This site makes extensive use of JavaScript.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser.
News
Live
News Roundup: Vengeance Clarified, Cataclysm Sales Record, Razer Switchblade
Just more of the latest news from the World of Warcraft!
All has been relatively quiet on the Blue front, aside from their
recent post discussing Tol Barad balancing
, though we do have a clarification on the mechanics of the
Vengeance
tanking specialization. Vengeance does not cap at 10% of health, but rather at raw stamina + 10% of
base
health.
Hey all, I'm hopping in to see if this will help you all a bit in understanding how this is meant to work. Hopefully it will clear up a little confusion.
The Vengeance calculation is working correctly as far as we can ascertain. Vengeance caps at a number equal to Stamina plus 10% of base health, which is lower than 10% of health. When we buffed Stamina late in Cataclysm development, we specifically did not buff Vengeance because we didn’t think tanks needed 40% additional attack power in order to maintain threat or contribute to damage done by the group. The Vengeance too
Live
Tol Barad Balance Discussion
Cory "Mumper" Stockton has posted a dev blog about balance in
Tol Barad
, and the developer's approach to gameplay in the zone.
If you've been curious about their recent changes, this post should shed a little light on the subject. Some of you may remember a blue post a
few days ago
indicating that this post was coming.
The full text is after the break!
Live
Latest Cataclysm Hotfixes (January 6)
That will teach us to say the hotfixes are slow in coming. Blizzard has hit us with another round of hotfixes today!
Most of the changes are pretty minor encounter re-tunings and bug fixes, but a few are worth reading:
Entering Tol Barad via the bridge during an active battle by joining the queue will port the player to the correct starting place of the battle, but players who do not join the queue will be ported back to the camp.
Shapeshifted characters should no longer be unable to jump on the rope during the Vanessa VanCleef encounter. They will now be pulled out of a shapeshift form automatically. In addition, players should no longer lose pets when jumping on the rope (they will respawn when the player lands after swinging). Please note that until a client-side patch can be applied, an inappropriate aura will be displayed when pet classes or shapeshifted characters use the rope. The tooltip of this aura will read "Delicious Aura (UNUSED REUSE) / Instant / Delicious food increases haste by 10%" and can be disregarded, as it does not provide a haste buff. It's an aura of free word association... Enjoy!
Live
Patch 4.0.6 PTR Patch Notes
Edit: Blizzard has added a new, updated set of patch notes! The changes are marked below with the word New!
Blizzard has released a new batch of patch notes for the upcoming patch 4.0.6!
Remember, you can always find the patch notes in our menu under
Tools > Patch Notes
, or at the URL below:
http://www.cuckhead.com/patchnotes=4.0.6-ptr
Check out the full patch notes, fully Wowhead linkified for your viewing pleasure, after the break!
Live
Guild Flask and Cauldron Hotfixes
Blizzard just announced some hotfixes to flask-related achievements! Specifically:
Mix Master
now requires your guild to craft 1,000 Cataclysm flasks (down from 10,000).
Better Leveling Through Chemistry
now requires your guild to craft 3,000 Cataclysm flasks (down from 25,000).
Looks like guilds weren't crafting flasks as fast as Blizzard had originally anticipated. This should make unlocking the
Recipe: Cauldron of Battle
and
Recipe: Big Cauldron of Battle
significantly easier!
Check after the break for the full details!
Live
New Wowhead Feature: Blue Tracker!
It's been a while since our last big
feature announcement
, so we thought we'd give you guys a late holiday gift in introducing our latest site feature:
Blue Tracker
! We finally have our own, onsite tracker for all things Blizzard! This tracker pulls all posts and threads made by Blizzard posters on the official World of Warcraft forums (both US and EU) and displays them in easy-to-view listings for your browsing pleasure!
http://www.cuckhead.com/bluetracker
Check out the full list of features!
Features
Accessible via the 'Tools' tab (Tools > Blue Tracker)
Menu features full subforum filtering options
Popular categories featured for easy access
RSS
Feeds available for all forums!
Ability to sort listings via date or activity
Activity is a calculation of
Live
TankSpot's Guide to Nefarian
TankSpot has posted their guide to
Nefarian
!
Just like before, you can find the video guide on Nefarian's NPC page, and the transcript is after the break!
Live
News Roundup: Rated Battlegrounds Honor Change, Traveling Azeroth
Just two little brief tidbits of news today!
Blizzard changes Rated Battlegrounds to award full Honor to players already at the Conquest Points cap, and have also posted a helpful and informative guide on getting around in the World of Warcraft!
We've recently made a change in an effort to promote continued play in Rated Battlegrounds. Now when a player is at their weekly Conquest cap they will receive the full amount of Honor from kills, objective completions, victories and losses while in a Rated Battleground match. Those not at their cap will continue to earn Conquest normally, and will only earn Honor once they reach their weekly cap.
Whether you’re capped and others on your team aren’t, or you’re all capped and just want to keep playing, we hope this change will allow more flexibility for those participating in Rated Battlegrounds.
Check out their informative post on travel methods in Azeroth and beyond after the break!
Live
News Roundup: Tol Barad Balancing, Daze Mechanic, WoW on Kinect
The latest World of Warcraft news is starting up again in full force as the holidays come to a close, with Blizzard posts popping up from beloved blue poster Zarhym!
Today's Blizzard posts include a look at the balance issues affecting the new
Tol Barad
battleground and a look into the Daze mechanic and why it still exists! We've also got an awesome video of a talented team at USC's
Institute for Creative Techologies
who got WoW working with a
Microsoft Kinect
!
Check out the full posts and my own thoughts after the break!
Live
News Roundup: Cataclysm Hotfixes, Heroics, Project Titan, Starcraft II Demo
Just the latest news from the world of Blizzard, including a small batch of Cataclysm hotfixes, veiled details about Blizzard's new MMO, tips on surviving Heroics and more!
Notable Cataclysm hotfixes include:
The search radius to find an Archaeology node from the Archaeology ability Survey has been increased. This will result in fewer searches needed while in the "green" range of surveying.
Chakra is no longer consumed by a Prayer of Mending bounce.
Several shirts have been corrected so they no longer cause a player's item level to increase. They are item level 1.
In addition, another, undocumented hotfix was recently applied which will make it so that players without an appropriate crafting profession of 425 or higher will no longer be able to 'Need' roll on
Chaos Orb
! This should be a welcome change for any users with the profession, however I still say that making them BOP was silly in the first place. But meh, we're probably just a few patches away from a change on that - and by then, it won't matter.
A hotfix was applied about an hour ago that changes it so Chaos Orbs will only be available
Live
WoWInterface Gets a New Look
If you user addons when you play WoW, you're most likely familiar with our sister site,
WoWInterface
. But you may not yet know that WoWInterface just got a full redesign!
They've done a full layout redesign, with new icons, new menus, and simpler navigation. If you want to know more, check out the announcement here:
http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37704
...or you can read the full announcement after the break!
Live
Winter Veil 2010 Guide
Miyari has updated our
Winter Veil Guide
for 2010!
Deck the halls with boughs of
Preserved Holly
, and have a merry
Winter Veil
! It's that time of year again, when kids run playfully through the streets tossing
Snowball
s at one another, old friends will gather to exchange gifts, and the fine gentlegoblins of
Smokywood Pastures
come once again to bless us with their delightful yearly gift packages (and fruitcake). Cheers!
Remember that we'll be updating the guide with new content as we go, so if you see something missing, just notify us in the comment thread here!
The event goes live at
8am
on
Wednesday, December 15th!
http://www.cuckhead.com/guide=winter-veil
Live
Holy Paladin Nerfs Explained
Nethaera just jumped on to the official forums to let us know about a holy paladin nerf:
no longer generates Holy Power when used with
, and
Light of Dawn
isn't healing for as much.
Looks like paladin healers were spamming Holy Light on the tank to build up Holy Power, then using Light of Dawn to heal the rest of the raid for free.
These hotfixes were intentional and we wanted to share more information about the "why" for you all here:
Mana is supposed to matter for healers, and in the case of Holy paladins, that just wasn’t happening. We were seeing raid groups attempting to learn new bosses where the other healers were out of mana while the paladins were still at 90% of mana. We also thought the experience of paladins healing harder heroic dungeons was inconsistent with that of other healers, or our design intent. We thought it was only a matter of time before groups started going out of their way to stack paladins for raids or recruit them for dungeon runs, which of course is not our intent. For this reason, we thought it was important to address this point now rather than sitting on it until a fut
Live
PvP Season 9 Has Begun
The first PvP season of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is underway! Players are now able to compete in level-85 Rated Arenas for top gear, items, and titles -- and for the first time ever, they can enter level-85
Rated Battlegrounds
to fight for the same rewards available through Arenas, along with the original World of Warcraft PvP titles. Players can also participate in unranked
War Games
, skirmishes that allow Battleground and Arena teams to hone their skills against opponents of their choosing -- even if they're in the same faction. So prepare yourselves, aspiring Grand Marshals and High Warlords, as the struggle between the Horde and the Alliance is about to get bloodier.
Live
Blizzard Launching "War Games": PvP Practice Matches
Blizzard is implementing a
War Game
system—a system broadly similar to the old Arena skirmish system.
Basically, with a simple text command, you can now start a "War Game" against another group in a battleground, or another arena team, the matches don't actually count for achievements or currency rewards, and you can only initiate them against other people on your realm—but it's a great way to test out new players in PvP, or hold grudge matches against old enemies.
The new system opens up with Arena Season 9!
The full blue post is after the break, complete with a Q&A.
Live
Normal Loot Upgraded for Blackrock Caverns and Throne of the Tides
Astute Wowhead users will have actually caught this before I did—Blizzard has upgraded all the loot from Normal
Throne of the Tides
and Normal
Blackrock Caverns
. The old items were ilvl 279, and have now been upgraded to ilvl 308.
You can see a full list of the changed items here:
http://www.cuckhead.com/items?filter=cr=105:105;crs=5004:4926;crv=0:0;ma=1
It's a good thing, too. I've got to tell you, considering the fact that quest greens in
Vashj'ir
were already ilvl 272, 85 blues coming in at only ilvl 279 was a little odd—and it made it REALLY difficult to collect the gear necessary to meet the gear requirement for heroics.
I wonder if all future changes are going to be this...unannounced?
Live
Guild XP Stealth Nerfed to 1/4?
Posts in the
Achievements and Guild Advancement
forum are indicating that
Guild XP gains have been nerfed by 75%.
It looks like only 1/4th of individual experience is contributing to guild experience now, rather than a full 1:1 ratio.
We tested this in game, and our findings sync up with the posts we're seeing in the forums.There hasn't been any announcement about this on the official forums—so we're not sure if this is a stealth nerf, a bug, or what. Keep your eyes peeled, and we'll update you as we know more.
Here's the original post:
We're getting 1/4th of xp now contributing to guild xp, and not a peep from any blue about this.
I'd like to trust that there's a reason for this, or an explanation.
Maybe on weekends it's reduced to 1/4th and weekdays it goes up to full to more easily allow caps to be hit weekdays.
Maybe rep affects xp contribution now.
Maybe it's a bug.
Maybe at 85 things even out.
Maybe they went overboard on the nerf, and are going to scale it back up some.
In any case, gett
Live
TankSpot's Guide to Blackrock Caverns
TankSpot is still going, with a new guide to
Blackrock Caverns
!
LIke yesterday, we've already posted the video on the
zone page
, and the boss pages.
The transcript of the guide is after the break, if you prefer to read while you listen. :)
Live
TankSpot's Guide to The Stonecore
TankSpot has posted their guide to
The Stonecore
!
The guide has already been embedded in all the key pages on the site, including the
zone page
, as well as
all
the
boss
pages
.
There's also a complete transcript of the guide after the break, if you want to see the details all written out!
Live
ZAM Jumps Into StarCraft II, Vindictus, Torchlight
The ZAM family is growing!
We've added three new websites to the ZAM Network:
SC2Ranks.com
,
VindictusDB
, and
TorchlightArmory.com
!
We're really excited about these new additions to our lineup, so I hope that if you play any of these games you'll take a moment to go and check them out!
The full announcement is here:
http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=24387
1
4
5
6
7
8
37
