"First five minutes playing the new WoW Cataclysm Worgen is unique!" - George Vanous

World of Warcraft Cataclysm introduces two new player races: Goblins and Worgen.

TGN Stratics presents the first five minute of in-game footage playing the Worgen Druid!

See
WoW Cataclysm video wiki

"The first five minutes playing the new WoW Cataclysm Goblin is awesome!" - George Vanous

World of Warcraft Cataclysm introduces two new player races: Goblins and Worgen.

TGN Stratics presents the first five minute of in-game footage playing the Goblin Shaman!

See
WoW Cataclysm video wiki

Blizzard has announced the start of Phase 2 of the Arena Tournament.

Phase 2 of the 2010 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament has begun. Tournament participants have had ample time during the practice phase to hone their strategies, try various team compositions, and get used to playing with their team. It’s now time to play for keeps. To track the progress of your team and competition, please visit the World of Warcraft Armory and select the Coliseum battlegroup. Top teams will earn a chance to participate in live events, including the global finals being held at BlizzCon. If you have not yet registered for the tournament, you can still do so until June 7. For more information on the tournament, please visit our Arena Tournament information page; to discuss the tournament with your fellow players, please visit the Arena Tournament Forum. Good luck, and may the best teams be left standing.

Blizzard has announced sales dates for this year's BlizzCon. Mark your calendars and get your credit cards ready as these tickets go fast!

Get those opt-ins ready for the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm closed beta! The sundering of Azeroth is nigh, and you don’t want to be left out in the cold of Northrend when you could be enjoying the sun-drenched beaches on the goblin isle of Kezan. To ensure you’re opted-in and eligible as a potential candidate, you’ll need a World of Warcraft license attached to your Battle.net account, have your current system specifications uploaded to the Battle.net Beta Profile Settings page, and have expressed interest through the franchise-specific check boxes.

So get your opt-ins set up, updated, and ready; we're worgen real hard to get the beta going soon!

See what we mean? Horrible! Anyway, get set for beta and watch here for the latest updates!

Discuss: http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=208732

[Ety wandered through the bustling Trade District and towards the giant arch of the front gate, he walked towards the stables and the familiar sight of his warhorse, Edgar created a crooked smile on his pale face. He mounted up and commanded his horse to move out through the beautiful landscape of Elywnn Forest towards Duskwood...]

Now I’m not one to read quest text, or pay attention to cut scenes in World of Warcraft for that matter. However, after talking to a friend about how the Lich King came to power and the whole back story behind it, I regret not paying attention through my time in Northrend.

The week started on a good note with another night of trying to beat the Dreamwalker boss in Ice Crown Citadel. Another three hours passed without any success, and my guild decided to give it one last try. We somehow managed to heal Dreamwalker to the minimal health and completed the boss. Cheers went out over Ventrilo and everyone received a great sense of accomplishment. We called it a night and retired back to Stormwind for a rest.

For those of you that do not know, I have only recently joined World of Warcraft, before this I used to be a veteran of Star Wars Galaxies since 2005. One of the main differences I found with the transition was the apparent need for better gear in WoW. Everything at level 80 is based around gear, which came as a surprise to me seeing as I had never been this focused on armour before. Also, as my guild is a raiding guild it gets a lot more complicated than some of the other guilds I’ve been in. With trying to sort out raid positions, who’s being left out, who to give loot to, it can get quite confusing.

Moving on from the hassle of guilds, this week I participated in a 25 man raid to Vault of Archavon. What surprised me was the amount of damage I was pumping out as a Rogue with not the best gear, showed how good Rogues are at single target dps.

The week moved onto a random 10 man heroic to VoA, the run went pretty well with only two wipes before finishing the dungeon. Later into the week I participated in the weekly ice crown run with my guild, as before we had Dreamwalker down after one wipe and moved onto the Blood Princes. This fight was the most complicated we had faced in the Citadel, which made it difficult for some people to understand tactics. The night ended with many wipes on the princes and another failed week of trying to down another boss. However there is always next week...

Ety's Warcraft Diary is a regular feature on WoW Stratics, appearing every week. Let us know what you think of Ety's adventures!

In the wake of Deathwing's return, the powerful mysteries of Uldum sheathed within the mountains of southern Tanaris will be left vulnerable to discovery. Those who ascertain the purpose of the ancient titan Halls of Origination might just be able to unearth knowledge of Azeroth's very origins, or harness the capacity to bring about its end.

As with Uldaman and Ulduar, Uldum houses one of only a few of the known titan constructions, the existence of which predates that of mortal life on Azeroth. For years historians have explored southern Kalimdor for a means of entry into this ancient titan land, searching for more evidence of Azeroth's origins. But the Cataclysm will change everything, for the façade behind which Uldum has been tucked for millennia will be ruptured, leaving powerful mysteries vulnerable to discovery by the bravest, smartest, or perhaps even most brutal explorers.

The Halls of Origination in Uldum is a level-85 five-player dungeon available in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, featuring an unparalleled journey through the timeless titan construction and seven unique boss fights. Hidden deep within its halls lies an ancient treasure that, if placed in the wrong hands, could endanger all life on Azeroth. Should players survive the perils of Uldum, they will be called to help Brann Bronzebeard unlock the mysteries within these treacherous titan halls and protect the titans' ancient secrets.

Discuss: http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?p=1720828

Source:  http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/features/origination.html

Blizzard has announced a couple of updates to Battle.net that add more social features to the network: Real ID and Facebook integration.

One of our goals for the new Battle.net is to create the framework for an online gaming experience that is even more accessible, more engaging, and more entertaining than the previous Battle.net. Our new Real ID feature is an integral part of this effort, providing you with advanced ways for forming and maintaining meaningful relationships with your friends on the service.

Real ID is a completely voluntary and optional level of identity that keeps players connected across all of Battle.net. When you and a friend mutually agree to become Real ID friends, you'll have access to a number of additional features that will enrich your social gaming experience in new and exciting ways.

Source: http://us.battle.net/realid/

"We're pleased to be working with Facebook to integrate their platform with Battle.net to enhance the social-entertainment experience for our players," said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. "This new functionality will make it easier than ever to connect with friends on Battle.net and play StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games together."

The new Facebook functionality in Battle.net will be tested in the near future via the ongoing StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty beta test and will be available to all StarCraft II players when the game ships later this year. Information about other Facebook-related features on Battle.net will be announced at a later date.

Source: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/press/pressreleases.html?100505

Yeeha! Time to be roundin' up some of the news from the last few days!

• They're back! I pity the fool who doesn't grab themselves a Mohawk Grenade! Enough jibber jabber!
• Children's Week has begun! More information on this event can be found here.
• Blizzard has posted some Under Development notes, including upcoming updates for the Echo Isles and Gnomeregan events, the Ruby Sanctum and Cataclysm.
• The practice phase for the Arena Tournament has begun!
• Blizzard has started posting Cataclysm shots on the revised Screenshot of the Day page.
• It was confirmed on the forums that the Family & Friends phase of Cataclysm testing has begun.

This pic has been making the rounds today.

Looks like it will be a little while before this is available but it is pretty cool to see it is possible!

Source: http://www.dperry.com/archives/news/dp_blog/wow_streamed_to/

Friday 23th April 2010

Ety woke up to the familiar sound of birds chirping in the hot autumn sun. He started to wake, and noticed a huge pain in his neck. As he sat up and rubbed his neck he embarrassingly noticed that he had fallen asleep on the Stormwind Cathedral steps. Commoners flowed through the entrance of the huge white building without glancing at the heavily armoured Rogue sitting near them. Etyy stood up and sighed heavily as he made his way to the trade district...

The day started quickly with the Guild Chat bustling with friends talking. I must have been in for about two minutes when a guild member invited me to a group to do some PvP instances. I shrugged and clicked accept as I started to put on my one bit of PvP gear I had. Instantly we had an invite to Strand of the Ancients, a giant tropical island. It actually seemed as if I was the unique one in the raid group with my swift white standing behind countless players on Celestial Steeds.

I ran to the Blue Sapphire gates and mounted an Antipersonnel Cannon as the horde boat docked. The horde quickly ran up the hill to the gate as I fired into the middle of the red names, trying to kill as many as I could before they reached the gates. The gate blew through without much effort, and I was instantly mobbed by a dozen horde members! I must have run about 10 feet before dying an embarrassing death. I made a quick note of running away next time the gates blow!

We mounted up and went to the gates of the Yellow Moon; again I had been ambushed and feared. The horde made short work of me after that. As I waited for the resurrection timer to expire another guild member asked me to join a group for the daily frost. PvP finished quickly with Alliance getting beat into the ground by the Horde. I quit the instance and swiftly moved onto a random dungeon with another guild member.

Invites went out to the team and The Oculus screen loaded up. The tank started to quickly run through the mobs agroing them as he went. We pursued after him as he continued to pull more whelps. The team ran forward and through the shiny portal to the next part of the dreaded dungeon. The tank ran forward as soon as he was teleported straight into the path of Drakos the Interrogator, he seemed either very confident on his survivability or very confident on the healer’s ability, luckily for him the shaman healer was exceptionally well geared and seemed to be under control.

We moved onto the last boss, Ley-Guardian Eregos, where one of our team members seemed to have encountered a combat bug, he seemed to be stuck in combat without any mobs attacking him. In the end he had to jump off the side and take his own life. The last boss was not too much trouble with the amber drake flyers using Temporal Rift until the dragon fell to the platform. The day finished shortly after with another run through another dungeon...

Saturday 24th April 2010

Later in the evening two other guild members and I decided to run through some Classic dungeons for the first time to get the achievements. We ran through Magisters' Terrace with ease and received the achievement. We all agreed that it was hard to believe that these dungeons were a challenge to people back when the game started.

We then moved onto another dungeon, fun! We attempted to get a group to Halls of Reflection because there was a boss that seemed to hold my sword! We quickly got a group and loaded into the instance. My fellow guild members told me to get into the corner while the tank agroed the mobs that spawned. Unfortunately for us, the healer seemed to be incompetant of healing the tank and we shortly wiped the dungeon. The rest of the instance went without a hitch and the sword seemed to drop for me today!

Sunday 25th April 2010

The main focus of today was the weekly raid in which we were going to attempt to finish the boss, Valithria Dreamwalker in Ice Crown Citadel. Our tactic in the beginning was to have all three healers healing Valithria Dreamwalker while the damage members took care of the other mobs that came into the dungeon! This seemed to be a bad tactic as we all got killed quickly. We then tried to have only one healer on Valithria Dreamwalker whilst the other two healed the party. This again, proved to fail as we all got killed again. We then sat for a while and pondered a new strategy, it seemed as we didn’t have enough Area of Effect damage for all the countless monsters that spawned within the dungeon.

The night turned into many attempts to finish this boss, all proving unsuccessful. We walked out of the dungeon a few hours later, tired, and injured and with our pride destroyed. Hopefully next time we will be more successful...

Ety's Warcraft Diary is a new feature on WoW Stratics, appearing every week. Let us know what you think of Ety's adventures!

Discuss: http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?p=1711991

Blizzard has revealed more details of the upcoming changes to the Echo Isles.

After years in exile, the Darkspear trolls are preparing to invade the Echo Isles and reclaim the land once bestowed to them by Thrall. Led by Vol'jin, a wise and highly regarded Darkspear, the tribe's bravest warriors will set out from Orgrimmar and Sen'jin Village, seeking to bring about Zalazane's fall and begin the process of rebuilding their homes and villages on the Echo Isles. In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, new troll adventurers will begin their journey on these tiny islands off the coast of Durotar, where they'll be able to experience this time of trial and transition firsthand.

Though the Darkspears may once again have their land, the tribe's turmoil is far from over. The impending cataclysm will spark rivalry among the Horde leadership, and after years of running from a seemingly endless string of conflicts to preserve the Darkspear nation, Vol'jin is done fleeing. The Darkspears have reclaimed their islands and have no intention of settling elsewhere. Of course, as an untested member of the tribe, you'll have some training to do before tackling the Darkspears' larger matters.

Every great hero starts somewhere. As a troll of the Echo Isles, the journey begins with safeguarding your people's well-being. Early in your adventures, you'll be charged with protecting the local Bloodtalon raptors and hatchlings from the sorcery of a nearby sea witch, slaying the beasts that feast upon the Darkspears' primary food sources, and assaulting the naga who've overrun the northern isle. But it won't be long before Vol'jin trusts you with vital -- and potentially dangerous -- information about the political struggles plaguing the Horde and, ultimately, the fellow members of your tribe.

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, you'll face these trials and more in the trolls' new and enhanced introductory questing experience (level 1 to 5). Be steadfast and honorable, and your actions will help usher in a new era of Darkspear perseverance in a time of ultimate peril.

Source: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/features/echoisles.html

Blizzard has announced the X-53 Touring Rocket reward for the Recruit-A-Friend program is now available. They've also posted details of upcoming changes to badges and the PVP point system. 

New Recruit-A-Friend Reward Now Available

Have a friend who's interested in adventuring alongside you in Azeroth? Starting today, veteran players who bring a friend into the game through our Recruit-A-Friend program will be able to earn a brand-new X-53 Touring Rocket, World of Warcraft's first ever two-person flying mount.

Recruit-A-Friend participants also gain access to several other in-game benefits. From the moment your recruited friend creates a character and starts playing, you'll both earn triple experience when grouped together and can summon each other from anywhere in the world. Also, for every two levels of experience your friend earns, he or she can grant one level of experience to one of your characters. In addition, the recruiting player can receive 30 days of free game time if the recruited friend upgrades to the retail version of World of Warcraft and purchases a subscription. 

FAQ: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=20588

Cataclysm Badge and PvP Point Changes

We're continuing to refine the badge/emblem and PvP point systems in Cataclysm and we'd like to share some of those changes with you today. Please enjoy!

Our primary goal when approaching badges in Cataclysm is to address a lot of the confusion that comes with these currency systems. To that end we're changing badges to a more straightforward point system, similar to the ones we've used for a while for Arenas and Battlegrounds. There will be a total of four types of points you can earn in Cataclysm (two for PvE and two for PvP), and these will remain the same even as we introduce new content.

Here's the breakdown:

PvE
Hero Points -- Low-tier, easier-to-get PVE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, but no cap to how quickly you can earn them. Earned from most dungeons. (most like the current Emblem of Triumph)
Valor Points -- High-tier, harder-to-get PvE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, as well as a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from Dungeon Finder daily Heroic and from raids. (most like the current Emblem of Frost)

PvP
Honor Points -- Low-tier, easier-to-get PVP points. There will be a maximum cap to how many you can own, but no cap to how quickly you can earn them. Earned from most PvP activities.
Conquest Points -- High-tier, harder-to-get PvP points. There will be a maximum cap to how many you can own, and a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from winning Rated Battlegrounds or Arenas. (currently called Arena Points)

When a new tier of raiding gear is released or a new PvP season begins, your higher tier of points will be converted into the lower tier. For instance, if a new tier of raid gear is released, your Valor points will be converted to Hero points, and similarly if a new PvP season begins your Conquest points will be converted to Honor points. Of course that means with these new releases you'll always begin without any of the higher tier of points, and thus be unable to stockpile them.

As noted for Conquest points, the Rated Battlegrounds and Arenas will be sharing this same point type. Because of that, it will in fact be possible to get the best PvP items without setting foot in Arena; however, more powerful armor and weapons will of course require more Conquest points, so players who win their matches more often will still gear up faster. We're removing personal rating requirements on almost all items; they're definitely removed for weapons. We might offer a few items to the absolute best players based on personal rating, largely as cosmetic or 'bragging rights' type items. And you'll have the option of purchasing the previous season’s gear with the more readily available Honor points.

We do plan to have a way to convert Honor points (PvP) into Hero points (PvE), and vice versa, at a loss. The conversions will be possible, but it won't be a 1:1 rate, and you'll have fewer points after the conversion process. We won't allow the higher tiers to be exchanged for each other, however.

To explain the reasoning for the weekly cap on points for the higher tiers, this is to provide flexibility in how players choose to earn the points without feeling like they have to do all of the content as often as it is available. If your Valor income from raiding is sufficient, you may not feel the need to run Dungeon Finder every night, or perhaps even at all. Likewise, a PvP player could choose to participate in a lot of Rated Battlegrounds but no Arenas, or focus on both, and still be able to earn the points they want.

We realize that with any changes to progression pathways there are going to be questions. We're eagerly awaiting any that we may have left unanswered. To the comments!

Source: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=24401796793&sid=1

Nethaera on the Touring Rocket reward delay:

While we had originally announced the new Recruit-A-Friend X-53 Touring Rocket reward would be coming in just a few short days, it turns out there are still a few bolts to tighten, some loose wires to tuck inconspicuously under the upholstery, and a handful of parts leftover that we’re going to ponder and then assume we can safely throw away. As a result, we’ll be releasing this beauty a bit later than we’d first anticipated. This will also give anyone interested in the current Zhevra mount reward some extra time to claim one. While we don’t have an exact release date nailed down yet, we’ll make an announcement once the new mount becomes available.

Bornakk's response to a player accusing Blizzard of forgetting their values:

Our values are not forgotten and they actually get brought up on a pretty regular basis when discussing various topics. While we appreciate you bringing this up, this information we posted is still accurate... So I'm not sure how it is breaking any of the values when we did provide updates when possible. Please be more conscientious of the situation in the future. 

Nethaera on players who are sick of complainers:

I would like to thank you, and all those like you who have this attitude and are here having fun.

Generally speaking, those that are happy, rarely speak up and that's OK. Those that are unhappy, have concerns etc, are generally more vocal, and that's OK too, as long as it's constructive.

In the end, and I've said this for years in person and on these forums, passionate people post passionately because they care. It's when there is nothing but silence that I will begin to truly worry.

Nethaera's advice to a player who states his wife is a newbie:

I'd like to suggest letting her pick the one that interests her most rather than attempting to assign her the "easy" one. She'll do much better if she feels she connects with her choice and if that one doesn't work, let her try another one. She may surprise you in the end.

Other than that, I'd say take it one step at a time. Don't tell her about raiding or grouping when she's just trying to learn how to do a gathering quest or a kill quest. She'll get to that when it's time.

Good luck to you!

Bornakk on running regular dungeons at level 80:

While running the normals is not too common these days, it was definitely more common when players were first hitting 80. If you put together a group in nothing but greens and quest blues (possibly crit-able tank) these dungeons can be a bit of a challenge.

I also still did normals on some of my alts when they first hit 80, but mainly focused on like totc and that wasn't needed for very long.

This is pretty much one of those situations where a picture says a thousand words.

"We're pleased to announce the grand opening of our new Concept Art gallery, highlighting the myriad characters, environments, and other artwork we create during the development of our games. We plan to update this page regularly with a wide variety of never-before-seen pieces of art reaching all the way back to Blizzard’s early days, so be sure to check back often!"

Link: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/community/conceptart/

The official word from the official forums. Officially!

Nathaera on whether Vashj'ir will overshadow the revamped zones

"You'll still need (if you decide to) level to 85 somewhere right? We have new zones that you'll be able to do that in as well as the revamped (some more significantly than others) zones."

Bornakk on Gnome Hunters

"This does sound interesting. I can see it as an event that coincides with Operation Gnomeregan. While the gnomes go to fight for their city, they need it as a refuge more than anything as everybody else (alliance races included) in the game will get a gold bounty for hunting down gnomes. Also, you can't expect the race to overhaul themselves in one pass. It takes a lot of focus and gnomish might to heal so please understand the difficulties these people are going through to make it happen."

Bornakk on the cost of "plushies"

"You can also see it as $10 for the in-game pet and only $15 for the plushy. They are pretty high quality too, at least that's what I'm told from people with more plushy experience than me, like Zarhym. There should be more available soon. Yeah, I don't have a better time frame to provide than that, so you have to keep an eye on the site." 

Vanera on sound issues with the Lil' XT pet

"A hotfix was recently applied, which temporarily disabled some of the sounds Lil’ XT makes. The issue was that some of his sounds were flagged in such a way that they play for everyone around him and not just the player that owns the pet, an annoying problem to be sure. We can’t alter volume or who the sounds play for through a hotfix so the temporary workaround is to disable them completely right now until the proper fix can be patched in later."

Eyeonix on "unrandom" loot in repeated ICC runs:

"Because it's random, you're just as likely to keep seeing the same drops as you are to see different drops. Each drop isn't dependant on what dropped before."

Eyeonix on what to do after completing Ashenvale:

"I personally don't ever go to STV until around 33-34 that way I'm not stuck in a position where I travel there to do only a couple of yellow quests and have everything turn red."

The latest from the official forums!

Bornakk

"There is currently an issue that we are aware of where gems and enchantments are missing from items that had them before we released patch 3.3.3 this week. This appears to be affecting some equipment that was acquired before the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. We are planning to resolve this during the next maintenance on Tuesday, March 30th, and recommend that you do not try to gem or re-gem any of this gear until after that time. We will provide further updates if this situation changes."

Eyonix (on why is there no railway in Kalimdor)

"I'd guess the Steamwheedle Cartel weighed production and maintenance costs vs. potential profit and it wasn't worth it."

Bornakk (responding to random battleground criticisms/questions)

"The random battleground feature just came out and we will see how it goes. Things can always change in the future but with a large amount of the player base being (or have multiple) level 80, we wanted to make sure this worked for that area and all of the existing battlegrounds."

"The Battlemasters/magical Dalaran portals are still there to assist you if this is what you are looking for. I just logged in and saw a list of the couple running BGs (it's early so not a lot is going on at the moment)."

"H (by default) accesses the new random and mobile battleground features, if you'd like to use this it works differently than the old way. The battlemasters will still exist if you would like to continue to do things the old way."

"The update we did in patch 3.3.3 is meant to emphasize the random battleground feature and overall help battlegrounds "pop" faster. If you are still looking to pick only certain existing battlegrounds, especially since you won't get the freebie marks from a quick win/loss now, you will need to do that through the battlemasters/portals."

 World of Warcraft players in China are one step closer to getting caught up with the US and Europe.

Despite World of Warcraft's huge popularity in China, publisher NetEase has had trouble getting content in The Burning Crusade approved for Chinese audiences. Some of the images and quests in the first expansion pack for WoW were deemed inappropriate by the General Application of Press and Publication (GAPP) and Ministry of Culture (MoC). For months, a legal battle ensued between the publisher and these parties, eventually resulting in a freeze on NetEase's right to accept new subscriptions for WoW at all. Accounts are finally available again, along with the expansion pack.

The Burning Crusade was actually available for Chinese players back when The9 published the game there. However, once NetEase took over, content had to be reapproved, and The Burning Crusade didn't make the cut. It's worth noting that vanilla WoW has a few slight differences in China, made to appease the GAPP and MoC's strict tendencies; for example, killing another player results in a neat little gravesite, as opposed to a rotting skeleton. At this time, it's unclear whether The Burning Crusade was approved as is, or if similar changes had to be made to get the content through. Either way, let's hope that China can get caught up by the time Cataclysm launches!

Despite the recent hefty Icecrown Citadel update, more content for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is planned before Cataclysm comes out. Responding to player queries, a Blizzard poster said this:

"There's a lot of content in Icecrown Citadel for those who like raids. There are plenty of bosses, a good deal of trash, quite the need for progression, and even random weekly quests which have varying degrees of difficulty. This is aside from the new boss in Vault of Archavon, the weekly raid quests in Dalaran, and the very popular cross-realm Dungeon Finder. We feel these features will bring enjoyment to those who like the PvE side of things for quite some time, allowing the average level 80 player to collect some great gear over time and hopefully have a shot at the Lich King before Cataclysm happens.

With that being said, we do have some additional PvE and PvP content and changes we plan to implement prior to the release of the big Cataclysm patch and subsequent retail release of that third expansion. We'll be discussing these new features in more detail in the coming weeks."

We can infer that this means Cataclysm isn't about to be pushed out the door anytime soon. Fall of the Lich King might be the last major content update between Wrath and Cataclysm, but if Blizzard feels the need to pad out the game's longevity even more, Cataclysm must still be a bit far off. 

Along with their financial update yesterday, Blizzard revealed that World of Warcraft has seen no growth in subscribers since 2008.

Yes, it seems World of Warcraft's userbase peaked this last year at 11.5 million. Coupled with the news that about 70% of players don't make it past level 10, things seem surprisingly less rosy than they ought to for the biggest MMO on the block. Still, it's not all bad; if 70% of players leave after level ten, but the number of users has held steady at 11.5 million, there must be enough new subscribers to fill in the gaps as others leave.

Wrath of the Lich King seemed to do nothing to spike these numbers. However, that's not so odd, considering it was mostly filled with high-level user content. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, the upcoming expansion pack, features a load of high-level and newbie content, including two new races. These are things that could cause a spurt of growth for the game again.

It could also be true that the game has just peaked. And, as scary as that may sound, it's really not a bad thing at all. Peaking at nearly 12 million subscribers is an impressive feat, and will ensure the game's longevity, even if it's not picking up as many new players as it used to. Considering WoW has been around since 2004, it's amazing that it's come this far. 

Last night, Blizzard rolled out a few new hotfixes, ammending patch 3.3.2 once again.

Most of the changes are small, but a couple of them are quite interesting. For one, the Titan-Forged Spaulders of Triumph that were supposed to be for druids can now actually be purchased by them, which is nice, and T10 plate armor now has a proper durability rating. Raging Spirits, one of the enemies from the Lich King boss fight, have also been nerfed slightly, taking a health decrease in normal and heroic raids - at least, in the 10 player runs. The full changes are listed below, and in our forum thread dedicated to the latest World of Warcraft patch.

" Source

• Titan-Forged Spaulders of Triumph are purchasable by druids as intended.
• Lovely Charms now stack to 40.
• Any player who has a Lovely Charm Collector's Kit in their bags now has a chance to receive a Lovely Charm when in a group or raid and a group member gets a killing blow as long as they are within a certain range of the kill.
• In all difficulties of the Lich King encounter, players who are tanking raging spirits are no longer valid Harvest Soul targets during phase 3, Vile Spirits in phase 3 now spawn at a greater height, and Vile Spirits in phase 3 will not be spawned as often.
• In the 10 player Lich King encounter, Raging Spirits have had their health decreased in both normal and heroic versions and then fewer Vile Spirirts will be summoned in just the 10 player normal mode.
• Svala Sorrowgrave in Utgarde Pinnacle should no longer get stuck in the air during her transformation phase.
• The Blue Sack of Gems earned from completing a random heroic Oculus dungeon is no longer tradeable.
• The Tier 10 tanking plate gloves and chest pieces now have their appropriate durability on them."

Activision Blizzard, publisher and developer of World of Warcraft, posted its Q4 2009 earnings report today, beating previous financial estimates.

Although the report bested many of Wall Street's predictions, the company still posted at a $286 million net loss, much more than last year's $72 million. Blizzard reports to have earned 49 cents per share. Activision Blizzard's net revenue was $1.56 billion.

Sales were driven by the wildly successful Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and bolstered by subscription money from World of Warcraft. For 2010, Activision Blizzard is predicting earnings around 70 cents per share.

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...Or at least, little baby plush ones. The Blizzard Store will soon release two plush toys, a Gryphon Hatchling and baby Wind Rider.

The toys will each come with a code for an in-game counterpart pet that both Horde and Alliance players can redeem. 

Has anyone having trouble logging in today? What began as a fairly routine bit of server downtime for maintainance has been extended far past what Blizzard originally projected. While the tinkering was originally supposed to be finished around noon today, the time has been extended several times, due to problems being discovered by the technicians. We have no idea what these "problems" actually are at this point, but Blizzard says the next update on the maintainance will be around 6pm.

The official thread for the maintanance is here. We'll keep you updated once Blizzard has a statement.

Hot on the heels of the announcement of new drops for the Lich King boss in Icecrown Citadel, the dungeon is receiving another change after server maintainance this week. Getting wiped on boss runs Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King will no longer result in a lost attempt. Don't expect this to be the last change to the Citadel, either, because according to Blizzard:

"We will continue to monitor developments in Icecrown Citadel in the future, especially since the Heroic difficulty has been unlocked by a significant number of raids." Source

For now, Heroic raids will still have a limited number of attempts in the Citadel. Our thread dedicated to the Icecrown raids can be found here.

It's been barely a week since patch 3.3.2 went live, and the Icecrown Citadel raid is already getting a few tweaks. The drops from the Lich King boss are going to be updated, according to a post on the European World of Warcraft forums. The changes are as follows:

"After reviewing several items available from the Lich King encounter, we've decided to re-optimise certain weapons that didn't meet with our expectations and the quality that the Lich King expects. The weapons listed below, both their Normal and Heroic versions, will now better represent their respective roles and present more intriguing options to players.

• Royal Scepter of Terenas II: MP5 replaced with Haste rating
• Archus, Greatstaff of Antonidas: Critical Strike replaced with Haste rating
• Heaven’s Fall, Kryss of a Thousand Lies: Armor Penetration replaced with Haste rating
• Stormfury, Black Blade of the Betrayer: Armor Penetration replaced with expertise rating
• Fal’inrush, Defender of Quel’thalas: Haste rating replaced with Armor Penetration"

The official thread can be read here, and it goes into great detail about the updated drops. These new items seem to be a much better reward for ending the Lich King than the game previously offered. 

We have a thread dedcated to The Lich King raid here in our forums for discussions on tactics and drops.

More hotfixes for 3.3.2 were revealed today, this time dealing specifically with the Death Knight and Paladin's tanking abilities. The changes, according to Blizzard, were made in response to initial observations of tanks in the new Icecrown Citadel run that was added in the original update.

"Paladin:

While the Paladin has taken a slight hit to a couple of his abilities, the Death Knight class has had stats slightly increased, which Blizzard says was done with PvP in mind. The official breakdown of the fixes can be read here. The majority of players seem to be elated at both the Death Knight's upgrade and the Paladin's cutbacks, although a few grumbly Paladins disagree with the changes.

Read up on the full notes and talk about it in our thread in the forums.

We've been busy working with PLAYXPERT to deliver a totally unique experience for you while you play the games you love. This new technology allows you to use gamer-inspired tools without the need to alt-tab. Now for those of you with dual monitors, this is already an option. But for the majority of users out there this will be a new luxury, allowing you to surf the web, chat with friends, listen to music and even kill process's all while still in-game.

We have built these Stratics Community tools just for you.

DOWNLOAD HERE

The hand-picked widgets that will come standard for our users:

• Universal chat across all major chat IM tools (Yahoo, Xfire, Windows Live, ICQ, AIM, Gtalk)
• Pandora for your music listening pleasure while you're raiding or grinding in-game (Pandora has a US only restriction)
• Web browser widget so you can access the stratics news, reviews and even your guild pages while in-game and
• Switchblade so you can test playing your favorite games with a Xbox 360 controller.
• GoogleGadgets – Allows the user access to the wealth of Google Gadgets in-game
• Notepad – Gives the user the ability to use the Notepad application in-game to take notes for quests, locations, etc.

*The technology works on XP and Vista but the in-game overlay system will not be available to Vista users until January. Take note – the updater will auto-upgrade your vista version when the in-game support is added.*

More about the Technology:

If the latency issues got you down Blizzard has created new realms and is offering free transfers.  According to Bornakk on the WorldofWarcraft.com forums check out the details:

We will be offering free character moves from selected high population realms to a brand new realm, Fizzcrank, to assist in population dispersal. The ability to move a character on the selected source realms will become available starting on Monday, November 10 at 12:00PM PST, and is scheduled to run until Monday, November 24 at 12:00PM PST.

In the event that these realms meet our transfer goals before the scheduled end date, the transfers to that realm will be disabled. We highly recommend that if you are planning to transfer that you do so at your earliest convenience. No characters will be eligible for these free moves once the transfers have been closed.

Once the transfers open you can begin your transfer by visiting the Character Move page located here: https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/character-move.html

We will continue to evaluate realms and add more free character moves as we feel they are needed.

This came to me via Nethaera and if you use the WoW Forums it is important!

All forums on the official World of Warcraft forums will be temporarily switched over to read-only mode. While we would like to make every effort to ensure the forums allow the community to interact with each other, the current situation does not allow for this, or allow Blizzard to relay information to the community. Thus, all forums will be available as read-only to allow us to share information with the public. We hope that we can keep the limitation of access to a minimum and revert the forums to full functionality as soon as possible.

 

  We have also posted up some information on the Wrath Launch Help Center that can be found here:

            http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12651004995&postId=126492765041&sid=1#0

Ghostcrawler said this quote will probably come back to haunt him, so might as well make it start now :)

There's some disdain on retribution specced paladins and how powerful they are in PVP. Ghostcrawler has put out a statement that they are aware of these issues and do plan on doing something about the damage that retribution paladins are currently doing. Here's the snippet:

Since these threads seem to be proliferating, I figure'd I'd just start a new one. Here is a quick Q&A.

Q: Is Ret OP?
A: Perhaps. We think Ret's dps isn't abnormally high in PvE, and may not even be high in PvP over the course of a long fight. Where we are worried is how much damage Ret can do up front. It's also Holy damage, which isn't a big deal when you're considering a fully sundered mob, but can turn into a lot of damage in PvP.

Q: Are we going to nerf Ret?
A: TO THE GROUND BABY. Okay, not really, but sometimes I can't resist. We'll see how much that quote comes back to haunt me. We will probably be making some changes soon, perhaps even hotfixes. We want to be very surgical about what we do. We don't want to overdo it, and we don't want to hurt their sustained PvE damage. When we've decided, I'll make sure you all know.

Q: Why did it take us this long to admit there was a problem when EVERYONE knew about it?
A: A couple of weeks ago there were some bugs with weapon equipping that caused some problems that of course were being exploited. We didn't want to nerf Ret TO THE GROUND BABY only to discover that the weapon problem was causing 90% of it.

Q: Enough about Ret. Unholy death knights are worse!
A: That wasn't a question, but we think we have Unholy in a better place now. We made some changes to a few deep talents (that the DK community is already aware of, so don't fret) to get Unholy's dps more in line. Also, you aren't going to see any PvP DKs for a long time, so we need to focus on paladins for now.

Q: Hi. Thanks for the update. While you're here, can I ask you all these other offtopic questions about paladins or the game in general?
A: ...