Yeah… did you watch that video? Obviously cute and funny, I posted it because it’s like looking at some WoW players waiting for Wrath. (OK, I’ll admit it… I’m one of them!) Blizzard is getting the food game ready, and we players can smell it coming! They temp us with a few new features getting to us a bit earlier, and we go crazy wanting it to hurry up and get down to our level!

Haven’t heard as to what will be included with this patch? Here’s an (incomplete) list:

• New class spells and talents
• Stormwind Harbor opens
• Barbershops in capital cities
• Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades
• Two new arenas
• Guild calendar
• Hunter pet skill revamp
• The inscription profession

Patch 3.x is coming within ‘weeks,’ which probably really translate to about a month away. The PTR looks like it’s getting prepped. Make no mistake though, if Blizzard includes the mentioned content in patch 3.x, it’s going to need quite a bit of testing/tweaking before it gets released to the live servers. Never the less, the cats players are already prepping.

Herb prices have already started to go up. Granted, they’re not at, “OMFG 25 gold for a stack of mageroyal!” yet, but they’re starting to creep up there. The day Blizzard announced Patch 3.x was coming, I was going to sell-off an excess of herbs I had hoarded. Instead, I had a 32-slot herbalist bag made and those herbs are getting stored for power-leveling my inscription. (‘Cause I’m not paying out the nose for already over-priced herbs!)

WOW Insider made a semi-media-scare post about how the patch will break, everything. (Like bosses suddenly becoming unbeatable with the way classes are changing.) I honestly don’t think things will get that bad, and that’s why the patch will go to the PTR first before going live. Come patch time, I’ll be in Wrath-Prepping over-drive anyways. So long as I can farm herbs and gold while also possibly level a druid, I’ll be fine.

Lastly, I’ve been seeing a lot of lower-level players around Azeroth. I remember not four months ago you could go into Feralas and not see anyone but NPC’s running around. Now though, I’m sure people are out there, like me, trying to level their alts to get them ready for The Lich King’s wrath. It’s kind of nice for my shaman to randomly heal Alliance players in need.

You thought I was kidding…No you are really THAT fearsome that Scarlet Peasants evacuate their bowels at the mere sight of you.  DKs R OP?  

Welcome to the second installment from the Beta World.  I originally thought I’d take you through all the starter quests for DKs, but that would take all the fun out of when this whole thing goes live, so I’ll just point out a couple of things you need to know.

1.  Blizzard took a page out of Age of Conan, that is, you start out in Ebon Hold, in Eastern Plaguelands, north of Tyr’s Hand, and northeast of Light’s Hope Chapel.  Regardless of server type (PvP/PvE/RP) you will only be with your OWN faction.  It is an instanced version of the game.  You can interact with guildmates, etc, but you won’t actually be in the same game with them, until you complete your Death Knight questline.

2.  You start out with some basic green gear, all of which is replaced during your quests.  You have learned first aid to 270, and can make Runecloth Bandages.  You have ZERO talent points to start.  Quest rewards usually include money, a superior (ie BLUE) upgrade and a talent point.  Some vary, but by the time you finish the quest line, you will probably be within 10% of level 58 with talent points equal to your level (49 or so).  

Here’s a typical reward screen…

That’s right.  For those of you keeping score at home, that’s a savings of 8000 honor points.  Just for dueling 5 NPC death knights (or real ones, the choice is yours).  Insignia of the Alliance/Horde/Scourge.  All the same thing.  I guess Blizz figures you’d have done SOME PvP prior to getting to 55, right?

That’s all for this morning.  I broke a tooth last night on some popcorn, so now I get to enjoy the dentist’s drill…getting older sucks.  Hopefully more this afternoon.

First Prize (5 Winners)

• SteelSeries Zboard Gaming Keyboard
• World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King™ Keyset for Zboard
• SteelSeries Siberia Headset

Second Prize (10 Winners)

• BradyGames World of Warcraft Dungeon Companioin Volumes 1 & 2
• JINX World of Warcraft Hat
• Upper Deck World of Warcraft Miniatures Game Starter Set

Third Prize (10 Winners)

• Upper Deck World of Warcraft Trading Card Game Drums of War PVP Battle Deck
• BradyGames World of Warcraft Bestiary Guide
• JINX World of Warcraft T-Shirt
• SteelSeries World of Warcraft FragMat Mouse Pad

I usually don’t post videos of in-game footage, especially beta. However, I thought this one by Big Red Kitty deserved to be shown. Of course, come Wrath, hunters will be able to tame all sorts of ‘exotic’ pets. So far, the biggest is this bad boy; the rhino! It’s… massive. I mean, there really is no other way to describe it. I know a lot of us have hunter alts, and being able to tame exotic pets like this huge rhino would be a, ‘massive’ incentive to dust them off again.

This will serve as the first in a series of blogs for ECC members who want to get information from the Wrath of the Lich King beta firsthand, from a guildie they can trust, even if I AM relatively new to the guild.  What I post here will be from the viewpoint of either my Night Elf Death Knight Tyrenda (currently level 72) or from Allassea (still sitting at 70) from the NORTHREND (PvE) Beta server.

I will try and cover as much newsworthy tidbits as I can, so feel free to add comments and such on what you would like to ask me.

My first blog will be on the creation and coming of age of your first World of Warcraft “hero” class: the Death Knight.  

I firmly believe that if you have a level 55 character currently and are planning on buying WotLK you should create at least ONE death knight.  There are no class restrictions, and sad as it is to say, I’ve seen more than my fair share of gnomish death knights running around.  From a pure lore aspect, the storyline that you follow from creation to entry into Azeroth is nothing short of amazing.  With that said, we begin.

You create your Death Knight on any server/realm.  If you have a 55 somewhere, you can create a Death Knight on any server.  For ECC folks, just because we’re on an RP realm, you aren’t limited to RP/PvE servers for Death Knight creation (currently anyways).  You will notice that the same hairstyles/piercings/tattoos as your normal characters, along with (for now) the same available hairstyles.  Yes, pigtailed gnomish DKs exist…  Your skin tones, however, are a bit…muted, and your eyes are glowing faintly white, much like the Lich King himself.  So now you have your freshly minted Death Knight in whatever flavor you like.  Keep in mind that racial traits such as Gift of the Naaru, Shadowmeld, and Escape Artist are still viable as DKs.  Basically it boils down to what you like to play.  Personally for me, the female Night Elf swing animations are the “least disjointed” so Tyrenda was born.

Below is what you see after you watch the opening cinematic (which I HIGHLY advise against skipping, it’s cool):

Yeah, pretty imposing…

Next blog entry:  The Death Knight and You, or Make Villagers Poop Themselves…

It’s kind of funny, seeing Blizzard implementing things like an in-game calendar system and threat meter. It almost looks like they’re trying to cut down on the most-frequently-used mods. For our guild especially, Group Calendar and Omen are two of the biggest mods that we need, and require frequent updating. (Omen, epecially!) It used to be, we could update a large portion of our mods through WowAceUpdater, though now it looks like that’s going to die here fairly soon. What other options are out there?

Well, there’s always Curse and other sites to download mods one by one. Of course, if you sign up to be a member, Curse has the option of simply emailing you when there’s a new version of one of your favorited mods. That’s handy if you have just a few. For people like me, we’ve got a crap-tastic-load of mods. Tracking updates and updating by them manually when you’ve had the luxury of having it done automatically just isn’t fair, LOL.

Curse has promised both an updated website AND a better client. (Their current one is, err, buggy.) As it stands right now, the new client hasn’t been released.  (Though there is a beta you can try out, if you’re brave enough.) I wouldn’t hold my breath for the new one soon, either. The last update was as of 07/15/2008. I’ll be honest and say that I only go to Curse’s site because it’s much more user-friendly than others I’ve seen. Something just rubs me the wrong way with Curse and, until they show us proof that they’ve really wanted to improve themselves, I can’t out-right recommend them.

I can say that I’ve been using WowMatrix for a while now. Unlike WowAceUpdater, it updates just about every mod you can think of. It will even install new mods you’ve never installed before. I’ve been using it for about two weeks or so, and I can safely say I’ve had no problems with it. Now, the same can’t be said for a few of my guild mates. I can’t remember if it was Kryj or Gwid, but someone had their mods totally screwed up and they had to start over fresh.

I’ve read plenty of reports though saying WowMatrix runs for them just fine, with zero problems. So, if you want to use it, here’s what I’d recommend:

1. Back up your ‘World of Warcraft\Interface’ folder in it’s entirety.
2. Back up your ‘World of Warcraft\WTF’ folder in it’s entirety.
3. Put those folders in a safe place in case things go wrong!
4. Run WowMatrix, see how things go.
5. If things don’t go well, get rid of WowMatrix, and simply restore things to the way they were with the folders you backed up.

The really sad fact is though, is that updating mods takes a lot of bandwidth. For the time being, I predict only a large, commercial site like Curse will be able to cover the costs. (Probably through advertising. Hopefully, not gold selling.) Again, if Curse would step up to the plate and come up with an awesome system that incorporates good site design WITH a good program that automatically updates our mods, I’d recommend them with no problem. As it is, everything with Curse is good in some places, half-assed in others.

Of course, Blizzard could some how help too. I’m not sure if they would actually host the mods themselves. (Though God knows they can cover the costs, I’m sure.) Maybe coming up with a way to either make the code easier/lighter to download or something? Like I said before though, it looks like they’re trying to incorporate several highly-used mods anyways into the game. So, who knows… maybe one day we’ll be running a whole hell of a lot less?

Well, I haven’t written a few blogs in a few days. Some of that has to do with work, but a good portion also has to do with the fact that there’s an information-overload on the Wrath beta at the moment. Almost every single new post from WOW Insider is about another tidbit of information. Oh, I read almost all of it, but writing about it can be daunting, since there’s so many changes!

Still, it looks like Wrath is looking to be a massive hit when it releases. (We’re hearing ‘2008,’ barring any major setbacks that would force Blizzard to push it out further.) There are so many goodies packed everywhere, I couldn’t even begin to list them. When TBC was released, I wasn’t really that excited about the changes. (OK, I was but I didn’t track every juicy update like I’m doing now.) Other people seem to feel excited, too.

No matter how you look at it, Wrath is going to be huge! It’s funny when you read stories saying this game or that game will be the WoW-Killer, but honestly, Blizzard is doing a great job keeping up. TBC gave us plenty of fresh content. Wrath will do that too, but give us plenty of goodies/upgrades to keep our interest. (Or in my case, addiction, LOL!)

PS: I’m loving WOW Insider doing the captions like I’m doing

One of our required mods for the guild, is Group Calendar. It allows everyone in the guild to plan events, instance runs, raids, whatever. (And thankfully, also tracks profession cool-downs.) Well, there’s a new beta of Wrath, and Blizzard gave us a wonderful gift: and in-game calendar system! Will this mean the end of Group Calendar? So far, it appears that it tracks game events like the Darkmoon Faire. According to WOW Insider, there’s also a way for users to add their own events and share them with others. (Like setting up instance/raid runs.)

It’s unclear at this time if, like Group Calendar, it will be easy to share across the guild. (And hey, tracking cool-downs would be awesome, too.) Though, I’m guessing Blizzard is looking at mods like Group Calendar, and plans on being at least on-par with their features. Going further, I have to wonder if the calendar information will be able to be accessed in the Armory and/or synced to guilds’ web sites? THAT would be incredibly cool, and I hope it’s something Blizzard is looking into!

I’m really digging the trend Blizzard is going with Wrath in that, they are looking at some of the most-used mods, and implementing them directly in the game. No more will players have to worry about updating mods constantly what version they have to use, or go to less than kosher sites to get the updates. Hopefully, the calendar feature will totally replace Group Calendar for our guild, so we won’t have to even use it.

(Check the article on WOW Insider for a small screenshot gallery of the calendar!)