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Blizzard are pumping up the PR engine in a big way in the final few days until Mists of Pandaria launches. The latest salvo is a nearly seven minute preview of what’s coming in MoP. It’ll be of particular interest to any WoW players who haven’t played the beta for MoP.
Enjoy:
I’ve had beta access and have purposely avoided the new zones so the surprise isn’t ruined too much. I have to say I like what I see – what about you?
Through the Mist is a regular column from Luke Le Page covering everything World of Warcraft. If you’d like something covered in a future column, drop us a line!
With Mists of Pandaria only a week away I felt like it was a good time for a review of its predecessor: Cataclysm.
The anticipation I felt towards the end of Wrath of the Lich King was immense. Icecrown Citadel and Ulduar had been a return to the epic raids of the past such as Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Karazhan and Black Temple to name a few. The reintroduction of Naxxramas as a level 80 raid also had me extremely excited having been stuck on the Four Horsemen in classic WoW before taking a break in preparation for the Burning Crusade. I was finally going to be able to defeat Kel’Thuzad and close that chapter of Warcraft lore – not only that but I would be throwing down against Arthas himself in the not too distant future.
This is where I think Cataclysm faced its greatest challenge – how were Blizzard going to come back after having defeated Arthas, the antagonist of the unbelievably popular Warcraft 3? We had spent years working up to this culminating fight. The pre-expansion event had me fairly excited (The Cataclysm). Having also read the Shattering, the expansion’s companion novel, I felt truly immersed in the events that were taking place. My beloved zones were utterly destroyed as Deathwing emerged from Deepholme.
I hated him for that as I am an altoholic. I loved many of the original zones, hated others. I played through them more times than I care to admit and came to love the environment of the game and this former aspect had come along and completely destroyed many of them and it was time for payback.
The event really set the tone for me as I ventured into this new expansion – there was no way I was going to let Deathwing off the hook. So I logged into my account page and race-changed my Rogue to a Goblin and set about on my journey for vengeance.
We also saw the introduction of two new races. After many years of petitions from players we finally saw the emergence of Goblins as a player race as well as the ever mysterious Worgen. I have played through both of these starting areas and must admit that I was quite impressed by the work done by Blizzard. During the Worgen scenario I truly felt that I was being hunted. The Goblin experience was less exciting for me but it left me with an even stronger desire to rid the world of Deathwing.
That was about as excited as I got during the Cataclysm expansion. My levelling experience went fairly well, I was among the first level 85’s on my server. I thoroughly enjoyed Mount Hyjal, the ever elusive Mount Hyjal that we had ran through as ghosts or by cliff jumping very early on in the original form of the game. It was finally open and it did not disappoint. The zone itself made fantastic use of Blizzards phasing technology.
My first foray into Cataclysm dungeons occurred on the first day as I headed into Blackrock Cavern with a guild group. This was a relatively positive experience and reinforced my hopes for the expansion.
Mount Hyjal was followed by Deepholme. The cutscene entry to this zone was excellent and really set the scene as we ventured deep into Deathwing’s home. This was another impressive zone, I enjoyed the turmoil within the elemental plane and our efforts to assist Therazane.
After completing Deepholme, and a few runs of the Stonecore (a thoroughly enjoyable dungeon that continued the storyline of the zone), I ventured into Uldum. I have to say this is where my experience went sour.
The zone itself was fine, though a little spread out and at times it felt a little slow. My major gripe was that the zone felt like filler. There was no real point to it even existing. Granted they tied the zone to Deathwing lore but it felt forced. I can’t say that I enjoyed Vortex pinnacle, though it was fun on heroic and had some interesting mechanics.
This lead me to the Twilight Highlands. Again the zone relied heavily on lore and led us to investigate the Twilight’s Hammer and Deathwing’s relationship with the other dragon flights. It was an interesting zone and tied into the Bastion of Twilight raid extremely well. The introduction quests to the zone, both Alliance and Horde, were interesting and I enjoyed doing them.
Overall, I had a mixed levelling experience, so much so that I still have not levelled a handful of alts that I would like to and many that I have were levelled through dungeons alone. The zones after a single completion felt tedious and I did not wish to do them again on alts. This is the first time I have ever felt that way during my time playing WoW and it was a somewhat foreign experience. If I was forced to give it a score out of 10 I would probably lean towards a 6.5 or 7. It wasn’t terrible and many zones were enjoyable while others were frustratingly spread out.
This brings me to heroic dungeons.
I don’t really have anything bad to say in regards to heroics – we began running them almost immediately as a guild in an effort to gear up for raids. I can’t say that I ever found any of them overly difficult; some were tough at lower gear levels as you would expect but I have no memories of repetitive wipes in any of them. Some of the achievements were a lot of fun to attempt and whilst I did not complete the heroic meta-achievement, due largely to a break that I will mention below and some laziness. I still occasionally run the early tier of heroics so that is definitely a positive for Blizzard. The remakes of Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep were also fun. The addition of the Zandalari heroics later in the expansion is also a positive – I was not playing at the time these were released so I can’t speak for how difficult they were at the appropriate gear level but I quite enjoyed them at a higher gear level. I give heroics an 8/10.
The New Azeroth
I have to say that I really enjoy the new zones. Blizzard has done an amazing job revamping the levelling experience and has made it relevant to the current content of the game. Lore-wise it is a little disconcerting that we do Azeroth and then move to Outlands and Northrend (that are effectively in the past) before returning to Cataclysm content. The other drawback comes from the levelling speed of the game. Even without Bind on Account items and Guild perks, that increased experience gain means it is possible to out-level a zone from a single quest hub. I found this a little annoying despite my enjoyment of the zones themselves. I give 9/10 for the new levelling areas.
Raiding
I will not spend too much time on my raiding experience. My guild went into Blackwing Descent first and downed Magmaw with minimal fuss. Omnitron took a handful of attempts but also went down on the first night. Chimaeron was a sterner challenge and went down on the following night after a fairly high number of attempts. In the second week we moved on to Maloriak and Atramades and successfully killed them. I was not present for the Nefarian and Onyxia kill but was there for a number of early attempts. The only fight I truly enjoyed in this raid was Atramedes. I was immediately disappointed with the difficulty level of the raid. Granted my guild wiped, but it was nothing major and we overcame much of the raid with minimal fuss. I rate the first tier of raids extremely poorly: 2/10
Bastion of Twilight was a similar story with the exception of Cho’ Gall. This fight for a variety of reasons took us some time to master and to be honest I really enjoyed it despite the wipes. I can’t say much for the rest of the raid zone. I found most of it boring and simple. Ascendant Council took some time to adapt to the mechanics and coordination required, but was overcome relatively quickly.
I give this early raiding tier a pretty low score, a mere 3/10 overall. I was severely disappointed by it. After my guild defeated Nefarian and Cho’ Gall I immediately took a break from the game. This is an opinion piece and I think that a launch player who had played through every previous tier of raiding stepping back so early says more than my review ever can about that tier. I also note that I never did Throne of the Four Winds.
Due to this, I missed all of Firelands. As a huge fan of Molten Core and Ragnaros I would love to have been a part of my guild’s progress through this raid but it was not to be. I still have not completed this raid having only returned to the game in mid Dragon Soul.
This brings me to Dragon Soul. Due to the break mentioned above I was no longer a part of a core raiding team for Dragon Soul and had to settle with sub-ins and pugs. My experience overall was fairly positive and I enjoyed the zone overall and give it a 7/10.
The introduction of the Raid finder. Well this is a debate in itself. It has polarised much of the WoW community and I personally like it. It gives casual and new players a chance to participate in later tiers of the game. The difficulty could probably use a little bit of tweaking – being able to ignore the mechanics of fights should not be allowed to happen but in general I feel it is a good way to make raiding accessible to all players. Hopefully in Mists of Pandaria we see a balance in the raid finder that is challenging and rewarding for new and casual players.
This is where people will gripe that if I found the raids so easy why didn’t I do hard modes? The simple answer is I didn’t care enough about the raids to bother with them. Very few of the encounters even piqued my interest enough to go through them a second time. My break ended up being an extremely long one and from all reports I missed an excellent raid in the Firelands and if I have one regret from this expansion it is not completing that raid or even experiencing it. The reason I returned from my break was the WoW annual pass. I was always going to play Diablo 3 and the deal was too good to pass up, it also gave me a chance to experience MoP without having to purchase it. I am sad to say that it was nothing Blizzard added to the current game that brought me back .
Overall, I think it is clear that I did not enjoy Cataclysm as much as I have the previous expansions of the game. This is not entirely Blizzard’s fault as I went through a number of issues in life that also affected my enjoyment of this expansion. Putting those aside however, I have to rate Cataclysm as the worst of WoW’s expansions so far.
My ranking structure would be
World of Warcraft 9/10
Wrath of the Lich King 8.5/10
The Burning Crusade 8.5/10
Cataclysm 6/10
Note that I rate BC and WotLK the same – I put in an inordinate amount of work during Karazhan progression which affected my experience of the raid so I rank it lower than WotLK.
Now your turn: what’s your feelings or thoughts about Cataclysm now that you look back?
Voting for the 30th Annual Golden Joystick Awards is open, and amongst others, SWTOR and TSW have got nominations.
SWTOR has picked up nominations in the Best MMO and Ultimate Game of the Year awards, whilst TSW has picked up a Best MMO nomination.
Other nominees in the MMO category include EVE Online, League of Legends, LOTRO, Rift, Runescape, Tera and World of Tanks.
If you want to lodge a vote, here’s where to go. I was torn with my vote in the Best MO category but ended up going with TSW. What about you?
Last night, BioWare continued its concentration of players into ever fewer servers in both the European and North American zones.
This process started in June where they tried to lure people across to the designated ‘destination’ servers with promises of vanity treats. Unsurprisingly, not everyone nibbled at these virtual goodies and stubbornly stayed where they were. Last night the forced evictions occurred and all the remaining holdouts got corralled into their new, higher population residence. That wasn’t surprising and we all knew it was coming. What did raise a couple of eyebrows was that the number of destination servers had actually shrunk. North America now only has eight, down from twelve in the original merger strategy. European servers also lost two of their former destination servers.
Obviously this means that those unlucky enough to have had naming issues when they moved to The Fatman, Corellian Run, Canderous Ordo or Drooga’s Pleasure Barge are now faced with a further round of name conflicts as they settle in to their new, new homes. Even more concerning, Bioware has only just started the ‘High Population Server’ testing, which suggests that further mergers may be in the near future. The other possibility is that this infrastructure is for the move to F2P, but even if that’s the only reason it’s there it still doesn’t rule out further consolidation or redistribution of the existing player based, subbed or not.
One of the pluses to come with the mergers is an increase in character slots from eight to twelve. Players in the EU and North America can now grow their in-game family of alts if they choose, although that’s not the reason for the increase in space. For the most part it’s a basic solution to accomodate players who have more than eight characters spread across multiple servers. Even if you have more than twelve you will still be able to access them but won’t be able to create new characters until you reduce your count to below twelve.
It goes without saying (but I will anyway) that APAC players immediately noticed that we haven’t seen the character slot increase, although Bioware have advised that they intend for us to get them.
This begs the question ‘what else will we get?’ Since the additional slots came as a solution for one problem created with the server merger, something we’ve not experienced, will the increase in slots come with our own three servers being folded into one?
Time will tell. Either way you might want to create some placeholder characters, just in case.
We’ve just received the info on the server live times and when people can pick up their box copies of Mists of Pandaria.
Here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth:
While heroic adventurers hailing from Australia and New Zealand can purchase a copy of Mists of Pandaria directly from www.warcraft.com, they can also pick up the game at their favourite retailer on Tuesday, September 25th beginning at 9 AM local time. (9 AM NZST/9 AM AEST/9 AM ACST/9 AM AWST)
For a handy reference, the game servers will go live at:
New Zealand Standard Time: 7:00 PM
Australian Eastern Standard Time: 5:00 PM
Australian Central Standard Time: 4:30 PM
Australian Western Standard Time: 3:00 PM
The new continent reveals itself to a broken world just as the Alliance and Horde are spiralling ever closer to a war that will consume all of Azeroth. Will the mists of Pandaria part to reveal the world’s salvation? Or will the battle to control this rich and breathtaking new land push the two mighty factions over the brink of war and into total annihilation? The answers await within Pandaria’s mysterious shores!
So if you’re like me and have ordered a box copy, you have plenty of time to pick it up and have things ready for the servers going live.
Over to you: what plans do you have for launch day?
After a marathon server downtime of around 12 hours, things are back to normal but there’s one issue affecting oceanic players on local servers. It seems the 12th character slot isn’t available.
It seems it’s caught BioWare by surprise after being raised by the community, with Joveth Gonzalez posting this a little while ago:
| No extra Character Slots for Oceanic | 09.18.2012, 10:05 PM | |
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Hi folks! Thanks for raising awareness for this! Rest assured that Oceanic servers will be getting 12 character slots as well. Apologies for the confusion and the wait as we work on making this adjustment. Thank you for your patience!
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No word on timeframes but we’ll let you know if it becomes clear.
It’s been a while coming but it’s now a reality. The Issue #2 content update is live on the servers, and we’ve got the full patch notes for you right here.
As you’ll see, there’s no shortage of things to delve into, so here we go:
“Issue #2: Digging Deeper” Game Update 1.2 – September 18th
Highlights
Brand new missions, the rocket launcher – our first auxiliary weapon including its own mission line – and the plastic surgery and barber shop are now all available as part of The Secret World Issue #2: Digging Deeper. Please click here for more information about the new missions in Issue #2.
And there is also a new title available if you complete all of the Digging Deeper missions!
Top changes
- Two additional dungeon Nightmare modes are now available: The Facility and Hell Eternal.
- The plastic surgeon’s shop Modern Prometheus in New York is now open for business.
- Visit Ockham’s Razor barber shop in London for a new haircut or change of facial hair styles.
- You can now access a Looking for Group (LFG) Tool using the Shift+C keyboard short cut or via the in-game menu.
- You can now equip an 8th active/passive ability! This is reserved only for auxiliary abilities.
- All lair NPCs now have a chance to drop Bind on Pickup rare core items.
- All Lair bosses will now drop two Bind on Pickup rare items, 1 rare signet, 1 rare Glyph kit, and two Region boss blueprints.
- All Region bosses will now drop a loot bag containing 2-4 blueprints to summon that boss, 3 epic Bind on Pickup items, 1 epic signet, 1 epic Glyph kit and a unique Raid Puzzle Piece.
- NEW Lair Kill missions :
- From Beyond the Iron Curtain (The Carpathian Fangs)
- The Spoils of Cold War (The Shadowy Forest)
- Midnight Mass (The Besieged Farmlands)
- Sinking Feelings (The Savage Coast)
- Unto the Beach (Kingsmouth)
- Citadel of Pain (City of the Sun God)
- Return of the Red Nights (The Scorched Desert)
- The House always Wins (Blue Mountain)
General
- London – Fixed the hat vendor’s voices to match their genders.
- Tabula Rasa – Gave some NPCs more health. You can now use active dodge in this playfield.
- Pangaea mannequins no longer have (U) tooltips.
- Corrected several visual issues with clothing.
- You are no longer able to get stuck between the bookcase and a chair in Dracula’s Castle.
- Slightly optimized client memory usage.
- Athletic Hoodie, blue should now appear correctly in the players Dressing Room after purchase.
- Turrets will turn to their original rotation after combat and when they deactivate.
- A new Anima Well can be found in the vicinity of the Lair area in Shadowy Forest.
- The Magna Cum Laude achievement should now always be achievable.
- You are now unable to accept dungeon teleports before reaching Jack Boone in Kingsmouth, to prevent an issue where your character could become totally unable to progress.
- Adjusted the animation of running while using a cellphone.
- Fixed an issue where the Shirt and Tie would clip through your equipped jacket.
- Each lair now has a “warning area” encircling it on the map.
- On the London map, the spelling of “Ealdwich alley” as been changed to “Ealdwych Alley”.
- The clock on the top menu can now switch between showing game time and real time. Switch by clicking it.
- Rifles will no longer clip through your character’s body when drawn.
- Fixed an issue with naked characters in cinematics.
- Fixed several locations worldwide where it was possible to get stuck.
- Fixed some clipping issues with new female hairstyles and hats.
- London: A specialised arms dealer in Ealdwic Station will now provide you with the necessary components to create and cast your auxiliary weapons.
- Signet of Echoes will no longer cause friendly targets to attack you.
- Fixed an issue with NPCs not playing attack animations for Assault Rifle attacks.
- The sound of your headlamp will no longer be heard by other characters.
- Fixed an issue with ocean reflections.
- The camera will no longer jump when changing sex during character creation.
- Fixed a few issues with hairstyles that caused clipping issues.
- Fixed collision issues in several places worldwide.
- Lair – Spoiled Garden – The Chain Spore detrimental effect on players should now display its icon correctly.
- Fixed an issue with flickering shadows with crossfire enabled.
- Fixed the cause of a server crash.
- Fixed a spot where players took unintended environmental damage.
- Fixed a crash caused when skipping introduction cinematics.
Abilities
- Do or Die no longer has a brief delay after activating it.
- Turn the Tables and The Scarlet Arts will build counters on Hot Iron.
- Turn the Tables updated to indicate that it is not affected by any heal increasing effects.
- Mass Provocation will now affect up to 5 targets.
- Mass Confusion will now affect up to 5 targets.
- Queued dash abilities will now change weapons correctly when they are executed.
- Assault Rifle
- The tooltip for Leeching Frenzy will now correctly state that the beneficial effect has a duration of 4 seconds.
- Anima Outbreak now specifies the number of friendly targets healed per enemy target hit.
- Tactical Retreat grenade will now damage targets.
- Tactical Retreat will no longer go on cooldown if it can’t be used (e.g. if you have a cliff behind you).
- High Explosive Grenade’s tooltip now reflects that it does more damage to Afflicted targets.
- Frag Grenade now does area damage when used with 4 and 5 resources.
- Lucky Bullet’s tooltip now reflects that the effect happens on the 7th attack, not on the 8th attack.
- The tooltip for Shellshocker now correctly states that it hits every 0.25 seconds instead of every 0.3 seconds.
- Fixed an issue with Demolition, Man.
- Updated the tooltip for Groundwork to state that up to 5 friendly targets will be affected. Improved Groundwork will affect the same number of targets.
- Updated Veteran Passive ability to only apply once per cast of abilities.
- Demolition, Man will only proc once from Tactical Retreat.
- Updated spelling error in Call your Shots.
- Blood
- Gaian Exposure’s buff is now correctly named “Gaian Exposure”.
- Updated Blood Pact tooltip for barrier with numeric information (absorption rate and amount).
- Updated the tooltip for Prolonged Darkness to correctly show that it adds 3 seconds (instead of 2 seconds) to Left Hand of Darkness’ damage over time effect.
- Blood Pact: Updated tooltip for barrier with numeric information (absorption rate and amount).
- Elementalism
- Aidelon: Reduced the critical chance bonus on Afflicted targets with Blaze from 100% to 40%.
- The damage buff from Short Fuse is now consistent whether the caster is in a group or not.
- Group mates will receive the Short Fuse buff when a group member casts it.
- Blaze is now affected by Seal the Deal.
- Final Fuse passive ability now correctly improves the buff from Short Fuse.
- Manifestations will now more reliably trigger the Elemental Skill: Fury.
- Fire Manifestation will now trigger hit effects.
- Updated description for Elemental Skill: Fury to clarify what triggers it.
- Fixed several issues with Short Fuse and its passive Final Fuse.
- Phantom Purge now removes the particle effects from targets that have been purged.
- Fist
- Hog Wild now only effects NPCs located within the specific cone effect area.
- Lick Your Wounds’ healing ticks are no longer able to crit.
- Using Anima Burst will now increment stacks of Hot Iron.
- Nurture, Cauterise and Shelter will now trigger Adrenalise.
- Vigour can now critically heal.
- Hammer
- Updated tooltip of Blowout to display proper health increase %.
- The tooltip of Epicentre has been updated to say that it creates a damage area around the targets of the caster’s attacks.
- The Thor Hammer ability will now stop to play its animation when the caster is interrupted.
- Epicentre should no longer cause FPS drop when used by multiple players near each other.
- Pistols
- Big Bang will now actually trigger each time each time a manifestation, turret, or drone deals damage.
- Critical Help will only trigger when a manifestation, turret, or drone is summoned.
- Win-win will now affect the caster and cleanse the correct number of detrimental effects.
- Mad Skills will now trigger when critically healing.
- Shotgun
- Smart Bomb: Reduced placement range to normal shotgun range.
- Bomb Squad: Reduced placement range to normal shotgun range.
- Riot Act will now show the advanced tooltip when the Show Advanced Ability Descriptions option is selected.
- Shotgun Damage Skill attack will now appear in the combat message window as CQC instead of Point Blank.
PvP
- Cover in Stonehenge has been more evenly spread out.
- Hit Rating and Defence Rating have been removed from the World Domination buff.
- Updated the mechanic for capturing an Anima Facility.
Dungeons
- The Facility and Hell Eternal Nightmare portals in Agartha have been added.
- You will now be able to rejoin a Nightmare dungeon that you previously left, provided the instance is still active. An instance will remain active for 5 minutes when empty.
- Generic pets are now disabled in dungeons.
- Wallachian nightmare dungeons give an increased amount of Black Bullion.
- The Facility: Anima Control Rod beams should no longer flicker.
- Hell Fallen – Nightmare: Some issues have been fixed and balance adjustments have been made.
- Hell Raised Nightmare and Hell Eternal Nightmare: Lifeburn will no longer cause certain passives to damage you.
- Nightmare Xibalban Bloodhound (Darkness War), Nightmare Pit Dweller (The Ankh), and Nightmare Piston Predator (Hell Eternal) mobs now have a 50% chance to drop Bind-On-Equip Band 10 purples.
- Trash in Nightmare dungeons now has a chance of dropping either Band 10 blues or a low chance to drop Bind-On-Equip Band 10 purples.
- The Slaughterhouse
- The dungeon has been rebalanced extensively and it’s now significantly harder.
- Aleksei-Chetyre should now die immediately when reaching 0 health.
- Darkness War Nightmare
- Wayeb-Xul: The duration of the stun applied by Concuss is now slightly shorter.
- Wayeb-Xul now pauses his combat a few seconds after casting Concuss.
- The Ankh
- A particle now plays on the target and Doctor Klein right before he casts Dreaming Shroud.
- Added tier and goal text in the mission journal for Pandora’s Box and Pandora’s Box Revisited.
- Removed the filth spawned along the edge in Normal/Elite.
Items
- Healing signets will now trigger on the correct target.
- Signet of Castigation will now have a visual indicator when active.
- Fixed an issue with Signet of Ablation not activating properly.
- Fixed an issue with Signet of Equilibrium not applying properly.
- Penetration kickbacks will now trigger correctly.
- Black Mark of the Morrigan now correctly applies Flurry of Feathers from all heals, including blood magic barriers that have a direct healing component.
- You can now create moulds with weapons such as Taipan’s Last Resort and Soul Crusher.
- The clothing item Atenist Garb no longer causes your character’s eyebrows to change color to orange.
- Fixed the name of the ability cast by the Fragmentation grenade, now named “Frag Grenade”.
- The cost of purchasing Glyphs from the PvP vendors has been significantly reduced.
- The cost of purchasing Venice Glyph Upgrade Toolkit has been significantly reduced.
- The cost of purchasing Venice Talisman Upgrade Toolkit has been significantly reduced.
- Auxiliary Weapon Mould: Original now for sale from vendors.
- Auxiliary Weapon Mould: Gold-Plated now for sale from vendors.
- Auxiliary casting Toolkit now for sale from vendors.
- Auxiliary weapon mould blueprints now have a chance to drop from all Nightmare bosses.
- Adjusted Signet of Order to behave more like its description.
- Signet of Temperance should now trigger properly.
- Plethron Epipens will now behave more consistently.
- Fixed spelling mistakes in several signets.
- The Atomos head talisman will no longer incorrectly place a stacking buff on your hostile target.
- Fixed an issue where some Dress shirts would clip through the Punk Blazer.
- Fixed some issues where the Female tight plaid pants would deform multiple shoes meshes.
- The Orochi Field Uniform will no longer change the your pants and shoes when equipping it.
- Shell of the Nautilus from normal Polaris has had its icon corrected.
- Achievement Rewards: The male “Dawn Leathers” item is now a green poncho similar to the female, as intended.
- Faction Marks sold by the Explosives Vendors now clear each other – a given target can only have 1 Mark. These Marks also no longer falsely claim to only effect one target at a time.
- Thoth’s Condemnation (normal and elite versions) now add the correct amount of stats to you.
- Wosret’s Marvel can now be properly disassembled.
- Caress of the Void can now be properly disassembled.
- Calabi-Yau Manifold can now be properly disassembled.
- Grotesquely Bloated Heart can now be properly disassembled.
- Pishacha’s Hunger can now be properly disassembled.
- The coveted Taco Hat is now available if you have consumed 7460 tacos or more in-game.
GUI
- Fixed an issue with the gear manager swapping builds with similar weapons.
- Marketplace : The marketplace search no longer returns with items that are already sold.
- The equip button has been replaced by a reassign button for abilities already equipped.
- Improved the mission tracker visuals and feedback.
- Cabals – Added a new permission to cabals (Can Withdraw Items).
- Cabals – You can now invite other players to your cabal even if they are not in your area.
- Made the GUI of states and resources a bit easier to understand.
- Added burst as a subtype in ability search.
- Fixed target decal option not saving properly.
- Crafting – Assembly window should now never open without text on the assembly button.
- The in-game browser should no longer crash when a download link is opened (it will rather just be ignored).
- Fixed an issue where the PvP GUI would not update properly after a Battlefield was completed.
- Fixed an issue where the Gear Manager would sometime not load the gears that are part of a build.
- You can now invite other players to your Cabal by Right Clicking their name in chat regardless of how far the invited player is from you.
- TO MODDERS: Added the possibility to set a target though the UseShortcut function in com.GameInterface.Game.Shortcut (UseShortcut(pos:Number, targetId:ID32)
- Changed cabal member promote button from Ok to Ok/Cancel.
- Opening up the dressing room tab should no longer show a blank Back tab by default.
- Gear manager has been updated to work with auxiliary abilities and weapons.
- Removed outdated achievements The Grimms and Heart of the Matter.
- Fixed a brief delay when joining a group where group chat would not display right away.
- Hazmat Suit will now correctly appear in the multislot section of the Dressing Room.
- Corrected an incomplete sentence on a character selection screen popup.
- The maximum number of possible gear manager slots your character can have when purchasing all upgrades, has been increased to 20.
- Added new icons to playfield maps to show the lairs.
- Area names and Lair names should no longer appear onscreen at the same time.
Missions
- Into Darkness – Illuminati : You will now be able to continue if you skip the road flares and proceed to the meeting point in the dark.
- Dawning of an Endless Night: Correct instance name will appear when attempting to enter Illuminati Archives.
- Dawning of an Endless Night: You should no longer be attacked by friendly Undying Thanes in The Savage Coast stone encounter.
- Hub cities: You are now unable to leave the training rooms until the weapon missions are complete.
- Virgula Divina: Fixed an issue which caused some players to be unable to move after watching a cinematic in the mission.
- To Catch a Thief: Goalmarker now guides you back to the instance on the ‘follow the rogue agent into Agartha’ step.
- Total Eclipse: The Headlamp is now removed from inventory upon mission completion.
London
- London Underground: Fixed an issue where the door found in the Bazalgette could be interacted with without having the mission active.
- London Underground: The Crocea Mors item has been removed from the mission as it is no longer required.
New York
- Mainframe: A locked door found in the instance will now provide appropriate feedback when interacted with.
Kingsmouth
- The Pick-Up
- Adjusted the trigger areas for this escort mission.
- Fixed an issue where Cassandra would sometime stop following you during tier 6 which would prevent mission completion.
- Fixed an issue where leaving the instance would sometime not solve the “Leave the maintenance tunnel” goal during tier 7.
- One of the 3 doors will always allow you to pass through to the other side.
- Floater: Lost Drone can now be spawned by other players after someone else already spawned it.
- It takes Two to Tango: Tango should automatically respawn after it despawns either from mission completion or failure.
- That’ll Leave a Mark: Fixed an issue where the Injured Man would duplicate himself.
- The Kingsmouth Code: Fixed an issue where the mission would pause after clicking some paintings.
- Runaway Light – Fixed a few issues with Ellis gun during the mission cinematic.
- The Hunger: Voracious Wendigo will now consistently spawn at the bones for tier 1, and then run away after the first ambush (without getting stuck at half health).
- Hell and Bach: Theodore Wicker’s spiritual memory re-lived on the seance circle in tier 2 is now distinct from his tape-recorded journal later in the mission, as intended.
The Savage Coast
- Carter Unleashed
- It is no longer possible to get stuck in the generators in the basement.
- You can now complete the mission even if you have crafted the Charged Ward Generator before the intended goal.
- Another Portable ward generator can be picked up while on goal “Assemble a charged ward generator” if it was used up previously.
- The Media pop-up is now larger and easier to read.
- A Carnival of Souls
- Fixed an issue where you would sometimes be unable to destroy the Joy of Children during tier 3.
- “Joy of Children” can be destroyed when re-entering the instance during “Free the Joy of Children”.
- Bring it Bach: Camera effect appears when the camera is used.
- Jack’s Back: Jack will reliably spawn after killing the 3 revenants in Tier 3.
- Ami Legend: Fixed an issue where the encounter would sometimes break if you died during tier 2.
- The Exterminator: Burrows can be attacked by melee attacks.
- Dear Reader: Fixed an issue where the ravens would sometime not fly away when approached.
- The Faculty: Professor Jones now drains less life from her familiars.
- The Breakfast Cult: Ward generator effects in the library will show properly now.
- Sinking Feelings: Added a text for when the mission has been solved. The number of slurs to kill has been adjusted.
The Blue Mountain
- Bitter Servants can no longer attack you through walls in the Franklin Mansion and can no longer pass through walls.
- Fixed an issue in pathfinding near the Franklin Mansion staircase where NPCs would end up under the stairs or on the above floor.
- Fixed an issue that prevented you from entering the area for the Aspect of the Long-Toothed.
- The Filth Amendment: The waypoint for finding Subject-Zero among the prisoners has been increased slightly in radius.
- The Filth: The Media pop up in Tier 2 should now be localized in the mission journal.
- His Master’s Voice: French and German version of the pages should appear correctly in the journal.
- Jack of the Lantern: Fixed an issue that could make Jack of the Lantern take a lengthy amount of time before spawning in the pumpkin patch.
- Up in Flames: The Hazmat Suit awarded when completing the mission will now properly appear as a Multislot item in the Dressing Room.
- Scavengers: Fixed an issue where the Faction Report would not show any text.
- Dreamcatcher
- Fixed an issue that prevented you from completing the goal “Find a Wabanaki Guide’s feather” after pausing and unpausing the mission.
- The mapmarkers for the Ancestor’s Nightmares have been adjusted to better reflect the location.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the mission to not complete correctly.
- Ancestor’s Nightmares will no longer keep you on their hatelist, preventing you from regenerating health.
- The Orochi Group
- The Poisonous Smoke can now be prevented by wearing the hazmat suit (from the Up in Flames mission).
- Fixed an issue where the required password was incorrectly shown on the computer terminal GUI during Tier 3.
- The Media pop up for Tier 4 of the mission should now be localized.
- Homeland Insecurity
- The Tactical Map found during the mission will now match the visual look of it’s media popup.
- Fixed an issue that could prevent you from completing the mission if your inventory was full.
- The Ghosts and the Darkness
- Fixed an issue that prevented you from hearing Billy Woodrow’s spoken dialogue.
- Jimmy Rigby’s corpse will now be easier to find.
- Echoes in Eternity
- Fixed an issue that prevented you from completing the mission if you resumed it on the last tier.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes prevented you from completing the mission if you paused it.
The Scorched Desert
- Old Gods, New Tricks: Mission dynel used to spy has been renamed to Spy on Tanis.
- The High Cost of Dying
- Tier 1: Interacting with the Altar of Learning inside the Ancient Marya Atheneum will now properly complete the mission goal.
- Tier 2: Leaving the Ancient Marya Atheneum during the mission will no longer block the mission from progressing.
City of the Sun God
- The 3rd Age – Tier 3: Fixed an issue that prevented you from completing the mission if it was paused.
- Batteries Not Included: The Malfunctioning Drones found during the mission will no longer remain immobilized on the way to their destination.
- Waters of the Nile: The mission will no longer disappear from certain instances.
- Halls of Lost Records: The locked door in the Chambers of Horus will now unlock properly when the mission asks you to pick up the Key of Horus.
- The Way of Things: Slightly improved lighting inside the pentagram room.
- Blood and Fire: The Statue of the Voice of Aten encountered at the end of the mission will now respawn faster and should not lock anymore.
- Changes to NPCs:
- Shade Stalkers should be easier to handle.
- Foreman Gahiji found new strength and should be slightly harder.
- Eiz has drawn even more power from his altars.
- Filth-Warped Aspirants now know how to use their weapons correctly.
- Golems now properly bind to the will of the Shaper of Golems.
- Transformed Orochi Soldiers have grown and found their proper powers.
- Filthy Orochi Assaulter should be more interesting to fight.
- Vile Dive ability from Soul Corruptors now have a clearer area of effect.
- Bullrush ability from some Guardians now have a clearer area of effect.
- The Corrupted Corpses NPCs in City of the Sun God have been tweaked to be more enjoyable.
- Infectious Commander should be easier to handle.
- Several NPCs have been made stronger in the mission “The way of things”.
- Shezmu the Betrayer found new defensive moves making him harder.
- The manifestations of Amir now have less health.
- Mummy ability “Old Blood” area of effect will now be clearer.
- Envoy Runihura has gained new gear and will be harder to kill.
- Rib-Hadda has gone through some soul searching and has been completely rebalanced.
- The Bling Blang ability of Mummies should be less of a problem.
- All NPCs in the mission “The Sad Song” should be easier to handle.
- Jinn Riftseeker has channelled more power.
- Heropsis, found in the Tainted Burrow, will now properly spawn adds during combat.
The Shadowy Forest
- Respawn timers for standard NPC population have been increased around The Shadowy Forest.
- You should no longer find oddly placed object interaction labels around the playfield.
- Mortal Sins
- The Water of Life pouring should no longer appear to cut abruptly.
- Puzzles in the Dreaming Prison can now be solved without audio.
- Each letter of the Water of Life puzzle should now reset correctly after a moment.
- The Cellar Door
- Fixed an issue where you would be unable to complete the mission if you Disabled the Security Wall too early.
- You won’t be able to skip ahead of the security systems and use levers unless you are on the appropriate objectives.
- Fatal Framing
- The Camera should now be removed from your inventory when you are not currently on the mission, or if you have completed it.
- You should now be able to interact with the Romany Corpse again during the first goal of tier two, should you decide to abandon the mission.
- The Camera should no longer be removed pre-emptively if you are in a grouped situation.
- The Drăculeşti: The Goal Marker for the Photograph Fungal Incubators should now be more accurate.
- The Amazing Brothers Blaga: The Electric Hazards debuffs in the area should no longer display placeholder text.
- Free Spirit: The Goal Marker for Tier 1 is now more accurate.
- The Wild Hunt: Leaving the cinematic directly after taking the mission does not continue to hinder your movement speed anymore.
- Lord of the flies: You now have two minutes to kill the Forest Heart’s Decay, and should revert back to the first goal should you fail by dying or running out of time.
- Fungal Fireworks: The Electrical Substation image should no longer display to every player in the area, it will only display for the player using the terminal.
The Besieged Farmlands
- Moved General Rodica slightly to prevent him from floating.
- The Lone Wolf won’t be lazy anymore, it will stand up and use its correct fight animations.
- Added collision to Slave Dog Gladiators and Slave Dog Trackers in the Besieged Farmlands.
- Ripples: The Herald of Sorrow won’t disappear anymore if summoned while the summoner is outside of the circle.
- Mortal Sins: The Forest God will now properly hold a mug while he is drinking during the cinematic on tier 2.
- The Cost of Magic: The page can be picked up again if deleted or never picked up in case of a full inventory.
- The Kindly Ones: This mission can now be picked up again after being paused.
The Carpathian Fangs
- NPC respawn times in Carpathian Fangs have been adjusted.
- Improved pathfinding in The Breach.
- Breached
- The Orochi message triggered from the terminal now plays to completion in all languages.
- Audio will now be played when accessing the audio file on the computer terminal.
- The Zmeu-Mother’s will now respawn more quickly.
- Adjusted the map marker for the “Access the terminal and find out what happened” goal during tier 1.
- Adjusted the map marker for the “Gain access to the research data” goal during tier 2.
- Adjusted the waymarker for ‘Breached – Tier Two’
- Finding the Orochi terminal will now update closer to the actual terminal.
- The Girl is Gone
- Fixed an issue where the helicopter would despawn before you could reach it.
- Lidiya will be more aware of new players entering the observatory while she is in combat.
- The helicopter should now arrive on time.
- Boss lockout barriers encountered in Tier 4 of the mission will now come down sooner following the encounter’s completion.
- Eye Spy
- The mission will now provide the correct amount of experience.
- The mission will now fail properly if the triggering player disconnects. Note that the mission will only provide credit for grouped players – solo players must each escort the drone.
- Too Deep: Fixed an issue where the four Bringer of the Beyond would sometime not spawn.
- A Dying Breed: The mission will now provide the correct amount of experience.
- Bloodlines: Added map markers to the goals requiring you to acquire blood sample from vampires.
- Cabin Fever: Virgilu’s respawn timer has been adjusted.
- The Castle: The ability cast by House of Danesti vampires now has a proper name.
- Icebreaker: The Ice block found during the mission can now only be destroyed by players on the appropriate goal of the mission.
- Metal Detective: Adjusted the waymarker for Tier 1.
NPCs
- Blue Mountain soldier’s arms now match the color of the rest of their skin.
- Blue Mountain – Fixed the respawn times on the Ellri Lords and Broodmothers in the Quarry.
- Reanimated Warrior’s XX_Mesopotamian Snare cast is now named “Halting approach”.
- Ellri Destroyers’ XX_Attract Zombie cast is now named “Undead attraction”.
- Zamira Vata now has her shades above her head.
- The House of Danesti Keeper located in Dracula’s Castle is now more aware of people sneaking up behind him.
World Design
Seoul
- Added collision to some gas canister found in the Fight Club.
The Shadowy Forest
- Fixed an issue where the runestones near Mama Padurii lair were floating above the ground.
The Savage Coast
- Fixed an issue where players could get stuck in the Shadow version of the Theme Park instance.
Ok I have to admit this has come as a major surprise. ArenaNet have just announced that GW2 is ocming to the Mac and a beta version is already avilable for download.
Here’s the details:
Today we’re happy to announce another major milestone in the development of Guild Wars 2: going forward, ArenaNet will also be supporting the game on Apple’s Mac OS X. The Mac Beta client is available immediately for all Guild Wars 2 players. It shares the same features and connects to the same live game servers as the PC client. Anyone who purchases Guild Wars 2 can now play it on both PC and Mac.
Bringing Guild Wars 2 to the Mac is huge for us, because it introduces the game to an entire group of players who are often ignored by game developers. The ability to play together with your friends is one of the underlying principles of Guild Wars 2, and providing a Mac client means that friends and guildmates can play together regardless of what operating system they favor.
On top of it all, ArenaNet staffers are big fans of Macs. We offer them as part of our employee laptop subsidy program, and our president Mike O’Brien is rarely seen without his Mac laptop. We’re as excited as anyone to play Guild Wars 2 on OS X.
The Mac Beta is available to anyone who has purchased or purchases Guild Wars 2. All you need is an active Guild Wars 2 account to download the Mac Beta client. Just log in to account.guildwars2.com and click Download Client to get started. If you have any questions, check out our Mac FAQ.
Keep in mind as you play the Mac Beta that it is a beta product. Performance and system requirements aren’t finalized. Review the beta hardware specification, and understand that your overall experience will be better when we release the final version. Even though it’s a beta, the Mac client does connect to the same live environment that the PC client connects to.
To bring Guild Wars 2 to the Mac, ArenaNet worked with our partners at TransGaming, whose Cider technology allows us to mirror the game experience as closely as possible between the PC and Mac. This means that future updates to Guild Wars 2 will be available for both platforms simultaneously.
So whether you’re a PC or a Mac, or both, we’ll see you in-game!
The hardware specs mentioned in the post aren’t too harsh either:
- Mac OS®X 10.7.X or later
- Intel® Core™ i5 or better
- 4 GB Ram or better
- NVIDIA® GeForce® 320M, ATI Radeon™ HD 6630M, Intel HD 3000 or better
- 25 GB available HDD space
- Broadband Internet connection
- Keyboard and mouse/equivalent
The Mac beta version of Guild Wars 2 runs well on the below machines or better. Your results may vary if you’ve upgraded or changed your Mac hardware or are running on lower hardware specifications.
- iMac 21.5″, 27″ (Mid-2010)
- iMac 21.5″, 27″ (Mid-2011)
- MacBook Pro 15″, 17″ (Mid-2010)
- MacBook Pro 13″, 15″, 17″ (Early and Late-2011)
- MacBook Pro 13″, 15″, 17 (Mid-2012)
- Mac Mini (Mid-2011)
So over to you: are you a Mac user that’s been waiting for this?
The full patch notes for you from the latest GW2 game update – enjoy! :
General
- Asuran players will now aim toward their targets when using a rifle.
- Fixed various broken events and skill challenges.
- Fixed various locations that allowed players to move outside the map.
- Fixed various locations on maps where players could become stuck.
- Discovery crafting may now use items directly from a player’s bank.
- Fixed bugs in the Exploration achievement so players can now receive 100% map completion.
- Added a system to limit the experience and gold that players can receive from speed-farming dungeons.
Story
- Fixed bugs in “A Different Dream,” “A Fragile Peace,” “Dredging Up the Past,” “Forging the Pact,” “Pastkeeper,” “Ships of the Line,” “Stealing Secrets,” “The Priory Assailed,” and “The Source of Orr.”
- Reduced the overall difficulty in “Dead of Winter.”
World-versus-World
- Retaliation: This boon no longer reflects damage received from siege weapons.
- The Experimental Rifle is no longer usable in World-versus-World.
Professions
Warrior
- Smoldering Arrow: This skill’s casting time has been reduced.
Mesmer
- The Prestige: This skill now requires full recharge if it’s interrupted at any time.
Thief
- Descent of Shadows: This trait’s effect can now only trigger once every 8 seconds.
Engineer
- Rocket Boots: This skill is no longer usable underwater. This is a temporary change until we can figure out why players can launch themselves into the sky using this skill.
- Detonate Mine Field: This skill is no longer a blast finisher.
Well, I’ve just finished the pre-Mists of Pandaria event, The Fall of Theramore.
I went in with fairly big expectations after having a ball with the pre-Lich King and pre-Cataclysm events. I’m here to tell you that the Fall of Theramore is a pimple on the arse of the previous two events.
I won’t give any details away, but it’s essentially a three-person, six stage event that reminded me in some ways of The Culling of Stratholme dungeon for some reason. Except that dungeon had a bit more ambience – I have zero desire to go back and do the Theramore event again.
Overall, this event seemed a little cobbled together and can be completed in 15-20 minutes. That’s about all the time you’ll want to give up for it anyway…
Over to you: did you enjoy the event? Did you find it as good as previous events?
For those unaware (which is probably just me), Blizzard have a nice handful of Mists of Pandaria wallpapers up on their site.
Well, there’s two of them really but they are pretty.
It’s had some delays but The Secret World is getting it’s Issue #2 update tonight (Tuesday).
The servers will be down for five hours, which is pretty reasonable for a full update.
Here are the local time conversions for you:
AEST: 9pm-2am
AWST: 7pm-Midnight
NZST: 11pm-4am
The short official blurb from Funcom:
The servers will come down for “Issue #2 – Digging Deeper” on September 18th at 11:00 GMT / 7am EDT / 4am PDT (check this link to see when this is in your timezone). The downtime is scheduled to last 5 hours.
Don’t forget you can check out the preview vid of the new content right here.
Over to you: are you excited for the new content?
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