w797 – The Collection of Game Post

1.05 is already Live, and many people are confused by the changes. We take a brave plunge into the new and improved AOC to tell you all about the…

Latest Hotfix has been applied to servers today. This one corrects several issues with 1.05 patch, most notably some crashes and GUI problems. Take a…

Patch 1.05 has already been deployed to Live servers in EU, and is being implemented in US realms. It’s been nicknamed ‘Gangs of…

Funcom just sent out the official press release announcing the launch of Update 5 Gangs of Tarantia. Check it out… Funcom is proud to announce…

Yesterday Tarib, CM at the official forums, posted an update on the status of 1.5. It seems that despite many, many balance issues and features yet to…

If you couldn’t get BlizzCon tickets and aren’t a DirecTV subscriber, there’s another way you can view coverage of the event. Eyonix has announced on the official forums that you’ll be able to purchase a live internet stream of the convention for the first time this year.

The stream, which costs $39.95, will contain the same content as the DirecTV pay-per-view coverage, and you’ll get the exclusive Grunty the Murloc Marine in-game pet. That means you can watch “over 16 hours of video, including interviews and commentary, main stage presentations, and tournament coverage” right from your computer.

Visit the BlizzCon 2009 Live Stream Web site to place your order or test out your system to make sure it’ll play the video. ZAM user PentUpAnger has started a thread in our general forum on the BlizzCon internet stream, so feel free to add to the discussion. BlizzCon will be held from Aug. 21-22 and ZAM staff members will be at the Anaheim Convention Center to supply you with as much news as possible.

As players continue to try out patch 3.2 on the public test realm, Blizzard is naturally going to implement changes based on feedback. Zarhym has announced the dev team will be making several updates to the Isle of Conquest battleground in the next test realm build.

Changes include a handful of increases to various aspects of the BG: the health of all gates will be bumped up from 300,000 to 600,000, the reinforcement count will double from 200 to 400, and the health and damage of the keep generals will be significantly buffed.

Seaforium, Glaive Thrower, Demolisher, Keep Cannons and Siege Engine updates have also been announced. You can read Zarhym’s full post below.

Based on player feedback and testing, we will be making several changes to Isle of Conquest in the next test realm build. We’d like to lay them out for you here in the hopes we’re able to encourage continued participation and feedback.

• Increased all the gates’ health from 300,000 to 600,000.
• Increased the reinforcement count from 200 to 400.
• Significantly increased the health and damage of the keep generals.
• Seaforium

  • Reduced effect range of the siege damage caused. Both the player damage and the siege damage caused should be 10 yards now.
  • The Huge Seaforium piles will now despawn for 20 seconds once looted.
• Glaive Thrower

  • Reduced the cooldown of Blade Salvo from 60 seconds to 30 seconds.
  • Reduced movement speed.
• Demolisher

  • The Hurl Boulder and Ram effects no longer share a cooldown.
• Keep Cannons

  • Fixed a bug that was causing them to do much more damage than intended.
  • Keep Cannons can now be repaired once they are destroyed by clicking on them. This repair process takes 8 seconds and can be interrupted, similar to capturing a PvP objective.
• Siege Engine

  • Significantly Increased health.

Your testing of this new Battleground thus far has proven invaluable and we ask that you please keep the feedback coming once these changes have been applied.

As Nethaera has announced, patch 3.2.0 is now available on the PTR for testing. Check out the official test realm forum for threads on player feedback, information on how to install the PTR and the most recent patch notes. For example, the notes were updated today to include quest tracking features, which show quest creatures and objects on a player’s world map.

If you’d like to discuss the PTR and 3.2, IDrownFish has started a thread in our general forum. MMO-Champion has a ton of information, including data on items such as the Tier 9 item sets and a list of badge rewards. Boubouille also posted new weapon models and Call of the Crusade achievements. Just remember, always take datamined information with a grain of salt.

Are you playing on the PTR? What are your thoughts on the patch?

One of the most controversially-discussed changes coming for World of Warcraft in patch 3.2 is the redesign of some major PvP mechanics. Specifically, the changes to the “resilience” stat has left many people on opposing sides of the fence; some seeing it as a well-needed fix to a broken part of the game, while others feel it has the potential to break the game itself.

The changes we’ll be seeing to resilience in 3.2 have been slowly trickling in over the past few days, ever since the patch notes “floodgate” opened. People have been trying to make sense of the changes, especially those who apparently lacked clarification regarding some of the finer details. One of the biggest changes? “The change to resilience affects ALL player damage,” Ghostcrawler (aka Greg Street) clarified in a recent post on the official forums.

You’ll actually find a wealth of information about the changes to resilience in this post, aside from GC’s most recent clarification. Generally speaking, the stat is being homogenized across the board, in an effort to slow PvP combat down. Warlocks and Shadow priests will be happy to find out that their DoTs won’t be quite as useless vs. resilience as they previously were, while classes like tanks might not be quite as thrilled to learn that resilience won’t offer the same benefits as a PvE stat that it did before.

But among all the changes to the stat, the fact that it will now mitigate all player damage might just be the most important of them all. Ghostcrawler says that it will help decrease the “burst damage” problem many players have issue with, and provide an overall benefit of improving Battleground and Arena play. If there’s one thing we know, it’s that PvP tends to draw fire from the community almost more so than any other topic. What do you think of the new stat changes?

The day World of Warcraft’s annual Midsummer Fire Festival launched, we reported many players experiencing problems tied to the in-game achievements. Players were having trouble completing certain quests, namely “Honor the Fires,” “Desecrate the Fires” and “Unusual Activity,” among others. Apparently some of the problems were caused because the achievement system wasn’t implemented this time last-year, and the acts to complete the current achievements purposely weren’t retro-actively attributed to player accounts, otherwise nothing would be required from those who completed them last year. Or something like that.

Regardless, Blizzard poster Bornakk announced in the official forums last night that the developers “are in the process of applying an in-game fix that will restart all of the quests associated with the Midsummer Fire Festival event and allow players to complete them once again.” The fix will be applied only after realms have been restarted.

He also notes that if you’re currently in the process of completing any of the festival achievements like “Extinguishing Kalimdor,” your progress will be reset and you’ll need to start over. That’s a bit of a bummer for those of you who might have been halfway done; but on the other hand, the Midsummer Fire Festival is one of Blizzard’s longest-lasting holidays, running until July 5 this year.