Episode 98 - Metamorphosis

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It’s a time for change and changes are a-coming. Along with announcing that we’re moving the live recording night to Saturday, this episode is a bittersweet one for us here at Twisted Nether. Our very own Nibuca is taking a break from WoW and feels that she can no longer co-host the show. However, Hydra from Almost Evil has been recruited by the Star League.. Oh wait.. She’s been recruited to take up Nibs Cohosting mantle and we know she is going to do an awesome job. Besides that, Hydra is our “guest” this week and we talk about, you guessed it, Cataclysm. There is a little other news and we’ve got a couple of emails and such. Changes can be difficult.

SPOILER ALERT! WE TALK ABOUT CATACLYSM!

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General News

The BlizzCon 2010 Fan Art, Original Song, and Movie contests have begun! To enter, simply submit your original Warcraft, StarCraft, or Diablo-themed work before September 27. We have over $25,000 worth of prizes to give away between these and our Dance and Costume contests on Friday night at BlizzCon, and winning entries will be showcased live at this year’s show.

Head over to the Fan Art, Original Song, and Movie contest pages to see the submission requirements, read the official rules, and check out the prizes. Information and online sign-ups for the BlizzCon 2010 Dance and Costume contests will be coming soon, so keep an eye on BlizzCon.com for details.

Cataclysm Collectors Edition Announced:

It will cost $79.99 when it’s released.
• The full Cataclysm expansion (obviously)
• A soundtrack with 10 “epic” songs
• A Deathwing mousepad
• A 60-card WoW trading card set
• Behind-the-scenes DVD with hour-long developer intervierw
• A 176-page art book
• An in-game pet: Lil Deathwing!
No release date has been set.

310% mount speed flying is 5,000 gold in cataclysm unless you already have a 310% mount. (link)

It is highly likely that we will be bumping up experience gains in Northrend to match the increase(s) we made in Outland when Northrend launched.

Glory of the Cataclysm Hero now rewards Reins of the Volcanic Stone Drake.
Glory of the Cataclysm Raider (WIP) now rewards Reins of the UKNOWN Storm Drake

Guild Achievements
Professions
Quests
Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms and Loremaster of Kalimdor no longer requires you to complete a given amount of quests anymore. You now have to complete the achievements for each zone to get the Loremaster title.
All the WoW classic zones now have their own quests achievement: Arathi Highlands Quests, Badlands Quests, Blasted Lands Quests, Burning Steppes Quests, etc … (Numbers are placeholders, obviously)

The Mounts & Companion Pets are now in the spellbook with a brand new interface.

Relics changes in Cataclysm
The “on paper” design of the Lich King relics sounds pretty cool: you have your choice of which of your spells or abilities you care about the most. Maybe a Resto druid takes the Rejuv idol over the Regrowth idol. In reality, what happens is that we make 3 druid idols per tier so the Resto druid is stuck with whatever idol we make. If we make the Rejuv idol, awesome. If we make the Lifebloom idol, probably less awesome (or at least much more situational). Of course we could just make the Rejuv idol every tier, but really that’s not much different than the stats. The procs are designed to mostly be always up, so it’s just clutter in the buff section of your UI.

With the new model, there is less risk of having the “bad luck” of having a bad relic for an entire tier for your spec. In fact, it should even offer a little more choice because you could choose the crit relic over the haste relic. Currently you don’t get a choice because we have to offer such specialized relics. The gem socket is to make them at least feel slightly different from the ranged items that can shoot

Cataclysm-level relics can be used by any paladin, shaman, druid or DK, though there may still be some class-specific ones from time to time.

We’re going to take the damage off of Silencing Shot. It’s supposed to be a situational utility ability, not something you macro into every shot.

“A private server company, Scapegaming (aka Alyson Reeves), was ordered to pay Blizzard Entertainment over $88 million in damages after losing a lawsuit that was concluded last week. Scapegaming was operating unauthorized World of Warcraft servers and using a micropayment system to collect money from the servers’ user base, which according to the lawsuit amounted to just over $3 million. $85 million of that settlement was for statutory damages, and surprisingly only $63,000 in attorney’s fees.”

(joystiq) We’ve been filling zerg-shaped balloons all year in preparation for Blizzard Entertainment’s 20th anniversary in 2011. Former EA.com editor-in-chief (and former EIC of Games for Windows magazine) Jeff Green, however, has been writing a book for the company. Announced via his personal blog this past weekend, Green says he’s been “contracted to write a book for Blizzard on their upcoming 20th Anniversary.”

Hot Topics from the Nether!

(via GoogleTutor) “How to publish a blogroll of your Google Reader RSS feeds” (link)

We’d like to welcome all of the new bloggers who introduced themselves on Blog Azeroth. This week we saw posts from:
– (WoW) Casualty of Warcraft
– (Casual play) A Shortage of Dwarves
– (WoW) Battle Priestess
– (Death Knights and Paladins) Strumwulf’s Page of Stories and Ideas
– (WoW as a couple) The MouseMatt
– (Cataclysm) Syrco Owl
– (Druids) Rank 4 Healing Touch

Shared Topic This Week

Each week on BlogAzeroth a new topic is posted for general blogging. We encourage our listeners to post about that topic on their own blog and then post a link to it in the forum.

What crazy stunts do you remember pulling in Vanilla (or early Burning Crusade), just for fun? Are you disappointed that there aren’t any achievements for killing old school bosses in an alternative way? Ryyus of I Gem Crit has just the Shared Topic for you!

Shared Topic: (link)

Strumwulf of Strumwulf’s Page of Stories and Ideas came up with the great idea of RPing a scene with your favorite mount.

My idea is that we roleplay a scene with a mount your character has. It can be anything from how you acquired the mount to its death.

Next week…

TNB is moving to Saturday.. but not next Saturday.. the next next Saturday. Find us on Saturday the 28th for Episode 99. See you then!

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

Addon Junkie Links

Seedyrom Video Tutorial on PowerAuras:  http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/educational/watch/v15571157gEYhEB6C

Aliena written tutorial on PowerAuras:  http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?58444-powerauras-tutorial

Matthew McCurley article on Wow.com on NeedToKnow:  http://www.wow.com/2010/04/29/addon-spotlight-needtoknow/

1 comment to Episode 98 – Metamorphosis

  • So glad there doing something better with the relics. I personally would like to see all procs removed from the talents and put on items like relics as talents should be an always happen skill.

    Yeeessss well done Blizz another fraudster caught and punished!