3.08 patch is live. Looks like there are a lot of buffs going around. Plus, the Warlock class wasn’t, in fact, deleted (see last post.)
Death Knights, as one might expect, got buffed, in addition to a bunch of tweaks.
Other classes got their tweaks, too, though not as many.
Lots of stuff in this patch, see WoWinsider for details and commentary about all aspects of the patch.
Bits and pieces from other places.
From Tobald:
Blizzard just announced that parts of Wrath of the Lich King content will already be released “in the coming weeks”…
But many people interpret the patch announcement, and the new features that were announced for Wrath of the Lich King and which just happen to be similar to features that Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has, to be a defensive move by Blizzard…
Here’s the rest: WoW is fighting back. There are a ton of comments on that post, so join the fun.
Blizzard does need some serious competion, but WAR doesn’t seem to be it, except maybe in the PvP area, though I think WAR will do well if it has a smooth launch. I think Bliz has the formula that most others are missing, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be on the lookout for nifty ideas that make their game more interesting for more poeple.
Spooncraft has a post on new voices in Wrath, and a video with the voices: Wrath of the Lich King Beta 8885 brings new Death Knight Voice Options
Spoon says: Awesome changes, not exactly sinister but at least now Blood Elf Males actually sound like MEN. You have to go into the sound options menu (if you’re a Death Knight) and turn this feature on for it to work. I am very excited about this and hope that it stays in game permanently.
Go check it out. Now I’m going to go see what my DK troll has to say.
Here’s a bit on the new Level 75 ability for Rogues, “Tricks of the Trade,” from WoW Insider: Rogues in 8885: Tricks of the Trade
Ok, time for dinner.
Via MMORPG.com
Blizzard has posted a Wrath of the Lich King talent calculator, which helps players explore the talent changes that are coming to WoW with the next expansion.
Bliz has the preliminary level 80 talents up on their talent calculator. All of these are subject to change, and likely will be changed, as [tag-tec]Wrath of the Lich King[/tag-tec] moves through beta.
I suppose that since Bliz has posted these talents that they must be reasonably close to the final version, but we’ll see.
Still, they’re fun to explore now. Check out the new talents here.
From the offical World of Warcraft Site:
While Wrath of the Lich King will improve many of [tag-tec]World of Warcraft[/tag-tec]’s existing features, it will also introduce plenty of brand-new ones to keep the game fresh and interesting. One of these new features is sure to suit a wide range of play styles: achievements. These self-contained goals will offer new challenges, satisfy goal-oriented players, allow others to see your accomplishments in World of Warcraft — and are just plain fun.
Achievements, of course, are a big thing on the Xbox system and they’ve been done in other MMOs, such as City of Heroes’ Badges.
Personally, I like the idea of adding achievements to WoW and I think it’ll spark some new interest in re-doing some old stuff, as well some other things that aren’t necessarily along the lines of leveling of making more gold. .
It looks like their Feats of Strength achievments will retroactively take care of some past glories, so older players won’t have to re-do everything again. Bliz even says that some of these will be impossible to achieve in Wrath of the Lich King.
For new glories there will be achievements for getting a shave (Ok, let’s load those Dwarves onto the cart!) and there’s even one for people prone to falling off of high towers.
Anything to further the WoW addiction, right? 😉
So what do you think should be some of the new [tag-tec]WoW achievements[/tag-tec]?
It looks like patch 2.4.3 is going live, since it just downloaded today. Patch notes haven’t made it to the main page, though. They’re still on the test side.
Here they are: Public Test Realm Patch Notes
I’ll be buying a couple of those level 30 mounts ASAP.
From the G4 site: Bushnell Predicts End of ‘Warcraft’
In an interview with Gamasutra, [tag-tec]Bushnell[/tag-tec] said:
“[tag-tec]World of Warcraft[/tag-tec] just passed what I call the Bushnell Threshold. The Bushnell Threshold is… I watch my sons, and because they’re my sons, they tend to start things at the beginning, or sometimes a little bit before. So they play and play and play and play, and all of a sudden, they don’t play anymore. They stayed with World of Warcraft for a long time. My older son all of a sudden got Mage 72 or whatever it is and quit. All at once. Cold turkey. I didn’t think it was going to happen. And my 14-year-old is getting close to there, which is surprising.”
Well, my kids showed a similiar pattern, and then they keep coming back when something in the game sparks new interest. When [tag-tec]Wrath of the Lich King[/tag-tec] come out I expect they’ll be spending long hours exploring every last inch of the thing.
When you’ve leveled everything and raided everything and done every BG many many times the game gets a bit old.
Given the continuing growth of WoW and the fact that the #2 game is so far back that you have to use a telescope to see it… well, I don’t think WoW is ending anytime soon.
It’s also kind of funny to see an Atari guy saying this. Atari has had a record of sharp to brilliant ideas shot down with unbelievably bad follow through.
No, I don’t think the End is Near.
How about you?
From the Washington Post blog:
This afternoon (July 8,) game publisher Activision announced that its shareholders have voted to approve a merger with Vivendi Games.
The proposed merger between the two video game giants was announced in December, but required the blessing of Activision shareholders. The game publisher said that 92 percent of shareholders approved the deal, which is expected to close tomorrow.
One analyst has predicted that the merged company would make $1.38 billion in profits during its first financial year, enough to make [tag-tec]Activision Blizzard[/tag-tec] the world’s largest game publisher
This could mean interesting things for the World of Warcraft, or maybe that the new company will have the resources to come up with similarly successful games.
But I don’t think I’ll be calling them Activision Blizzard very much…
More on Blizzard Activision:
Source: Activision’s ‘DJ Hero’ Was A Vivendi Game, Now A … – We now know that “DJ Hero†was in development under publisher Vivendi before they merged with Activision to become Activision Blizzard. The now-called “DJ Hero†was one of the few unannounced projects that the new mega-publisher decided …
More layoffs at Blizzard Activision – Vivendi, Blizzard’s owner, officially combined its interactive entertainment business with Activision, a publisher of mostly console games, in July and renamed the group Activision Blizzard. Layoffs have been reported at other locations …
Could Activision Enter The Console War? – Take a look at your game collection, and see how many of your games either have Activision, Blizzard, or Vivendi on them, and then think back to the Atari 2600, and how many quality games over the last 29 years have been released by …
Activision tried to buy Blizzard before merging with Vivendi Games – Merging with Vivendi Games was not Bobby Kotick’s first thought. While talking about the deal today, the Activision (and now Activision Blizzard) CEO admitted that in his first conversations with Vivendi Games CEO Bruce Hack, …
Obviously the World of Warcraft isn’t, and isn’t going to be, free to play, as interesting as that thought might be. But it seems that Bliz actually considered such a model (possibly ad supported,) then dumped it as being non-sustainable.
I happen to agree that a paid model is the way to go if you want to seriously develop a game. Whether of not we agree on the exact direction that Bliz takes with WoW I think we can all agree that they do a lot of support and development work so those few bucks 😉 that they pull in each month get put to use.
Here’s the clip, from Massively.com:
Blizzard’s own Rob Pardo recently dropped something of a bombshell about World of Warcraft at the Paris GDC event when he revealed in a keynote that the game was originally planned as a free-to-play experience. He also adds that, “We didn’t want to charge a subscription, but as we researched market conditions, we realized that wouldn’t support us.”
Here’s the rest of the article: WoW Originally Planned as Free to Play
Coming Real Soon Now, 2.4.3.
Lots of fixes and a few changes. Mounts will be availabel at level 30, for example.
Patch notes are on WoW Insider