Shadowfrost Shard, Armory Updates, Blue posts
Shadowmourne - Shadowfrost Shard Drop Rate
The preview of Shadowmourne was fairly popular and it's time for a small update.
One of the last quest of the chain requires you to gather The Splintered Throne requires you to acquire 50 Shadowfrost Shards. We didn't know the droprates until recently, the official armory has been updated with most of the data from patch 3.3 and gave us a few numbers :
- Shards only drop in 25-man from any boss of the instance.
- 25-man normal mode bosses have a medium (25-50%) chance to drop a shard.
- 25-man heroic mode bosses have a high (51-99%) chance to drop a shard.
If we assume that you kill all the boss in hard modes you should get an average of 9 shards each week and it will take 6 weeks to upgrade Shadow's Edge to Shadowmourne
You now have all the info you need to decide who gets it in your guild. Make sure you check the Shadowmourne Preview if you missed it!
Upcoming Armory Features - Update
On Saturday I reported that the official armory would get a few extra features (most likely in January 2010). The most interesting one (with the model viewer) is probably the Character Feed, this feature will let you build an RSS feed to report all the new achievementS/items on one or more characters based on a few criterias. You can check the FAQ below, it was removed from the official site a few hours after it went online. Once again, this feature is not live and you should expect it in January 2010
The FAQ of the Calendar Feed is also included but I don't think a lot of people will be excited about this one, I don't think a lot of people use the in-game calendar. It could be a good way to have out of game reminders for important events like the Kalu'ak Fishing Derby and a few other things.
Quote from Blizzard staff
Character Feed FAQ
What is the character activity feed?
Each character's activity feed shows the most recent in-game actions of the character that can be recorded by the Armory. These include achievements, boss kills, item acquisitions, and more. Character feeds can be customized using our customization tool, then exported as RSS feeds to your RSS reader of choice.
How do I create a customized character feed?
Click the RSS icon on the character's profile page (the orange icon on the upper right of the recent activity summary) to go to the Character Feed Customization page. The options on this page allow you to create a custom RSS feed that you can export to an RSS reader.
- You can enter up to five characters to aggregate into a single RSS feed. Enter each character in a name@realm format. If you are logged in, you do not need to specify the realm - it will default to the currently viewed character's realm.
- Achievement categories can be individually toggled to filter them in or out of the RSS feed.
- Achievement criteria include any intermediate steps within an achievement, such as defeating a particular boss in an achievement to defeat every boss in a particular raid dungeon. Toggling this category off will turn off all achievement criteria globally, while turning it on will still follow the rules that you select in the Achievement category (for example, turning off Quests in the Achievement category will turn off the criteria in this category as well).
- The Boss Kills category includes any boss that is tracked in the Statistics tab of a character profile. These include the end bosses of classic and Burning Crusade dungeons, and every boss in Wrath of the Lich King raids.
- Loot acquisitions can be assigned different rarity thresholds to appear in the feed. You can specify a minimum item level as well.
How do I use the custom feed once I create it?
The URL for your custom RSS feed updates in real time as you change options and enter character names. When you are satisfied with the options and characters you selected, simply copy and paste the resulting URL into an RSS reader. Online RSS readers include iGoogle, Netvibes, and Pageflakes, to name a few. You can also import RSS feeds into Outlook and other e-mail clients. In addition, clicking the Facebook icon (which appears near the RSS icon on character profiles) allows you to integrate the Armory's feeds into Facebook.
Can I customize the feed that appears in the Character Feed tab of a character profile?
In contrast to the RSS feeds created on the Character Feed Customization page, the feeds that appear on character profiles (on the main page and the 'Activity Feed' tab) are intended to be an unfiltered feed of a character's recent activity and as such can not be customized.
Why isn't the Armory's custom feed page finding a particular character that I enter in the character name field?
Only characters on US realms are stored here, as this is the US version of the Armory. To switch to a different region, such as Europe, go to their regional World of Warcraft website and access the Armory from there. In addition, a character must be recently active and be at least level 10 to have a character feed. When entering character names, keep spaces in realm names ('Black Dragonflight') and make sure the character and name realm is spelled correctly.
Calendar Feed FAQ
What is the custom calendar tool?
The custom calendar tool allows you to export in-game player calendar data to calendar applications such as Outlook, or to online calendars such as Google Calendar. The tool can aggregate up to five characters on your account in a single feed, and is automatically synched with the characters' in-game player calendars.
How do I create a customized calendar feed?
Use the Armory's main menu or click the link on the top right of a character's calendar page to access the Calendar Feed Customization tool. The options on this page allow you to create a custom calendar feed that you can export to any compatible application or website. You can choose up to five characters on your account to aggregate into a single calendar feed. Simply select the characters you wish to appear in the feed from the drop-down menus. Event categories can be individually toggled to filter them in or out of the feed.
How do I use the custom feed once I create it?
The URL for your custom feed updates in real time as you select options and characters. Simply copy and paste the URL into an online calendar such as Google Calendar when you are finished configuring your custom feed. In addition, clicking on the URL from this page will download a file that can be imported into compatible applications such as Outlook
Is the calendar feed automatically synched with in-game player calendars?
Yes. Calendar feeds created with this tool should always be automatically up-to-date with in-game player calendars.
What is the 'reset security key' option used for?
Each calendar feed URL contains a unique security key appended to the end of the URL. This key is intended to keep your calendar data inaccessible to others. If you wish, you can reset your security key at any time by clicking the 'reset security key' button at the bottom of the page. If you reset your key, you must update the URL in your web-based calendars, or re-download the calendar file to use it with a calendar application.
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Legendary weapons upgrades
Legendaries are not intended to be the last weapon you'll ever need. WoW is a game about upgrading your stuff. (Source)
Dungeon System kick rules
I believe the no-kick grace period is only 5 min, but we iterated on that a lot, so I could be wrong. If they DC you can kick after 1 min.
I suspect it's going to take a few tries before we get the vote kick thing feeling right. I hope it's obvious what purpose it serves though. We feared without some kind of grace period that a common behavior would be to automatically kick someone in greens or without certain achievements or perhaps even someone who would roll against you on stuff (in the partial premade situation). (Source)
Cataclysm masteries and PvP/PvE
Masteries are much broader than you're imagining from your examples. They are designed to have PvP and PvE benefit. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to use each of the 30 trees in both environments, which is the ultimate goal. (Source)
Recycled graphics in dungeons
We get a little more art for a raid tier than we used to, but we create many more items than we used to. I believe the new Icecrown raid and dungeon introduced something like 1800 new items to WoW. While it would be awesome for every piece to have unique art, that's not...
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