Category Archives: Wrath of the Lich King [Beta]

Coldarra, the Mystic Realm

Coldarra, also friendly called Rollercoaster (goes up and down and everybody is sick of it). I’m so curious about it.

This is just “yet another rant” post, so if you don’t care, feel free to skip.

When I opted for Beta, I was thinking about testing content. As opposite, I’m just testing world servers going down every 5-10 minutes and spike lags of 12-15 seconds each.

There are certain things I question myself. Why does US have 3 servers while we, averagely with more than half their whole people, we get 1? And why is the only european server in FRICKIN’ CANADA?!?

And that’s not all. There are several other little things, like the blizzard account-related pets. US people was forced to merge the WoW account and Blizz account to join the beta. In europe we dont even have the ability to do that, let alone for something. And this includes the fact that most bonus stuff linked to the merge of WoW and Blizz account won’t be avaliable to europeans.

I personally feel like they’re handing europeans a cookie, which also makes me quite willing to withdraw everything. I mean, if you don’t need us testing that’s fine, take it back, but if you want us to (and I’ve reported even some critical bugs), at least give us a FRICKIN’ DECENT SERVER.

Same goes for pre-made characters. US gets batches of pre-made characters to test instances and stuff, fully 70-80 geared bastards, while we, to test a DK in northrend, have to level them up in Outland.

I seriously don’t know what’s the matter with Blizzard…

Major Changes & Oddities

This post will be about some major changes I found during gameplay plus some “oddities”, something strange or terribly funny, or even the slightest inside joke I found out. Let’s start with something stupid, just to screw your mind.

Grand Theft Palomino
Grand Theft Palomino

Found during the first DK Quests. “I lol’d irl” (Anonymous)

Blizzard against Simpsons
Blizzard against Simpsons 

If you don’t remember Mayor Quimby, you should be ashamed of yourself. NO, REALLY! Also, apparently Blizzard just couldn’t resist another citation from BattleTech, and told us to stole New Avalon‘s Registry, but just after slaying each one of them, or closely anyway.

Off to serious things slightly less stupid things.

MOAR PETS!!
MOAR PETS!!

I had to check with my own eyes, so I rerolled hunter just for you guys. And yes, pet slots have increased from 2 to 4, rising the number of usable pets to 5. What? 4 you say? You need to tame beasts for skills? No, that’s what you HAD to do. Skills will be learned on a level base, lower level pets after taming (or being left in the stables) will automagically level to 5 levels below yours, and so you can have 5 pets at a time zOMG I CAN DIE HAPPY NOW!!

Mount Speed Increasers
Mount Speed Increasers

Shortly after I logged with my copied 70, I read the message you see below last image: “You receive item: [Skybreaker Whip].“. Useless to say, I had a unique reaction after this message, which left me a huge WTF?!? question mark parked over my hair. I tried to reequip it but it didn’t work. After hovering I noticed that the description was insanely longer than the normal I used to know. Read for yourself. NO MOAR TRINKETS!! The problem is that if you use more than a couple mounts, this will be a major pain in the ass wallet, because you would need several different speed enchants… basically just another money sink.

How the hell do you apply that you ask? I’ll show you right away, and the next is a feature that I like and welcome a DAMN LOT.

Mounts & Companions
Mounts & Companions 

This is a merged screen from the Character tabs, and it’s a screen of the “Pets” tab. What? You don’t understand? Press “C”, Character frame will popup, with tabs like “Character”, “Skills”, “Reputation” and so on. After the “Character” tab it’s been inserted a new “Pets” tab. From there you can select (you heard me right!) the pets or the mounts you want to summon. This has a few consequences:

  1. All mounts and pets have been “mutated” in “Use to Learn” objects, similar to what happened with [Riding Crop], [Skybreaker Whip] and the like.
  2. You won’t ever again use slots in bank or inventory bags to store all the damn companions and mounts you have acquired through your levels.
  3. Because of points 1 and 2, you are now forced to buy or acquire all the damn companions and mounts you wanted to take but you didn’t/couldn’t because of “where the hell do I put them?”
  4. I should have stopped at 3.

ISN’T IT TERRIBLY COOL? As you can see above I have/had quite a few mounts and minions, I destroyed even some because I didn’t know where else to put them to allow more space for new items, equips and the like. With those mounts/companions alone, you just theorically freed up a 16 slots bag in the bank. Don’t you feel happier?

WotLK Additions

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted the videos, and I since then spent my time on setting up the next few posts you will see in a moment. These are all the graphic reports from the time I started the betatesting until now. In the future they will be more synchronized, but as of now I couldnt do much more than what I’m doing right now!

This post will mainly talk about a few new additions to WoW and a couple minor changes (major changes will have soon a post of their own) . So, let’s begin.

I thought it was wise to start with one of the main introductions which let everybody go “zOMGFOHREAL”?

Barbershops

You can find these barbershops in all cities, in the picture you see me with a new style. When you “shave” for the first time, you also get an achievement (more on this later) . I found out the costs are quite high too. I found some cuts for 12-20g, maybe in some cases even more. Although that is not a great deal with all the dailies out there, it will probably be a no-no for new starters.

Next on our liste we have:

Achievements

For all who don’t know anything about achievements (where have you been living in the last 3 years?), said “achievements” are objectives to reach for fun. Each achievement gives points. Points will probably surely be used to brag with your archenemies friends to let them now how much they suck pro you are time you spent collecting them. And I’m not kidding, the net is now full of X360 cards displaying total achievement points. Sick parenthesis of humanity, but let’s move on.

I personally like achievements. Most of the times they require you to do the most stupid stuff you’d ever think of, and the fun part is you seriously start to like it. Or, at least, that’s what happened to me.

Loading/Splash Screens Revamped

Nothing major, but I thought that was cool. Characters are now more “toonish”, and I like the feel of it. I haven’t tested all loading screens, just a couple instances, but none of them were refreshed. As of now the only ones I found out are the zone screens. Who knows…

Skeletal Taxi, kthxbai

This particoular Taxi is the one I found while moving from the DK starting zone (after completing the whole chain) to the Dark Portal (in Hellfire. again. sob.)

I don’t know if there are any changes in other paths, although I don’t think they changed. Also I haven’t played in Northrend since the time I lastly logged out, so no news about Northrend flightpath yets. Just yet though 😉

A Huge Calendar
A Huge Calendar

I almost forgot to post the new Group Calendar, or whatever it’s name is. It has been fixed in the last patch (a couple days ago give or take). It has the ability to create new events for raids, display weekly resets, and even shows holidays and special events. I don’t know if it works for weekly battlegrounds bonus too, but I think it would eventually.

IMHO it’s damn HUGE and messy, but I see it’s in development right now, so I believe this is just a scratch.

… I’m not writing this, but until last patch, if you opened the calendar a shitload of error messages would appear flooding your screen. Also it was hilarious to see the use of constants: WEEKDAY_MONDAY, WEEKDAY_TUESDAY, … WEEKDAY_SUNDAY and so on. Ah, localizations… such gorgeous things… Still have the screen with that, should you be interested…

A Handful of Videos

Between the other things, I’ve been making videos here and there during the beta testing, mainly due to some dark pact with Neusy, but however… this is a special dedication to Neusy aka “Zeh Dragonlovah”:

Not too shabby for a beginning, isn’t it? What I really didn’t know and I found terribly hilarious and interesting, is that in the game you can actually ride that dragon in some point of the story. But more about it on next posts.

First thing everybody does when in the beta, is try out the Death Knight. Who wouldn’t? I personally would, and did it. This is the exact point where you spawn with your shiny new character. What you see in front of “you” is the Lich King nonetheless. I quite didn’t believe it in the first place, but I respected my duty and gave proper testimoniance. By the way, the “action” you see Arthas doing (Lich King) is the following: plant the sword, fit one glove, fit the other glove, getting back the Frostmourne (sword’s name).

Last video is about last DK quest. I won’t spoil it, and there’s why I cut the video, let’s just say it’s a big fight at Light’s Chapel.

This is all for the moment: since yesterday I’ve been more busy creating this website than playing, but I surely plan to play MOAR.

Like… now.