Adam enjoys all the different aspects of the World of Warcraft, although he mainly plays his Shaman, Priest, and Warrior. You can find more information about Adam at his personal blog: www.doyouhave.info
One of the more controversial parts of the Patch 3.2 PTR was the decision to remove the 2v2 bracket from serious arena play. In the 3.2 patch notes thus far it was said that "The newest season of Arena gear can only be purchased if you meet the requirements with your 3 or 5-player team rating. Rating requirements from 2-player teams can still be used to purchase the previous season of gear."
That effectively killed off the 2v2 bracket.
However today, Blizzard has done an about face on the issue. Sort of. Not that this is a bad thing, mind you. They're listening to feedback and this patch is in testing. The fact that they're willing to make such a major change based on feedback they've received is a great thing.
So as of today, your 2v2 rating will count towards your ability to purchase gear, etc... It will mean something. However the following exceptions apply:
The current season's weapons will not be available for purchase with your 2v2 rating
The current season's shoulders will not be available for purchase with your 2v2 rating
Your 2v2 rating will not count towards the Gladiator title/rewards
Blizzard just released their Warlock Q&A with Ghostcrawler and pals. This follows in the series of many others, which you can find in WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2.
Some of the highlights of this Q&A session include:
Blizzard is considering giving different models to Warlock pets.
Blizzard wants to make the Warlock experience more different from that of a Mage.
Affliction and Destruction are doing good damage, Demonology is lagging behind.
Warlocks are underrepresented in PvP currently, this needs to be fixed.
Basic idea for the new Soul Shard system: Soul Shards will provide a combat (damage) boost, but should not be something Locks need to farm. This change will be beyond Patch 3.2., with more information ideally at BlizzCon 2009. A new Soul Shard system sure would be a Cataclysmic event, right?
Soulshatter cooldown is going to be lowered to 3 minutes.
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.
I have to admit, o' faithful Queue readers, that I considered pawning off answering questions today to someone else so I could have more time to catch up on other work. Patch days can get quite busy around the WoW.com head quarters.
Last night for example. Alex, Mike Sacco, and I had heard that there was a new raid lockout extension feature in place, so we rushed onto the Patch 3.2 PTR to grab some screenshots. Of course that meant we had to deal with the thing crashing every few minutes. And once we finally did make it into ZG to get a quick boss kill, Sacco disconnected and the server announced a shutdown in 5 minutes. But hey, we got the kill off and the screenshots captured with 15 seconds left until the shutdown. We won!
Aideros asked...
"When are more "hero classes", like the Death Knight, coming out? What are the speculations? Has anything been said about them since WotLK?"
The Patch 3.2 PTR Patch Notes from the official sites have been updated this evening. There are a few notable changes, and you can read the full new patch notes after the break.
Some of the key changes include:
Item Level: A new option has been added under Display in the Interface Options to show the item level on item tooltips.
The frame rate for those with Shadow Effects enabled under the Ultra Video settings has been improved.
As if the Engineering changes today weren't enough for you, Nethaera has just announced a major bombshell:
Blizzard is implementing a faction switching service.
There is no immediate indication if this will be a free service or a pay service, however based on their past name change, character appearance, and server transfer services it likely will carry with it a small fee.
People have been talking about the ability for characters to switch races and factions for a long time. It appears to finally be here. Neth mentions that "the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm."
She goes on to say that this will be carefully orchestrated to limit the impact in gameplay, and that they don't have all the details worked out yet. There are a lot of things to work out in this – mounts, quests, tabards, pets, achievements, etc... You don't really want to see a Blood Elf Paladin riding around on a Human Charger.
Stay tuned for more information on this very cool change as it's released.
Zarhym has just released some major Engineering changes for the upcoming Patch 3.2. These changes are a long time coming for those of the Engineering profession, and many folks will be quite pleased by them. There are 19 total changes that Zarhym announced – that's quite a lot for any patch.
Some of the ones that stand out include:
Mind Amplification Dish – Head enchant, allows engineers to control other humans. Does not work in Arenas, sometimes reverses targets.
Portable Wormhole Generator for Northrend – Allows the engineer to travel about Northrend Deep Space 9 style.
Repair Bot Jeeves – A repair bot for the entire raid, who also allows bank access for 350+ engineers. Jeeves is not destroyed on use, and can be summoned once per hour. Schematic is apparently randomly hidden within another summonable bot.
A Steam-Powered Auctioneer has been added to the Dalaran Like Clockwork engineering shop, allowing access to one's faction Auction House. The Steam-Powered Auctioneer was programmed with a superiority chip, and will only interact with Grand Master engineers.
Take a look after the break for the complete list.
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.
Today's music comes from a viewing of Scrubs I was, at the time, forced to watch by the girlfriend Katie. They had this great band playing at the end called The Polyphonic Spree. Today's featured reading music is the aforementioned band performing Light & Day ("Reach for the Sun").
It really doesn't have anything to do with anything, but they're hippies and jump around a lot while making some rather cool and unique music. Plus they have this cultish vibe to them. The Leader is good, The Leader is great, we surrender our will as of this date.
Hey look! World of Warcraft related things coming up now...
Many people asked...
"The PTR you download from the official WoW site is still 3.1! How are people getting on the Patch 3.2 PTR?"
Noobding has some fun tips for the Midsummer Fire Festival., including "Always walk sideways when in crab disguise... otherwise you're pretty obviously not getting into the whole crab thing properly."
