Shadowmourne Extra Rewards, Blue posts, Comics
Shadowmourne Questline Extra Rewards
If you read this site regularly, and I'm sure that you do, you probably remember the Icecrown Citadel quests introduced with Patch 3.3.3. These quests have finally appeared on live servers and the rewards from this questline are actually Shadowmourne extra rewards.
It looks like Blizzard decided to add a couple of flavor items to let you attract the attention even more! When you kill the Lich King with a player wearing Shadowmourne in the raid, you will get an additional item - Unsealed Chest. After bringing the chest to Darion he will open it up and let you bring the items back to their respective owners to get your rewards :
I do realize that a couple of guilds with Shadowmourne already killed the Lich King in Patch 3.3.3, I will assume that the quest was bugged and only recently fixed. Thanks to Heist from EU-Genjuros for this info!
Quest - Quest: Personal Property
Reward - Unsealed Chest
Description
Bring the Sealed Chest to Highlord Darion Mograine in Icecrown Citadel.
You can detect no hinges or openings on this box. Were it not for the shifting of items inside, it could easily be mistaken for solid metal. If anyone could know the method of its opening, it would be Highlord Mograine.
Presumably, opening the box will contain five items, which the player will then return to their respective owners:
Quest - Jaina's Locket
Reward - Jaina's Locket
Description
What's this? He... he kept it.. all this time he kept it! I knew! I sensed a part of him still alive... trapped... struggling. Oh Arthas! Perhaps he might someday remember from what he once was... By the Light may he at last find rest, free from the icy grip of that terrible blade!
Quest - Muradin's Lament
Reward - Muradin's Favor - Frostborn Illusion - Screenshot
Description
Oh lad, how I missed those endless days in Lordaeron, sharpening your skill with this dull blade. Forging you into a weapon meant to withstand the demands of a great destiny. Heh… You sure put them skills to use, didn't you lad? If only I'd been able to stop you that day, how different things migha' been. If only I'da never discovered that accursed blade. Farewell, Arthas, my brother.
Quest - Sylvanas' Vengeance
Reward - Item #52253 - Possibly another flavor item, probably tied to the Lament of the Highborne spell.
Description
So, it is done. I had not dared to trust my senses. Too many times has the Lich King made me to be a fool. Finally, he has been made to pay for the atrocities he imposed upon my people. May Azeroth never fail to remember the horrible price we paid for our weakness, for our pride. But what now, Hero? What of those freed from his grasp but still shackled to their mortal coils? Leave me. I have much to ponder.
Quest - The Lightbringer's Redemption
Reward - Tabard of the Lightbringer
Description
Arthas... Alas, hero of Azeroth. You give me a greater gift than you know. Long have I struggled to forgive the prince for his terrible transgressions. My soul has been wracked with unbearable anxiety, dark thoughts, distancing me from the light. I recall clearly... the gleam of pride in his eye as he stood before me, eager to defeat the enemies of the light... eager to defend his people, no matter the cost. It is this memory of Arthas that I choose to keep in my heart. I shall always be in your debt, friend. Thank you.
Quest - Mograine's Reunion
Reward - Reins of the Crimson Deathcharger
Description
Alexandros: Darion, my son. At last I am able to lay my eyes upon you again. The Lich King tormented me without end, Darion. Endlessly he sought to break my will, to force me to serve him, to bind me to his blade. Finally, when events demanded his full attention, he left me. The one memory I clung to Darion, the one thought that kept me from giving in, it was your sacrifice, my son. That again saved me from eternal peril.
Darion: Father, father, I… I feared for your sanity, father, for you, I would give my life a thousand times.
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Mana regen in Cataclysm (Bye Bye 5-Second rule)
Two changes we're considering are combining all food and drink into food+drink and getting rid of the five-second rule in exchange for an out of combat rule. We're going to start talking a lot more about Cataclysm changes soon.
The FSR provides some interesting gameplay (but at a pretty high complexity cost). We think we can engineer similar gameplay where choosing spell A over spell B is a mana-based decision rather than casting vs. standing still doing nothing is a (less fun) mana-based decision. (Source)
Cataclysm Healing and effects on PvP
Ideally you'd go into an Arena game and not know immediately whether it was going to be an outlast game or a fast game. We don't have a problem with either case, but we think the overall experience is less fun when it's always and predictably one or the other (and in LK too often it's the latter).
We're not really interested in over-emphasizing mana draining as a dominant strategy, but running someone out of mana by causing a lot of damage seems perfectly reasonable. If you can't run the healer OOM then really your only options are to blow someone up while the healer is controlled or blow someone up so fast the healer can't respond. Again, those need to be valid strategies. They just can't be the only strategy. (Source)
Hybrid Tax System
We'll continue to polish it, but we're not fundamentally changing the design. We think there is plenty of evidence to suggest that pure dps would die off if more flexible classes could do everything they could do and more. Again though, in most cases gear or skill will have a much bigger influence on your performance than the potential maximums we engineer into the classes. While the averages more or less follow our general design (with some exceptions that we need to address), you can find plenty of individual parses where a hybrid "wins" or a pure "loses." (Source)
Farming Frost Badges in Heroics is boring
Some players like having a reason to still visit older content and a reason to do something on nights other than raid night, while other players want to be able to log in, raid, and be done for the week. It's hard to provide an incentive structure compelling enough for the first guy without the second feeling like he has to grind. The emblem system has a natural tapering off period where you start to get everything you need and have less and less a reason to keep earning them. But it ...
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