Blizzplanet has a new Wrath of the Lich King related video from G4TV. It has interviews with Jeffrey "Tigole" Kaplan and J. Allen "No nickname I'm aware of" Brack and very short previews of the new zones, the Death Knight hero class, quests and raids. It also has a very annoying soundtrack underneath the interview snippets which made me want to rip the speakers off of my computer when I watched it the first time, so be warned. A few notes of interest during the interview:
They definitely want to make sure that the Horde and Alliance experiences in WoTLK are different: "While some of the story threads will be the same, how you get there will vary for Horde and Alliance."
We will apparently not just ally with, but also have to fight some of the Tuskarr. This makes me sad. I don't want to kill the Wilford Brimley's of Azeroth. I mean, I'll do it if there's a shiny copper piece involved, don't get me wrong, but it still will make me sad as I rip that purse off of their blubbery corpses. I just dread the "Gather x Tuskarr tusks" quests I fear are coming. I saw tusks right on him! What do you mean he doesn't have any?
They're planning out all their patches in advance this time. I didn't actually know they didn't already do this, so it was news to me.
You know that awesome Amani War Bear? The one that has been sold for 20,000 gold? Well, you'd better work on getting it as soon as possible if you want one, because when Wrath of the Lich King comes out, it will no longer be attainable. Currently you get it as a reward for a time-based challenge in the ten-man raid Zul'Aman: free all four prisoners in time, get bear.
Tigole just posted in the official forums that upon Wrath's release, the bear will be replaced with "a very good, epic item," basically to preserve the prestige of having gotten the bear at its intended difficult level. He says they plan on doing a similar thing with the "Hand of A'dal" and "Champion of the Naaru" titles as well. I can understand this move -- it would probably be trivial to get the bear with a raid full of level 80s. And there is still a fair amount of time before Wrath comes out.
However, it makes me sad to see something become impossible to get. I think it would be a better solution if they made it so the bear could only be attained by a raid containing no members above level 70, personally. As Zach pointed out to me, the change that they're proposing now means that no Death Knight will ever be on a bear mount, and that's just sad. Unless, that is, they introduce a polar bear mount in Northrend -- did somebody say panserbjørne?
Over the past week, particularly in the last few days, the crisp Internet air has been abuzz with news from the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Fear you're out of the loop? Here's a quick round-up of all the information being released, along with analysis and opinion.
Don't forget to keep checking back, as this page will be updated as information becomes available:
Dungeons and raids
An analysis on Arthas as a ten-manned event, including its impact on the 25-man raiding structure, as well an exploration of its consistency with the lore.
Did you know that all expansion raids will have a 10-man setting, as well as a 25-man?
The Nexus has been announced on the official site as one of the new dungeons.
Zones, factions, and relevant lore
Alex has written an excellent overview of the Grizzly Hills, a soon-to-be zone for low to mid-seventies. With old factions reappearing, along with other surprises, it's definitely something to look forward to!
If news of the Dragonblight has intrigued you, you'll be pleased to know that more information has been made available.
While we're brushing up on our lore and learning about new areas and factions, Alex thought it fitting to illuminate the lore behind Azjol-Nerub, as the Nerubians will have their own role in the expansion.
Continue through the break for new information on Death Knights, as well as video and interviews, analysis, release date information, and our full-range of Wrath galleries.
Chilton meant that Blizzard has solid ties into the community, but should it worry us at all that those ties might be a little too close-knit? We already know that Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan has major ties to a guild in the game (he was actually hired by Blizzard from his Everquest raiding guild), and quest designer Alex "Furor" Afrasiabi also comes from a guild that is still active in World of Warcraft. In fact, we've already seen Blizzard get in trouble by their own admission for treating the devs' guilds differently -- is it right for them to keep their guild associations anonymous?
On the one hand, obviously it's much easier to keep the developers' ingame identities anonymous, otherwise they wouldn't be able to play the game at all without getting approached with questions and complaints every time they log on. But on the other hand, not only is there the potential for favoritism in terms of game design, but what if the PvP guild mentioned in the article was one that won an eSports or the Arena realm tournament? Is it right for Blizzard's developers to keep their guild associations anonymous?
Each week, Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player who has 2 hours or less to play at a time.
Almost every column, I talk about Welfare Epics since they are specifically designed for casuals to get their purplez on and I just assume that you all know what I'm talking about. But Dave recently sent in a question asking what they are and I realized that if I didn't write for WoW Insider, I probably wouldn't know either.
Though some people say they heard the phrase before this, the first time I heard it was at BlizzCon. Jeff Kaplan, aka Tigole, started off the Dungeons and Raids panel by saying that the panel wasn't for people with their Welfare Epics, but for people who actually earn them. Now, I think he was partially just being funny, but I also think he was speaking up for the Raiders who are upset that all of the work they put into conquering the PvE endgame content is for naught when any casual player can pick up purples that are equal to or better than gear that drops off endgame bosses.
I've been looking through patch 2.4's loot tables fairly frequently, and just the other night one piece in particular really jumped out at me. Angelista's Revenge. Yes, good ol' Angelista is back yet again.
There's no lore or backstory for Angelista, she's not really a lore figure at all. Like Foror and Styleen, Angelista is a just a little plug for a Blizzard employee, or friend/family member of a Blizzard employee. We don't know exactly who she is, but it's fun to see all of the signs pointing to her that crop up. Ahn'Qiraj, Stratholme(see above), Blackwing Lair, and now the Sunwell.
Even though I know there's no real lore for Angelista, I have a mind obsessed with story telling, so I started to wonder what she would be like if she was a Warcraft figure. Her name sounds like a Priest, but her equipment definitely isn't priest-like. There's cloth belts in BWL and Mount Hyjal, a melee DPS ring in 2.4, a tanking ring and healing neck in Ahn'Qiraj... the only classes Angelista could possibly be are a very, very confused Shaman, Paladin or Druid.
While we reported a while back on the use of the Essence of the Immortals as a method to unlock the Sunwell Plateau 25-man, progressive patching has continued its march, as Tigole explains to us in a recent forum thread.
The Essence of the Immortals itself is now gone, and instead, all gates will open automatically over time on each server. Tigole explains that although they like the idea of cross-server competition, and plan to implement in the future, The Essence of the Immortals concept wasn't working out as well as they'd hoped. Of course, servers can still compete to unlock the daily quests the fastest.
Blizzard Poster Tyren has announced that this coming Sunday, 12pm to 3pm, Blizzard will be holding a Worldwide Arena Battle on the Tournament Test Realm in order to focus testing on the server. Members of the community and development teams will be queuing up to fight, so if you've always wanted to show Kalgan or Tigole what for in the Arena, this looks like your chance. You can expect a battle between the various CMs as well, so we'll have to watch to see who gets stickied and who gets banned.
If you're not sure how to access the TTR, you can read Zach Yonzon's guide here on the site. Don't worry if you don't have a character transfer slot left, every character created on the TTR is automatically level 70, and will spawn next to a selection of vendors that will let them buy a wide variety of gear to outfit themselves for battle.
Assuming the TTR doesn't collapse under the stress, we'll see you there!
Attunement is one of those subjects that divides WoW players. You either think people should have to work to get into high-end dungeons, or you think they should be open to anyone with the guts to try. Of course, you're more likely to fall into the first camp if you yourself had to do that work, hence the recent controversy over the attunements for the Black Temple and Mount Hyjal being removed.
Well, it turns out that if WoW lead developer Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan had his way, attunement would be much less of a pain. He dropped the following information in a thread on "Attunement and Alts" in the general forums today:
They would like to make it so getting a Karazhan key or a heroic key gave all your other max-level alts access as well.
They're looking into guild and raid attunements, but "no promises."
They're interested in doing server events to open up content, like the AQ war but, Tigole says, with more fun dailies and fewer boring collection grinds.
Overall, he says the topic of attunement comes up often at Blizz HQ, and they want to do better moving forward and going into Wrath.
It seems like a small change, but it could be the herald of something larger. It's a change to the way the defense skill is described in-game in patch 2.4, as reported by World of Raids. I'll let them describe it:
* Old value: Higher defense makes you harder to hit and makes monsters less likely to land a crushing blow.
* New value: Higher defense improves your chance to dodge, parry, and block attacks, makes you harder to hit, and makes monsters less likely to land a critical strike against you.
So what does this mean? They've added things that have always been part of the skill, but have not been explicitly mentioned on the defense tab before, but what's most intriguing is what they've taken away.
Maybe you thought because it was Friday night that you could avoid new WoW news? Think again-- Tigole has posted on the forums that the PTR is coming up "soon," and the PTR forums have been reset in anticipation (unfortunately the forums have gone down due to all the chaos). We're not expecting the patch until Tuesday, so throwing it up tonight would be a very Blizzard thing for Blizzard to do. As Eliah said before, too, character transfers are up and running, so all signs point to Blizzard springing this on us very soon.
Tigole also says to watch WSG when the PTR comes back up, as there will be lots of changes. Their goal is to keep the gameplay similar, he says, while ending the turtling and flag kiting. Should be interesting. We're around this evening and will keep you updated if we see any notes.
In an interview at Computer and Videogames, Tigole mostly discusses some things we've already heard about, such as the Lake WintergraspPvP zone and the process to unlock the Death Knight class, but also reveals a few very tasty little morsels of new information as well.
First, he tells us a little bit more about Blizzard's philosophy behind Inscription, the new trade skill slated to be released with the expansion. While it appears that only one inscription will be allowed to be on a spell at one time, their goal is not to create one or two all-powerful inscriptions that will be used above all others, but to give players a variety of valid choices as to how to modify their spells. The example he gives is that of Frost Nova. One player might choose an inscription that gave their nova a longer range, while another might choose one that would lengthen the duration of the root associated with it.
The restriction on summoning in Netherstorm is going to be removed entirely! Hooray! While this change won't vastly alter gameplay, it's another nice little convenience thing. Those are usually the most enjoyable changes, I think. This far into the game, there really isn't much need to keep Tempest Keep restricted to those with flying mounts. Plus, as all of the level 68 Druids with their Flight Form have displayed, you don't need to be top level to do some damage in most of Tempest Keep either.
This seems like it might be another change with the intent of opening the game up to more players and speeding up the content to prepare for Wrath of the Lich King, but most people I know never liked the summoning restriction anyway. I, for one, am glad to see it go.
I haven't had this happen to me specifically, but I know it's happening out there-- players are blockingbattlemasters by flooding around them, and hiding them inside other models, leaving them unclickable. We've heard about this before, and apparently it's a growing problem.
So Blizzard has come up with a fix-- in 2.4, says Tigole, all the battlemasters will be standing on platforms, which will be coded with collision, so player models can't invade them. It's not that big a change (imagine the auctioneers in Ironforge and Silvermoon), but it should make for a little different visual-- it'll be a crowded little pavilion where the battlemasters are in Shattrath.
Of course, that doesn't solve the problem of blocking NPCs, only of blocking battlemasters. But there are probably enough repairers and questgivers around at this point that there's no reason to put all the NPCs on pedestals just to keep them away from the maddening crowd.
Tigole has been busy on the forums today, and that always tends to bring out interesting tidbits about the future of our favorite game. While it is certainly not earth-shattering, the most interesting thing that he mentions has to do with the future of the PVPbattlemasters. In patch 2.4 these guys will be put on a pedestal, literally. Much like the auctioneers in many cities, the battlemasters will be placed on a raised platform that is inaccessible to players in order to keep people from blocking them with their character's model. He also hints that Wrath will see even better improvements. This is certainly a welcome change to remove a minor annoyance that is sometimes imposed upon us by our fellow players.
Other posts hint at the future of guild banks, the title system, and a possible reward for Wrath'sLake Wintergrasp. First of all, he mentions that they're "exploring" the option to allow guild masters to set prices for items in the guild bank. I know in my guild this would be great for the guild leader, since it would probably save him a lot of time in the auction house and also provide an easy solution to those situations where he gets a valuable item and is not sure how to distribute it to the rest of the guild. I imagine that this could be exploited, to an extent, by guild leaders who might suddenly slap a price on everything in the bank rather than allowing free withdrawals, but that would probably fix itself over time as people leave the guild and/or stop donating to the bank.
Over the past week, particularly in the last few days, the crisp Internet air has been abuzz with news from the upcoming expansion, 
Tom "Kalgan" Chilton, in his interview 
Blizzard Poster Tyren has announced
Maybe you thought because it was Friday night that you could avoid new WoW news? Think again-- Tigole has posted on the forums that the 
I haven't had this happen to me specifically, but I know it's happening out there-- players are 
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