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[vitaflo]

So vita,

Do you think Burning Crusade's retail date is going to be anytime soon? I always thought before Black Friday....

How long is beta supposed to last?

They're pretty good at getting us info but the release date was never something they discussed, nor was how long alpha or beta would take.

That said, level cap right now is still 67, so all of the endgame content has not been touched at all yet, nor is it even in the beta as of now. I'm sure as they push more content out it will get included.

I was at Gamestop today and saw they had the release date down for Nov 21. Based on current progress, I'd doubt that they'd make this date.

 

[Teknopathetic]

"He's actually got a point, Tre. Once you hit Naxx gear, it's very possible for Rogues to stunlock Warriors into submission without any problems at all. No cooldowns needed.

It's scary crap, I have a friend who can just tear Warriors to shreds no matter what they're wearing, even the best in our guild. Has 6/8 Bonescythe, Death's Sting, unbuffed 1200something AP and 30/8/11 spec. That energy proc on 4pc Bonescythe alone is god with Seal Fate."

Which is indeed better than 99.98% of the entire rogue populace, however, it undermines said point if you need to be in the top 1 percent gear wise

Definitely scary, though.

"
But when he says better gear, he pretty much means the best gear. You won't be doing this stuff in anything prior to the overpowered shit that comes from Naxxramas.

Which will be outdated slop in a month. Dun dun dunnnnnn"

Which ultimately makes said point moot . Especially what with stamina re-itemization. Though I'd kill for a pair of Servo Arms.

 

[Alex]

I eagerly await overpowered Stamina reserves with my Warlock.

 

[border]

I'm still hoping for a release date that is pre-Black Friday, but the more I hear from the beta the less likely it seems. Flying mounts are still unaccessible, and so are the Caverns of Time. If major features like these still aren't ready for primetime, then I doubt that the game is really that close to shipping.

It's a pretty rare that I hope for a publisher to force a developer to ship a product, but in this case I'll make an exception. Please Vivendi -- make them push it out the door! I'm just so hyped for BC that I really don't care about the extra features -- it'll take me ages and ages to farm the gold for a flying mount, and Caverns of Time have never been a big draw since I don't care about the lore. I just want the new items and dungeons to play around in, and surely that will hold me until Blizzard can produce the less-essential elements.

 

[Alex]

They need to finish talents too, outside of subtlety, BC Rogue talents are abysmal.

 

[Teknopathetic]

"They need to finish talents too, outside of subtlety, BC Rogue talents are abysmal."

No kidding. Although I'm content to have my warlock parked for pvp and use my rogue for the new content.

 

[border]

I gotta imagine that the Level 67 cap exists just because they don't want Level 68 druids to get a flying travel form, since for whatever reason BC isn't ready to have a bunch of people flying around. Just make it a Level 70 spell and ship it, please...

 

[yacobod]

The condescension's cute, but unnecessary, equally geared the warrior will always have a relatively easy time vs. a rogue, due to the nature of the classes themselves, duel or not. Fact. I submit to you that if you're having trouble vs. a rogue, *you* might want to get some better gear on your warrior. I'm having trouble seeing how you could possibly be losing a duel to a rogue.

Also related to duels, it'd be pretty embarrassing if you blow all your cooldowns to beat a warrior (maybe), he asks for a duel and you have to respond "wait plz!" I suppose if you spend all day outside Org/IF dueling it doesn't matter, but I'd definitely not talk about what a class should do vs. another class if something as pointless as duels is your only concern.

again duels are for fun

i used to enjoy dueling outside of org or stormwind in between battlegrounds, back when their used to be long que times

i have extensive history dueling all classes, except for paladins since i played horde

just because your rogue is poorly geared and you cant beat warriors in duels or w/e, doesnt mean that warriors >>>> rogues in duels

go to the rogue forums, download some vids, Ming comes to mind (i'm sure there are tons other that might even be better), and you will see, i'm not gonna debate this fact, at high lvl rogues are better than warriors in duels

you can flame me all you want, but i was one of the top pvp warriors on my server, had an outstanding reputation on my server, have spent a lot of time pvping, dueling, blah blah blah

i will concede that in general, that i handled most rogues pretty easily in pvp and in duels, but exceptionally skilled and geared rogues are very difficult to defeat

just because you dont have experience doing it, doesnt mean it aint possible

and have you ever pvp'd extensively as a warrior? you bring up warriors using pvp trinket, relying on the pvp trinket is the same as a rogue relying on cool downs, so

 

[Teknopathetic]

"I gotta imagine that the Level 67 cap exists just because they don't want Level 68 druids to get a flying travel form, since for whatever reason BC isn't ready to have a bunch of people flying around. Just make it a Level 70 spell and ship it, please..."

Alex, as someone who's played MMOs as much as you have, you should know better than to rush MMO related releases And in case anyone's wondering, no, I'm not going to bother :lol

 

[ManaByte]

They're pretty good at getting us info but the release date was never something they discussed, nor was how long alpha or beta would take.

That said, level cap right now is still 67, so all of the endgame content has not been touched at all yet, nor is it even in the beta as of now. I'm sure as they push more content out it will get included.

I was at Gamestop today and saw they had the release date down for Nov 21. Based on current progress, I'd doubt that they'd make this date.

There's also the matter of the whole opening the Dark Portal world event to get into the live game

 

[ZombieSupaStar]

There's also the matter of the whole opening the Dark Portal world event to get into the live game

so are the new races availible at launch and just the outland is locked?

 

[border]

Alex, as someone who's played MMOs as much as you have, you should know better than to rush MMO related releases

I'm not Alex -- bring on the hastily produced $40 beta version please!

so are the new races availible at launch and just the outland is locked?

By all accounts, the Outland is accessible and open. There just isn't any sort of World Event that opens up the Outland. If the AQ gate opening is anything to go by, I really don't want to see such a thing (assuming that it'd require 500,000 mats or whatever).

 

[Teknopathetic]

"I'm not Alex -- bring on the hastily produced $40 beta version please! "

Got the names mixed up. But the point remains, you DON'T want that, man!

 

[border]

Getting the authentication servers to hold up under the load would probably be the main issue for the BC launch....if they could handle that, I don't much care about missing content (assuming that dungeons and leveling still work).

 

[Teknopathetic]

"Getting the authentication servers to hold up under the load would probably be the main issue for the BC launch....if they could handle that, I don't much care about missing content (assuming that dungeons and leveling still work)."

In the history of MMOkind, generally speaking, even when the game is "finished" and released without being rushed the shit's crazy busted on release day .

 

[firex]

I don't think all of the outland zones are in. Just some basic models/artwork. None of the stuff I've seen looks at all like the expansion areas.

Anyway, I think the Dark Portal opening isn't going to require farming a bunch of mats or anything - it's supposedly going to involve the return of some Warcraft heroes. I'm sure it'll be a laggy server crashing festival, but oh well.

Also, after looking at the change to the ret tree, my blood elf pally's going to level up as a retnoob at the least. Maybe I'll stick with it and go retnoob/holy endgame. Especially since I was considering pvping. And I kind of wonder what happened with the Lasting Judgement removal. They may have given an undocumented change to judgement durations, similar to the undocumented change to shaman weapon buffs (rockbiter now adds damage based on weapon speed instead of AP, and all weapon buffs apparently last 30 minutes).

 

[ManaByte]

By all accounts, the Outland is accessible and open. There just isn't any sort of World Event that opens up the Outland. If the AQ gate opening is anything to go by, I really don't want to see such a thing (assuming that it'd require 500,000 mats or whatever).

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=30074700&postId=302903057&sid=1

Everything in life is a learning process, and we have learned a lot from every in-game event we have done as to how they can be improved. I'm not going to give anything away, but the player 'clumping' that you have concerns with is something we're specifically attempting to avoid. The re-opening of the dark portal is an event that will change Azeroth as we currently know it, and it's only fitting that the tremble of such an event is felt throughout the world. It's still likely that players will group up at the portal, but the event we're planning won't encourage it as the AQ event did.

Yes, there is a World Event to open the Dark Portal.

Anyway, I think the Dark Portal opening isn't going to require farming a bunch of mats or anything - it's supposedly going to involve the return of some Warcraft heroes. I'm sure it'll be a laggy server crashing festival, but oh well.

Did you play the War II expansion?

The heroes that are statues in the Valley of Heroes did go through the Dark Portal...

 

[Teknopathetic]

"Yes, there is a World Event to open the Dark Portal."

Yeah, but if you think it'll be anything like the AQ world event, you're nuts. I don't think blizzard's dumb enough to make large groups of people spend hours doing random shit just to play what they just spent 50$+ bucks on.

 

[ManaByte]

"Yes, there is a World Event to open the Dark Portal."

Yeah, but if you think it'll be anything like the AQ world event, you're nuts. I don't think blizzard's dumb enough to make large groups of people spend hours doing random shit just to play what they just spent 50$+ bucks on.

That's because the World Event will likely happen before the expansion is released.

I doubt it'll be the grind fest AQ was.

But anyone who thinks the entire ****ing server ISN'T going to gather at the portal, they're seriously delusional.

 

[Meantime]

I almost feel bad for the alliance players who will be reminded of what world PvP is.

People really still wheel out the "LOL alliance can't PvP!!! LOL!!!" schtick with a straight face?

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

He's actually got a point, Tre. Once you hit Naxx gear, it's very possible for Rogues to stunlock Warriors into submission without any problems at all. No cooldowns needed.

It's scary crap, I have a friend who can just tear Warriors to shreds no matter what they're wearing, even the best in our guild. Has 6/8 Bonescythe, Death's Sting, unbuffed 1200something AP and 30/8/11 spec. That energy proc on 4pc Bonescythe alone is god with Seal Fate.

But when he says better gear, he pretty much means the best gear. You won't be doing this stuff in anything prior to the overpowered shit that comes from Naxxramas.

I got a buddy in our server's top PvE guild; I used to duel him when he was in BWL gear. I don't any more. :lol

Seriously, you just don't LIVE thru that stunlock that a Bonescythed out PvE rogue, or much past it with a trink pop. I saw another Rogue in their guild in a WSG I was in on, and he just camped below their GY, cuisinarting anyone who dared take the quick way down. Frightening.

Which will be outdated slop in a month. Dun dun dunnnnnn

Not really. Matched? Oh hell yah. But it will take a bit longer for outdated, probably.

 

[Alex]

I disagree, on the grounds that the favored stat will be Stamina in BC, and as a Warlock with Demonic Embrace, I for one welcome our new 10,000 hp overlords.

Oh man, when WoW came out, the bugs drove me nuts. But I don't think BC will be too buggy upon release.

Early WoW! When Paladins were gods, Warlocks and Warriors paupers, etc, etc.

Early WoW bugs drove me bonkers though. Every class I played had some huge bug. The attack speed and pet bugs with Hunters, the... 10,000 bugs on Warlock, and so on and so forth.

 

[Teknopathetic]

"I disagree, on the grounds that the favored stat will be Stamina in BC, and as a Warlock with Demonic Embrace, I for one welcome our new 10,000 hp overlords."

It will be good times. Soul Link is going to be stupid.

 

[Ferrio]

Some decent changes to BC Rogue Combat tree

Combat
# Blade Twisting - Moved up two tiers to one column left of Weapon Expertise. Reduced to 2 ranks for 10/20% chance to proc the daze effect.
# (NEW) Combat Potency - Where Blade Twisting was. 5 ranks that "Gives your successful off-hand melee attacks a 20% chance to generate 3/6/9/12/15 Energy."

Finally a skill that increases energy regen... should be interesting.

 

[Outdoor Miner]

World events are lame.

Blizzard has such sickly talented CG artists and they're going to waste. Imagine a kickass CG scenes for the AQ and Dark Portal openings. Everyone updates their client, and fires up WoW and are greeted with a CG scene. Fantastic, great, good. Now you enter the game and all's already been explained to you, and the gameworld has undergone whatever cosmetic changes Bliz had planned.

Pretty sad they can't even make one for BC. Instead we get that in-game realtime shit that looks so amateurish. This is your cash cow Bliz, please treat it as such.

 

[MrPing1000]

From what I've heard I'm expecting the event to be viewable by everyone when it happens. Of course how they'd do that I have no idea.

 

[Son of Godzilla]

World events are lame.

Blizzard has such sickly talented CG artists and they're going to waste. Imagine a kickass CG scenes for the AQ and Dark Portal openings. Everyone updates their client, and fires up WoW and are greeted with a CG scene. Fantastic, great, good. Now you enter the game and all's already been explained to you, and the gameworld has undergone whatever cosmetic changes Bliz had planned.

Pretty sad they can't even make one for BC. Instead we get that in-game realtime shit that looks so amateurish. This is your cash cow Bliz, please treat it as such.

Pretty certain they confirmed a CG opening for BC.

 

[Outdoor Miner]

Pretty certain they confirmed a CG opening for BC.

Excellent then!

 

[explodet]

Good to know Blizzard learned their lesson after the AQ gate opening events went between laggy to disastrous.

One story I heard: Some guy paid to transfer his account to a new server. This character had an finished AQ scepter. He rang the gong and started the world event - only he did it a few minutes before server maintenance. By the time the server came back up the event was over.

 

[vitaflo]

I'm still hoping for a release date that is pre-Black Friday, but the more I hear from the beta the less likely it seems. Flying mounts are still unaccessible, and so are the Caverns of Time.

Caverns of Time are actually in the game and ready for testing, there is a just a bug they've found that's a show stopper, so they pulled the plug on it in the Beta for the time being until that's fixed.

 

[vitaflo]

I don't think all of the outland zones are in. Just some basic models/artwork. None of the stuff I've seen looks at all like the expansion areas.

All of the outland zones are currently in Beta. There is some content that's still not accessible, like the lvl 70 raids, etc, but the zones are there.

 

[Son of Godzilla]

Huh, is that a way to get the bug mount even after AQ has opened? Complete the quest but don't collect your weapon reward, transfer to some unopened server, bang the gong, and transfer back (If you want to)? $50, but if someone is bored enough to do the quest nowadays I don't see that stopping them...

And I for one hope that the world event is less about opening the stupid portal than it is about Cthulhu crashlanding it's space ship next to the World Stump.

 

[explodet]

I believe there's still the matter of collecting all the materials on both sides to get the gate opened. But after that I don't think there's anything to stop someone from opening the gates with a character from another server.

Reports from the BC beta are saying that the mage water elemental is fairly decent - it's got a 500 water bolt and a ranged frost nova that the mage can target. I might go back to full frost with a splash of fire. Oh, and Invisibility is the new Feign Death - after the 8 second fadeout, total aggro wipe and the caster is removed from combat. Eight seconds is a long time, but it can't be resisted as far as I know.

I want BC noooooooooow.

And I for one hope that the world event is less about opening the stupid portal than it is about Cthulhu crashlanding it's space ship next to the World Stump.

That'd be great. Bunch of Dranei come scurrying out of the ship, Cthulhu stomping around...
"C'Thun was a pussy. Say hello to the real deal."

 

[Son of Godzilla]

I probably missed the BC lock talent discussion here, as I wasn't too interested in the game till a week or so ago.

Basically it seems to me that some combination of DS/Conflag is miles beyond any other combo. I mean, Affliction is still a joke, an even worse one now with incenerate. I guess Unstable Affliction holds some appeal, but there's no way I'd pass up DS or Ruin for it. Same goes for Shadowfury.

Demonology seems phenomenal for undergeared people, but seeing as how all the boosts aside from DS/MS are set and don't scale with equip it's definently limited. They need to toss Locks a bone the same way they did Hunters and make pets scale with gear.

 

[fallout]

People really still wheel out the "LOL alliance can't PvP!!! LOL!!!" schtick with a straight face?

People really still get that offended so easily? Oh, and the "LOLs" added with the extra exclamation points? Beautiful touch.

I wasn't saying that at all. I assume that there are also Horde players who have no idea what world PvP is like ... I just can't help teach them because I cannot kill them. They're on my side. I guess I should have expanded a little more on what I was saying ... I was just a little excited at the time. Before the battlegrounds came out (and before multi-queue/major city queue battlegrounds came out), people spent more time out in the world. Trying to level at this time was a little painful, especially when you got into the game a little late like I did. Still, it teaches you a lot.

World PvP is a grossly different beast than a battleground. The numbers aren't always fair, the level difference isn't always fair and that's what makes it interesting. Things like watching your back at all times while you're trying to bring down some mob, or running across a group of 5 by yourself and having to run your ass to safety. Ever take down a guy 5-10 levels higher than you who tried to gank you? Great feeling.

So, apologies to the alliance players that I may have offended with my previous statement.

 

[Teknopathetic]

"Basically it seems to me that some combination of DS/Conflag is miles beyond any other combo. I mean, Affliction is still a joke, an even worse one now with incenerate. I guess Unstable Affliction holds some appeal, but there's no way I'd pass up DS or Ruin for it. Same goes for Shadowfury."


I dunno, I'd bet my money that Siphon Life and Conflag will be a much more popular combo as it'll give much needed survivability to someone who just stopped at Conflag (for PvP). Although if you're speaking PvE you may be onto something.

 

[Hero]

I probably missed the BC lock talent discussion here, as I wasn't too interested in the game till a week or so ago.

Basically it seems to me that some combination of DS/Conflag is miles beyond any other combo. I mean, Affliction is still a joke, an even worse one now with incenerate. I guess Unstable Affliction holds some appeal, but there's no way I'd pass up DS or Ruin for it. Same goes for Shadowfury.

Demonology seems phenomenal for undergeared people, but seeing as how all the boosts aside from DS/MS are set and don't scale with equip it's definently limited. They need to toss Locks a bone the same way they did Hunters and make pets scale with gear.

???

Today they just announced warlock pets will scale.

Warlock pets scale in two ways:


* Melee Attack Power: All warlock pets, including the Fel Guard, receive 57% of your +damage gear (probably specifically +shadow but unconfirmed). This means that if you have 463 +damage, your Felguard will receive (463 * .57) = 263 bonus attack power on top of the 238 base, which equals 501 attack power total.

At the moment all of our pets receive the same percentage bonus, and they all have the same base melee attack power (238), except for the imp who has 112 base (the imp doesn't melee at all though so this is irrelevant).
* +Spellpower: Your imp receives 46% of your +damage gear. Firebolt has a 2 second casting time, so it receives 2/3.5 = 57% from +damage. So if you have 463 +damage, he will hit for 159 base + 463(.46)(.57) = 280 per firebolt. This has been tested with different values of +damage gear and is pretty accurate.
* Resistances: Your pet receives roughly 40% of your spell resistances. So if you have 100 Shadow Resistance, he will get 40 SR. If you have 134 FR, he will get 53, etc

Also, demonology warlocks will be one of the most powerful classes in PVP.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3692404574296515634&q=Felguard&hl=en

That's freaking ridiculous.

Also, for Ferrio and other rogues:

Spells
Disembowel - Removed.
(NEW) Envenom - Replaces Disembowel. Two ranks and is available at level 62. “Finishing move that consumes your Deadly Poison doses on the target and deals instant poison damage. One dose is consumed for each combo point.”

Combat
Vitality - Now "Increases your total Stamina by 2/4% and your total Agility by 1/2%."
Surprise Attacks - Changed to 8% from 5%.

Subtlety
Cheat Death - Now 3 ranks for 10/20/30% chance.
Sinister Calling - Now "Increases your total Agility by 3/6/9/12/15%."
Cloak of Shadows - Now "Instantly removes all existing harmful spell effects and increases your chance to resist all spells by 90% for 5 sec."

Assassin needs to be buffed. Disembowel isn't even worth training. It should give effects based upon what poisons are on your weapons + dmg. Who honestly uses deadly poison?

Combat...Vitality is meh. Needs to be like 4/8% stamina and 3/6% agility to be 'decent.' Overall the combat tree is pretty nice. Surprise Attacks should make our special abilities unblockable as well.

Subtlety..I never thought I would consider a heavy sub. build. But Cheat Death sounds good on paper, can't wait to try it out. Sinister Calling is pretty nice. Cloak of Shadows updated sounds ridiculously overpowered. Super PVP trinket on a 2 minute timer with an additional 5 seconds of (theoretical) spell immunity. Sign me up.

 

[Son of Godzilla]

I dunno, I'd bet my money that Siphon Life and Conflag will be a much more popular combo as it'll give much needed survivability to someone who just stopped at Conflag (for PvP). Although if you're speaking PvE you may be onto something.

Actually I had something like 21/40 in mind, picking up at least Backlash and Soul Leech instead of just stopping at Conflag. You'd lose insta corruption, but honestly I wouldn't miss it. Backlash is just insane right now, and I'm not sure just how much survivabilty Affliction could offer over saccing a VW, the 15% sta, 3% hp demonology gets now, and Soul Leech. The new Drain is nice, but it's kinda counter-productive to heavy Destro.

Edit: Wow nevermind all that, gogo Demon spec.

 

[Teknopathetic]

"Actually I had something like 21/40 in mind, picking up at least Backlash and Soul Leech instead of just stopping at Conflag. You'd lose insta corruption, but honestly I wouldn't miss it. Backlash is just insane right now, and I'm not sure just how much survivabilty Affliction could offer over saccing a VW, the 15% sta, 3% hp demonology gets now, and Soul Leech. The new Drain is nice, but it's kinda counter-productive to heavy Destro."


It is hard to pass up Backlash and Soul Leech .

As far as heavy destro goes, I'm really thinking the most efficient build is probably the current heavy destro build with the extra 10 points thrown right into Destro again, 7/5/49. With the extra damage and crit you'll be hitting like a freight train and with Soul Leech, Backlash and Nether Protection you're going to be a pain in the ass to just about everyone. And what is even scarier is that I haven't even really considered Incinerate and how that benefits from Emberstorm, Shadow and Flame, Immolate, and Fel Armor.

And that Fel Guard video is sick.

 

[Son of Godzilla]

Yea, now I'm not sure at all how to spec. Pet scaling kinda throws DS out the window. All I know is that every single build I ever take now will include Imp Imp and Imp Firebolt.

 

[firex]

All of the outland zones are currently in Beta. There is some content that's still not accessible, like the lvl 70 raids, etc, but the zones are there.

I didn't mean beta, I meant the current retail game client.

 

[Ferrio]

Well my guild is currently deteriorating. People don't have the steam to do raids anymore with BC looming ahead, so there's low turnouts. Which in turn causes the people who are more hardcore wanna jump ship to join another guild to raid (I guess for a month? Geez).

I'm not too worried though, the guild needed to be wittled down due to the low raid cap in BC. This just gives us all a nice break to recooperate for BC and less headache for manually cutting people out of raids in BC.

 

[SaitoH]

It's weird, I'd expect the same situation with my guild, but sign-ups have steadily gotten worse. BWL and AQ40 priest sign-ups were filled in 8 minutes after posting. I'm on the waiting list again this week.

=(

 

[Tamanon]

It's weird, I'd expect the same situation with my guild, but sign-ups have steadily gotten worse. BWL and AQ40 priest sign-ups were filled in 8 minutes after posting. I'm on the waiting list again this week.

=(

We would've killed for that attendance

 

[Ramirez]

Anyone heard anything about what races are on the Hawkstiders?I want one for my tauren,but I'm highly doubting they'll be able to ride them

 

[Ferrio]

Heh, my guild just went "POOF".

 

[Alex]

Affliction is great, Demo is great and Destro is great.

With the polishing up of Demo they did in the 10/17 revision today, I have no more complaints with Warlock talents.

Our talents go from trash to some of the best in BC. Huzzah!

 

[border]

Heh, my guild just went "POOF".

It's because they let you have Thunderfury!

 

[MrPing1000]

we really can't kill moam

 

[Teknopathetic]

"we really can't kill moam"

I <3 Moam. If only because giant faux-egyptian mythological shit makes me swoon. That arcane explosion's a mother****er, though.