World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

The Call of the Crusade, aka Patch 3.2

The patch of all patches is slowly making its way to the live servers. The size of this patch in both megabytes and content is staggering. There is not a facet of the game being left untouched. Old world Azeroth will see many more mounts for lower level characters and more Zeppelins and portals. PvP has a whole new zone (Battleground) and PvE gets all kinds of modifications.  Professions have something to look forward to (Engineering especially), and some things will be going away (Ulduar Proto-Drake).

The volume of changes is fairly large, but looking at some bite-sized chunks, we’ll attempt to review the highlights.

First of all, let’s review the cool new content:

New Raid Instance – Argent Coliseum

Keeping with the “Get in, get some loot and get out” methodology, Blizzard is recreating another Ring of Blood style encounter with all kinds of different difficulty flavors. There will be the 10 Man Normal and Heroic, as well as the 25 Man Normal and Heroic to satisfy all your raid size needs. The coliseum offers multiple ways for players to gather gear and introduces another “Tribute” run where player parties gather better loot the less they die.

New 5 Man Dungeon – Trial of the Champion

Trial of the Champion will pit heroes of each faction against the players. The Horde and Alliance will face different bosses in the encounters which is definitely a new twist.

New Boss – Koralon the Flame Watcher

In addition to the new instance, there is a new boss in Vault of Archavon – Koralon the Flame Watcher. Will Koralon be the next rung up on the difficulty ladder like Algalon or will they scale it back a bit? Did you hear about the next boss for VoA? I think it’s going to be Calgon the Relaxation Watcher.

New Battleground – Isle of Conquest

A new 40 Man battleground is heading our way with more of what we’ve seen in the latest incarnations of PvP territories.  Siege vehicles, nodes to capture, keeps to defend, it’s all in there.

New Dailies – Argent Tournament

Two new quest hubs and more dailies are going to be available as the Argent Circus increases the size of the carnival. Showing just how much fun we can have in Arthas’ backyard, players will play and quest for new mounts and new heirlooms among many other rewards.

New Holiday – Pilgrim’s Bounty

While this content may or may not launch exactly with the patch, it is new content. Now say this in your best John Wayne voice “Well don’t fret about that pilgrim.” (Watch “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” or at least look it up.) The new holiday is obviously a play on Thanksgiving and provides yet another set of achievements, recipes, cosmetic trinkets and all the things we’ve grown (or is that groan) to love with holiday events.

In addition to the new content, much of the established content is receiving a face lift, a nip and tuck, or a flat out whack. The major modifications include the following:

Class changes

There are so many class changes already announced that this article can’t do them justice. Lucky for us, some of our writers have been able to tackle the preliminary test realm changes. You can read up on the Druid, Death Knight, Hunter, Paladin, Mages and Warlock. Some of the class changes haven’t been announced, so keep watching for updates.

PvP – Wintergrasp

New for Patch 3.2, Wintergrasp will be receiving a cap on the number of participants. Players may queue up for the battle 15 minutes prior to the start, and the “instance” of Wintergrasp will allow the first 100 participants for each side into the battle. Will capping the battle at 200 players work out? Hopefully extensive testing can be completed on this prior to it going live.

Raids – Loot Distribution

Loot in raids will now be transferrable as “Item will bind soon”  and can be traded to any party/raid member eligible to loot that item. This is quite a feat as the number of “oops” from the master looter won’t require a ticket to a GM.

Profession changes

Engineers seem to be getting the lion’s share of the profession boost, but many professions are seeing beneficial changes. In addition to improving current engineer gadgets (Mana/Health Injectors will provide a 25% buff), the overall usefulness of being an engineer is getting better. Mote tracking will work better, MOLL-E is getting a shorter cooldown, and these are just the first round of changes.

A welcome change to Alchemy that helps us all is that Potions will stack up to 20 per slot. Fishing and Cooking professions are also getting more recipes and rewards, many centering on the new holiday, The Pilgrim’s Bounty.

New Emblems –Consolidation of Old Emblems

Emblems of Heroism and Valor are officially on the endangered species list as they will become extinct when the Patch goes live. All instances that drop these two emblems in the current live game will start dropping Emblems of Conquest. Emblems of Conquest become generic and can be traded for Emblems of Heroism or Valor. The latest and greatest raid will offer up Emblems of Triumph. The forums are a buzz with discussions about players getting tier 8 gear without ever setting foot in a raid, but we’ll address that later, if we need to.

 

The changes to mounts are both welcome and a long time in the making. Who hasn’t wanted a mount at level 20? The Barrens may not be the worst zone to adventure in at higher speeds. On top of mounts being available sooner, the flying mounts will be available to level 60 players, meaning that the Outlands will be a lot easier (and faster, the standard flying mount will be a 150% speed increase – it is currently 60%).

Achievements

Children’s Week will have a whole new set of achievements and quests to be completed in Northrend. Much of the new achievements will revolve around the Argent Crusade as well as the raids.

Classic/Retro Raiding

Experience points will become voluntary, not compulsory if the latest patch goes live. Players will have the option to turn off the experience gains for their characters which provides twinks a benefit as well as those role players who want to truly role play at a certain level.

UI Changes

Boy howdy, we’re looking at some decent changes.  Casting bars of a target will show whether or not the spell is interruptible at their portrait. Hopefully this will cut down on the misfires only to find that a boss can’t be interrupted.

All items will now show vendor prices, another way that Blizzard is cutting out some addon developer’s mod.

Last but not least, totems will no longer be targetable by name so those Shaman brave enough to enter PvP areas can rely on them for a least a second or two longer.

 

The Only Thing Constant is Change

Patch Notes always need to be taken with a grain of salt, so don’t get too attached or disappointed if the news changes. These latest changes seem to be fairly stable though, so expect most of them to arrive in some fashion or another. Watch Ten Ton Hammer for ongoing coverage of Patch 3.2, The Call of the Crusade.