But whats so great about this vendor trash 2-4 damage sword? Well, its really 2-178 damage and can be equipped by a level 1. This is AMAZING for a warrior because rend is based off weapon damage. At level 13 it was doing 140 damage a tick with rend. Remember that roaster oven on T.V. with the old dude that shouted “set it and forget it”? Well, now you can “rend it and forget it”. Simply rend everything in sight and walk away as the dot will kill it in 2-3 ticks. I picked this up, put a crusader enchant on it, and took my warrior from 13-20 in a couple hours. You have about a week to take advantage of this awesome item before they put a lvl 70 requirement on it next patch.

Here is a little video showing a level 5 using this.

We currently have no plans to add a 40-player dungeon into Wrath of the Lich King. We fully anticipate making the 10 and 25-player dungeons and raids challenging as a part of their progression.

You can say what you like about whether or not a 10-player dungeon is truly challenging if you wish, but they take coordination and require each player to play their role to their best ability to succeed.

When it comes to whether or not Arthas will be epic enough, we are working to maintain the epic feel of the encounter and have been discussing ways of doing this that should be appropriate. One idea that has been talked about was whether or not it would require a 25-player group to defeat Arthas before it ever opens up to 10-player groups.

What we end up with is yet to be decided.

I think it would suck to have to wait until a 25 raid beat the encounter before those of us who can only field 10 even get a chance to see it. But after being part of an uberguild I can see where they are coming from, having 10 people walk up and kill arthas doesn’t seem too epic. What do you think about limiting the 10 player raids in WOTLK?

“Whenever we’ve been able to meet and interact with Blizzard gamers from around the world, it’s been a great experience for us,” stated Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re looking forward to seeing even more of our players at this year’s BlizzCon and delivering another entertaining and informative event for them.”

BlizzCon will offer a wide variety of activities to help all attendees get the most out of the two-day event. In addition to serving as a gathering place for the different Blizzard Entertainment gaming communities, attendees will be able to enjoy:

* Hands-on play time with upcoming Blizzard Entertainment releases
* Discussion panels with Blizzard Entertainment developers
* Competitive and casual tournaments for players to showcase their talents
* Areas and activities devoted to licensed products such as the World of Warcraft® Trading Card Game
* Costume, machinima, and character sound-alike contests with great prizes
* Commemorative merchandise based on the Blizzard Entertainment franchises
* A silent auction
* More exciting activities to be announced

Tickets for BlizzCon will go on sale in the next few weeks at a price of $100 USD per person. As the event draws closer, further details will be announced on the official BlizzCon website: www.blizzcon.com.

WotLK Preview – Info Summary

The following is a compilation of information from Curse , Gamespy and Eurogamer using the patch notes layout, for a better readability.

General

• Players will unlock their flying mounts at level 77
• You can use your Outland flying mount, and Blizzard will have new flying mounts for players to get as well
• The Northrend in Wrath of the Lich King is considerably larger than Outland, the area explored by players in Burning Crusade. That means not only are there larger numbers of zones to explore, many of them are so large that they’ve been divided into “sub-zones,” much like Terrokar Forest and the Auchindon Waste in Outland.
• The new “vehicle” system will enable characters to “drive” an object around. One example Blizzard gave them: Players will fly over a human settlement being overrun with the Scourge, lowering a ladder down to pull up and rescue civilians. In one dungeon instance, players will be able to “liberate” some blue dragons that they can mount up and fly around, fighting their way up a massive tower.

Old Azeroth contents used in Northrend
• There are quests and content relating to the Worgen and the sons of Arugal (from Silverpine Forest) and everyone’s favorite religious fanatics, the Scarlet Crusade (called the Scarlet Onslaught in Northrend).
• They’re also advancing the Forsaken storyline, adding in uniquely Forsaken building architecture and giving the player more chances to help in their Wile E. Coyote-like quest to kill every living thing on Azeroth.

Factions

• The Argent Dawn faction returns in Zul’Drak.
• In Sholazar Basin, players will take part in a faction-reputation war between the Wolvar (sentient wolves) and Oracles (“the next evolution of the Murlocs”). A much lighter take on reputation gaming is promised here, with players actively encouraged to defect to the other side at will.

Professions

Inscription
• Inscribers will create glyphs that allow players to modify their spells and abilities.
• The first recipe is going to requires Peacebloom, thus they’ll rely on the herbalist gathering profession.
• Every player will get a new spell book page to which they can add six glyphs – currently, four major and two minor.
• Major glyphs will be effective in combat – adding damage over time or stun to a physical attack, for example – while minor glyphs will give convenient or cosmetic improvements, removing the need for some spell reagents.

Dungeons & Raids

• Similar to World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, all 5-person dungeons will have a Heroic mode, and the loot tables for the 2 modes will be totally separate. Heroic dungeons will have their own “Tier” of armor completely unique to that level dungeon.
• The regular five-man instances take around one hour or less to beat (this probably won’t be the case for the heroic versions)
• Zero raid bosses have been designed at this point

New “two-tier” raiding system
• All raid dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King will have both 25-person and 10-person versions
- 25-person raiding progression is not dependent on 10-person raiding; players will not have to obtain keys or attunements in 10-person raids to participate in 25-person raids
- 10- and 25-person raids both have their own, independent progression paths
• Players will receive more, higher level rewards for completing the 25-person raid dungeons over the 10-person version

Dragonblight
• Players will interact with Arthas for the first time at a relatively low level, around 71-74 in Dragonblight – the final encounter with him won’t be until the final patch of the Lich King cycle, some time after release.
• The Chamber of Aspects in Dragonblight will offer a series of different single-encounter short raids with dragon bosses.

Coldara
• Coldara (a sub-zone of Borean Tundra) is a three-wing dungeon for 70s, 80s and a short Onyxia-style raid against Malygos himself.
• Coldara is structurally a broken tower with rotating rings surrounding a column of blue energy.
• During some of the boss encounters, players will actually free drakes to fly around the ring. Using the game’s new vehicle technology, players will be able to engage in free flight around the dungeon and use some of the drake’s abilities to take on some of the dungeon’s challenges.

A quick description of some of the spells:
• Death Coil — Depletes all Runic Power, dealing 600 damage to a non-Undead target, or healing 900 damage on a friendly target.
• Death Grip — This is the Death Knight’s “taunt” ability. It also pulls the target to the Death Knight, forcing them to attack the Death Knight for a short amount of time. Yes, I said pulls the target; Blizzard is going to allow players to move mobs in the expansion both with Death Grip, and other knockback/pull abilities. This works on players too, so PvP balance ahoy!
• Chains of Ice — Roots the target in place. When the spell fades, it places a snare on the target that reduces in potency as the duration runs out.
• Raise Dead — Raises a nearby corpse to fight for the Death Knight for 2 minutes. If used on a player corpse, the player has the option to play as the ghoul for the duration — gaining access to the ghoul’s abilities.
- The ghoul has the ability to do the following:
– Leap to the target
– Rend for decent damage-over-time
– Stun target, and of course more
• Death Pact — Sacrifices the raised ghouls to heal the Death Knight.
• Death and Decay — Targeted, AoE Damage-over-time which pulses similar to the Paladin spell Consecration. Anyone affected by Death and Decay has a chance to be feared.
• Frost Presence — Increases Armor by 45% and allows the Death Knight to generate 25% more threat. Only one presence can be active at any time.
• Unholy Presence — Increases Attack Speed and Movement speed by 15%. Only one presence can be active at any time. This was described by Tom Chilton as the “PvP” presence.
• Anti-magic Shield — Reduces the damage of the next magical spell cast on the Death Knight by 75%. It also converts the damage reduced into Runic Power.
• Strangulate — Depletes all Runic Power, dealing minor damage and silencing the target for up to 5 seconds.
• Summon Deathcharger — Allows the Death Knight to summon a Deathcharger mount. This mount is acquired through quests, similar to the Paladin and Warlock land mounts.

A quick recap of the information they were told about the Death Knight:
• Death knights will be available to all players with level 55 characters
• Players can create one death knight per realm, per account
• Death knights can be any of the races
• Once created, death knights can undertake a series of quests to introduce the player to the new class and its associated lore
• Death knights utilize a rune system as their resource mechanic
- Three different rune types are available: Unholy, Frost, and Blood
- These runes allow death knights to cast spells and abilities; spells can cost any combination of these runes
- Spent runes automatically refresh after a set period of time, similar to a rogue’s energy bar
- The death knight will have the ability to customize which array of six runes is currently available
• As rune abilities are used, the death knight also generates another resource called Runic Power
- The death knight will have several abilities that cost all available Runic Power, with varying levels of effectiveness based on total Runic Power spent
- Runic Power decays over time if it’s not spent, similar to a warrior’s rage bar
• The death knight has three different presences to use: Blood, Frost, and Unholy; each presence grants the death knight a unique buff that will allow him or her to fulfill different roles in combat
• The death knight can serve either as a tank or as a melee-based damage-dealing class
• Death knights are designed to be highly viable tanking, magic-using characters
• Death knights will have the ability to summon undead guardians to fight by their side
• Death knights will have the ability to summon a Deathcharger mount.

• Honor diminishing returns removed! But wait theres more, with diminishing returns removed there will no longer be a need for estimated honor to calculate. This means that players will now be able to spend those hard earned honor points right after you earn them, no more waiting until the next day only to find out your estimated was slightly off and you have a whole extra day to wait for an item. With the removal of diminishing returns, there will still be a limit on how much you can farm from one player, once someone dies 50 times in a game they will no longer be worth honor for the rest of that game.
• 25 man raid bosses will now drop an additional set token, this means your guild will be able to gear up a little faster and start moving on to the final raids of The Burning Crusade if you haven’t already. In addition to the extra set tokens, raid bosses will also drop more gold to help you keep up with that massive repair bill.
• To encourage more participation in outdoor raid bosses, all epics dropped will now be changed to bind on equip. Also, the gold rewards for killing outdoor raid bosses has been increased significantly.
• Spell haste finally reduces global cool down, making it actually worthwhile for those fast heals and 1.5 sec spells, there is a minimum cap however, which is set to 1 second.
• On a sad note, players can only carry up to a maximum of 80 mana biscuits from mage tables. As lame as it is, I can see why and I think you might notice more mages willing to pop up those tables in AV.
]]> http://www.powerlevelblog.com/news/patch-24-info/feed/ 0 http://www.powerlevelblog.com/news/24-patch-notes-soon/ http://www.powerlevelblog.com/news/24-patch-notes-soon/#comments Sun, 27 Jan 2008 03:36:53 +0000 admin http://www.powerlevelblog.com/2008/01/26/24-patch-notes-soon/ Straight from the blizzard forums

We have information in the works, but I’d caution people that it’s not going to be today or even Monday, but we have plans and are working to put things together that will hopefully make the wait worthwhile.

I’d also caution people about getting their expectations up in regard to “sweeping class changes”. Again, we have many things in the works and a definite plan of action that we will share with you all more as we progress.

As always, I’ll remind people that if we don’t post patch notes, they aren’t the real deal. We create them, we post them, we make them reality. Don’t supplant someone’s fantasy patch notes for the real ones in your heads. It will only end in tears on so many fronts.


Source

]]> http://www.powerlevelblog.com/news/24-patch-notes-soon/feed/ 0 http://www.powerlevelblog.com/news/season-3-and-patch-23-coming-soon/ http://www.powerlevelblog.com/news/season-3-and-patch-23-coming-soon/#comments Wed, 07 Nov 2007 04:33:50 +0000 admin http://www.powerlevelblog.com/2007/11/06/season-3-and-patch-23-coming-soon/ Looks like we will see patch 2.3 go live next Tuesday, and then season 3 will go live the following Tuesday assuming there are no testing delays. Heres what drysc had to say on the official WoW forums…

While testing continues and a delay could possibly change these dates, we are currently planning to start Season 3 on November 20 once the realms come back up from their weekly maintenance. This means that Season 2 will come to a close when the realms come down for maintenance on November 20. During that maintenance the final standings are taken and the end of season rewards are distributed.

The start date for Season 3 is purposefully planned to be one week later than the release of patch 2.3, which is currently scheduled for November 13. We will be closely monitoring the testing of the 2.3 patch, and if it looks like it won’t make the November 13 date, we will announce a delay.

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]]> http://www.powerlevelblog.com/news/season-3-and-patch-23-coming-soon/feed/ 0 http://www.powerlevelblog.com/news/no-23-patch-today/ http://www.powerlevelblog.com/news/no-23-patch-today/#comments Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:24:13 +0000 admin http://www.powerlevelblog.com/2007/11/06/no-23-patch-today/ Looks like there is no patch again this week, based on blue posts recently it seems it might not be next week either. However it will be soon they say! As you may know if you were playing at all this last week the background download started picking up 2.3 files. Heres what Bornakk had to say on that

We have had a number of patches begin downloading the content before they are released, especially when they have a lot of new content like in this case the new dungeon Zul’Aman. This download doesn’t guarantee any specific release dates, just that it will be soon.

Source

Be sure to get that download started so you aren’t waiting 2 hours for the patch on release day. If for whatever reason it isn’t starting for you, or you want to download it without starting the game, go into your WoW folder and run the background downloader file from there.

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