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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsCataclysm Beta: Patch notes, build 12319
by Michael Sacco 
Jun 30th 2010 at 9:05PM
Cataclysm Beta Patch Notes 6.30.10World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Beta Patch Notes
Welcome to the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm beta test! Patch notes listed here are not comprehensive and will be changed throughout the testing process.
General
Welcome to the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm beta test! Patch notes listed here are not comprehensive and will be changed throughout the testing process.
General
- The Alliance starting experience for worgen is available. Venture through the cursed lands of Gilneas to discover your true path! Currently the female worgen character is not available for testing.
- The Horde starting experience for goblins is available. Beginning on the Isle of Kezan in a goblin paradise, players will face a treacherous road ahead!
- The level cap for all characters is 82.
- Players may use our Character Copy feature for copying existing characters to beta realms, or may choose from high-level pre-made template characters.
Cataclysm Beta Patch Notes - 6.30.10Zones
Dungeons & Raids
Classes: General
Death Knights
Druids
Hunters
Warlocks
User Interface
Graphics
Known Issues
- Mount Hyjal and Vashj'ir, two new level 78-82 zones, are available for testing. Players may find their way to these zones by speaking with temporary teleportation NPCs located in any major city.
- The level ranges of Gilneas and the Lost Isles are in the process of being adjusted slightly. Creature, quest, and quest reward levels are all being altered so that players finish questing in these zones roughly by level 12. Further fine tuning will continue in future content updates.
- Several zones have had quest maps integrated.
- Eastern Kingdoms
- Arathi Highlands, Blasted Lands, Dun Morogh, Duskwood, Elwynn Forest, Loch Modan, Northshire, Westfall, Hinterlands and Redridge Mountains are ready for testing.
- Stranglethorn Vale (currently Horde only) is available for testing.
- Kalimdor
- Most zones in Kalimdor are available for testing, though work continues on polishing the quest experience and flow, as well as zone aesthetics.
Dungeons & Raids
- Teleportation NPCs in Stormwind, Orgrimmar, and Dalaran can transport players to any available new dungeons, including players who are ghosts.
- Blackrock Caverns, a new level 79-81 five-player dungeon, is available for testing.
- Throne of the Tides, a new level 79-81 five-player dungeon, is partially available for testing.
Classes: General
- Ammo has been removed from the game.
- The character levels at which classes gain new spells and abilities have changed.
- The glyph system is in the process of being altered. Existing glyphs may not be fully supported or functional.
- Many item and class stats have been changed or removed.
- Rage has been normalized.
- Spells and abilities no longer have multiple ranks and now scale with character level.
- Talents trees have changed and are still in the process of being reworked.
Death Knights
- A dedicated tanking tree has been implemented.
- The way in which runes recharge has changed.
Druids
- A new Eclipse mechanic has been added for druids. The feature is functional, but the interface art is still a work in-progress.
Hunters
- Five pets can now be stored with the hunter at all times. Any one of these five pets can be summoned via the Call Pet ability.
- Focus has replaced mana as a new resource.
- Hunters now start with a pet at level 1.
- The Stable will now store 20 pets. If a pet is moved into the Stable, its talents are wiped.
Warlocks
- Soul Shards have been removed from the game as items. Instead, they now exist as a resource system necessary for using, or altering the mechanics of certain spells.
User Interface
- The ability to use third-party addons has been temporarily disabled for the test environment.
- The Arena Teams pane has been improved.
- Auto-quests have been added to the game. Players will automatically be given an auto-quest by entering specific areas in the game world. This alert will appear distinctly in the Objectives pane via the Advanced Quest Tracking feature. These quests will still be given to players with full Quest Logs, but will count toward the 25 total allotted quests if the log is not full.
- The Character pane has been redesigned. Character stats can now be shown or hidden via the Show All Details/Hide All Details button on the bottom left. When shown, all character stats will be visible in a window to the right of the pane. Stat sections can be reorganized by clicking and dragging them up or down the pane.
- The Professions panes now have more filtering and search functionality, as well as buttons to easily link recipes in the chat frame.
- Many of the yellow System Messages that would display in the chat frame when leveling up have been removed.
- New text animations now alert players as they level up, also providing information on when new talents, spells and abilities are available.
- Professions and Class Trainers windows have been altered to more clearly display available and upcoming purchases.
- The Spellbook interface has been improved for greater ease-of-use and visual appeal.
Graphics
- Experimental support for DX11 (can be enabled by passing '-d3d11' on the command line or adding SET gxApi "d3d11" to the Config.WTF file).
- OpenGL Hardware Cursor support (can be enabled on the Video Resolution Panel).
- Improved water and lava rendering system (enabled by the Liquid Detail slider on the Video Effects Panel)
- 0 = Classic Water
- 1 = New Water (fake reflections)
- 2 = New Water (ocean has real reflection for terrain)
- These values are likely to change during Beta.
- Dynamic Sunshafts effect (enabled by the Sunshafts option on the Video Effects Panel).
Known Issues
- Selecting high Liquid Detail when using Geforce 6 & 7 series video cards will currently prevent lava and water from rendering properly. You can temporarily restore liquid to the world by reducing the Liquid Detail setting via the Video Effects Panel, or by typing "waterDetail 0" in your Config.WTF file.
Filed under: Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Dreyja Jun 30th 2010 9:56PM
"The Stable will now store 20 pets" - It's official. I just died and went to heaven!
Natsumi Jul 1st 2010 1:29AM
You now can carry up to 5 pets with you at all times.
Perhaps you missed that little tidbit when you were running back to your corpse :)
pilar_80_2002 Jun 30th 2010 10:41PM
Wait, wait, did I read that correctly - 20 pets?!?!?! I now accessorize which pet to match with my gun or bow, and gear?!?!!? Oh, Blizzard, how do I love thee, i don't even know how to count the ways right now......*crying happily* I can finally get snake, hyena, blue moth, rhino, got to catch them all or something and I don't even have to worry about dps *tears of joy*
logicalfundy Jul 1st 2010 1:41AM
"Experimental support for DX11 (can be enabled by passing '-d3d11' on the command line or adding SET gxApi "d3d11" to the Config.WTF file)."
O.O
:O
!!!!!
Awesome. And can't believe they're able to do it with an engine this old. Congrats on what I'm sure was a lot of hard work to make this available.
Now - start using those shaders!! Make a bunch of them. Make the rocks pop out of the cobblestone roads, make my skin look real, and make my armor shine.
Well, at least they have better water now. But hopefully it's only the beginning of graphical improvements.
"Players will automatically be given an auto-quest by entering specific areas in the game world."
Very nice - but hopefully before release, they'll make it ask the player rather than doing it completely automatically. I can see the complaints right now with players getting unexpected full quest logs.
Now all I need is an invite :).
zippoburn54 Jul 1st 2010 3:18AM
So then with DX11 support, does this mean that they're moving more towards Video Card support as opposed to focusing more on your processor? I have an HD 5870 with a 2.88 processor and compared to other guild mates, who have 3.00 CPU's, they have a bit better performance. This would be a very welcome improvement!
logicalfundy Jul 1st 2010 3:29AM
Even as old as WoW is, it has always depended on the video card for graphics. That's not gonna change. What appears to be changing is what version of DirectX it supports, which allows them to (theoretically) add a lot more effects to the game.
The stuff that WoW uses the CPU for likely isn't going to change much.
xoxotl Jul 1st 2010 4:11AM
I wonder when the official cinematic trailer will be released...
Rommster Jul 1st 2010 5:35PM
At Blizzcon, methinks...that's when we say WotLK's cinematic.
Possum Jul 1st 2010 5:02AM
Is there a way to flag my account for Beta Invite Yes Please! Or is it too late now? I was overseas when the initial call to arms happened.
Adanion Jul 1st 2010 10:37AM
"Spells and abilities no longer have multiple ranks and now scale with character level."
Does this mean that you learn the spell once and never train the spell again at a higher level?
--- Can I get all of the gold back that I wasted on rank 2-* on all of my 80s? ---
That would be a LOT of gold! :D
Maira Jul 1st 2010 10:13PM
"2 = New Water (ocean has real reflection for terrain)"
Head = Bang.