Blizzard recently came out with an interview about the Icecrown Citadel with Lead Systems Designer Greg Street (aka Ghostcrawler) and Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton. The interview is entitled the “Heart and Souls of Icecrown Citadel”. While there really isn’t any totally new earth shattering information that was revealed in this interview, it’s still nice to get into the heads of the designers and get their insights about what they worked on. When everyone gets to see the Icecrown Citadel when patch 3.3 is live (some of us have already seen some of it in the PTR) it will be …read more

Lead Encounter Designer Daelo recently got on the forums to make an announcement about Icecrown Citadel’s Raid Access Progression. If you’ve been following raids in the past, you would know that the concept of gating raid content is not new at all. For some raids, Blizzard doesn’t want players to have access to everything right from the start. We saw this done in Sunwell where players could gain access to further bosses only after a while when Blizzard unlocked them. We also saw this in Trial of the Crusader where new bosses were unlocked week after week.
The devs plan on …read more

The other day, I was explaining to some friends in the game that the current dungeon daily quests will be replaced by the random dungeon feature of the new Dungeon Finder LFG tool coming out in patch 3.3. One of them reacted with something like this, “Oh no I have to do PuG’s now?” I think this shows that a lot of people equate anything that has something to do with LFG with PuG’s. While it’s true that this tool will make PuG’s easier to do with the cross-realm feature and the rewards for using the Dungeon Finder, it’s not …read more

Ever since the new LFG system (which Blizzard recently named the Dungeon Finder) was announced and especially ever since the details of said feature was released, it has become one of if not the most anticipated feature of the upcoming patch 3.3. It’s going to make group formation for dungeon runs easier with the cross server feature and it’s also going to give more incentive for players to run PuG’s. Of course there’s the exciting random dungeon feature that will reward players for using it. But as much as the Dungeon Finder is going to help level 80 players in …read more

As I posted yesterday, the patch 3.3 PTR revealed a bunch of cool stuff yesterday including the four Quel’delar blades plus the three maces that you can get by completing the Quel’delar quest chain. Looking at all seven weapons you’ll realize that not all specs are accommodated but all classes can use at least one of them. If you happen to be one of the unlucky specs then too bad for you. The most glaring thing isn’t that all specs aren’t accommodated. I mean sure Elemental Shamans and Boomkin Druids don’t have a weapon that perfectly fits their spec but …read more

The more the PTR reveals about the upcoming patch 3.3, the more it feels like the patch is really getting closer. We still don’t know exactly when it’s coming out so we’ll have to settle for the latest bit of info that just popped up. MMO Champion was able to get hold of more details about things we already know are coming out but don’t know specifics of. We know that the Quel’delar is coming out, an epic weapon involving a en epic quest chain from 5 man dungeons. We know that we’ll be getting more loot from the next …read more

When Blizzard officially announced the new Dungeon System coming out in patch 3.3 that will include a new LFG tool that will allow us to do cross server dungeons, they mentioned that the NPC’s who currently give us the normal and heroic dungeon daily quests will instead give out weekly raid quests. So dungeon daily quests that we currently have will be gone when the patch comes out. But as you know this will be replaced by the random dungeon feature in the LFG tool.
Before you get the wrong idea, I have to admit that the random dungeon system in …read more

The other day I mentioned that Blizzard really has been going aggressive with releasing non combat pets into the game. Their latest release is from the Blizzard Pet Store where they offered players two new and cool pets, Lil K.T. and the Pandaren Monk. This is after offering players Mr. Chilly for the battle.net conversion and announcing the Perky Pug pet from the patch 3.3 LFG system. But that’s not the end of it. Apparently we’ll be seeing two even newer non combat pets in patch 3.3 and the best part is that everyone willing to spend a small …read more

For a long time in the Burning Crusade days, npc Haris Pilton in the World’s End Tavern was nothing more than an obvious parody of the famous socialite. She sold items that were nothing more than expensive money sinks that did nothing. Then during the later days of the Burning Crusade expansion, Blizzard made her a bit more useful by selling the “Gigantique” bag, which was a pretty expensive (for that level and those days) 22 slot bag. the aim of the bag was that it was something that wasn’t really a necessity but was a useful money sink for …read more

A new set of updates have been released into the patch 3.3 PTR recently and one thing caught my eye more than the other things listed. It seems like the new Quest Tracker feature which was supposed to come out in patch 3.2 will finally make it in patch 3.3. it didn’t make it before because there were some problems with it at the time and it just wasn’t ready for release. Better to have something come out late but working rather than early but broken right?
Basically this new Quest Tracker feature will change the current user interface to be …read more