Tag Archives: patches

I Left My Heart in Un’Goro Crater

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That Famous Bridge in San FranciscoI’m in San Francisco on business for a few days.

Don’t worry, I’ll still make the Wednesday night raids … well, y’know, assuming the Warcraft servers have been revived.

I’m not so out of the loop that I didn’t hear about how Patch 1.10 soloed the servers and wtfpwned the server spawn for many hours. Announced player compensation for the inconvenience: 50 cents.

Blizzard’s Drysc: “An issue occurred while applying the 1.10 content patch yesterday that prevented the realms from going live at the end of our scheduled maintenance window. To compensate players for any inconvenience caused by this extended downtime, we will be issuing a 24-hour time extension to all players with an active account. Thank you for your patience during today’s maintenance; we hope you enjoy all the new content in patch 1.10!”

How sweet is that? I wasn’t inconvenienced AT ALL, and I’ll get the 50 cents credit too. Also, I can say I told you so:

Any wagers on how fast they’ll push Patch 1.10 to live? how much downtime for hotfixes/server crashes? how much forum screaming? And the million-dollar question: Will this patch attract or drive away our priests?

(March 28th, 3 hours on 3/28, it will be thunderous, they’ll be happier post-1.10 but not ecstatic.)

I was a little optimistic about that additional downtime, but I’m still refining my prognosticative techniques. Honestly, I know of no other industry that would push several major system and code changes all at once and hope for the best. Only in gaming is this considered standard protocol.

Other Warcraft News: Blizzard announces new patch delivery system
Players’ UIs may be broken after Patch 1.10 (No! That’s hard to believe!)
Official Patch 1.10 notes (Patch notes Furl archive. Permalinks, wru?)

Farm-a-licious Armor Quests

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Miscellaneous discussions on the new World of Warcraft Tier 0.5 armor sets to be introduced in Patch 1.10, aka non-raider armor sets:

The new colors for the armor sets. Did I say new graphics? No, I did not.

The additional material requirements to complete the armor quests. This is in addition to (re)collecting each Tier 0 piece of the set. So you have some idea on which mats to gouge on save for later, the author’s sample mat list for one of the quests: 10 Stonescale Oil, 1 Delicate Arcanite Converter, 4 Greater Eternal Essences, 8 Large Brilliant Shards, 4 Dark Runes, 3 Mooncloth, 3 Dark Iron Bars, 20 Enchanted Leather, 4 Cured Rugged Hide and 1 Flask of Supreme Power.

A player reminds the non-raiders that it’s a crap shoot on whether they’ll score an armor piece and wants Blizzard to consider adding a non-raider DKP-esque system. He has a few ideas that aren’t as kooky as that sounds.

Now, when I first read this post, I had all the knee-jerk reactions you might expect — the fuck? join a damn guild then! jeezus, does Blizzard have to do EVERYTHING for people? — but after thinking about this for a while, maybe some game in the future will have a built-in pseudo-DKP system. Not this game, obviously — some other game, some other time.

Instead of a kook, that guy could be a visionary.

Anyways. I can sum up my opinion of the Tier 0.5 armor quests in two words: Start raiding. Less time, less bother (and I did not think that was possible), better gear in a raiding guild. We’re talkin’ by a HUGE margin here.

There’s other alternatives, of course: Learn2BuyGold. Wait around for them to design Dire Maul version 2 with epic armor. Preorder the expansion because I bet level 70s could kick the shit out of Molten Core. And the ole standby, quit.

Cmon, how bad could a few consecutive hours in an enclosed space with 39 relative strangers be? It’s not as bad as 10 Stonescale Oil, 1 Delicate Arcanite Converter, 4 Greater Eternal Essences, 8 Large Brilliant Shards, 4 Dark Runes, 3 Mooncloth, 3 Dark Iron Bars, 20 Enchanted Leather, 4 Cured Rugged Hide and 1 Flask of Supreme Power. I guarantee it.

Archived links:
Furl archive of new colors for the armor sets
Furl archive of the additional material requirements to complete the armor quests
Furl archive of ideas for a non-raider DKP-esque system

Now We Hate Patch 1.10

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And I had such high hopes for World of Warcraft’s Patch 1.10, the Patch that Would Save the Game!

Didn’t take long — a few days after the test realm players had time to get their hands dirty, just about everyone is pissed about something.

New Non-raider Epics. This is the gear that was added on the fly to Patch 1.10 to quell the rising shitstorm. (I’m guessing about that “on the fly”, the shitstorm is not a guess.)

What People Hate: New (even) lower raid limits on the Tier 0 Instances — those are your Scholo, the Strath twins, Blackrock Depths (BRD) and the two Blackrock Spires (UpperBRS/LowerBRS) areas. BRS limited to 10-man, all the others will be 5-man.

Translation: This time when you run these dungeons over and over again for your Tier 0 gear, you’re REALLY going to want a solid tank and healer.

The revamped Tier Crap instances will have new bosses, better drop rates and improved loot. Which is good, because you must have your Tier 0 set to turn in for the new epic set. You vendored it? Disenchanted maybe? Oh. Bummer.

(Seriously, just start raiding Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and Ahn’Queer. Life will be so much easier for you then.)

Here’s more from authorized Blizzard posters on the Dungeon changes: 90-minute runs, start re-farming Dungeon 1 pieces, dungeon sets are class specific.

What Foton Hates: Nothing. I’m in a raid guild so I dodged that bullet. Funny how that works out, huh? Being serious though, I’ve stopped asking, “WHY?? WHY??”, when it comes to design decisions. There often is no why.

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