f13.net

General
-  The amount of haste granted by a point of haste rating has been
   increased by about 50%.
-  20 slot bags are now bind on equip.
-  Any effect which benefits the victim of a critical strike will now
   trigger even if resilience converted the attack from a critical
   strike to a normal strike; this applies to melee, ranged, and spell.
   The affected talents, abilities, and items are: "Eye for an Eye",
   "Blessed Resilience", "Enrage", "Martyrdom", "Blood Craze", "Eye of
   the Storm", and "Bonespike Shoulder".
-  The Crust Bruster has had a loot icon and sound change.
-  Players can no longer send gift wrapped packages via COD.
-  When sharing a quest, the order logic has changed to check whether
   or not the player has completed or is ineligible for the quest before
   checking whether their quest log is full.
   
PvP
-  Battlegrounds
-  If Primalist Thurloga is attacked and pulled off her pathing on the
   way to summon Lokholar the Ice Lord, she will now properly path back
   to the summoning ring to complete the event.
-  PVP flags and graveyard nodes can no longer be captured through
   collision.
   
Raids and Dungeons
-  Players are no longer able to accept the quest "The Opening of the
   Dark Portal" while the Black Morass encounter is engaged.
-  In the Black Morass, Chrono Lord Deja will now properly spawn during
   a Heroic Mode attempt.
-  After completing the Black Morass encounter, all the additional mobs
   in the zone will no longer all aggro.
-  Durnholde Lookouts will now properly despawn after all 5 of the
   Baracks in Caverns of Time: Escape from Durnholde are burned down.
-  The items required to complete the Karazhan key quest can now only
   be looted by the first group in the instance to reach them.
-  Berthold the Doorman will now have a gossip option to teleport
   players to the Shade of Aran's room. This gossip option only becomes
   available when players have defeated the Shade of Aran.
-  The aggro range for players when under the effect of "Incite Chaos"
   while fighting Blackheart the Inciter in the Shadow Labrynth has
   been adjusted.
-  Many creatures within Coilfang Resevoir have been slightly retuned.
-  Many creatures within the Mana Tombs have been slightly retuned.
   
Mac
-  Stability improvements in Multi-Threaded OpenGL support on future
   OS X releases.
   
Bug Fixes
-  The talent "Combat Potency" no longer causes rogues to have a chance
   to gain energy when other players hit them with off-hand attacks.
-  Players with multiple chat windows will no longer have fixed
   channels (ie. general, trade)  added back to the main chat window
   every time they log on.
-  Attempting to prospect less than 5 pieces of ore will no longer
   cause a game crash. (Spanish Only)
-  The Fel Reaver for "It's A Fel Reaver, But With Heart" quest will
   now respawn properly if you wipe on the quest.
-  Fixed the local defense channel so that it will properly change based
   on the player's zone.

Looking forward to the buff to haste for my 2-piece Assassination set. That should bump it to a 21% melee haste if I understand it correctly.

That Quest Log Full had been bugging the fuck out of me.  Glad they fixed it.

No, I'm not joking.

lol, i agree... that was one frustrating bug.

u got any quests for here u can share?

yeah just 1 though

can u share it plz

sure, 1 sec ....... hey, it says your quest log is full

oh ok.. hold on.  damn i really dont want to abandon any of these, but i guess i dont have a choice .... ok now try sharing

lol u already completed it u nub

I'm hoping while they retool the mobs in Coilfang they can fix the freaking buggy-as-hell consoles that open the last door in Steamvault. I got locked out last night because nobody could access them in the group.

Heh.  Guess this is because of the proliferation of those "Argent Dawn" packages.  Those would have been much more amusing if the letter had been well-done without spelling errors, cutting off, or sounding...stupid.

Explain?  I never got one or heard about it.

You would get an in-game mail titled "Gift From The Argent Dawn" (or other faction like cenarion circle)

The text would be RP text saying what a great job you've been doing, here is a nice gift for you.  Attached would be a gift-wrapped item on C.O.D. anywhere from 50-100g. 

I wonder how many people must've fallen for it.   

Doesn't it still pop up the "Do you want to send XgXs to X?" prompt? If so, those people are retards and deserve to get bilked.

I notice with some dismay that the guards in Silvermoon are still speaking Common half the time, for some reason, and directing me to Stormwind whenever I ask for directions.  No, the engineering trainer in this city, please, as I doubt the one in Stormwind would be happy to see me even after I hoof it two thirds of the way across the continent to reach him.

Is THAT what it is?  I thought something was wrong with my system.  The text was all garbled every time I talked to a guard in silvermoon for directions..

It's taking them a while to remember they are no longer a part of the Alliance.  Old habits die hard.

I think something got screwed up with their dialogue code when Blizzard turned on the Valentine's Day event.  At least, that's when I first noticed a problem with their dialogue.  Now that I can understand them again, they're wanting my warlock to put on some perfume, which is mildly amusing. 

That makes sense.  I didn't remember them talking Common, but then I haven't been in Silvermoon for a week or so.

Yes it does, and I agree.  However, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and it's just bad business to tell your customers exactly how stupid they are.

The Guards around the Draenei Islands and the Exodar are doing the same thing. Trying to find anything in the Exo is bad enough, now with no directions?  :cry:

I did the Black Morass three times today and I think they've upped the timers on portals. It seems like they are spawning a hell of a lot faster than pre-patch.

Looks like they are hotfixing the guard problem this morning.

Fix meaning: turn off the event stuff in Silvermoon and Exodar.

Well they're not involved in the Valentine's quests anyway, so it's no great loss. It is a bit of a shame, though - it would have been interesting to see what the elves and the demons would have given as gifts.

Wonder if they'll remember to fix the rest of the seasonal quests for the two new cities now?

Well, it's Chinese New Ye..Moon Festival in a couple of days, rhough if they hadn't tuned Valentine's day they won't have tuned the Moon Festivus either. I wonder if there will be a third tier of sightseeing?

They "stealth changed" a lot of the bosses in the 5 mans with this patch. I think it's pretty shitty that they didn't remark on that in the notes at all.

For example, the last boss in Sethekk can no longer be stunned, CS'd, shield bashed, or at all stopped during his arcane blast. You have to run around pillars now, but the first time it happens you get majorly surpised.

Point of order: the dranei aren't demons.

Of course they are. They are Alliance, aren't they?  :evil:

We made the pre-existing Alliance start Blood Elves.  Both sides are tainted now.

I hear that if you say /who 40-50 there are more blood elves than there are undead, often more than there are orcs, taurens, and trolls combined.

Well, according to WoWCensus (http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php), which bases it's results around /who searches (excluding players below level 10), the number of Blood Elves and Undead are fairly similar (860k Blood Elves vs. 842k Undead), but they don't outnumber Orcs or Tauren 2:1 yet (Orcs with 479k and Tauren with 567k, while Trolls, the least popular race, have only 428k).  Considering that (subjectively) the Ghostlands are WAY more crowded than the Barrens or Silverpine nowadays, I suspect that most Blood Elves are still mid-level, too, so I'd guess that 40-50 may be a bit high to see those numbers.

One thing I do find interesting is that according to those numbers, close to half of all Draenei are Shamans, and they make up about 44% of all the shamans in the game, now.

Well that's partially because until Blood Elves were available very few people played anything other than undead Horde... and the undead can't be shamans.

Looking at the census today...
19% Human, 18% Night Elf

12% Blood Elf, 11% Undead

8% Tauren, 7% Draenei, 7% Dwarf, 6% Orc, 6% Gnome, 6% Troll

A significant plurality of Taurens are druids... Trolls and Orcs have a plurality of hunters for their respective bow and pet damage racial abilities. Actually, Taurens and Blood Elves are the only classes that can play a hunter for whom hunter is not the most popular choice. For Taurens it's the LEAST popular. Anyway, shaman is a rather high-ranked choice, reliably second or third for every horde race that can play it. Interestingly, 1/4 of the four-class Taurens are shamans, 1/5 of the five-class Orcs, and 1/6 of the six-class Trolls.

(I also note that although Night Elves have more hunters than they do druids, druids are 9% of the Alliance and only 6% of the Horde.)

Paladin is the top choice for humans, as they cannot be hunters. Dwarves can (and nearly half of them are).... but paladin holds a very distant number two spot.

Today Blood Elves were 27% of the Horde. Draenei are only 13% of the Alliance.

1/3 of the six-class Blood Elves are Paladins. They make up 38% of the three-class paladin population, most of the rest are human.
1/2 of the six-class Draenei are Shamans. They make up 47% of the four-class shaman population, Taurens making up a plurality of the remainder.

What a fun toy.

Anyone dumb enough to accept CoD mail from an "NPC" with a one word name deserves it even more.

NPCs would NEVER ask you to pay them for guifts.
NPCs pretty much ALL have two word names, and many also have titles as well.

General stupidity never ceases to amaze.

Yeah, it's always interesting to take a look at Wowcensus.  As you pointed out a lot of the population stats have to do with racial abilities, and that explains the # of NE hunters vs druids.  NE used to be THE hunter class, prior to the stealthchanges so  Shadowmeld -> Aimed Shot  wasn't so annoying.  Dwarves get nothing as nice beyond the +5 skill to guns - not a big deal at all.

I really would have thought that pallies would be more than 1/3 the BE population and closer to the Draeni shaman numbers.  I suppose that lends some credibility to the idea that there were plenty of people willing to play Horde, they just didn't like the PC models. 

The original video introduction to WoW featured a dwarf hunter with bear pet.  I think that might have influenced a lot of people when it came to picking a race/class combo.

Interestingly I have noticed that nearly all my groups as a 30something Horde now consist mostly of Blood Elves. I wonder how this will play out in the long term, since I'm almost certainly riding the bubble of semi-casuals like myself who started a blood elf and may or may not make it to high levels.

Pre-BE, my favorite Horde races were (in this order from favorite to least): Trolls, Orcs, Tauren, Undead.  In fact, even though my main is a blood elf, I'd now put them between Orcs and Tauren in my personal pecking order.

See, I rank 'em this way:

#1 - Tauren:  Their head is slung between their shoulders, which looks weird, but they're not hunchbacked and they're not elves.  Plus I have one undead friend who never stops being annoyed that my avatar can jump completely over hers.

#2 - Blood Elves:  I hate elves, but at least they can stand up straight.

#3 - Everying else:  They just look like shit.

Don't forget that gun itemization also used to suck balls -- with the Hunter epic being a bow. A +5 to guns was more than useless, since high-end hunters weren't using guns. I don't recall a single decent gun drop off the level 60 5-mans, but lots of crossbows and bows.

I do admit the opening graphic of the Hunter and bear pet influenced me -- plus I had already tried a night-elf druid and didn't want to double up at that point. When they changed Shadowmeld so you couldn't aimed shot without breaking, I was glad I'd taken a dwarf. Stoneform for PvP and Find Treasure for PvE are rather useful skills, and I prefer guns to bows -- and gun itemization was a lot better in later raiding zones, and supposedly in TBC. (My main is only level 61 -- been busy).

A lot of the differences have to due with people just wanting to be people. The more human a race looks, the more popular it tends to be. It's harder for many folks to identify with something that has tusks or hooves.

The thing about the + to guns is,that +5 translates into only about .5% added crit chance to a monster at your level.. and that's IF your WS is the full 5 points above the monster's defense.    Most of the other stuff WS grants only really works for melee, unless I'm completly misremembering the way WS works.

 Anyway, since WS doesn't affect ranged weapons the same was melee, I always felt Dwarves got the short end of the racial stick. 


Anywho - yeah gun itemization used to suck.  It's pretty good now, but its funny hearing hunters complain about having to raise gun skills they ignored, or even use a gun at all.   I'm on a bow now, still hoping for that epic gun to drop for me on a random chance, while working on my key so I can get into a Kharazan group for the Wolf's gun drop.  Whee.

I'm still using the Blastershot Launcher -- I always wanted that Dragonbreath Handcannon from BWL, but I doubt I'll ever get that. Pity, it looked awesome.

I got a random world purple gun drop on my priest, which I failed to sell before BC came along and smashed the old world-drop purple market :(

Heh, I've got both the Flawless Arcanite Rifle schem AND the Accurascope schem. (Spent a lot of DKP on both of them -- never planned to make the gun, though.). MC mats for the accurascope actually went up with TBC, since no one is currently running MC.

I got my very first purple world drop last week. I was so excited, since I needed some cash to by my mount. My friends loaned me the gold for the mount and riding skill while I AH'ed it. had it up 2 or 3 times and no love yet  :cry:

Gun itemization is so much better in TBC that the elf hunters in my guild are starting to whine. Blizzard can never seem to balance itemization, prefering to swing widely in on direction or another. It seems like 99% of the quest itemization rewards are guns, with 2 crossbows and 1 low level bow that I remember from 60-70.

Treasure finding has effectively been nerfed by the complete lack of any outdoor treasure chests. As well they have changed rare mobs. In the old world a rare was barely stronger than a similarly leveled normal mob, now they appear to be super-elites, even stronger than a quest elite of similar level. Probably both changes were made to combat farmers but it takes away a bit of what I found fun about the game.

Point the gun whiners over here (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31072)  Quest reward from a fairly long quest line in Shadowmoon valley. It beings at 68 at the Altar of the Damned with hunting elementals and ends with killing this huge elemental lord.  It was a really cool series.

Ya they must have added the bow late in beta cause I did that quest series on my druid and don't remember the bow.

Treasure finding works for all 'find x bones / zeppelin parts / orb of whatshisface / etc' type quests though, which is nice.


-- Z.

Finding a dagger that doesn't have caster shit on it is tricky too.

And I said tricky, not impossible.  For Christ's Sake, don't link me to the Terrokar Dune Quest again.

Fine for the 0.001% of your gameplay time you will spend leveling maybe.

Yes, my rogue is quite perturbed at this phenomenon although he has found a few daggers that are just fine for now.  (Read: way more kick ass than I had before.) 

However, my Warlock has been most appreciative to my rogue for the daggers he keeps sending him.  Either for use or for disenchanting.  Works both ways.

Considering I find that to be the most annoying type of quest, it makes me happy. Plus Stoneform is useful enough in PvE too.

'
I found a 1.9 speed dagger in terrokar too but it's only green. was reasonable dps though but not up to the 2 daggers from the Sand Worm.

For fist weapons it's all joy though. Currently my roque is sporting the one from Ring of Blood and an offhand from Netherspire. It was kind of amusing that I'd never used fist weapons before but my unarmed skill was around 285 from being disarmped by npc's leveling to 60.