Armored Frostwyrm Mounts, Blue Posts

Armored Frostwyrm Mounts (Possible Spoilers)
The latest PTR build added a new type of mount to the game, the Armored Frostwyrm Mounts.

<div align="center">Warning, Speculation here. Nothing is confirmed (Also, quests spoilers)</span></b>
We don&#39;t really have any details on these mounts for the moment, but after some digging in the game files and on PTR servers it seems that one of these mounts is already active under the name of Armored Frostbrood Vanquisher (MOUNT) (BLUE).

Two spells are also named after this mount : Frostbrood Vanquisher and Frostbrood Vanquisher Flight.

The only Vanquishers we know are the Wyrmrest Vanquisher used in the Wyrmrest Temple daily quests. The existing Frostbrood Vanquisher spells aren&#39;t really proper mount spells and at this point nothing says that we will be able to learn them like normal mounts, even if it wouldn&#39;t be very surprising to see a new set of flying mount as a reward for Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25 player) (Objectives and rewards are obviously placeholders at this point)

Things get interesting when you look at quests introduced with this build especially one of them ...

Respite for a Tormented Soul
Deliver Sindragosa&#39;s Essence to Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight.

Description
Take this Life Crystal, and have your companions take one as well. It contains potent energies from the verdant Dragonshrine in Dragonblight, and it was my own secret to resisting the dark magics of this place for so long. When you face Sindragosa, battle her until she is weakened, and then have your companions use these Crystals to coax out the essence that is dormant within her. If you then defeat her, you should be able to recover it and return it to Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight.

I&#39;m not going to jump to conclusions here, but it looks like the latest build added a way to control Frostbrood wyrms and a quest to preserve Sindragosa&#39;s Essence at the same time? I&#39;m also pretty sure that the Icecrown Citadel doesn&#39;t have an elevator with a "Frozen Throne" button.

We&#39;ll probably learn more about this in the next builds, stay tuned and keep in mind that at this point it&#39;s just speculation.


Tools Patch Issues: Please Read
Quote from: Eyonix (Source)
We are aware that since the latest tools patch, some players are receiving the error, "invalid game version" when attempting to login to the game. In order to resolve this issue, you must allow the launcher to run so the appropriate update can be applied.

We&#39;ve also identified an issue that&#39;s preventing players from running the launcher while wow.exe is open. This is preventing players from running multiple iterations of World of Warcraft. As a temporary work-around, until this issue is resolved, simply run the second game instance by opening wow.exe directly from your World of Warcraft folder.

If your download fails, please wait a few moments and try again. We hope to have these issues corrected shortly, and appreciate your understanding.



PUG with the Blues - Take Two!
Quote from: Zarhym (Source)
Since our first test went so well, we’d like to invite everyone out again for round 2! Come join the fun on the PTR; and instead of looting the PUG blues, you could end up with a PUG blue (see what we did there?). Members of the Development Team (including the encounter designers themselves), the QA team, and the Community Team will be on the PTRs to test out the new dungeon system and want you to come join in the fun.

To have a chance to group up with one of us, just queue up for a random Heroic through the Dungeon tool. We will be playing both Alliance and Horde, and since the Dungeon tool allows players to group cross-server, it doesn’t matter which of the two PTR realms you join from.

Join us Wednesday 11/11/09 at 4:00pm PST. We&#39;ll see you then! http://www.mmo-champion.com/Smileys/classic/smiley.gif



Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Oculus nerf in 3.3
As is evidenced in this thread, players have strong opinions on Oculus in contrast to the majority of the other Wrath of the Lich King dungeons. With the implementation of the new Dungeon system and Random Dungeon option in patch 3.3, many players were asking for the ability to black list at least one dungeon from the selection pool. If a large number of players want to black list Oculus because they don&#39;t find it enjoyable -- and it can often times be a pick-up group killer -- we view that as a problem. We do not, however, see a viable solution in giving players the ability to simply remove any dungeon they want from the Random Dungeon rotation. That takes away from the idea of randomness. In addition, we feel the benefits afforded players when running random Heroic dungeons (extra emblems, the chance to run a specific Heroic instance more than once a day, etc.) are too good to let them narrow down the list as they see fit.

As a compromise, we&#39;ve made the standard fights in Oculus a bit easier, and increased the benefits of item-based vehicle scaling to make the drake combat less cumbersome. We hope these changes deter players from deserting a random dungeon when it happens to be Oculus. (Source)

Vanity Pets with Stats?
We enjoy adding things into the game that just add flavor and aren&#39;t part of any min-maxing discussions. The non-combat pets are one of these things and so are things like titles. As soon as we put some stats on them the purpose changes entirely and anything without the ideal stats becomes "worthless". Imagine if the cockroaches had the best stats and you see 25 of them in a raid... kinda weird. (Source)

Pugging in 3.3
Just a couple of observations from our point of view:

1) Players who don&#39;t pug dramatically underestimate the number of people who do.
2) Players often assume every realm has the same dynamics that their realm has.

Pugging is something an awful lot of players do and our (frankly inadequate) tool didn&#39;t facilitate that experience very well. The new tool is pretty fast and simple. If you enjoy pugging (or don&#39;t enjoy it but do it anyway http://www.mmo-champion.com/Smileys/classic/smiley.gif ) the new tool should let you spend less time organizing and more time killing (or wiping http://www.mmo-champion.com/Smileys/classic/sad.gif ).

If pugging isn&#39;t your thing, that&#39;s cool. We&#39;re not trying to push you into it... unless you really like pugs (by which I mean the pooch). The tool will also benefit premades.

Dungeon System
1. You can run with whoever you like. You can /invite or have the tool find random players to fill it in (it is pretty smart in who it finds too). If you find random people, we place some restrictions on your group to discourage griefing.

2. I don&#39;t want to get into this too much in this thread because the discussion has already gone on and on regarding this topic. However, an old style LFG channel doesn&#39;t make much sense (because 1, the tool finds groups pretty quickly, and 2, we don&#39;t like people lurking in the tool and messing up matchmaking just to use the chat channel). Making a new LFG channel world wide would instantly become the new channel of choice for gold sellers, spammers or people who are bored and want attention. Making a second city-wide "trade" channel might at least draw some of the legit LFG lookers from the traders. (Source)

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...s/ihunters.gif Hunter
Hunter using focus in Cataclysm
If you ignore combo points (which we aren&#39;t planning on adding to hunters), then the biggest decision energy-users face is whether to use a single 60 energy attack or two 30 energy attacks. The answer depends on a lot of variables, including which does more damage, what is on cooldo...




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