Warcraft Experience

Extra info. Blizzard will release a 1.13 patch soon (next few weeks). This will be a MAJOR CONTENT PATCH. Included in this patch will be the new honor system, all new talent trees and abilities, and the new spells that you can learn at lvl 60 and before. Other stuff, too, but those are the biggies. Keep your eyes peeled…

Nooooooo!

IRVINE, Calif. — Blizzard Entertainment® today announced that the release date for World of Warcraft®: The Burning Crusadeâ„¢, the highly anticipated expansion for World of Warcraft, will be in January 2007. By adding a few extra weeks to the development cycle beyond its original target date, Blizzard will be able to extend the closed beta test and further refine the new content that will ship with the game.

“We appreciate the enthusiasm surrounding World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, and we’re excited about putting the finishing touches on all of the new content,” said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We feel confident that the extra time spent polishing the game will result in the high-quality experience that our players expect and deserve.”

Blizzard began the closed-beta phase of testing on World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade earlier this month. The January 2007 release window will allow extra time for current beta testers to participate in the final stages of development and continue providing valuable feedback.

Further information on specific worldwide release dates, pricing, and other details will be announced in the near future.

Players are expressing their concerns with the Priest’s Vamp Touch in The Burning Crusade Beta and BLizzzrd poster Drysc fired back with this…

The talent is first and foremost intended as an additional DOT, it’s a damage over time ability with some great potential for putting the hurt on someone when factoring in how much further its damage will be on an actual character with talents and gear. The mana regen is definitely going to be great while soloing by at least being able to regain some of the mana you’re already spending to get your damage out, and in large groups a few shadow priests would definitely become a great asset for the mana they would be giving back by keeping Vampiric Touch active.

There seems to be some amount of misconception as to just how much damage the spell will be doing without factoring in anything that’s going to be increasing the damage, on top of fundamentally shaving off the mana costs of the rest of your shadow spells.

As a side note we are lowering the mana cost of rank 3 a bit to keep a smooth curve of mana vs damage output. The change should be viewable in our next expansion talent and ability preview website update.

There are other threads here pointing out specific real-world examples of how the talent is working for them in various situations, I would recommend checking them out, or hey, this is the beta, go try it out! In practice the talent is showing a lot of promise, but we’re still always open to feedback and suggestions.

Thanks

For those who have heard the rumor floating around about a option of an “easy button” and “difficult” setting in the Burning Crusade, Drysc had this tidbit to share on the matter. Easy mode = less experience, average loot and Hard setting = more experience, better loot. 

Semi-true I guess. Some dungeons or dungeon wings will allow you to choose between a normal and hard mode. The hard mode will allow you to either test your abilities or come back to a lower level dungeon at level 70 for better rewards. The setting only applies to specific dungeons though, not the entire game.

Thanks

The guys from WoW Petopia posted a bit of new information from The Burning Crusade beta for everyone to go check out. Go check it out

1 Up editors have posted several videos they’ve encountered so far:

A handful of us are playing World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade well into the morning hours. We aren’t doing it because we’re hopelessly addicted to Blizzard’s MMO, but rather because we want to start showing people who haven’t got a chance to check out the Burning Crusade some of what to expect from the expansion.

Over the next few days, addicts posing as employees of Gamevideos will be busting out videos of a variety of stuff from the Outlands. For starters, here are videos of three bosses from Hellfire Ramparts, one of the first instances players will encounter post-level 60 in the Outlands.

Slouken speaks up on the upcoming expansions changes to UI modifciation:

Q: Given all the new information that has just been announced are addons like benecast still possible?

You can easily bind specific spells to modified buttons, but you can’t have the addon intelligently pick the rank of the spell. For example, you can set up a row of frames representing the folks you want to heal, and then bind “medium heal” to click, and then “big heal” to shift-click, or right click. Or you could have a column of info frames showing raid member status, and then have a menu of cleanse/heal type spells that pop up when you click on them, etc. etc.

Q: Keep in mind that our secure templates are still a work in progress and we’re trying to make available lots of functionality in building-block style pieces.

Could Decursive be changed so that I could, at the very least, still target the sheeped player really quick with one button, without having to fumble around with my mouse and keyboard to try to select him manually?

You no longer have to target a unit to cast a spell on it, if you have the spell pre-loaded into your buttons. For example, you can have your teammates arranged in a pleasing array, and when they get sheeped they can start glowing or flashing … or just bleat… and then you can either click on them to dispel them or pop up a menu with the dispel action on it, depending on how you have things set up. … while you’re still targeting the flag carrier all along. The key point is that the UI won’t automatically have the right spell ready, you’ll have to plan your tactics in advance.

Slouken does promise to fight hard to get all the functions needed to make legit mods work correctly. Could this be the end of modding as we know it? If thats the case there goes many-a-uber players skills as they learn to rework the game.