Filed under: Realm News

Last Monday, July 21st, many European realms apparently underwent thirteen hours of additional maintenance. Players were understandably upset. Blizzard understands this too, which is why they’re giving players with characters on any of those realms a one-day playtime credit, like they do. The battlegroups Cyclone, Nightfall, Conviction, Ruin, and Rampage were affected, which is to say the following realms:

Anachronos, Balnazzar, Blade’s Edge, Bloodfeather, Bronze Dragonflight, Burning Steppes, Darkmoon Faire, Darksorrow, Darkspear, Defias Brotherhood, Earthen Ring, Frostwhisper, Genjuros, Hakkar, Haomarush, Hellscream, Kor’gall, Laughing Skull, Lightbringer, Lightning’s Blade, Magtheridon, Molten Core, Neptulon, Nordrassil, Quel’Thalas, Ragnaros, Ravencrest, Runetotem, Scarshield Legion, Shadow Moon, Shadowsong, Shattered Hand, Silvermoon, Skullcrusher, Spinebreaker, Steamwheedle Cartel, Stormrage, Stormreaver, Stormscale, Sylvanas, Terenas, The Maelstrom, The Venture Co., Thunderhorn, Turalyon, Twisting Nether, Vashj, and Xavius

Anyone with an active account and a character on any of those realms will get a free day. That must have been some technical difficulty, since well over half the English-speaking European realms are on that list. Enjoy your playtime credit, my friends across the Atlantic.

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Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Breakfast topics, Classes, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King

It can’t be too long now — people are getting let in the Wrath beta from BlizzCon last year, and everyone’s opt-in registrations are in, so it’s only a matter of time before the invites go out and the floodgates open. And when they do: what’s your plan?

Are you going to step right into a Death Knight first to see how the new Hero class works? Which of the classes has got you most interested in trying new things? I’m excited to see all the Shaman changes, and I’ve got a Shammy waiting at 70, so that’s probably what I’ll do first. As for the Death Knight, I kind of want to see that stuff on the live realms, though by the time the beta ends, the call of a new class may be too much for me to ignore.

What’s up first for you when you log into the beta realms?

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The Latin American Spanish version of World of Warcraft launched today in Mexico, Chile, and Argentina. Players can now purchase
the localized version of the game and play on dedicated Spanish-language realms. Existing players can also download language
packs to convert their installation, and can transfer characters to the new realms. Head over to the
for more information about the release, or check out the
that we’re holding in Mexico.

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Filed under: Odds and ends, Blizzard, News items, Wrath of the Lich King

Blizzard’s Wrath talent trees page has been updated with minor changes, such as new icons for Wrath talents, as well as major changes such as a long-clamored for polish to the Mage trees. A noticeable change, for example, is the removal of Spirit from the equation for the Arcane tree. Potent Spirit and Student of the Mind, Spirit-based talents, were removed to make way for Arcane Flows and a reworked Netherwind Presence. The former reduces the cooldown on Arcane Power, Presence of Mind, and Invisibility by 30 seconds, while the latter now grants a passive 6% spell haste at max rank.

Most changes are cosmetic — the humorous placeholder icon used on many of the game’s spells in development have been removed — although astute players may find updates to the wordings of talents across the board. Other changes include some talents buffed and reduced in talent points such as the Paladin talent Vindication (down to 2 talent points, from 3; buffed to 20% from 15%). Check out Wowhead’s talent calculators, which haven’t been updated as of this writing, for comparison.

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Filed under: Hunter, Wrath of the Lich King

In the comments thread on the post yesterday regarding Wowhead’s new pet talent calculators, many of you seemed somewhat misinformed and accused the calculator of being buggy. To set the record straight, here are some fun facts about pets and pet talents in the current Wrath beta:

• The +damage/+health/+armor modifiers have been removed from pet families. Instead, a pet’s modifiers depend on which of the three pet talent trees it has: Ferocity, Cunning, or Tenacity. However, Blizzard will be implementing pet-family-specific abilities.
• Hunters get one pet talent point at level 20, and one every four levels thereafter.
• The total number of pet talent points available at level 80 is 16, unless you are a Beast Mastery Hunter with the 51-point talent Beast Mastery, in which case you get an additional five points, for 21 total.
• Each successive tier requires three points per previous tier to unlock (compare to five points for player talents). The exception is single-point talents such as Charge or any of the tier 5 talents, which require five points per previous tier, according to their tooltips; the exception to this exception is Boar’s Speed.
• This means that the tier 5 talents are only available to BM hunters, since they require 20 points to unlock (again according to their tooltips), and any given pet can have at most one of them at a time.
• The last two points are based on how the tooltips read. However, this is not how they’re currently implemented in-game; in the beta right now, all talents require three points per previous tier to unlock, which means non-BM hunters can get two out of three tier 5 talents for any given pet. So there is a discrepancy between how the tooltips read and how it actually works when you go to spend the points. I’m guessing the tooltips are correct, since that would keep the tier 5 talents BM-only, and prevent hunters from getting more than one tier 5 talent.

All of these facts are confirmed by sources in the beta. Of course, it is beta, and any of this is very subject to change, but that’s the way things stand right now. By the way, how amusing is it that moths will be Ferocity pets? Ahhh, run! Ferocious moth!

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