Checking in From Austin #2

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I’m exhausted. I have 257 messages in my inbox (12 of which I haven’t even read yet), including copious comments from the last several posts here. I have 496 unread posts in Google Reader, including 146 from my own forums. My legs are killing me and my feet have (rather ominously) gone numb. After three nights crammed in a tiny hotel room my husband is barely talking to me, and somehow I still feel slightly hung over from last night’s SOE party (what do they put in those drinks?!) …

… and Blizzard is updating the Public Test and Beta Realms. What, are they trying to kill me?

I’ll do what I can to get caught up tonight and relay any interesting news — both from the new builds and from the comments, e-mails, and posts I have yet to read through. But in the worst case, if I just plain pass out here on the floor … well, I’m flying home tomorrow. We may have to pick up the pieces afterwards.

Thanks for being so patient with me while I fumble through!

78 thoughts on “Checking in From Austin #2”

  2. wow 257 masages i dont even get that much in a year lol (mr popularity here lol)and 496 maesages form google your like so popluer lol

    the beta thing sucks but hopefully lvling will be faster now iv been playing for a max of 24hours and im only 45% to the next lvl i hate it

    and dotn worry i was expecting you woudl post less then you did since you all the way over there

    well have a happy flight mania.

  4. I think everyone will understand if you take a break and get yourself some rest. But at least you can feel proud at your dedication to all this beta crazyness :)

  7. I say you just wipe your inbox and feed reader and start from scratch! :), j/k, obviously you can’t do that, lol ;)

    Well, just remember it’ll all be over soon… but not in a suicide way… I mean… how long is your trip again? >_>

  11. *laughs* I once spent four days in an airport in Idaho, thanks to some botched travel plans. That was interesting. And you can complain to us all you like, but we do worry about you. Don’t over do yourself! All the stuff here can wait. We’re patient people, and for those who aren’t, well those of us who are can ‘persuade’ them to be patient.

  12. An update. Camouflage is out ((Again)) and at the moment we get this at eighty.

    Fire a freezing arrow that places a Freezing Trap at the target location, freezing the first enemy that approaches, preventing all action for up to 20 sec. Any damage caused will break the ice. Trap will exist for . Only one trap can be active at a time.
    3% of base mana, 40 yd range, Instant cast, 30 sec cooldown

  14. Long distance traps? AT&T trapping? Ok if you’re a hunter and you can’t “pull” a mob into a trap. . .

    Come on Blizzard, if you don’t want to give us Camo at 80 fine. But don’t waste the effort to make up a redundant trap.

  15. Now before you get to riled up ((trust me, I am riled myself)) this may be datamined and not yet implimented. The second the test realms are back up I’ll go have a gander. It doesn’t help that its the old frost trap, and not the new, can take some damage before breaking one.

    Any one else notice the amount of damage it takes to break is abysmally low? It takes like three times as much for me to break a fear through damage on my warlock….

  17. That sounds like a datamine, but who knows. All I know is that with the “patch” they better get the servers actually running. I was hoping to check out UBRS today but PvE seemed down all day. XD

  18. The PvE server was actually running today with no to minimal lag. Granted I was on while most of the children were at school and not too many of the elitist jerks were present… ok. some where, but the numbers weren’t TOO high, but I’d noticed it was running alot less laggy than it had been.

    Again though, should I be downloading a patch? It lets me sign on just fine but won’t let me into any relms…

  19. No Pepsi, it isn’t ready yet. It started at about six AM pacific time, and will go for about six hours. That was about four hours ago. And thats my thought Rikaku, but I want to make sure a bit more before coming to any concrete judgements. Just wanted to let everyone know that we had the potential for a new skill, and that it wasn’t exactly thrilling.

  22. lol you caught it before I did Palladiamors. I am in the PST and I was like “wait, what time IS it???” Yeah, I’m all for a new skill, but the numbers just dont seem right.

    PepsiJedi: Really? I couldn’t log in at all on the PvE all day. My toon is still stuck in SMV where I was taming Uvuros XD

  23. I got onto my death knight around three eastern long enough to get to 63 and had no lag, but I was only on for an hour or so. Some times different continents go down, and you can’t log into them.

  24. I started playing my Death knight in beta around.. yep around 3pm est and played till almost 7pm est. Little to no lag.

    It was then that Best buy called me. Now… I paid for two copies of Litch king about 4 months ago there, with the FIRM understanding I could upgrade when collectors hit their computers. It hit monday but I live 40 miles from the store. I called. They said I had to physically come sign a slip of paper to change them over. I go in on fridays so I was going to wait… this afternoon I get a furritive call from the location manager, saying that the best buy here was about to cut off all collector pre-orders, tonight at closing becuase of the HIGH demand, and if I wanted mine I had to drive in. NOW.. tonight… so I had to log out and dress the kids and drive 40 miles into town at the drop of a hat.

    I did it… Pissed but I did it and now have 2 collectors editions reserved.. but yeah. Meh!

  26. Here’s some info for any CE shoppers here. I’ve been following the forums and doing alot of CE info-hunting for peeps on the forums. So PepsiJedi, your comment reminded me of it.

    “Spoke with someone at EB today (I was buying Spore since I already pre-ordered my CE, btw Spore’s fun) and he said that tonight was the last day they’d be taking pre-orders for the CA area. (Note, Im in southern cali, so northern areas may differ.) They said they had no idea why they were told to stop, but that it wasn’t due to a shortage. They’re almost certain to be put back onto the pre-order shelves soon. He also stated that if you already pre-ordered your CE, then you have nothing to worry about.

    Someone on here mentioned that his EB stated it had something to do with Vivendi, but when I asked they said they had heard nothing of the sort and have no word onto why the pre-orders were stopped.”
    Taken from my post on the Wrath forums.

  29. *points at the spirit beast* WANT!! *FLAILS* *Coughs* Sorry. My only issue, both with that and the new rake, is that the abilities deal damage after 10 and over 9 seconds, respectively, while longevity decreases the cooldown on those abilities to 7 seconds. I’ll have to test my cats rake and see if it lowers the amount of time its dealt over as well. Thank you for that, Shinryu.

  31. Latest Beta buils 8962
    New/changed pet abilities.

    * Boar’s Speed: Now increases all movement speed instead of just outdoor.
    * Demoralizing Screech: Now lasts 10 seconds (up from 4).
    * Furious Howl: Now increases both ranged and melee attack power. Now effects the raid. Range increased to 45 yards (up from 40).
    * Thunderstomp: Now costs 25 Focus.
    * Fire Breath: Now does base fire damage as well as a fire DoT.
    * Warp: Now gives the pet a 50% chance to avoid the next 3 melee attacks (instead of just the next attack).
    * Poison Spit: Now also reduces the target’s casting speed by 50% for 8 sec.
    * Ravage: Cooldown removed.
    * Lick Your Wounds: Now your pet heals itself for 100% of its total health over 5 sec (down from 10 sec) while channeling.
    * Taunt: Cooldown removed.
    * Roar of Sacrifice reworked: Now your pet absorbs damage from a party or raid member, transfering 30% damage taken to the pet. (Previously: Your pet absorbs damage from the friendly target up to a maximum of 50% of the pet’s total health. Lasts 12 sec.)
    * Bullheaded: Focus cost removed.
    * Roar of Recovery: Now your pet’s inspiring roar restores 30% (up from 20%) of your total mana over 9 sec (up from 8 sec).
    * Nether Shock: Cooldown removed.
    * Froststorm Breath: Damage ranges added to tooltips.
    * Heart of the Phoenix: Reworded for clarity. Now “When your pet dies, it will miraculously return to life with full health.”
    * Spider’s Bite: Now increases the critical strike chance of your pet by 3/6/9% (instead of the critical strike damage bonus of your pet by 10/20/30%).
    * Rake (New Cat Family Ability): (6 Ranks @ level 1/16/32/48/64/80) Rake the target for 4 to 6/8 to 10/11 to 15/18 to 24/28 to 38/59 to 83 bleed damage and an additional 1/2 to 4/3 to 6/6 to 8/10 to 12/21 to 27 damage over 9 sec.
    * Feeding Frenzy: 2 ranks added for 6 and 12%.

  33. (On Wow Head) I can’t make out it’s tiny icon thing. I don’t know what’s that a picture of. Now this pet sounds exciting to me. Does Arcane damage too.

  34. *chuckles* Things like ghost wolves and ghost sabers come to mind when I think of spirit beast. That ain’t what it is, I know, but it just occured to me that those are spirits. Now, going by WoWhead this spirit beast also has prowl, which seems to insinuate cat like. Wonder if its a higher level Northrend thing, or something we’re just not thinking of?

  36. Kiaron, they haven’t removed any cooldowns, they have decreased certain cooldowns, and take other things off the GCD, or the global cooldown. Taunt was taken off the global cooldown to better work with growl and other tanking abilities.

  38. If it’s real, I’m wondering if it’s not one particular beast, but an amalgam of various tameable animal spirits that appear in the game (maybe Grimtotem Spirit Guides will make a comeback within this family?).

    Creatures like this are not (or are no longer) real animals. So it’s entirely possible their powers as pets would be related to the spirit world rather than their natural counterparts.

  39. I meant to add… if that’s the case, it would explain the ambiguous icon that’s being used for the family, since members could look like all kinds of animals.

  40. The tooltip for Spirit Beast is a cat’s head facing forward, with one eye glowing. You only see the upper right part of the head, assuming the bottom nose is where the head is split in 4 pieces.

  43. I don’t know about up and coming pets, but they have been wrong before, and everyone makes mistakes. As per the usual with the beta, right now its just to soon to tell, no one can even log onto the beta realms right now, though presumably we’ll be able to start patching in about four minutes.

  47. GAH, found another potential model but it got caught by the defense feature here, to later be rescued by Mania. Cursed Offspring of Har’Koa if you want to search WoWhead for it.

  49. ..Eh, I am an optimist here. I DID note about “upcoming pets”, not about them in general. Of course they do. And I’ll question them about pets when they actually do it.. I’m excited!

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