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4.1 Cataclysm News/Updates

4.1 Patch Notes

February 24, 2011

*Edit – Since this old post is getting a lot of attention from players looking for patch notes I wanted to link the current notes here – http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/patch-notes/ptr-patch-notes . – Feel free to let me know if you see a more recent set of notes on Blizzards site.*

Finally, the long-awaited patch notes for 4.1, the first major Cataclysm content patch, have been made available. In addition to the notes below, I’m pretty sure we’re going to get the Firelands raid to kill Ragnaros and probably another one – both dropping tier 12. In later posts I’ll probably go into some of these changes in more detail but for now here’s a few of my personal favorites from the patch:

Divine Storm now generates 1 point of Holy Power if it hits (i.e. successfully lands on) 4 or more targets. – Hurray for more Paladin AOE potential.

Stealth base cooldown has been reduced to 4 seconds, down from 10, and the movement penalty from being in Stealth has been removed. – Non-rogues that PVP are crying right now… crying tears of blood in preparation for all the incoming deaths.

The Guild Perk, Cash Flow, no longer prints out text to the Chat Log. Instead, the daily amount deposited is shown in the Guild Vault Money Log. In addition, players can view the weekly contribution in a new window at the bottom of the Money Log. – Cause that was really annoying.

Continue on to see the patch notes in their entirety.

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Daily

Daily Thoughts: The MMO That Could Beat WoW

February 24, 2011

It’s 2011. World of Warcraft is hailed as the largest (and argued by some to be the best) MMO on the planet. WoW boasts 11-12 million active subscribers. Brighthub lists Aion as WoW’s closest competitor at 3.5 million users, which is only a third of the player base. Though if we bend the definition of MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online – though usually requiring a permanent world) just a little, we find that Blizzards behemoth already has been trumped and by no small margin. Zynga’s Farmville, the Facebook app, has somewhere between 60 and 80 million users – easily 5 times the player base of WoW. So, hasn’t Zynga already beaten Blizzard? Not quite.

First, we need to remember that Farmville isn’t truly an MMO. Is massive and has many players and is online, but it doesn’t have a true persistent world such as WoW or Aion. Second, FV clearly isn’t trying to be even the same type of game. It’s more so a social networking past-time. A place to loiter for a few minutes a day in between status updates, as opposed to an hour sucking beast that WoW or other MMO’s can be. But MMO gaming companies need to realize, it’s 2011 and social media is king.

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Daily News/Updates

Daily Thoughts: Dungeon Finder/Vote Kick Changes

February 17, 2011

Blizzard decide to make a couple significant changes to the Dungeon Finder system to help curb the rampant abuse that’s been going on recently. Personally, I’m a fan of some of these changes but one I really could do without.

The Good:

* Players who are outside a dungeon for more than a few minutes are now immediately able to be kicked.

Players going AFK or off doing some for an extended period out of the group should be able to be kicked without waiting for the cursory 15 minutes that had been opposed up to this point. I absolutely agree

* If queuing as a group with a tank or healer, and the tank or healer drops group (or is kicked) soon after joining, those that queued with them will also be removed from the dungeon.

A simple change that prevents the “wtb tank queue 50g” attitude that’s been plaguing a lot of groups. This way a tank cannot insta-queue a group and then leave, forcing the people who waited legitimately to wait longer for a tank who actually intends to run to join.

* If three or more players group queue with each other it will require an additional vote for them to kick anyone they did not group queue with.

This is also a great change to issue that 3 man guild groups can’t as easily “bully” other non-guild member, at least not without the support of the other non-guild member in the group. Typically if the 3 guild members AND the 4th pug want to kick the 5th pug, there’s a pretty good change he was a baddie and needed to go. Good choice blizzard.
* If someone initiates a vote kick for someone they group queued with they will not incur a penalty to their ability to initiate future kicks.

Nothing really significant here. You won’t get punished if your guild member DC’s and you have to kick him.
The Bad:

* If a group queue of 4 kicks the one person that they did not group queue with they will each receive a more severe penalty to their ability to initiate future kicks.

I have a little bit of a problem with this. If you join the Dungeon finder with a 4 man guild group and there’s a bad or inactive player you’ll get a significant mark against your ability to kick future bad or inactive players. This is a pretty unfortunate case of protecting the minority at the expense of the majority. Hopefully though, it still takes a few cases of this happening before it becomes a problem, otherwise getting a bad streak of AFK pugs joining your 4 man guild run could be detrimental to your ability to initiate legitimate kicks.

Overall, it’s a pretty good change. I imagine the penalty for 4 member queued groups kicking won’t end up too ridiculous so we should just have a little less douche-baggery in our overall Dungeon Finder experience.

The full text from blizzard can be found HERE.

4.0.3a Cataclysm Daily

Daily Thoughts: Item Level is the New Gearscore

February 14, 2011

To be oh so cliché, the more things change the more things stay the same. WoW is no exception to the rule. I’m not talking about whether or not new bosses or gear are too similar to old ones, which are complaints I’ve heard from a couple of fellow players who’ve been wowing since vanilla. Nope, I’m instead here to talk about players and how regardless of what is added to the game, we’re always going to act the same way. Prior to cataclysm and 4.0.3 I suppose, gearscore ruled pugs. The gearscore addon, which attributed a point value to each piece of gear and gave a “score” for each player based on that gear was the loathed standard from which players were judged before being invited to a random group or raid. Not content with mere players making their own system for judging the “goodness” of others, blizzard implemented the average item level. Viewed on both your character sheet and on your armory profile, it is the new number from which all characters must be judged. I say this sarcastically of course, as there are much more important factors; see: Skill. Now instead of a gearscore requirement, we see “looking for heals for *instance*, 350ilvl or higher”

Along the same lines are the recruiters for small or social guilds and their message. Prior to cataclysm we’d see “Friendly leveling guild looking for members of all levels. Have tabard and 4 bank tabs, pst xxxx for invite”. Quite often after spamming a couple of those, random /trade trolls bash the poster, mocking their guild tab message. Usually undaunted, they continue the recruitment spam. Now the trolls have a new topic to mock the social guild recruiters for, “we’re a level 4 guild…”

Anything else you can think of that we keep doing over and over as players? Aside from standing in fire.

Daily

Daily Thoughts: Apparently Wolves Don’t Like Creed

February 7, 2011

So, this has nothing to do with WoW…at all (but I promise there will be a loose tie in). CNN reports that a Norwegian boy fends off a pack of wolves using only his boyish charms and a Creed song.

Luckily for Walter Eikrem, it does not appear Norwegian wolves care for Creed.

The 13-year-old was walking home from the school bus stop in the town of Rakkestdad this week when he noticed something on the hillside near his family’s farmhouse, according to Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine.

At first he thought they were dogs, but he soon realized they were wolves– four of them – the magazine said, citing Norway’s TV2.

The boy, remembering that his mother had told him never to run from wolves, pulled the headphones out of his mobile phone and cranked up the volume on the tiny speakers.

He was listening to “Overcome” by Creed, an arguably Christian rock band, and apparently, the wolves were not fans.

(Initial reports indicated Walter shooed the wolves away with a Megadeth song, but the blog at Gibson guitars cleared up the confusion.)

“They just turned around and simply trotted away,” he told the TV station, according to Der Spiegel. “The worst thing you can do is run away because doing so just invites the wolves to chase you down … but I was so afraid that I couldn’t even run away if I’d wanted to.”

To be fair, Walter was yelling at the top of his lungs and wildly flailing his arms, so it’s tough to say exactly what made the wolves decide the boy might not be delicious.

His mother told the local paper that she was going to pick her son up from school because she knew there were wolves in the area, but she got carried away shopping, Der Spiegel reported.

“I have a completely guilty conscience,” she said. “The previous evening, we saw three wolves on the edge of the forest when we were putting our horses in their stall. The horses were panicky.”

Um, thanks, mum? … Well, OK, scratch that. Perhaps sarcasm is a little harsh for the woman who taught young Walter never to run from wolves. (Original Article HERE)

Seems like wolves are inclined to make headlines these days. And for the Warcraft tie in? Remember when Blizzard joked that we’d be seeing a new Hero class – the Bard (info here) – looks like we know at least one of that classes important cooldowns would have been Power Word: Creed, possibly having a fear effect.

4.0.6 Cataclysm Daily

Daily Thoughts: 4.0.6

February 7, 2011

Those anxiously awaiting patch 4.0.6 should be happy to know that this patch should be hitting the live servers tomorrow. This includes the redefining of how many players constitutes a “guild group”, fixes and adds to the “luck of the draw” buff, adds some balance to Tol Barad and Strand of the Ancients, makes Retributions mastery possibly their best stat, along with a plethora of other class and instance changes. This patch has seen a ton of revisions already – you can find the most current after the break – with more possible by the time it goes live. I’m pretty happy with the changes overall. We should see some class balance, random dungeon finder groups might be a little more manageable, and did I mention the buff to retribution? Continue on for the most recent patch notes (as of this posting) in their entirety.

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