World of Warcraft News

Filed under: Blizzard, PvP, Interviews, Battlegrounds

Blizzard"s Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton answered quite a lot of questions about the upcoming PvP changes in Patch 3.2. There are a lot, particularly the experience gains in Battlegrounds which also has deep implications in PvE as players can simply toggle experience gains off (any Level 60s up for Molten Core?). It"s a pretty lengthy interview and Stockton goes into detail with the new Isle of Conquest Battleground. Some highlights from the chat:

• Experience gain in Battlegrounds is slightly slower than questing or grinding
• Players can toggle experience gain on and off with a mere 10 Gold
• There are plans to include greens and "the occasional blue item" at the end of each Battleground match (!) but won"t make it to Patch 3.2
• The Isle of Conquest is in the Frozen Sea, North of Icecrown
• Objectives in Isle of Conquest are captured exactly like flags in Arathi Basin -- I totally called this wrong when I said it would probably be a numbers and proximity thing
• Battlemaster Achievement isn"t likely to change (whew!) but Blizzard is considering what to do with the Achievements for the Isle of Conquest
  
• Rated Battlegrounds are coming. Not quite soon(R), but an announcement will be made during BlizzCon
• Blizzard plans "to deliver more Battlegrounds to the players as often as we can"

Oh, man. That last bit made me want to change my underwear. Blizzard is actually paying attention to Battleground enthusiasts, realizing that while Arenas are nice and all, a lot of players love the BGs, too. New Battlegrounds "as often as we can?" Yes, please! Head on over to the official site to read Stockton"s interview in full. Bombs, cannons, parachutes, angry Generals... 3.2 is shaping up to be one explosive patch, indeed.

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com"s Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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PvP Q&A with Blizzard"s Cory Stockton originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Patches, Blizzard, PvP, Battlegrounds, Arena

Brilliant. Just brilliant. If you"ve been keeping up with the many changes in Patch 3.2, you might get an inkling that PvP is going to change drastically and for the better. Adam has already gone through the whopper announcement that Blizzard hinted at some time back: players can now gain experience from the Battlegrounds. It"s something I"d wished for since the days of vanilla WoW and the developers have finally gotten around to implementing it in the next major patch.

Does this mean the death of twinks? Not necessarily. Players can opt to toggle experience gains on and off by going to Behsten in Orgrimmar or Slahtz in Stormwind (best-in-slot, get it?) and ponying up 10 Gold. But wait, there"s more! Players who turn off experience gains will only be placed in the same Battleground queues as other players who opt not to gain experience. That"s right -- twinks will be facing off against twinks. Twinks who have always contended that it wasn"t about the unfair gear advantage will finally get the opportunity to test their mettle against equally geared opponents. Enjoy.

That"s just the tip of the iceberg, though. After the jump, we"ll take a look at a whole bunch of changes that will impact World of Warcraft PvP from the obvious (Arena and Battleground changes) to the not-so-obvious (item and ability changes). Let"s hit it.

Continue reading What Patch 3.2 means for PvP

What Patch 3.2 means for PvP originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Patches, Raiding, Achievements

We had a bit of a minor freakout when we heard that the Rusted and Ironbound protodrakes might be getting removed as rewards for the Ulduar meta achievements in Patch 3.2, and then even more of one when the slow trickle of information about 3.2 turned into a firehose. Bornakk mentioned the change initially with the caveat that it was their intention to remove the drakes eventually, but that he"d seek definite confirmation either way as to whether it was happening in 3.2 or not. There"s been no update about it in the past few weeks.

Well, after a thorough reading of the 3.2 patch notes, I don"t see a single trace of anything saying the drakes are getting removed. At the risk of counting my protochickens before they hatch, I think we might be safe, given how fast 3.2 looks like it"s coming out.

This is at least a relief for my guild, who"s doing pretty well on 10-man hard-mode progression but ... is there a word worse than "dismal"? ... on 25-man hard-modes. Maybe there"s hope for us yet.

Should we get the soul-crushing confirmation that they"ll be removed with 3.2, we"ll be sure to let you know. There"s still a lot of time for change on this one, though -- maybe it was an accidental omission, maybe it"ll get decided on later -- but for now, you can breathe a little easier knowing you might be able to keep hacking away at those hard modes to get your undeniably awesome drakes even after the Argent Coliseum is commanding your guild"s attention.

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com"s Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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Maybe Ulduar drakes aren"t going away in 3.2 after all originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Hunter, Patches, Blizzard, News items

I discussed last week about how Hunter trapping and crowd control had gone the way of the dodo. And now as reported earlier today, we have much to celebrate with the release of the official Patch 3.2 PTR Notes. Ghostcrawler and the development team are really showing us Hunters some much needed luvin.

• Aspect of the Cheetah: Can now be learned at level 16.

I was really wondering what we were going to do now that mounts were available at 20. It seems we are in good hands. We only have 16 painful levels of slow run until we can get Aspect of the Cheetah and start zipping around.

• Deterrence now has a new visual spell effect.

New graphics are always cool.

Continue reading Patch 3.2 brings some Hunter love

Patch 3.2 brings some Hunter love originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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