Filed under: News items

Grab yourself a drink and get comfortable because these are some hefty patch notes. There are a lot of changes coming to almost every aspect of the game -- classes, garrisons, professions, items, you name it. Here are a few highlights.

• Collecting all heirloom items awards a special mount usable by level 1 characters.
• Tertiary Stats for Avoidance, Speed, and Leech now provide about four times as much benefit per stat point.
• Lumber Mill and the Trading Post no longer require Garrison Resources to build or upgrade.
• The Mage Tower now accepts Ogre Waystones as work orders awarding Apexis Crystals and a chance to receive an item that allows instant completion of a mission that's in-progress.
• Players may find an item while completing a Bounty, Relic, Dungeon, or Raid daily quest from the Garrison visitor that that allows them to summon one of six new raid or world boss in the Garrison (10-40 players).
• Characters can now accrue up to a maximum of 60,000 Apexis Crystals (up from 20,000).

View the complete notes after the break for much more, including a ton of class changes.

At long last, the new blood elf models have finally appeared on the patch 6.1 PTR. These are still a work in progress according to Blizzard. All of the faces are still using similar geometry, but new faces are slated to be added in a future PTR build. In the meantime, you are encouraged to give Blizzard your feedback on the new models and animations on the forums (US feedback thread, EU feedback thread). Want a preview of how the models are shaping up? Check out our new gallery below!

---

So once again the folks at Wowhead are hard at work datamining away at Patch 6.1 on the PTR, and they've found something very interesting - new heirlooms. Specifically, neckpieces. A whole host of them, in fact.

• Eternal Talisman of Evasion
• Eternal Amulet of the Redeemed
• Eternal Will of the Martyr
• Eternal Emberfury Talisman
• Eternal Woven Ivy Necklace
• Eternal Horizon Choker

At present they don't seem to scale down on Wowhead, and they say 1 to 60 which seems odd to me, I'd expect 1 to 90. But that On Use is pretty amazing, all told. Since we're also talking about the heirloom tab coming in this patch as well, it's a good time for a set of necklace heirlooms.

---

No, this feat isn't impossible. A WoW-player named Watola has managed to level 100 characters up to level 100, which has a nice symmetry to it. Watola started work on this project towards the end of Mists, working with two accounts (each account is limited to 50 characters, so this is a must) to level two characters at once with Recruit-a-Friend bonuses. Always leveling with one tank meant getting into dungeons and clearing them, even solo, was easy XP. Getting to 85 in this way took Watola 5-8 hours, depending on the class -- likely taking advantage of rested XP (easy to gain when leveling so many alts) and heirloom bonuses.

At 85, an alt would be paired with a max-level hunter to farm Pandaria elites, which, if they were tagged by the alt before being killed by the hunter, the alt would get full experience for. This would earn a level every 20 or 30 minutes with full rested, and Watola would cycle through rested alts to maximize XP gain. At 90, Watola took his army of alts to Timeless Isle, gearing them up to an average ilvl of 507 to be ready for questing in Warlords.

Celestalon decided to tease us with this rather cryptic tweet regarding upcoming class changes on the patch 6.1 PTR.

Class design is often 85% talking about what to do, 15% actually doing. Today was the 15%. Next PTR build should spur lots of discussion.

- Celestalon (@Celestalon) January 22, 2015

Alright, Celestalon, you have my attention. He later followed it up with another tweet saying the changes will primarily be number tweaks, but there will be a few functionality changes. Overall class balance could definitely use some tweaks, at least for the top and bottom outliers. Recent hotfixes have helped, but I get the feeling they've been cautious with some of the changes. Patches are probably a better time to make significant adjustments since they can be thoroughly tested beforehand.

What would you like to see changed for your class in patch 6.1?

Update: Theses changes won't be going in today's upcoming build (January 22), but should make it into the next PTR build (source).

---

Blizzard has just posted a preview of the upcoming Blackrock Foundry raid. It will feature 10 total bosses across 4 wings. A new world boss, Rukhmar, will also make its debut when Blackrock Foundry opens on February 3. You can find the full unlock schedule for all difficulties right here.

Blizzard Entertainment

Blackrock Foundry was the ancestral home of the Blackrock orcs, wherein master smiths smelted and worked the impossibly hard ore that is the clan's namesake. Now, massive giants captured and broken by the Thunderlord heat the great forges, flamebenders of the Burning Blade imbue the ore with an inner fire, and engineers shape the slag according to otherworldly schematics. Warlord Blackhand's foundry is the center of the Iron Horde's military might, churning out the weaponry that will be used to raze Azeroth.

source

Check out the full preview for a rundown of all the bosses you'll be facing in as little as two weeks!

---

The WoW Insider Weekly Recap is back again this week to discuss all of the hottest news of the past week. This week's topics include:

• Tradechat's Latest WoW jokes
• All wings of Highmaul LFR now available
• Blackrock Foundry opens on February 3
• Patch 6.1 PTR realms are up
• Patch 6.1 build headed to the PTR
• World of Wacraft 10 Year Anniversary gift arrives
• Question of the week: What do you think about people selling their 10th anniversary statues on eBay?

If you enjoyed the show, make sure to subscribe to TradeChat, leave a comment, and come back next week for the next episode!

---

---

On live realms, the training dummies found within the garrison often prove to be a problem for DPS players. With the tanking dummy standing right next to the damage dummy, any sort of splash or cleave damage -- a baseline part of many DPS rotations -- hits the tanking dummy which proceeds to kill the player. The issue renders the dummies effectively unusable for many players who might be interested in practicing their rotation.

On the patch 6.1 PTR, the damage and healing dummies have swapped places. The tanking dummy remains on the far left and the damage dummy is now on the far right. Even if you accidentally hit the tanking dummy with a bit of AOE damage, you're standing far enough away that you won't be brutally murdered by an ostensibly inanimate object.

---

---

The patch 6.1 PTR introduces a number of updates to the garrison mission table UI, many of which will be well-appreciated. First, the mission table provides more at-a-glance information about mission rewards without need for a mouseover: ilevel of equipment, the exact number of experience points, and so on. If you do hover your mouse over a mission, a new array of information will be displayed: the ability counters required (and whether you have followers who can counter them) and the mission availability -- that is, how long the mission will stay in your list before it expires. If you have a follower who could counter something but is currently unavailable due to being on another mission, the tooltip will even tell you how long until that follower becomes available. If a mission will expire before that follower returns home, you can quickly and easily make the decision to try that mission with less than 100% chance of success.

The tab which displays your list of followers has also been updated. At the top of the menu, the UI now displays the total number of each ability in your active roster. If you have 7 followers who can counter Powerful Spell, for example, that is displayed at-a-glance. As someone who keeps a spreadsheet of his followers, it's a welcome addition. It's likely I'll still keep my spreadsheet, but having the ability to quickly reference that breakdown will make it easier when it comes to recruiting new followers from the inn each week. Using follower upgrade items has also changed: you no longer click on the item, then click on the character's portrait in the list. Instead, you click the item, click the portrait in the list, and then click on their full-size image to use the item. That change seems unusual -- it adds a redundant step to the process -- but the redundancy might be intended to prevent misclicks.

An image of the new follower tab can be found below; it's a big one.

Update: We've gotten an official announcement from Blizzard saying that Veteran Edition is coming with patch 6.1 as a way for players who have ever had a subscription to log on, chat (with restrictions) and play (also with restrictions) even after their subscription has lapsed. This version of the game will have all of the restrictions the Starter Edition has, but let you check in with the game (and your friends) without paying for subscription time.

Original post: Since the patch 6.1 files well and thoroughly datamined, another rumor about free to play WoW has started making the rounds. Hidden in the patch data is a new account type called Veteran Edition which is set up to have similar restrictions to the Starter Edition, in which you can play for free up to level 20. However, just what those restrictions are aren't yet defined: all we know now is that there are new strings in the patch file that refer to a Veteran Edition.

Though there are plenty of military personal who play and love World of Warcraft, we really can't say what this Veteran Edition is -- but if it gave military or veterans a chance to revisit WoW that only seems like a good thing. However, it might yet turn out to be nothing at all... or just an idea that wound up in the patch files that may vanish by the next PTR release. Though Blizzard has expanded the game's microtransactions, sparking rumors that WoW itself would be going free to play, Blizzard has said before that there are no plans to make the game free to play. So even if we do get a Veteran Edition, it's probably not a segue towards a free to play game -- but we're definitely curious as to where this is headed.

[Via Cnet]

---

Blizzard has just announced the unlock schedule for the Blackrock Foundry raid! Normal and heroic modes open on February 3, with Mythic opening the following week on February 10. Raid finder begins to unlock with wing 1 on February 17, and you'll have to wait all the way until March 24 to kill Blackhand in wing 4. LFR will require a minimum item level of 635.

Keep in mind this doesn't mean patch 6.1 will be released on the same date. The @WarcraftDevs Twitter account has already told us that the two are not dependent.

Check out the full unlock schedule after the break.

Today's maintenance has been extended for WoW, Diablo 3, and Hearthstone. Realms are now scheduled to be up at 1 p.m. PST. The PTR is still up if you really need your WoW fix.

We'll update this post if it gets extended again.

[Update - NA] Maintenance has been extended until 1pm PST for #Wow, #D3, and #Hearthstone. We'll update as soon as we know more.

- BlizzardCS (@BlizzardCS) January 13, 2015

---