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Live
BlizzCon 2010 In-game Items Announced!
BlizzCon 2010
is approaching at an alarming rate, and Blizzard has just announced the in-game items that will go with your convention ticket (or virtual ticket)! This is
Deathy
, a murloc companion decked out like Deathwing—he'll be available for WoW players! StarCraft II players will be pleased to find out they will
also
be able get something special—a new Murloc Marine character portrait and a pair of deep-sea decals for your units!
BlizzCon 2010 World of Warcraft & StarCraft II In-Game Items
"Death will rise from the tide!" Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain once warned -- and at BlizzCon 2010, the band's dire musical prophecy will finally come to pass. Everyone who attends this year's BlizzCon or purchases the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket will receive an exclusive set of murlocalyptic in-game items for World of Warcraft and StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. World of Warcraft players will be joined by Deathy, a murloc companion decked out as Deathwing and doing his best to strike fear into the hearts of Azeroth's crustacean population. You'll also be able to display your tidal prid
Live
Cataclysm Beta (Build 12803) New + Updated Maps!
The Cataclysm beta build 12803 was deployed last week and we have a slew of new (and even some updated) maps for you to check out. We even have maps for all kinds of classic dungeons such as
Wailing Caverns
and
Blackrock Spire
!
Check out our side by side comparisons after the break!
Live
Premium Users Get Beta Access to Vindictus
The ZAM Network is giving away beta keys to a new MMO called
Vindictus
, created by Nexon—the same people, interestingly enough, who brought you
MapleStory
. Vindictus is a fantasy based MMORPG that incorporates real world physics into it's high-speed combat. You can find out more about the game itself on ZAM's Game Info page
here
.
After watching the
trailer
on Nexon's official site, I have to say it looks pretty awesome—I'll be sure to check it out myself!
Right now ZAM is only giving away beta keys to
Premium
members! If you already have Premium, you can head on over and get your
beta key
already!
Note: Beta Keys are currently only available in North America.
http://www.zam.com/giveaways/vindictus.html
Live
Cataclysm New Feature: Level Sync?
The Escapist
recently did an interview with
Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street
, where they talk Blizzard's plans and ideas behind Cataclysm. One part that really stood out was Ghostcrawler mentioning a new system being put in place that will
allow high level characters to decrease their level to help out low level characters.
This sound familiar to anyone? Anyone who has ever played Final Fantasy XI may remember this as
Level Sync
, and City of Heroes players may remember this as their "Mentoring System". Ghostcrawler does mention that this may happen
eventually
, so no getting your hopes up if it doesn't come true!
Cataclysm may also eventually include a system that allows players to scale down their character's level in order to help newer players. The heirloom items unveiled in Wrath of the Lich King already scale with a character's level, so adjusting t
Live
Cataclysm Build 12759: New Data and Talent Calc Updated!
Build 12759
was pushed to the beta servers last Friday, and after a long and difficult fight with the new game file format, we now have all the new data added!
Blizzard has added all new quest completion achievements for Azerothian old world zones, which will now be part of the criteria for earning
(similar to the existing
Loremaster of Outland
and
Loremaster of Northrend
Achievements). With most 1-60 zones featuring many new streamlined quest hubs and tons of new quests, earning Loremaster should come much more naturally and involve less scavenging for that one missing quest in a zone!
The ferocious
Lil' Deathwing
, which is part of the recently
announced
Cataclysm Collector's Edition, also makes an appearance in this build, as well as several new cooking recipes—including
Lavascale Minestrone
and
South Island Iced Tea
. You can check out all this on our
Latest Additions
pages for
Tuesday
and
Wednesday
.
Also we have the [url=
http://cata.wowhead
.
Live
Cataclysm Collector's Edition Announced!
Blizzard has just announced the
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Collector's Edition
! Some items included in the Collector's Edition are a 176-page Cataclysm themed art-book, Lil' Deathwing in-game pet, a behind the scenes DVD, the soundtrack from Cataclysm, a special edition mouspad depicting Deathwing himself, and World of Warcraft: The Trading Card Game cards from the Wrathgate expansion. According to the Press Release the Collector's Edition will be available for $79.99 (US dollars).
Blizzard's
Cataclysm Mini-site
has been updated with extensive details and pictures!
Update!
Now features correct Lil' Deathwing model!
You can read the official Press Release after the break.
Live
Cataclysm Beta (Build 12759) UI Changes!
A new beta build has just been deployed on the beta realms and with it came some excellent changes to the UI that I think everyone will enjoy.
First off
Mounts
and
Companion Pets
have moved out of the character pane and into their own tabs in the spell book. This allows a player to easily browse through the pages looking for the right mount or pets to add to your bars instead of guessing if that's the right icon for your
Onyx Netherwing Drake
.
There was one other things that got a
much
needed overhaul was the Video Settings window. Now all the sliders have been removed and turned into drop downs, this way you no longer have to guess what each section of the sliding bar. All settings have different options ranging from the standard fare of Low, Fair, Good, High and Ultra to simple Enabled or Disabled options.
Another small addition is you're now able to
"learn"
Glyphs and they show up in your general tab of your spellbook. You will automatically learn a glyph upon purchasing and using the glyph item. Now, whenever you want to change glyphs you will no longer have to run out and buy new ones and can just apply them directly from the spellbook.
Blizzard also added a tweak for the new streaming client t
Live
Cataclysm Beta: Mob Damage Increased
Zarhym posted a rather interesting announcement on the beta forums today: it seems
damage output
on mobs level 65 and above have been
increased
. An example used by Zarhym states that mobs in a level 80 area had their damage increased by 2.5, while mobs at 81 were increased by 3.2—and it scales further on according to level.
Blizzard is also asking for feedback regarding how combat feels in the level 80-85 exterior zones, including spawn rates and the amount of NPCs in specific locations.
You can read the the original announcement after the break.
Live
Wowhead Client, Cataclysm Beta and You
As usual, when there's a beta up, we need your data! But there's been a little bit of confusion as to how to make the Wowhead Client work with the beta installation of Cataclysm.
So I've come to answer the question on everyone's mind,
how do I upload data for the beta?
Well, that's an easy one! First you need to make sure you have the Wowhead Client installed, which you can get
here
. Unzip the files and copy the Wowhead_client.exe to somewhere you can easily remember—I personally keep mine inside the World of Warcraft folder for my live install. When you open the Wowhead Client for the first time it will try to auto detect your World of Warcraft installations. Typically this will be done automatically, but if for some reason it does not detect your game files properly, all you will need to do is click on Tools -> Options and Browse for Live, PTR and Beta installations. Once you've done all this, all you have to do is click OK and upload your data!
Remember at this time
Addons are disabled
in the Cat
Live
Azeroth, Revisited: Scarlet Monastery in Cataclysm
With the upcoming
Cataclysm
expansion now going through its beta phase, I thought now would be a perfect time to take a look at some of the classic dungeons that everyone loves and see how they will be changing.
The first dungeon we're taking a look at is
Scarlet Monastery
. While technically only one instance, it has been split up into four wings: Graveyard, Library, Armory, and Cathedral. The four wings have seen no physical changes, but each has received a nice makeover in mob and quest locations.
Note: This is from a Horde perspective, because that's what character I had available. The Alliance version is slightly different.
WARNING: IF YOU DON'T LIKE SPOILERS OF ANY KIND, DON'T READ THIS.
Live
Blizzard Cataclysm Preview: Darkshore
Blizzard has just posted another exciting zone preview on their European forums, this time featuring
Darkshore
! In this Q&A with the game designers, Luis Barriga and Craig Amai, they talk about subjects ranging from their concepts for the zone all the way to what is happening at the Master's Glaive.
We also have a bunch of screenshots of
Darkshore
in our
Cataclysm Guide
!
You can read the whole preview after the break.
Live
TankSpot: This Week in Warcraft
Our friends over at
TankSpot
have a new video series, aptly-named
This Week in Warcraft
. In this series they'll be covering some of the new and interesting topics that have occurred in the last week, and this week they cover such items as the new
Cataclysm Launcher
,
reforging
and even the Southern Barrens
preview
!
Live
Cataclysm Beta: New Macintosh Repair Tool
With the new
streaming client
released last week in the Cataclysm beta, Blizzard has also apparently decided to sneak in something that has been missing from the Macintosh client for quite some time.
Repair.app
works exactly like the Windows version, in that it will check your MPQ files against the current patch file and restores any that are corrupt. Now instead of reinstalling the game or restoring it from backup, Macintosh users will have an easy way to restore their World of Warcraft installation!
Thanks to
bluspacecow
for the heads up on this!
Live
Cataclysm Beta (Build 12964) New Icons and Update Talent Calc!
Another Cataclysm Build was released this past Wednesday and now that we have our server issues out of the way we have some awesome new data for you! The
Cataclysm
Latest Addition
page lists off all the new spells and talents in this build such as the new Goblin mount
Goblin Trike
. The
Talent Calculator
has also been fully updated to support the newest build. We also found 5 updated icons, which you can check out after the break!
Live
Reforging Now Available in Cataclysm Beta
Reforging
, which we mentioned two weeks ago
here
, is finally active in the beta. It is a rather simple process—Alliance side you will need to visit
Ithurian Whitespire
in Stormwind near the Stockades, ask a guard for the nearest Thaumaturge. The Horde equivalent is
Enchanter Farendin
in Orgrimmar's Cleft of Shadows. When you speak to the NPC, it asks you to drag and drop the item you want reforged. After dropping the item in the slot it asks which stat you would like to reduce and what you would like to increase.
An example (which is in the screenshots) is taking 32 Haste Rating from
Lasherweave Cover
, and adding 32 Mastery Rating to it. After clicking
Reforge
, it will make the changes—and bringing any reforged item back and clicking restore will turn the item back to its original form. As this example is a Tier piece which cannot be vendored it only costs 1 gold while any other pieces will cost their vendor price.
Live
Cataclysm: New Guild UI
In the recent Cataclysm beta build the new
Guild UI
has been partially enabled. The new Guild UI is only available by typing /groster currently, but presumably will have it's own menu option in the future.
Inside you'll start off with the revamped roster list. Several new panels have been added to the roster, with the default panel displaying level, class, name and last zone the player was in. A little drop down at the top will let you switch to the other two panels:
Guild Status
and
Professions
. The Guild Status panel is pretty much exactly the same as the one we currently see in-game. The real nice part about the new roster is the addition of the all-new Professions panel! The list allows you to see who has what profession, and then open up a second window to see all the patterns you have within the guild, and to view who has them.
Check out an extensive visual tour of the new Guild UI after the break! Also, be sure to check out our recent
Guild Perks
blog for a full rundown of all the interesting new benefits you can earn by being in a guild!
Live
Official Forums Now Use Authenticators
Live
Cataclysm: New Raid Frames and Reforging(?)
In a recent Cataclysm beta build Blizzard introduced
new raid frames
, to allow better testing (since there are no new raids enabled) they have enabled them as party frames. The new raid frames are vastly different from the live version. Taking some design aspects of popular addons like
Grid
I believe Blizzard has designed raid frames that I personally might not have to use an addon for!
Also added in the newest build,
Reforging
has finally made its appearance. Performed by Highborne Thaumaturges in the major cities, reforging allows you take secondary stats on your armor and convert them to another secondary stat. An example used by the in-game thaumaturges is, if you have an item that increases hit rating but you would rather it increase your haste rating you can convert the hit to haste for a price.
Unfortunately we are unable to test reforging to get more exact information, as it is currently bugged!
Live
Cataclysm: Mount Hyjal and Vashj'ir Level Changes
In the next beta build it seems Blizzard is changing the minimum level requirement for entering both
Vashj'ir
and
Mount Hyjal
. The quests which allow entrance into the two new zones will be available at level 80, not level 78 as it was previously set at. You will also need to be level 80 to enter
Throne of the Tides
or
Blackrock Caverns
Along with this change mob health is getting double for all 80+ Cataclysm creatures. So a mob that had 16,400 HP now has 31,000 HP!
So now that you've heard these changes, how does the community feel about them?
In the next beta build the minimum level for entering and questing in Mount Hyjal and Vashj’ir will change from level 78 to level 80. All associated creature will have their levels increased to match the new flow.
Additionally, after careful review and consideration we've decided to increase the hit point values of level 80+ Cataclysm creatures. The new hit point values are roughly double their previous values.
Level 80 (OLD)
16400
Level 80 (NEW)
31000
Players will also
Live
Cataclysm: New Worgen Male Models
In latest Cataclysm beta build new models for male
Worgen
's have been added. The new models change is mostly in the facial area where it looks like Blizzard was trying to go for a more feral look. You can check out a comparison of the old and new models on the right.
So now that you've seen the new models,
what are your opinions
? Is this change for the better or for the worse?
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