Results tagged “Patches” from From the Abbey to Outlands

The air has grown chilled, the waters stilled. The signs point to the event that has been anticipated with bated breath. Prepare yourselves, for... 3.0.3 is nearly upon us. The downtime is extended right about the same length of a usual patch maintenance, and people are preparing. While it is hard to know what the patch will actually hold, since even WoW Insider is only quoting the PTR notes, which could have changed in the 3 week or so run that the PTRs had.

We know that many Ret changes were hot fixed, which Siha points out were done without PTR testing, and other changes are so small, like the Hallowed Be Thy Name change, that they are unlikely to not make the patch. The Druid talent reset is pretty much a given, along with many of the changes to their talents. Other than that? Well, anything could happen. WoW Insider got something right, though, that Patch 3.0.3 is most likely going to happen, even if we haven't seen the typical 'thanks for testing' message on the PTR forums. 

Note: WoW Insider is using guesses and labeling Test Realm info as confirmed patch info. This should be noted, but isn't. PTR notes at launch can differ wildly from live patch notes.

Sorry for the tardiness on this post, but yesterday was a big recording day for me, getting some All Things Azeroth episodes pre recorded for the upcoming NaPodPoMo, and just ran out of time before bed that would allow me to write this post. If you'll recall the last couple of posts I have showed you the mods that went bad, the new mods I found to fill the roles I needed, and today I am going to go over the mods that, like a rock, stayed by my side like a good friend.

I wouldn't say WIM was a rock, more a strong tree, but still it's there, and it does work well enough. It feels like it's lost some of it's features, like tab to move to the next window, but for now it's working enough to be useful. One mod that remained strong, though feeling incomplete, is Titan Panel. Like it's bar based competitor, FuBar, Titan Panel allows mod authors to write plugins for it, and that is there I have found Titan falling short. Many of the plugins I most cherished have not been updated, and therefore do not work as well as I would like.

I was pretty sure when I saw Ark Inventory available for use in the beta, I would be able to upgrade to it when the patch hit, and I was dead on. The patch showed that AI was fully functional and ready to go on patch day, and I rejoiced in the knowledge I would have that small piece of comfort. Auctioneer is another one that works, though I have not spent much time in the auction house to do testing to ensure all of it's features are where they should be in the mix.

When it comes to raiding, Deadly Boss Mods was a mod I knew would need to be done, because many raid groups count on it to be polished and working or wipes can, and often do ensue. Thankfully DBM didn't even hiccup in the face of 3.0.2, in fact it did better than expected in game queues for boss events like the rain in Zul'aman. Omen, likewise, is essential to any good raider and was updated, with a new parchment look, for the patch, and hasn't showed a bit of hesitancy since. In fact, I like the new config interface better, as it clearly shows me how to change that horrid 'you're getting aggro' sound off.

Chatter is working, though it was copied from the old install, so I can't say it's a rock, since it hasn't stayed strong, just stayed functional. The quest log combo of DoubleWide and Lightheaded were updated within a few days, allowing for useful and happy questing throughout my WoW time. Pally Power is working nicely, though I am still grasping how it works and how to customize it properly. I am using AlphaMap again, which is a cute little map mod that shows on mouse over the current zone's map. Minimap Button Frame is also working, thought here is not a lot to the mod other than clearing up the minimap from the clutter of buttons that seemingly every mod tosses up there.

Gatherer was a mod that many in my guild were worried might not be fixed for the patch, and while it was not on day of, a couple days later it was updated and working, once again recording herbs and mineral spawns found in my travels. Lastly Statusbars, a mod I find essential for keeping my eyes on the action instead of wandering to the edges of my screen, was updated quickly, cleanly, and without any problems. I am loving the ability it gives me to see what's going on in front of me, and know if I need to run, heal, bubble, or push my DPS to the max in a fight if it is close.

That's about it. There was a couple of new mods I forgot to mention yesterday, like Class Bars v3, The Collector, and Mapster. The first I find invaluable to my play style, giving me more of my bars with which I can use for more critical abilities. The second helped with the pet and mount achievements by easily showing you what you do not yet have. the last is a replacement for the MetaMap mod, which I always found hogged my resources more than I liked. And there we have it, my mods in a nutshell. Below you can see a peak at my UI.

I wrote yesterday about the mods I sadly had to abandon from my post 3.0.2 world, well today I will talk about the mods that I have found since patch day and have fallen in mod-whore love with. Enjoy this list, and look forward tomorrow to the next in my impromptu series on mods; the mods which never went bad.

As I mentioned yesterday, Skillet is my new mod for crafting my items, be they gems, armor, or potions. Combine that mod, which allows me to search and craft based on a number of parameters, with TradeTabs, which puts a tab for every crafting profession that you know. This is a really simply, very useful way to keep all of my professions easily accessible and usable. I do not know if either of these are, or need to be updated for Inscription, however comments are down below if you want to test them out.

I fell in love, or back in love with TrainerSkills in the beta. I used to use this, or a mod like this, ages ago. It basically tells you when you can learn something and what that is. Whether it be a new class skill on ding, or a new profession item on reaching a certain point, these things are all clearly pointed out to you in the chat window of your choice. A long lost mod, come back and just as awesome as before!

Since I am trying to avoid the crutch of CT Mod, I have been forced to go elsewhere for a few things I loved about the package. TipTop takes care of the tooltip placement problem, though it admittedly took a bit to get the tooltip right where I like it, which is to say center of my screen right below TitanPanel. oRA2 is a mod recommended by a guildie as we prepared for a post 3.0.2 raid, and realized that CTRA had been abandoned. I replaced the bar mods part of CT Mod, which was always more broken than fixed, with Dominos, though I have a Druid in Cat while Prowling bug I had to fix. Lastly I have not yet found a fix for the mail mod, but I am working on it and have a few leads.

The last batch of mods I have come across is the Achievement mods. Overachiever is a nice mod that helps me track where I am on an achievement, and it also changes exploration tracking based on zones and the /love you've given, or need to give to critters all over the world. AchievementSS is a cool mod which takes a screenshot whenever you complete and achievement, no matter where you are. Lastly, we have Urban Achiever, which is accessed by /ua and allows you to search for any achievement, text for an achievement, or criteria in order to find an achievement.

So there you have it. A few of the neat new mods I have found in this, the post 3.0.2 mod world. Like I said before, check back for the strong and true mods that never, or barely faltered for me when modpocalypse hit. [Update: Dominos not only allowed me to turn off the bar changing in prowl mode, but also turn off the moonkin bar change! I have more bars now!]

I thought I would write a few thoughts on my experiences this lovely October patch day because my realm is not up yet and I am bored. I guess my first thought is on the admission by Blizzard that there are some balance issues with some talents and those were excluded from this patch, unlikely to return until closer to, or the day of Wrath's release. I am disappointed by this. That means that either a) they are pushing an unfinished patch or b) they intentionally held back this information until well into the patching process, knowing the fans would be furious. The first denotes a significant amount of proof that things have changed at Blizzard since the merger, and the second shows a great lack of respect for their customers.

My day, odd as it was, started at about 5 am my time, which is to say Central. I had taken a nap, and slept longer than planned, missing the entirety of the few hours before the realms went down. I went ahead with my plan and blew away my install of WoW after backing up a few of my favorite folders, and began the process of installing the client from scratch, since my client felt really sluggish of late. I went through the entire patching system all the way up to 3.0.2, and, knowing the beta realms were down, I decided to launch my beta client since I had word through Twitter that those were still up. I got about as far as 2 or 3 seconds after click and I got an error message saying there was an error in one of my beta files. I have since narrowed this down to the Wrath beta looking for files that are not there.

The likely culprit is that during the install of 3.0.2, the patch asks if it can move my install to Public folders, cause Vista's User Access Controls or some such don't like it in the Program Files. I think this is bogus, but I did it anyway. Now, though, there was a problem. I run over and begin downloading the beta client again, and load up the beta and live forums to look for an answer. 503 Service Unavailable. Uggh. So I go out for a bit while my client downloads, and come back to the beta installer saying it cannot install since I already run a WoW.exe that is in the 3.0.2 generation. /facepalm. The servers are slowly coming back up now, and I am dreading seeing what patch changes didn't make it, and worried what we will all come to see, some day, that this is not the Blizzard we are looking for.

So we look to have a date for the upcoming 3.0.2 patch, which will bring in some of the features of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, so I thought I would give you the lowdown on the stuff that will make it into 3.0.2 based on the latest PTR builds, what you have to wait until the expansion for, and what won't be in until much later on.

The Patch - We know we will see the Barbershop feature in the patch, giving us the chance to finally change those hairstyles we've had for up to four years. Achievements will make it in, so while a few will wait for many of the Achievements that require Northrend to complete, we can get many of our desired achievements out of the way before we slag through the lengthy install process for the expansion. Inscription will be active, which is surprising a lot of people since Jewelcrafting was not available unless you had the expansion. A feature we will see that has many of my character's banks rejoicing is the Pets/Mounts tab, which will be in for the patch. Thousands of vanity pets will soon find a new home!

Hunters will get to customize their pets in a new talent style of ability system, with the old system of training points going the way of the Ghost Wolf. Hunters will also get Exotic pets, so expect to see Devilsaurs, Rhinos, Chimeras and Worms in your local bank. Stormwind Harbor will finally open up, and King Varian Wrynn will return to Stormwind, bringing a new era to the land of Azeroth. The patch will bring in new UI features like the Calendar system, built in threat meter, and many new emotes.

In the way of combat we will also be seeing several stat changes. Hit, Crit, and Haste will affect Melee and Spell attacks, while Spell Damage and Healing stats will be unified into a universal Spell Power, meaning more gear can be shared between the various casting classes. Lastly on this section, channeling and casting interrupts are changing, with any hits after the second no longer interrupting or stopping a cast bar, though I believe full spell interrupts like Kick and Counterspell will still work as usual. As you can tell, the patch will be bringing some big things for all players of the game.

The Expansion - As big as the patch is, the expansion is even bigger. Of course we get to travel to Northrend, which can be accessed from boats in either Stormwind Harbor or Menethil Harbor. There is also the leveling to 80 thing, which is a pretty important expansion-only feature to mention. From my travels in beta, this is going to be an area that is well worth the time to buy the expansion for. The mobs are interesting, and often unique. The zones are huge, and each has many quest hubs. Medros, one of my Paladins, has gone through all of Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Howling Fjord, and part of Grizzly Hills before he hit 76.

I am in Sholazar Basin, have left a bunch of unfinished quests in Grizzly Hills, and I have yet to enter any Northrend instances. I haven't even touched quests in Zul'Drak, Crystalsong(quests Not Yet Implemented), Storm Peaks, or Icecrown. I feel it is quite possible Medros could ding 80 without even touching the top two zones, and on Live it would be even easier with guildies to run dungeons with. No need to worry, folks, there will be no lack of things to do when Wrath hits, even beyond the 80 Ding.

With reaching 80, you immediately have the chance to hop into the 10 man Naxxramas dungeon, which is followed by the 25 man, and the other three Raid dungeons, The Nexus, Eye of Eternity, and Ulduar. According to Blizzard's reps, you should be able to enter Naxx 10 man with just the quest and dungeon gear you have when you hit 80 or shortly thereafter, and the gear progresses naturally from there. While Icecrown Glacier the raid will not be in at launch, it should launch in 3.1, which can be expected a couple months into 2009.

While we have not seen any sign yet of the Dance studios, the Death Knight is definitely the biggest thing not yet listed, and it will require the expansion to create one. You too get to go through the Starting Experience, likely the first example of the implemented phasing technology Blizzard has made a huge deal of that most people will see. You will be able to Death Grip people from vast distances, summon ghouls from the bones of friends and enemies, and ride and walk on water using the Path of Frost ability given to our friends of the Ebon Blade.

Of course we have the little stuff, like new profession abilities, discovery for many crafters, and so on, not to mention the excitement of the culmination of 2 years of Blizzard's efforts. So while there is no doubt plenty to get excited about in patch 3.0.2 when it hits, expected to be on Octber 14th, there is yet more to get pumped about in Wrath of the Lich King, on store shelves, and online, November 13th.

I first heard this analysis from WoW Insider, and while it is connecting two possibly unrelated dots, I have to agree. Yesterday Eyonix posted on the General forums that the current season of Arena's would be ending when the new patch hit, since the new talents and abilities would lead to an unfair playing field compared to the rest of the season. This makes sense, if for no other reason than because Blizzard will likely still be fine tuning the classes after this patch goes live.

Today, in a not unexpected turn of events, Nethaera posted on the forums that not only would the Arena season be ending soon, which we knew, but that it is expected to end on the 14th of October, the Tuesday after Blizzcon. The date may change, of course, but at this point we can almost certainly expect to see the WoW realms go nuts on the 14th, with mods breaking, players respecccing, and so on as the day wears on. I am very excited to see this patch, and eager to take my experiences from beta and apply them to the live game!

Here is my question for you, friends, when will the Wrath lead up events begin, and what would you like to see happen?

Today saw an announcement that the next patch to World of Warcraft will be incoming soon, which will be the pre expansion patch we have all been waiting for. I was luckily in the beta when the news hit, and I got a bit of the early reactions that those in the thick of testing have about the impending release. The first impression I got was that many think it is too early, and others thought that this was one of the many 'Soon™' promises that Blizzard is both legendary and frequently mocked for.

I did a bit of research based on the first expansion, Burning Crusade, and I got some insights into how things might go this time. I would like to point out first that this is not last time, and that was Blizzard's first expansion to an MMO, and they have most likely learned a bit since then. So, the first fact we need to keep in mind was the January 16th release date of Burning Crusade. The next one I dug up was that the 2.0.1 content patch was released on the 5th of December. This was 1 month and 11 days before the release of the expansion.

Now, these two dates do not really have much of a connection now, since we still do not know the date that 3.0.1 will be pushed to the live realms, but keep that in mind when we do get that anticipated patch. The other piece of data we have is that Blizzard, after weeks of speculation about the release date, confirmed the release date on the 9th of November. This was 1 month and 4 days before the patch was released and over 2 months before the expansion was actually released.

Now, again, as I said before, things may well be different this time. Mike Morhaime has stated emphatically that the expansion will be released in 2008, so even if the date is announced on December 1st, I would think it is unlikely it will be a 2 month wait. Second, Blizzard was being pummeled by it's fans and the press for a release date, or at least a confirm or deny on the matter. This could have forced Blizzard to give a release date before they were ready. Lastly, as I said in the beginning and repeatedly, things can be different. Things likely will be different. Tomorrow Blizz could give us a release date. They could do it at Blizzcon. They could release it at Blizzcon! In the end, we'll have to wait and see, but these are just a few of my ideas of what the announcement could mean.

I was reading this WoW Insider piece talking about 2.4.3 being the author's savior, as it gives them something fun to do while they wait, currently bored, for the expansion to hit. Zach Yonzon suggests that it is quite possible this will not be the last patch of this kind, and this got me thinking. Is it realistic to think we can go for the oft predicted 5-6 months with no change to the 'no 2.5' stance that Blizzard is still sticking to?

I think that, like the author, we just might see some filler patches if the next expansion does take longer than my current prediction of late September. As I had previously explained my now horribly wrong summer prediction for Wrath, let me take a moment or twenty to explain my current thinking behind that guess, cause I tell ya, it's a doozy!

Fist point: Blizzcon in early October. Second point: No Blizzcon has been held without the announcement of an expansion for the game. Third: There is no bigger sign that your next expansion will be a flop than announcing it's predecessor before it even hits store shelves. I had a fourth point until recently, the Brewfest/Hallow's End factor, but both now seem somehow less pertinent now that 2.4.3 has much of that content from the alpha test.

If we look at the lead up to Burning Crusade, we never really had the precursor stuff to that expansion that we are seeing beginning in 2.4.3, which has at least the Stormwind Harbor under construction. While it is entirely possible this could be the only lead up bit, I somehow doubt it since no construction project goes from blasting supplies to a fully completed section overnight.

In the end, what we will see likely depends a great deal on how long the expansion takes to be completed in Alpha and possibly Beta. I don't think it will last more than another 3 months, but I may be wrong. We might see a Blizzcon without a new expansion announcement. We might see WoW 4.0 announced. Such an announcement may also include a release date for Wrath, which would take some of the surprise out of the occasion. We also should see some new info that could hint as to what we might expect from the expansion at the Worldwide Invitational in a few days.

As I have said before, I think we just might have a clearer picture of what we can expect in Wrath and it's release at the worldwide invitational. I think that with around 10 million players in the game, it would be surprising to not see something about the expansion mentioned at the Invitational in Paris. I suspect the amount of content that is playable at the Invitational will also be a telling note for how far into the development they are.

As for my thoughts on the prospect of truly progressive content, I would simply say "YES!!!!!!!". As a long time leveler in Westfall and other human lands, I would love to see something like the Westfall inn repaired fully, the bridge in Lakeshire rebuilt, and all of the 'work in progress' in the game actually get finished. Now, I am told this has changed, but I am fully against the way content progression worked in LOTRO when I beta tested it, cause once you completed an instance you could not return, and the entire world, including who you could talk to and play alongside, had changed. Progressive, not exclusionary content, rocks!