[NOTE: some pictures now included]
Its mid-afternoon and I’m taking a short break from the convention to rest my feet and get a bite to eat (as well as to update the blog). Today I actually managed to get into demos of Wrath of the Lich King, as well as attending a couple of seminars and watching some pro-games. In general, it was much quieter today (a lot of people at the WWI just for the Saturday I guess) though a functioning WotLK area and tournament games to spectate will have helped the general crowding level. It remains bloody hot though (and the concession continues to gouge attendees for a can of coke or bottle of water ...)
Lich king was … interesting. I ended up playing twice, the first time as a Paladin and the second as my main class, a mage. My time with the Paladin gave me chance to explore a little – the Howling Fjord is pretty impressive, even with the placeholder models – and I ended up wandering across a couple of zones and into an instance (where I promptly had the stuffing kicked out of me.) It was very clear from the client stability – it crashed on me once in the 20 minutes, and watching others play that wasn’t an unusual occurrence – and there were numerous bugs with the interface and numerous “placeholder” models (mammoths with elek models, for example). Nothing too horrible, but enough to make me wonder precisely when the game was due out (more on that anon).
Second time out I spent som time looking at talents (though I didn’t find a class trainer, and so didn’t investigate the spells. Now, cameras weren’t allowed, and I couldn’t very well get out a notepad so the following are from memory (and far from complete). It’ll be interesting to see what these look like at the end of the day:
The Mage Arcane tree includes:
A talent to increase Spirit
A talent to increase +spellcrit depending on Spirit
A spell that may convert spells (not just Arcane) to insta-casts
A spell that provides damage absorbtion
A “big bang” spell (50-point talent)
The Mage Fire Tree includes:
A damage bonus for getting three crits in a row
A bonus that accumulates depending on the number of targets hit with an AOE
A spell the provides a crit bonus (that declines as crits occur)
A spell that turns the caster into a "living bomb" (aoe effect, then an explosive effect) (50-point talent)
The Frost tree includes:
An enhanced pet (extended duration etc)
An ability to stun frozen targets
An a ability to hamper enemies' attacks.
(I did look at talent trees for a couple of classes, but in many cases they were absent an those that were present were for classes I'm not too familiar with, so no comments here).
As might be expected, the mage I was playing with was more to my tastes and despite one accident with a slip while wandering along a roof (that was hanging out over a REALLY BIG cliff, the less said about that the better … unless you’re into base-jumping) I had a pretty good time wanering around – the mobs round the starting points seemed to be circa level 67, rising to 73 or so in the adjacent zones.
I’m hoping for a third visit later this afternoon …
The first seminar of the day was on Dungeons and Raids, but as I was wandering Northrend I missed the beginning (again). Some potted notes:
o There will be 8 level-up instances and 4 “first tier” ones, plus heroics and raid instances.
o The Raid instances will be in two forms: 10 man, and 25-main so as to give more people chance to experience the content.
o The loot in the 25 will be clearly distinct though, and will drop in larger quantities to reflect the number of participants in the raid.
o The aim for most instances is for them to be completeable in 60 minutes – some in BC were too long they admit.
o Heroics will be better tuned.
o Instance levels will be use narrower level bands, like the recent changes.
o They'll add in various instances after the launch of WotLK, but the order in which they do (5-mans, 10-mans, 25-mans) will depend on player demand; they say that with Burning Crusade, it would've been fairer to launch Zul Aman before Black Temple ....
o Itemization will be improved to make items desirable to a broader range of specs/classes
o Some PvP items (starter kit?) will be available through PvE
o Recipe drops will be improved and professions be less reliant on uber-rare drops.
o Faction rep will continue but be improved through “championing” (only in heroic instances?)
o You can “champion” a faction by wearing it tabard which gives a bonus rep-gain for kills (and stacks with instance related rep, so an alliance character wearing a Cenarion Tabard in Shattered Halls will gain some Cenario Rep in addition to the Honor Hold rep they’d normally gain. If the same character wore a Honor Hold tabard, they’d gain bonus rep over and above the usual gain)
o There will be no faction requirements for heroics (to open them up more)
o There’ll be more faction rewards
We were given sneak peaks of a couple of instances:
The Occulus
• A lvl 80 dungeon in the Borean Tundra.
• Non-linear, with distinct rings that can be hopped between.
• Allows flying mounts and aerial combat (the mounts have abilities, so a healer can do dps by choosing a DPS mount was mentioned)
• Looks spectacular!
The Halls of Stone
o A lvl 77-79 dungeon in the Storm Peaks (part of a complex of titan-related instances, including a lvl-80 one and a raid).
o Requires a flying mount to access
o Non-linear.
o Massive scale (due to Titan construction)
o Ties into Uldaman storyline (if you can recall that far back …)
The Culling of Stratholme
o A lvl-80 Caverns of Time instance
o Based on the Warcraft 3 scenario with pre-fall Arthas (et al).
o Scripted, ala old-Hillsbrad
o Will be recognizable, in part, those who’ve been to the “modern ruined Stratholme (just less undead and fires …)
The second seminar was on PVP. There’ll be three main aspects of this in Wrath of the Lich King:
World-PVP in lake Wintergrasp
• Non-instanced
• Attack/defense style battle
o Controller gains benefits
• Northrend Spirit Shards
• Wintergrasp Marks of Honor
o A failed attempt to take the objectives isn’t a complete waste – benefits will accrue in the next attempt (and keep doing so) so that relams with a faction imbalane won’t automatically favour the more populous faction).
• Involving siege warfare and siege engines
o Destructable buildings, walls and bridges
o Numerous vehicle types
• Demolisher: Baseline vehicle with driver and open space for 3 pasengers (for “drive by nukings”)
• Forsaken catapult: Single person, cheap, fast, agile, light damage
• Siege Engine: Huge, heavy armored and hard hitting, has gunner slot and enclosed passenger space (no drive-bys!)
• Aircraft; Single man fighter type, and 2-man version with pilot and bombardier
• Goblin Shredder: AA-vehicle (but not much use against ground units)
• Intended to be accessible to small and large-scale battles.
2 New Arenas
• Simple, but with dynamic scenery to influence battles/LOS
• Dalaran sewers
o Around a water-pipe hub (sometimes on blocking LOS, at other times not)
o No mounts allowed
o Players start in pipes and will be “thrown” into the arena by a jet of water.
• Ogrimmar Arena
o Located in the Valley of Heroes
o Players arrive by “elevator” … and will start 10 yards from their opponents!
o Mounts are allowed
o There will be pillars that rise and fall, blocking/opening LOS (and which may lift players into the air)
o Spikes may pop out in some places too.
Northrend Battleground
• Located on an old Titan-related island off the Dragon isles
• Probably a 10-15 player/side contest
• An attack and defend map (the concepept reminded me of “Omaha Beach for WOW”)
o The defenders will be behind walls
o The attackers land from boats
o Siege weapons will be used (and mounts are allowed).
Hopefully more news (and the inclusion of todays pictures) after tonight's concerts.
Its mid-afternoon and I’m taking a short break from the convention to rest my feet and get a bite to eat (as well as to update the blog). Today I actually managed to get into demos of Wrath of the Lich King, as well as attending a couple of seminars and watching some pro-games. In general, it was much quieter today (a lot of people at the WWI just for the Saturday I guess) though a functioning WotLK area and tournament games to spectate will have helped the general crowding level. It remains bloody hot though (and the concession continues to gouge attendees for a can of coke or bottle of water ...)
Lich king was … interesting. I ended up playing twice, the first time as a Paladin and the second as my main class, a mage. My time with the Paladin gave me chance to explore a little – the Howling Fjord is pretty impressive, even with the placeholder models – and I ended up wandering across a couple of zones and into an instance (where I promptly had the stuffing kicked out of me.) It was very clear from the client stability – it crashed on me once in the 20 minutes, and watching others play that wasn’t an unusual occurrence – and there were numerous bugs with the interface and numerous “placeholder” models (mammoths with elek models, for example). Nothing too horrible, but enough to make me wonder precisely when the game was due out (more on that anon).
Second time out I spent som time looking at talents (though I didn’t find a class trainer, and so didn’t investigate the spells. Now, cameras weren’t allowed, and I couldn’t very well get out a notepad so the following are from memory (and far from complete). It’ll be interesting to see what these look like at the end of the day:
The Mage Arcane tree includes:
A talent to increase Spirit
A talent to increase +spellcrit depending on Spirit
A spell that may convert spells (not just Arcane) to insta-casts
A spell that provides damage absorbtion
A “big bang” spell (50-point talent)
The Mage Fire Tree includes:
A damage bonus for getting three crits in a row
A bonus that accumulates depending on the number of targets hit with an AOE
A spell the provides a crit bonus (that declines as crits occur)
A spell that turns the caster into a "living bomb" (aoe effect, then an explosive effect) (50-point talent)
The Frost tree includes:
An enhanced pet (extended duration etc)
An ability to stun frozen targets
An a ability to hamper enemies' attacks.
(I did look at talent trees for a couple of classes, but in many cases they were absent an those that were present were for classes I'm not too familiar with, so no comments here).
As might be expected, the mage I was playing with was more to my tastes and despite one accident with a slip while wandering along a roof (that was hanging out over a REALLY BIG cliff, the less said about that the better … unless you’re into base-jumping) I had a pretty good time wanering around – the mobs round the starting points seemed to be circa level 67, rising to 73 or so in the adjacent zones.
I’m hoping for a third visit later this afternoon …
The first seminar of the day was on Dungeons and Raids, but as I was wandering Northrend I missed the beginning (again). Some potted notes:
o There will be 8 level-up instances and 4 “first tier” ones, plus heroics and raid instances.
o The Raid instances will be in two forms: 10 man, and 25-main so as to give more people chance to experience the content.
o The loot in the 25 will be clearly distinct though, and will drop in larger quantities to reflect the number of participants in the raid.
o The aim for most instances is for them to be completeable in 60 minutes – some in BC were too long they admit.
o Heroics will be better tuned.
o Instance levels will be use narrower level bands, like the recent changes.
o They'll add in various instances after the launch of WotLK, but the order in which they do (5-mans, 10-mans, 25-mans) will depend on player demand; they say that with Burning Crusade, it would've been fairer to launch Zul Aman before Black Temple ....
o Itemization will be improved to make items desirable to a broader range of specs/classes
o Some PvP items (starter kit?) will be available through PvE
o Recipe drops will be improved and professions be less reliant on uber-rare drops.
o Faction rep will continue but be improved through “championing” (only in heroic instances?)
o You can “champion” a faction by wearing it tabard which gives a bonus rep-gain for kills (and stacks with instance related rep, so an alliance character wearing a Cenarion Tabard in Shattered Halls will gain some Cenario Rep in addition to the Honor Hold rep they’d normally gain. If the same character wore a Honor Hold tabard, they’d gain bonus rep over and above the usual gain)
o There will be no faction requirements for heroics (to open them up more)
o There’ll be more faction rewards
We were given sneak peaks of a couple of instances:
The Occulus
• A lvl 80 dungeon in the Borean Tundra.
• Non-linear, with distinct rings that can be hopped between.
• Allows flying mounts and aerial combat (the mounts have abilities, so a healer can do dps by choosing a DPS mount was mentioned)
• Looks spectacular!
The Halls of Stone
o A lvl 77-79 dungeon in the Storm Peaks (part of a complex of titan-related instances, including a lvl-80 one and a raid).
o Requires a flying mount to access
o Non-linear.
o Massive scale (due to Titan construction)
o Ties into Uldaman storyline (if you can recall that far back …)
The Culling of Stratholme
o A lvl-80 Caverns of Time instance
o Based on the Warcraft 3 scenario with pre-fall Arthas (et al).
o Scripted, ala old-Hillsbrad
o Will be recognizable, in part, those who’ve been to the “modern ruined Stratholme (just less undead and fires …)
The second seminar was on PVP. There’ll be three main aspects of this in Wrath of the Lich King:
World-PVP in lake Wintergrasp
• Non-instanced
• Attack/defense style battle
o Controller gains benefits
• Northrend Spirit Shards
• Wintergrasp Marks of Honor
o A failed attempt to take the objectives isn’t a complete waste – benefits will accrue in the next attempt (and keep doing so) so that relams with a faction imbalane won’t automatically favour the more populous faction).
• Involving siege warfare and siege engines
o Destructable buildings, walls and bridges
o Numerous vehicle types
• Demolisher: Baseline vehicle with driver and open space for 3 pasengers (for “drive by nukings”)
• Forsaken catapult: Single person, cheap, fast, agile, light damage
• Siege Engine: Huge, heavy armored and hard hitting, has gunner slot and enclosed passenger space (no drive-bys!)
• Aircraft; Single man fighter type, and 2-man version with pilot and bombardier
• Goblin Shredder: AA-vehicle (but not much use against ground units)
• Intended to be accessible to small and large-scale battles.
2 New Arenas
• Simple, but with dynamic scenery to influence battles/LOS
• Dalaran sewers
o Around a water-pipe hub (sometimes on blocking LOS, at other times not)
o No mounts allowed
o Players start in pipes and will be “thrown” into the arena by a jet of water.
• Ogrimmar Arena
o Located in the Valley of Heroes
o Players arrive by “elevator” … and will start 10 yards from their opponents!
o Mounts are allowed
o There will be pillars that rise and fall, blocking/opening LOS (and which may lift players into the air)
o Spikes may pop out in some places too.
Northrend Battleground
• Located on an old Titan-related island off the Dragon isles
• Probably a 10-15 player/side contest
• An attack and defend map (the concepept reminded me of “Omaha Beach for WOW”)
o The defenders will be behind walls
o The attackers land from boats
o Siege weapons will be used (and mounts are allowed).
Hopefully more news (and the inclusion of todays pictures) after tonight's concerts.
; "Onwards into Ulduar")
; "How to get ahead")
; "Completing the Siege of Ulduar")
; "Razorscale.jpg")
; "Temper Tantrum")
; "Fashion sense")
; "Koralon Downed!")
; "Battling Flame Leviathan")
; "Flame Leviathan Down")
; "Ignis downed")