Monday, June 21, 2010

Patch 3.3.5 and Other WoW News - A.K.A Catching Up



Last week, I had the inspiration for the emblem and gearing new 80s articles that I completely neglected a bunch of WoW news.  So, for the first post this week, I wanted to just go through some of the major news that came out last week including one breaking story from today.

1) Path of the Titans Gone - As someone who has max leveled cooking and first aid, I'm glad that it won't be an absolute requirement now to level archaeology.  I'm still gonna do it, but at least it is not going to determine raid ability.

2) Guild Talent Trees Gone - As much as I like my GM, I'm glad that he doesn't have to make the decision on where to put guild talent tree points.  I know when they announced it, they thought it would be something to bring guilds together.  What it actually would do is destroy guilds with arguments, fighting, etc.  I still like the fact that they are going to keep guild leveling for additional benefits though.

3) New Glyph Changes - I love both of the changes they have announced for glyphs.  One, they are creating a third tier of glyphs that are moderate glyphs, which sound incredible.  Second, and the one I'm more excited about, is that you only have to buy a glyph once.  After you buy it, you only have to change it out.  This makes glyphs what they should be, situational and able to change on the fly.  As a bear tank, I would love the ability to change out the Growl glyph and the Maul glyph at will without having to buy multiple glyphs.

4) Level 80 Heirloom Gear Stops at 80 - I had a feeling they would do this, but I'm okay with it.  It would be rough to change out my T10 bear gear for two pieces of heirloom gear.  But it will make my mage easy to level after I hit 85.  However, level 80 heirlooms will work for goblins and worgans, but not worgoblins.  (Dark Legacy Comic Joke)

5) Heroic Deadmines and Heroic Shadowfang Keep on Hold - Even so come quickly 4.1.  Please.  Pretty Please.

6) Caverns of Time Raid - As someone who has not gone back and did the Mount Hyjal raid, but has done all the other 5 mans in CoT, this excites me.  Every CoT instance has been incredible.  And I'm not even a lore nerd.

7) Garrosh Hellscream, New Warchief  - Old news since it was predicted a while ago.  Plus I'm alliance.  I do care, but not that much.

8) Raid Lockout Changes - This has been my favorite news of the past week.  You will be able to split 1 25 man raid into up to 3 separate 10 man raids.  That is incredible, especially if you think about the summer slump that a lot of guilds are going through right now.  You get a 25 man together on Tuesday, but you only have 20 on Thursday.  No problem.  Just split the raid.  While we kind of knew about this, the other news is the incredible news.  If you have downed up to a certain boss in a raid lockout, you will be able to join a raid that has killed the same boss but not beyond that boss.  In other words, let's say that you split the 25 man and all three groups kill one additional boss.  However, you only have enough to have one 10 man on Monday.  Since all three groups killed the one additional boss, you would be able to pull any of the 30 into the 10 man to raid.  The only thing they said is that you cannot combine 10 mans into a 25 man, which does make sense.

9) Cross Account Achievement - This will help out drastically.  As many people ask for links to achievements that you have done stuff, like VoA, this will help out so that you can show you have done it, even if it was on a different character.  And while I think the mounts, pets, and titles should remain player specific, you can at least shown that you have done it.

10) Patch 3.3.5 Tomorrow - Thank God.  I love ICC, but I am definitely ready for a change of scenery.  Even if we down him on the first day and go back to ICC, it will be something different.  However, the news has pointed to Ruby Sanctum not being available tomorrow, but maybe the week after.  This also means having to say goodbye to AVR, which is fine, because I stopped using it a couple weeks ago to get ready for this moment.  It is a crutch.  A very technically advanced and awesome crutch, but a crutch none the less.  This will also be the introduction of RealID.  I know some people are concerned about privacy, which could be an issue.  However, I'm gonna have to take Blizzard's word on this one and trust they know what they are doing.  Also, I believe we will see the buff increase to 25% this week for ICC, which should help our HM progression, considering how close we are on 25 man HM Blood Queen.  

So this is just a sampling of the WoW news from this past week.  There are other stories about what the news raids will be, but I will just wait for Cataclysm to talk about those.

Also, I'm glad to announce that I'm going to be working with www.WoWCentric.com, which is going to be a collection of WoW comics, bloggers, podcast, etc.  It is a very ambitious project and I'm glad to be working on it with a bunch of other bloggers.

Finally, I'm going to try to get some guest posters for next week since I'm going to be going on vacation to see if they would be willing to write some stuff, including some members of my own guild hopefully.  I will hope to have some news for everybody during this week.

2 comments:

Avatar said...

PotT being yanked is a disappointment, however I am glad that Blizzard doesn't implement crap.

Not sure I completely agree with the removal of guild talent trees.

I love the raid changes

Due to the inscription changes, I am considering dropping it...not sure yet

Redhawks said...

@Avatar

What I'm personally hoping is that all the things that were in the guild talent trees are now going to be incorporated into the guild leveling system. If would be nice to hit guild level 10 and be able to do a mass resurrection every hour or some other reward.

Also, with inscription, the only thing I can see them doing is making the level 85 glyphs more expensive by adding more ingredients per glyph. The fact that a profession can only sell most glyphs for around 5 gold is insane. They actually need to make glyphs more expensive to bring it in line with the other professions, especially if you will need to only buy one of each.