Checking in From Austin
So here I am stuck in a hotel a thousand miles from home, desperately trying to catch up with WoW news while my husband is off schmoozing with game developers. To be fair, I spent all this morning ‘networking’, which basically means standing around gossiping bitterly. (And if you are curious, I haven’t seen a single Blizzard person here, although I also haven’t been looking very hard. Blizzard doesn’t seem to do these conferences very much. *shrug*)
So what have I missed? Well, it looks like Wrath of the Lich King will be released on November 13th (for most areas). There’s a Collector’s Edition with a special mini-pet and you can now pre-order. I haven’t pre-ordered yet because I want to check with BRK. At one point he said he’d be doing a whole midnight expansion thing at a local store, and if he is I want in on it! But he may have been kidding.
Incidentally, last expansion I managed to update Petopia shortly after getting home with my new Burning Crusade box. This time, however, since there are so many major changes available to all hunters starting with Patch 3.0 and only some specific pets limited to expansion areas, I’ll be frantically updating Petopia the day patch 3.0 goes live and then enjoying my Wrath box in relative peace.
I still can’t log into the PTR to check out the 3.0 changes, but I’m already getting plenty of tips from readers so I think I’ll survive a bit longer. (By the way, if you’ve e-mailed me I have definitely read your message (unless it got blocked as spam), but I haven’t had time to respond yet. I really appreciate you mailing me, though, and I’ll respond as soon as I can.)
And thankfully I remembered to bring along my Blizzard Authenticator so I can log into the live realms. (Although here’s an important tip: Make sure you are holding it right-side up or the code won’t work!)
34 Comments
Good to know your doing well, Mania. The beta to PTR bug is still going around. *makes a rude geasture at that* The most new stuff to report is the possibility of pet leveling being made easier, since Ghostcrawler agrees that in Wrath it is way to slow and clunky.
Yay!!! 1st Post! Mania, we all thank you for the work you do and I hope you do get a chance to enjoy WotLK! On that not… keep us informed on everything, there is no such thing as to much information. (at least about this…)
or not on the 1st post… dang.
Sheesh, this isn’t the blizzard forums. Don’t tell me everyone is “first post” here too now D=
I bet that special edition mini-pet is that penguin. I’m gonna leave right now to change my pre-order to a collector’s edition. XD
Hey mania if you dont mind (or if anyone else can help me) i’ve asked before how to get into a PTR and i’m asking agin, now i know you have to first off copy your characters, but i dont know what to do after that if you can help me mania i’d like that. Oh and enjoy yourslef and take it easy mania you’ll make it.
Yeah, I heard about the release, this morning (and about WoW Head’s “leaking” last night, was excited for that too). I’m excited! >:-D lol That’s awesome that you’re gonna update Petopia, when the soon-to-be 3.0.1 goes “live”! Woot! Yup, they said they’d, hopefully, get that “bug” fixed some time this week. And I’m hoping for the patch to be released at the end of the month (the pre-Burning Crusade patch was released a little more than a month before the game came out)! Woot! >:-D lol
I doubt Chilly is going to be the collector’s edition pet – in the beta, they’re giving them out like candy for “switching to a Blizzard account” instead of using your WoW-specific account (I’m not complaining since the penguin is kinda cute, but it isn’t like we had a choice about switching if we wanted to play on the beta servers…).
Seriously though, I think they’re probably going to do a phased migration of everyone’s WoW accounts over to common Blizzard accounts (running both authentication systems in parallel for a while), with Chilly the penguin as an in-game reward for switching to the new system.
@Rikaku- acctually the “mini pet” is a frost wyrm named frosty not a penguin.
Ah, they actually name the pet on the Collector’s Edition details page. It’s a baby frost wyrm.
I’m in the PTR and a lot of the way the pets have changed is great. There’s a lot of people walking around with either Core Hounds (usually The Kurken) or Devilsaurs (usually the Black Skinned one). More Core Hounds than Devilsaurs, but then, Core Hounds are a bit easier to get. I’ve been doing something really crazy with my character, and that is actually leveling and not doing high end content. I can tell you this, the changes have made it a bit smoother for Hunters to level up. Though, I have to agree with Ghostcrawler that pet leveling is a bit clunky.
I don’t know if this was noted, but Hyenae no longer eat fruit. They eat only meat.
Dei, do you have the Blizzard loader enabled? I think thats what it is, its the thingummy that gives you all the news and such, before you get to the log on screen. If not, I think you can enable it from the log on screen. At the bottom of the loader is a liddle button that says “Public test realm”. I’d send you a link, but being in the beta screws my ability to be on the PTR.
Ha! So the November release date I heard from Game Stop months ago is gonna hold after all. I’m definetely pre-ordering a collector’s edition. A Shame my husband decided to quit playing again. :(
@Deidare & Nimizar: I’m slightly an idiot, I meant to write frostwyrm, but I was talking to my friend about the penguin and how it reminded us of “Chilly Willy” as I wrote the comment and well yeah XD My bad!
Another bit of news from the insane person actually leveling a Hunter in the PTR- lol- is that family skills do not always show up right away. It looks like they may show up at different intervals, with Shell Shield (Turtle) showing up some time after lvl 16. I don’t know if it’s a bug or not, but I’ll keep plugging along.
A note, about Deep Borer worms in Maraudon – they swap between the skyblue/white skin and the Gray/gray skin when you mount/zone.
Did anybody pre-order Collector’s Edition already? I want one, but amazon.com lists it as “Currently unavailable” and I could not find any other place where it is available. Any tips will be appreciated ;).
Dvorkin: I can help ya =) All the stores were just barely notified today that the pre-order has been opened by Blizzard. As Blizzard announced it at like 8 PM PST last night (roughly) many businesses did not upgrade their info until today. You’ll probably be able to by Wednesday however.
This is the information i received from all the listed retailers on the Pre-order WotLK site. Hope it helps!
I pre-ordered a copy of the CE off of Gamestop.com
Here’s a link: http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=72700
I would pre-order mine online, but I rather like going to the store and picking it up. ^^ Especially if they do another Midnight Launch, man that was a blast at my mall XD
Grats on your CE tho =)
I tried to get on the PTR and its still down, so I dont think its up yet, even though I got the patch. So, Blizz must be double checking or something.
PTR is up, however if you transfer to the US PvE server, note it will be down 85% of the time. Outlands, Kalimdor, and Instances keep crashing. Your best bet for actual testing is the PvP server.
PTR is up, PTR is down, PTR has a que long enough to wrap around Orgrimmar three times.
That just about sums it up. When you can get in, it feels almost like a new game in some of the mechanics though. I didn’t really see them when I was working on my Lock, Shammy, and Pally (all 70′s) but I really saw it on my Hunter (lvl 18 when she transfered). It’s almost a whole new game without being a whole new game.
Gonna be doing some pet testing on ptr (mostly just for giggles) and see what’s what.
Already tried solo taming an Ancient Core Hound, but got my butt brutally handed to me. :( But got some ideas on how to get to the closest one…
A nice thing I noticed so far is that low lvl stabled pets auto lvl now. ^^
I feel so stupid..
I just realised I had the WRONG patch downloaded..
I had the 3.0.2 in my file, but I didnt run it..
Well, its running now..
All I have to do is sit back, and relax for…5 hours..Joy lol
Sorry for double posting
Its gonna be fun when its done…Oh look, 1% done in 3 mintues O.o
Rikaku, I remember Chilly Willy. Today must be my day for nostalgia. When my family would watch home movies (and I mean movies) when I was a kid, he would also show a bunch of cartoons he had bought over the years. One was Chilly Willy, in black and white, silent (projector didn’t have sound anyway) with title cards.
Yeah, this has nothing to do with hunter pets. Sorry about that; back to you guys.
he = Dad. Time for bed….
Welcome to the joys of the beta in a convenient PTR sized package! You spend half your time lagging like all billyo, and the other half of your time looking at “World server is down” and being unable to log into Northrend.
I finally got into the EU PTR yesterday, and must say: the pets are awesome. I killed mobs in Nagrand all of yesterday with a lv61 bear (my toon being 66) and couldn’t stop. The fact that I can dps like no tomorrow without the pet losing aggro is amazing, having used to grabbing aggro from my lv65 cat every time I happen to use more than four Steady Shots on a mob. Heck.. I can kill three 65 mobs simultaneously with my bear, whereas my retail cat would’ve had huge difficulties with just two.
I’m SO going to get that Collector’s Edition, just for the Frostwyrm. It seems pretty pricey though, $70. Better start saving now.
PTR – did a bit of rummaging around – snagged a spawn of Uvuros … still has the stop/start lava breath dance. nice pet though. a bit green for me. since in the PTR I can’t get exp,until the lvl 80 cap is in place (as in beta) I can’t get any of the exotics that are over 70, of course.
some quests are a bit borked. for example, be VERY careful where you fly. fly over the skettis platforms and you will be dismounted. if you live, and land on one, you can’t mount until you get to the ground. if you fly over the ogres overlooking shatt – boom, you will be dismounted. figure that is probably over any buildings (except in shatt or other == your alignment areas? strange problem. apparently made some blanket change to the flying/mount code that didn’t merge well into the ‘old world’.
will go back in and dink around with my albino Rex, and Toadkiller the green glowy dog. kinda fun – when you get far away (in the lag of PTR that’s fast) he kinda snuffles and ‘separation anxiety’ and his horns light up.
g’luck Mania – hopefully things are ok at home.
btw collectors edition – gamestop indeed has it. 69.99 or so. then a minimum of 20+ for shipping, ranging from low end 5 day, to overnight for a LOT more. if you gotta have that worm, then for 80 or 90 bucks you can :)
I have amazon prime, so if it ever shows up there I’ll upgrade my current pre-order. we’ll see. then the shipping isn’t gonna kill me
addendum
just checked and ordered the collector’s edition via amazon. with overnight (not prime free shipping) it came to 73 bucks.
Just to re-iterte on what Shibumi said, flying over anything that counts as indoors or unmountable areas, no matter how high you are, dismounts you. Needless to say, this is a spectacular and annoying way to die.
I mighta kinda sorta tamed a rhino just to knock things off of high places last night….. that was fun…. I can’t wait to use that in the towers in AV…..
re-iterate* for my double.
Leave a Reply