f13.net

Blizzard is allowing anybody to transfer characters to the test realm now:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=2467170&p=1&tmp=1#post2467170

Official test realm patch notes are here:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/patch-05-04-06.html

I'm extremely dissapointed in the look of the new level 60 Orc mounts... I was expecting a whole lot more.  That being said, the other new mounts that I have seen looked nice, especially the Kodo, which actually looks good finally.  Oh, and my Shaman looks like a walking coat rack now.  See for yourself. 

Coat rack on Bulldog! (http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/Bedrock_Demise/WoWScrnShot_040805_194745.jpg)

New Level 60 Kodo Mount (http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/Bedrock_Demise/WoWScrnShot_040805_224122.jpg)

New Warlock Succubus model (http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/Bedrock_Demise/WoWScrnShot_040805_195117.jpg)

I actually kind of like the look of that one. However, just like the normal mount, it needs to be a lot bigger.

Edit:
Another Epic Wolf Pic (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v492/rexking/WoWScrnShot_040805_231709.jpg)
Other new graphics/models (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=2470338&p=1&tmp=1#post2470338)

Quick review:

Rogues get a huge damage boost in trade for some small stealth nerfs, frost mages have their spec line become worthless after 3 spells, hunters get more crazy nerfs, WotF gets buffed, pvp trinkets anyone can get make CC abilities fairly worthless, and melee weapons dps keeps going up.  Oh, and the new art is some of the ugliest shit I've ever seen.

I guess I only see one possible "nerf" not "crazy nerfs". Am I missing something?

Mages:

Chill and root effects cause diminishing returns on any abilities that also use these.  So, you frost nova to root, then cone of cold to slow.  Even though one's a root and the other a slow, the diminishing returns kick in.  Your CoC only does 75% damage, and 75% of the slow it's supposed to get.  You now frostbolt them, doing 50% damage, and 50% of the slow.  Frostbolt again, and you're at 25%.  Now, your frost line is completely worthless for 15 seconds. 

It doesn't sound too bad, until you realize that the mages iceshield causes a slow/root effect that can now trigger the diminishing returns.  And coldsnap, which removes the cooldown on their frostnova/CoC spells is now fairly worthless, as you'll go into diminishing returns just from using those 4 abilities.



Hunters:

Their pets damage was nerfed again, from what I gather.  Also, their to-hit formula is now based on their opponents defense rating, not the opponents level.  This is big.  Rogues, warriors, and paladins now evade their ranged attacks by anywhere from 10% to 30%, based on their defense.

Edit: and you now get a big honor message displayed whenever you kill someone.  So, while feigning on someone was a longshot, that's pretty much gone now, too.

Thanks for the follow-up. I guess I won't be going back to my hunter in WoW.

People have been warning them since beta that they were on the path to over-buffing melee...

My priest was capable of dying so fast in GvG already, glad I sold him last week.

So how much did you get for the priest?  DLing the test stuff now to check how bad hunters have it, but I've been leveling up a priest and a warrior on my collector's edition acct and if it's too bad I'll get get one of them to 60 and dump the account.  MTG:O has been getting my attention lately in WoW's stead.

Some good news:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=2485852&p=1&tmp=1#post2485852

Shaman shoulders look like a portable carnival booth game.   

Why bother changing anything if they are just gonna nerf it? "fixed a bug with backstab and ambush that was causing it to do less damage than intended, but now that it works like it should its doing too much damage so we are just going to nerf it to how it was before".  bleh.

What's funny is that the reported super ambush and stuff are against L1 critters.

You cannot crit 2k+ ambush on any PC player.  Unless they have 5 sunders on them, in which case they're dead anyways.

I tested against a few real players and found that my ambush and bs did go up, but only by about 15%.

Read: It may be the first MMO in history where melee wasn't the most boring type of character to play.

Funny thing, Warlocks, that are commonly considered one of the weeker classes, are getting a nerf also.

As to rogues, I hate the changes. I am a combat rogue, and this buff to bs/ambush is only leading up to getting all rogues nerfed again, and putting the Backstab/Assassin builds far superior to the other rogue builds, making what was once a very balanced talent spread much much more cookiecutter.

I don't get the warlocks are weak thing. I'm enjoying the hell out of my warlock so far. It just takes a certain playstyle to be successful.

@Riggs:  Your right, often melee is stupid in fact I almost always play melee so I'm well aware.  WoW did a good job of making cc effects common but not like DAOC and stealth or charge/intercept/hamstring makes playing melee quite fun.

I'm talking about how end-game gear keeps getting more and more resistence based, but you can argue that so here's the key point.

There is nothing that effectively boosts spell damage, dont talk to me about +X Damage type, that only works if your casting a 3sec+ spell according to all the research I could ever find.  We all know that nobody casts non insta's if they can help it in pvp so thats a moot fucking point.

So melee damage + spell resistence gets boosted, spell damage (other then crit chance) does not.  This will eventually through off the balance badly.

Warlock can be played terribly. Most of the perception of Warlock being a weak class on my server comes from the fact that a great many warlocks here are played by people who don't know how to really use them properly, be it in a PvP or PvE manner.

Of course, the advantage to this is that a person who does know how to play warlock can bet on really surprising their opponent with some unexpected warlock-fu. People typically don't know when to expect it and don't know how to react to it.

New ambush and backstab damage numbers post patch/lethality adjustment. (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-rogue&t=239447&p=1&tmp=1#post239447)

Medium sized story short: they corrected a bug that wasn't giving ambush and backstab full bonuses from attack power.  Internal testing and incessant whining showed this to give rogues too large of a damage boost.  Now ambush damage bonus will be dropped from lethality.  Net result: ambush not as jaw dropping as it was initially with the patch but still buffed, backstab buffed, rogues should be happy (well, ones that ambush and/or backstab).