When patch 3.3 was still something to look forward to, Lead Encounter Designer Daelo talked about the raid access progression for the Icecrown Citadel raid dungeon. First he talked about how they were going to release the dungeon in stages, one wing at a time. We have now seen this work out as the last wing was released and the Lich King already beaten. Daelo also talked about the limited attempts for the main bosses Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King and how the number of attempts increased as the wings came in one by one.

For those who don’t know how this works, basically set number of attempts are given to the raid and when this number ran out it’s basically over for those bosses for the week. When the wings were still coming out, every time a new wing was released this number increased. But since this number is shared with all the main bosses, the attempts had to be used wisely.

Lead Encounter Designer Daelo made an interesting announcement just recently about how this limited attempt system would only apply to the hard modes, giving raiders running the normal mode as many chances to down these main bosses for the week as they need. he said that this change will apply after this week’s maintenance.

This change makes Icecrown Citadel more similar to the Trail of the Crusader raid, where only the trail of the Grand Crusader had limited attempts.

The annual Love is in the Air in game event just started yesterday and I’m sure that you’re noticed it’s quite different this year than the past years. One of the things different this year is how much easier it is to acquire Love Tokens. The daily quests that involve giving Lovely Charm Bracelets to all four of your faction leaders are very helpful for piling up the Love Tokens, especially since they’re pretty easy to make. All you need is a collection kit and farm the Lovely Charms needed to make them from killing anything your level.

I have a …read more

The annual Love is in the Air in game event is finally out, but after so many years of basically the same thing over and over we finally get a change. Some of the old achievements are still there but there are some new ones and quite a bit of aspects about the event have changed as well. The most glaring change for this event is that they finally managed to sneak in a boss encounter related to the event just like the Headless Horseman or the Direbrew boss.

Unlike the other bosses related to World Events, there’s actually a decently …read more

Blizzard announced a few tanking and survivability changes for Paladins and Death Knights, which were made based on the data they have seen from the Icecrown Citadel. CM Crygil mentioned that they like where Warrior and Druid tanks currently are in terms of balance and that they won’t hesitate making more changes if they see the need to as they get more data.

Paladin tanks are getting a slight nerf as the Sacred Duty talent will provide just a 2%/4% increase to stamina, down from 4%/8%. On the other hand, Death Knights will be getting a few buffs. Frost Presence will …read more

When Blizzard implemented the PvP healing debuff in patch 3.3.2, they said that they would be monitoring the situation and will be making any adjustments they see fit. This debuff decreases all healing in Wintergrasp, Battlegrounds and Arenas by 10% and was a complementary change to the that made for the effectiveness of resilience.

When Blizzard announced this PvP healing debuff they mentioned that all shield effects would not be affected. Well they’re turning that stance around now with a change that seems to already have been hotfixed in. According to CM Zarhym, the PvP healing debuff will also reduce the …read more

We’ve recently seen some cool new features added to the WoW Armory like the Character Activity Feed and the 3D Model Viewer. Features like these are just the latest in Blizzard’s goal of giving players the ability to access information about their characters more easily while away from the game. We can already access information about our characters on the go via the Armory App for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, and the latest features even allow some info to reach us via RRS feed.

The thing about how the Armory works now is that it accesses data from the …read more

When Blizzard announced the changes to Resilience that increases some of their effects not too long ago, they also mentioned that would not hesitate also implementing a PvP only debuff to healing if they saw fit. The reasoning for this is to counter all the burst that’s been happening in PvP settings this expansion. They mentioned they want to address this problem for the Cataclysm expansion but these are efforts to deal with the problem as they move towards the next expansion.
Patch 3.3.2 saw the implementation of this PvP healing debuff, which will affect all players in Wintergrasp, Battlegrounds and …read more

Somehow the end cinematic that plays after the Lich King is defeated has managed to come out. With patch 3.3.2 expected to come out today along with the opening of the Frostwing Halls and the Lich King encounter, it won’t be too long until we see the Lich King finally defeated by some guild out there. But you don’t need to wait until then to see what happens after he is defeated, that is if you do want to see it already.

I have decided not to post the video here directly because of the spoiler nature of its content. Posting …read more

It’s not yet totally confirmed but patch 3.3.2 is most probably coming out this week. After all Blizzard already mentioned that the new arena season was supposed to start last week but needed data from the patch to start it and it wasn’t ready yet. But the most telling sign that it’s really probably coming is the early and long maintenance that was announced for this week, which starts at 3 am PST instead of the usual 5 am and ends at 11 am.

Patch 3.3.2 is going to usher in the new arena season as well as a bunch of …read more

It’s almost been a custom for World of Warcraft expansions to make the talent trees deeper than it was. All the players who played during the Vanila days will remember when talent trees were only as deep as 31 points and then when The Burning Crusade came it got bumped up to 41 then then finally 51 with Wrath of the Lich King.
The Cataclysm expansion is a strange one not only because the level cap is only getting bumped up 5 levels but also because the talent trees aren’t getting any deeper. We are getting 5 more talent points to …read more