New PTR Realm Test, Sun Darter Hatchling, Tweets, Build of the Month, WowCraft #37

[chaud]

The Lore and Secrets of the Shrouded Moors, New Diablo 3 Zone Coming in Patch 2.6

Top HearthPwn Standard and Wild Decks of the Week for June 25

New PTR Realm Test - Temporus

Starting today we’ll be performing a connected realm test on the PTR and we’re looking for as many players as possible to help. A new temporary realm named ‘Temporus’ will be coming online from 6/23 until 6/26. Character copy is enabled on this realm, we would like you to copy your Live characters over to this realm via the ‘Character Copy’ button, log in, and take stock of your character’s gear and progress, including:
[*]Completed quests[*]In-Progress quests and current progression[*]Current gear loadout[*]Achievements (both earned and in-progress)[*]Pets and mounts

Then, on Monday 6/26 the realm will come down and we’ll be connecting Temporus to the other PTR realms. Once complete, we’ll need those participating to log back in and check our work! Please comment below with your findings. We’re especially interested in finding out if anything is missing, or if there are any gameplay progression issues and other things of that nature.

Thanks in advance for your participation! Please keep an eye on this thread for any updates.

Sun Darter Hatchling Guide
The WoW secrets discord recently discovered how to get the Sun Darter Hatchling. Items needed to complete the puzzle:

• Major Fire Protection Potion
  
• Major Arcane Protection Potion
  
• Major Frost Protection Potion
  
• Major Holy Protection Potion
  
• Major Shadow Protection Potion
  
• 10x Noggenfogger Elixir
  
• Scotty’s Lucky Coin
  
• Dire Brew
  
• Ethereal Oil
  
• Gordok Ogre Suit
  
• Winterfall Firewater
  
• 10x Pygmy Oil
  
• Perky Pug
  
• “Little Princess” Costume
  
• Scroll of Intellect

Step-by-Step Guide:
Make sure to follow the guide down to the letter, otherwise you might have to start over!

• Enter the cave at 57.0, 16.0 (North coast of Winterspring)
• To get past the first barrier (orange) use a Major Fire Protection Potion
• To get past the second barrier (green) use the other 5 potions you collected (Frost, Holy, Nature, Shadow, Fire, Arcane)
• To get past the Diligent Watcher use Noggenfogger Elixir until you become a skeleton, which will allow you to walk past him
• When you get to the split in the path, go to the wall of vines and use Scotty’s Lucky Coin
• Once transformed, you can enter the room and pick up the Water Stone from the pool — use the stone, and you'll be granted a buff allowing you to get past the blue barrier (backtrack to where the road splits and you will see it)
• Use Dire Brew to walk past the Stone Watcher
• The path splits into three at this point - you will need to follow them in the order described below
• First, go up the ramp towards the purple barrier on the right side, and use Ethereal Oil to get through it
• You will see a Strange Stone with a hole for your arm - use Gordok Ogre Suit and Winterfall Firewater, then click the stone
• Second, go back to the gate on the left and use x10 Pygmy Oil until you become a Pygmy — this will allow you to walk through the gate to the Wisdom Cube
• Summon your Perky Pug and use the “Little Princess” Costume on it, then interact with the cube and select Place arm beneath cube.
• Head back to the intersection and go towards the gate at the bottom
• The gate should be open, and the corridor leads to a Tarnished Plaque — make sure to click it
• Before entering the water, cancel your Winterfall Firewater buff by right clicking on it, and apply the Scroll of Intellect to yourself
• Then you can enter the water and loot the pet from the Oddly-Colored Egg
• Make sure you enter the lake through one of the two paths, otherwise you will get ported out
• If you get ported out at any point just run back in, you should be able to make it back to the point you got kicked out at
• Congrats on your new Sun Darter Hatchling!

Blue Tweets

Just obliterated 3 pieces of pvp gear and only got 3 Echoes of Battle in total. Is this a bug?
You can now obliterate Legion Season 4 Battleground-quality gear for a few Echoes. Gladiator gear is worth more. (WarcraftDevs)

Ghostcrawler Tweets
Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard.

A more general game design question if I may. You’ve worked previously on WoW and now LoL, two massively popular live games that continue to be iterated. I’m curious if game developers and game designers have some sort of rule or measure that determines when it’s time for the game to stop being updated and instead moved towards a full on sequel.
It’s ultimately a business decision.

If, for example, you sell a box copy of your game then you probably drive more revenue if you just make a new game every year or two rather than try to keep supporting an older version of the game. Sports games that release a new edition every season and some franchises that are on their eighth or higher sequel do so because players have demonstrated they will pay for those. Dungeons and Dragons has gone through five editions now, and that’s at least in part because the core rulebooks are their most reliable products in terms of sales. You need a new rulebook to support a new edition.

League is a free to play game, so we would get no benefit from making a League 2, at least in terms of “selling” more copies. It’s possible we could make a huge marketing splash if we made a big enough deal about how League 2 is coming, and that might get more players in the short term, but we think we can keep players ultimately happier just by iterating on what we have today rather than a massive rebranding exercise.

Sometimes developers feel that they can solve systemic problems by starting with a clean slate. For example, if your rules or content become too complex, maybe it makes sense to start over (which is another reason D&D makes versions). If your veteran players are too far removed from newer players, a reset is a good way to bring everyone to parity once again.

I do want to add that I often get the perception from some players that making a sequel can be a good way to clean the slate technically as well. I’ll get questions about WoW or LoL and how just starting over with a new engine would let us do more. But game engines aren’t like car engines that you just plug into a chassis. If you want to add a new pathfinding algorithm, or renderer, or particle emitter, or matchmaking system to your game, you can do that to your existing code base. While it might be cleaner sometimes to start with no legacy code, it might also take years to re-create every feature in a brand new code base. For example, we’re almost finished with a brand new client for League, and we didn’t have to spin up League of Legends 2 to do so. (Source)

Build of the Month - June 2017
Each month or so we will post a couple of hardware setups for those of you who are thinking of upgrading their computer!

All of the parts on this page are Amazon affiliate links. When you purchase your parts through them it helps support the site!

This month
There is currently a shortage of GPUs, resulting in availability issues and drastically increased prices.

The current SSD prices are fairly flat right now, with most SSDs under $0.50 per gigabyte when on sale.

Depending on how much you want to overclock, you may need to spend a bit more for a better CPU cooler like the NH-D15.

Unless you are doing a lot of video rendering or streaming, you do not need the 7700K and would get more performance from spending that money elsewhere.

Make sure to keep your AMD and Nvidia drivers up to date.

Don't forget to visit the Computer Forum for any extra questions!

Peripherals

Puppy

Monitor	ASUS VS228T-P 22-Inch Monitor	$89
Keyboard	Microsoft Wired Keyboard 600	$13
Mouse	Logitech G Pro	$50
Speakers	Creative A250 2.1	$30

Dolphin

Monitor	ASUS VS248H-P 24-Inch Monitor	$139
Keyboard	Logitech G105	$39
Mouse	Razer DeathAdder Elite	$55
Speakers	Logitech Z313	$34

Narwhal

Monitor	Dell U2414H Monitor	$225
Keyboard	Logitech G710+	$75
Mouse	Logitech G502	$56
Speakers	Logitech Z323 2.1	$40

Unicorn

Monitor	Dell U2715H Monitor	$470
Keyboard	Corsair K70	$107
Mouse	Razer Naga Chroma	$60
Speakers	Logitech Z523	$75

Puppy and Dolphin
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Puppy and Dolphin.

Puppy

Updated June 25, 2017

$555

Case	Carbide Series 200R	$55
Power Supply	EVGA 600B	$47
CPU	Intel G4500	$70
Heatsink	Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO	$30
Motherboard	MSI Pro Z270	$115
Memory	8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4	$76
Graphics Card	Gigabyte GTX 1050	$92
Hard Drive	Western Digital Blue 1TB	$50
DVD	Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW	$20

Dolphin

Updated June 25, 2017

$841

Case	Carbide Series 200R	$55
Power Supply	EVGA 600B	$47
CPU	Intel 7600K	$240
Heatsink	Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO	$30
Motherboard	ASUS Z270-K	$140
Memory	8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4	$76
Graphics Card	GTX 1060 3GB	$160
Hard Drive	Western Digital Black 1TB	$73
DVD	Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW	$20

Narwhal and Unicorn
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Narwhal and Unicorn.

Narwhal

Updated June 25, 2017

$1127

Case	Cooler Master HAF 912	$60
Power Supply	EVGA G2 650W	$88
CPU	Intel 7600K	$240
Heatsink	Noctua NH-U12S	$58
Motherboard	ASUS Z270-A	$155
Memory	16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4	$127
Graphics Card	GTX 1060 OR GTX 1070	$250 $400
Hard Drive	Western Digital Black 2TB	$117
SSD	Crucial MX300 275GB OR Samsung Evo 850 250GB	$100 $103
DVD	Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW	$20

Unicorn

Updated June 25, 2017

$1500

Case	Corsair Air 540	$125
Power Supply	EVGA G2 650W	$88
CPU	Intel 7600K	$240
Heatsink	Noctua 6 NH-D15	$90
Motherboard	ASUS Z270-A	$155
Memory	16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4	$127
Graphics Card	GTX 1070	$400
Hard Drive	Western Digital Black 2TB	$117
SSD	SAMSUNG 850 Pro 256GB	$138
DVD	Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW	$20

WowCraft - Episode 37: Selfie Attack
Another episode of WowCraft has been released.

[moveth]

That is an insane amount of effort for a pet. Good on you guys for figuring it out.

[Eleccybubb]

People say there is no mystery in WoW anymore yet that pet is a prime example. They still had to work out that they needed all that.

[GGA1759]

Some one just found the cave? Some one knew there was a pet there? Sounds fishy. But great find.

[stomination]

thats an old wowcraft. they just rereleased it on thier channel.

[autopsy]

Some one just found the cave? Some one knew there was a pet there? Sounds fishy. But great find.

Unsure of the specifics but the cave was likely found because the minimap changed for that area (something that can be datamined and compared to previous patches) and before hotfixed it was possible to see all the way into the cave. They saw an object labelled 'oddly coloured egg', which was know to be the source of this pet. Then many man hours of trial and error / brute force and the solution was found.

[alexs]

1500$ build and you choose a 7600k. ok

[Paleaura]

1500$ build and you choose a 7600k. ok

Its a lot more than $1500 with these gpu prices lol.

[Gilgallad]

why an overclocking mobo on a pentium g4500? and why a 7600k on everything?

[jay808]

On these computer builds I think a AMD Ryzen 1600 would be better than getting a Intel 7600K, more processing power and its cheaper.

[Deleted]

Guys, I'm somewhat dim at times. Is the blue saying they're testing merging realms? I.E could we see realms actually merge together instead of using CRZ in future?

Seems more like a better process for connecting realms (note the "connecting Temporus to the other PTR realms"). A full merge would give so much trouble with naming that it's unlikely it will ever happen. Connecting multiple realms would be a good solution for the underpopulated connected realms.

[Muh]

On these computer builds I think a AMD Ryzen 1600 would be better than getting a Intel 7600K, more processing power and its cheaper.

The 1600 is worse for WoW...

[Skillslam]

Amazing! A whole new server they can ignore all the feedback on!

[Maerad]

For the PC Builds - it would be nice to hint at a shotcoming of GPU's because of the mining hype right now. I understand that there is no AMD GPU right now because of that and the increased prices, but at least tell that to potential buyers. Also I don't like the miss of AMD in general... the Dolphin would be better with a 1600 (210€ with good cooler) or a 1600X @ 220 € (without cooler). It's faster, 2x cores, HT etc. and the board is cheaper too (a 350). Not to mention that you can OC it easily to at least 3.8 Ghz stock (both) or even higer. 1600X can reach 4 Ghz easily without much more power usage or heat.

The builds are a bit biased IMHO to Intel / Nvida

[GrubeegGroova]

Just wanted to point out you left out the major nature protection potion from the list at the start of the guide.. big chance i went to the cave w/out it

[Deleted]

Can this guy be more biased towards Intel and Nvidia please.

[Deleted]

great secret... makes me angry when I see what I have to collect... Ii takes weeks

[Will]

Cave entrance is coast NORTH of winterspring. KALIMDOR world map coords 57,15. From above look for a slip of land covered in trees near the coastline. Cave entrance is there.

- - - Updated - - -

You also need a major nature prot potion too

- - - Updated - - -

It also takes 11 pygmy oil to transform to get through the gate.

This is the SECOND time I've had to correct this guide. Come on, MMOC, get it right like Wowhead did.

[Shodan30]

I did this quest a week ago when it was just discovered. The Pet is pretty. The AH prices are already being inflated for the items you need, but hey...thats the way it goes. (time to put up my ogre suits again).

- - - Updated - - -

BTW, if you accidentially get ported back to the cave entrance you should have time on the potions to run through the doors again without starting all over. this happened to me twice, and im so glad i didnt have to rebuy the mats and start over, but go fast. Do NOT try to jump or fall from ANY place in this cave...dont even walk into the water from the ledge, go to the beach and walk into it. any falling into the pond or off a ledge will port you to the entrance.

[deadman1]

Are they testing a megaserver?