PTR is closed

Posted May 5th 2008 3:00PM by Adam Holisky
Filed under: Patches, News items

Hortus just posted that the PTR server for patch 2.4.2 has been taken down, and that the PTR phase for the patch has ended. This is a strong indicator that patch 2.4.2 is on its way soon, perhaps during some expected maintenance tomorrow.

Take a look at the official and un-official notes for a comprehensive look at what will change. Nothing in the patch is game-breaking, in my opinion, but there are some nice changes. Some of the major highlights include:

• Changes to the way arena points are calculated.
  
• Void Shatter no longer has a cooldown, and other cooldowns have been reduced.
• If you are sheeped / polymorphed by a mob, you will no longer gain back health (ie: the mass sheep in Aran, which regens your health before he fire blasts the raid).
  
• Many main hand weapons are now one hand weapons.

WoW Insider will carry the latest on the patch, including as soon as we know when it's set to go live. Stay tuned!

Edit 3:24 p.m. EDT: It should be noted that the final version of the patch notes have not been released yet, however they are usually close to what the PTR patch notes are.

What are you looking forward to the most in WotLK?

Posted Apr 26th 2008 8:00PM by Adam Holisky
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Wrath of the Lich King

There have been lots of little bits of news and information coming out about Wrath of the Lich King lately. With the World Wide Invitational 2008 just around the corner where WotLK will be playable again for us all, and the news that Wrath is in alpha, we can expect to see more and more come out about the game.

With this expectation of the beta and eventual release building, a lot of people are getting excited about different things. So I want to know, what are you most excited about?

For me, I'm most excited about seeing the new end game raid content. I'm with a very dedicated group of raiders right now who do about 20 hours a week of raiding, and it's a lot of fun. Hopefully we'll all still be around in WotLK and get to push into the new content quickly and with a lot of zeal.

Then there is the Death Knight. Who isn't thrilled at the chance to play a new class? We haven't ever seen a new class in WoW, and it's bound to throw a wrench in the way a lot of folks play the game. Seeing the Death Knight get integrated into raiding will be a very interesting thing to watch.

Continue reading What are you looking forward to the most in WotLK?

Fake Throne of Arthas Video

Posted Apr 26th 2008 7:00PM by Adam Holisky
Filed under: Wrath of the Lich King

Kupoccino sent us a tip earlier today about a video that's posted over on a German site about WotLK. In the video a level one Warrior walks up the throne of Arthas and purchases a sword from a stone – a sword that appears to be Frostmourne.

The video is a fake, and has graphics elements and game elements, such as the bags, that are indicative of a private server. Additionally Kuoccino points out to me in a later email that the steps are really benches from the Undercity, and that the throne is from the Undercity as well. I'm inclined to agree with him.

Normally I wouldn't post something like this, but it's a good example of how far people are willing to go to try to get a scoop on WotLK. Also, as Mike Schramm pointed out on the podcast this afternoon, now is about the time that we'll start to see more leaked WotLK information. The alpha is going on, and the beta is a few months away - this is prime time for leaks to happen.

Now of course, there is the remotest of remote possibilities that this video is real. If there is even a smidgen of truthiness in here, my hat is off to the person that got this.

If you've got any WotLK screenshots, real or fake, hop on over to our tip line and send away! We're always on the lookout for a good thing! We just reserve the right to laugh and cackle if you send us fakes.

New WotLK screenshots leaked [Updated]

Posted Apr 20th 2008 11:25PM by Adam Holisky
Filed under: News items, Screenshots, Wrath of the Lich King

A poster on the mmo-champion forums has found several leaked screenshots from the alpha of Wrath of the Lich King. While not all screenshots the original poster produced are real, WoW Insider has learned from an inside source that a number of them are very similar to what the actual alpha looks like and appear to be legitimate. While this isn't an official confirmation from Blizzard, it is about as good as we'll get for any leaked screenshot for the time being.

The images are of various places around what looks to be Utgarde Keep. Additionally, there is a very real looking screenshot of the alpha installation package. Sources tell me this is very close to what is on the docket at Blizzard, again lending credibility to these leaks.

Stay tuned to WoW Insider for all the latest Wrath of the Lich King information. Click the gallery below to see the full leaked sets.

Updated 12:53 a.m. EDT: Login screen was a fake. Removed. However, other screenshots still stand up with our sources. Thanks to Aichon, Kyraa, and our sources for helping clear up which images are real and which are fake.

Updated 11:00 p.m. EDT April 21st: Most of these images came from Two Hammers over at Gamebunny from his Blizzcon 2007 trip. However, still good screenies for people to enjoy.

Gallery: WotLK Leaks

Check out more information on WoW's upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, including Blizzard's recent interview about Northrend and the new creatures that infest of Northrend. Plus, a visual guide to what we know about Death Knights so far.

What it will look like when you're invited to the WotLK beta

Posted Apr 20th 2008 7:00PM by Adam Holisky
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Wrath of the Lich King

Right now there is no WotLK beta, there is no chance you'll get in the alpha if you're not already in it, and there is no email that's going to be coming to your inbox anytime soon about it. But when it comes, it's going to make you one happy gamer. This is a very important thing for people to understand, especially with the flood of fake emails lately.

Blizzard will make an announcement on their forums and/or their homepage letting all of us know that WotLK beta invites are going out. The email that you'll get if you're lucky enough to get invited will be sent from an @blizzard.com address, will come through the blizzard.com servers (you can check the extended email headers in your email program to see this). The email will have tons of identifiable information in it that only points to blizzard.com or worldofwarcraft.com and nowhere else.

For a reference, let's that a look at what the Burning Crusade beta email looked like that I got back in 2006

Continue reading What it will look like when you're invited to the WotLK beta

Make way for maintenance day

Posted Apr 15th 2008 10:30AM by Amanda Miller
Filed under: News items

Maintenance day is underway until 2pET/11aPT and many WoW fans are searching for something to do, while players with day jobs log on to point out that they can never play during these hours. Fortunately, we have lots going on today, as well as some highlights from the past week that you won't want to miss.

Wrath of the Lich King:

• Compilation of everything we know of to date about Death Knights, the new hero class we'll be seeing with the expansion.
• The new expansion is now in alpha testing! Read on to find out what this means, as well as what it doesn't mean.

Arena Season 4:

• A great analysis of when arena season 4 might begin.

Continue reading Make way for maintenance day

Fake Howling Fjord map released [Updated]

Posted Apr 11th 2008 1:40PM by Adam Holisky
Filed under: News items, Wrath of the Lich King

(click on image for larger view)

WoW Insider has come across a potentially leaked image of a map of the new Howling Fjord zone. This information comes hot on the heels of our announcement yesterday of the closed alpha testing of Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion to World of Warcraft. The image has been posted today at several spots around the internet.

Howling Fjord will be one of the two starting points for those entering into Northrend. The other starting zone will be the Borean Tundra. Wrath of the Lich King will raise the level cap to 80, introduce the Death Knight class, new PvP warfare, and new group and solo play.

WoWWiki has the image listed as a "player made" image. However, the image itself has been found around several other galleries on the internet, and there is no credit to the original author on the image. Additionally, the map itself closely resembles the terrain and layout of the zone that was playable at Blizzcon in 2007. We'll keep an eye on this, and other Wrath of the Lich King media that might be legit, and get you all the latest information when we know it. Stay tuned!

Update: The map is a fake, produced and propagated by user Kanaru on WoWWiki. Welcome to the World of Fakecraft.

Gallery: Wrath of the Lich King

Breaking: Wrath of the Lich King is in alpha

Posted Apr 10th 2008 2:15PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Blizzard, Expansions, Wrath of the Lich King

We had some hints that this would happen soon and now WoW Insider has confirmed through anonymous sources that the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is in closed alpha status, and that various players are being invited to check it out, under a strict NDA.

Alpha is part of the software release life cycle -- a software product in development goes from alpha status to beta status (sometimes including a "closed beta," where a limited few are invited to preview and test the software, and an "open beta,", where anyone can download and try out the beta), to "release candidates" and then "gold" (the final version, used to print the media to be available for sale). This doesn't tell us anything about the timing of the expansion's release (especially since Blizzard historically takes their time going through this cycle), but it does tell us that Wrath's content is in a playable and mostly completed form -- quests, game mechanics, and items are in, even if specific flavor text, names, and even textures are not.

We'll keep an eye, as usual, on any other news we see coming out of Blizzard, through official or unofficial channels. Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion of World of Warcraft, is in alpha testing. The journey to Northrend has begun.

Update: A word to the wise: this is not an open beta, and any email or site that tells you to sign up for one is still scamming you. When open beta comes down, we'll hear about it on Blizzard's official site. This is just news that the next expansion has moved up a notch in its development, and that we're one step closer to an official open beta.

Gallery: What we know about Death Knights

Gallery: Wrath of the Lich King

Check out more information on WoW's upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, including a look at the new Death Knight class and the new creatures that infest Northrend.

No Sunwell Plateau this weekend

Posted Mar 8th 2008 1:45PM by Adam Holisky

If you were expecting to trash around in the Sunwell Plateau this weekend, think again. According to a Daelo post, Blizzard has taken the instance offline for the next couple of days.

While I can understand the Blizzard dev's taking the realm offline here or there, and taking down an instance for an extended period of time during the week, it does strike me as odd that they would choose to remove access during the weekend – a prime playing time for a lot of folks. And I know that I and many of my friends only raid weeknights, so we have ample opportunity to test out the content on the weekends.

Nonetheless, we can all look forward to reentering the Sunwell on Monday. If this changes, expect to see an update on WoW Insider.

Auctioneer ready for 2.3

Posted Nov 15th 2007 4:00PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Economy, AddOns, Making money

Reader V3T sends word that the folks behind Auctioneer did a long testing session last night, and they say that the latest builds of all the Auctioneer addons are now working under 2.3. They are, we're told, still in alpha, but V3T says they are stable enough to use and that all functions are working-- including BottomScanner, an awesome little addon that finds bargain auctions for you as they happen.

That cheering you hear is frugal and money conscious players everywhere happy to have a new build of Auctioneer under 2.3. Preview versions of the addons can be found on Auctioneer's Preview page. V3T also says they're looking for more usage and feedback, so if you do download it, make sure to report any bugs or errors and let them know what works or what doesn't.

Wrath of the Lich King Alpha in the wild?

Posted Oct 11th 2007 9:36PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Expansions, BlizzCon, Wrath of the Lich King

Take this with a gigantic shaker full of salt, but a sketchy guild site host named Ejeet Networks claims to have received screenshots of the downloader for the Wrath of the Lich King alpha (watch out for the automatic music player on their site, too). Again, this means almost nothing-- even if the downloader is really out there in the wild, it hardly means the game is anywhere near done, or that anyone but Blizzard employees are still playing it at this point. But Ejeet says the DNS server for the WotLK beta is online and answering DNS resolution, and they claim that a "Swedish contact" sent them screenshots of the alpha downloader.

Personally, I call shenanigans-- their first screenshot says version .1, and then the Properties screen they have says version 2.0.3.70, so which is it? They also claim that since the Properties screen says "{c} 2004-2008 Blizzard Entertainment," that's proof that we'll see Wrath in 2008, but that's hardly true as well. I have no doubt that we'll see the beta in 2008, but I'd bet money we won't see the expansion itself until January 2009. I'd love to be wrong, but them's the breaks.

But I leave it up to you-- as much as I disagree, these could be proof that Blizzard has an expansion alpha up and running. Anyone else spot any other weirdness that could rule these out as fakes?

Thanks, Dan!

WoW Model Viewer updated to 2.0.1 alpha

Posted Dec 28th 2006 10:07AM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Patches, Tricks, Blizzard, News items, AddOns

WoW Model Viewer has been updated to work with 2.0.1, and they've got a new website to boot. If you've never used it, the model viewer is a program that lets you poke around inside the WoW resources on your computer, and check out the 3D models of players, armor, NPCs, and so on. The latest version is being called .5 "very alpha" and can be found here.

A few words of warning: as the name implies, the software isn't quite done yet, which means it's likely to (at least) crash, and (at worst) break your computer (I doubt that's likely to happen, but anytime you run alpha software, it's a possibility). In addition, the model viewer is in no way created or condoned by Blizzard-- there's a chance (albeit small, I realize) that they could consider this using a 3rd party program to modify the game files. Again, it's not likely-- I doubt this program actually does any editing, just reading-- but the possibility is there.

Anyway, the Model Viewer can make for some pretty cool looks at content you haven't yet seen in the game (or haven't yet been able to examine closely). And the Model Viewer is also responsible for some pretty amazing fanmade videos, too. The new version allows you to access the Blood Elf and Draenei models, so if you're interested in seeing what's just around the corner with the expansion (and willing to use unofficial alpha software to do it), have at it.

Rumored hunter pet abilities

Posted Oct 6th 2006 1:00PM by Elizabeth Harper
Filed under: Hunter, Expansions

These new pet abilities on the Curse Gaming forums, if accurate, sound pretty darned awesome. As to their accuracy, several posters have noted that some of these abilities have been in the game (not available to players, but in the game) since beta, but never usable -- and that the final release of pet skills gave pets completely new abilities. To this, original poster Celebrimor notes that, in the Alpha release, these abilities now scale up to level 70, meaning they've at least been updated. (And why update them if not to make use of them in-game?) So are they real or just someone's idea of a bad joke? Read on and see what you think.

Continue reading Rumored hunter pet abilities

Blizzard 1, BC rumor sites 0

Posted Sep 29th 2006 9:00AM by Elizabeth Harper
Filed under: Blizzard, Expansions

The pluralization is a bit pre-emptive here, as only one site I know of has had its contents pulled offline due to Blizzard's requests. That site, the Caverns of Time, was a great compilation of rumors and occasionally legitimate information about the upcoming expansion (the screenshot above, pulled from the site, was obviously not an accurate representation of the druid changes). They've received notice from Blizzard giving them 48 hours to remove contents of the site or else face "formal action," and they seem to have complied. You can check the site, still, for a copy of what I assume is Blizzard's complaint. Ah well -- I'm sure three sites will spring up tomorrow to replace it, thus providing us a steady stream of interesting Burning Crusade gossip!

Even More Burning Crusade Leaks

Posted Sep 7th 2006 8:00PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Blizzard, Expansions, Draenei, Blood Elves

Even more leaks are finding their way out of the supposedly ubersecret Burning Crusade Friends and Family Alpha. First we saw videos of the newbie areas, then we heard the voices of BE and Draenei, and now, using a model hacker, various sources have put together a few more spoilers about the expansion. If, like me, you want to wait until you buy the game to actually see what's in it, don't click on the links below. But if you're willing to dive into unreleased and unconfirmed information because you just can't wait to find out what might be in the expansion, have at it!

• borgseawolf over on Livejournal has put up four huge image strips of a bunch of different enemies from the game. Some of them are still untextured, but there's a lot of interesting stuff in there, including a few new forms of mobs we already know and love.
• And YouTuber roguekitten246 has unearthed video animations of the emotes and fighting movements of the Draenei male, the Draenei female, and the Blood Elf male and BE female. Again, don't click on the links if you don't want to see spoilers, but I have to say that I think the Horde are going to be pretty happy to have the BEs on their side. They look good.
• Also, Eluna (who sent us the voices) also sends along a few other pics from the alpha: some freaky skelly, a felorc, a female and male naga, a race whose name we won't mention, and the normal and epic Draenei mounts.

Again, hacking the code like this is definitely against the Blizzard TOS and may even be illegal, so we can't confirm or guarantee any of these pictures or movies are exactly what you'll see in Burning Crusade. Even if they are real, there's a huge chance things will change before the game is released, so take these with a grain of salt. That said-- wow these look awesome!

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