The 3.1 Patch is Live (Finally)

 News  Comments Off on The 3.1 Patch is Live (Finally)
Apr 142009
 

Weool Ok… the servers aren’t up yet (as I write this) but the patch is finally here. Rumor has it that this is the biggest patch Bliz has ever provided.

Naturally there will be a few bugs coming along with the patch, and no, they’re not the ones you’ll kill to earn XP. As an aside, it’s be kinda interesting to be able to code a hack that fixes a game bug and get Bliz to pay you for it.

Anyway, the full patch notes are in the usual place so check them out. Here are my remarks on miscellaneous points:

General Notes

Mounts can now swim.

Trainers, having decided that their trainees can’t read, have done away with the course requirements for books and will now teach those skills directly.

Dual Talents – Now you can have two builds to switch between. For example, one for raiding and one for PvP. The only downside is that it costs 1,000 gold to get the ability.

Glyphs – A bunch of new glyphs are being introduced and a bunch of old glyphs have been changed. You no longer need to be near a lexicon of power to install glyphs.

And the most important, game-changing, change of all: New music can be heard at the Argent Tournament grounds and in Ulduar.

Class Notes

All classes get a couple of pages of changes, except Warriors and Warlocks, who get a few lines each. Guess that means that Warriors and Rogues are nearly perfect. Looks like there are more than a few buffs in the list of changes. A few nerfs, too.  I’m looking forward to Rogues now being in demand for raids. Oh, Ok, I’m awake now… what was I saying?

Enough changes have been made to talents and spells that everyone (except Rogues and Warriors?) will get a free respec and should visit the trainer the get new spells.

Armor Penetration has been buffed. All classes now get 25% more effect from it. The main visible change of this will be to drop PvP survivability in the BGs (at level 80) from 1 second to 0.9 seconds.

The Fear mongers on the house have had a bit of a nerf. The fear (and related abilities) break sooner now.

DKs, Pallies, and Droods, the classes most in need of a buff, now receive 30% more haste from Haste Rating.

Profession Notes

Alchemy – Several Flask changes, introduction of Northrend Mixtures, and secret Alchemist loot caches (from the Bosses) in Uldar.

Blacksmithing – New recipes from Uldar and an upgrade to some recipes in the 1-300 range to make them useful.

Cooking – I’ll pass these on to my wife and she’ll update our cookbooks (Tauren Chef and Wrath of the Kitchen King) appropriately.

Enchanting and Engineering: have some updates and tweaks.

Fishing – You can now catch a mount! It’s pretty rare, though. Also, you can now fish anywhere.

Gathering skills – For some time low-level twinks have been able to get to 450 mining and skinning (for the crit and stam buffs.) No longer, there’s now a level requirement for those skills.

Inscription – More recipes and quite a number of Glyph changes.

Uldar bosses – will, rarely, be dropping recipes for several professions.

Misc Notes

There’s a bunch of interface tweaks

Lots of little item changes, but if you use Glyphs (you are, aren’t you?) you will want to check it out. There have been some significant changes.

Lots of little bug fixes.

So all in all there’s a lot there. Something for everyone and all that.

Update on Wrath of the Lich King Release

 wrath of the lich king  1 Response »
Sep 162008
 

As I mentioned previously, the pre-order page for Wrath of the Lich King is up on Amazon.com.

The release date has been moved from Nov 3 to Nov 13 (darn close to my Birthday!) Given that Blizzard is willing to let release dates slide if things need more work I wouldn’t say the 13th is etched in stone, but it’s probably close.

edit: Since it’s on the front page of the official World of Warcraft site that date’s probably pretty well etched. Still, don’t be too surprised if it slides a bit.

Get yours here: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack

So just off the top of my head, here’s a reminder of what’s coming in November:

  1. [tag-tec]Deathknights[/tag-tec] are coming, hide now.
  2. All classes will have new talents, changed talents, and the talent trees are being shifted around. Hopefully Bliz gives us all a free respec.
  3. Level 80. Who’s gonna get there first? The guys playing 24/7? The writers of the leveling guides? Nyhm?
  4. New cooking recipes (some of which will be in our cookbook.)
  5. The Inscription profession. Glyphs will be inscribed onto your naked flesh with Raptor Claw pens… Oh, waitaminute… wrong game.
  6. Modified professions
  7. New daily quests and badges from those quests, which will allow you to buy high end recipes for various professions.
  8. Northrend. ’nuff said.
  9. A new BG and Arena to slaughter alliance in.
  10. New dungeons, raids, and some changes to the raiding system.
  11. Various buffs, nerfs, and bugs. Hope they fix the “randomly fall off your mount and die, while flying way up high” one.
  12. And a partridge in a pear tree…

Word has it that Bliz is going to provide a free patch that will incorporate a lot of the Wrath changes. I expect this is to make sure that people who don’t buy Wrath are still on, more or less, the same page as those who do buy it.

This will be a huge download, but will be handled as a background process so it shouldn’t force long waits on people. Estimated time on a dial-up connection is 3 weeks, 2 days… (just kidding, I think.)

When does it happen? Real Soon Now.

Get your Wrath on Amazon, here.

By the way, you DO have to have Burning Crusade installed in order to play Wrath.

Edit: There is going to be a Wrath Collector’s Edition, but it’s going to be hard to find. Here’s the link to the Amazon page, but as I write this it’s only available from Amazon’s 3rd party sellers. For the low low price of just $300.00 (no, that’s not a typo.)
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Collector’s Edition

If you want it then check back to the Amazon page every now and then, to get the Amazon price just in case they get some in. Or camp your local game store.

Wrath of the Kitchen King is in the Oven

 WoW Cooking  Comments Off on Wrath of the Kitchen King is in the Oven
Aug 152008
 

We actually have a [tag-tec]World of Warcraft[/tag-tec] product of our own. It’s not a leveling guide, or a gold guide, or a PvP guide… It’s a cookbook. A real world cookbook taking, primarily, WoW recipes (from the WoW cooking system) and making real word dishes.

So yeah, this means you can really eat your Aterac Manna Biscuits while hacking down the opposition in the AV battlegrounds.

It’s the Tauren Chef Cookbook. Check it out if you like to cook or know someone, somewhere, who does. By the way, we have lots of recipes in that book for people who have not yet worked up their cooking skills.

Now, if you hop over to that site you’ll be able to grab a free mini-cookbook that will finally give you something to do with those Murloc eyes that you’ve been collecting and unable to sell on the Auction House.

Now, in honor of the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion, due in November, Gwynne is baking up the expansion to the [tag-del]Tauren Chef Cookbook[/tag-del], Wrath of the Kitchen King.

Now, since Blizzard will probably miss the Early November release date for Wrath, we’re not going to hold ourselves to an exact release date for Kitchen King. Still, we’ll probably release it right around the time that Bliz releases WotLK.

Now, if you like the smell of Beer Basted Boar Ribs in the morning you should probably look into our other blog, The WoW Cookbook every now and then, most of the updates to the book will happen over there.