Love is in the Air, Arena Tournament, Blue posts

[Boubouille]

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Love is in the Air - Achievement Guide
Love is in the Air! Be careful because it seems that love isn't around for long in World of Warcraft: this event will start on February 11 at 06:00AM and end on February 16 at 06:00AM. (Server time)

The Fool for Love meta-achievement is obviously a part of the What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been achievement to get the Violet Proto-Drake (310% Speed Flying Mount).

Most of these achievements are easily completed because they rely heavily on items found in Gifts of Adorations and Pledge of Adoration. You can easily get them and you can also buy them from other players at the Auction House if you're running short on time.

Heartmender
Use the Unbestowed Friendship Bracelets on 20 players affected by the Heartbroken debuff. You can find the bracelets inside the Gift of Adorations you get when you offer a Love Token to a guard in capital cities.

Nation of Adoration / Nation of Adoration
Get a Gift of Adorations from each capital city.

Tokens are bought from Innkeepers during the event. Giving a token to a guard will affect you with the Adored debuff and will reward you with a Gift of Adorations. This won't work all the time, you can also get the Heartbroken debuff and in this case you just won't get anything. You can cancel the Heartbroken debuff with a Unbestowed Friendship Bracelets ... Which is the whole point of the achievement! Just make other players happy!

Flirt with Disaster
Drink enough alcohol to be completely smashed, buy a Perfume Bottle from the closest Innkeeper selling it, and use your Bouquet of Red Roses or Bouquet of Ebon Roses on either
Sraaz or Jeremiah Payson depending on your faction.

Nearest and Dearest
Buy some Perfume or Cologne along with a few Love Tokens and complete the Dangerous Love or Dangerous Love questline depending on your faction. They're simple delivery quests and you shouldn't have any problem with that.

Sweet Tooth
Eat a Buttermilk Delight, Dark Desire, Sweet Surprise and a Very Berry Cream. All these items are found in the Box of Chocolate contained in Gifts of Adorations and Pledge of Adoration. If you plan to do the other achievements this one won't be a problem as you'll have plenty of them available.

My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose
Obtain a Bouquet of Red Roses or Bouquet of Ebon Roses.

• The Bouquet of Red Roses was found on Archivist Galford (Stratholme), Illyanna Ravenoak (Dire Maul), Princess Moira Bronzebeard (Blackrock Depths) and Lorekeeper Polkelt but is no longer obtainable
• The Bouquet of Ebon Roses is found on Maiden of Grief (Halls of Stone), Prince Keleseth (Utgarde Keep) and Prince Taldaram.

Shafted!
Use Silver Shafted Arrow on 10 players, once again you can find this item in the Gifts of Adorations and Pledge of Adoration and it should be pretty easy to have enough of them to complete the achievement. If you really need more arrows you can also complete the Alliance Gift Collection/Horde Gift Collection and complete the quest to get 5 extra arrows but it's going to waste a LOT of your time.

Lonely?
Join someone for a picnic in Dalaran! This will require a Romantic Picnic Basket, this is a rare drop from Gifts of Adorations and Pledges of Adoration. If you're not lucky with droprates, you can still find someone with the basket and share a picnic with him/her to complete your achievement.

The Rocket's Pink Glare
Shoot off 10 Love Rockets in 20 seconds or less. This is another easy achievement, you can find the rockets in Gifts of Adorations and Pledges of Adoration.

Fistful of Love
Use a Handful of Rose Petals or your Bouquet of Red Roses / Bouquet of Ebon Roses on each of the race/class combination. Handful of Petals are found in Gifts of Adorations and Pledges of Adoration.

Be Mine!
Use the Bag of Candies found in Gifts of Adorations and Pledges of Adoration to create each of the hearts listed.

I Pitied the Fool
Obtain a Love Fool from a Gifts of Adorations or Pledges of Adoration and use it in the specified locations. Once the Love Fool is on the ground just target it and do a /pity emote.


2009 WoW Arena Tournament Announced

We’re pleased to announce that the 2009 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament is nearly here. Starting next week (February 17, 2009), players will be able to sign up to compete in this year’s exciting competition. The tournament will feature an online qualifier played on our special tournament realms. Top teams will proceed to their respective regional finals and compete for a chance to reach the global world championship – with cash prizes totaling over $200,000.

These realms have been outfitted with level 80 character templates and the latest epic gear from Wrath of the Lich King. As an added bonus, we have included exclusive rewards that players can earn by participating in the tournament, including an Armored Murloc in-game pet. Top teams will also contend for a chance to achieve the “Vanquisher” title for their live characters.

If you would like to demonstrate your arena prowess, or simply want a chance to earn the exclusive loot, please check back next week for more details and register!

Hunter Ammo Changes partially removed from Patch 3.1.0

In our 3.1.0 class updates post, we had announced plans to remove consumable ammunition from the game upon the release of the next major content patch. Our original plans were to change ammunition so that hunters would no longer need to utilize bag space, while adding some new functionality that would continue to make ammunition a compelling element of gameplay. Unfortunately, this intended change will not be completely ready in time for patch 3.1.0.

We still fully intend to move forward with this change when the additional functionality becomes available, and for 3.1.0 we still intend to remove the need for pouches/quivers by greatly increasing the stack sizes on arrows and bullets, and the haste bonus from the bags will be preserved in another fashion. We’ll be sure to inform our players with further updates once they become available.

Blue Posts

Unintentional instance saving
We did speak with some of the developers about this recently. While I'm unable to comment on your specific suggestions, I'll say we were all in agreement that something needs to change with raid IDs. On the one hand, we are happy that pick-up groups have a wider array of options at their disposal, whether it be 5, 10, or 25 man content. On the other hand though, it's currently too easy to end up saved to an instance that's been cleared, or close to it, without knowing ahead of time this will happen.

We've been looking at player feedback in this regard, and are working to develop a better interface to warn players that will be saved to an instance that's been partially, or completely cleared. This is something that might not happen in 3.1, but we'll be discussing this further internally in the near future. (Source)

Druid (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Savage Defense
It isn't intended as a buff or nerf per se. As many players have surmised, we want to make gearing as a bear tank more interesting, yet we don't have a lot of room to expand on stamina, dodge or armor. In this case the specific numbers are not as important as the general idea, though we also think the specific numbers are a really good place to start. (Source)

Hunter (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Plans to changes hunter ammos in 3.1.0 cancelled
One of the things we have been trying to do more of is give players a sneak peak at what we are working on. The risk of course is that players become disappointed or even outraged when some of the changes don't come to pass. The traditional Blizzard tight-lipped responses and invocation of "soon" are partially for this reason. It used to be that everyone found out about class changes through patch notes.

Blizzard uses the development model of iterative design more than almost anyone else in the industry. We go through a ton of changes before you see a fraction of them. (Source)

Mage (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Arcane Barrage Nerfed
A last minute change was made to the mage Arcane Barrage spell which reduced its spell power coefficient. This change did not make it into the 3.0.9 patch notes. We will be carefully evaluating this change and its effects on game balance in both PvE and PvP. If you have constructive feedback to provide, please do so in this thread. (Source)

Priest (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Hymns
Keep in mind that the changes we listed as a possible for the future patch are just a short list. I believe Ghostcrawler did say that Hymns are something we'd like to look at, but I couldn't say specifically if anything is planned for them just yet. (Source)

Warlock (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Warlock Pets
We're looking into making further improvements (though there is no current ETA) for these pets, however, specifics haven't been locked down. We'll let you know when more information becomes available on this subject. (Source)

New World of Warcraft Wallpaper
A new wallpaper has been added to the official site

Comics
Dark Legacy Comic #176 and Teh Gladiators #60 are out!

[LavaDuck]

Where is the love, the love, the love... ??

[Exhorder]

Yay for arcane nerf.

[Bainz]

That wallpaper doesn't look too bad ....

[dr4g0n]

It's now completly obvious that blizzard doesnt like hunters... when we will get some love ???
Even in valentine days we get heartbroken by blizzard ...

[TheYang]

Archivist Galford Doesn't Drop Bouquet of Red Roses, just tested...

[Eversor]

Where is the love, the love, the love... ??

We're no strangers to love, you know the rules and so do I...

[Boubouille]

Archivist Galford Doesn't Drop Bouquet of Red Roses, just tested...

That's most likely for lower level players only, just like any other kind of event.

[eRAZOR]

It's now completly obvious that blizzard doesnt like hunters... when we will get some love ???
Even in valentine days we get heartbroken by blizzard ...

Relax. They said postponed. Not cancelled for good.

[MagicSN]

As to the instance saving: Maybe they should look at the solution done in the MMO "LOTRO". While the game IMHO is generally not as good
as WoW the lock system in LOTRO I like much better than the one from WoW.

In this game it works like that:

- On the raid tab there is a special section about instance locks. Instead of (like in WoW) just the name of the instance you see behind the
name of the instance a list of "instance steps" (don't remember the exact term they use in LOTRO, but something like that). So for example
if you have a raid instance with 7 bosses, and you killed boss 1-3, it lists: "My Raid Instance: 1,2,3" in your raid UI.
- On another part of the Raid UI it lists "the locks of the raid group". So let's imagine you have killed bosses 1,2,3, but another one of the
group has killed bosses 1,2,3,4. In this case this part of the raid UI lists "My Raid Instance: 1,2,3,4". And if you look at the UI you clearly
see someone killed more bosses than you this id already. This entry shows the "highest" list of bosses killed by all people.
- Now the important part: If someone killed MORE BOSSES this id than the LEADER of the instance a message "incompatible raid locks" comes
up and NOBODY can enter the instance. The only way to fix this is by giving raid lead to the person who has "the most advanced lock" (killed
the most bosses) and then someone (the leader or someone else) enters the instance.
- A big difference to WoW locks is this: Let's imagine raid member A killed 1,2,3 with raid group A. Raid member B killed 1,2,3,4 with Raid Group B
before. In WoW they could not continue the raid together as they are on different locks. On LOTRO they give lead to Raid Member B, the locks
are updated to 1,2,3,4. And now all can enter an instance where bosses 1-4 are dead, the rest still alive. This feature is especially extremely popular
with PUGs. Ever encountered the problem that you killed one raid boss with a bad PUG and now you cannot do the raid this week anymore, as nobody
is willing to skip the first boss? In LOTRO you just tell the other group to invite you once they killed the first boss with 11/12, then you get an invite
and are on the same lock (as boss #1 is dead for both of you).
- total impossible is just stuff like: Member A killed 1,2,3, and Member B killed 1,2,4. They cannot join the same raid unless they find someone who
has killed 1-4, and they both take this guy's lock.
- The downside of this IMHO especially for PUGs great system is that people trade around "only endboss alive" locks a lot to avoid to do the early bosses.
You want your alt raid only to do the final boss? No problem, temporary log the alt into the main raid and "copy their lock". Good thing is that it is
completely transparent which lock you will join and there is no possibility (unless you forget to check on the Raid UI) you get a lock "by mistake".

[lu]

Yay for arcane nerf.

yeah suxx dude.. now i can respec ffb..

[Nozuka]

It's now completly obvious that blizzard doesnt like hunters...

i lold.

[krozey]

"players will be able to sign up to compete in this year’s EXCITING competition".

That shows Blizz sense of humour and sense of excitment.

Watching over and over some dk/palla and hunter/resto shaman fights for top rating is surely Their idea of arena fun.

[Barook]

Why do I get a bad feeling when I read about the blue post about Savage Defense? Right now, it sounds like they have no idea what they're doing and Savage Defense is going to suck.

No wonder there are less and less Feral Tanks every day... :

[cavalier]

Just wanted to mention another development on the US Realm Forums -- which is the 50 page Mana Regen thread has been quietly disappeared and replaced with a new Mana Regen thread featuring the same announcement but without the 50 pages of comments.

I spent hours arguing why replenishment was the problem, not the solution, and listing several examples without being all WAHHH QQ WAHHH. Now it just disappears and they white wash it? Fucking CM's. Last time I participate in a thread thinking they're actually listening -- why not just lock the announcement if they don't want feedback?

Really annoyed...

[mitchimitch]

and are working to develop a better interface to warn players that will be saved to an instance that's been partially, or completely cleared. This is something that might not happen in 3.1

its me or that's the kind of thing that would take a good programming team like 1 week to do at max ?

[cavalier]

its me or that's the kind of thing that would take a good programming team like 1 week to do at max ?

Just you. Keep in mind that any change made has to be regressively tested against everything else. Inserting some sort of instance clear status checking that then checks the user and then warns them etc etc.. it kind of goes through all the streams, so while the actual logic itself is simple the implementation on such a large code base is probably pretty big.

[stupid11]

Nice Dark Legacy, always makes me lol.

Also, WOOT for Mage nerfs and sucks on the hunter ammo postponement.

[harod]

Most of these achievements are easily completed because they rely heavily on items found in Gifts of Adorations and Pledge of Adoration. You can easily get them and you can also buy them from other players at the Auction House if you're running short on time.

No, you can't easily get them. They can't be put on the AH and they can't be mailed to your alts. You only get one gift/pledge per hour. Some of the things have become soulbound, and when I try to put things like the love rocket on the AH, it says "cannot auction conjured items".

[harod]

Archivist Galford Doesn't Drop Bouquet of Red Roses, just tested...

Most likely, they moved it to a few Northrend bosses. Hopefully another easy one like the first boss in Nexus for the winter caps.