f13.net

 New High-Level Armor Sets!
Adventurers of Azeroth can now quest to upgrade their previous Rare-
quality Dungeon set to a new, higher-quality set, including epic gear!
These tasks include all-new boss encounters, so prepare your finest
group of dungeon-delvers and prepare for a challenge!

Weather!
Weather has been introduced in the following areas around Azeroth:
- Elwynn Forest
- Tirisfal Glades
- Dun Morogh
- Darkshore
- Alterac Mountains
- Stranglethorn Vale
- Feralas
- Un'Goro Crater
- Tanaris
- Winterspring
- Ahn'Qiraj
We will be adding more weather to the world as time progresses; this
is simply the beginning!

High-Level Instance Changes
Along with the new Armor Sets, the high-level 5-10 man dungeons have
received some changes regarding loot. Many items have been improved
in quality and use. In addition, several epic items, such as
Headmaster's Charge and the Runeblade of Baron Rivendare, have had
their drop rates significantly increased. In order to preserve the
challenge of these dungeons, they have had their instance caps
lowered. Stratholme, Scholomance, and Blackrock Depths now allow a
maximum of five players inside, and Blackrock Spire allows a maximum
of ten.

Quest Experience to Gold Conversion at Level 60
Previously, quest experience was wasted if one completed a quest at
level 60. In this patch, any quests done at maximum level will have
their experience reward converted to a healthy amount of gold, thus
adding additional incentive to completing those quests in your log
once you hit 60.

New Final Destination Flight Paths!
If you're making several jumps to get to your destination, you will
now be able to choose that flight path from your initial Flight
Master. The costs will remain the same, but you no longer need to
manually click on each path. The UI has also been improved
significantly.

General
- All spells/abilities that remove existing effects (e.g. Dispel Magic,
Cleanse, Remove Curse etc...) will now verify that there is an effect
that can be removed before casting.
- You will no longer lose your current target when affected by a crowd
control spell (e.g. Fear, Polymorph etc...).
- Various tooltips updated.

PvP & Battlegrounds
- Alterac Valley
Flavor items from player loot in Alterac Valley will now stack and
can be sold for a small value. These are items like Documents from
Boomstick Imports, Worn Running Shoes, etc.
Global reputation gains have been removed from several quests.
Frostwolf and Stormpike faction will now be gained by killing
players of the opposite faction. Reputation will no longer be split
up among the entire raid group.
- The reputation gain in Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin has been
significantly increased.

Druids
- Healing Touch - Mana cost on all ranks reduced approximately 9%.
- Ravage - Can no longer be dodged, parried, or blocked.
- Cure Poison - Can no longer be cast while in Moonkin form.
- Gift of the Wild - Range and area of effect increased.
- Rip - Is now properly considered a Bleed effect.
- All shapeshift forms can now use equipped items.
- Nature's Swiftness - Now makes Rebirth and Soothe Animal spells
instant cast.
- Bear Form and Dire Bear Form - It is no longer possible at very low
health to die when shifting out of these forms.
- Pounce - This ability will no longer apply its bleed effect when the
attack misses or is dodged.
- Some creature Mana Drain spells were previously able to mana drain
druids in forms that do not display mana. That has been fixed.
- Previously, shifting into an animal form granted a one-second
immunity to roots and snares. That has been changed to dispelling
roots and snares.

Hunters
- Multi-Shot - This ability now has its attack power normalized the
same as melee instant attacks. This means that the attack power
contribution from all ranged weapons will be the same, no matter what
their speed. All weapons will contribute attack power as if they were
2.8 speed. Weapons slower than 2.8 speed will do slightly less damage
than previously; weapons faster than 2.8 speed will do slightly more
damage.
- Aimed Shot - This ability now has its attack power normalized the
same as melee instant attacks. This means that the attack power
contribution from all ranged weapons will be the same, no matter what
their speed. All weapons will contribute attack power as if they were
2.8 speed. Weapons slower than 2.8 speed will do slightly less damage
than previously; weapons faster than 2.8 speed will do slightly more
damage.
- Improved Aspect of the Hawk - The buff from this talent has had its
duration increased from 8 seconds to 12 seconds. Note that the haste
it provides does not begin until the second shot after the triggering
shot. This change is to compensate for that delay.
- Hunter's Mark - This spell no longer triggers procs on the spell
caster. This was being abused to land debuffs without getting on the
creature's hate list.
- Claw and Bite - Pets using these abilities will now generate the
correct amount of threat. Only ranks 7 and 8 of claw were generating
the correct amount previously.
- Bestial Wrath - No longer generates threat for the Hunter.
- New high-level boars now exist in the Eastern Plaguelands and have a
new rank 6 version of the pet ability: Charge.

 Mages
- Improved Frost Ward - This ability now functions properly again.
- Improved Fire Ward - This ability now functions properly again.
- Detect Magic - This spell no longer triggers procs on the spell
caster. This was being abused to land debuffs without getting on the
creature's hate list.
- Ignite - This talent will now only trigger off fire damage generated
by mage spells.
- Arcane Brilliance - Range and area of effect increased.

Paladins
- Blessing of Light - Different ranks of this spell were stacking
without causing additional effect. It was never intended for them to
be able to stack, so they can no longer stack.
- Judgement of Justice - This judgement will now always hit.
- Righteous Fury - Righteous Fury will now always generate the correct
amount of additional threat on all holy damage. There were some
abilities, such as Retribution Aura, where this did not work
correctly.
- Holy Shock - This ability now works with Divine Favor and
Illumination.
- Holy Shield - Mana cost reduced approximately 15%. The effect now has
a small bonus coefficient from spell damage items and effects.
- Eye for an Eye - This talent can now trigger while you are mounted.
- Blessing of Sacrifice - This Blessing can no longer be used to
prevent the death of a target that is supposed to die for a spell
effect (e.g.: Sacrifice, Demonic Sacrifice, Divine Intervention,
Ritual of Doom).
- Seal of Command - Will now be able to proc when the Paladin is
silenced.
- Improved Seal of Righteousness - Tooltip updated to reflect actual
functionality. This talent increases Seal of Righteousness and
Judgement of Righteousness by 3-15%.
- Lay on Hands - Range increased.
- Divine Intervention - Range increased.
- Holy Shield - Tooltip updated to reflect that damage caused by Holy
Shield causes 20% additional threat. This has been active since 1.9,
but was undocumented.
- All Greater Blessings now have increased range.
- Holy Shock - Mana cost reduced.
- Creatures that were previously immune to Scorpid Sting are now also
immune to the Paladin Talent Vindication.

Priests
- Due to significant talent changes, Priests will have all talent
points refunded and can be respent. Training costs for all talent
spell replacements have been significantly reduced.
- All racial priest spell replacements have had their training costs
reduced.
- Prayer of Fortitude - Range and area of effect increased.
- Holy Fire - Is now available to all priests, starting at level 20.
- Mind Soothe - Is now instant cast.
- Shadowform - Now reduces all physical damage taken (melee and ranged),
as the tooltip suggests.
- Feedback (Human) - Redesigned. The priest surrounds himself with
anti-magic energy. Any successful spell cast against the priest will
burn mana from the attacker and cause Shadow damage.
- Elune's Grace (Night Elf) - Now also increases chance to dodge.
Ranged damage reduction increased, duration decreased, mana cost
decreased, now has a cooldown.
- Shadowguard (Troll) - Is now instant cast. Updated tooltip to reflect
that damage caused by Shadowguard causes no threat. This was
previously the case, but was undocumented.
- Inner Fire - Redesigned. Now increases armor by a significant amount
but has 20 charges. Each melee or ranged damage hit will remove a
charge. Lasts 10 minutes, mana cost increased.
- Desperate Prayer (Dwarf/Human) - Cooldown reduced.
- Touch of Weakness (Undead) - Now a 10 min. buff on the caster that is
triggered when they are struck in melee. The effect is otherwise the
same. Mana cost decreased substantially.
- Hex of Weakness (Troll) - Now also applies a -20% healing modifier in
addition to its normal effect. The healing debuff does not stack with
the warrior's Mortal Strike ability, although the damage penalty now
stacks with either Touch of Weakness or Curse of Weakness. Mana cost
decreased substantially.
- Starshards (Night Elf) - This spell now works like Curse of Agony,
with lower initial damage which increases as the duration continues.
Mana cost dropped approximately 30% on all ranks. Ranks 1 and 2
increased to 6 second duration. Damage increased approximately 17%.
- Lesser Heal - Mana cost dropped approximately 9%.
- Heal - Ranks 2, 3, and 4, cast time reduced to 3 seconds. Rank 1 mana
cost dropped approximately 9%. Rank 2, 3, and 4 the healing amount
has been reduced to generate the same amount of healing per cast time
as before the cast time was reduced. Rank 2, 3, and 4, the mana cost
was reduced to cost approximately 9% less mana per point of healing
generated. The net effect on all ranks is that the healing per mana
is 10% higher, the cast time is limited to 3 seconds, and the healing
per second is unchanged. Note that spells with less than 3.5 second
cast time will not receive the full bonus from plus healing items.
- Greater Heal - Cast time reduced to 3 seconds. Healing and Mana cost
reduced so that the healing per second is unchanged, but the healing
per mana is increased approximately 10%. Note that spells with less
than 3.5 second cast time will not receive the full bonus from plus
healing items.
- Vampiric Embrace - Damage resisted by the target will no longer be
counted as damage caused for the purposes of the healing from this
ability.
- Power Word: Shield - This spell will now get a small bonus from items
and effects which increase your healing.
- Holy Nova - Self cooldown on this spell removed. Mana cost increased.

Rogues
- Slice and Dice - This ability can no longer be blocked, dodged, or
parried, and cannot miss. If you attempt to use this ability when
your target is dead, you will now receive an error message instead of
displaying the spell animations.
- Sap - Lightning Shield will no longer break Stealth when the Sap is
resisted.
- Remorseless Attacks - This ability will no longer trigger off killing
creatures that do not award experience, or players that do not award
honor.
- Distract - This ability will no longer trigger a Shaman's Lightning
Shield (which caused the Rogue to lose stealth).
- Blade Flurry - The additonal attacks generated by this ability will
now properly take into account the armor of the second target.
- Blind - Now considered a ranged attack. It can no longer be dodged
or parried.

Shaman
- Lightning Shield - Bonfires and other environmental damage sources
will no longer consume charges of the Lightning Shield. Warsong Gulch
power-ups will also no longer consume the charges.
- Grounding Totem - This totem will no longer absorb the procs from:
Frostguard, Annihilator, Bludgeon of the Grinning Dog, The Chief's
Enforcer, The Judge's Gavel, Hammer of the Titans, Blackblade of
Shahram, and Bonereaver's Edge. Tooltip updated to be more clear.
- Flurry - Your haste will now last only the intended next 3 swings.
- Healing Wave - Mana cost on all ranks reduced approximately 9%.
- Shaman can now use equipped items while in Ghost Wolf form.

Warlocks
- Curse of Agony - The damage over time component of this curse will
now only trigger periodic triggerable procs.
- Soulburn - The debuff which produces the soul shard upon death is
now visible to the player and has a 5 sec duration. The Warlock will
no longer sometimes receive two soul shards upon the victim's death.
Targets which do not grant experience or honor will no longer produce
shards.
- Rain of Fire - This ability will correctly trigger Pyroclasm again.
- Master Demonologist - Pets that were crowd controlled at the moment
of summon prevented you from receiving the buff from this talent.
That has been fixed.
- Curse of Doom - This curse can no longer be cast on players who are
under the control of a creature.
- Shadowburn - This spell will no longer apply its debuff to the
creature when the spell is resisted. Targets which do not grant
experience or honor will no longer produce shards.
- Curse of Weakness - Mana cost decreased substantially.
- Curse of Recklessness - Mana cost decreased.
- Creatures immune to fear are now also properly immune to the fear
effect of Death Coil.
- Suffering (Voidwalker) - Radius increased, tooltip updated.

Warriors
- Execute - This ability will now work with Sweeping Strikes again. If
the second victim is below 20% health, they will be hit with the full
Execute amount. If the second victim is not below 20% health, they
will be hit with normal melee swing damage.
- Whirlwind - When this ability is used with Sweeping Strikes, it will
burn only one charge of Sweeping Strikes and will generate only one
additional attack.
- Flurry - Ranks 1 through 4 of this talent will now activate correctly
again.
- Retaliation - This ability will now function correctly at full melee
range.
- Intimidating Shout - The cowering in fear effect will no longer be
applied when the target resists this shout. In addition, this shout
will now affect a maximum of 5 targets.
- Flurry - Your haste will now last only the intended next 3 swings.
- Sweeping Strikes - The additonal attacks generated by this ability
will now properly take into account the armor of the second target.

Items
- Relics have been introduced to the game. These are class specific
items for Druids, Paladins, and Shaman which can be equipped in the
ranged slot. Currently there are a handful for each class which can
be found scattered throughout Blackrock Depths, Blackrock Spire, Dire
Maul, Scholomance, Stratholme, and The Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. We hope
that you enjoy the first round of available relics and we will
continue to add more in future patches.
- Many items in Blackrock Depths, Stratholme, Scholomance, and
Blackrock Spire have been re-evaluated and adjusted to make them more
appealing. In addition several new items have been added to all of
these instances.
- The following item sets have had their set bonuses adjusted: Valor,
Magister's, Lightforge, Shadowcraft, Dreadmist, Devout, Wildheart,
Beaststalker, and Elements.
- The locations of some of the waist, wrist, and hand slot pieces of
the dungeon armor sets have been moved from their old creatures,
including the Lightforge Gauntlets and the Magister's Boots.
Additional creature types can also drop many of the previously
difficult to obtain armor pieces.
- All of the hand slot items in the dungeon armor sets are now bind on
equip. The Belt of Valor is also now bind on equip.
- Death's Head Judgement and Wolfrunner Shoes now have stats more
appropriate for cloth wearers.
- The value of Health per 5 seconds items was re-evaluated and has been
changed to be the same as Mana per 5 items. As a result most items
that restore Health per 5 seconds will see an increase in
effectiveness.
- Biznicks 247x127 Accurascope now only affects ranged attacks, and
Elemental Sharpening Stones no longer will affect ranged weaponry. The
schematic for the Accurascope will now drop once again in the Molten
Core.
- Item use can no longer trigger the effect on the Five Thunders set or
the Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon trinket.
- The On Use ability on the Blade of Eternal Darkness has been changed
to an On Equip triggered effect with a chance to occur on any damage
spell.
- The Netherwind set's instant cast spell bonus will no longer be
consumed if the mage is not facing his or her target.
- The Lightning Shield bonus on the Ten Storms set will now work the
same way as all other Lightning Shield auras, including increased
damage from bonus spell damage effects.
- The tooltip on Thunderfury has been clarified to indicate that only
the primary target will receive the slowing effect. In addition, the
two effects have been broken down into two different debuffs to
prevent incorrect information from appearing in the debuff tooltip
for secondary targets (previously secondary targets were told they
were slowed when they were not actually slowed).
- Wrath of Cenarius will now trigger off all damaging spells.
- The charges from the Zandalarian Hero Charm will now be consumed by
melee and ranged abilities and spells which do non-physical damage.
This includes: Hammer of Wrath, Judgement of Righteousness, Seal of
Command, Judgement of Command, Volley, and Arcane Shot. The trinket
will also now burn charges from each casting of a damage over time
spell, heal over time spell, and area aura spells such as Blizzard
and Consecration. Only one charge will be burned per area spell cast,
rather than multiple charges per target hit as was previously the
case.
- The Panther Hide Bag from High Priestess Arlokk will no longer take
the place of other items. Instead, this item will now sometimes drop
in addition to the normal loot.
- The following items were found to be more powerful than intended and
have been tuned to be more in line with their level: Satyr's Bow,
Inventor's Focal Sword, and Scepter of the Unholy.
- Green Whelp Armor no longer affects targets above level 50 and the
sleep duration was reduced to 10 seconds.
- Many Recipes now have different icons. Recipe icons should correspond
with the item color; a green-glowing scroll is a green recipe, and a
blue-glowing scroll is a blue recipe, for example. As a reminder,
white recipes can be purchased from a vendor somewhere in the world,
so players should not pay too much for them at the Auction House.
- The Phantom Blade's effect will now prevent players from trying to
become stealthed or invisible.
- The Luffa and Talisman of Ephemeral Power now have sell prices.
- The Heavy Leather Ball now has an inventory sound.
- The Crystal Force, Crystal Ward, and Oil of Immolation effects now
have effect tooltips.
- The Royal Sceptre of Vek'lor has the proper spell hit chance instead
of melee hit chance.
- The damage dealt by Demonic Rune and Dark Rune will no longer be
affected by the user's increased spell damage items.
- The target of the Demon Forged Breastplate's effect no longer has to
be in front of the wearer.
- The spell hit effect on the Felheart Robes is now properly listed as
an On Equip effect.
- The Augural Shroud and Spidertank Oilrag now have stats more
appropriate for cloth wearers.
- The Skeletal Guardian and Skeletal Berserker now drop loot
appropriate to their non-elite status.
- Flavor items from the Stratholme postbox are now listed as poor
quality.
- The Black Diamond and Pristine Black Diamond now stack to 20, the
same as other gems.
- The tooltip of the Seeping Willow's effect has been reworded for
clarity.
- The Chromatic Boots and Boots of the Fallen Hero have had their stats
adjusted.
- The duration of the Fetish of the Sand Reaver's effect has been
increased, but the effect lowered.
- Many trinkets will now trigger a cooldown equal to the duration of
their effects that will prevent simultaneous use of more than one of
these trinkets. The Trinkets affected include the Zandalarian Hero
Charm, Zandalarian Hero Badge, Zandalarian Hero Medallion, and most
all the other Trinkets available from Zul'Gurub, Earthstrike, the
Talisman of Ephemeral Power, and the level 50 class quest trinkets
such as the Devilsaur Eye.
- Rumsey Rum gained from fishing is no longer soulbound.
- The Innkeeper in Everlook now sells Winter Kimchi.
- The drop rate for Essence of Air has been increased.
- The Diablo Stone now has a unique icon.
- Fixed typos in the names of Last Month's Mutton and Last Year's
Mutton.
- The Expose Weakness effect of the Hunter's Dragonstalker set can no
longer be resisted as a magical spell.
- The Dawn Treaders, Timbermaw Brawlers and Might of the Timbermaw now
make sounds when moved in your inventory.
- The Zulian Stone Axe has the proper inventory icon again.
- Clarified the Hand of Justice and Force of Will tooltips to better
describe their functionalities.

Professions
- Blacksmithing
The Statues in Ahn'Qiraj now drop chunks of obsidian that can be
crafted by blacksmiths in to various types of armor. The Recipes
come from both Cenarion Circle vendors as well as drops and other
sources.
The materials required to make the Gloves of the Dawn have been
reduced.
New high level World Drop epic recipes have been added for
Hammersmiths, Swordsmiths and Armorsmiths.
- Engineering
The Alarm-o-Bot now pulses its detection every 7 seconds rather than
every 30 seconds.
Fused Wiring now stacks to 5.
Rocket Clusters now require Solid Blasting Powder and Large Rocket
Clusters require Dense Blasting Powder.
Target Dummies now have a much shorter duration, but have
significantly more health. They also have a general 3 minute
cooldown on their use.
The Goblin Mortar's maximum range has been increased from 20 yards
to 40 yards.
- Tailoring
Mooncloth Bag recipe only requires a single mooncloth to make.
Tailors can now make bags with up to 24 slots that can only hold
enchanting materials or herbs. The recipes can mostly be found on
vendors that sell enchanting materials or on vendors in Silithus.
- Enchanting
A new enchanting recipe that adds +25 Agility to two-handed weapons
has been added to the Timbermaw Furbolgs that requires Friendly
reputation.
Enchant Gloves - Healing only requires a single Righteous Orb.
- Leatherworking
Many of the beast bosses in the game will now be skinnable for
significantly more leather.
There is now a fourth item in the Stormshroud Armor set: Stormshroud
Gloves.
The recipe for the Heavy Scorpid Vest is no longer soulbound.
The Dreamscale Breastplate is now Bind on Equip.
Red Dragonscales drop significantly more often off the dragonkin in
the Wetlands.
Golden Mantle of the Dawn no longer requires Righteous Orbs.
- Alchemy
There is now an Elixir of Greater Firepower recipe in the world. The
Dark Iron Dwarves of the Searing Gorge hold the secret.

Quests & Reputation
- The Hexxer's Head is no longer a requirement for the Collection of
Heads quest in Zul'Gurub.

 Raids & Dungeons
- The Four Green Dragons will now spawn as originally intended. They
should all now spawn at the same time everytime.
- Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj
Ayamiss the Hunter now flies down from the air much earlier.
Lieutenant General Andorov will now offer supplies if kept alive
through the battle.
The Plague effect from Anubisath Defenders and Anubisath Sentinel's
is no longer amplified by +damage gear.
Certain monsters have had their hitpoints reduced.
- Temple of Ahn'Qiraj
Spawn of Fankriss will now enrage if not dealt with in a timely
manner.
- Blackwing Lair
Nefarian's reset should now consistently be 15 minutes regardless of
what phase your raid may have wiped out on.
- Dire Maul
Tendris Warpwood will now call upon any protectors still alive to
aid him.
Magister Kalendris has been moved in to the middle of the hall.
Guard Slip'kik's patrol path has been altered.
- Blackrock Spire
Some monsters were removed to reduce the time it takes to run the
dungeon.
Mother's Milk off Mother Smolderweb will now only affect players.
Spire Spiderlings now have fewer hitpoints.
- Blackrock Depths
Lord Roccor is no longer a rare spawn. His patrol path was altered
accordingly.
Pick lock and Seaforium now work on the Shadowforge Gates Mechanism.
The difficulty of the Lord Incendius and Ambassador Flamelash
encounters has been increased.
- Stratholme
Some of the undead that invade the Scarlet Bastion after Balnazzar's
death have been removed to make exiting faster.
- Zul'Farrak
The summoned zombies will now attack any player in the instance
after their grave has been disturbed.

User Interface
- The Reputation UI has gotten a significant overhaul:
You can now click on a faction in the reputation pane to get
additional details/options.
You can display one of your reputations on your main display where
your experience bar currently displays. If you are not level 60 it
displays two thin bars - experience and reputation.
You can mark any of your factions as "Inactive". These factions will
be moved to the bottom of your reputation pane in a callout that is
closed by default.
- Your experience bar will no longer display when you are level 60. The
primary benefit of this relates to the improvements to the Reputation
systems.
- Shift-R will now reply to the last person that you sent a tell to
rather than the last person who sent a tell to you.
- Purchasing Bank Slots now has a confirmation dialogue to prevent
accidental purchase.
- All Set bonuses for a set now display even if you do not have all the
required items for that set. The set bonuses that you do not have yet
display in gray and also show in parenthesis the number of pieces of
the set required for that bonus.
- You can now mouseover items in your mailbox and get item mouseover
information without opening the mail.
- The raid option to "Show Castable Buffs" should now work correctly.
- If a /who search brings up few enough names that those names are
displayed to the chat interface, those names will be right clickable
for invite/whisper purposes.

World Environment
- New flight paths have been added between:
Ironforge and Light's Hope Chapel
Stonetalon Peak and Astranaar
Talendris Point and Everlook
Theramore and Talendris Point
Sepulcher and Tarren Mill
- The Ice Totem effects from Wildpaw Shamans will no longer stack.
- Stable master added to Grom'gol.

"Can now quest to upgrade their previous Rare-quality Dungeon set to a new, higher-quality set".. Sounds to me like we're going to have to run ubrs/lbrs/scholo/strat and get our teir 0 stuff.  THEN we can solo quest a few items to get upgrades, and raid quest a few more.  *shrug*  Annoying but I've suspected this for quite some time and have been trying to collect my craptastic dreadmist in the bank while I run these instances (even though I will not wear a single piece of that crap armor ever)..


Awesome.


Damn..

I smell shite.

Potentially..

Here's one I just noticed:


Already the boards are alight..  Though these instances are easy to do with 5 and 10 mans respectively.  At least my guild has never had an issue doing it (we have NO ZG/MC/BWL gear at all and we can 8 man ubrs fairly quickly)..

Seriously, some of these changes just seem 'off' to me.  I couldn't narrow it down very much, but on first scan through all I can think of is 'no, this is just a little much'.

Hmmm.


Slice and Dice can miss at the mo ?  I've never noticed that.

Same here, its like they took all the known changes and they added a buncha stuff they hope will be in.  The free gold at 60, the 5 person caps to existing dungeons, and the significantly increased rep in ab and wsg sound like bs to me.

The gold thing reeks of bullshit.

The free gold thing annoys me.  If true, where the fuck is my buyback for all the questing I've done because I hate Raiding ?

Mofos.

As I say, I suspect not.

My main issue with requiring 5-mans for these places is that it will take a much longer time investment.  It was feasible to do a 1-2 hour run on a weeknight, now you're looking at 2-4 hour runs with a lot more possiblity for wipes.  As well it really enforces "required" classes - and level?  Forget about taking any sub-60's - you're just gimping yourself.

Seems someone took the Korea patch notes and added-in a lot of BS.  You'd have heard about the Strath/Scholo stuff at the same time the crowing about Hunter normalization began if it were true.  Ditto on the gold thing (Holy hyper-inflation, Batman. There's a TON of quests I never did in lowbie zones, not to mention that I've blown-off all the strath/scholo/ ubrs quests that didn't give me a useful item.) and  the upgrades to set bonuses on Blue Sets.

The dungeon stuff would be great if it were true, but I recall the bitching in Beta was enough to make them change to the current 10-man runs from the previous 5-man cap. Ditto on upping BRS to 15-man, since I distinctly recall reading therads where some posters said UBRS was "impossible" in a 10-man.  (And considering they were trying as level 56-58s geared in greens, I'd agree.)

Nice that the Slice & Dice exploit is finally being fixed tho.  I could never get it to work for me and Strazos irritated me when he was pulling it off consistently.

Well, scholo was really the "hardest" of these, and since beta Scholo has has LOTS of it's spawns removed, a great number of trash spawns have been taken out.  The patch notes (true or not) and the devs have indicated that even more trash spawns will be removed from these dungeons, and the boss encounters will be modified and more bosses will be added.

Given all those things, I think that changing the instance caps on those dungeons isn't really a good indicator about the truthfulness of the patch notes.  However, there are several other things in there that I think sound like total bs.

The AV stuff is going to be HARSH for healers if true.  Increasing AB and WSG rep seems odd.  Make AV slower and AB/WSG faster?  Interesting if true..

Hmm, just noticed this:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=7352436&p=1&tmp=1#post7352436

I'd like these to be right as it is, which means it is probably fake.  I actually do like more of the old content moving to 5-man.  Yes it makes it hard.  Yes it makes it hard to get a group.  However for smaller more casual guilds, getting 10-15 people together is near impossible anyway.

When we do have people on and they want to hit Scholo or Strat they raid it.  I have like 10 quests in those two places that never get done because nobody wants to 5-man it.  They want their loot quick and easy and get out.  I've enjoyed that part, but there is absolutely no risk doing Strat with 10 people.  I know that I could have sat out all of the fights and still gotten loot.

They may have to revisit and ease up the content in those places for 5-man, but this is the direction I'd like to see them go.

Spank my ass and call me Susan, they're real.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

Looks like I spend this weekend trying to get my BS Shoulders/ Chest before I'm shut-out of groups completly.

Details of the contests for beta slots mentioned in Cevik's posts.  GET YOUR GRIND ON, MOTHERBITCHES!

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/contests/ptr-contest/

This is exactly what I wish had happened when I hit 60 on my rogue.  Ah well, shaman next!

As for the contest, if that's true, then the patch is probably 3-4 more weeks away, which is shitty.

That gold thing kinda pisses me off.  I mean, just how fucking many quests that give a ton of exp at 60 have I done?  Gah.

Wee, healing wave sucks less.

Edit: I have other thoughts on this patch. Yay relics.  Lunch time though.  (Removed random frustrated raid shaman rambling)

1.11 is the Mage patch.

So.. more gold.. that will be nice..

I find this interesting:


I guess there will be no more Chuck Norris's Thunderfury of Roundhouse Kicking or whatever..

Yah, that made shaman super happy.  Doesn't even mean we're in 1.12.  No matter, not like we're a busted class, but the talent design and totem system needs a little looking over PVE side.

Couple warrior nerfs again. Awesome.

Also, UBRS can be done 10-man? I've done lower 10-man rather easily, but upper?

As for Strat/Scholo, that's awesome. Finally, no more battling with 2-3 of your class over every drop, or having twice as much chance of having a random jacktard that will cause a wipe, and no more begging for people to JUST do a 5-man so you can get your quests done. If you have a priest in your party you have no one to blame but really bad luck or your party if you wipe. My little guild hits Scholo and Strat for fun, pulling shit at random and chatting while fighting and we can still complete the place.

Shit, we 4-manned Strat Live up to Willie. You have any idea how irritating Strat Live is even in a 10-man candy run?

The rest of the changes...god, why does Blizzard want even more people clusterfucking about in Silithus? I HATE that fucking zone. Oh boy! More epic crafting shit that requires raid drops! Thanks for more stuff half the players won't ever see!

Should be easy enough with a decent amount of Dire Maul gear.  Doing 10 man way back in the day was a little challenging when it came to the general, but the gear level of the average 60 is a lot better, the general seems like more of a puss, and even really bad PUGs down him with ease nowadays since the strats have been so refined.

I just don't like the extra time commitment that now these dungeons will have.  Some of these places move really slow at a 5 man pace.

I have little to no Dire Maul gear (my l33t trinket item that I got solo from DM is the only item I can think of).  My lock has 4.2k hp (unbuffed) and +270ish damage, just as a reference.  Most of my guild is similarly equipped, several of us have boe epics in one or two slots, and blues everywhere else.  We 8 manned ubrs fairly quickly the other day without a mage (rend sucks with all your aoe spells coming from 1 lock and 1 hunter).  I don't see where 10 manning it will be that much of an issue personally.

To be honest I'm thinking of 10-manning the current UBRS. Re-reading the notes it looks like spawns have been removed from the Spire overall to speed things up. It'll probably take longer either way.

It took a long time for any group I was in to get all the way through either level of the Spire since we always had a couple mid-50's level characters who would accidentally aggro shit on lower levels by standing too close to ledges. That, and in the largest raids I've been on there'd be a lot of people dropping in and out of the raid. Hopefully with less "LFM" or "My feet hurt, I'm logging" stuff going on it'll be a bit quicker in that regard.

That gear is significantly better than what people were initially doing UBRS with.  Yah, what I was saying is that don't see it as that big of a deal anymore. 

I wasn't sure, that's why I gave details, so you could get my frame of reference.

I still smell Shite.  For different reasons now tho.

Oh dear.

My group of 5 can get to the rend event 5 manning pretty easy. The waves in the rend event come just a bit to fast for us to finish that with 5 man. If we had 8 or 10 people the dungeon would be very doable. The general fight would be nasty but I believe if you had a hunter who knew what he was doing to train the general you could do it pretty well.

kaid

From just after the first pull past the beast on, UBRS can get either really tricky or really easy, depending on wether or not your group realizes that you can use fear as crowd control.  Fear can make the general fight really really easy (I can almost solo one of the two adds)..

So we get to go back to Scholo now for loot? That's actually kinda cool. I like the idea of incentizing those dungeons again for players that like the five man runs.

Not really. Everyone (Except folks like Rasix who did quests at 60) has access to them. That just means hyper inflation as people increase their wealth so blue items for L30 twinks will go from the stupid ass 90-200g prices they're getting now (on my server at least) to 200-400 gold.  Joy.

Unless, of course, i missed the sarchasim there.  The ramp was looking unsteady.


Thank god.  You can avoid these easily enough in town but when some idiot guildie makes one that starts a flood of them in /gu you wish for the ability to turn off guildchat.

YEah that's exactly what these are for.  Call them "Tier .5" epics.  It's Blizz's answer to the complaints that non-raiders and casuals can't get jack shit for purples.  Kinda nice, and might just help smaller guilds (like mine) gear up a bit better while running ZG/ AQ20 on weekends.

Eh, but it won't inflate repair costs or epic mount costs or anything along those lines.  And if you REALLY want to twink a lvl 30, you get a 60 rogue to sneak into various instances and kill boss mobs for you.  So all said and done, it means more gold for me.. :)

I doubt the gold amounts doled out for completing quests is going to be all that much.

Ya, I'm thinking maybe 1xp = 2cp or someshit.

That way an epic 10k quest will net you like 3 extra gold.

3g isn't what I'd call a "Healthy amount of gold." (their words, not mine.)   Still, better than mob drops.

yeah, I imagine that you running around ashenvale doing grey level 20 quests will not be the goldmine that an above poster speculated. OTOH, it might give me somethingto do on my 60 pally that actually kind of has a point since I can't be arsed raiding, and faction grinding is soul destroying, and pvp is like waitning in a queue for weeks to be wtfpwned by people like Honda Civic in their l33t gear...

K, maybe 10cp per xp point?

so 10g per 10k xp?

You know, you're not married to the game, right?

Why do you people play games that obviously give your bowels discomfort?

Edit:  New dungeon caps + tons of unfinished dungeon quests + new dungeon drops = gold mine.

Freak.

I recently went back and did a shitload of high level quests for their gold rewards and vendorable items...

Oh well. :roll:

Me too.  This is why my rogue is not pleased at these events while my warrior is rubbing his hands in gleeful anticipation.

Good news for pallies too, since their Tier 0 set will be much easier to complete. No more full BRD runs for a tiny shot at the gloves.

Most of the gold will come from doing bgs, the turn ins are worth 3k exp at 60, the same as a small quest.

I heard a nasty rumor that you have to have your tier 0 set before you can have your .5 set, as in you have to turn it in as part of the reward. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, that blows. I never got the full valor set because it sucks ass for tanking, and the parts I did get I vendored or DC'd when I upgraded to something better. I know a lot of people will have done the same. That means, if you dumped some of your old pieces for bank space or something, you have to get them again.

Pretty much everything I read said in no uncertain terms that you were UPGRADING your Tier 0 set, so having the pieces would be a given.

I'm having nightmares since I haven't been able to win a single roll on my shoulders or chestpiece. Ever.

I don't think you'll take more than 1 of any class now that the dungeon caps are 5.

Spire needs 10 people, so unless you're packing a small army of druids you'll need a couple warriors.

Seems like a good time to quit your <almost any class> and just reroll a fucking warrior or priest... it's become very much like EQ1 in that regard..

There's too damn many warriors out there.  They're also mainly Fury/Arms or Arms/Fury. Protection? Ha, you need 2-3 "gimped"  warriors you keep on the side for tanking those raid instances.   You want a group, roll a priest now before the masses do after 1.10 and start saying "Wtf u mean heal, I'm Holy/ Disc smite build, I'm DPS!!"

Really, I love the game, but the masochistic side of me is starting to realize how free of idiots the oldschool MMO grind kept things.  That, I fear more than anything.

Pretty much every class is overabundant at the end game.

Except warlocks for the next couple weeks.

Warriors weren't too plentiful on my server until people realised they were pretty good. There still aren't nearly as many warriors as there are Hunters and Rogues though.

I disagree. The old grind didn't mean less idiots, it meant idiots that had been trained to be tenacious. :)

Apparently the tier 0.5 stuff will need a LOT of expensive materials and grinding. 10 stonescale oils, arcanite converter, greater eternal essences, ~150 gold per piece, etc etc. Also mob grinding for the first few pieces, and instance blitzing for the last few [I've heard that for the 0.5 legpiece, you need to do a strat baron run in less than 45 minutes, starting from the spider boss].
Shadowmeld got nerfed.. I don't mind, though now all of the top 5 racials are horde-side. Ah well, shouldda rolled undead.


-- Z.

The set bonuses have all been turned to shit, as well.  Hunters REALLY take it in the pooper on that one.  The .5 bonuses aren't much better, and in the case of priests are the EXACT SAME BONUSES, just reversed in the order that you get them.  Plus, the stats on the .5 tier stuff are, in some instances, WORSE than the current blue stats. (Priest belt and Boots both have less int. The belt goes from 20int to 13 int. Er, yay?)

This looks like a case of just putting in a long, involved quest to change the color of an item to shut-up board whiners.  "There's your purple text, now gtfa."

Pictures of the new 1.10 item sets:

http://www.wowguru.com/gallery/itemsets-id16/

Always a lack of druids where I am. I'm often the only druid in a 40-person raid. Hard work, but the druid loot is mine, all mine!

So basically the new sets are just recolored old sets? Pretty weak but not unexpected.

Where are we hearing all this?

The official boards from beta testers.  Test servers are up and test copy was up for a few hours late Friday.  It won't be up again until 3am on Monday.

Good lord on the 45 minute Baron run. How the hell is that possible? Even frantically running you couldn't pull that off 5-man unless you found some way to ignore half the pulls.

They tuned down all the late game instances so that 5 mans could do them in 45 mins.

I've heard from a few reliable sources that it's pretty easy as long as everyone is on the ball.

You mean they toned Strat down even more this patch? Or are we talking the cumulative nerfs from previous patches?

Because as it is a 45 minute run would require a lot of sweaty palmed pulls into corners and carefully sneaking past several pulls provided you could even do it. You'd need a lot of DM and the better Strat/Scholo stuff to have a ghost of a chance either.

They toned it down even more.  I've seen folks speculating on lowered mob hps, lower hps on the Baron, and fewer number of mobs in general.  I'm going to try to copy over tomorrow and see if I can get in on a run with my priest to verify it.  I'm fairly familiar with Baron-side as it's one of my favorites (excepting the 'fatties' part.. too damn long there.)

This is what I've heard too, also, crazy crazy drop rates.

Of course, they will probably 'tune' this before final release.

Man... looking at those above armor sets... the only one that looks at all good to me is the Five Thunders one.  The Rogue armor stands out as particularly awkward looking.  I'd hate to grind/farm for all those pieces only to look ridiculous when I got them.

The paladin set is an improvement, if only because you won't look like the love child of Ronald McDonald and The Burger King when you wear it unlike the Dungeon Teir 1 set.

Supposedly their testers managed the baron run in 30 min with an optimized group in all Blue gear. 35-40 min with unoptimized.

Bout fucking time they fixed the good old 41 yard ranged Ambush.

I just find it funny that in the "Casual vs Raider" debate going on on the wow forums, the casuals all always say "We dont want getting epics to be easy, we just want the chance at it" but now that they have implimented it, they are all screaming that its to hard, and takes to long. Guess a lot of them really did want free epics.

It fixes nothing, really.  If they're going to AS you at 41 yards, you're going to get hit weather it drops before or after they shoot.  You just have a chance of actually seeing them do it now.

Expect a lot of "nerf undead" posts in retaliation, however.

Yes but in general they suck unless rogues in plate are in demand.  Good warriors who can actually perform the role of tanking and aggro control are very hard to find.

"Interesting, that hunter just poped out of stealth and is just standing there with his bow drawn.  I guess I'll deathcoil him."

I'm a little tweaked at the 45 minute Baron run since I'm one of those people who prefers to clear everything and carefully decide pulls.

I fucking can't stand doing Metal Gear Solid sneak mission content bypassing where everyone has to jump on this fucking ledge and walk backwards like this so you can glitch through this corner, then stand all clusterfucked on this 10x10 grid of pixels where you have to do an utterly perfect pull to avoid aggroing the mobs you just snuck by....when you can just do one extra fucking pull and not have to worry about someone moving 1 inch in the wrong direction. This is one of the reasons I hate Blackrock Depths with a firey passion.

Or when I did 10-man candy runs into Strat/Scholo where 1-2 people would have a major bug up their ass about "hurrying up" and would pull 1/4th of the instance at a time so they could get to their phat lewt faster.

Fab, you don't have to do the 45 min run.  Just that one quest.

Sounds within the realm of probability. Enough carrot to give 60's motivation to go whack 20 foozles, deliver this letter to Sydney overnight and collect 10 giant rat ears again.



Fuck! I'm not married to it?

I enjoyed the 1-60 game immensely, when I got to 60 and found out that Pally is an average support class at best I lost much interest.

I'm levelling a rogue now, because I enjoy doing different quests on the level up and will have a useful and more-fun class to play when I hit 60, and I'm levelling a mage parallel with my wife, because I enjoy playing with her. These two things give me enough interest to play WoW again for the time being. When the game gets boring/shitty for me again at some point in the future, I'll do what I did last time and stop playing it.


As for "too many" warriors, in PUG's and even in my recently-left shitty guild most shitstains in the game won't go anywhere without a priest and a warrior. Leaving the other 3 group slots for, you know, every other class to fight for... and most people will take a "rogue in plate" over every other class.

Indeed.  Much along the same lines as:

mage - Oh? Hunter popped out of stealth?  Blink Into deadzone / Out of range, Iceblock
Priest - Shield, run at him, fear.
Rogue - haha, vanish

You get the idea.

The very fact that we now know the hunter is there and prepping Aimed Shot when he starts the cast, rather then when the AS hits us is the edge that just might allow many good players a chance to kill the hunter, instead of just dying without having a clue in hell what just hit us untill after the fact.

Nah, I'll more than likely still die.

See, smart hunters will just wait until your attention is on someone else or use terrain to their advantage.  I've seen plenty of dwarves trolls and orcs get aimed-shot kills on anyone not a warlock. (Cuz, well, locks are just hunter bane right now.)  Shadowmeld  was a crutch for bad hunters.  It'll nerf them, and you might see a reduction of hunters in PvP, but it won't stop the kills nearly as much as the normalization will.

Also, I agree with what Az said about "rogues in plate."  I'm talking from a casual/ pug stance here, not raiding, and that's where the complaints come from. Yeah, good warriors are hard to find.  However, if you're trying to level-up or get your blue gear, you're stuck with what you can get unless you're good buddies with one of the good warriors.  The trinity is still in everyone's mind, despite WoW being designed well enough to avoid requiring it. (Well, pre-60 anyway.)

Redundant statement: Shadowmeld + hunter = NE, therefore 'bad' can be assumed.

Why the fuck does the Darkmantle set have TWO overlapping sets of shoulder pads? Other than that, it looks good, but that's really Rob Liefeld silly. Also, Soulforge and Beastmaster sets? WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THE SHOULDER PADS? I think Image Comics from the 90's puked into the designer's minds.

Um.  So did Shadowcraft ?

Yeah, Blizzard goes fucking overboard on pauldrons and shit.

I take offense as a NE hunter.  I'm not fantastic, but I know I'm better than the median. :p  (I said average first, but that's a much lower bar..)

http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general-en&t=877878&p=#post877878




http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-realm-test&t=155963&p=#post155963


So no grinding the BGs for cash.

Yes, I am reading blue.cardplace.com right now...

So really, it's a worthless bone and I'd be better off holding onto the quest stuff until the expansion where I can quest outside of the new zones with the 2300 other level 60s. Awesome.

Level 55+ quests tend to give 7000-10000 xp from my experience.  So 4-6ish gold per quest, in addition to the reward (either an item to vendor or money).. you're looking around 6-8g per quest.  Sounds pretty decent to me, you can make quite a nest egg pretty quickly imho.. assuming you can find enough quests..

Nah, not worth it.  I can make more gold reselling blues on the AH for less effort. Plus, like I said, keeping those quests for later means I can finish them out while everyone else is DCing/ competing for spawns in the expansion zones. Iif you thought release was a clusterfuck in the noob zones, remember that was when there were only a few hundred thousand players.  I'm going to avoid all that stuff like the plague when it finally hits.

I am worried about that too.

I have the feeling that since the new "noob" zone full of 60s is likely going to require some kind of event to open (dark portal, lots of nasty demons, etc) chances are that you wont see a massive influx of fresh off the boat 60's in there when it goes live.  Most likely, the uber guilds on each server will be in there first, and the casual norms wont make it in untill they have hit 64+.  There should also be plenty of people dicking around with the New races and new instances that will launce simultaneously.

Hmmm.  The last Event was such a raging success.

Well I'm not thinking of running one at a time, I'm thinking about doing "quest packs" like I did to level.  Find 5-10 quests all in close proximity and requiring the same critters, then do them all together at once.  Do all of that WHILE your stuff is sitting in the AH to be sold.. that'll be 20-60 or so gold off quests in short order I bet.

I doubt the old world content will get you past level 61 when the expansion pack comes out.  If you can make it all the way to 62 on the old world stuff, I'll be amazed.

I'm betting that you will have to do something with the new content to unlock your character to get to 65.  Then, you'll do another set of quests to unlock to get to 70.  The new content will be forced upon you if you ever want to hit 70.  Wait and see!

The rumor I've heard is that getting to level 61 has a quest chain involved.  Hopefully they're intelligent about it and make it something that doesn't require you competing for drops for 2000 other people or going through a 3 hour instance.  :|

And I heard that it's essentially new classes, similar to the weaponsmith/armorsmith choice at the end of blacksmithing.

Who knows though.

That sounds like hero classes to me.  They essentially ruled that out, so my guess is no.

Why wouldnt it?   i mean, unless they drastically change the existing experience curve and amount of Exp from similar level mobs, hitting 62 should be easy.
First off, most people should have, what 1.5 or 2 full levels worth of rested exp (forget what the max is). 
Second, if you hold off on the Unused exp = gold feature, there could still be a LOT of quests you could do at 60 on old world content.
I mean, hell, my druid alt hit 60 without even touching any of the quests in WPL / EPL.  That would be an easly 1 level or more worth of exp.
Heck, i think i remember someone in my guild saying that if you were bored, you could collect 18 of each battleground reward token, and turn them all in at the same time when the expantion hit and make most of level 61.

Well, they've already said that the rested exp you've built up will not apply in the expansion pack.  I'm just betting on them not letting you get a quest log full of quests done (20 quests, all ready for turn in) so that you can get a level in the opening minutes.  I may be wrong, but we'll have to bump this thread in 2 years when the expansion pack comes out..

Oh wow.  When was it confirmed that all your rested exp will be wasted?  That kind of sucks.

Too many unconfirmed rumours about an expansion that will definately not be out intil Thanksgiving at the earliest.

Are people (well, people here) really going to let potential/maybe epeen measuring on what may or may not be possible to be the first one on your block to ding 61 really fucking quick determine how thay play the game within/for the next 7 months in case they maybe might lose some kind of temporary percieved xp advantage?

I would answer your massive run-on sentence, but I ran out of energy half way through.

Do you need Viagra for your epeen?

vPeen?

That's the new "beetle" look.

It'll be interesting to see what they do for 60+ though, whether they go the EQ1 route of "hell levels" or force you to do a quest to open up the levels, or if they let you just level up easy and relatively painlessly like the pre-60 game..

Are these the final, real patch notes? If not can someone post them?

The final patch notes have not been posted on the Web site yet.

Not having played EQ1, what are "hell levels"?

These notes match what was on test server as late as last night.  There might be some detail changes, but overall I'm fairly certain they're accurate.

I bought-up a few arcanite bars, stonescale oils and boe pieces from the AH last night.  (You need them for the second part of the .5 armor quests. 1 Delicate Arcanite Converter, 10 stonescale oils and a bunch of other crap. )

 I expect I'll be able to sell the BOE pieces today at a nice markup, and might do the same with the Arcanite converters I made and the oils I bought.  We'll see what the market has to say about that tonight.   Someone was already trying to gogue on the Arcanite bars.. they normally go for 26-29g and there were a few up at 46g rather than the usual price.  Devout bracers doubled in price last night, too.

When the game only had 50 levels there was a problem with the way they designed the level curve where starting from level 30 every 5th level required a lot more experience (and therefore time) to advance to the next. Then when they increased the level cap past 50, every level was intentionally made to be a hell level in terms of the time it would take to advance.

It was an artifact of really bad math by the original EQ design team. They had some screwy math in their leveling system. Each level took more experience than the last, but for levels 30, 35, 40, 45 and every level after 50, you got a hell level. That meant that the amount of experience required to complete that level was twice what you needed for the last level, and twice what you needed for the next level. So at level 29, you could get the level in a good night, and spend the next 3 days struggling through level 30 while your experience bar moved like a dwarf in a David Lynch movie.

I remember spending like 2 weeks at level 35 doing the same goddamn zone over and over camping the same spots just to see the bar crawl forward. The design team, especially Brad McQuaid, kept insisting that was just the way the experience system had to work, and that it could not be fixed because of the way EQ was designed. That was a bald-faced lie to cover their own incompetence. A later design team came in and fixed the whole thing within a month.

Moved to http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=6379.msg171097#msg171097

Thanks, Haemish.

What a way to punish players.

I'm still surprised that so many people played EQ.  I understand people playing UO but never really understood the appeal of EQ.  Seems like so much of it was punishing and unfun.

There was nothing else like it at the time. Really. It rubbed a particularly fun spot for a lot of us, and I think we were just too desperate to have that itch scratched to quit. But it all piled on after awhile and when DAoC came out, I bolted for it.

All these games are a balance of risk and reward.  If there is no punishment for taking a risk and losing, then it's a meaningless risk.

EQ definitely took this philosophy too much to heart and poured on the punishment thinking it would make the game more fun.  A little risk is fun, so a lot of risk must be REALLY fun, right?

It's obviously more complicated than that in retrospect, but when your game is the only alternative to being pwned by sweaty teenagers UO and you are wearing hats made of cash, hubris tends to set in.

(edited for clarity)

I took a look at EQ at the time it came out, but didn't play because it just seemed to clunky to me.  I was busy playing a text mud at the time, which I had been playing for a while, and was still having a lot of fun with.

The amount of hubris shown to players astonishes me.  I understand that too much listening to players can result in problems, but being deaf seems to result in far more.

I am fairly impressed by the Blizzard team in this sense.  Mythic, which by many accounts was more responsive than SOE, still reacted too slowly to player unhappiness over ToA.

I don't understand why anyone would buy an SOE product given their history.  Especially people who were directly burned by EQ and SWG.  But EQII is doing well, (by pre-WoW standards, anyway), isn't it? (I didn't make it past the Isle).

EQ2 is a much better game than it was at release. It's about on par with WoW, though it lacks PVP except on the special servers and in the hardly-used arenas.

SOE don't release their sub figures per game any more - but they've recently merged a lot of EQ2 servers.  I had a crack at it a couple of months ago after seeing the box heavily discounted in my local EB.  It was a lot better than what I heard on release, but the tumbleweeds rolling through Freeport and the staggering lack of chat anywhere combined with the slightly clunky graphics made me think I was playing Morrowind. 

Add all those factors up (merged servers, discounted box, tumbleweeds in major city zones) and methinks EQ2 aint doing too well - the corporate overlords in Sony must not be amused.

Probably not. According to their press release figures three months after the release of EQ II SOE increased their total subscriber base by around 50K subscriptions. Everybody else playing the game were presumably Station Pass subscribers or existing SOE customers who cancelled accounts and switched to EQ II (i.e. EQ players). And the months after that the total number of SOE subscribers stay flat and then they stopped publishing specific numbers other than to say "hundreds of thousands" of subscribers. At this point I would guess that EQ is still their biggest game.