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Posts with tag minimap

Patch 2.3 on WoW Insider


Happy patch day! Yes, it's time for patch 2.3 today, and boy do we at WoW Insider have a lot of information for you about today's patch.
And this is just scratching the surface -- use the search box at the top to find anything else you'd like to know about 2.3 -- we covered it all, from the season 1 arena item prices to how Elemental Shamans got buffed to what casuals can do for fun in 2.3 to the changes to Aimed Shot. There is just a ton of stuff changing in our favorite game today, and if you're wondering about it, odds are we wrote a post about it. 2.3 is here!

Details on the new minimap tracking system

In addition to letting us know about the new hunter pets in Patch 2.3, Mania's Arcania (of Petopia fame) has also written up a pretty detailed explanation of how the new minimap tracking system works, with helpful screenshots and everything. We've mentioned this before, but now here are some of the new details she has uncovered for us:
  • The "!" and "?" quest-giver symbols now show up on the minimap very clearly.
  • Clicking on the new magnifying glass button gives you a list of all the different things you can track, including existing tracking abilities, as well as places to repair, buy ammo, aucions, banks, and so on.
  • Flight Masters you haven't met yet will always show up, whether you are tracking them or not.
  • Quest-givers' "!" symbols disappear from the minimap if their quest is too low-level for you (which is too bad if you are going back for more reputation).
  • For hunters: the various creature-tracking abilities now distinguish between neutral and hostile mobs, via yellow and red dots, respectively.
  • Special tracking-assistant addons like Gazmik Fizzwidget's famous TrackMenu may no longer be needed.

Amazing updates to the UI in 2.3

Tons of amazing gems found in the patch 2.3 notes (Art from our /silly comic called this "the patch that keeps on giving). Here's just a few of the UI-slimming things Blizzard is implementing in the next patch:
  • Auction House categories have been cleaned up-- no more "Plate > Cloak" categories.
  • "Battle Map" is now available for all zones, not just PvP battlegrounds. Does that mean you can pull up the map and see where all players are at all times? Sounds like it to me.
  • Game objects that you can interact with now have a glow around them and their name over them. Wow! No more searching for twenty minutes just to find that little switch you have to click on.
  • We'll be able to send 12 items in a single mail message! Bye bye, CTMailMod.
  • Monsters that need to be looted by people in your party will now have the name of the would-be looter visible in the tooltip. Bye bye, "LOOT YOUR CORE HOUNDS!" Actually, that one I might miss.
  • And we've heard that there are big enhancements to the minimap-- bankers, auction house tellers, repair people, and quest givers can now be optionally tracked on the minimap.
  • Additionally, fishing anglers will be able to track fishing holes-- but only after obtaining a crate that contains a book from fishing.
Wild. The whole thing about interactive items glowing? It's like we're getting "WoW for preschoolers." Don't get me wrong, it'll be a huge help to everyone doing quests, I'm sure, but at what point are we getting a big arrow you can see from halfway across the zone that says "Kill This Mob to Finish Your Quest"?
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Insider Trader: Yeah, nice effect -- but does it glow?

Insider Trader is your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.


Laugh all you like – for a sizable population of WoW players, an enchant's not worth the mats it takes unless it creates a cool glow. A long-time enchanter, I've made my share of snarky remarks in guild chat about dorky customers bringing me mats for completely inappropriate enchants on completely inappropriate weapons ... But then again, back in the day (ok -- way back in the day), I also made sure to equip an alternate staff enchanted with Demonslaying every time I zoned into town. Watch the peons swarm to see what the Great and Powerful Enchanter (TM) is wielding!

You'd probably be pretty surprised to learn that there is, in fact, an entire web site devoted to helping enchanters and players figure out which enchants make the coolest glows. GlowChart.com, the brainchild of Cordana of the Detheroc realm, offers screenshots of specific glows, lists of available enchants and their effects, and news on newly updated Burning Crusade-era glows.

Read more about glows after the jump, as well as an Insider Trader tip for miners trying to track elusive greyed-out "ghost nodes."

Continue reading Insider Trader: Yeah, nice effect -- but does it glow?

Better Know an Interface Element: The minimap

Today I would like to take a look at WoW's UI -- not any of those newfangled mods, but the default UI, the one that Blizzard wrote. We'll start at the top-right corner: everybody, say hi to the minimap!

As far as I've been able to determine, the minimap hasn't changed since I've started playing the game (circa patch 1.4 or so) -- until now! Yes, as I'm sure you've all noticed by this point, patch 2.0.1 introduced a new minimap button, one to open the world map (it's the one in the top-left corner of the minimap pic to the right, all looking like the Atlas button). I was rather confused about this for quite some time, until I realized that they had to take the world map button off the micro-buttons at the bottom of the screen to make room for one for the new LFG interface. But the micro-buttons are a topic for another post.

Continue reading Better Know an Interface Element: The minimap


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