Blizzcon 2008 Ticket Sales Announced

I missed it yesterday, but Blizzard announced the sale of Blizzcon 2008 tickets starting August 11th.  I’ll be there with the whole crew for the third time, covering all the news from the show floor.

Patch notes by expirement

Well, officially the new patch notes are out, but the only thing they indicate for changes is:

 

New Calendar feature: Players will be able to access the new Calendar feature by clicking on the new icon located in the top right corner of their mini map. The calendar will track in game events, allow raid scheduling, and more. 

New Vanity Pet and Mount changes: Players will now be able to access their non-combat pets and mounts by clicking on the pets tab in the Character Info panel. These pets and mounts will be now learnable much like spells or abilities. Once a vanity pet or mount is learned, the icon will disappear from within a player’s inventory and reappear in the appropriate tab under the pet tab under Character Info. Say goodbye to your vanity pets and mounts taking up bag and bank slots!

But just a little bit of play time shows there are other differences.  For one thing, I verified the change to runic power decay that I mentioned in my post yesterday.  After going into combat and maxing out the runic power to 100/100, I sat around and waited to see what would happen.  As suspected, it just sat there at full.  If this is an intentional change, it’s certainly welcome!

The other major changes focus on Ebon Hold, the Death Knight starting area.  The area has been revised significantly, including a new flight path in and out of the city.  The flight path uses the new skeletal gryphon mount (shown below), which is also new Death Knight only mount at level 70 (The Winged Steed of the Ebon Blade).

 

 

The new skeletal gryphon mount leaves Ebon Hold

Also related to my previous post about Death Knight starting gear, I wanted to create a new Death Knight to get a screenshot of the first set of gear you start with.

 

A brand new Tauren with the Lich King

And another screenshot of pwnshop after completing the first set of quests to leave Ebon Hold and start my adventures in Outland.

 

Pwnshop posing in quest gear

The last bit of info I caught today was that Blizzard has immortalized some of the early Death Knight players by adding their names and stories to a book in Ebon Hold.  The book is only visible when playing as a brand new Death Knight, and supposedly its contents change as you advance in your initial quest line, so it’s something I’ll have to explore in a future post.

Unfortunately for me, the server was going down for a restart right when I finished up with these screenshots, so it looks like two nights in a row of logging in for about 10 minutes to experiment before being logged out again for the night.  With any luck I’ll get another good test session in soon, and get this little Death Knight into the 60s.

Until next time…

New patch to the beta servers

Blizzard rolled out another 235 MB patch to the beta realms tonight.  Although the patch notes haven’t been officially released (yet), I logged in and scanned the forums just long enough to find out what some of the changes were.

At least one person reported that the barber shops were now working, so I’ll have to give that a try on another day.  Another person suggested changes had been made to the Ebon Hold Death Knight starting area, perhaps tuning the quests in that area.

The most exciting news I heard was that runic power no longer decays!  There’s no telling at this point if this is a bug or an intentional change, but folks were reporting that after building up their runic power bar to full, it remained there even after leaving combat for several minutes.  That would be a very welcome change, in my opinion, provided it doesn’t come as a trade for something else.

As I hear more on this development and the official patch notes, I’ll keep you posted.

Thanks for dropping by!

Level 59

Made it to level 59 this morning on the Death Knight. I didn’t get the chance to train for the new spells yet, but I’ll be doing it soon. I did get the chance to travel to Theramore and complete the triage quest (to get trained for the heavy runecloth bandages). It’s definately something I’ll provide feedback about, since it’s silly to force Death Knights to run around Azeroth training up first aid for the half level before you head into Outland.

Death Knight Beginnings

I wanted to post a few observations about the early stages of being a Death Knight.  By now everyone knows that you start as a level 55 character, and begin a series of quests designed to help you get used to your new abilities.  I’m sure some of items I’m going to discuss in the post will be modified or “balanced” prior to the game going live (if I’m able to do so, I’ll try to verify this towards the end of the beta), but I thought they were interesting.

The first was the time it takes to get out of the Death Knight starting area of Ebon Hold, a floating mass north of Tyr’s Hold in the Eastern Plaguelands.  In reality this starting area is a finely controlled series of quests that appears to seamlessly take you through several instanced versions of the same location.  This is because there are several “zone events” you participate in during the introduction to the Death Knight class, and they seem to segregate those characters participating in the events away from those just running around the world.  Overall it creates a pretty unique experience compared to the more typical quest progression we’re all used to.  So how long does it take?  From the time I started the new character to the time I completed the last Death Knight quest and was able to explore the “normal” regions of Azeroth was 2 hours and 7 minutes.

Two other interesting items of note related to questing: when I turned in that last quest, I also hit level 57 at the same time, gaining a full two levels during the initial quest process.  I also noticed something about the quest density of the starting zone thanks to the new Achievements feature.  As I turned in the last quest, I was notified I had completed 50 quests total.  Yes, 50 quests.  I guess when you’re flying along bouncing between the exclamation marks and question marks, you don’t really notice how quickly you’re tearing through them.

Finally I wanted to point out how the talent progression works when you’re a young Death Knight.  In the starting area for the Death Knights you receive talent points as rewards for quests in addition to items and gold.  If I remember correctly, the individual quest rewards varied from 1 to 6 talent points when you turned in  quest.  This gives you a way to experience some of the character’s capabilities before being burdened wit the decision of how to spend all the talent points you would normally earn one at a time over the course of reaching level 55.  When you complete your final quest to break free of the starting area, you also receive your final talent points.

Speaking of gear, the starting quests of Ebon Hold will systematically replace each of your starting green items with a blue item, creating a character that is decked out completely in blue items by the time you start your own adventures.  Just how far into Outland those items will last remains to be scene, and will be a topic of several new posts here I’m sure.

So there you have it, a little info about the very early stages of a Death Knight’s life.

What am I doing here anyway?

It occurred to me that a little background information on what I’m trying to accomplish here is in order.

When I was involved in the Burning Crusade Beta, and the subsequent retail release of The Burning Crusade I was focused on speed.  I was leveling up as quickly as possible, without really stopping to enjoy the content.  When the retail version of The Burning Crusade was released, I went from level 60 to 70 in just under two weeks, playing as close as I could to non-stop while dealing with family and work at the same time.  For most of the process, I was likely so tired I just barely appreciated what I was even doing.

This time around I want to do things differently.  I’m in on the front side of the beta process, with a lot of time to spare before this “goes live”.  My many estimates, this beta is going to be around until at least Thanksgiving or Christmas.  So why not go slow?  Take in the scenery… Analyze the changes in depth… Really wring out the new software and help discover bugs…  That’s one of the reasons I started this blog.  If I know I’m writing about all of these experiences, I’m much more likely to take it slow, to enjoy what’s going on, and to now get caught up in the race to 80.

Off with my gear?

Earlier today WoW Insider asked a question I have been curious to discover the answer for myself: Just how soon will I replace my Burning Crusade Gear in the Wrath of the Lich King?

To start off I’m taking two existing characters into beta, which are:

1. Traks – lvl 70 Orc Hunter
2. Manattietu – lvl 70 Tauren Shaman

I also have a level 58 Death Knight for which this blog is named, and I’ll have a whole other post dedicated to the gear peculiarities of the Death Knight leveling process.

For comparison, my lvl 70s aren’t the most epic’d out toons you’ll see on the servers, in fact their not even close.  Just mostly blues from some 5-man instances with some random quest greens thrown in for show.  At this point all I remember about starting The Burning Crusade is it didn’t take long to replace even my epic gear which was obtained mostly from Molten Core at the time, so I’m very curious to see what happens in this round.  I can remember being so frustrated with how quickly gear was replaced in the TBC Beta that I essentially stopped gearing up my higher level character on the live in the months leading up to the expansion.

So how about this time?  I’m just hitting my first quest turn-ins on my Hunter, so I’ll keep you posted as things get replaced as they happen.  The real fun, for now though, is leveling my Death Knight.

The first step

Like all good journeys, this is where this particular one starts, the first step…

Earlier this week I was invited to join the beta testing program for the World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) expansion pack.  Last year when I attended Blizzard Entertainment’s Blizzcon 2007 event each attendee was given a “beta key for a future software beta”.  I had guessed it was for WotLK, but it was certainly a long wait to find out.

Now that I have my account activated for the beta, have downloaded and installed the 1.88GB of WotLK beta goodness, and have cleared out my social calendar for the next 5 months, I’m ready to rock!

Welcome, and stay tuned for updates from Northrend and beyond…