You may remember that we announced that a Brewfest Kodo was hidden in the WoTLK Alpha files some time ago. With patch 2.4.3, the Kodo did in fact get into this year's Brewfest. The Brewfest is currently open for testing on the PTR, and you can see the Kodos for yourselves - but only on the Horde side.
That's right. Blizzard has added the Kodo mount, but not in the way many of us had hoped. The Ram mount is now available for purchase only on the Alliance side, and the Kodo mount only on the Horde side. Kisirani has confirmed that this is intended. She says that they came to this decision only after much deliberation, but it's likely staying, although she'll listen to constructive criticism. As you can imagine, this has not been well received.
With Phase 4 upon us, The options for dailies are pretty much long and endless. Of course, with a daily limit of 25 dailies, you can end up doing most of them anyways, and while certainly don't try to spring for 25 dailies every day, I still do my fair share of dailies. About once or twice a week, I do what I have come to call my Outland Circle. All three of my characters have all the daily hubs unlocked, so between Ogri'la, the Skyguard, the Netherwing, and the Shattered Sun Offensive, I can get a lot done.
World of Raids has discovered something hiding in the latest patch build: All the epic gem cut recipes from current 25 mans will now be available from the Shattered Sun Offensive at various reputation levels.
While no vendor has been found for them, the most likely candidate would seem be Shaani, one of the new NPCs we mentioned yesterday. In fact, I would call this even further evidence for the likelihood of epic gem transmutes from the lab set up by Mar'nah from the Razorthorn Rise daily, also mentioned in that article. Certainly, if casuals will be able to learn epic gem cuts from a daily grind reputation, it would make sense that they'd also be able to obtain epic gems to cut from somewhere other than the AH. It really does seem like Blizzard is preparing for Wrath of the Lich King with this patch, giving more and more opportunities for the casual player to catch up so they can start the expansion on a much more equal footing with the raiding player than they did for the Burning Crusade.
In other item and trade skill news from the latest build, the new goggles will now require more ingredients to make, mostly extra primals of various types.
Finally, most of the new tier 6 gear had previously been stripped of stamina, but now has it back, though in slightly smaller amounts than before. This should be good news to all those Druid Tanks who were a bit concerned about what use the gear would be for them, at the least.
Oh, and the scaling bug continues to be hilarious.
MMO-Champion reports that their sources have uncovered some news about loot in 2.4. In non-Sunwell news, recipes for upgraded versions of all the various BoP goggles have been found. Mostly, the recipes require large amounts of elemental primals, some khorium, and primal nethers. A peace offering for the recent Rocket Boots Xtreme change, perhaps?
We also have names for what appears to be the PvP armor that will be purchasable off of reputation vendors. They're all called "Battlegear," but we're seeing some familiar prefixes, such as "Kodohide" and "Dragonhide" for the Druids, and "Ornamented" for the Paladins.
MMO-Champion's sources claim that the new Sunwell armor may actually connect directly to Tier 6, counting for the 2 and 4 piece bonuses on those sets. It doesn't appear, however, that there will be additional bonuses beyond those already in place on the sets, but it should encourage people to get a few pieces of Tier 6 in some of the older content before they try their hand against Kil'jaedan.
Finally, a set called Latro's Flurry has been uncovered, with one of the set pieces being the preexisting Latro's Shifting Sword. We'll have to keep an eye out for the other sword, possibly from the Sunwell daily rep or the new 5-man dungeon.
The PTRs should be up soon, and hopefully we'll have confirmation on this and more of the news coming in soon enough.
Reader Sparticatina of Ysera sends us this excellent shot of a new take on Shatterspear Village (otherwise known as the dancing Troll village hidden away between Moonglade and Darkshore). In my humble opinion, the scenery is much improved by the addition of Gnomes, thanks to the Brewfest beer goggles!
Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing a copy to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com, with as much or as little detail as you'd like to share with the world!
Well unfortunately, it seems my request is not to be. As commenter so2 pointed out the other day, Illidan is not actually a humanoid, so he's not affected by the Beerfest goggles that turn everything into a Gnome (Alliance) or a female Orc (Horde). Bummer-- I really wanted to see Illidan as a tiny little Gnome guy.
However, as you can see above, Gruul is technically a humanoid. And thanks to reader Nate S., we've got a picture of Gruul in his lair, looking as attractive as a female Orc can look. I don't know how much Mudder's Milk you have to drink to make Gruul look that attractive, but it's got to be a whole lot of alcohol.
Of course, the other thing about Gruul is that as the fight goes on, he gets bigger, so I'm still curious to see if, while wearing the Gnome glasses, you could get a picture of the raid fighting a giant Gnome (heck, who needs the glasses-- Blizz, here's my official request for a giant Gnome instance boss in Northrend). And I think a lot more experimentation is needed with these goggles, anyway-- can we see Thrall as a Gnome or Bolivar Fordragon as a female Orc?
So here's the thing. We've posted about these Brewfest goggles that 00hshiny is wearing above before-- they were purchasable during Brewfest (although, I just went by Org this morning, and the Brewfest ticket guy was still standing all by his lonesome outside the city, even though the Brewfest celebration had moved on), and when you wear them, you see everyone in the game as either Female Orcs (the Horde version) or little Gnomes, as in the picture above (Alliance version). And we've already seen the goggles used to hilarious effect.
But if you've been listening to the podcast, you'll know that there's one thing I haven't seen yet, and that I can't wait to see it. Someone, somewhere, please wear the Gnome goggles, and go down Illidan. I'm a Horde player, so I just can't do it, but surely there's some Alliance player out there who had some Brewfest fun in between raiding the Black Temple, and surely they can take the goggles on an Illidan run, and record the hilarious video results. I don't know what I can put on this for a bounty, but you tell me-- prizes? A promise to write about something of your choice on the blog? A callout on the podcast? Someone please go to see Illidan with the Gnome goggles on, and send us the FRAPS of it-- I'm just not prepared for how incredibly awesome that would be.
Update: Aww, that's a bummer. Looks like Illidan don't play that game, homey. Looks like the dream is lost forever. Oh well. Thanks anyway, so2!
Rikora over on the official forums posted about some hopes she has for what engineers will be able to do in the next expansion, such as building siege weapons and other such machinery. You've probably already heard that engineers will be able to craft flying mounts, but other than that we haven't heard so much.
Other posters got pretty creative too, though. There were suggestions of more goggles, more pets, more fun trinkets of course, but one suggested that we make remote controlled planes that can shoot each other down. Another person suggested that there be little remote controlled machines that could sneak past enemies and scout about or throw an optional switch in an instance.
The obvious thing that somehow didn't happen with the Burning Crusade, is just to provide upgraded versions of existing trinkets that actually help as much as the old trinkets did, a Gnomish Battle Piglet, perhaps, or a Goblin Gnome Launcher. One poster to the forum thread said Engineering should be a bit on the overpowered side, and I agree wholeheartedly, especially since many of its items can't be used in Arenas.
To my mind, it should almost be like a secondary class unto itself, with lots of different abilities, from crowd control to healing -- nothing as powerful as a native class ability of course, but something to make engineers feel really glad for choosing their profession and putting lots of work into it.
Erika from Stonemaul shared this shot with us -- and while it's not terribly clear in the small version above, it's actually a cool shot of the Spectrecals given by the Harbrngers of Shadowmoon quest in Shadowmoon Valley. Sure, they always glow, but you can't quite appreciate the headlight-factor without seeing them in complete dark.
Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth.
I think of all the trade skills I have, Engineering has to be the one I feel has been overlooked the most by the devs. The patterns have traditionally been scarce, and it seemed to me like the material costs were pretty crazy for many things when I was leveling up. In contrast, I still haven't gotten all the patterns for tailoring and recipes for alchemy. Enchanting is definitely a pain in the arse, but I can justify that one with tips and the occasional sale when I have the mats. Engineering, for me, was something I picked up and only leveled for the love of toys. (Like my long-ago-nerfed Gnomish Shrink Ray in combination with Nogginfogger Elixir, which was great for laughs.)
I've listened to my Hunter officer, who has maxed his skill out, decry the material costs of many of the new patterns. (I haven't pursued it on my alt as yet) So when I saw this tidbit today, I thought that many engineers would be glad to hear that they are actually looking at improving a pattern as opposed to nerfing it. Per Drysc when fielding complaints about the inclusion of Primal Nether in the epic goggle schematics:
We're in the process of reevaluating the power consumption needs of the goggles. While it was felt that the Primal Nether would be able to sufficiently power the devices, and through further testing, we're currently investigating other power sources and their availability.
Good news, and a bit of RP. We'll have to wait and see what the final decision is in regards to "power sources."
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