Blizzard’s Eyonix reviews the upcoming “Mastery” system
Last week, we gave you an early look at the changes we’re making to the stat system in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and explained how these changes will ultimately provide players with more interesting gear choices and make stats easier to understand. Today we’d like to go into more detail about a brand-new feature that’s an integral part of this overhaul: the Mastery system, a set of new game mechanics designed to allow players to become better at what makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. With this system, we want to accomplish three things: give players more freedom in how they allocate talent points, simplify some of the “kitchen sinky” talents that try to do too much at once, and add a new stat to high-level gear that makes you better at your chosen role.
Cataclysm Stat & System Changes
As many of you know from panels at last year’s BlizzCon and posts here on the forums since then, Cataclysm will bring about major changes to familiar character stats such as Intellect, Armor Penetration, Defense, and others, ultimately designed to make the effects of stats more easily understandable and make gear choices more interesting. As these changes will have a significant impact on how stats work and relate to one another, today we wanted to offer you a closer look at exactly what’s in store and explain some of the rationale before Cataclysm arrives. The most obvious question these changes raise is “Why are stats being changed, and why now?” As the game has matured, we’ve run into increasingly complex issues with the current stat system. Many stats are inherently confusing, and the way they interrelate can feel convoluted. Attack Power, for example, currently translates to damage, but so does Armor Penetration. Defense provides five different statistical benefits of varying utility. Mana regeneration involves understanding multiple stats and rules and often ends up being irrelevant anyway. In addition, the difference between a “good stat” for a class and a “bad stat” can be extreme. Some casters want Haste but not Crit; hunters want Armor Penetration but not Haste. There are other overarching issues, as well, such as Intellect not being very exciting for casters despite it being a core stat — and these are just a few examples.
Ualaa and his Amazing Alchemy Guide
Ualaa’s Alchemy (Transmute Guide) Introduction While we can take a single toon and fly about gathering mineral or herbs, the same as any other one-boxer… and possibly even have a few toons doing the same at one time, switching between them. This is not really that much more efficient a means to make gold then we could do as single boxers. Dailies are a decent method to compound our extra characters into more gold then a one-boxer makes, from doing the same thing as one character. It requires a route which is based off of either kills or drops where each toon can loot from every corpse. My current route takes 45 minutes on the first team and an hour on the other two teams, and makes 1100g in the process. But dailies are repetitive and boring, even if they are consistent. It is getting rather hard to make myself run the route each day.
Want 1000mbit/sec Internet Access for “t3h cheep”?
Imagine playing WoW on 1000mb/sec fiber optic connection, rolling around with 9ms ping times.  Well guess what?  Google wants to give it to just me you. Google is planning to launch an experiment that we hope will make Internet access better and faster for everyone. We plan to test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country. Our networks will deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today over 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections.
Cataclysm – Everybody wants Goblins? No, we don’t think so.
Blizzard has a nifty little poll up about which character race/class combination people are most looking forward to.  The results might surprise you! One big thing I was thinking about is Worgen PVP Warriors with their 70% sprint for 6 seconds.  This is going to be insanely powerful.  Thoughts? The vote is constantly ongoing and can be seen here.
Blizzard changes Lich King weapon drops!
Although this probably won’t affect too many of us in the near future, Blizzard is already tinkering with many of the stats supplied by the Lich King’s weapon drops. A community manager on the Korean site posted about upcoming changes to one Lich King-10 and four Lich King-25 weapons, and Boubouille’s posted a translation with help from user Locriani. A lot of raiders had been surprised at the itemization decisions, and as a raiding healer, I’ve seen a lot of commentary concerning the uninspiring presence of MP5 on the Royal Scepter of Terenas II. Blizzard’s specifically addressing these concerns.
World of Warcraft Patch 3.2.2 is Live!
Dungeons & Raids Icecrown Citadel Frostwing Halls, the final stronghold of the Scourge and their Lich King, has been added. Halls of Stone Brann Bronzebeard has been getting into shape and now feels comfortable walking faster when escorted. The Forge of Souls The Devourer of Souls will now cast Mirrored Souls less often. The Spell Reflect ability has been altered on several creatures. It now has a cast time, only has 2 charges, and has a 75% chance of reflecting spells. The Nexus Anomalus will now use the Create Rift ability only once, down from 3 times.
Breaking News – Fall of the Lich King Movie!
Below is a movie of the what happens AFTER the Lich King is defeated!  This is a huge spoiler, but a definite must see.  The mightly Lich King, Arthas Menethil, is defeated, joined in spirit by his father, King Terenas. Lich King Arthas:  Father, is it over? King Terenas:  At long last, no king rules forever my son. Lich King Arthas:  I see only darkness before me. King Terenas:  …. There must always be a Lich King.
World PVP Guide by Bergisst
Bergisst wrote an excellent post today on World PVP general strategies.  If you are new to World of Warcraft and want to engage in world PVP, this is a good read. World PvP: Player versus Player in the big wide World of Warcraft. It generally means fighting outside of battlegrounds and arena–brawling in enemy cities, or chasing players out of your towns, etc. For me, World PvP means World Defense. I enjoy going around to anywhere that is under attack and driving the attackers away. For others, it can mean fighting anyone you come across on a PvP realm, or it can merely mean Wintergrasp, Venture Bay, Spirit Towers in Auchindoun etc.
Ghostcrawler to substantially change talent trees in Cataclysm
Ghostcrawler, one of the Blizzard employees responsible for the current design as well as upcoming changes in World of Warcraft, had this to say recently on the forums: 1) We are changing talent trees, in some cases substantially. The major focus is pruning out boring but valuable talents that passively increase say damage or healing. 2) A secondary focus is to fix the clunky areas (e.g. warlocks having two conflicting range increasing talents). We’re not going to remove old favorites or radically change the focus of the trees. You will definitely have to rethink your builds however. 3) Because you earn passive bonuses just for spending points in the tree, those fun, niche or utility talents won’t seem as expensive as they do today.
Weekly fun WoW community links
Here are some interesting links from the general World of Warcraft community which have been promoted by the EU official WoW website.  Check them out! World of War have an interview up with World of Warcraft player: Adrianne Curry. http://wow.incgamers.com/blog/comments/celebs-playing-world-of-warcraft-adrianne-curry-interview/ TheBurningCrusade.pl have some nice updates this week. They have just recently released their new talent calculator, and a translated version of the story of Invincible.
Update your Flash – Now!
ATTENTION!  I have been told that there are multiple advertisements going around, disguised as harmless internet advertising, when in fact they are trojan embedded Flash files.  These specific flash advertisements were crafted specifically to key log World of Warcraft Accounts and may be disguised as advertisements for things OTHER than gold farming websites.  I’ve been told that these trojans are automatically injected into your PC as noted in this security bulletin released by Adobe a couple months ago. If you haven’t already then you should update your Flash on your PC to version WIN 10,0,42,34 immediately!   To find your current flash version, visit
Night elf Mohawk is gone – finally!
If you were like me, desperately clicking away the Nightelf Mohawk from each of your multiboxed teams due to ill will over the icky face, worry no more!  Blizzard has finally removed it from the game! Ancilorn from Blizzard has stated: You’ve pitied and you’ve been pitied, but the time has come for the Night Elf Mohawk to pack up his Mohawk Grenades and move on. You looked goooood while his visit lasted, Azeroth, but his work here is done…for now.
Blizzard speaks up on recent patch issues
Blizzard put together an extensive list of issues in WoW that they recognize and are looking to patch.  One of them that I have feel repeated victim to is the Uldaman bugs whereas you cannot combine the 2 items required to open up one of the boss doors.   For new players who are in Uldaman for ~5 levels of their life, this can be extremely bothersome. General Issues Logging out inside a battleground and logging back in after the BG is completed will cause characters to be unable to queue using the Looking for Dungeon System. Spamming the Auto Attack button causes the
Blizzard announces PVP Resilience Changes
It was announced today that there will be a major change to resilience, which is being hotfixed into the game as we approach the new arena season. The change is expected to be in place for the duration of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion; which we take to mean it will not carry over into Cataclysm. This change will “double the value of resilience in reducing damage done by players,” according to Bornakk. Players will see a 10% to 20% reduction in damage taken. However, this change will not affect critical strike chances or critical strike damage. If healing becomes too over powered with this change, Blizzard has a “PvP only solution”
Dual Multiboxing – Multiboxing Blackfathom Deeps 2x Priest 3x Hunters
Tim and Rob’s Priest and Hunter team had a ball running through Blackfathom Deeps (BFD) on their team of hunters and priests.  The team consists of the following: Tim:  2x Priests – Holy Spec Rob:  3x Hunters – BM Spec (Pet spec’d for tanking) The general strategy was to run in, raise hell with aggro, and have the pets tank everything while the Hunters DPS’d with multishot a bunch.  At the same time, the Priests would go nuts casting Holy Nova, both for DPS and for healing. Check out the video below of the actual live run
Blizzard developer Q+A via Twitter!
Today the Blizzard team consisting of Bornakk, Ghostcrawler, Aratil,  had a Q+A session via Twitter and the results are some really great insight onto things coming in the game.  Check this out! Q. If damage and healing is too much per health ratio, then why don’t you have battlegrounds/arenas give a -30% damage/healing debuff? A. We have been talking about solutions like that. It might feel a bit awkward, but it might also solve the problem and maybe it’s okay in the last season before an expansion to experiment a little bit. Q. Is there talk of a fire shield spell for elemental shaman to use like water shield for restoration shaman? A. Not at this time. Q. Do you still have plans to implement guild housing? A. Guild housing isn’t a priority. Aside from the huge development involved it gets people out of cities and into these private areas other players can’t see. We like cities to feel populated. But I’m not sure anyone expected WoW to be going as strong as it is after five years, so who knows in the future.
Blizzard to make resilience more important in Arena
The Blizzard forums are typically a breeding ground for QQing of all sorts, but today I read a very interesting post, and an even more interesting response from Blizzard. “This is just a question I’ve been wondering about and that is how has burst gotten to be so high? I’ve been watching some of the BC pvp vids and the damage seemed significant but never this crazy “global or be globaled” stuff we see currently. Were there any reasons or factors that contributed to Burst getting so high or is it just the natural trend of things?” To which Blizzard responded (in 2 posts): “We think everything is a little too intense right now, almost like playing the game on fast forward. Yes, damage can come in too quickly, but that is partially because healing is also so huge that without some amount of burst, it would seem as though nobody would ever die. It’s as if players are either at 100% health or 0% health, and very infrequently effective in between.
Multiboxing Stockades with 2 multiboxers
A little over a week ago, Tim and Rob decide to build a new team of multiboxers with the intent to play together on the new team as much as possible.  The team is built around PVE and PVP, with PVP being more of the focus.  The team is highly specialized and consists of only two character classes. Tim – 2x Priests, currently both Holy spec Rob – 3x Hunters, currently both BM spec The reasoning behind the team composition is that the BM pets should easily be able to tank with the hunters contributing the bulk of the groups DPS, while at the same time healing the pets through pet and hunter talents.  The dual priests will float around spamming Holy Nova
Blizzard Account Administration told not to restore hacked characters
In a stunning revelation from a veteran account administrator at Blizzard, WoW.com has learned that account administrators are being told by Blizzard managers not to restore people’s characters and items after their account has been ransacked by gold sellers and keyloggers. Instead, account administrators are being told to give people a “care package” and get them to accept the package in lieu of total account restoration. If the player does not accept this care package, they are then forced to go into a character restoration queue that is consistently several days to weeks long. According to sources familiar with the situation, this “care package policy” has been implemented in order to lighten the work load of those Blizzard employees who perform account restorations. Similar policies have existed at other times account compromises have been high, such as during the transition from Vanilla WoW to The Burning Crusade.

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