7:55pm EDT: Sheesh. I feel like I’ve spent most of today blogging. But the WoW Class Panel is about to begin and I am hoping to learn more about upcoming hunter changes. Be aware, I will probably phase out during the non-hunter bits, but I’ll try to grab anything that sounds particularly interesting.
7:59pm EDT: The live stream is taking their time switching to the class panel. They are still interviewing Samwise Didier (I think). Which is neat, but not about hunters.
Speaking of which, I would love to get more information about possible creatures to tame in the new starter areas. I’ve seen a few quick takes on the new race areas, but nothing in depth and nothing about beasts. So if you see something, please let me know!
8:01pm EDT: Ahh, here we go! Ghostcrawler is up on stage, along with the people in charge of item design and profession design.
He’s starting with the racial abilities for the new races. Goblins have some nice stuff: a passive 1% boost to attack/casting speed, the best possible faction discounts all the time (regardless of their actual faction level), and a pack hobgoblin that let’s them get at the bank once every half hour. (This isn’t all of them, just the ones I happened to grab as they went by.)
Worgen get a sprint ability, a passive bonus to damage, a skinning bonus (and no need for a knife!), and worgen form. Worgen can be in human or worg form when they are not in combat, but always switch to worg form when in combat. (The forms have no gameplay effect.)
8:06pm: GC is going into detail about Warlocks – namely the promised Soul Shard revamp. Soul Shards are leaving inventory and becoming part of the warlock UI, kind of like a rogue combo point mechanic. I don’t know enough about warlocks to follow everything he is saying, so if this is what you were waiting for … well, I think you may be on the wrong site. *grin*
8:10pm EDT: And now he’s going into detail on hunters.
Hunters will no longer use mana. No more Intellect. No more Aspect of the Viper. We will use focus instead. Focus will come back on its own, steadily, but Steady Shot will help it come back a bit faster.
Also, there will be fewer cooldowns on our abilities. And finally, they still plan to switch ammo to equipment, not a consumable.
And not a single word about pets. Ah, well.
8:12pm EDT: And on to items. Mana per 5 is gone (in terms of appearing on equipment), replaced by something or other. Attack power is also going — it will be replaced by Agility. Defense and armor penetration are going away (on items). I can’t keep up with this section — in part because I don’t pay any attention to stats — so I’m going to stop trying now. Sorry about that.
Ooh! There was a mention of the Mastery System in terms of pets, though — apparently one thing you can use it for is to make your pet better. We’ll learn more about that at the System Panel tomorrow.
The next Legendary weapon will be Shadowmourne — a two-handed axe.
8:17pm EDT: Professions! The new profession is Archaeology. It’s a secondary, like cooking, so everyone can take it. With Archaeology you can collect Artifacts throughout the world.
In addition to unlocking paths for Paths of the Titans, Archeology may also give you access to mini pets, instant travel, recipes for other professions, etc.
Archaeology is a gathering skill, but the things you gather go directly into your Archaeology Journal, not into your inventory. Once you get enough fragments of info, you .. do something. They don’t know exactly what yet, but it might even be a little mini-game. And that gives you the rewards! Or something … it’s a bit vague yet.
Hey, and here’s something new: reforging! This is something that Blacksmiths, Leatherworkers, Tailors, Jewelcrafters, and Engineers will be able to do to customize equipment. For example, Engineers can reforge trinkets while Blacksmiths can reforge plate. Reforging let’s you cut one stat bonus on the piece and put those points into another stat — but not one that’s already on the piece.
They are also introducing multi-gains — that is, items that give you more than one skill-up for creation, maybe based on what materials you need.
They also want to customize the gathering skill bonuses a bit, and they will be trying to take Engineering back to it’s “fun” roots.
There are also big changes coming to fishing to make it more fun.
8:25pm EDT: Now they are starting the Q&A. Egad, are my fingers tired. These are all paraphrased, of course. And I’m skipping the boring ones that I don’t personally care about. Sorry! :>
Question: Racial bonus changes for the older races?
Answer: Almost certainly. They want to catch them up to the newer level of cool.
Question: Are professions going up by another 75 points? And what’s the new title?
Answer: Yes, and “Illustrious”.
Question: Why Worgen and Goblin Death Knights? It makes no sense with the lore!
Answer: Yeah, but it’ll be fun!
Question: Something about abilities. I missed the question.
Answer: They are getting rid of Ranks with abilities. Instead abilities will scale smoothly as you level.
Question: How will hunter mana-related talents change with no mana?
Answer: They’ll be changing talent trees a lot.
Question: Is reforging profession-only? And what are the limits?
Answer: No, other people can reforge items for you — they aren’t soulbound to the crafter. There will be limits, but they haven’t worked everything out all the way yet.
Question: Can we have more than two professions please? Maybe one gathering and two production professions?
Answer: No. They want to make the gathering professions better instead. But you will be able to track two things (or all things?) at once. This was a little unclear.
Question: Dual spec is nice. How about three or four specs?
Answer: Maybe someday, but not too soon.
Question: Make the backpack bigger!
Answer: Maybe when they revamp the leveling experience.
Question: Tell us more about non-consumable ammo!
Answer: They’re not sure they want to drop it off of bosses. They may put it on badge vendors. Hunters may upgrade ammo as they level or possibly drops. It’s still unclear.
Question: Will be there any mutil-passenger flying mounts or +310% profession mounts?
Answer: Multi-passenger flying mounts: quite possibly. But +310% profession mounts: not unless it’s tied to an existing achievement that already gives a +310% mount.
Question: Are there any plans to let professions repair the sort of equipment that they can make? Or possible get rid of repair entirely …
Answer: Nope. They’ve talked about it, but think that the Engineering repair bots cover everyone well enough.
Question: Dwarves have an amazing ability called Find Treasure. What happened to all the treasure in the world?
Answer: They found it all! Seriously, they have plans to make chests on the landscape are cooler and less exploitable.
Question: If you have a +310% mount, can your really cool looking +280% mounts please go +310%?
Answer: They’ve been talking about it and think they want to do something there, but it’s not certain what they will do yet.
Question: Something about shadowpriests. I missed it.
Answer: The new skills will probably come at 81, 83, and 85. They haven’t talked about what those will be yet (and this part tied back into the question, but I just wanted to grab the skill levels).
Question: Is there any plan to allow crafting staves, bows, or crossbows?
Answer: There isn’t enough there for a whole tradeskill. They may add bows to Engineering, and the others may be found through Archaeology.
8:55pm EDT: And the panel is over! Thank goodness — I need to pee!
More Info
Blizzard posted a wrap-up from the class panel on the forums.
Kaliope from Crafter’s Tome has more detail on the new profession stuff.
OK, I see everybody taliing about pets that could possibly be tamable whenthe nex xpac comes out… but what abot pets thatmay disappear??? Somebody already brough this up, and I don’t know who to give credit to, but if the Slatflats are gonna be flooded, will that mean the Silithis ravager would disppear too? Also, if there are gonna be lots of changes to lots of other areas, how do we know we are gonna have all those pets to chose from when the change comes? A common lion in the barrens could become a VERY rare pet in the new future. Who knows….
Dweezill Brings up a good point… Lots of areas are changing, so lots of creatures adn beasts are going to be disappearing… I better get my common Tallstrider right away!
I’ve actually been doing a bit of studying, and more or less gear and stats are returning to a pre-BC time in general, with a caveat of “But plate wearers won’t want get any use out of mail or leather, and mail won’t get any use of out leather.” Resilience is remaining, and honest to god I wish that was one stat that had been pulled. Haste is still around, though it appears as though it will have an increased effect.
Is it just me, or is this Blizzard trying to revamp WoW? I mean I am not complaining yet ((We’ll have to see about that path of the Titans…thing.)) but it feels weird. Which is odd for me to say that, since I have been saying for a while now that 1-58 is a huge drag. I am…..remaining on the fence about this. I’ll have to see how they pull it off.
Like I said on the previous post, Blizzard probably won’t just wipe all the pets. I mean yes, most likely, some will be gone. HOWEVER!!! Blizzard has done well when they revamp zones. Generally when a pet disappears with a zones facelift (AKA Dustwallow Marsh, Hawkbane) or changes to a pets color stealthly (Hinterlands Wolves, Frostsaber Cats), it is generally done to pet’s whose color can be found elsewhere. When all those mobs face removal/recoloring, we didn’t lost access to those skins, just availability at particular levels.
I imagine that even with Barrns and Thousand Needles being torn to shreds, there are no beasts that have a unique color standing at being lost forever. Snort the Heckler and the other purple thousand needles hyenas may be in trouble, but we don’t know how MUCH of Thousand needles is flooded (it may just be the salt flat area). Still, there is one rare purple hyena left, Ravage. The Tan silthid rare in TN, he can also be found AQ at lvl 61. The Mulgore lion “The Rake” will still provide the golden lion color even if all the lions from barrens vanish.
So I mean, we don’t really stand to lose any real colorations. We may (and probably will) lose some pets of more common colorations, but I don’t see any in any area that (at this time) stand to be gone forever. Also, we don’t know what else will show up in the expansion, forall we know, purple hyenas could be the populace of Lost Isles.
Rottingham: BlizzCon continued today. Unfortunately I managed to sleep through most of it inadvertantly. *sigh* Told you I was too old for this.
There was another WoW Q&A today, but the internet stream didn’t cover it so far as I can tell. I’ve just woken up but I’ll grab anything I can find from elsewhere and do a post on that in a minute.
LOL, thanks you Mania :D
I’m sure we can find out more of what they released somehow on a link or something…
Mania:
You didn’t really miss much. I watched it and no one really did ask anything amazing. Though MMO has some neat hunter changes (I think I listed them above comment) for 3.3
Rikaku: I saw that. I also see from the schedule that they added a couple more WoW panels from the first schedule I saw. Did any of those make it to the internet stream? The stream schedule only has the Dungeons & Raids panel, but I can’t imagine they’d skimp out on the cool WoW stuff.
I just watched the video showing the Lost Isles again… It seems that there is a crab walking on the shores, and winged creatures flying around. The crabs will most likely be tameable, but the winged creatures I have high hopes for…
Although I couldn’t see them very well, they either looked like bats or pterrordactyls from Ungoro Crater
@Rikaku in post 43″
“Hunters might be able to choose the talent tree of their pet to let them pick the pet that looks best to them.”
So does that mean we can tame a pet and give it whatever talent tree we want?
@Everyone else:
I just realized something about one of the more popular pet abilities. With them taking away Attack Power, how will it change Wolves and Furious Howl?
@Palla
Ok, yes, this is a revamp. Alright, if you are Blizzard right now, you have two choices. You can scrap World of Warcraft and build a new game forcing everyone to ditch their old characters in favor of new ones (amazing how people are adamantly against that!) or you pretty much wipe the slate clean, rebuild from the bottom, and have a new game without forcing everyone to reroll and start new. Given that the game world continues on and wouldn’t change drastically (like blowing up or anything), it is a little easier to drastically revamp rather than restart.
@The Person Who Mentioned Lost Isle
They are Pterrodax.
Pterrodax… ThanksSeidoutumi :D
WOW! Lots of typos…
Thanks Seidouyumi
Rikaku: You forget there is ONE rare lion skin, the white one. You can only obtain it via QUESTS, both were formerly horde quests and only ‘recently’ did they make the Shy-Rotam chain available for alliance. So if the barrens does blow up for lowbies before they can even get to quest, as in it doesn’t phase at all for them, then this means there will be NO white lions on lowbies once this happens.
And if there’s Pterrodax- then this could mean MORE dinosaurs, since there’s already the wierd raptor, the bipedal ankylosaurus..
I want screen shots D:
theres humar to.i dont think iv seen anyone actually tame pitch yet.probubly because he lacks the elite tag…
Ryai:
Same applies to Humar as well, and several other barrens-animals. However, I did mention that. It wasn’t forgotten. I said we don’t lose any skins, just availablity. Availability (personally) never bothered me; all the cool pets are lvl 70+ anyways.
Actually I think Humar is far enough away to be safe; I doubt Blizzard would destroy the easiest way to get to booty bay, unless ratchet and booty bay get destroyed. And then there’s Takk- they’re not going to get rid of an animal that drops a pet.
Hopefully.
The main destruction that was shown was mostly around WC/the oasis[s?] with rippled affects spreading outwards.
Ariamodasu did make one good comment about it and I guess she’s right. Basically said, as well as I remember it; “Atleast the XR raiding will stop. Since you know Crossroads will probably be on fire.”
Though I’m just wondering HOW are people going to get across the barrens now if it’s in ruins, so this means it’s either A: completely split where you need a flying mount or the zepplin that was implimented [and that everyone thought was a sign for emerald dream! NOOO BLIZZ WASNT THAT NICE], or that southern barrens is relatively … unharmed .. except for you know trees and ruins exploding out of everything; and that could mean Ratchet, or atleast the coast escaped devisation. Possibly meaning Takk and Humar are left undisturbed.
[tho glad I grabbed Echayeeke on one ally alt when I did.]
But what I was getting at is Blizz is destroying several habitats in places to get specific skins/pets, such as Desolace; the yellow scorpids, they might not like the change there. And other places and 1K being flooded probably means Tanaris is affected [while I now doubt Un'goro will be affected], this will wipe out the earliest pets of spotted cat you can change, and then there’s Azzere the skyblade and others…
Not really trying to bash that you like 70+ pets, but it’s the lowbie pets I’m worried about, and the choices for low end hunters.
And you know the fear of where is safe to log out before this comes out.
I’m coming from an angle for lowbies cause I have so many- AND I try to NOT duplicate skins or pets on alts unless I REALLY like the pet.
Oh man- this is really gonna affect suicide runs on lv 10 hunters wanting their first imba pet that’s 10 zones away.
Ryai:
“Not really trying to bash that you like 70+ pets, but it’s the lowbie pets I’m worried about, and the choices for low end hunters.”
No worries. Everyone’s different, and I don’t want you to think that I bash lowbie pets. Not at all. Some of my favorite pets ever (Timber) is a lowbie pet. =)
I just wanted to get a point across to everyone that while some pets may disappear, let’s not just jump to conclusions yet (and that’s myself included), only because Blizzard did fairly well in Dustwallow Marsh and revamping TBC areas to not wipe out any “unique” skins.
Their availability however, well, yes that did take a hit. But I’m just trying to be optimistic.
“Oh man- this is really gonna affect suicide runs on lv 10 hunters wanting their first imba pet that’s 10 zones away.”
Oh god I never thought of that….Now how will I get all those ridiculous pets I always strive for on lowbies DDDD=
@Ryai
Agreed. Just with changes to the Barrens, Wailing Caverns, and 1k Needles alone, low level hunters could lose access to Wind Serpents and Serpents (Snakes) completely, not to mention the loss of access to other skins between levels 10 and 25. Hopefully, if that’s the case, there will be pet skins available to make up for it somewhere else.
Maybe it is time to institute a Hunter’s Refuge. An area run by the Etherials to protect Azeroth and Outland’s animals where Hunters can come and choose the most basic models of these given animals (note- exotics and rare skins would not be included.) Hunters could gain access to the Hunter’s Refuge at level 10, but have a strict limit to how often they could get to visit.
Sigrah on post #60: ‘I just realized something about one of the more popular pet abilities. With them taking away Attack Power, how will it change Wolves and Furious Howl?’
they are not getting rid of the stat AP, they are getting rid of it on gear alone… thus the 2AP = 1 agil. so Furious howl or other AP boost skills shouldn’t be affected too much if i understood it correctly.
Gimlion:
You’re exactly correct. There will still be an AP stat, it’s just not going to be on the gear so much.
It’s not going to be so “OMG Do I want the ArP or the AP? Is this better if I use these two items? My AGI does this if I do that” etc etc etc. We’ve all had those moments where you have 3 peices of gear and spend a good hr just going through RAWR and other spreadsheets just to figure out if gear A is better than Gear B. This is what Blizz wants to get rid of.
Spine Thief@
Another thing though, keep in mind that the very same cataclysm that tore the world apart might bring even *more* pets for us to tame into those level ranges. Who’s to say that we might be able to tame lvl 15 fire wolves from the lava spreading across barrens?
Ok maybe not fire wolves, but I’m just saying. There will be new mobs, maybe that fiery looking turtle thing will be in the lava pools of barrens? We might even gain new low level families to look forward to =)
@Rikaku- Of course we spend an hour going over the spread sheets and discover that the armor we wanted just got bought out by someone while we tried to figure out if it was better for us.
Rikaku as much as I’m hoping that the turtles are allowed, even as exotic, when I showed them, Sandra mentioned them being DRAGON Turtles, of the Naga[?] or atleast Dragon Turtles really.
So like the red turtles in BT or wherever they might not be tameable- or they could be like some Proto Drakes, classified as beasts but still kin/untameable. Tho I have my fingers crossed too.
And I know this will probably bring out new pets, hopefully, but hoping they don’t completely wipe the lowbie pet slate clean.
I mean Ariamodasu as that’s her handle here*. Guh.
/targetself.
/doh.
Edit again!:
Just realized, MC hounds might be taken away completely, showing Blizzard really doesn’t care about pet skins, as the only entrance to MC is either A: if you got ‘attuned’ via the quest, or B: the entrance in er .. LBRS? And if both of the instances in that damned volcano are getting wiped/renewed ..
So unless Blizzard makes a direct portal to MC I don’t see how we’re gonna be getting our true blue lava hounds anymore :/
Sei: That happens to often for me 9_9
Ryai:
You don’t need attunement for MC anymore. Attunements were taken out. However, I do know there was a bug with the teleporting NPC and I believe it has been fixed.
Funny thing though Ryai, when I was listening to the Blizzcon feed, I heard that “The Beast” is still lurking around this Fireland elemental plane. Essentially we’re at Ragnaros door. So I forsee lots and lots of Corehounds being tameable.
But yes, it will suck if the MC hounds go away. I do love those guys, I mean, I spent much of my first few months as a lvl 60 in MC. MC and I, we go way back.
I don’t think it’s getting wiped though…Im not sure. See the people at the Open Q&A sucked!! 3 asked like the same damn question. My ass would’ve been up there “YO ARE YOU TAKING ALL THE COREHOUNDS AWAY!!!!? AND WHAT ABOUT GIRAFFES!!”
;)
No really, I would.
No no no I don’t mean like that, and I don’t mean attunement in that way I mean to get into MC without going thru .. lbrs? I dunno, Aria was the one to drag me when I made my first, and failed attempt, to tame a hound.
But the thing is, it’s a raid, and even as lv 70/80 it’s a struggle to tame them solo, [needing 20k health is an understatement tbh].
And the thing is if Fireland[?], is a raid, the mobs are going to be set for it so .. that’s what I mean. No more SOLO taming :/ I mean it takes a whole party to tame Dred.
That’s what I mean- so unless some demons get switched into beasts, it’s looking pretty grim for taming.
Unless ofc when the mountain explodes Core Hounds are sent all over Burning Steppes.
I’d love to lobby heavily to see these guys back in the game and as tamable creatures:
http://www.wow-petopia.com/html/skins/skin_warpstalkerskinred.html
They’d be perfect in some of the lava-based ridges that are coming with Cataclysm, and I don’t see any reason lore couldn’t be developed to say they exist in the Elemental Plane and they somehow find their way here when Deathwing bursts (literally) onto the scene again. Yes, I love Warp Stalkers and wish they had more skin types available for them :)
Regardless, I can’t wait to see what new families or skin types come out with this expansion, along with playable Worgen and Goblins. Also, I’m hoping they bring a new server online for it, those are always fun :) The only thing I’m not looking forward to is the min/max debate about “which pet is best” that’ll follow.
@Sigrah,
One thing with the changes is that it may eliminate some of that min/max for hunter pets. Apparently, they are thinking of doing away with singular pet families and allowing hunters to get which ever pet they like and choosing that pet’s spec. This might mean that the only big difference is in the special abilities. Then it becomes do you want defensive, offensive, or a mix of both?
@ Ryai,
I’d love to see Blackrock blow its top and spew lava all over the Burning Steppes changing it forever and unleashing core hounds upon the land while making a lot of orcs and dwarfs into crispy critters.
There is a bit of a problem there, though, Sei. A large number of talents are shared amongst the three trees being the first. IF they decide to do that, then they’ll have to broaden each of the three trees, OR limit you to just one tree per pet, with the option to respec into a different tree. The other problem is that it’s already quasi-difficult to get all of the right talent points in even one tree. Of course if they actually ‘bettered’ the system, then each of the three trees would have enough unique abilities in them to warrant either a split or a full spec into a tree with a partial spec into another, ala players.
Guess we’ll see, eh?
@Palladiamors,
Looking back, I wasn’t terribly clear. From what I’ve read, they’re thinking of giving each pet all three talent trees (possibly locking out the others).
Reading up on the Mastery system, they may be moving some of the passive overlapping talents to a Pet’s Mastery System similar to what they are thinking with all the classes. This means that we may see a lot of the excess talents shifted off the trees. We really will have to see, Palla.
You get into MC via Black rock depths… just fyi =D