WoW.com reports that her Portable Hole, which is a 3000g 24 slot bag, is currently available for sale in the patch 3.3 PTR. According to the Warcraft twitter page, Haris Pilton is perusing her new winter collection of pouches and bags, confirming what WoW.com reported. basically the Portable Hole is the new “Gigantique” Bag, another nice money sink for those people with lots of money and in need of a slightly bigger bag.

Now if only Blizzard picked a better name for this bag considering the reputation of said famous socialite…

Post from: WOW Obsessed

quest log

Basically this new Quest Tracker feature will change the current user interface to be more helpful to players when doing quests. To put things simply, it will pretty much be the game’s built in version of the Quest Helper addon that a lot of players have been using. Right now the default UI will only show you the quest log and the progress of said quest (how many more creatures you need to kill, items to gather etc) and show if you completed everything you need to turn the quest in. The new Quest Tracker will be able to show you a lot more than that, making questing a lot easier for players.

Below is a comprehensive list of things that the Quest Tracker will be able to do taken from the PTR patch notes. But the basic thing is that this feature will be able to help you with your quests by showing you where to go on the map for whatever quest you need to do. If you’re in a particular zone where you have quests to be done, it will also show you all the quests that you can do in that zone using a numerical system from your quest log. The days of having to keep looking at your enlarged map while questing should be gone with the new shrunken map feature.

Quest Tracker entry from the patch 3.3 PTR notes:

# Players can now track quest objectives on the map (‘M’ key).
# Quest Log

* A Show Map button has been added to the Quest Log. Selecting a quest and pressing this button will open the map for the zone in which the quest objective is located displaying the associated area of interest. Any other active quests in a player’s Quest Log for that zone will also be displayed.

# Map

* The map interface has been separated into four separate panes: a map pane (left), a pane listing active quest names for the zone being viewed (right), a pane listing the full quest text for any highlighted quest (bottom left), and a pane listing the quest rewards for any highlighted quest (bottom right).
* All active quests listed in the right pane for the zone being viewed on the map will be assigned a number. These numbers will be displayed on the map according to the areas of interest for each quest.
* Highlighting a quest name in the right pane will highlight the corresponding area of interest on the map in the left pane, show its quest text in the lower left pane, and list the quest rewards in the lower right pane.
* Given that some quest objectives can be achieved in multiple locations within a given zone, highlighting such a quest will highlight an area of interest closest in proximity to the character’s current location.
* This feature can be disabled by un-checking the Show Quest Objectives box in the bottom right corner of the new map interface, restoring the map to its standard full-screen display.
* Clicking on the arrow in the top right corner of the new map interface will hide all but the map pane, bringing the map out of full-screen mode and allowing players to leave it open while navigating a zone or engaging in combat.

# Objectives Tracking

* This frame has been improved to offer new functionality and can be used with the new shrunken map option.
* The Objectives frame is now docked below the mini-map next to the right 2 action bars and will track up to 12 quests for a zone.
* Numbers have been added next to each quest name and objective corresponding with those areas of interest displayed on the map.
* If a quest objective has been completed, the number will be replaced with a yellow question mark symbol.
* The arrow button in the top right corner of the Objectives frame can be used to toggle between minimizing and maximizing the quest objective display.

# Quest Difficulty Tracking

* This feature is off by default and can be enabled in the Objectives window from the Interface Options menu. Turning this feature on will color-code all quest names displayed in the map interface according to difficulty (grey, green, yellow, orange, and red).

Post from: WOW Obsessed

The Blizzard Pet Store is a new way for players to get new non combat pets using means that’s not within the game. Some players might not care for collecting non-combat pets in the game but for those who are, this is a great way to beef up your collection if you’re willing to pay the price. Currently the Pet Store has two unique and cool pets, the Pandaren Monk and Lil K.T. The Pandaren Monk is a martial arts expert (he even makes those Bruce Lee like sounds hehe) of the Pandaren race, the for fun Panda-like race that Blizzard announced for an April Fools joke a few years back. Lil K.T. is a mini version of the lich Kel’thuzad who lords over Naxxramas. He even kills critters and has a diabolical laugh. One thing about the Pandaren Monk is that from now until December 31, 2009 every Pandaren Monk purchase will have 50% of the proceeds from the purchase will be donated to charity. Both the Pandaren Monk and Lil K.T. costs $10

Blizzard intends to add more pets to the store in the future so it’s definitively something every pet collector should look out for. Also, according to the Pet Store FAQ they have no plans to remove the pets from their “shelves” so the Pandern monk and Lil K.T. are here to stay! You can see the Pet Store FAQ here.

Happy pet collecting!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

I can see more reason for players to do PuG’s because of this. To give more rewards to those players who do PuG’s often, Blizzard is also coming out with a non-combat pet called the Perky Pug. Basically you have to run enough Pugs to get this pet and we don’t know how many is “enough” just yet.

I’ve always found Pugs to be pretty cute especially since I’ve taken quite a liking to dogs that have short snouts like Pugs, Bulldogs and even Boston Terriers. I have a Boston Terrier and he’s really lovely but Pugs look awesome too. When you see the Perky Pug that Blizzard is giving out, you’ll find him so cute too. Thanks to MMO Champion, we can see a preview of the Perky Pug! The video is below but you can also click here for the image from MMO Champion.

The image above was taken from Sxc.hu

Post from: WOW Obsessed

As you know, one of the ways to obtain Stone Keeper’s Shards is to do dungeons and kill bosses while your faction controls Wintergrasp. Since Wintergrasp is a per server thing, the status of control varies depending on what server you’re in. There are times when you do dungeons and you can’t get Stone Keeper’s Shards from bosses and there are times when you can. Since this is a per server issue, this becomes sort of a problem when you’re doing cross-server dungeons using the new LFG system coming out in patch 3.3.

According to CM Zarhym, the system is set up to determine the state of Wintergrasp control in your server and reward Stone Keeper Shards accordingly. So only players whose faction controls Wintergrasp on their server can get the buff that allows players to loot the shards.. It’s actually a pretty simple and fair solution and would be something I would have suggested if someone asked me.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

If you want to get the most of the event then you can go ahead and get Macabre Marionette, which is a temporary pet of a skeleton with a sombrero and maracas. You get this by making a Bread of the Dead using a cooking recipe that the vendor sells then going to your race’s major city graveyard (I think Dalaran and Shattrath works too) and using a marigold see the Cheerful Spirit and offering the bread. This is where some issues have been known to happen. Listed below are the issues that Blizzard encountered, according to blue poster Aredek and the ones with the “resolved” tag have already been fixed.

#Macabre Marionette disappearing when changing zones *resolved*
#Players being disconnected when retrieving Bread of the Dead or Candy Skulls from the mail, auction house, and guild banks *resolved*
#The Day of the Dead costume may not last the full 12 hour duration

It’s nice that some of these issues have been resolved. It was especially annoying to go through the trouble of getting this temporary pet, only to lose it so easily. It would have been much better if this pet stayed with you throughout the duration of the holiday. An item that you could use to summon the Macabre Marionette that disappears when the holiday ends would have been the better way of dealing with this pet.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Day of the Dead is an event to honor the dead which made me think that this event was inspired by All Saints Day and All Souls Day celebration that falls on Novembers 1 and 2 for Catholics. But then I remembered that it’s more accurate to think that it’s inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration.

This in game event starts at the graveyards of any major city in Azeroth or in the Outlands. This means the graveyards Orgrimmar, Undercity, Silvermoon City, Thunderbluff, Stormwind City, Ironforge, Exodar, Darnassus, Shattrath City and Dalaran. What you have to do is look for Catrina and /dance with her and you’ll get a buff to transform into a skeleton for 12 hours. This also gives you an achievement called “Dead Man’s Party”. You can also get some flowers from Chapman the vendor to be able to see Cheerful Spirits and offering some Bread of the Dead which you can get from a cooking recipe sold by Chapman will give you a Macabre Marionette as a reward. It’s a sombrero wearing, maracas wielding skeleton pet that you can only use during this event.

The nice thing about this event is that while it’s simple, it also has more to offer than simply getting an achievement and being done with it. During Pirate’s Day I said that if they allowed us to do something more like offer special things to be bought from special vendors or even allow us to try out the cannons during that event, that would have made it more fun and special. Aside from being able to get a pet that you can only use during the event (you can’t learn it either) you can also buy a few other cute things that you can only use during the event like a Whimsical Skull Mask.

Have fun honoring the dead!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

icecrown citadel

Before going into the issue itself, I just find it quite interesting because this whole thing looks like a way to show how badass the Lich King is and adding to the whole epic difficulty feel of the place but the devs said that it was something they didn’t have to do if not for something you would originally think would be the reason. According to Ghostcrawler, they didn’t anticipate that they would add more gear tiers because of the heroic modes so their avoidance numbers are messed up. He also said that Cataclsym will better handle the avoidance numbers.

So players have actually seen this before with a buff that mobs in the Sunwell Plateau had called Sunwell Radiance. According to them they would want tanks to take a constant stream of damage over time but having high avoidance numbers would make their incoming damage more spiky than the raid would want. They would want healers to better plan their heals and for tanks to better react to incoming damage using cooldowns.

I have to be honest. I don’t tank and only have a very limited knowledge of all this technical stuff concerning tanking stats. This reasoning actually sounds to me like it’s actually better for the raid that tank avoidance is getting nerfed. That doesn’t sound right to me any way I look at it. It makes more sense to me if they just said that “we want the place to be badass so we’re nerfing your tanks”.

Right or wrong, there’s now a debate going in the forums about how this change will affect the avoidance tanks as opposed to the mitigation tanks. All tanks are affected by this of course but it seems like druids and death knights who rely a lot on avoidance (death knights need to dodge or parry to get a rune strike going, which is one of their threat increasing tools) are going to be affected more than the paladins and warriors. Others say that there really won’t be a big difference and that druids might even come out ok because of their high health pool levels.

Whatever the right answer is, this announcement surely is causing a ruckus in the tanking community and I’m sure it will add to the epic difficult benefiting a raid dungeon like the Icecrown Citadel and a boss like the Lich King.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

violet hold

So as you already know, we’ll be able to group with others players from other servers in your battlegroup to do dungeons using the the new dungeon system. Like Battlegrounds, you’ll be able to join solo or as a group making the a complete premade group absolutely possible. Using the LFG tool will be teleported inside the dungeon just like when you queue up for Battlegrounds. Leaving the instance will bring you back to your previous location and if you need to leave temporarily to repair and such, you can teleport back to the instance.

This feature is also include a smarter matchmaking system where less experienced players will be matched with at least one experienced player. This is great for the less experienced players but could end up badly for the more experienced guys! It will also take into account class types and match players with equal levels which can be a useful tool when doing dungeons while leveling up.

Players can queue up for specific normal or heroic dungeons but can also opt to make things interesting by doing random dungeons and getting rewarded for it. All bosses of level 80 heroics will drop Emblems of Triumph instead of Conquest. Doing your first random heroic quest will award 2 Emblems of Frost and doing more random heroics after your first using the LFG system will award 2 Emblems of Triumph each time. Doing the random normal dungeon quest will award 2 Emblems of Triumph.

Speaking of the random dungeon quests, they will be replacing the current normal and heroic dungeon daily quests. The two npc’s in Dalaran will instead give out weekly raid quests that will have players kill a specific target in a specific raid dungeon. These raid quests will involve a random target from any raid dungeon from Naxxramas to Icecrown Citadel. The LFG system will also include a Looking for Raid option that you can use by typing /lfr or using the raid info screen.

Running enough PuG’s using the LFG to run instances with random members will have their own rewards and running them enough times will net you a non-combat pet, the Perky Pug.

A few other cool features are coming out with this new Dungeon System. There will be a Vote to Kick feature that can be used to kick a pesky group member. You’ll need 4 votes to kick anybody though. There will also be the new disenchanting option I talked about a few days ago where a third option aside from Need and Greed can pop up when looting in groups. basically the disenchant option will have the same wight as a Greed roll and if someone wins using this, the player will receive enchanting materials instead. I just found out though from a post from CM Bornakk that this feature will only be available if there’s an enchanter in the group who has the appropriate skill level to disenchant the item. There’s also an update to the need before greed system wherein need rolls take into account if the player can equip that item, pure melee classes cannot roll on spell power gear and players will be limited to their dominant armor type. As always greed is an option if nobody can use the item and there’s also the disenchant option if you have an enchanter in the group.

You can view a thread in the forums where CM Zarhym answers a bunch of more specific questions concerning this new dungeon system here.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

It actually didn’t take much thinking that a race change service would make sense especially after Blizzard allowed faction switching. Switching factions is more of a leap than switching races within the same faction. In a way race switching was possible even before but it involved switching factions then paying for another one later on when the service is available again but this time choosing a different race like going from an Undead warlock to a Human Warlock then an Orc Warlock. That being said, I was actually a bit surprised that this service actually came out before patch 3.3’s release.

Basically the mechanics of the race change service has similarities to the faction transfer except that of course since you aren’t switching factions, a lot of things aren’t affected. The service costs $25 per transaction and is different and separate from a faction transfer so you cannot change factions using this service. Characters at least level 10 are eligible for this service, except for Death Knights who need to be level 60. This service also includes a name change and a re-customization as part of the package but this is purely optional. You can change your race every three days.

After purchasing a race change you’ll need to be logged out of the character involved for at least 30 minutes. When the change has been completed, necessary reputations will be changed accordingly but things like achievements, honor points, arena points, mounts, titles, non combat pets and such similar things will not be affected by this process.

Click here to see the complete Race Change FAQ.

Post from: WOW Obsessed