Posts Tagged ‘icecrown citadel’

Assault on Icecrown Citadel Raid Deck Impressions

15 March 2011 | 3 Comments » | Heartbourne

I had the pleasure of trying out the new Assault on Icecrown Citadel raid set at PAX East. Cryptozoic was nice enough to lend us a set to take for a test run. The game comes with four decks: the raid boss, The Lich King, and three opposing heroes, Jaina Proudmoore, Sylvanas Windrunner, and Highlord Tirion Fordring. Players with their own decks or cards can modify their decks or play with their own setups against Arthas, but the box set contains everything you’ll need to get started.

Since the game requires four players, we rounded up some of our friends from other sites. I, Heartbourne, took on Sylvanas’ role, while Michael Sacco from WoW Insider played Jaina Proudmoore and Thespius from Raid Warning played Tirion. Seven from Raid Warning stepped up as the Lich King, and Joe Perez from WoW Insider and Raid Warning helped him out. Neither me nor Seven had played the WoW TCG before, so the guidance of Sacco and Perez were well appreciated.

Read about my experiences after the break.

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No Firelands Raid in Patch 4.1

3 March 2011 | 1 Comment » | Amatera

Earlier in the week, I posed the question as to why we haven’t heard anything about the Firelands in accordance with the newly-released Patch 4.1 information. J. Allen Brack had the answer for us at the Game Developers’ Conference: It won’t be coming. Instead, it will be post-poned to a later patch, which at this point is 4.2.

According to Brack’s interview with Eurogamer, this decision has been predicated upon the idea that “…the player base isn’t really ready for the next raid yet.” While I expect there’s a grain of truth to that, experience tells me that Firelands is probably just taking the development team a lot longer than they anticipated. Despite my skepticism, Blizzard insists this is the beginning of a new strategy to release content in smaller, more frequent chunks:

The decision to move Firelands to 4.2 was also motivated by a desire to move away from the “monolithic” content patches World of Warcraft has received recently, towards smaller updates, Brack said.

…

“One of our long-standing development goals is to release regular content updates for the community to enjoy. These updates are generally focused on introducing specific content, like a new raid or new gameplay features.

“Our plan is to package these features into smaller content updates and to release them as soon as possible, rather than wait and release larger updates more infrequently.

Of course, this would require them to be on the ball and actually release content at a quicker pace. We all learned how hard it was to deal with broken promises in Wrath of the Lich King, especially the terrible dearth of content after Icecrown Citadel.

And as apt as it might seem for Firelands, Summer — when everyone is on vacation and guilds are dying — is not historically the best time to release a new raid. So let’s hope we get to tackle ol’ Ragnaros sooner rather than later.

Gone, Baby, Gone: Items Removed in 4.0.3

15 October 2010 | 4 Comments » | Amatera

The world’s a-changin’, our stats are better, our gear more powerful, and old content is even more of a joke than it used to be. It hit me in the heart muscle — right here — when they removed the Amani War Bear just before Wrath came out. Of course, the transition patch made (theoretically) beating the timer in Zul’Aman much easier, but we were so damn close even before it dropped. With Patch 4.0.3 on deck, that means it’s time for Blizzard to bring out the axe again. The following is the official list of items that will either be removed, or have the methods for obtaining them significantly tweaked.

Predictably, several are from the raid version of Zul’Gurub which will be removed in the expansion and replaced with a new questing area. Some rare Wrath mounts are getting even rarer, to boot.

    Swift Zulian Tiger
    Zul’Gurub is changing from a raid to a leveling zone in 4.0.3, and this mount will no longer be obtainable.

    Swift Razzashi Raptor
    This mount will also no longer be obtainable after the change to Zul’Gurub.

    Razzashi Hatchling
    With the change to Zul’Gurub this non-combat pet will no longer be obtainable.

    Tome of Polymorph: Turtle
    This tome will continue to be available through other means.

    Crusader’s White/Black Warhorse and Swift Alliance Steed/Swift Horde Wolf
    As the attempt-based tribute system is being removed from Heroic Trial of the Crusader, the Argent Crusade Tribute Chest will no longer spawn, and these mounts will no longer be obtainable

    Reins of the Blue Drake
    This mount will once again be available from defeating 10-player Malygos without needing to use the Dungeon Finder. The Reins of the Azure Drake will only be available on 25-player Malygos.

    Mimiron’s Head
    This mount will change to be a very low drop chance when defeating 25-player Yogg’Saron with no Keepers assisting you

    Invincible
    This mount will change to be a very low drop chance when defeating Heroic 25-player Lich King

Interestingly enough, Blizzard states that some of those ZG-related goodies could be inserted back into the game at a later date if they can find a reliable and logical place to put them. In the mean time, I’d recommend you get your butt to Stranglethorn while you still can.

Rumor: Rumored Cataclysm Release Date Gets Pushed Back (Rumor)

27 September 2010 | 6 Comments » | Amatera

Blizzard doesn't care if you've been naughty or nice, Cataclysm will be finished "when it's done!"

If ifs and buts were candies and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas! We’d have an even more wonderful holiday if we found a copy of Cataclysm under the tree, wouldn’t we? Well, maybe you would, but not I, sir or ma’am! No, Christmas means going home, and for me, that means playing on a woefully underpowered laptop, if anything at all. I imagine I won’t be the only one traveling, nor would I be the only one with less time to dedicate to all the content in a fresh, new expansion.

But if MMO-Champion is right, then we may be dealing with an early-mid December release date. That contradicts the previous rumor of November 2nd, presumably from the same unnamed, internal source. I opted to repeat myself in the title to hammer home the fact that this still doesn’t constitute official word — or perhaps to actively ignore the idea that it could be true. Just be glad I didn’t make any stupid puns this time (like “Rumore Hound”).

Do note that although it disagrees with the November 27th date that’s been floating around online retail sites lately as well, that number should be the least valid of any predictions (it’s normally just conjecture on the retailer’s part).

So, what could be holding it back? Well, there’s the obvious — it needs more development time. But they’ve been kicking out builds (both on the PTR and beta servers) like it’s nobody’s business, and the last time they released content around Christmas they intentionally gated it so it didn’t conflict with players’ holiday plans too much. And that was just a raid dungeon, let alone a whole expansion! I’m not sure what makes Blizzard think it’s a good idea this year.

But if you’d allow me, how about a little bit of conspiracy time here, featuring the game industry’s favorite punching bag: Activision-Blizzard showrunner, Bobby Kotick? Continue Reading

Storytelling in Icecrown Citadel Sucks

1 June 2010 | 5 Comments » | Heartbourne

Whenever you have a universe as big as Warcraft, retcons and inconsistency are inevitable. There are so many things going on written by so many people in many places. To me, Icecrown as a zone and as a raid instance was the epitome of this unfinished, chaotic mess of storytelling.

Lets start out with my initial expectations of what I thought I was going to see when I first arrived in Icecrown. Back when Arthas was racing Illidan to the Frozen Throne (so that Arthas could “save” Ner’zhul and Illidan could kill him) during the last events of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, as well as the Arthas novel and other sources of lore, Illidan and his allies had arrived in Icecrown well before Arthas and were sieging the Citadel. They had built up considerable defenses, and Arthas arrived by exploring the underground tunnels of Azjol-Nerub.
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Lore Hound WoWcast: Episode 7

28 May 2010 | 4 Comments » | Juggynaut

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Join Juggynaut, pixiestixy, and iTZKooPA for this week’s WoWcast. Today we’re discussing the following topics and much more:

Click the player above to listen, download the podcast, subscribe via RSS, or Subscribe via iTunes

Get involved with our podcasts! E-mail us at podcast@lorehound.comor leave us a voicemail using the button below or simply call us at (304) 884-LORE. We look forward to hearing from you guys.

And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for a chance to win a Celestial Steed mount!

WotLK Progression Statistics: Looking Forward to Cataclysm

11 May 2010 | 7 Comments » | Heartbourne

Progression in ICC has been moving along at a steady rate for many guilds. The stacking buff in Icecrown Citadel that updates about once a month to add increased healing, health, and damage done pushes many guilds to be able to do previously impassible encounters and gives them enough steam to work through many more encounters until the buff is updated. Indeed, if we look at the graphs from WoWProgress, the leading site in tracking guild progression, the mechanic of the Icecrown Citadel buff has caused a steady increase in the number of guilds defeating each encounter.

In fact, they look rather linear. In comparison, the tier 8 and 9 progression graphs are not nearly as linear. After a short burst of hardcore guilds downing content, the number of new guilds defeating the content tapers off. Additionally, many less guilds have done older content than ICC. Click through for more… Continue Reading

PTR: 3.3.5 Patch Notes

10 May 2010 | 12 Comments » | Amatera

Hold your horses!  Wait on those character transfers! The Patch Test Realm ain’t up just yet, but it should be reasonably soon due to the release of preliminary patch notes today. Unlike the last one we got, there don’t appear to be any sweeping changes to class balance or anything of that nature. In fact, with this patch encompassing the only remaining high-level content until the expansion (and, at that, nothing significantly more difficult than Icecrown Citadel), it would almost seem like a waste of time to bother.

But the Ruby Sanctum raid dungeon is still an important update, and along with it come several new social options no doubt tied into future Battle.net 2.0 functionality. It seems like they’re taking some cues from chat add-ons and are allowing players to “pop out” a new window, say, to keep whispers with a specific person separate from everything else. Also, the Friends List is getting a couple of upgrades, including the ability to add Real IDs (Blizzard’s cross-game identification) and communicate with them.

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 3.3.5

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

General

  • The Ruby Sanctum, an all-new 10- and 25-player raid featuring normal and Heroic difficulties, is now available for testing! Players will find the dungeon entrance below Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight.
  • Copied Test Realm characters are not copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

User Interface

  • Chat Frame
    • Players can now right-click on any chat type (Whisper, Trade, General, Party, Raid, etc.) and choose the Pop Out Chat option. This will move that chat type to a separate tab in the Chat frame which can be undocked and moved anywhere on the screen.
      • Using the Pop Out Chat option on a Whisper will place the conversation with that player in a separate tab.
      • Any time a conversation with another player is put into its own tab, the tab will glow when a new message is received.
    • Hovering over the Chat Frame and using the mouse wheel will allow players to scroll through chat text.
    • Players can select Classic Mode under Interface Options to keep the Chat Frame functionality closer to what it was prior to patch 3.3.5.
    • The Simple Chat User Interface option has been removed.
  • Friends List
    • A new icon has been added to the top left of the Chat Frame which will open up the Friends list.
    • In addition to its current functionality, the Friends List will now allow players to add Battle.net accounts (Real ID). Players will have to confirm that they are friends in order for a Real ID to be added. Once Real ID friends, players can communicate cross-game, cross-faction and cross-realm.
    • A new Pending tab has been added where players can accept or decline a Real ID friend request, or select the Report Spam or Block Communications buttons.
    • Players can now select from three statuses which will be visible to their friends: Available, Away and Busy.
    • A Broadcast window has been added to the top of the frame. Players can use this to broadcast a message to all of their Real ID friends online. This message will also be displayed under the broadcaster’s Real ID information in each friend’s list.
  • For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros Forum: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?sid=1&forumId=11114