Archive for February, 2010

Here at WoW.com we’re on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we ought to follow? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow!

If you’re interested in PvP battlegrounds, you’re probably aware that patch 3.3.3 is turning the system on its head — completely removing Marks of Honor as well as increasing honor gains across the board. Have a bank full of the things? Well, we’ve got good news for you — at present on the PTR you can convert them to honor at the rate of 2000 honor per mark. Combine that with the recent explanation of Wintergrasp mechanics and what have you got? A lot of excitement about PvP battlegrounds. Here’s what’s making the rounds of the blogosphere.

• Cynwise thinks now’s the time to be running battlegrounds and collecting Marks of Honor.
• Holypaladin.net talks about Wintergrasp imbalance.
• Birdfall discusses seeing the opposite faction as people.
• Getting back to the basics, Spiceytuna explains resilience and gives talks frost mage PvP 101.
• Already a PvP expert? Over on the official forums More >

The Twitter BlizzChat has now been completed!

Q. What have you learned from this expansion’s emblem system? A. Having that many different kind of emblems is overwhelming. In hindsight, we wish we had done maybe 2 emblems: the current tier and the previous tier (Frost and Triumph at the moment). They also felt a tad too grindy when 3.3 first came out before all of the sources of emblems were available.

Q. Is there any ETA on tree / moonkin form graphical update? A. Moonkin is hard because Moonkin players are so in love with that form. It’s tough to change it at all. We currently hope to do a new tree form for Cataclysm, but no promises.

Q. Is the Valithria Dreamwalker encounter a deliberate move towards making WoW more “fun & interesting” for healers? Will we see more encounters like this? A. We want to make healing more fun, yes. Part of that is letting healers use their whole repetoire instead of just their best spells. Part of it is trying to get healers to look at the battlefield a little more and unit frames a little less, that of course means a little more time in between spamming heals More >

We addressed the implication that the Alliance might be retaking some lost lands in Cataclysm thanks to some mutterings by blues on the official forums. Now we’ve got confirmation from the latest Twitter dev chat that while Eastern Plaguelands will still be a hellhole, Western Plaguelands will be free of the plague when the expansion hits.

Twitter developer chat

Q. With the Lich King defeated, in Cataclysm, will the Plaguelands be green and beautiful again?

A. Western Plaguelands will finally be free of the plague in Cataclysm. It’s hard for the Scourge to survive without their beloved Lich King. I guess this means we need to rename the zone?

source

Just awesome. This is the kind of change I was hoping for in Cataclysm, to be honest — not just earthquakes and floods, but actual passage of time and logical storyline progression post-defeat of Lordaeron’s traitor prince. Wonder what this means for Scholomance or Andorhal!

But, also, what does it mean for the name? I guess Eastern Plaguelands will likely become just The Plaguelands, but what will WPL become? East Lordaeron? New Lordaeron? Or, given the zone’s proximity to the zone that’s basically Azeroth’s armpit, they could just go with the one that makes the most More >