The Addon Junkie

I’m a regular reader of several WoW-related blogs, prime among them WoW.com. When the PTR opened up yesterday for character transfers I of course got some toons in the queue. While it’s taking a mysteriously long time for the transfer to actually go through, I can at least summarize the changes that those with more clout (or faster fingers) have already made available. This is a long one so I’m going to split it up to avoid spamming the front page. Please click more to read on…

• We can now tell Arthas to shut the hell up in the Culling of Stratholme event and get on with the zombie slaughtering. Note: You do still have to listen to his spiel once the first time you run CoS, but never again after that. As a lore nerd I love that encounter, but as someone who wants to get badges I don’t ALWAYS want to hear it.
• Massive changes to the auction house, professions and by extension the entire economy of the game. Nothing new there, Blizzard messes with the economy every patch and there are always people waiting to exploit it. There are so many changes that to list them here would merit its own article. Luckily WoW.com has already given the subject it’s own article so I don’t have to.
• The patch notes themselves say this one best:
  “Several raid buffs have had their ranges increased to 100 yards, up from 45 yards, to prevent select buffs from repeatedly getting applied and removed during highly mobile encounters. Some buffs, such as paladin auras, totems, shouts and Blood Pact are intentionally meant to have shorter ranges and remain unchanged.”
  No word from the WoW.com folks yet regarding which buffs, exactly, had their ranges increased but I’ll do my best to find out and edit this post either when my transfers go through or when someone else posts the pertinent information
• Another interesting post regarding some new achievements and spells datamined from the 3.3.3 files indicating that Gnomeregan might be making a comeback in Cataclysm and that the trolls might play a fairly large part as well. Warning: There may be spoilers.
• Some more Death Knight changes – they actually look like buffs this time! As a contraversial dual-wielding frost tank I have to say that I like how these changes will affect the damage curve (and therefore the threat curve). Particularly high on my list is the change to Rune of Razorice: it now stacks to 5, down from 10, but each stack is good for 2% frost vulnerability, up from 1%. The application rate has also been increased to 100%.
• Shaman got some nice little buffs. The DoT effect of Flame Shock is now capable of critting and both Elemental Oath and Unleashed Rage are now always-on passive auras. Also, for the record, the plural form of “Shaman” is “Shaman.” I know it’s confusing, but so are a lot of things in English.
• several tweaks to the default UI. There’s quite a few of these, but they’re significant so I’ll do my best to briefly list the important ones. The rest can be found in the original article here.
  • Authenticator users can now enter their six-digit code in a new textbox directly below the password entry box – no more annoying popup window, yay!
    Edit: The authenticator box only appears if you tell WoW to remember your account name – which makes sense considering that otherwise they have no way of remembering that you have an authenticator.
  • As previously mentioned (sort of) minor tweaks to the auction house interface, including the ability to set prices on a per-stack or per-item basis.
  • Players can now queue up for random battlegrounds. Random battlegrounds are currently giving the same reward as the weekly battleground quest, but it’s still just on the PTR so expect some tweaking.
  • Holiday dungeons, when applicable, will be available from the random dungeon finder tool. The current implementation on the PTR offers a “Heart Shaped Box” as the quest reward for completion of the Crown Chemical Co. event, and since I’m both a fan of Blizzard breaking the fourth wall AND Nirvana, that’s a double winner in my book.
  • Objectives of quests being tracked can now be sorted in the objectives frame. This is either automatically sorted by difficulty or distance from objectives (player selectable) or a player may manually sort their quest objectives by right-clicking.
• Frozo the Renowned will now trade your growing stacks of Frozen Orbs for other crafting materials. Currently on the list: Runed Orbs, Crusader Orbs, Frost Lotus and all six kinds of Eternals.
• Warriors: Revenge now does 50% more damage, and Rampage is now passive instead of a proc from critical hits.
• More Cataclysm data mining. It’s already been confirmed that the Twilight’s Hammer cult will be working with Deathwing in the upcoming expansion, but now we have models to prove it! There are also two new mounts, the Blazing Hippogryph and the Wooly White Rhino. MMO-Champion is reporting the two mounts to be trading card game loot, but there’s been some drama between Blizz and Upper Deck recently so who knows what will happen right now. Finally, Blizzard apparently realized that little boys, even the ones who are kings, do eventually grow up. Happy several-birthdays-at-once Anduin Wrynn.
• Marks of honor are gone. With the addition of the currency panel to the character sheet the stacks of AV marks that used to crowd my inventory aren’t really that big an issue any more, but for anyone actually saving up for gear, this removes a lot of complication and means you never have to play your least favorite BGs again, though weeklies and randoms do award more honor. Damn you Warsong Gulch, why can’t I quit you…
• Practically every ability that once proc’d from critical strikes or spellcasts is now a passive buff.
• Cooldowns have been removed for creating Titansteel, Moonshroud, Spellweave and Ebonweave; mysteriously a 7-day cooldown has been added to the Glacial Bag. Seems like blizzard doesn’t want those bags getting any cheaper. Hooray for gold-sinks!
• “Many quests which require vehicles have had their vehicle mechanics updated and improved in the interest of fun.” OMG they figured out games are supposed to be fun?! Is this that apocalypse thing people always talk about when the server reboots?

That’s all I have for now, there’s a lot going on for what looks (in numerical terms anyway) like a minor patch. Keep in mind that this is still the “Test Realm” for a reason. Not all of these changes will make it to the live game, and probably none of them will make it in their current state. If you want to keep abreast of all the latest changes in the PTR, Blizzard always makes the latest PTR patch notes available at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html