CM Zarhym also warns about resellers who are using this opportunity to get the game cheap and sell it to other people even possibly at full price. He warns that these resold copies might already be used and have an invalid authentication key. To be safe he recommends that eveyone purchase it through the Blizzard store.

Thanksgiving may be over but the weekend is not so I wish all you a great weekend!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

The only real remnant of this old honor system, which involved a lot of hours of grinding honor per week, are the PvP titles like Blood Guard, Warlord, Private, Grand Marshal and others like it. If you happen to see someone with one of these titles, that means he’s been around since those days and that’s the highest rank that he attained in a system that made characters go up and down in rank each week.

When the new honor system came out, that saw the end of newer characters being able to get these titles. It’s why you don’t see any Draenei or Blood Elves with it. But that could change by as early as Cataclysm! As you know, Cataclsym is going to usher in a new feature in the Rated Battlegrounds. we still don’t know exactly how this works but it’s supposed to be a competitive environment for Battlegrounds, a lot like the Arena Tournament I guess. According to Zarhym, Blizzard plans to make the old PvP titles available by Cataclysm and that the Rated Battlegrounds is the planned means for attaining them.

The way the titles were attained back in the day involved a flawed system where more time invested rather than actual skill played a pretty big part. According to Zarhym, they want the return of these titles to involve skill represented by a good win/loss ratio and probably other factors. They’re still not certain exactly what the details are or if this information will even stick, given that the cataclysm expansion is still in early stages of its development.

It’s a pleasant surprise especially for players who never had a chance to get these titles before. Now it looks like it’s a fairer system in giving out the ranks. I just wonder how this news will be taken by players who have these titles considering the time and effort they had to put in. Well I have one character who’s a not too high and not too low Stone Guard and I don’t mind the return of these titles because I just know that anyone who even reaches my rank under the new system will probably have to be more skilled than I was back in the day and I respect that and I already take my hat of to any future high Warlords and Grand Marshals when this system takes off.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

heirloom vendor

If you’ve taken the time to consider it, you’ll realize that the term Heirloom is more accurate right now because it’s something your main or any of your other high level characters can get and pass on to lower level characters. Bind on account is a misnomer since it currently is more like bind on faction on server on account. You can’t transfer the heirloom if your character you want to give it to is in another faction or another realm. But that’s about to change! Well at least there’s word that this will change sometime in the future.

According to CM Zarhym, Blizzard want to allow heirloom transfers across factions in the same server by patch 3.3. They also would like to allow heirloom transfers to your characters in another server and even across WoW accounts in the same Battle.net account but that will take more time to implement and they don’t have a time frame for that yet.

When all of this gets implemented Heirlooms will truly be Bind on Account items!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

heirloom vendor

Right now the heirlooms state that they increase the experience gained from killing monsters and from completing quests. So it’s actually not that surprising that they currently don’t increase the XP gained from doing Battlegrounds. But apparently this is unintended, according to CM Zarhym. In patch 3.2.2, heirlooms will also increase XP gained from Battlegrounds.

So it actually turns out that that this was just a mixup. It’s just a coincidence that the explanation seemed to fit which actually makes this whole thing a bit cooler. We have to remember that when the heirlooms were designed for the expansion’s release and at that time XP from Battlegrounds was still not possible. In fact it’s only in patch 3.2 that they decided to to make that possible. So while here we were getting XP from the BG’s, I guess they just forgot to change the wording and the mechanics for heirlooms.

The bottom line is that you can use the heirloom XP bonus for PvP as well when patch 3.2.2 comes out so have fun!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Grim Batol

CM Zarhym mentions that they want something similar for Deathwing in the Cataclysm expansion. They want characters leveling through the changed Azeroth (whether it be the 1-55 or 78-85 zones) to know who Deathwing is and his history. After all, it’s only right for players to know more about the guy who altered Azeroth’s landscape forever. In this sense he’s more badass than the Lich King and after reading a bit about his story it seems like he could be a more interesting foe. Being an ancient figure in the Warcraft lore, it’s quite a shame that the average WoW player probably doesn’t know as much about such a powerful being as he/she does the Lich King (as I said I had to do more reading to know more about Deathwing).

Zarhym also mentions that while they want players to feel more involved with Deathwing’s story, it will be in a much different way than the Lich King. He won’t be as directly involved as the Lich King who appears in front of the players many many times. If you think about it, it kinda makes sense because there aren’t as many circumstances where you could fit a badass dragon in various areas of the leveling process. It probably would seem shocking to see Deathwing in all his power as you quest through the lands. as Zarhym puts it, “your jaw will turn to molten liquid before it could drop to the floor”. That’s definitely not the feeling we get when we see the Lich King face to face.

I’m excited about this. We finally see some of the dragon aspects in the game like Malygos and Alexstrasza in WoTLK and also the whole thing with Wyrmrest Accord and even a sneak peak at Deathwing’s Twilight Dragons. It’s actually the perfect thing to set up the Cataclysm. And we finally get to see the guy hiding in Grim Batol after all these years!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

class character creation

According to CM Zarhym, we should expect to see another round of class Q&A’s especially because of all the new announcements that have been coming out. So while the first batch focused more on patch 3.2 while touching on future plans, we should see more specifics on patch 3.3 (if they’re planning on coming out soon enough) and the Cataclysm expansion. Who knows, we might be able to see specific ideas and plans for each class’ talents, spells, and abilities for the expansion. Whatever the case I hope the next batch of Q$A’s will answer more issues more effectivley and provide something really new to the table. Before it felt like the issues weren’t really answered or very little new things were really being presented.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

argent tournament grounds

Unfortunately this idea isn’t what you think. It’s not 20 sets of gear giving a unique design for all classes depending on your faction since there are 10 classes and 2 factions. According to CM Zarhym, the sets are designed per armor type per faction, with the classes just getting a different color. This means the Mage design looks like a recolored Warlock design and so on. This is why I’m a bit disappointed. There’s something wrong about Paladins looking like Death Knights, even if you say that the color scheme could make the set fit the class theme. Somehow I prefer having unique class designs even if I have to share it with the other faction.

World of Raids put together a preview of the tier 9 gear as seen from the PTR. It’s not complete yet but it’s almost all there at this point. You can see how the different classes look different per faction but look almost the same across armor types. At least even if the design per armor type are just different colors per class, you can say that the color scheme almost makes them look unique… almost.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

When you think about it, it makes a little bit of sense since they already lowered the prerequisite level to use flying mounts to level 60. Getting Cold Weather Flying at level 68 is just Blizzard being consistent. I’m talking about the new item found in the patch 3.2 PTR called Tome of Cold Weather Flight.

Cold Weather Flying

According to CM Zarhym, the Tome of Cold Weather Flight is an heirloom item level 80 players can buy their alts for 1,000 gold who are on the same server, faction and account to give them Cold Weather Fliyng. This is a one use thing so it’s really meant to facilitate the ability of players to fly in Northrend at such a relatively low level. Players normally can’t have access to the Cold Weather Flying trainer in either Dalaran or Sholazar Basin at that level.

This begs the question though. I understand allowing the use of flying mounts at an earlier level for the Outlands. The Burning Crusade is an old expansion whose content is pretty much just sped through to reach Northrend. But Wrath of the Lich King is still ongoing and I even remember one of the blue posters saying that it’s still a relatively young expansion. So why make Cold Weather Flying almost pointless so soon? Wasn’t it put there so that players won’t just fly over content? In TBC, even alts had to wait for level 70 to get a flying mount.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

argent tournament grounds

This move is quite creative in my opinion because it gives players a certain element that the Sunwell badge gear gave players back in TBC but not giving the whole thing outright. As we know, the Sunwell badge gear did give players a way to bridge the gap between the lower content and the higher content but it also was a bit too much since players could just farm the dungeons for gear as good as the raiders who worked so hard to get theirs. The new idea with Emblem of Triumph gives players a chance to bridge the content gap but at a harder climb and a slower pace. This also allows 5 man dungeon content to become more relevant again. I’m guessing that this is what CM Zarhym was talking about when he announced that new things were in store for the emblem system .

MMO Champion gives us some info from the PTR about more of these new things. According to them, instead of having several tokens corresponding to a certain gear slot, the tier 9 gear system (item level 245) is going to be a one token for any gear slot system. According to them, item level 232 and 245 tier 9 emblem gear can be bought with Emblems of Triumph.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Well if you thought you got excited about the change to get your regular ground mount at level 30 back then you’ll really be excited for the new changes Blizzard is going to give the mount system in patch 3.2. First of all the good news from CM Zarhym about those people who already have their epic flying mount (and thus don’t need to purchase any more mount training) is that all mounts will have their summoning time reduced from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds. This will make mounting up a bit faster, which is something I’ve always felt was quite slow especially since I’m quite used to my druid’s instant cast flight form.

According to CM Zarhym, Blizzard is also implementing the following changes listed below to the mount system in patch 3.2. While they are awesome changes because you get the mounts sooner and cheaper, it at least feels a bit weird if you think about it.

Apprentice Riding (Skill 75)

o 60% land mount speed
o Requires level 20
o Cost: 4 gold
o Mount cost: 1 gold
o Mail will be sent to players at level 20 guiding them to the riding trainer

Journeyman Riding (Skill 150)

o 100% land mount speed
o Requires level 40
o Cost: 50 gold
o Mount cost: 10 gold
o Mail will be sent to players at level 40 guiding them back to the riding trainer

Expert Riding (Skill 225)

o 150% flying mount speed; 60% land mount speed
o Requires level 60
o Cost: 600 gold (faction discounts now apply)
o Mount Cost: 50 gold
o Can now be learned in Honor Hold (Alliance) or Thrallmar (Horde)

Artisan Riding (Skill 300)

o 280% flying mount speed; 100% land mount speed
o Requires level 70
o Cost: 5,000 gold (faction discounts now apply)
o Mount Cost: 100 gold

As I said above it’s at least going to feel strange that you’ll be able to get your regular ground mount at level 20 (10 levels before Druids can get a slower travel form but let’s not get into that debate anymore since we know travel form has it’s won uses) and it’s going to feel even a stranger to get the epic ground mount 20 levels earlier at level 40. It’s also going to feel strange that you will be able to get your regular flying mount at level 60, suggesting that Blizzard isn’t worried about people just flying over the early Outlands content anymore (probably because most of us have already seen it… a lot!).

if you haven’t noticed, the regular flying mount flying speed is being changed to 150% instead of 60% but the ground speed will still remain 60%. So if you’re leveling an alt right now and still will be by the time patch 3.2 comes out, these changes to the mount system will be something to look forward to.

Post from: WOW Obsessed