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Old News from February 2011
News - February 28th 2011 - 4.1 Eye Candy Bunch of stuff for today. First is that we got guild level 16 last night. That gave us the second rank of the Cash Flow perk. Now 10% of the money that we loot from mobs gets generated and put straight into our guild bank. Surprisingly enough Old Ironforge will be open in 4.1. As it stands now, and has been since the beta of vanilla WoW when Old IF was closed to the public, you have to use "creative use of game mechanics" to get in there, but in 4.1 the door is open and anyone can waltz right on in. While you're down there you can even see the fate of King Magni Bronzebeard. We've got a few hotfixes that went into place last Friday, mostly some nerfs to Bastion of Twilight. A video showing the animation of the Crimson and Beryl Fire Hawk mounts is now up. Yeah they use the same skeleton and animations as the proto-drakes, but the result is much more spectacular. We've also got models for the Razzashi Raptor, Zulian Panther, Flameward Hippogryph, and the panther cubs. Aww, so cute. And a special treat for you staff-wielding casters. Thanks to some datamining and speculation we get to see what could possibly be the models (yes that is plural) for the next legendary weapon which we already knew was going to be a caster staff. There's even a video showing the animation effects. And before you ask, this is all the information that we have about this. There is nothing found showing stats, or how to get it, or even if this really is the actual legendary weapon or not. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 25th 2011 - That Mount Is HOT! Thanks to some more datamining we now get a look at what the Crimson Fire Hawk mount looks like, and I gotta say it puts the Ashes of Al'ar to shame. Seriously, look at that mount, it is total badass. Oops, sorry, got distracted by the pretty birdy. We also get to see a new model for a mob titled Salamander Hunter, and a look at the window for the new Looking for Guild feature. We also get some clarification on some of the new mounts, vanity pets, and other fun items that were datamined from 4.1. It turns out that Landro's Lichling, Fool's Gold, and the Savage Raptor mount will be obtained from the War of the Elements WoW TCG expansion. And the Nightsaber Cub, War Party Hitching Post, and Amani Dragonhawk mount will be loot obtained from the Twilight of the Dragons WoW TCG expansion. So if you want any of these goodies you'll have to buy some of the card game packs when they come out... or check eBay. J!NX's spring 2011 line of T-shirts is now out. As usual there are some pretty nice shirts they've added and they'd make great gifts. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 24th 2011 - The Return Of The Trolls In 4.1 "Hopefully that means patch 4.1 will show up on the PTR in the near future." That's what I ended yesterday's post with and look what we've got for today. Patch 4.1 is in fact now on the PTR. That's good because it means we've got a lot of new things to look forward to.
_________________________________________________________________________ News - February 23rd 2011 - Raid Progression Is Good With the downing of the Omnotron Defense System we're now at 4/12 for normal Cataclysm raiding. It may be slow and steady but it's certainly getting the job done. The only other thing for today is a couple of hotfixes, but the Hunter ones are things we knew about already, so it's really only a single hotfix. Hopefully that means patch 4.1 will show up on the PTR in the near future. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 22nd 2011 - I Guess The Horde Really Is Better At PvP Just a real quick update since I've been shanghaied into a large project at work and there isn't a whole lot to mention today anyways. What I do have for you is a couple of charts showing some compiled data for wins/losses for both factions in each of the battlegrounds. Now, this data isn't 100% accurate, but it is compiled from Armory statistics so it's not going to be too far off. As expected the Horde have a higher win % for most of the battlegrounds, but surprisingly the numbers aren't that far apart with the largest difference being only 16%. All I know is that the Alliance is pretty fail in our battlegroup. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 21st 2011 - We're Quick When We're Dead Yesterday we dinged guild level 15! Just 10 more to go. This new level gives us two things: the first being the guild perk The Quick and the Dead which gives you an extra 50% health when you're rezzed by a guild member and an extra 100% movement speed boost while you're dead. Unfortunately this does not work while in combat so battle rezzes are not affected by the extra health, but it's still a nice perk to have. The other benefit guild level 15 gives us is the ability to buy the Wrap of Unity for 300g, which does the same thing as the Shroud of Cooperation but with half the cooldown time. And of course some new hotfixes for your enjoyment. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 18th 2011 - Clearing Up The Kicking Changes We're up to 3/12 for normal mode raiding. Apparently Halfus has been fixed and the fight isn't as much of a cake walk anymore. The rest of the evening was spent bashing our heads against Valiona/Theralion who just wouldn't go past 50% health until the one time that everything clicked and we finally brought the duo down. As usual there is some confusion over the post Blizzard made yesterday regarding the changes to voting to kick and that's caused people to start making incorrect assumptions and complaining on the forums. Shocking news, I know. But Blizzard is stepping up and trying to set these people straight. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 17th 2011 - Careful With The Kicking Today's post is full of blue forum posts from Blizzard. First up is our regular batch of hotfixes. Next is a large post explaining incoming changes that will affect healers. Some nerfs to Power Word: Shield, a buff to Shaman's Purification, and word on future buffs to Shaman and Druid cooldowns. And finally a number of hotfixes pertaining to the Dungeon Finder and vote to kick tools. It's worth looking through these changes should you ever queue up for instances with other people. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 16th 2011 - Don't Have A Seizure Even more hotfixes to go through. Not much worth mentioning, mostly just some tweaks and fixes. Blizzard is taking steps to change the death animation of the new Cataclysm elementals in response to a number of messages from players who suffer from epilepsy. You probably know what they're talking about, the animations for these elementals involve a number of rapid flashes as they die and it's enough to cause siezures. It's good to see Blizzard making an effort to make the game once again epileptic friendly. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 15th 2011 - Home Vs. World Latency A somewhat small group of hotfixes went into effect yesterday. Yay hotfixes. The 4.0.6 patch made some changes to latency, and we now have a 'Home' latency and a 'World' latency. Blizzard posted a long explanation of what it all means as well as how latency works in WoW. Overall the changes aren't going to really mean much to you, but if you happen to notice the two types of latency in your UI you'll understand what it means. And for Valentine's Day we were given this humorous little comic. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 14th 2011 - Much QQ From The Previously Exalted I hope you got everything done with the Lunar Festival because it ended yesterday. Love is in the Air is still going on and in fact Blizzard added 2 extra days to the event due to the bugs involved when it started this year. We dinged guild level 14 so we now have the perk Working Overtime which bumps your chances of getting a skill gain when working on your tradeskills by 10%. Sure, many of us are maxed out with our professions, but some are still working on it and we've all got alts that could probably benefit from this perk. Another round of hotfixes to look through, plus a little, mini-hotfix. Have fun. In patch 4.0.6 Blizzard made an unannounced change to the number of exalted reputations that you need in order to get the "the Exalted" title from 40 to 50. Did this cause any nerd rage? Oh hell yes it did. Over the weekened Blizzard had to ban a large number of people from the forums who got too upset over the change. After some discussion with the design team they will be changing the requirement back to 40 exalted reps. You'll still get achievements for getting 45 and 50 exalted reputations but nothing else besides the achievement points for them. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 11th 2011 - Blizzard's Using Some Real Good Fertilizer Thanks to some serious nerfing to Halfus we're now 2/12 for normal mode raiding. I'm serious, either the fight was bugged or they nerfed Halfus to the point that it is stupidly easy. We also made some progressively good attempts at Valiona/Theralion, but haven't quite gotten that down yet. There's some profession news to pass along. The first is 4.0.6 added a number of new Nerubian and Tol'vir archaeology dig sites. Seven Tol'vir sites were added to Uldum which means there will be a greater chance of a Tol'vir dig site being randomly chosen in Kalimdor. And four new Nerubian sites were added: one in Icecrown, one in Borean Tundra, and two in Eastern Plaguelands. Although nothing official has been said by Blizzard it's become pretty obvious to most Herbalists that herb respawn rates have shot up considerably since 4.0.6. So get out there and pick those weeds before Blizzard sets it back again. For anyone who goes to BlizzCon you'll be glad to know that the date for BlizzCon 2011 has been set for October 21st and 22nd. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 10th 2011 - Ask Mr. Robot I guess we're back to the days of frequent hotixes. And speaking of hotfixes, the haste bug mentioned yesterday was hotfixed... and in return resulted in a new bug with haste. But it looks like a hotfix for the haste bug that resulted from the hotfixed haste bug has been hotfixed and will fix the haste bugs after a rolling restart. I'm so confused after typing that. Blizzard is celebrating their 20th anniversary! They've developed a mini-site to commemorate it and will eventually be adding more content that showcases their past 20 years. And we all need a little help once in a while min-maxing our toons. And for most of us digging through the piles of information on Elitist Jerks or some other site can be very confusing and/or intimidating. To help you get the most out of your character's gear all you need to do is Ask Mr. Robot. It's a new site that will optimize your gear, enchants, gems, and reforges. It's pretty simple to use but WoWInsider has a post showing an example of how it works. And yes, it is updated for 4.0.6. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 9th 2011 - Starting Our Raids On The Right Foot After an evening of irritating Pillars of Flame we are now 1/12 for normal mode raiding with the defeat of Magmaw! And so our long march begins. What would a patch be without bugs and fixes? "Fortunately" we've got both. There's currently a problem with haste and resource generation. This problem affects Rogues, Death Knights, Hunters, and Feral Druids. Blizzard is working on a fix. Plus MMO-Champion has a list of additions to the 4.0.6 notes as well as some hotfixes that were applied last night. Overall I'd say the problems associated with this patch were fairly minor compared to some of the patches of the past. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 8th 2011 - First The Patch, Then Magmaw Yes indeed, today is 4.0.6 patch day. Yesterday I posted MMO-Champion's overview of what's in this patch but in case you want the official word here are the patch notes from Blizzard. One of the things included is a fix to the Luck of the Draw buff. Unfortunately this buff, which you get for using the Dungeon Finder to add PUGs to your group, has not been working correctly in Cataclysm, to the point where it doesn't work at all in some Cata instances. But today's patch will not only fix that it will buff it too. So now the Luck of the Draw buff will give you an extra 5% to damage, healing, and health for EACH PUG you have in your group, up to a 15% bonus (i.e. 3 PUGs). That kind of makes up for the retardedness you're bound to encounter with that many PUGs in your group. And definitely don't forget that tonight, as long as the servers behave, we're going to return to raiding. On the agenda for this evening is Magmaw in Blackwing Descent. If you are signed up to go you MUST be aware of the fight mechanics, you MUST be on time, you MUST be prepared. If you're not then Matimeo will have to model his Lovely Purple Dress for you, then you'll be sorry. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 7th 2011 - Love Is In The Air And It's Filled With Bugs We've got guild level 13! We're over half way to the max guild level. This gets us the first rank of the perk Honorable Mention which provides an extra 5% gain to Honor Points. Sure, we don't PvP that much but I'm sure some of us will find this useful. I apologize for not mentioning last Friday that the Love is in the Air world event started yesterday. Though unless you've been avoiding any major city I'm sure you discovered it yourself. Here's a guide for the event, though I gotta mention that Blizzard did not test any of the world events' compatability with Cataclysm and there are a number of bugs that they are franctically working to fix. Speaking of fixes, the 4.0.6 patch will be coming out tomorrow. Although it's not a content patch there are still a ton of changes being made. MMO-Champion has a nice compilation of the patch notes. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 4th 2011 - Ready To Raid We finally managed to get the Working as a Team guild achievement, after only being short a Leatherworker for a while now. This unlocked the Banner of Cooperation for purchase. Although we already had the Standard of Unity unlocked, which is better, but I guess it's the thought that counts. We have officially announced a start to our raiding in Cataclysm. We intend to raid on Tuesday and Thursday nights at 6pm server starting next week. Since we're only doing 10-man raids, no longer are we doing any 25-mans, this means we're going to be a bit selective about who gets to go. It won't necessarily be first-come-first-serve, and we're also going to start getting a little more strict about people not wasting the rest of the group's time by showing up to a raid unprepared. Nightbloom has a write-up explaining it all on our forums, so be sure to read through it. And Inscriptionists, Scribes, Inscribers, whatever the heck you want to call yourselves, rejoice for Blizzard is adding ink traders to Stormwind in the 4.0.6 patch. Now you won't have to go all the way back to Dalaran to trade. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 3rd 2011 - Points Of Conquest And the lull in news continues. There was a new build applied to the 4.0.6 PTR, but it was just the stuff that was datamined and mentioned last Friday in addition to some other fixes. So things are still looking good for the patch to come out either next week or the week after. Blizzard did take the time to write up an explanation of one of the new Cataclysm currencies: Conquest Points. CPs are the PvP equivalent of Valor Points in PvE; in other words they're harder to get but they buy you better PvP gear than what you can get with Honor Points. So if you're at all curious about stepping into PvP, or if you want to find an alternative way of bumping up your average ilevel then make sure you understand Conquest Points. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 2nd 2011 - A Film Called Gamers Still not much to talk about. Even my main source for news, MMO-Champion, is complaining about it. Oh well, what can ya do. I will mention a 1-hour documentary titled Gamers. It's a film that follows filmmaker Ben Gonyo as he jumps into the world of MMORPG video games (including WoW) after having not played video games for ten years. He interviews players, critics, fans, celebrities, game designers, etc. He touches on controversial issues like a player's obsession with gaming, but overall the documentary is intended to be light-hearted. If you've got the time give it a watch. _________________________________________________________________________ News - February 1st 2011 - Stupid No News Days /grumble You can probably guess by just glancing at the size of today's post that there's nothing new to mention. The only even partially interesting piece of news is that the 4.0.6 patch is definitely not coming out today. ...ok, so maybe that's not even partially interesting. |
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