Posts with tag wow-patch-3.1

Last week's WRUP was dismally quiet as the team waited (a bit impatiently) for patch 3.1 to hit the realms. So, with the patch out, what is the WoW Insider team playing this weekend? Like the rest of you, it looks like we're scoping out new content! Want to know what the team is playing this weekend -- or want to let us know what you're playing this weekend? Read on!

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If you are a Scribe who has not yet stepped into the glyph market since patch 3.1 went live on Tuesday, April 14th, then you'd better hustle!

As we discussed pre-patch, the glyph market is undergoing a radical shift. For a limited time, perhaps very limited, it is soaring to epic heights. Unfortunately, this will not last, and I expect the market to take a sobering downturn in the next couple of weeks.

This upswing is also affecting related markets, such as those for inks and herbs, and although we will likely see a bit of a price crash once the glyph market deteriorates, these should stabilize relatively quickly.

Today, I will be reviewing why and how the glyph market is changing, and make some predictions for the future. I will also discuss how you can earn some of this post-patch wealth, as well as ways to continue making some profit even after the demand for glyphs drops. I will also be pointing you to some interesting stories around the web of how other Scribes are cashing in this week!

The Warlock community was in an uproar over the extremely quick hotfix that Blizzard applied to nerf Conflagrate among other niggling issues with the recent Patch 3.1. Aside from the fact that nerfs are never a fun thing, Warlock players pointed out that Death Knights, while acknowledged by Blizzard to be overpowered, reigned for months before getting nerfed (somewhat) in the latest patch. Warlocks also pointed an accusatory finger at Holy Paladins, who dominated Arenas throughout Season 5 and promptly got a fix along with Death Knights.

On the other hand. it took all of 24 hours for Warlocks to enjoy insane Conflagrate numbers, which was promptly fixed. Ghostcrawler explain why through a lengthy response over at the forums, noting that Death Knights were imbalanced for more reasons than a simply overpowered spell coefficient. He also said that Death Knights and Paladins were nerfed over the course of several patches leading to Patch 3.1, but none proved to be enough to balance them.

It needs to be said that Death Knights were changed the most in this patch, with talent trees completely revised, some notable abilities removed (oh, Shadow of Death, how we'll miss you...), and class mechanics changed. It's quite possible that even these changes won't curb Death Knight dominance, but it's a massive change that simply isn't hotfixable. It's a fair response and a pretty good read. Ghostcrawler makes several important points, one of which is that players shouldn't feel that developers don't love them. So don't be emo.

With stealthiness worthy of an Arashikage, Blizzard removed the Flawless Victor title granted by the Achievement Hot Hot Hot Streak, along with the Achievement itself in Patch 3.1. This tiny little 'inconvenience' was conveniently left out of the patch notes, surprising many players who logged in to the puzzling message 'Title removed: Flawless Victor'. Conversations with GMs didn't manage to shed light into the situation, either, with the standard answer bring "apologies for the inconvenience".

Blizzard gives no reason for the removal of the Achievement and title, and forum posts asking about the matter have so far received no blue responses. On the other hand, Bornakk was quick to address the bug about the Champion of the Frozen Wastes title, which was hotfixed. It's fairly certain that Blizzard removed the Achievement intentionally. Some suspect that there were exploits that allowed players to obtain the Achievement with ease, while others dismissed it as a meaningless title in what is arguably the most imbalanced Arena season to date. With the Arena system being completely overhauled yet again for Season 6, it is possible that we may see the title return in some form or the other.

It was inevitable that someone would down Yogg-Saron pretty quickly, and less than twenty four hours after the patch went live European guild Ensidia have claimed World First on the Death God. Given the non-linear progression into Ulduar, a lot of other guilds were able to pull off world firsts on other bosses. It also seems that Ensidia was focusing on clearing Ulduar in normal mode, as none of their kills were done on hard mode. This means we're unlikely to see Algalon downed this week (not by Ensidia, anyway).

While it came as no surprise that someone killed him, what surprised me was that it was Ensidia. I was betting on Vodka (can I get a 'for the Alliance!' from anyone?) and that they managed to do it while many of the EU realms were having stability issues. Of course, it should be noted that Ensidia was the same guild that cleared all Wrath content three days after its release (they hadn't decided on a name yet).

Boubouille over at MMO Champion has a full raid list and info on some of the loot that dropped, including a rather nice cloak and a piece of that legendary healer mace.

New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.

Welcome, O WoW rookie, to patch week madness. If you thought run-of-the-mill maintenance and minor patch days could be dicey, here's your chance to enjoy the epic-level chaos wrought by epic-level content patches.

World of Warcraft has evolved considerably since its launch in what's now been almost a handful of years ago. Blizzard regularly releases downloadable updates, called "patches," to add new content and features, fix problems and tweak game play and balance. Through patches, players have gained access to new quests, instances, Battlegrounds, events, items and tools.

This week's Patch 3.1 is known as a content patch – a nice way of saying "a ton of new stuff we've added to the game that's going to make all hell break loose." The realms go up, the realms go down. The realms go up. Did we mention they also go down? You may log in only to find your characters nowhere in sight ("Oh #%$&, my characters are all gone!"). You may experience disappearing mail or auctions, random disconnections from the game and insufferable lag. You may find yourself merrily rolling along only to find the NPCs have disappeared, you can't zone in or out of instances or log out of the game, and you and every other player who's trapped in your zone are left with nothing to do but chat about the whole thing. (Almost makes you wonder if the Ice Stone has melted yet.)

We're not out of the woods with this patch yet. I'm seeing this message on a North American realm, and lots of other people are seeing the same thing. At least one of our bloggers is still in the game, though, and Blizzard is saying the Authentication servers are still up and running, so this should be fixed soon.

We'll keep you updated, stay tuned.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Update: A login server died. If you try signing in with a Bnet account, you should be able to get in. Otherwise, everybody PANIC hold on and they'll be back up soon.

Update 2: Everything seems back up. That was relatively painless. Thanks for playing, everybody!

Listen up, this is very important stuff here.

When male Draenei logged on last night, they were greeted with some serious facial hair. No one is sure exactly what's happened, and the only blue response is a reply asking for folks to post if they're having the issue.

Now what I have to say next is the important part.

Who has the best 'stache pictured above?

To the left we have the timeless hunk of man meat Burt Reynolds, in the middle we have Virtual Sacco, and on the right sits the anchorman himself, Ron Burgundy. Vote and be heard! The results of the poll will matter more than you could ever know...

It's been a long old twenty four hours but the US servers have had Patch 3.1 running life for a little while now. I can just imagine the thousands of people swamping Ulduar, the Argent Tournament and every class trainer from Azuremyst to Thunderbluff will be stood on by thousands of toons trying to dual spec.

Now over the last few weeks Breakfast Topic has been, quite understandably, a little Patch 3.1-heavy. We've asked about your most anticipated feature, whether your guild is ready and where your toon will be when the realms restart (just in case you were wondering, Serisa is waiting outside Ulduar to see if the above happens on live as well).

So if you're lucky, you've had a few hours to poke around and take a look, I want to know what your impressions are of The Secrets of Ulduar now that it's gone live?

Let's get real here for a second. When I signed off at midnight, the US realms were only just started to pop back up. Did you honestly think we here in Europe were going to get away scott free?

You did? Oh dear, let's not go there, eh?

Folks have been reporting extended maintenance and so we're now looking at 3pm CET. All we need to do now is cross our digits that Blizzard managed to fix whatever was ailing the US realms before starting to roll out 3.1 on our severs.

Needless to say. I'll be keeping you guys in the loop should things change.

So in the meantime, as your waiting, why not enter our EU loot card competition? Your could also check out our 3.1 FAQ and start planning your new primary and secondary specs using Wowhead's new calculator.
Not finished patching yet and having issues? Try this post.

Hopefully we should have a smoother ride of it but I'll be keeping you updated nevertheless.

UPDATE: As of 3pm CET, the realms are slowly starting to come back up. Some of the most popular ones - Vek'nilash amongst them - keep going offline, probably due to being hammered by players trying to login. Hang on in there.

UPDATE: Most of the realms are now back!

Hey, European players, psst! I know it's the crack of dawn and to make things even worse it's patch day! Pretty miserable, huh? Well, I have something that might cheer you up! Upper Deck International here in the UK have given WoW Insider a set of shiny, brand spanking new loot cards from the Blood of Gladiators expansion set, which is available right now, just in case you didn't know.

And we're giving them away to you, loyal EU readers. All you need to do is leave a comment in this post before 5PM GMT (6PM CET) today, April 15, 2009. We will then randomly choose which of our three lucky readers will win one card each. Be sure to comment with an e-mail address you check often and have easy access to, because that's how we will be contacting our chosen winners with the codes.

We have three codes to give away, one for each of the cards in the set. That's the Epic Purple Shirt, the Sandbox Tiger (awwww, bless) and the Foam Sword Rack.

The only caveat is you MUST have a European WoW account or the cards won't work (sorry to our American brethren) so please make sure before you enter, okay? Also, you can only enter once. Good luck to all who participate!

Thanks to Tom at Upper Deck International's UK office for the codes.

UPDATE: The competition is now closed! We'll be announcing the winners at 7pm CET/1pm EST!

When I first had a chat with the Big Giant Heads who run WoW Insider and Massively, they were under the impression that I dwell in the future. Sadly not, even if I am on GMT. I had to explain that, no, we don't get patches before North America but rather we have to wait an extra day to enjoy all the new patch goodness.

So it's Wednesday morning in the UK and guess what? Yes we have extended maintenance on all European realms. Hmm, what could this mean? Ah yes, could it be, 3.1.

So all realms, the Armoury, Account Management and the Blizzard Store will be down from 3am until 11am (CET).

Fortunately, there's plenty to be doing while you wait. Personally, I will have the official trailer on repeat. For your convenience you can see it below, and while I agree with Alex that Jaina looks different, I actually prefer her in the trailer! The new character animations look amazing and she in particular finally looks human.

While I make no secrets that I play Alliance, I have to side with the Horde on this one (sorry Daniel)! Varian Wrynn is just becoming xenophobic and paranoid which is not doing any good for Alliance-Horde relations. Indeed I can smell a buildup of testosterone that is bound to come to a head in 3.2 or 3.3 and I can't wait! It is, after all, the World of Warcraft, it's about time the factions remembered they hate each other even if I live in hope that Thrall might eventually hook up with Jaina.

Please see the updated information at the end of the post for the latest news.

Realms have been down today since 3:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 a.m. EDT. A few realms were up for a short time earlier this afternoon after the maintenance was extended, however they were promptly brought back down.

There is no indication as to what problems Blizzard has encountered. While the official forums and account management are often offline right now, WoW Insider has a few sources where we are getting our information from and we'll keep you updated with the very latest.

Be glad that at least the in-game mail hasn't gone missing, and did you get that pony Ghostcrawler promised you?

Don't forget to check out WoW Insider's Guide to Patch 3.1 for all our patch information, and stay tuned throughout the evening for updates!

Update 9:30 p.m. EDT: Current announcements indicate that most realms are up and available for play, and those that are not will be available by 10:00 p.m. EDT / 7:00 p.m. PDT. Enjoy the evening!

Older updates will appear after the break.

Our own Elizabeth Harper has been hard at work gathering together all of the most frequently asked questions that we've received over the last few weeks regarding patch 3.1. Now that the realms are finally coming up, it's a good time to get these out to you all because many of you will probably be asking them soon, too!

Our FAQ is listed below, and if you ever want to find it again just bookmark this page. It will always be there, and should there be a need to update it at any point, we'll be sure to do so! Thanks for sticking with us today, ladies and gentlemen.