instead – I researched the ability to find out that boars share it as well. Why? I know not. It was also set to auto cast, which was what brought on Pig’s sleepy demeanor.

So hunters, take note. Boars and bears are lazy, and you need to tell them they can’t take naps mid-battle. Lesson learned.

We take a break from our PTR coverage to discuss what’s going with Gavelier on Live.

I’m not going to open this post with the trite pirate speak, but it is Pirates Day in Azeroth. You can speak to any commoner to get a pirate costume for a short while or speak to Dread Captain DeMeza in Booty Bay to get a 12 hour costume. Make sure you visit DeMeza to get your holiday achievement.

You may notice that I’m going ‘sword and board’ in the above pic, rather then wielding my usual Tyrannical Beheader. That’s obviously because I’d been off playing in a PvP scenario. This time, it was my first excursion into Warsong Gulch. That’s a cozy little battleground, ain’t it? I took my Dread Corsair  buff to the battleground (after waiting 9 minutes!) and had a great round. Sure it was mostly because my team was awesome and the horde seemingly gave up towards the end of the match, but I still had a good round.

I also (because we blitzed the hell out of the place) got a couple of achievements: Warsong Expedience and Warsong Perfection. I say the horde gave up at the end because after pitched fighting around the middle of the zone on our first two flag captures, they were nowhere to be seen on our third run. We all just tailed the flag carrier into our base without seeing a single hordie.  I never died, which was weird. I got hit hard a few times, but never enough to drop me below 50% health. I credit our healers (a couple of paladins and a priest) and my stocking up on resilience with stuff like my PvP armor and the flask I quaffed. I did crap damage but was in the middle of everything for 19 honorable kills. I was using my Seal of Justice, so that may have contributed to my low damage output (that and I don’t have a decent one-hander) Aw well.

The new PTR patch is live on the PTR server now, and I’ve logged an hour or so on it to see what’s changed. For one, the new water art is there, and it’s a looker. Everyone was in consensus: it actually looks like water now. People were chiming in over local chat constantly to rave about the new water art. I guess it was a success, Blizzard.

Also up is reforging. In it, you can change a percentage of secondary stats on your gear (i.e. not strength, stamina or the like) to a new, more useful stat, like hit rating, crit, or haste. You can see here me reforging my Teldrassil Protector (my crummy prot-PvP axe) to have a higher crit rating in lieu of parry. I also reforged my leg armor to take advantage of the new Mastery stat. I really like this feature as it means that if you find gear that’s good but not quite what you need, you can tweak it to fit you better.

That’s all I’ve seen new so far in the ‘new, improved’ 4.0.1 PTR. I’ll come back and post more if the situation calls for it.

The new PTR patch is on the download now. I just wish I could tell you what was in it! The PTR downloader is showing everyone the beta patch notes which aren’t the same as the PTR patch notes.  I’ll try and get the real PTR notes for you when I can.

Blizzard has announced officially that Worgen will not get racial mounts, and instead will have Running Wild as their mount substitute. 

[bluepost] Running Wild is indeed the new racial "mount" for worgen. Functionally the ability works exactly like a mount. This does mean the worgen are not bringing faction mounts to the table which other Alliance races can access. This is also of course very different from the original Plainsrunning implemented for taurens. We have no plans to try and bring that ability back in any form.

Ultimately, we feel Running Wild fits very well with the nature of the worgen race. Rather than getting a physical mount, they get down and sprint on all fours. When you’re playing a worgen, it just feels awesome. 🙂 (source) [/bluepost]

This is fine, except that now Alliance players are short mounts for mount-based achievements, giving Horde players an advantage there. For example, Leading the Cavalry will be harder for Alliance players. We’ll see how this pans out.

According to Zarhym, it looks like there will be a huge new patch on the PTR in the near future. What will it contain? No one knows just yet.

[bluepost]We plan to apply a new build to the 4.0.1 public test realms soon. In order to accomplish our development goals while pushing this next patch, testers will be required to re-patch and re-download all of the PTR client data. This should happen automatically and you can verify this by checking the Launcher when it begins downloading new data. The progress bar should be empty and in the red (Setup) section. (source) [/bluepost]