Patches


Karazhan


Site Changes

Been a little while since my last post, so I figured now would be a good time as any to do so. First off, there were a couple of new patches released, 2.0.7 and 2.0.8. Now before the Burning Crusade came out, the most number of patches between major updates (1.#.0) was 5. This time around, there has been 7 updates, and no major patch. They even skipped 2.0.2 for some reason.

I'll be going back through the current changelogs and adding an Undocumented Changes section, via WoWWiki.com. These changes are observed by the players, are not part of the official Blizzard release notes, and may not be agreed upon by everybody, but I like the addition of it.

On the side of my Site Upgrades, there's been some you may have noticed. Firstly, I finally updated the in-game rendition of me in the header and on the profile page.

Second, I re-added an Image Gallery back. I used to have the popular Gallery integrated in the site, but I ended up not liking how the end-result looked. So this past week I decided to just code my own. It's very basic, and has some nice effects, but isn't overloaded with stuff I don't really need.

Lastly, I started playing around with WoW Model Viewer and Lightwave again, only this time I am able to get the texture along with the model. If you have a look in my renders gallery, you'll see some quick renders of stuff.

It's been 2 weeks since The Burning Crusade was released, and it's been a pretty good time. I've gotten Unbarc up to level 67, and replaced some (not much, but some) gear with quest rewards and a drop or 2. I think my favorite upgrade thus far is from a quest, [Battle Mage's Baton]. It's better then [Staff of the Shadow Flame], which drops off of Nefarian, and it's a quest reward. After seeing all this stuff drop in the 5-man instances (blues/greens), I'm really anxious to see what comes from the 25-man raids. With all the quests and quick instances I've been doing, I shot my banked gold from 950g to 2100g as of last night. Looks like I won't have any problems getting a flying mount when I hit 70.

Now on to some bad news (for me, anyway). With the latest patch, the mage talent Improved Fireball and Improved Frostbolt have been given a damage reduction of 2% for each point you put into it, which comes out to a spell that reduces cast time by 0.5 seconds and reduces spell damage by 10%. To try and avoid this, I tried to respec and get around that talent, but needless to say I hated it. I went all the way down to Slow in Arcane, and put the rest in fire (minus Improved Fireball). It may not seem like it, but a 3.5 second cast fireball seems like an eternety after a year of casting a 3 second fireball. By the end of the night I switched back to my old build and just dealt with the damage reduction. It's not too bad, since I just got my new staff, along with the new enchant +40 spelldamage to weapon. I even replaced my gloves with some nice socketed ones ([Tempest's Touch]) and put some crit gems into it, so my crit is building up enough to where I don't care about the damage nerf. After I get these new gloves enchanted with the +20 all damage (instead of my old +20 fire damage), I should be up to around 580ish spell damage and 25% crit with fire.

Only 6 days and counting until The Burning Crusade is unleashed upon the world, and the Dark Portal is finally open. All this week, certain events will be taking place throughout the world. If you venture to the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands, demons are starting to spawn through the Portal. There is a quest to help kill them, and in return you get some gold and a [Tabard of the Protector]. Make sure you get a group first... not because it's hard to kill the demons, but just so you have a better chance of tagging them before anybody else. There will be a lot of people standing around the Portal casting AoE all the time, and they only spawn a few at a time.

Also, one final patch has been released before the Expansion comes out. Here's an blurb from it:

Patch 2.0.3 Wrote:

Several years have passed since the Burning Legion's defeat at the Battle of Mount Hyjal - and the races of Azeroth have continued to rebuild their once shattered kingdoms. With renewed strength, the heros of the Horde and Alliance have begun to explore the broken lands beyond the Dark Portal. What dangers or rewards await mortal champions in Draenor? And what will the Alliance and Horde do when they discover that the demons they thought vanquished have returned to renew their terrible Burning Crusade?

After you install The Burning Crusade, you will have to re-patch 2.0.3, so don't delete the files just yet. The game CDs went into production right before the patch was ready.

First off, The Burning Crusade has been set for release on 1/16/2007, which happens to be a normal maintenance day. Hopefully they leave the servers up for launch day. I think I might be taking a day or two of vacation around that time.

Second, it saddens me to say that I have quit my guild, Dark Portal Syndicate. I've been with DPS for roughly a year and a month, and I've enjoyed most of my time there. Yaral and I have transferred to the Runetotem server, so look us up if you're in the area. I quit mainly because our GM quit playing WoW, along with some other key people in the guild. The first night without them, we spent a couple hours wiping to the first boss in BWL. We were a guild who have cleared BWL with ease, killed 5 bosses in Nax, and got C'Thun to 56% phase 1 on our first attempt ever, were wiping to Razorgore. From the sounds of it, there hasn't been any improvement the past couple of days. So now, on Runetotem, Yaral and I joined a guild with some old friends that we first leveled up to 60 with. Everything is kinda casual right now, as they're going to be an expansion guild (running the 25-man stuff). It's been nice not having to worry about raiding, since I've been doing it for a long time. The first night on the new server, Yaral and I ran through Stratholme (live-side) twice, and I walked away with almost 40g and a [Righteous Orb]. That's more than I'd normally make in a week with raiding. Well, enough about that for now. Come see me on Runetotem.

Last, the pre-patch (1.13 or 2.0, however you want to look at it), has been set for release this upcoming Tuesday (12/5/2006). What this means for me, is that I'll be in AddOn updating hell. It'll also mean I get a free respec! Hopefully a day or two after the patch, I'll have my Profile updated with the new talents and honor page (not that the honor will mater, since I can't stand PvP).

Patch 1.12.1 was released on Tuesday, have a look at what's been done to the game this time.

On the WoW General forums, Eyonix posted a pretty decent Raid Tips Guide. Here's what he had to say:

Eyonix Wrote:

Hey guys, after reviewing feedback on the boards for good raiding tips, we're ready to show off our first iteration of our 'Raid Tips Guide'. We'd like everyone to take a pass at what we've written and provide some more feedback, to ensure that this guide covers as much as possible, is still very user-friendly, and most importantly makes sense and provides valuable information.

On that note, please have a look. ;)

Last night, Patch 1.12 was released. It's not really a patch that I'm interested in, so I won't go much more into it.

PvP. Oooooh boy!

On another note, I finally got into Friendly with the Brood of Nozdormu, and I was able to get my ring! (I skipped getting my neutral ring, since the rep flew past that pretty quickly)
[Signet Ring of the Bronze Dragonflight]

It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted, but not much has happened. Nefarian has yet to drop any [Netherwind Robes] for us (10 weeks in a row)... last night we had stupid hunter armor drop on almost every boss.

Also, not even a month since 1.11.0 came out, the Test Realm is up for 1.12.0 already. Doesn't seem like a very good patch to me, cross-realm battlegrounds, World PvP, Rogue review.

Well it's been a little bit since I posted last... I've been enjoying the mage changes with the 1.11.0 patch. Earlier in the week, we actually didn't get the [Cloak of Firemaw] (which we tend to get almost every damn week), but instead [Firemaw's Clutch] dropped. Luckily, I got it, so I have a spiffy new belt.

Also, Blizzard decided to release a patch last night around the peak hour. The patch took people 20+ minutes to download. The patch was only 3.3MB! Nice of them to send that out right before everybody at the Blizz shop went home for the day. As usual, the 1.11.1 changes can be found in the Changelog section.

While browsing the net on my cell phone here at work, I found out that the patch is in fact coming today! I should have the final patch notes up tomorrow, along with what spec I finally do decide on (if I change my mind again...)

Finally, the Mages (and Shaman) have gotten their review! Test realm patch notes are available here.

Yesterday, I tracked down somebody to enchant my [Netherwind Gloves] with [Formula: Enchant Gloves - Frost Power] (woo!).

Patch 1.10.2 went live yesterday, and it brought along some headaches. We started off in Molten Core, and moved to Blackwing Lair after we had some hunters to help kite. Vael was being a butt of sorts, because when he did the tail-whip, it could cause people to disconnect.

No loots to report, but I am now only 2 [Golden Pearl]s away from getting the Spellpower Enchant for my [Azuresong Mageblade], which I got 2 weeks ago. Damn pearls, last time I farmed them it took me 10 minutes to get both, and now it's taken over 4 hours of farming with nothing to show. Guess I should have just kept going last time...

As for the site, I haven't been working on it much. I upgraded a site that I host for some friends, so that has been a big task. The only real change that I can think of that I've done (besides site optimizations and administration things), is add some more custom things to the Itemstats tooltips, like this:

This time, the test realms have been set up with a minor patch. Here's a quote from the WoW main site:

Blizzard Wrote:

We have seen a profound benefit with offering major patches on the PTRs, and although this is a minor patch, we believe the benefits will apply to it as well.

You can see the test realm notes for 1.10.2 here.

A patch should be out today. I'm currently at work and don't have a solid way to check the patch notes, but I'll get them here soon.

UPDATE: And here they are.

Patch 1.10.0 went out last Tuesday (boy, what a mess that was). Here are the patch notes.

The test realm went live with version 1.10.0 the other day. You can see the patch notes in the Changelog section.

Yet another new patch was released this week. Patch notes can be found in the normal spot.

A new patch was released yesterday, you can see the patch notes here.