Archive for April, 2008
Sunwell Plateau Gates Opened, Wotlk Alpa beta testing, Season 4 Arena Gear
April 16th, 2008
Many servers have now completed their anvil, and players are seen running around with their new spicy epics. There are even a few servers who are charging forward and have aldready reached phase four, and are now in the progress of opening the Alchemy Lab. Once formed, the Alchemy Lab will give players the ability to purchase epic gems from badges.
- Wrath of the Lich King: Alpha Testing – Blizzard began Alpha testing for the expansion this past week. Alpha testing only includes blizzard employees for the most part, and all participating members have had to sign a Non-disclosure Agreement. It is extremely doubtful we will even get a single screenshot leak from Alpha testing.
- Epic Gems Only 10 Badges – When Proudmoore reached Phase 4 of the Shattered Sun offensive, the epic gems became viewable on the Armory. For right now it looks like the cost of the epic gems has been reduced from 15 to 10 Badges. This is not confirmed on live servers, and you should wait to get overly excited until Proudmoore or another server close behind them finishes the Alchemy lab and can buy the gems.
- Agamath, The First Gate Now Open – Blizzard opened up the first gate inside Sunwell Plateau, this gives players access to a new boss called the Twin Eredar. Nihilum registered the world first kill earlier this week, with Premonition registering the US first kill the very next day. Congratulations to both guilds!
- Thori’dal, the Stars Fury Preview – This is the Legendary bow that will presumably drop from Kil’jaeden in the Sunwell Plateau. It looks as if the arrows you shoot will have a glowing effect that is really cool. You can check out the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKbB7BrdFOE.
- Arena Tournament Realms Bug – It seems that Blizzard forgot to allow Tauren Druids to train Cure Poison on the Tournament Realms. They also said that it will not be fixed for quite some time, if it is fixed at all. This is a slight nerf, but druids will mainly use Abolish Poison anyway in most cases. However it is nice to Abolish then Cure Poison spam to strip off poisons really fast.
- Season 4 Rating Requirements – It was also discovered this week by looking through the Armory that Season 4 Shoulders will require a 2200 Personal rating. If you look at the top 20 teams in each battlegroup for 5v5 they are barely over the 2200 rating! So Blizzard only wants the top 20 teams to get shoulders, expect this to get lowered before season 4 is released.
- Onyxia Attunement will not be Removed – Players will have to keep killing Rend and Drakkisath for their Onyxia Attunement, Blizzard stated this week they have no intentions of changing the requirements for this Raid encounter. Many players now use this encounter as a way to make some extra gold each week, and since the quest line is such a pain they were hoping for a change to the attunement.
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World of warcraft hunter mastery guide
April 15th, 2008
1. Ranged weapon specialization is their best talent, even more so than their pet taming. The projectiles include 4 different types of stings that cause a debuff effect on targets causing great damage. They also have shots like Arcane Shot, Auto Shot and later in levels Steady Shot.
2. Melee fighting: Hunters can close fight but not in the same league as warriors. Useful to have if target gets too close or pet is impaired due to a spell or busy with other targets.
3. Pets are probably the most important part in their arsenal adding to their DPS (Damage Per Second) allowing them to dispatch adversaries quicker. They also act for the most part as tanks while the Hunter finishes off opponents with projectiles thus avoiding aggro (or the focus of enemies attack) which the pet absorbs instead.
4. Traps: At their disposal hunters have up to 5 traps used for crowd control, and to cause damage . Traps have a cool down period of 30 seconds. Once a trap is set another can be set up immediately afterwards. Here are the kind of traps available to hunters:
Freezing Trap – freezes approaching enemies.
Frost Trap – Slows enemies up to 60% in area where trap is set.
Immolation Trap – Burns enemies over 15 sec period.
Explosive Trap – Explodes as enemy approaches causing fire damage.
5.Aspects: this is an ability which is only exclusive to hunters. It empowers them to assume aspects (or characteristics) of 7 different kind of animals. At any one time only one aspect can be active. They are most useful for the hunter depending on what kind of combat he or she is about to engage with. A good hunter will know just which ones to implement given the combat situation or mob they are faced with. The seven available hunter aspects are as follows:
Aspect of the Monkey: This can increase the chance to dodge by 8%.
- Aspect of the Hawk: Increases “ranged” attack by “x” amount depending on level.
- Aspect of the Cheetah: Can speed up the hunter speed by 30% but can also daze him for 4 seconds if suffering damage.
- Aspect of the Beast: Allows hunters to become undetectable.
Aspect of the Pack: The hunter and his/her group take on the characteristics of a pack of cheetahs, increasing all their movement speeds by 30%. If a pack member takes damage, they will be dazed for 4 sec.
Aspect of the Wild: The Hunter and group assume the aspect of the wilderness, gaining +X resistance to nature damage.
- Aspect of the Viper: Regenerates mana equal to 55% of his intellect every 5 seconds
6. Hunters are able to track eight kinds of units in the game. Only one tracking ability can be kept open at a time. Type of creatures or items they are able to track are: Beasts, Humanoids, Undead, Hidden, Elementals, Demons, Giants, and Dragonkin.
Being a hunter is fun due to the diverse things it can do. It’s the best solo class there is on a par with Warlocks if not better. You should be able to decide if this is the class as soon as you reach level 20 by which time you will have a fair idea if you enjoy playing it. Of course if you like grouping with others, this is not the best class for it but there are still plenty of Hunters who group well.
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Tags: World of Warcraft Shaman Secrets
April 13th, 2008
What makes the Shaman unique is their use of totems which when fixed on the ground gives them and other group members a wide range of benefits such as healing and aid when fighting opponents. It’s the use of totems and how to use them effectively which is what makes playing a Shaman an exciting and challenging experience. There are four types of totems: Earth, Fire, Water and Air and each require split second decision and sound judgement when used in tricky combat situation or group play. Shamans have also the ability to resurrect themselves and others in their group using the Reincarnation spell every hour of played time; this can also be reduced to 40 minutes as they assign more talent points to that ability. Another great asset to any group and a great ability to have if you solo.
Thanks to the Burning Crusade expansion Shamans is no longer restricted as being a Horde only class. Now the new Alliance race the Draenei, can also play as Shaman which, of all the classes that they have at their disposa,l is one of the best for them to pick thanks to attributes that are unique to this race which makes this class an ideal choice for them.
Upon reaching level 70, you can specialize your Shammy as either an Elemental, Enhancement or Restoration Shaman. Each of these trees has their own unique abilities. For Elemental s, the focus is on high damage casting abilities and this makes it the best choice for power levelling fast while Restoration Shamans have higher healing abilities and later in the game are useful healers and back up casters.
This condensed world of warcraft guide on shamans only touches the surface. This is indeed a multi talented and complex class to master. It’s the very fact that they are jack of all trades and master of none that makes the Shamans a class to consider because as you play you will will be able to gauge whether you like to cast, tank or heal without having to start three new characters. And make no mistake, Shamans can indeed master of all of these abilities just as proficiently as any of the classes that are more specialized in them, making them expert of all of these abilities and definitely the jack of none. You will find out at your peril if you underestimate this class and pass it up for another.
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Wrath of the Lich King Release Date News
April 11th, 2008
simrook writes to tell us that World of Warcraft’s second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, has entered closed alpha testing, as reported by WoWInsider. Wrath of the Lich King will raise the level cap to 80 and introduce a new class: Death Knights. World of Warcraft remains the most popular MMORPG on the market with over 10 million subscribers. WoWInsider notes, “Various players are being invited to check it out, under a strict NDA.”
The release date of Wrath of the Lich King is an area of great speculation. Gamestop is already taking pre-orders and has a date of November 3, 2008 for release date. Play.com has posted May 30, 2008. Amazon.com is reporting a release date of November 30, 2008. I could definitely see WoTLK being released just in time for Christmas. And of course, on the US forums, Nethaera says “It will be released (you heard it before) when it’s ready. “.
So when’s the actual release date? Your guess is as good as mine but it sure looks like it’s going to be this side of the year.
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Wrath of the Lich King Beta News & More 2.4 Stuff
April 9th, 2008
Wrath of the Lich King: BETA CLOSE!
Blizzard changed a few of its Wrath of the Lich King Beta sites from 404: Not Found to 403: Forbidden this week. If you want to check for yourself see http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com/ and http://beta.wow-europe.com/. It definitely looks like blizzard is getting ready to launch the expansion public beta testing soon, so get ready to fill out your applications and support why you should be selected!
Wrath of the Lich King: Epics vs. Greens
It was confirmed this week, that upon players reaching level 80 or even sooner that even the highest level epics will begin to be replaced by green quality items. It is Blizzard’s intention to relevel the playing field with the expansion and give players just entering the game the same competitiveness as that of the hardcore raiders from Burning Crusade. However there will be no major stat changes like that of Stamina in Burning Crusade, so players may not see items getting replaced in the first few quests in Northrend, as they did with quests in Burning Crusade.
World of Warcraft in Latin America
Blizzard has decided to expand its customer base to users in Latin America, and they have hired and designated a team for it’s sole development and support. For more information on this topic you can see the FAQ they posted earlier in the week: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5720423121&sid=2.
List of Known Issues with Patch 2.4
Hortus also listed all the known issues within the current state of WoW, you can view them here. The most notable bugs are with the Kalecgos fight, where he casts the Revitalize spell on targets with no mana, and with Zul’jin who will melee targets of Claw Rage or Lynx Rush meaning certain death for cloth wearers. You can expect this entire list of bugs to be fixed soon.
Keyboard Issues when using Avast 4.8
World of Warcraft players using the Anti-Virus program Avast are seeing keyboard control issues during game play. Most of this comes in the form of severe lag between keystrokes and actual movement or spell cast in game. Blizzard is working on resolving this issue as quickly as possible.
UICentral Addon Copyright Infringement
It was discovered this week that the WoW addon UICentral was using a cracked section of a Java application. They are requesting that all users of the addon please uninstall the addon in order to give complete compliance to the original copyright. For more information see the post on WorldofWar.net.
Still no Sunwell Plateau Gates Open
Blizzard has yet to open any of the gates to the last three bosses of Sunwell Plateau, and no information has been released on when they expect they will open either. For now the only bosses players can access are Kalecgos, Brutallus, and Felmyst who have all been killed already by multiple guilds. I would think you will see at least one gate open soon, possibly even during maintenance this week.
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