Shadowfrost Shard, Armory Updates, Blue posts

[Boubouille]

Shadowmourne - Shadowfrost Shard Drop Rate
The preview of Shadowmourne was fairly popular and it's time for a small update.

One of the last quest of the chain requires you to gather The Splintered Throne requires you to acquire 50 Shadowfrost Shards. We didn't know the droprates until recently, the official armory has been updated with most of the data from patch 3.3 and gave us a few numbers :

• Shards only drop in 25-man from any boss of the instance.
• 25-man normal mode bosses have a medium (25-50%) chance to drop a shard.
• 25-man heroic mode bosses have a high (51-99%) chance to drop a shard.

If we assume that you kill all the boss in hard modes you should get an average of 9 shards each week and it will take 6 weeks to upgrade Shadow's Edge to Shadowmourne

You now have all the info you need to decide who gets it in your guild. Make sure you check the Shadowmourne Preview if you missed it!

Upcoming Armory Features - Update
On Saturday I reported that the official armory would get a few extra features (most likely in January 2010). The most interesting one (with the model viewer) is probably the Character Feed, this feature will let you build an RSS feed to report all the new achievementS/items on one or more characters based on a few criterias. You can check the FAQ below, it was removed from the official site a few hours after it went online. Once again, this feature is not live and you should expect it in January 2010

The FAQ of the Calendar Feed is also included but I don't think a lot of people will be excited about this one, I don't think a lot of people use the in-game calendar. It could be a good way to have out of game reminders for important events like the Kalu'ak Fishing Derby and a few other things.

Character Feed FAQ
What is the character activity feed?
Each character's activity feed shows the most recent in-game actions of the character that can be recorded by the Armory. These include achievements, boss kills, item acquisitions, and more. Character feeds can be customized using our customization tool, then exported as RSS feeds to your RSS reader of choice.

How do I create a customized character feed?
Click the RSS icon on the character's profile page (the orange icon on the upper right of the recent activity summary) to go to the Character Feed Customization page. The options on this page allow you to create a custom RSS feed that you can export to an RSS reader.

• You can enter up to five characters to aggregate into a single RSS feed. Enter each character in a name@realm format. If you are logged in, you do not need to specify the realm - it will default to the currently viewed character's realm.
• Achievement categories can be individually toggled to filter them in or out of the RSS feed.
• Achievement criteria include any intermediate steps within an achievement, such as defeating a particular boss in an achievement to defeat every boss in a particular raid dungeon. Toggling this category off will turn off all achievement criteria globally, while turning it on will still follow the rules that you select in the Achievement category (for example, turning off Quests in the Achievement category will turn off the criteria in this category as well).
• The Boss Kills category includes any boss that is tracked in the Statistics tab of a character profile. These include the end bosses of classic and Burning Crusade dungeons, and every boss in Wrath of the Lich King raids.
• Loot acquisitions can be assigned different rarity thresholds to appear in the feed. You can specify a minimum item level as well.

How do I use the custom feed once I create it?
The URL for your custom RSS feed updates in real time as you change options and enter character names. When you are satisfied with the options and characters you selected, simply copy and paste the resulting URL into an RSS reader. Online RSS readers include iGoogle, Netvibes, and Pageflakes, to name a few. You can also import RSS feeds into Outlook and other e-mail clients. In addition, clicking the Facebook icon (which appears near the RSS icon on character profiles) allows you to integrate the Armory's feeds into Facebook.

Can I customize the feed that appears in the Character Feed tab of a character profile?
In contrast to the RSS feeds created on the Character Feed Customization page, the feeds that appear on character profiles (on the main page and the 'Activity Feed' tab) are intended to be an unfiltered feed of a character's recent activity and as such can not be customized.

Why isn't the Armory's custom feed page finding a particular character that I enter in the character name field?
Only characters on US realms are stored here, as this is the US version of the Armory. To switch to a different region, such as Europe, go to their regional World of Warcraft website and access the Armory from there. In addition, a character must be recently active and be at least level 10 to have a character feed. When entering character names, keep spaces in realm names ('Black Dragonflight') and make sure the character and name realm is spelled correctly.


Calendar Feed FAQ
What is the custom calendar tool?
The custom calendar tool allows you to export in-game player calendar data to calendar applications such as Outlook, or to online calendars such as Google Calendar. The tool can aggregate up to five characters on your account in a single feed, and is automatically synched with the characters' in-game player calendars.

How do I create a customized calendar feed?
Use the Armory's main menu or click the link on the top right of a character's calendar page to access the Calendar Feed Customization tool. The options on this page allow you to create a custom calendar feed that you can export to any compatible application or website. You can choose up to five characters on your account to aggregate into a single calendar feed. Simply select the characters you wish to appear in the feed from the drop-down menus. Event categories can be individually toggled to filter them in or out of the feed.

How do I use the custom feed once I create it?
The URL for your custom feed updates in real time as you select options and characters. Simply copy and paste the URL into an online calendar such as Google Calendar when you are finished configuring your custom feed. In addition, clicking on the URL from this page will download a file that can be imported into compatible applications such as Outlook

Is the calendar feed automatically synched with in-game player calendars?
Yes. Calendar feeds created with this tool should always be automatically up-to-date with in-game player calendars.

What is the 'reset security key' option used for?
Each calendar feed URL contains a unique security key appended to the end of the URL. This key is intended to keep your calendar data inaccessible to others. If you wish, you can reset your security key at any time by clicking the 'reset security key' button at the bottom of the page. If you reset your key, you must update the URL in your web-based calendars, or re-download the calendar file to use it with a calendar application.

[url=http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/december/armory.jpg]

Blue posts

Legendary weapons upgrades
Legendaries are not intended to be the last weapon you'll ever need. WoW is a game about upgrading your stuff. (Source)

Dungeon System kick rules
I believe the no-kick grace period is only 5 min, but we iterated on that a lot, so I could be wrong. If they DC you can kick after 1 min.

I suspect it's going to take a few tries before we get the vote kick thing feeling right. I hope it's obvious what purpose it serves though. We feared without some kind of grace period that a common behavior would be to automatically kick someone in greens or without certain achievements or perhaps even someone who would roll against you on stuff (in the partial premade situation). (Source)

Cataclysm masteries and PvP/PvE
Masteries are much broader than you're imagining from your examples. They are designed to have PvP and PvE benefit. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to use each of the 30 trees in both environments, which is the ultimate goal. (Source)

Recycled graphics in dungeons
We get a little more art for a raid tier than we used to, but we create many more items than we used to. I believe the new Icecrown raid and dungeon introduced something like 1800 new items to WoW. While it would be awesome for every piece to have unique art, that's not a realistic goal. (Source)

Priest (Forums / Talent Calculator)
SW:P not affected by haste
Have a hot or dot affected by haste is not a no-brainer. It might be if you have a mechanic that automatically refreshes the hot or dot, but not every spell fits into that category. For those spells, the hot or dot actually finishes sooner so you have to find time to squeeze in a GCD to get it going again. In some situations that will work out well for you. In others, not so much.

Simply keeping the current duration and letting the hots tick faster is problematic because then it's a much bigger dps increase -- you are just getting more damage per unit time. At some point, haste might even trump spell power as a dps stat.

Long-term, we need for every spec to care about say crit and haste to some degree. When crit or haste are junk stats for anyone, then a ton of gear is just not anything you'll even consider. It's okay if say Shadow Priests like crit more and Fire mages like haste more, but it's just too extreme right now (or at least before these changes). (Source)

Warlock (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Nerf to hasted corruption
I do want to point out one side effect - when we could roll hasted corruption we COULD top the DPS charts - not destroy other classes but we had a chance to reach the #1 spot. I hope this issue will make GC re-asses our lack of damage output.
No, you were destroying the other classes, except for Mutilate rogues and Unholy DKs, who were also nerfed. I think the only difference is that for the rogues and DKs it was easier to do so, while only the better locks could really come out with the great numbers. But being hard to do is no excuse for someone's dps to be gratuitously higher than everyone else. (Source)

Comics
Dark Legacy Comic #218 and Teh Gladiators #104 are out!

[Tickingtime]

Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)

That's all that's said under the warrior section, unless my internet blocked something?

[FireBorne]

What about kicking ppl doing 900 dps? I had some extra emblems laying around and so i decided to build a tanking set. My stats are ok 30% dodge with sigil, 21% parry self buffed 35k health unbuffed. I should by no means be dominating dps charts and my dps gear is toc 25/togc 25, while i dont want to be rude but a tank should do 40% of the group's dps. I thought the groups ilvl would be scaled from the highest ilvls you own so in my case my dps set. But i'm getting paired with freshly dinged 80s and rarely ppl that can do 4k+.

[Freedom]

I don't see ANY new blue posts dealing with warriors... so maybe it's a goof?

[DrRight]

We know you loved seeing every mundane achievement your guildys alts got, so we came up with a way for you to get them in real life as well.

Merry Christmas-
Blizzard.

[Bowen]

Current 4 votes to kick is down right stupid, I can't remove people who have empty sockets, questing gear and no enchants expecting a boost, if one person has a so what we can boost them attitude you are stuck with them.

And so what if you want to kick someone in greens, retarded info by the blue there.

[DaLeetPawner]

Crap, hope our RL wont make us use DKP on those shards

[Helmed]

blizzard is making fun of warriors, since we never get any updates. there new meme around the office is making blue posts about warriors containing nothing....those bastards!

[theKarn]

Current 4 votes to kick is down right stupid, I can't remove people who have empty sockets, questing gear and no enchants expecting a boost, if one person has a so what we can boost them attitude you are stuck with them.

And so what if you want to kick someone in greens, retarded info by the blue there.

I don't think it's 4 votes to kick... any longer? I was in an h nexus and a scrub wanted to vote kick the tank. I clicked no but he was still booted. so 3/5 is most likely.

The grace period is needed. new people need gear too. Gearscore means nothing.

[Bowen]

Thekarn I'm all with you there, My old guild first few days into release of wotlk were doing the heroics in blues, we didn't have access to the professions made gear and the heroics were easy without that stuff, we all had stuff gem'ed and enchanted, correct specs ect, we all pulled our weight in respect for each other.

But what gets my back are the people who turn up with pvp gear, no gems, no enchants on 213/232 epics that they have received for running a 5man heroic, they have not had raiding expenses so there is no excuse really.

I have had a lot of people with blues and made epics hitting 4k, and it is excellent to see these people, it truly is.

[BaddyMcBad]

So it looks like I won't be able to get Shadowmourne until the first guy does .

[LanceDH]

I've had HoS quite often using the random dungeon system.
as we all know, that one has the most boring encounter ever.
Sooo, some lock decided to AFK the whole fight, and as a healer I wanted to get her killed by standing on her to have more chance for the last beam to kill her.
Sadly enough, she survived with 2k hp...
Anyway, after the fight (finaly) ended, I just healed her and she got back.
I just wanted to kick her as she simple went AFK so she didn't have to do the encounter, but I got the error that I couldn't kick her.
Well I just thought it was because we didn't loot the chest yet and thought it was an anti-ninja system,... it lasted untill we walked all the way back to the door of the last boss.
By the time it finally worked the other members probably didn't see the reason for the kick (as they prob also didn't see her being AFK) and declined...

[OnTheHissay]

So you think everyone on the correct part of the quest will be able to pick up a shard if it drops, like a questitem, or will it be only one char per drop who can pick it up?

[BaddyMcBad]

So you think everyone on the correct part of the quest will be able to pick up a shard if it drops, like a questitem, or will it be only one char per drop who can pick it up?

Taking into account the %s I'd say it'll be like Fragments.

[Shmiles]

Its a quest item, pretty sure anyone on the quest can pick it up.

[Errant]

So you think everyone on the correct part of the quest will be able to pick up a shard if it drops, like a questitem, or will it be only one char per drop who can pick it up?

If you check out the armory item: http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=50274

You can see that it is no longer a quest item, which means only one person is able to get them, and they will NOT have to be on a quest.

[Shmiles]

If you check out the armory item: http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=50274

You can see that it is no longer a quest item, which means only one person is able to get them, and they will NOT have to be on a quest.

siiiiiigh he's right, there goes my chances of getting it then.

[Errant]

Also if you click "Link" On wow-head, copy and paste it into the game and click the link, it is simply bop in game as well.

Boubouille, want to update your item database as to not give scrubs like me false hope? =(

[gr8rx]

Current 4 votes to kick is down right stupid, I can't remove people who have empty sockets, questing gear and no enchants expecting a boost, if one person has a so what we can boost them attitude you are stuck with them.

And so what if you want to kick someone in greens, retarded info by the blue there.

I ran a 3man part pug with my guildies, and after wiping due to some failure in HoL, I went to grab a drink. Came back to my guildies arguing with the other 2 pug's because they tried to boot me...

Some people just have zero tolerance. Those kind of people piss me off.

It's a GAME. Try playing because it's fun, not because you get to be a jerk. If you don't like the idea of getting put RANDOMLY with someone that might be inferior to your epic skills, or doesn't play to your time frames, et - Don't use the random tool..

[LavaDuck]

U have no flash player??? Lol

edit: DLC wins again \o/