Wrath of the Lich King Beta is UP! Patch notes are here! Invites are out!

So did anyone get one? Anyone gotten to play in what will shortly become our new home?

Shamans and paladins got a TON of major changes in basic functionality. Blessings of salvation, light, protection and freedom were eliminated or changed into "hand" spells. A bunch of totems were fundamentally altered (windfury now a flat haste to melee).

I've been looking on MMO Champion and the new zones and dungeons look really cool. The new achievement system is kind of meh, but I guess I'll have to see what the rewards are. Alternative progression paths never hurt, and it's something to work on if you're fed up with the normal activities of playing.

In case you haven't seen it you can check out the info at either:
www.worldofraids.com OR
www.mmo-champion.com

Enjoy.

no invite here :\

me either :(

No invite... I got my hopes up cause I was in original WoW beta, but I've unsubscribed/resubscribed so many times since then. Anybody know if it's completely random?

No invite here either. :(

Oh well..

No invite for me either. QQ

Been looking at the DK talents and skills while at work and I'm starting to get excited about playing again. I just can't decide if I want to go Undead or Orc. I'm sure there's going to be a shitload of Undead DK's but Undead are just badass. Then again so are Orcs. :|

An answer from Wrath of the Lich King Beta Opt-In FAQ

Yeah, I wish I could always be undead. Even on Alliance side. Their /dance is just too awesome.

Afaik, US invites have not been sent yet. People who are downloading the client say there are 0 servers currently up. Press invites are slated to be released in the next few days aaaaaand I think they will announce the beta on the main page.


This taken from reading the beta/death knight/wrath wiki forums.

A Retraction
 

Despite my last comments on my experience with WoW, I have now decided to take the leap into the world.

I had originally gone in with too many expectations on a particular style of gameplay that just isn't built into the environment and the culture. I shouldn't view WoW as a roleplaying experience anywhere near the mode that I play on NWN Cormyr; it just isn't meant for that.

What I do like about WoW is its grand scope, both geographically and socially. And all of this can be had in a casual manner. I don't have to attach myself to a particular experience; I can take or leave what I come across using my own prerogative. I can create experiences or join them on a whim, and I can leave them just as well. I simply need to view this as an experience based in actions and consequences rather than complex identities.

I don't know much about the potential yet, as I've barely scratched the surface during the trial, but I'm giving WoW its fair shot at winning my approval.

That said, I'm trying to join the Warsong server.

Everyone go join the WoW addicts social group! I know there are more than three of us.

i'm on either darrowmere horde or kil'jaeden (either faction) both pvp servers *shrug* let me know if land on those servers

I joined the social group :)

I'm really looking forward to the hunter changes. I know some of my hunter friends are going to hate it because they're hardcore MM hunters that consider pets to be a burden though. It seems like a lot of focus is being put into pet skill management. Many long cooldown pet abilities that can't be just put on Auto-cast like Taunts, last stand, etc etc..
I just saw a video of the Explosive shot owning the entire SM Cath boss room. Should help us rush instances a little better :)

If anyone is on Whisperwind (not likely.. but eh) my guild leader will be running a "PVP Day" On Saturday (july 25). 30,000g in prizes. You can get some gold by simply taking part and are flagged for pvp. Bunch of bonus stuff going on for extra gold like killing some enemy city bosses. :thumbsup:

More info here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...03584910&sid=1

Medivh- Normal

Arandrul- 70 BM Hunter :)

Arandin- 70 Tankadin

Aranheal- 64 Shadow Priest.. Healer at 70

I play on Malygos... I have a shaman named Cauchmar and a lock named Sinnful... Both are horde.

Carp!! Wish I knew about this site 4 years ago when I started playing WoW...
Anyway... I play on Boulderfist
Got a 70 Rogue - Ivanja
62 Paladin - Anja
52 Lock - Dotyoutodeth

Working on 3 hunters. One to twink at 19. Others are just for experimenting...

So, I was in BT last night on my shammy, and a Soul Cleaver dropped (Soul Cleaver - Item - World of Warcraft)

I took it. I have always had a strange hard on for 2h enhancement, even though it fails in pretty much every way except for 1 shotting no resil clothies and rogues. Anyways, took it to a WSG that night. This was done in 4/5 T4 and some other shitty gear so yeah...

http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/2...ncementpq3.jpg
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/2...af97721224.jpg

Anyone else going to Blizzcon?

Blizzcon is sold out already
 

I missed the boat.

It is already sold out :(

Must be nice to win EotS :P

Hah, You should join The Incredibles you dirty alliance!

Boulderfist horde FTW! except at AV and WSG..

Has anyone used a powerleveling service? My friends just started a guild and I was considering playing again by they are alliance so I'd have to start from scratch.

I depise grinding and just want to be 70. Any reccomended services, or is it a really bad idea?

A friend used a leveling service on his priest from 30 to almost level 50. I actually reported his account every day for a week straight and the worst he got was a 24 hour suspension.

Keep in mind paying money for services like this is the reason we get spam in game from gold farmers/leveling services because it only gives them even more incentive to do it.

Well I went ahead and did it. In less than 3 weeks I should have a level 70 lol. I just have no patience to spend months leveling a guy so I can play with friends.

Just be careful. They're notoriously good at stealing your account later and bleeding it dry.

Use the refer a friend method your friend can grind a toon with you, and you both get 3x the xp when grouped together... Safer then exposing your account to some farmer. Also a lot of these places supposedly use what is called a 'bot' (a program that plays the character but the behavior is kind of obvious that it is not a real person). which can get your account banned.

Definitely take measures to change your account details once you have the character.

I stopped playing about 3 months ago and i'm unshure if i should restart playing with WotLK. I played hardcore style before, raiding 5+ days a week and long into the night. It was a lot of fun, but aiding with raidlead was a lot of effort, to. Do you think, the next addon will change "everything" completley? Beside the new classes for both fraction with the last addon, it was a better (read: heavier) learning curve and a lot of challenging fights.
But i really doubt, that with a 10th class and the same amount of healing requirements (7-8 on regular) it can hold my attention for to long.

Looking forward for WAR, but i've some sorrows about it's future when you can see what happened to AoC after only a few month.

One of the iggest problems with using services for power leveling is that they usually use your account to create toons that they use for spamming in the trade groups. then after enough complaints are filed, wow just suspends your account, and you are short an account, AND the money you paid to the leveling people. I would say dont do it.

WotLK Opening cinematic is up: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

Was ok i guess. They always do an amazing job with the visuals.

WOTLK movie is kinda weak imo.

Yeah. Their CG movies always leave you wanting more. I was expecting something about Death Knights in there.

CG is of course beyond amazing as usual.

Ya, about that power leveling deal. Not such a great idea after all.

What ended up happening?

They got me up to level 25 and that's when I received a 3 day ban.



And the services reply:

Lol is it broken english or a 12 year old on the internets?
This is basically BS because I'm the only one who knows my info beside them and I never logged on. Ill keep the updates coming :cool:

I wish I would have seen you ask this question before you tried the power lvling service.

I would have told you not to do it. Begged you even.

You should be happy it was only three days, assuming you get your account info back.

Ya, debating whether to let them try to finish or just stop them and try to get money back. There are no characters on the account so I could care less what happens to it.

I am very strongly against using services like this, but if the tip is already in, you may as well go balls deep.

At the very worst you're looking at losing 40 bucks and whatever it cost to hire the services.

I hate to say it but you were asking for it. :thumbsup:

I agree. Those lvling services use your account all the time to spam for other people for them to offer their services to. Just as bad are the Gold sellers who can really screw up a servers economy. I say do just what was intended, and that is to play the game, and build yourself up naturally.

I PvP on a rogue/priest/warlock.

With the baby and all I had kind of lost some of my pvp arena teams since I could not play as hardcore. Still can get back on almost any of those teams thankfully, due to my reputation. A good druid transferred in who I knew from arena, and we started doing 2s (with my lock), so far we are 53-1, longest match was against a horde team better racials, and my partner had forgotten to respec right but after 2 hours we pulled through insane fight. Waiting for wowarmory to update, but we should be in 8th spot after just 2 weeks, and looking great for the rest of the season.

Now if I can only find a good rogue for my 3s team, a great rogue is rare and so easy for them to mess up, but if you get the right one, watch out!

I just been loving this and can not wait for the next expansion see the new pvp content.

Ha ha ha ha wow. 2 hour arena fight...now that's epic. My longest was a 30 minute fight 2v2. My warrior and a paladin versus a hunter and paladin. That 30 minutes seemed like 5 minutes.......we won, but it was so damn close. My 100 rage execute landed else it would have been all over (the previous 3 executes did crap damage, not enough to finish him off).

I love it when I see a 4k execute flash up on the screen

They're really dumbing down raid management in wotlk. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It will help guilds that don't have the right classes to make a good raid setup, but it's really going to change how people min/max raids and I think it's even going to change how people spec. example: I'm a BM hunter, I raid 100% of the time with a ret pally. I'll have Furious Inspiration, He'll have Sanctified Retribution. Both spells do the same thing, They don't stack. In this case, FI is a pre-req to another needed talent so the Ret pally could put his talent point somewhere else. It's going to be interesting.

I just cannot imagine how the change is a bad thing. It all looks weird and scary now, but the bottom line is that raid stacking to min/max is not fun and not productive. My guild (Drama-Korgath, US) went through nearly 60 (!!!) people trying to clear sunwell, and we had weeks where progression essentially halted because we were down a shaman or a shadow priest or a protection paladin.

It's nothing but a hassle to try to put together "ideal" raids for Sunwell. It's not fun, it's wrecked or halted the progression of a lot of guilds. I think this is a fantastic change for promoting more fun, more player skill and more flexibility. I don't think it's going to end up hurting or burdening any classes in the long run after they get everything put together and polished for raiding at 80.

Lol .. I sort of miss hard-core raiding. It was way better in the 40-man days. We cleared every raid instance in my guild - and we had our share of difficulty finding the perfect class/spec balance for raids from time to time. The introduction of 25-man raids made min/max class balance too tight.

WoW will burn soon enough :o .. that is once people realize how its really World of Grindcraft. I'm just shocked that people play between the expansion announcement date and the actual release date. Didn't anyone learn from TBC? Your top-tier gear is worthless at level 72-73 .. how sweet is that?

Eh, my warrior was able to use his T3 gear in instances until he reached 70. But, that was only the grind.

Yeah, able to use it for the grind.

But during the grind you'll find pieces that will match your t3 gear, and for quite a bit less of hassle.


Personally, I think WoW's time had come around when TBC came out. Time for new concepts. Away with the grind I say!

WoW would be better (and I would still be playing) if raiding was never put in the game. It is absolutely absurd that in order to get the best of gear you have to play the game for 3-10 hours at a time. I don't mind playing a game 15 or 20 hours a week, I mind playing it for 10 hours STRAIGHT (and I actually don't mind it, but my wife does, and everyone else in my family).

I remember WoW when UBRS was considered the top end dungeon and raiding didn't even exist. Those were the truly fun times...when you could get the best gear in the game from 5-man dungeons that only took 1-3 hours and could be done with a circle of friends. That and open-world PVP were what made WoW awesome. Now it's just raid, get better gear, walk around in IF, raid, walk around in IF with new items, raid, etc. There is no game to WoW except raiding.

I guess it all boils down to WoW being so focused on gear (which I don't really know how to get around). I wish it were more based on equal(ish) gear and skill based so that PVP was skill and teamwork instead of who has the best epics. I'm still waiting for an MMORPG that doesn't force you to put 10 hours at a time into a game in order to progress your character.

I won't lie, I used to play WoW 50 hours a week, helped my guild get to the top 1% of our server, had an orange (Legendary) weapon on my warrior and over 70 epics before BC came out. It was fun then but look at the life I led. I gained 70 fucking pounds and flushed away my college years and almost ruined my relationship with my now wife. WoW is a great game but it needs to be steered towards 5-man group content only if you ask me.

Agreed. I hate raiding. Won't do it. I tried some of the smaller raids like AQ20, but I just don't have the patience to sit there for hours and listen to people blather on about who needs to do what. It gets really overly complicated with too many people. But some of my favorite group experiences are from LBRS and UBRS. :) Had some really fun fights there. I wouldn't mind for 5-man group content, simply because I can put together a 5-man group of real life friends pretty easily.

My SO used to be big into raiding and was a raid officer for one of the most advanced guilds on our server, but it took so much time away from everything else that he decided it wasn't worth it. Now he sticks to arenas with friends and BGs with friends, because he can do those and be done with them fairly quickly.

As for the time between now and WoTLK, I'm spending it leveling up my first warlock (human), who I abandoned when TBC came out to roll another warlock (Blood Elf) on another server (Tichondrius). I transferred the human warlock to another server (Llane) that my friends actually play on, and have been working on getting her to 70. I'm not in any real rush, as her tradeskills had been horribly neglected and need work, so I've been doing a lot of fishing. :) I love fishing.

I don't even know what a raid is yet. This thread has revealed to me how I've barely managed to scratch the surface of WoW. All I can say, is that I'll rarely play more than 2 or 3 hours at a time. I don't even care about having the best items in the game. I just want to have fun exploring the world and killing monsters. I know WoW isn't the optimal game for me, but I'm giving it a try. I think I'd like a more sandbox type of game. I just know little about the MMORPGs out there. WoW was the easy choice in terms of popularity and knowing people who are already playing.

You don't need to take advantage of all aspects of the game to enjoy it. At least, I don't. I'm sure I'll get bored with it eventually, but I'm giving it a 6-month run.

You don't HAVE to play 10 hours straight, 5 days a week to progress pretty far. We did 3 nights a week, 4 hour raids and would be clearing at least 1 boss Sunwell right now if Summer + wotlk hadn't killed raiding for my whole server. We didn't get any server firsts but those guilds that were ahead of us respected us because we didn't get stuck on any bosses, except for Maulgar of course... They might have cleared BT a few months before us but comparing how much farther they are and how much time they've invested in raiding, They've probably raided hundreds of more hours than us yet they were only 2-3 bosses ahead when raiding died.

The problem for me isn't how much time it takes, It's that you can't organize a raid, especially a progression raid at a time that doesn't conflict with quality real life time. When people are available to raid in game it usually means people are available to hang out in real life and THAT's a problem.

Just to overwhelm you with information, raids are the "hardest" pve content in the game. They're designed for 10, 25 or 40 (pre-expansion WoW only) level-capped players. Success in raids requires strategy and teamwork and lots of hours spent figuring out what to do. And yeah, it's a huge time sink!

10-mans are being designed to last an hour, and the badge and pvp gear go a long way to alleviate the need for raids.

That said - those that -do- have the time and inclination to work to the 25-man raids should have the best gear, there can be no argument about that. You can still get very good gear and never step foot in a raid. An example for warlocks but it's the same for all classes.

Where did you hear that 10 mans are being designed to last an hour? I know for a fact that is wrong. 5 mans are being designed to be <1 hour for non-heroic and about an hour for heroic.

I'm playing a 70 Undead Warlock on Kargath. It's good times if not a little bit boring right now. My guild is finally starting to recruit for 25-man raids thank god. I was getting so sick of Kara and Heroics.

So who here is on the Dragonblight Server like me?

I heard it waaay back, so if you know otherwise you're probably right :P

our guild had a schism and over half have dropped, now we're no longer even raiding Kara. Lots of folks are just sitting on the sidelines waiting on Warhammer to come out. So it's a little boring right now, but i can't see myself dropping WoW, i've got 3 years committed to my troll rogue, i'd miss him :)

With WAR being in open beta now, release cant be far off(I think? I dont really follow it). WOTLK will probably start right as people are coming back to WoW.

Warhammer is coming out Sept. 18th. There's no way WOTLK will hit in 7 days. I'm thinking they MAY get the 3.0 patch on the PTR by then, and they'll get the WAR players back with the WOTLK launch a few months after WAR launches.

WOTLK is probably coming out around November. I was trying to say that once people start getting tired of WAR(about a couple months into it)they will quit around the time Wrath is released, giving them more incentive to come back to WoW.

So basically I said what you said, but I worded it poorly.

I am expecting the patch to hit early to mid October with the WotLK hitting stores in mid November.

I hated the last patch before the x-pack and I will hate this one.

Why did you hate it then and why will you hate it now? Is it just underwhelming to have partially implemented abilities because you can't get the levels to flesh out the talent trees to make them complete?

The main reason I hate it I have to find a spec that will work so little talent points, then I have a raid that night they never go well. Then I spend the next day respecing all my other 9 toons. But I have been talking to a lot of other mages and we might have a nice arcane/frost spec lined up until we start lvling again.

Your spec will be the least of your problems the night of the patch. Good luck getting a raid at all. Queue times, instance, continent and server crashes.. I'd say just go out, get drunk and give blizzard 24 hours to fix the patch before even attempting to log in.

LOL getting drunk on a Tuesday is out of the question, but I will make up for it Friday

we'll see about wotlk....we shall see...

wow... I just watched the WotLK trailer... amazing!

man, forgot how long it takes to level a character...

My shaman is lvl 63 now /played says 2 days :p

Well lets see....I am exidently wrong about the patch, for it is 13th October, so I am off maybe on Mid Octoer, ut hey, I predicted mid November for the WotLK, and the release date is November 13th, so I got THAT one right! WOOT!

Patch is tomorrow so get ready :D

No, you were absolutely correct on both fronts. Patch tomorrow, LK a month from now. New content hooooooooo!

You just have to start early.. like 11am..

Oh patch tomorrow! I currently have 53 mounts which is enough to get the 50 mount achievement and the albino nether drake mount :)

Wow, 53 mounts. Look at you man. I don't have anywhere close to the mount achievement because I am not willing to grind my original character to exalted with the home faction cities by turning in piles of runecloth. Damn them for making it so easy to get rep leveling post TBC compared to now. Damn them! Because if I had all the horses and rams, I'd be pretty damn close.

yeah but now at lvl 30 for mounts.. bah just lvl up a ton of locks to 30 .. you get those mounts .. unless you mean a single toon with 53 mounts..

holy cow er.. i gotta check my mage..

im exalted with the 3 main facitons wintersabers ( the main mount i ride... my mage actually has the barons mount got it doing endless 45 min baron runs back in the day i won the roll)

man i bet i got enough of them heh

is there an achievement for non combat compaions? cuz i got most all of them except blizzcon and the tradeing card ones.. heh

the one thing i love on my human mage was the pets you could get.. started with my cimson welp and ended FINALLY with my firefly pet.. (killed over 3k of those zang marsh buggers for it to drop)

on a sad note i had to quit wow for a bit... had a sad time doing it so close to the expanson release but no choice.. two hurricanes here in louisiana and i do construction now... no work no wow.

and my horde belf is our guilds 2nd main tank.. id be the 1st but my friend she keeps out rolling me on the loot heh.

I think there's an achievement for non-combat pets. I don't know how many or if there's a reward for getting it though. I had 13 mounts and I went and bought 2600g worth to put me at 53. I actually could have done it cheaper but some mounts totally slipped my mind. If I had skipped 3 netherdrakes I could have saved 600g. I could have gotten a PVP mount and skipped another drake, and could have bought the 3 slow windriders instead of nether drakes and saved another 300g. I really spent 1000g too much than required but honestly I'd rather have the drakes than slow windriders.

The pet achievement is 50 pets and it rewards you with a skunk cage.

This patch is a fucking mess. God damn it. Giant download, giant install. Yaaaawn.

What did you expect? New talents and huge gameplay changes tend to break shit. I almost want to resub just to see how good Moonkin and Ret Pallies are, Holy still looks terrible ever since they removed the instant HLs.

Yeah I'm in the same boat wanting to resub to see how the priest changes went.

Not that I plan on playing ever again but.. does anyone have a list of all the changes?

Here is a list of the new talent trees:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

And here are the patch notes:

WoW -> Patch Notes -> Current Patch Notes

It was terrible because the patch install blew up my computer and my wife's computer. Mine seems to have recovered and is limping along. Hers...not so much. Now, I doubt that it was the patch itself which caused the problem, but we'd never had any problems with it before, and now suddenly it's not turning on anymore after crashing during the install. I'm also just not interested in having to rebuild my UI. Again. But so it goes.

WTF Sudden Death!!!!!!!!!! Man that sounds amazing.

I hate blizzard..... the sheer gall of the bastards..... they stole my tanks DEFENSE!!! Went from 493 to 459

They may have taken his defense, but they removed crushing blows and increased your dps almost threefold.

That they did. I just really noticed how much more powerful tanks are when my warlock was fighting the tank for 1st on the damage chart.

So I went to Hyjal today.. Found out volley got a (minor) buff. I took this screenshot after a couple of waves of trash.
http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/8...lleybh4.th.jpghttp://img357.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif

Now if only I could get everyone in Arena 5v5 to stand on top of each other.

Oh yeah, that's as beast mastery. No Improved volley damage, no improved volley crit.. I had a rogue in my group with Honor amongst thieves talent which gives them a combo point when someone in their party crits. He said he was spamming his finishing moves and he was getting 5 combo points again before his global cooldown was up. Funniest and fastest Hyjal I've ever been in.

oh.. 1 more thing to add.. See the pally at #5 on the dmg meters? That's our tank :)

This site has it all:
http: / / wotlkwiki.info / index.php / Main_Page

(had to divide the url cause I apparently can't post urls yet)

I play on EU-Turalyon myself, got 6x70s to level when WotLK hits... and a 69 and a 65... I've had a 3-4 months break from the game now though, want to play Wrath, but not TBC...

Well this patch is a good one finally got all my mods back and my raid guild is plowing through BT and Hyjal in 1 week(3 nights). Not bad for a casual guild.

They actually made the Boomkin pretty fun to play. Right now the biggest issue I have with the expac is the fact that they gave us jackshit defense against a counterspell/silence. Destro Locks and Mages straight up destroy me if they time their shit right.

Although I destroy Rogues, so thats nice.

Moonfire critting for 1600, ticks for 400 and Insect Swarm is ticking for 540, while thorns hits for 244 each time.

Also, treants critting softies for 900 is lol.

dont know i have a friend with t6 belf pally and he's always been holy .. man he rocks in both pvp and healing.. his crits are over 12k now on his big heals.. average heal is well over 7k but its the spellpower that does it now i guess. I thought he was blowing smoke but yet there it was.. if you want ill get him to take some shots and ill set them up later this week.

btw look on youtube for the new wotlk bg.. man it rocks.. only thing that sucks is its 15 vs. 15 and its attack/deffend. The map is huge and i mean huge.. unlike AV its most like AB where its all squat and spread out. One team starts on a boat the other team in the fortress so to speak. The can man cannons possible siege tanks. You have to get the nodes then take out the fortress before the timer wears out.. and from what ive read, its turn based. Two games in one.

I haven't done BGs since I hit 70 with my mage or warlock so I decided to take a run at it this weekend with my frost-spec'd mage and after getting use to playing the mage again had quite a good time in AV when the sides decided to actually fight instead of running to the otherside of the map.

They seem to have broken some things post 3.0.2 for some of the battlegroups, lag this weekend was horrid on Icecrown, and by Sunday afternoon it was taking 1-2 minutes to zone in and out of BGs.

Anyone have their flying broom yet from the Halloween event?

I got my broom, I'm loving the instant cast. In BGs, I can Feign Death, instant mount and get out of the battle. At least that's what I try to do.. Usually I end up getting slowed and stunned and die while mounted :)

I finally killed Illidan last night. Black temple is so much easier. We 1 shot everything up to Council which took a few pulls for our mage to learn to tank and illidan took 2 attempts because our fury warrior in FR gear tanking a flame only had 16k HP. I'm a little pissed because it was open rolls and for the first night ever, everything I wanted dropped. Gorefiend's cloak, T6 shoulders, legs, madness of the betrayer, cursed visage and t6 chest from illidan.. 1 loot per run kinda screwed me over so I just ended up with T6 legs which are a downgrade without the 4 piece bonus.

Zombies!!

As I was logging out last night one of my guildmates got infected and had us lol'ing as he told us what was happening. Can't wait to try this after work.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Zombie Infestation Survival Guide