The Tuesday Morning Post: Is it 3.0 time yet?
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Sep 30th 2008 at 7:30AM
Good Tuesday morning, everyone! The servers will be down for a short maintenance today, from 5 AM to 11 AM PDT. During this time, Blizzard plans to upgrade some of their hardware to prepare for the Wrath of the Lich King. While some people are hoping for 3.0 in addition, there's no word of it as of this writing, and I wouldn't hold my breath. I don't think they'd want to patch and upgrade hardware at the same time, and if they did, they'd definitely have planned for a 3 AM to 11 AM extended downtime. So I'm guessing we have at least another week before we see the patch. In the meantime, you can keep yourself occupied by reading up on all of our Wrath Beta and 3.0 PTR news. Here's some of the best stuff from the past week:
Hot News and Features
- Moo Money, our favorite machinima maven, has moved on from WoW Insider, but not from our hearts. Check out her farewell post as she looks back at some of her favorite WoW movies.
- If you were planning on saving up Honor and Arena points for Wrath, you'd better make a new plan, Stan. They aren't sticking around for Wrath. There's going to be new stuff to buy with them in 3.0 though.
- Haven't upgraded to a DVD drive yet? Plan to play Wrath of the Lich King? You may have a problem.
- New Skill Mastery articles for this week include Thunderstorm and Guardian Spirit.
- You want epic stories in Wrath? You got them. Warning: Huge spoilers and even huger spoilers.
- As always, be sure to check out Ask A Beta Tester for all the latest news on the Wrath Beta delivered in the form of answers to your questions. Go ahead, go to the latest post and ask one in the comments.
Wrath and 3.0 Class News
- Crushing blows will soon be a thing of the past, and Shifting Perspectives reflected on that though this week.
- Tanking news was pretty heavy this week. Here's a bombshell: Ghostcrawler says that the dev team wants to get away from +threat moves.
- In addition, Warriors got some very, very nice tank buffs too.
- Druids weren't left out either. In fact, all Tank classes now have a very nice unlimited target AE ability. What could this mean?
- Since we can't let tanks get all the coverage, check out Alison Robert's discussion on healing 5-mans in Wrath.
- Also, Encrypted Text continues discussing Rogue Glyphs.
- Here's some of the latest Priest changes from Beta.
- Shamans also got some changes, including a new totem protection mechanic on Stoneclaw.
- Here, have some Paladin changes while we're at it.
- The latest Warlock changes might be cool, if they actually worked.
- As Alex so memorably said: Everyone gets a turn at being overpowered for a little while. Balance Druids, this was your turn.
Wrath and 3.0 Miscellany
- Unfortunately, Tabards aren't getting their own UI tab any time soon, but Blizzard is working a bit at making them less of a bag space hog.
- When it's Tigole's turn to write the patch notes, Shenanigans ensue.
- Sylvanas has been going through some changes in Beta. But with this latest patch, she and some of the other faction leaders are looking cooler than ever.
- Good news for mount and/or achievement collectors: You now only need 50 mounts to get your Albino Drake.
Other News
- Wait, so does the Alliance QQ Nullifier comfirm or refute our supposed massive Horde bias?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, News items, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
voltius Sep 30th 2008 7:36AM
my server's up. No 3.0 here.(thunderlord)
Bob Sep 30th 2008 8:52AM
No, your realm is down.
But yes, zip nada patch.
Andrell Sep 30th 2008 10:28AM
Not sure what they're doing, but I already have the patch downloaded...it came to me via the bg download tool...it was 812MB's and labeled 2.4.3-3.0.1
WatcherZero Sep 30th 2008 7:39AM
Another week and they could patch something acceptable or more likely a fortnight to get it fully polished, its getting close but its not quite done yet.
superfrank Sep 30th 2008 7:40AM
no
Caustik Sep 30th 2008 7:51AM
You're pretty optimist about 3.0.
Cy Sep 30th 2008 8:05AM
Laziness at WoW Insider, go figure.
If you look at the PTR forum, you can see about two dozen blued and locked threads saying those issues will get looked at in the next build, meaning there's going to be another build on the test realms.
With that and the MASSIVELY screwed up shadow rendering bug (as well as a few other fairly important bugs that are still outstanding), we've got weeks to go before 3.0.2.
Want to get it here faster? Jump on the PTRs, do stuff, report your bugs, and help Blizz get this crap sorted out. It's not that hard.
Rugus Sep 30th 2008 8:17AM
> Want to get it here faster? Jump on the PTRs,
> do stuff, report your bugs, and help Blizz get
> this crap sorted out. It's not that hard.
Note: that works if you are a *** US CUSTOMER*** only. For EU players (like me) forums are just a wall-of-rant. Blizz employees never answer there, never. It's like being talking alone. Also, sending ingame tickets as well as bug reports results in ZERO feedback at all (in weeks of testing).
Yaimano Sep 30th 2008 9:15AM
Too lazy to find the post, but Blue recently said they do read all feedback submitted via ingame, and actually prefer it because the forums are so cluttered with other stuff.
Omestes Sep 30th 2008 12:13PM
I think part of it is wishful thinking, and part of it is a slight lessening of our trust in Blizzard's "when its done" philosophy.
I want 3.02 to come out badly. The Affliction changes has made my current leveling warlock (64) feel flat and lackluster. Its like being so excited by Xmas that all your old toys get boring. The same goes for my Shamie, I've been saving up 3.02 gear for my DPS boost, but right now it is hurting my DPS.
I want my new toys, and I want them now!
Also, when Blizz says things like "We were going to do this, it would be neat, but we ran out of time" or "we won't have time to make this spell perfect", it makes my head hurt. Blizzard will delay a 90% finished game for 3 years to make it perfect, then cancel it if it isn't. This also is the first release after Activision, so this is the test.
Rugus Sep 30th 2008 8:15AM
Broken or not, everyone will just drool when WOTLK will go live... Even with bugs and missing stuff, I cannot imagine how a Wow player could resist to get that new stuff. And to be honest, I do not think Blizzard offers "poor content" for that price. Yes, it can be 90% complete and/or bugged but that happens with every game... and no other game is so patched/updated/expanded as Wow.
I'm not a fanboy of this game, I see and hate its limits and problems. But I cannot deny that wow environment, lore, stuff... are simply awesome. And after Outland, the idea of new areas to explore, quests to complete, fishes to fish and food to cook... well I love it.
Note: I'm not a PvP player at all (never done that in mu wow "career") so this could be helpful. As PvP user, maybe I'd hate this game.
Redaurora Sep 30th 2008 8:23AM
I have been betting on it coming out in Oct. 14th. Of course the sooner the better right. Maybe it will come out 2 weeks to release of the expansion so they can add in a world event for it.
Necrotica Sep 30th 2008 9:58AM
That's the date I'm telling people as well. It's the first Tuesday after BlizzCon and I expect a major announcement concerning 3.0... (i.e. DKs being available)
Radiophonic Sep 30th 2008 8:29AM
Ugh, I doubt there's no 3.0 today. It's terribad with imbalance on the ptr.
h8rain Sep 30th 2008 8:36AM
I hope I have at least another week or two till 3.0 hits. I am only Gruul and Mag away from my title on my priest.
Other than that I am pretty excited about the changes, even though I am a bit worried about druid tanking (armor nerf), but you can't be to concerned about it until you see the actual changes in action.
unigolyn Sep 30th 2008 9:05AM
h8rain - you don't need to kill gruul for any title. If you're talking about Champion of the Naaru, you only have to kill Magtheridon.
Casira Sep 30th 2008 9:47AM
@ unigolyn:
Yes, you do have to kill Gruul. You have to do the Naaru chain as well as the quests for the shards off of Nightbane and Gruul. See http://www.wowwiki.com/Champion_of_the_naaru
zappo Sep 30th 2008 8:56AM
Damn... coming down to the wire with me trying to level fast enough to do the Alliance Onyxia attunement. I have this bad feeling I'm going to end up in LFG forever and miss it anyway, but usually someone wants to run it on the weekends.
Steve Sep 30th 2008 9:10AM
What a waste of space on the front page of wowinsider this post was.
Patch 3.0? Are you serious, Dan? Have you even downloaded the PTR? Inscription isn't even halfway implemented yet and you're allowing yourself to conjecture that 3.0 might be released today? Come on man save this post for a time when theres actually a remote inkling of a chance that 3.0 might be released.
Krugeroff Sep 30th 2008 9:51AM
yeeeah,
Armored to the teeth not showing the strength or AP gained when points are applied to it among the other myriad issues mentioned by the above posters.
AND, I realize this is anecdotal, but the PTR was up last night still. When a patch gets finalized they shut the PTR off and start putting it on the background downloader.
Also, if you notice the background downloader 3 or 4 weeks ago downloaded 821 MB. It has not changed. It most definitely will as there have been quite a few updates to the base patch that was fielded on the PTR.
I am looking forward to the new patch at least as much as everyone else, maybe more since my main is a prot warrior, but I am also realistic about how this process works. If it comes out 2 weeks prior to the xpack....I would be happy, and not at all surprised.