Beta News Round-Up
The Wrath of the Lich King beta servers are down for ‘maintenance’ as I type this. Now I was initially disappointed, because ‘maintenance’ usually doesn’t seem to include a new build, but Tigole says:
We’re going to try to patch today.
And what might be in this patch? Tigole again:
Icecrown, the exterior zone, will be shipped out with the expansion. Icecrown Citadel, the dungeon/raid experience, will be part of a future patch.
[...]
Storm Peaks will be in this patch. If it continues to crash the server, we’ll have to turn it off again.
Also included, more tuning of the leveling rate:
The XP tuning is getting closer. We’re going to do a minor adjustment in today’s patch. 10% faster.
In addition, pre-made characters became available for the beta realms yesterday, but it appears as if they weren’t quite supposed to be yet. Tigole (again!):
Actually, the premades being available on the existing realms was a mistake. They are being removed. There will be a specific premade realm.
The pre-made realm is called Murmur.
Okay, you say. That’s great. But Mania, where is the hunter info?! Well we haven’t seen much about this patch yet in terms of hunter pets, but there are some snippets for hunters. For that, let’s check in with class-meister Koraa.
We did a major bug fixing pass recently, a lot of the bugged talents and abilities should be fixed in an upcoming build (including Master’s Call).
Yes, it should interrupt now. If you find it not working please report so in the bug forum.
We’re going to be changing it so that procs/hits restore a % of your base mana each time you hit, rather than base it off your actual DPS/damage. While the return of mana based on your actual damage numbers do make the ability a lot of fun (at least I thought so!), it has bad scaling issues.
And on of my favorite responses from a Blizzard poster, when someone asked on the WotLK Beta Hunter forum where the blue posters had gone:
Busy working. Remember that we aren’t community managers.
Ouch! I’m sure he didn’t mean that the CMs are lazy slackers! Heh.
At any rate, this should be a fun and exciting new build. Let’s hope they get it up today!
(As a terribly mis-placed aside: I am really really loving Google Chrome.)
18 Comments
I’m not surprised that Icecrown is being added later. In fact, I’ve heard rumors that Arthas wouldn’t be seen for a few major content patches, so this is in line with that.
I can’t wait for the rest of this to come through.
That Aspect of the Viper thing has me worried. If it scales off of base mana… it’s not going to scale at all. Most troubling.
If Icecrown isn’t getting shipped with WotLK, it does present the possibility that they are ramping up for the final push to get the game out onto the shelves.
Ichigo,
This has been in the works like this for ages. The original interviews that I saw several months ago well before Beta and towards the start of Alpha mentioned that Arthas was going to be the final boss for this arc the same way that the Sunwell was the final boss spot for TBC, and that Arthas was not going to be included in the game until much later. Given that Icecrown is almost going to be a whole zone dedicated to the final push to get to Arthas, I’m not surprised that it isn’t included simply because of that. It’s sort of like Quel’Danas and Zul’Aman, but on a much larger scale. Zul’Aman’s structures were included in the orginal release of TBC, but the gates were shut.
This was intentional and not something last minute.
What I already posted here: Aspect of the viper with the 50% damage minus is really annoying, and switching as much as possible between 2 aspects (with additional delay for switching) is bullshit. And of course, I forgot to say: Kill command nerfed from 5 secs cooldown to 30 secs cooldown is also not very helpful. I already tested to fight with Lvl 70 against a deathknight Lvl 68 and I almost instantly lost.
So I am convinced the char inbalance is still there and I lost all hope that the hunter class will have at least a (balanced) chance against other (non caster) classes.
dangit, there goes my 80 premade druid, oh well lol, any idea how much longer itl be down?
Keep in mind though that Aspect of the Viper is moved to level 20, so scaling off of base mana is probably the easiest and most obvious way to make it work the same through all levels.
Cool. Waiting on the PTRs here n.n hope they come up soon.
..Alas, still no beta key though.
I like chrome as well though I have had issues with some scripts not working.
I’m excited about getting into the PTR and testing some of these changes! Lets see I need a Hyena, a carrion bird, and…
Of course AotV will “scale” on base mana (or rather, not scale), seeing as blizzard apparantly wants us to be permanently stuck in viper mode instead of doing DPS with hawk. Letting us stay in viper mode only briefly was a mistake they now say, no we can’t have that.
…Sigh. And I was just thinking maybe they’ve finally got a clue how hunter players want their class to work and then they go and do this.
Guthorm: The maintenance post says 6-8 hours from 10:30 am Pacific. For me, that translates to 7:30 pm – 9:30pm EDT, which gives us another 2-4 hours from now (as I type this).
On the other hand, so far beta has been up sooner than expected several times. On the third hand, if they are going to “try to patch” and also sort out the pre-mades, it may take longer this time.
Seidouyumi,
You could be right, but this could also be a mirror to what occurred with BC and the Black Temple. With the flurry of beta patches, increasing level cap to 80 in the beta, patch 3.0.2 forthcoming and other signs, it does appear that there is a sudden increase in pace for Blizzard.
If this truly is a sign of upcoming events or just a coincidental occurrence can only be speculated upon.
Ichigo,
I can dig up the interviews, I think, but I would have to go a lot of searching. It really isn’t guesswork. This time they decided that they could and should not put everything out at one time.
I also have no doubt that things are speeding up at Blizzard since they have two months to get things done and ready for release, and then get them burned to disk and shipped across the country. So, yes, but I wouldn’t speculate it.
That was botched. So, yes it’s speeding up, but I wouldn’t speculate upon it.
hey mania i just got my beta key yeserday its taking foreeeeeever to dl the client, mania do you know how to make it so it downloads quick/erfaster? or anyone on the forums? some reason it’s insanely slow when i dl stuff from blizzard :(
Solarshot: Unfortunately I don’t have any tricks that can help. However, if you are comfortable doing so you can use a mirror to download the files you need. I suggest the ones mentioned in this thread on the beta forums. I haven’t had any trouble with these guys, but you should always be safe and check for viruses.
The effectiveness of the new AotV Koraa mentioned is going to be highly dependent on the exact numbers involved. What proc chance per hit? What base mana % per proc? Does the proc chance scale with haste or is it normalised? With our cheapest shot (Steady) clocking in at 4% of base and our most expensive (Chimera) clocking in at 16%, there are a wide range of possibilities for tuning it.
And yeah, as far as Icecrown goes, Blizz have stated several times that they think Illidan was made killable too soon in the Burning Crusage release cycle – expect to see Icecrown Citadel (and Arthas) as the last major dungeon addition in Wrath, similar to the addition of Sunwell Plateau and Kil’Jaeden in Burning Crusade.
Gah, “Burning Crusade” :P
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