Patch 3.3 Official patch Notes – Fall of the Lich King!
Update 1: At 11:04 Blizzard Officials extended Maintenance by 1 hour.
Bornakk
Blue Poster
# 0 - Extended Maintenance 12/8 - December 8, 2009, 11:04 am
We are performing extended maintenance while we resolve some additional issues. We do not have an estimate on when the realms will be available for play but we will provide another update in approximately 1 hour. Thank you for your patience.
Bornakk
Blue Poster
# 1361 - Extended Maintenance 12/8 - December 8, 2009, 12:56 pm
We have resolved the issues that came up during maintenance. We are in the process of making all realms playable and we expect this to be ...
Wrath Of The Lich King
There have been many additions in previous expansions. This expansion however brings forth many new aspects to the game. Some of which include, new territories, dungeons, quests, siege weapons & the use of them in new PVP match called Battle For Wintergrasp. There also includes new raids and the one most people find the most appealing addition is the new hero class - The Death Knight class. To learn more about these and new update info about patches and patch releases browse through the pages categories! Here is the trailer for Wrath of the Lich King
All the new features included ...
Cataclysm
Announcement Trailer
Source: Blizzard
Two New Playable Races
Adventure as one of two new races--the cursed worgen with the Alliance or the resourceful goblins with the Horde.
Level Cap Increased to 85
Earn new abilities, tap into new talents, and progress through the path system, a new way for players to improve characters.
Classic Zones Remade
Familiar zones across the original continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms have been altered forever and updated with new content, from the devastated Badlands to the broken Barrens, which has been sundered in two.
New High-Level Zones
Explore newly opened parts of the world, including Uldum, Grim Batol, and the great Sunken ...
The History Behind Warcraft!
Compilation of Warcraft Lore Videos
Hordelife has put together a compilation of videos starting from Warcraft three all the way until World Of Warcraft! They are very good videos. I really enjoyed watching all of them. Gave a good perspective behind the storyline and what actually happens throughout Warcraft! We will also be getting inro more detail about the World Of Warcraft Movie within the next week or so! So stay tuned. But anyway without further-a-do! Here they are =)
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So There you have it. We hope you ...
World Of Warcraft Magazine!
WoW Magazine
So here it is, the first Official issue of the World Of Warcraft magazine! To help show you more about the Magazine there is a 40-Page Preview of the magazine online! The preview includes the 5-year anniversary lookback, interviews with players of the game, more information behind the lore of Sylvannes and much more. Take my advice on this and be sure to check it out, it's worth the time. Also if you seem to like it, go ahead and subscribe to receive this magazine and future ones. All of the magazines will consist 148 pages with no advertising ...
WoW Class Guides!
Guides to both PVE and PVP. Click on the images below to view the guides
Mage
Death Knight
To have you guide posted on the website e-mail it to us at webmaster@hordelife.com =)
Page Under construction!
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It’s that time of the year again! All across Azeroth and Outland, festive decorations adorn towns and cities as the Horde and the Alliance begin their annual celebration of the Feast of Winter Veil. Join in the festivities and experience some Winter Veil activities this year!
Type: Holiday Date: December 15 – January 2 Location: Most Major Cities Available to:
The Feast of Winter Veil is a yearly World Event that occurs around the time typically celebrated as Christmas around the world. It involves gift-giving, holiday revelers, and visits from an NPC dressed similarly to the famed Father Christmas.
The event typically includes many quests, special holiday items, unique boss drops through its duration, and now with Wrath of the Lich King, special achievements created specifically for the Feast of Winter Veil. On this page you can find a bevy of information on the event to help you along the way as you participate. The tabbed section below can be navigated to browse that particular section of content.
Greatfather Winter
Greatfather Winter is visiting the great cities of Ironforge and Orgrimmar – courtesy of the fine folks of Smokywood Pastures and he’s spreading cheer in celebration for the Feast of Winter Veil. But, all the cheer-spreading is making Greatfather Winter hungry, and he’s looking for adventurers to get him his daily fix of milk and cookies.
Revelers
During the Feast of Winter Veil, the innkeepers bring out holiday decorations to provide a festive atmosphere for their patrons. Who knows what might happen if you /kiss a reveler standing near a sprig of mistletoe….
Gift-Giving
In the quiet, early hours of the 25th of December, the industrious goblins of Smokywood Pastures are already awake. As a much-deserved reward for the noble adventurers throughout Azeroth, these generous harbingers of the holidays deposit gifts underneath the decorated trees in Orgrimmar and Ironforge. Keep a keen eye out for these presents, as they’re there for the taking!
The Jinglepocket Goblins have set up their seasonal fare shops in major cities. Adventurers can purchase many holiday favorites – including Greatfather’s Winter ale, candy canes, gingerbread cookie recipes, and mistletoes.
Snowballs
Whether you pick them up from your local vendor or ask a friendly engineer to craft them for you, no feast of Winter Veil is complete without some frozen projectile-weapons. Get your mitts on some snowballs and say, “Merry Feast of Winter Veil” the old-fashioned way!
Snowmen
Accompanying Greatfather Winter in his journeys across Azeroth are his loyal troops of snowmen. They can be found wandering around Ironforge and Orgrimmar, bringing with them the chill breath of winter into even the warmest climates.
With the Feast of Winter Veil after the release of Wrath of the Lich King, you can now find the winter hats on the Northrend bosses listed below.
Gain 25 crashes with your [Crashin' Thrashin' Racer] during the Feast of Winter Veil. This achievement can only be completed if you participated in the 2008 Feast of Winter Veil and received that year’s special gift.
During the Feast of Winter Veil, use a Handful of Snowflakes on each of the race/class combinations listed: Orc Death Knight, Tauren Shaman, Undead Rogue, Gnome Mage, Blood Elf Warlock, Human Warrior, Night Elf Druid, Troll Hunter, Dwarf Paladin, Draenei Priest.
The later seasons of Azeroth are marked as a time of change in many cultures. The Dwarves and the Tauren especially look to a legend of the coming Winter Veil – the blanketing of the land in snow, thus heralding a time of renewal – as a time for celebration.
The term “Winter Veil” is said to stem from a supernatural being referred in many cultures to as Greatfather Winter. As he would walk the land late in the seasons, winter itself would be his billowing cloak. In his wake was the blanketing of the land in snow, and thus it is said that Greatfather Winter would cast his wintry veil over the land. Though parts of Azeroth may lie in snow, it gives the land time for rebirth and renewal.
The idea of feasting during this time of year is one that traces its origins to the legend itself. As Greatfather Winter walked Azeroth, it is said he would provide a bounty for those who welcomed his presence. As such, the idea of feasting during the winter veil would bring together communities as they shared whatever they had. Typically, a single day of merriment and feasting welcomed the change, all in anticipation of the land’s renewal.
Other cultures have begun to recognize the Feast of Winter Veil as a time of great celebration, though not in the same traditions as the legend bases it in. Customs, often unrelated to anything other than a chance for celebration and gift exchange, have made their way into modern observation of the season. Even the image of Greatfather Winter is sometimes used, but more as a harbringer of commercial exploit rather than as a supernatural titan.
Frost Spec Mage for Raiding
Ever since patch 3.3 Came out there have been some additions made to Mages being able to use frost as a viable PvE spec. With the new Glyph Eternal water you can have a water elemental forever! Also getting the Frostbolt glyph is helpful as well. Along with all of these you can use your mirror images and do some more damage. Your Crit percent will be ridiculous with all the talents helping you crit. Speaking of talents, here is the spec to follow, if there are any suggestions please leave a comment.
Patch 3.3.0a Live!!!!
Some small bugs have been fixed in this patch. The patch has started for North America, and should start for European players soon. Here are the patch Notes below. There is nothing major or big, but it’s worth it to just check out.
We will be offering free character moves from select realms to assist in population balancing. The ability to move a character on the selected source realms will become available starting as soon as we can get them setup on Friday, December 11 and end them on Thursday, December 17, at 2:00pm PST.
Alterac Mountains is an Eastern time zone realm in the Nightfall battlegroup and Agamaggan is a Central time zone realm in the Shadowburn battlegroup.
In the event that these realms meet our transfer goals before the scheduled end date, the transfers to or from any realm may be disabled. We highly recommend that if you are planning to transfer that you do so at your earliest convenience. No characters will be eligible for these free moves once the transfers have been closed.
The end is really more of a reward — an achievement with stats. Very little of our content is tuned to the point where you have to farm to a large degree before you are capable of beating the encounters. I remember in the BC days guilds running a new recruit through SSC to gear up before they could survive BT. That really isn’t the case anymore. Now as you to the hard modes, this is more true, but players tackling that content have access to better gear faster anyway.
I don’t find it offensive that players who only run dungeons can eventually get some decent Frost badge loot at a much slower pace than the raiders can. That pretty much happens anyway when we advance tiers and the old badges become much more farmable.
Classes
The reason for the recent hotfixes of Scourge Strike, Hunger for Blood and Corruption (Source)
WoW is a game with PvP and PvE components. We balance around both.
However, the changes to warlocks, DKs and rogues were made largely for PvE reasons. All 3 were too high on parse after parse.
There are two known bugs with Chains of Ice that should be hotfixed today (Dec 11) or possibly soon after that if something goes wrong. (Stupid caveat that I have to put in everything I type now: this is not a promise of when it will be fixed; only our intention to fix it when we can.)
First, there should not be a target limit. That is, the single limit nerf you are seeing now was not intentional.
Second, it appears to not be functioning correctly with Endless Winter. The disease is not being applied at all against snare-immune targets. The intended behavior is the snare is not applied, but Frost Fever is.
Unless I am forgetting some change we made early on, the design intent is that Chains of Ice functions as it did before 3.3 shipped.
If you can’t afford to AH the ammo, you probably can’t afford to get the best gems and enchants for you new gear which would probably be a bigger dps increase. That is going to affect the economic decision of looting more than the ammo I suspect. I don’t think the ammo will be outrageously high on the AH given the mats. It may be high for the next week or so while it’s scarce, but as I’ve said, we don’t really want every hunter in the game to be able to get ammo which is tied to a rep grind and rare drop on day one.
You may not be able to afford to constantly switch Engineering specs, but we’re not trying to make that a very attractive option in the first place.
Some of you are still arguing about the cost of ammo or the fact that it’s a consumable or tied to a trade skill, but all of that has been true for some time. The Engineering specialization didn’t affect any of that to a large degree. It may affect cost or availability for a short time, but that is true of most new and valuable resources. What is Primordial Saronite selling for on your server? Do you think it will still be at that price in a week? In a month?
The materials to make the ammo are not hard to get. The recipe itself is quite hard to get. Therefore it will probably take awhile before the ammo is widely available at a low cost. That’s what we want. After the ammo is widely available it would basically take a unified cabal of Engineers to keep the prices inflated. Almost always in those situations someone blinks because the loss of selling things for cheaper is a lot better outcome than not selling anything at all.
Onyxia will now move at a normal speed when performing a Deep Breath.
Players will no longer die while zoning into Icecrown citadel as the Gunship event resets.
The Battered Hilt will show it’s appropriate faction-racial restrictions.
Hunters, Rogues, and Shaman will once again be able to roll need on off-hand weapons when the need before greed looting system is active.
Earthen Power now properly removes snare effects.
Hunger for Blood now increases a rogues damage by 10% down from 15%.
The Ephemeral Snowflake trinket now has a very short cooldown to prevent it from restoring inappropriately large amounts of mana.
The Shadow damage from Scourge Strike will no longer be able to critically strike. The physical component will continue to be able to critically strike.
You are now able to recast Mind Flay after missing with the spell without receiving a “This spell is not ready yet” message.
After evaluating damage dealt in instances and PvP over the last two days, we are going to deploy three changes. There could always be more along the way. These hotfixes should hit sometime today (Dec 10).
>Hunger for Blood now increases damage by 10% instead of 15%. We wanted to increase Assassination rogue damage, and we were succesful, but we overshot the mark. We buffed Hunger for Blood back when Assassination needed a damage boost, so we’re more than happy that this talent won’t account for such a huge dps increase. Because of the nature of hotfixes, it is unlikely the tooltip will change to 10% right away.
Scourge Strike can now crit only once. The Shadow portion of the damage cannot separately crit. We wanted to keep the double crit mechanic as a way of making Scourge Strike do more than just being an attack that hits for equal part physical and Shadow damage. The change just proved to be too bursty in PvP and provide too much sustained damage in raids. The Shadow portion Scourge Strike will continue to be increased by effects that currently boost Shadow damage.
Rolling Corruptions no longer use the initial haste value indefinitely. This is really more of a bug fix than a nerf. The problem here was that players could inflate the initial cast of Corruption and have the spell tick for that damage indefinitely as long as it was refreshed. This resulted in some “jaw dropping” damage. Technically this was a tricky one to fix but we wanted to keep the Glyph of Quick Decay and were able to ultimately find a solution. When this fix goes live, the hasted Corruption should correct itself to your current haste within a tick or two of the spell being refreshed.
Ideally, we’d rather make changes while we’re still in PTR before a patch goes live, but in the end we’d rather make changes than allow something imbalanced to continue just because we didn’t change it pre-patch. To the community’s credit, some players predicted these issues might become a problem. We appreciate the feedback as always, even if we don’t always immediately make changes suggested by the community.
I’m going to go ahead and lock this thread, but only because it covers three different topics and not because we’re trying to limit any response or feedback to this announcement.
Players have made several requests for more explanation on the Scourge Strike nerf. I tried to find a post to respond to, but the ones I found were very angry and I didn’t feel like a response in there was going to do anything to discourage more angry posts. So I’ll just do it here.
We initially started mucking around with Scourge Strike based on numerous requests and complaints from Unholy DKs that their talented strike wasn’t very appealing. At the time a lot of Unholy DKs were just using Obliterate instead, especially in PvE. Their logic made a lot of sense. It’s obvious that the tree is built around Scourge Strike to some extent. There are many talents that are less interesting without Scourge Strike.
Side note 1: *You* personally may have been happy with Scourge Strike as it was. We don’t take a public vote on these things. When players make a lot of sense, the designers sit down and discuss whether we agree with them and whether than warrants any changes. In this case we thought it did.
Side note 2: We have a design law around the office, named for one of the designers here, that anything overpowered is fun. There was a time when Scourge Strike hit for silly numbers. Many DKs knew it did too much damage. Others were nostalgic for that day, perhaps even subconsciously. I’ve read several times before something else that makes a lot of sense: too many DKs want a class that hits as often as a rogue but hits as hard as a warrior. You can see the problem there. As long as DKs do so much spell and disease damage, their strikes can’t hit for really big numbers. (If you don’t care about spells and disease damage, then you’re probably playing the wrong class.)
In any event, we tried a lot of different things with the talent. You can probably find my old posts. There were many, which makes these claims that DKs were ignored ring a little hollow. We couldn’t make it just hit as hard as a physical swing since it completely ignored armor. The problem was that in a raid environment in which armor was routinely sundered / exposed or otherwise bypassed, Scourge Strike’s smaller base damage fell short. Again, you can find more detail in older posts.
That’s why we came upon the answer of letting Scourge Strike do half physical damage. Half of the attack would respect armor (and therefore sundered armor as well) but the other half could still benefit from all of the DK abilities that improve Shadow damage. As a side bonus, this made the armor penetration on so much of the dps plate slightly more attractive to Unholy DKs. Players argued that this made the ability less interesting or even compromised. We understood the logic there, so we tried to let the physical and Shadow portions crit separately. We knew there was a risk of it feeling too RNG, and some players brought up that risk. But remember we were still trying to solve two other problems (SS needs to hit hard and not be boring) so we decided to try it anyway.
The parses that came out of the PTR weren’t too bad. There were some big hits of course, but they didn’t happen too often and in PvP the damage didn’t seem out of control. Remember though, our PTRs are voluntary. We get some great players trying things out and sending feedback, which is awesome and much appreciated. We have great internal testers who beat on the raid encounters over and over again before they’re ready to go public. But none of that testing compares to the flood of data we get the day something goes live. The handful of Icecrown raid parses grew by thousands over night, and many of those had Unholy DKs doing much higher damage than was warranted. Go check out any parse by a decent guild for the Icecrown raid. Once you skip over all the Mutilate rogues, there are all the Unholy DKs.
Maybe in retrospect we made a mistake messing with Scourge Strike at all. Maybe a superior solution would have been to let some Unholy DKs just migrate over to Obliterate or whatever. Just remember as passionately as you feel about things now, many DKs felt just as passionately back then when they urged us to reconsider Scourge Strike. As another designer commented recently “You rarely see indifferent players come to the forums to post their indifference.”
Will it stay this way for long? It’s too early to tell. This implementation has a chance of working out, but we also want to see the Icecrown hard modes start up as well as the new Arena season kick in.
Blue Posts
There was also some more information Blizzard mentioned, so here you go =)!
Dungeon Finder System
Can we get a “fresh instance only” filter? (Source)
It depends on your point of view. For some players, the chance to get 2 Frost for 5 min of work killing the final boss can be pretty attractive too.
It’s not rocket science to add more options. You just have to be careful not to subdivide your pool too much any time you’re dealing with matchmaking.
Teleporting to the dungeon and the future of the system (Source)
We knew the teleportation aspect in particular was going to be controversial. It was something we discussed over and over again. I think there is definitely a risk that the world feels somehow emptier when you are magically transported to a dungeon instead of having to walk through its entrance.
But then you have to take a step back and ask what is better for the player. Does a player get more out of the wonder and grandeur of stepping into a dungeon — and some of the dungeons are quite epic even from the outside? Or does a player get more out of being able to fight through a dungeon over their lunch hour or after dinner?
We’ve talked about ideas like making you actually discover a dungeon entrance before you can be whisked there. That may be something we do for Cataclysm. I think the BGs definitely feel less like places in the world since transport to them is seamless. Then again, we’ve made a lot of steps to make the game easier and faster to play that can work against realism. Ulduar and Icecrown are full of teleporters while you had to hoof it in dungeons like Molten Core and Ahn’Qiraj. Would a lot of players want to go back to the old way though? (Sure you can take that to extremes and say players would have their epics mailed to them in Dalaran, were it up to them. But just because players want things efficient doesn’t mean that it’s our job as designers to throw up barriers to what they think is fun in any way we can.)
Dungeon Finder is a new feature for us and like all of our new features we’ll have to iterate a bit before we’re really happy with it. On the other hand, the response from players has been amazing. I don’t think I’ve been involved with a feature since working here that received so much positive feedback, and you have to consider that in my position, 90% of what I hear from players is negative (which you should not take to mean that 90% of players are unhappy — far from it). Everything we’ve heard so far makes me think we made the right call with teleporting. That doesn’t mean we should neglect the sense of a gigantic world. It just means we need to work harder at keeping that sense alive without forcing players to do tedious things like slog to an instance portal. Pugs are hard enough. We don’t want the logistics of organizing the group and travelling to overshadow the challenge of beating the boss.
Contests
The Rise and Fall of the Lich King: Contest (Source)
The cold winds of the north are not stayed by armor or weaponry, but slip through the links in the armor and bite at the flesh beneath. The Scourge answers to but one king and he is a terrifying foe. Enter the heroes of the Horde and the Alliance to match steel with steel and face down this walking terror and his minions in the cold steppes of Northrend.
We’re looking for your best screenshot of your own effort to put a damper on the machinations of the Lich King and the Scourge in Northrend; you could win a Rise of the Lich King Stein.
What can be better than fresh-baked cookies or cakes? Cookies, cakes, and scrumptious desserts created with care to represent elements of the Warcraft, StarCraft, or Diablo universes, of course! We’re holding our Blizzard Holiday Dessert contest again and calling out all those talented bakers and pastry chefs to get out their flour, sugar, and rolling pins to create something amazing to tantalize the eye. Find out more on our contest page!
The Ephemeral Snowflake now has a tiny internal cooldown to keep it from being overpowered on spells such as Vampiric Embrance (when dotting multiple targets) and Wild Growth. It will still return mana as expected in most cases.
I can come up with many examples, and ALL of them are positive changes from one perspective or another – my concern are these changes as a whole, as these changes are continually implemented the direction of the game is getting even easier then it already was.
You’re welcome to your opinion of course. We don’t think the game has gotten too easy. Very few players have been able to defeat say heroic Anub’arak or Yogg-Saron in his hardest mode before that. High level Arena remains as challenging as ever.
We made some changes to make the game more accessible, which I don’t think is at all a bad idea. It’s awesome that WoW has as much depth as it does, but we don’t believe complexity, and particularly not confusing complexity, go hand in hand with depth. It’s a social game, definitely, but social doesn’t have to mean that it requires an experienced friend to teach you how some unintuitive mechanics work.
As a player I can understand how you might have a sense of accomplishment for being able to overcome a very hostile world or leveling environment. It’s fun to be challenged and overcome those challenges. But you can also think about how it benefits you to have the audience for this game grow as large as it has. We are able to release relatively expensive content (3.3 was a gigantic patch by almost any measure) because WoW has been so successful. We are now talking about our third full expansion and beyond because it’s clear that WoW has enough players to endure for awhile. So while it definitely benefits us to attract and retain new players, it ultimately benefits you too.
There are MMOs out there who cater to a much harder core audience and there are ways to make such a business model work. WoW just went in a different direction. We’re big and ambitious and we want to keep the game going and growing for as long as we can.
Classes
Priest
Shadow Word: Pain needs to be hotfixed as well (Source)
We think Shadow Priest dps is in a good place without SW:P benefiting from haste based on the data we have seen so far.
Warlock
Rolling Corruption bug and Affliction DPS in 3.3 (Source)
If you thought the Affliction Corruption rolling was fine, you probably weren’t playing it correctly.
I’ll admit it required some level of sophistication to pull off. But we don’t think it’s fair to let some players do ridiculously high damage just because the average player can’t do it.
# Emblem of Triumph quartermasters now exchanges one Emblem of Conquest for one Emblem of Triumph.
# The NPC Usuri Brightcoin in Dalaran now exchanges one Emblem of Triumph for one Emblem of Frost.
The problem and idea people are getting is that you can give one emblem of conquest and in return you get a triumph, then you can turn in that triumph for frost. But it’s not like that as of now as we have checked for ourselves. Its actually vise versa. You have the ability to trade emblem of frost to receive an emblem of triumph and so on..
As noted in game, the release of the Plagueworks in Icecrown Citadel occurs 28 days after patch 3.3.0 was released. After the Plagueworks is available, you will then wait less than 28 days for the next wing to become active. The extended length of the initial 28 day delay is simply due to the timing of the Holidays.
In other news, the initial number of attempts to defeat the major bosses at the end of each wing of Icecrown Citadel has been increased by 5. This means you’ll have 10 attempts for Professor Putricide, 15 attempts when The Crimson Halls are available, then 20 when the Frostwing Halls becomes attackable.
Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. Keep in mind that some of these changes may not be active until after the realm has been restarted.
We have recently implemented a fix that allows players to walk up the ramp and open the item chest at the end of Halls of Reflection as intended. We are actively working through the tickets we received on this issue and will handle them as quickly as possible. We thank you for your patience as we worked through this issue and apologize for any inconvenience.
We just deployed a hotfix addressing the spawning of Deathbringer Saurfang.
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Upon further review, the hotfix will require a server restart. I have no ETA on when we will be restarting the servers. Again, sorry for the inconvenience.
Logging out inside a battleground and logging back in after the BG is completed will cause characters to be unable to queue using the Looking for Dungeon System.
Spamming the Auto Attack button causes the character to play the attack animation even though no actual attack is done.
Dungeons & Raids
Escape from Durnhold – At the end of the Escape from Durnholde instance Erozion teleports you back to Caverns of Time rather than where you entered the instance from.
Halls of Reflection – Player will get disconnected when running up the ramp to the ship.
Quests
Horde players do not receive a parachute when the Kor’kron Troop Transport is destroyed during the quest, “Assault by Air”.
Classes
Druid
While swimming in Cat form or Travel form players nameplates are clipping through their model.
Mage
Mage Summon Water Elemental does not fully function as a permanent pet when glyphed with Glyph of Eternal Water.
Paladin
Avenging Wrath and self cast Lay on Hands cannot be used within 30 seconds of each other.
UI
The dungeon finder visual UI will sometimes display inaccurate class archetype counts.
The group “guide” is called “Party Leader” in chat.
Hey, I've created this fansite for all World of Warcraft players to come conversate and read up on interesting information. I will post humerous pictures, polls, and topics for people to view as well as comment. I do play World Of Warcraft and I play for the Horde faction! So all you alliance players, watch your backs! FOR THE HORDE!
