Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsThe Queue: We killed Malygos edition
by Mathew McCurley 
Oct 5th 2010 at 1:00PM
Hello there, friends. Mathew here, filling in for another exciting episode of The Queue. Did you know that we totally killed Malygos? He's dead. First, we punched Sapphiron in the face for a key to the Eye of Eternity. Then, we marched over to Coldarra and made our way up the spire. After that, Malygos attacked while my buddies and I stood around in zappy pools of power and blasted the aspect of magic. After some disc surfing and cowering under magic domes, Malygos redecorated the floor and, with the help of annoyingly hard-to-control red drakes and a bunch of idiots who can't press 1-1-1-3-1-1-1-3-1-1-1-3 and maybe the shield button, Malygos died. Dead. Forever? Who knows? Right now, though, Malygos is dead. Questions?
loreaddict asked:
Malygos is dead for real?
Yes.
Itanius asked:
With Cataclysm being released as a digital download, I guess we can say goodbye to many of the midnight release lines, eh?
Yes and no. On the one hand, if you're going for the pageantry of the release night, with all the cool events and fun going on all over the country at midnight, you won't want to miss a midnight release party. In addition, you can still only get the collector's edition of Cataclysm from retail establishments and online ordering from places like Amazon. On the other hand, yeah, the digital download will most likely just be an unlock, meaning you'll be up and running more quickly than if you ran to and from the store.
feniks9174 asked:
Does it feel good to finally have an answer to the most-asked question of 2010?
Yes, I'm glad that we finally know who is replacing Simon and Paula on American Idol.
thegatherer asked:
How many hours will be lost during the week of Dec. 7?
A lot. In fact, get ready for the cable news media to hit everyone with the "experts" who come out to tell you how popular this new "online role playing game" phenomenon is and that the kids these days pretend to be dragons on the internet.
bui asked:
So yeah Mr. Queuepants Mcwearersonburg, here's a question for you, or for anyone, really. What's the first thing you're gonna do when Cataclysm is up and running on your PC? Me? I'm going to buy the old world flying stuff and cruise around to survey the damage.
I plan on destroying, or at least aggressively agitating, my server's economy using crafting materials on the auction house.
Discolando asked:
How much time do I have to get a Kingslayer title?
Probably forever, until the game shuts down. Titles usually don't go anywhere. Removing the Glory of the Raider drakes and Hand of A'dal were fairly uncommon moves by Blizzard, and titles have stayed beyond content patches in the past. Don't expect Kingslayer to go anywhere. Although I would like them to put those drakes and titles back in.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 15)
(cutaia) Oct 5th 2010 5:18PM
Oh, hey Vinnie. Finally decided to give up on your vague "the emperor has no clothes" comments and be slightly less vague? Don't worry, buddy. Your "message" wasn't falling on deaf ears...just uncaring ones.
Boobah Oct 5th 2010 5:47PM
Er... I thought Ghostcrawler was talking about being GCD locked, which isn't the same thing.
GCD locked is when you have to push a button every (GCD length; 1- 1.5) seconds to do your job, without any procs or utility abilities thrown in, like the tankadin's 969 or the blood DK's Heart Strike spam.
As a game designer, this is a bad thing because you can't give the player anything else to do; see the original version of Sudden Death. Great! A free Death Coil! That almost never gets used, because it's better DPS to continue with any rune abilities than to stop and spend a GCD for the Death Coil. It's not like it being 'free' meant much when you were frequently wasting runic power anyway.
GCD capped can mean a couple things. Option 1: 50% haste, where a spellcaster's GCD is hasted to 1 second. Option 2: Whatever amount of haste it takes to speed an ability down to the GCD. In either case, more haste ceases to have any effect for throughput (although in the latter case, you move in between the end of the cast and the end of the GCD if you overcap.)
Eternauta Oct 5th 2010 7:36PM
Thanks Boobah!
I meant GCD locked, not capped. Sry if I confused you guys =(
Josin Oct 5th 2010 1:04PM
"On the other hand, yeah, the digital download will most likely just be an unlock, meaning you'll be up and running more quickly than if you ran to and from the store."
I'll put my DVD drive up against the bandwidth choke of that download any time.
Of course, the servers will be crushed anyway, so nobody's getting much playtime until the 8th, I'd expect.
xvkarbear Oct 5th 2010 1:10PM
well, we'll be downloading the shattering in a patch before December 7th (Here's hoping it's on November 7th!). That's patch 4.0.3. The one that redoes the world and opens the new 1-60 content. Willing to bet that patch will also have worgen/goblin starting zones and the new 80-85 zones as well. So, it really would just be something blizz has to toggle in their system to say that you have it.
Josin Oct 5th 2010 1:16PM
Based on past expansions, I really doubt it'll be that frontloaded. If it were, they wouldn't have to put it out as disks at all. They'd just make it a toggle for everyone.
There will still be gigs and gigs of download to take care of, I assure you. And of course a patch to fix bugs, because there's always an immediate patch to load with the differences between when the game goes gold and the working live game.
Yes, we're getting a lot of content in advance. No, I don't think it's so much that it'll be a simple toggle.
jorSbalZla Oct 5th 2010 1:28PM
I'm assuming background downloader will be stacked full of cata content and release day patches
Dennis Oct 5th 2010 1:26PM
The beta download was around 13GB. I'm willing to bet that along with the last minute patches even a fast connection will take hours to download Cataclysm. I'll gladly wait in line on a cold, cold December night in Minnesota to get my DVD.
Drakkenfyre Oct 5th 2010 1:34PM
The reason the beta and the PTR download was so big was because it was the entire client.
People don't get this. On the PTR forum, day after day when it first went up people complained about the 16GB download. It's because you are downloading the entire game. The final size of the expansion will not be that big.
Mzungu the Priest Oct 5th 2010 1:50PM
At the per Gig cost of data on a decently fast line (in South Africa where I live, at any event), it will be significantly cheaper to buy the DVD than to download 15 odd Gig.
Josin Oct 5th 2010 1:58PM
@Drakkenfyre:
We get that. Even if it's only 3 gigs,(it'll be more) and only 100,000 people try for the digital download (it'll be more), that's a large chunk of people trying to get the same data through the same pipeline at the same time.
I really think that in the context I've given, it's far easier for a 20-minute run to the store and 20-minutes back, plus install time, than to go to the Blizzard store, buy it, download it and install it.
Feel free to disagree, but I remember the queues in providing something as simple as a spectral horse mount, which was no download required.
Mzungu the Priest Oct 5th 2010 2:00PM
Oh yeah, and that's just the data costs, not to mention the download purchase price.
Now to find a store that will be open at midnight in this neck of the woods. Local stores don't really get the midnight opening thing.
eyeprod420 Oct 5th 2010 2:03PM
Maybe you haven't been getting all these background downloads like I have. It looks to me like Blizz has been sending us a lot of Cataclysm already using the background transfer program. I suspect that when it actually goes live we won't have much at all to download. Also, the download program uses torrents so it won't be just Blizz servers sending out the data. Sure DVD is nice, but I think Blizz has learned a thing or two since the release of WOTLK. I could be wrong, but I hope not.
Josin Oct 5th 2010 2:08PM
Background downloads are just stuff for 4.0.1, as far as I know.
Anyway, I'm pretty much done with debating this. Enjoy your downloads. I'll be waiting for you in-game.
alblemma Oct 5th 2010 2:21PM
If its anything like the Starcraft 2 digital download (which I assume it will be) then i will have my digital copy downloaded about 5 days before the boxed retail release date. Blizzard allowed us to pre download the whole game about two weeks in advance of release iirc.
jbodar Oct 5th 2010 2:29PM
You know many digital pre-orders let you download the game DAYS in advance, right? That's what is meant by unlock. You have no idea what you're talking about.
Drakkenfyre Oct 5th 2010 3:59PM
Josin, I actually wasn't commenting on you. I was saying all those people freaking out "OMG, THE PTR IS 16GB! WHY IS THE PATCH SO HUGE? I WON'T BE ABLE TO DOWNLOAD ALL THIS!" are freaking out over no reason.
There are people complaining about a 16GB download for the expansion, which is not right. The expansion won't be that large. The 16GB that they have downloaded was the original game, first, second expansion, and Catalysm all together. I saw someone comment on the size, I was commenting to them.
Of course installing off a DVD will be faster.
Ysonia Oct 5th 2010 4:07PM
I don't know about everyone else, but when I got WotLK, I basically put in a code to upgrade my account and was in the game playing within a couple minutes, no problems. We have been doing a TON of background downloading, so I'm pretty sure we're getting all the innards ahead of time.
That being said...I am spoiled and I and I want the Collector's Edition, so midnight release party ahoy!
Boobah Oct 5th 2010 5:56PM
Most everything in Cataclysm will be already needed to play; all the systems changes are part of the 4.0.1 patch, which is likely within the next couple of weeks, and which the majority of which you've probably already downloaded.
The world changes (or at least the majority) are coming in 4.0.3, which will drop in November (or, possibly, late October). Again, if you don't download them, you'll be unable to play at all until you get your Cataclysm disc.
If you have been playing during the months before the xpac drops, you'll have been using everything, except possibly the new zones/dungeons/raids, that is on the expansion disc.
Altogether, this means that there'll be a fairly small patch on release day (almost certainly smaller than the six gigs or so I've already downloaded for 4.0.1) and then just adding a Cataclysm key to my BattleNet account. And with the streaming downloader, I don't even have to wait for the patch to finish to start playing; it's not like I'll need Uldum and the Twilight Highlands on the 7th.
Jesse! Oct 5th 2010 9:45PM
@Josin:
"We get that. Even if it's only 3 gigs,(it'll be more) and only 100,000 people try for the digital download (it'll be more), that's a large chunk of people trying to get the same data through the same pipeline at the same time."
You forget that for the majority of people, Blizzard uses a BitTorrent client for distribution. There are cases where people turn off the P2P client, but unless somebody manually does it, there is no "pipeline" that you speak of, and once there are a few hundred (it'll be more) seeders, most people on decent connections will download the client extremely quickly.