Spectral Gryphon, Dungeon Loot, Wintergrasp, Blue posts

[Boubouille]

WotLK Mounts - Spectral Gryphon
Today's mount ... isn't really a mount actually. In the current build of the WotLK beta, people dying in Storm Peaks are resurrected on a ghost flying mount ! Running to your corpse could be very hard in a region with so many mountains and developpers solved it by giving you a very nice mount. Obviously, its only purpose is to make corpse running easier in the zone and it fades off once you're back among the living.

Build 8820 - Additional Dungeon Loot
A few more items were added to the dungeon loot list.

Halls of Lightning
Tornado Cuffs (Mail - Bracers)
Pauldrons of the Lightning Revenant (Plate - Shoulders)
Ionar's Girdle (Plate - Belt)
Thundercloud Grasps (Cloth - Hands)

The Occulus
Dragonflight Great-Ring (Others - Ring)


Lake Wintergrasp Upcoming Changes

We’re hoping to get the zone into better shape in the next couple patches. Here’s a few things that should be coming in the next build:

• All vehicles should be despawn after the battle ends
• Demolisher and Siege Vehicle health has been reduced by 50-75%
• Demolisher and Siege Vehicle ram attacks no longer knock a player high enough to kill them
• Jet & Bomber health has been reduced
• Bomber damage has been increased
• Players in Bombers should no longer take damage
• Reward for holding the keep has been added
• The Goblin Workshops in the North and South now also supply players with land mines that deal bonus damage to tanks

We also hope to have a system for rewarding only players that participated in the battle working soon.

Blue posts

Profession recipes collection achievements
We're working on the ability to do these kind of achievements. We wouldn't do anything percentage based but rather choose a flat number and add more achievements as we add more content.

Most likely, you'll see a cooking version like this in the near future. Versions for the primary professions won't go live until account-based achievements are active. We don't want to encourage people picking up and dropping profressions simply to gain achievements. (Source)

Feats of Strength - Spirit of Competition 2008
Great idea. We implemented two Feats... one for the Tabard and one for the Pet. (Source)

Shaman (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8820))
Anticipation / Shamanistic Focus changes / Windfury concerns
One change we're doing to Anticipation is changing it to 3-points, and giving it disarm reduction. We are also most likely going to change Shamanistic Focus to make it a flat mana reduction in shock cooldowns. It's too spammy right now, and the class has too many on proc buffs. (Source)

Edit: BTW, one thing I totally agree with is the Windfury Weapon concern. We'll see if we can make the ability less complicated/"mathy".

Warlock (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8820))
Warlock changes and Patch 3.0 Deployment
We'll be doing some considerable work on Warlocks before that patch hits. (Source)

Warrior (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8820))
Furious Attacks
This talent will see some revision before retail so don't worry about a world where warriors are dual wielding daggers for MS bonanzas. (Source)

BlizzCon Ticket Drawing Winners Selected

The winners of the BlizzCon 2008 Ticket Drawing have been chosen. We’ve sent emails to 1,500 randomly selected eligible Blizzard Account holders containing instructions for purchasing up to two tickets to the show. For your security, please note that in this email we are not asking winners to email us credit card information directly, nor are we asking winners to call Blizzard for any reason.

If we still have tickets remaining after this initial round, we will select more winners from the original opt-in pool. We will make an announcement on our websites once all tickets available have been sold. For more information, refer to the BlizzCon Ticket Drawing FAQ: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9023727679&sid=1

BlizzCast Episode 5: Special WWI Edition
Nothing really related to the game itself in this Blizzcast, but still a nice read if you're interested in what happened during the Worldwide Invitational.

This special Worldwide Invitational wrap-up edition of BlizzCast begins with a brief chat between RTS Community Manager Karune, World of Warcraft Community Manager Nethaera, and Diablo III Community Manager Bashiok about their WWI experiences. Bashiok then takes you into the mind of Diablo III Lead Designer Jay Wilson, and the two discuss some recent hot issues surrounding the game. Listen to the show now or check out the transcript to see all the featured artwork.

Download the new episode here:
http://eu.blizzard.com/blizzcast/

Transcript for the new episode:
http://eu.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode5.xml

World of Warcraft Downloads for Your Phone
Don't get too happy about this, there are a bunch of nice things to download here but you will have to pay 1.50€ / $1.99 for a wallpaper and 3€ / $3 for a ringtone.

Carry a little piece of Azeroth wherever your real-world travels take you with our new World of Warcraft-themed wallpapers and ringtones for your phone. They’re part of a new service that lets you download content related to your favorite Blizzard Entertainment games to supported mobile phones.

Over 50 pieces of content are currently available, including ringtones of World of Warcraft’s capital city themes and the distinctive murloc gurgle, as well as wallpapers featuring character artwork, class and faction emblems, and more. Visit the new Mobile Ringtones and Wallpapers page for more information -- and while you’re there, be sure to check out our StarCraft and Diablo mobile content, too.

[jkw]

Itemlinks are broken.

Works now.

[Sonikk]

Yeah, all 5 items get a Not Found error when you click them:
The requested URL /mmoc/images/news/2008/august/hallsoflightning_14.jpg was not found on this server.

[Nilaihah]

Screenie of those Gryphons look like the typical oddball's picture of an UFO, blurry and can't make anything out.

Not the subby's fault though, its just the death effect coupled with transparency and sprinkled with spell effects.

[bbr]

They should add a spectral mount for outland as well.

Bloody hard to get your corpse in netherstorm / blades edge at times.

[Boubouille]

Links fixed, I'll randomly blame someone and pretend I'm not the one who did the error.

[Nadarius]

The Spectral Gryphons seem like the models from the ones in Eastern Plaguelands when flying from a tower to another, but im not too sure...

[LavaDuck]

They should add a spectral mount for outland as well.

Bloody hard to get your corpse in netherstorm / blades edge at times.

They said early in TBC that they were working on a solution for when you died up in the air and your corpse was unreachable from the ground. And now, almost 2 years later they have a solution for this >_>

[kittynipples]

They said early in TBC that they were working on a solution for when you died up in the air and your corpse was unreachable from the ground. And now, almost 2 years later they have a solution for this >_>

Yeah, it's called rez sickness. I remember the first time I died on top of a mushroom in zangar marsh. I learned not to go flying so close to the alliance base after that.

Since Wintergrasp is supposed to be an active PvP zone, you can't really have people gimped for 10 mins just because they died in a bad spot though, so this change is necessary here, and not quite so much elsewhere.

[mud_lime]

World of Warcraft Downloads for Your Phone
Don't get too happy about this, there are a bunch of nice things to download here but you will have to pay 1.50€ / $1.99 for a wallpaper and 3€ / $3 for a ringtone.

Hehe all ready have my own home made ringtone with the wc2 oger bloodlust sound

[Ashton]

Screenie of those Gryphons look like the typical oddball's picture of an UFO, blurry and can't make anything out.

Not the subby's fault though, its just the death effect coupled with transparency and sprinkled with spell effects.

My thoughts exactly.

[Deleted]

The Spectral Gryphons seem like the models from the ones in Eastern Plaguelands when flying from a tower to another, but im not too sure...

true, the mount on which you fly from northwestern tower to east tower, is also a spectral Gryphon..

this one is a bid more "alive" tho...

[mrchee]

Shaman (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8820))
Anticipation / Shamanistic Focus changes / Windfury concerns
One change we're doing to Anticipation is changing it to 3-points, and giving it disarm reduction. (Source)

WOW. So now, not only will LOLenhance have disarm reduction in PvP, but Arms warriors will not. MAKES SENSE AMIRITE

[harod]

WOW. So now, not only will LOLenhance have disarm reduction in PvP, but Arms warriors will not. MAKES SENSE AMIRITE

Yep. Ask yourself which class needs more help in pvp, enhance shamans or arms warriors?

[Nilaihah]

My thoughts exactly.

[Marvdatboi]

sweet..

[naturefreak]

Night elfs come back as whisps and can fly up to stuff with their wisps.

[rothomp3]

Yep. Ask yourself which class needs more help in pvp, enhance shamans or arms warriors?

You haven't realized by now that Warriors — against all visible evidence and in contradiction of any logic — are 100% convinced that they suck in PvP? I don't pretend to understand why they have this widespread delusion, so I can't tell you the reasons. I just observe that this is the case.

[shabuegah]

Edit: BTW, one thing I totally agree with is the Windfury Weapon concern. We'll see if we can make the ability less complicated/"mathy".

What Windfury-Weapon concerns are there? Did i miss something?

[Nilaihah]

I don't pretend to understand why they have this widespread delusion, so I can't tell you the reasons. I just observe that this is the case.

To have an answer to this question, you must look at the psychological profile of the average in the warrior demographic.

You'll find this as a common denominator among other things:

Self-Entitlement
Delusion de Grandeur
Obsessive/Compulsive Behavior

When put in a situation where they just can't have absolute control, they go insane. True story.

What other class actually crashed a server when they got nerfed? Here, some quick google found a reference if you're wondering about this: http://afkgamer.com/archives/2005/01...will-overcome/