Replenishment Change For Arenas
Quote from: Zarhym (Source)We are making a hotfix (any minute now probably) so that Replenishment in arenas will only affect the character and not the whole team. It will continue to function as it does currently outside of arenas.

We feel Replenishment is balanced for larger groups, but just makes too much of a difference on smaller arena teams. Making the rules work differently in PvP and PvE isn’t a solution we like to use often, but in this case we think it fixes the issue cleanly, while still making the talents in question useful to the character who takes them. Alternatives, such as nerfing the amount returned by Replenishment in arena or making it not function at all, seem like more punitive choices from which we want to stay away.
Recent In-Game Fixes - 04/23
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. Keep in mind that some of these changes may not be active until after the realm has been restarted.

[Expand 3 Paragraphs]

Scattered Shots is your weekly guide to improving your Hunter skills, brought to you by Jessica "Lassirra" Klein of The Hunter's Mark, covering a variety of Huntery topics. Today, we'll be taking a look at the new ranged weapons available from Ulduar.

With new raid instances comes new gear to covet, and Ulduar is no different. Normal and Heroic modes both have new guns and bows available to help give your shots that much more oomph, and today I'd like to take a closer look at these weapons to help you compare potential upgrades. Before we dive right into the new stuff, let's do a quick recap of the older ranged weapons so we'll have a point of reference to start from.

[Expand 5 Paragraphs]

Blizzard has announced the final results of the qualifier rounds on the US Arena Tournament realms, and there they are -- you can see that Death Knights are probably the most dominant class in the lineup. Their teamup with a Paladin and a ranged DPS (specifically a Warlock, though there is a Hunter in there) is pretty devastating so far. Shaman have made a nice comeback as well, serving both as utility and healing on a few teams. And of course the old Arena standby of PMR finishes out the top ten.

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW Insider's series of fantasy death matches. This season's bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.

On the heels of a Zuramat the Obliterator (Violet Hold) victory this week over Hadronox of Azjol-Nerub, we bring you this week's fantasy deathmatch: the Maiden of Grief from Halls of Stone versus Prince Taldaram of Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom. Can you predict the outcome?

[Expand 3 Paragraphs]

Mania's got info on a few Hunter pet-related hotfixes that have found their way into the game recently. There's nothing really earthshaking in there, but there are at least two points of interest: because players can no longer flick the "at war" switch on for the Sunreavers with the Horde in Dalaran, that means Hordies can't pick a fight just to tame the Sunreaver Dragonhawks, which unfortunately were the only "already 80" Cunning pets in the game.

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

The Runic Mana and Runic Health Injectors are staples of effective bag and inventory management. These items allow for the high-level regeneration potions that normally only stack in fives to stack in twenties. More importantly, and for our profitable purposes, they allow us to vastly overcharge for Runic Mana and Runic Healing potions. On every test server, since the injectors became available with the launch of WotLK, they are one of the few items that consistently sells for more than the cost of the required crafting reagents.

The reagents required to craft an injector are 20 of the relevant potion and 1 mana or health injector kit. Engineers craft both injector kits but unlike many engineering items, they do not require the profession to use. They are very cheap to make, requiring only 12 Saronite Bars and an additional either 2 Crystallized Water for the mana version or 2 Handful of Cobalt Bolts (approximately 2 Cobalt Bars) for the health version.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

Hard Mode Kills - Freya and Thorim

I really need a picture of Ragnaros yelling "TOO SOON!" at Algalon or something, with the way things are going.  Anyway, here are a few Hard Mode progress updates!  Method was able to take down the new Freya, and both Ensidia and For the Horde took out Thorim's latest iteration.  No new loot was discovered this time, sadly.  An interesting note; Method now only needs Mimiron's sigil to unlock access to 25-player Algalon the Observer!

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

Haven't gotten a chance to raid this week on the shaman, we've been pushing 25 man content pretty hard. Did manage to put 10 man Freya down (not on hard mode, holy heck that's going to be insane) which killed me when I didn't stand under a mushroom and was quite confused about being unable to cast spells while the raid leader yelled on vent about standing under the shrooms. Still, we got it done despite my total noobishness. As a healer, I've so far noticed that I somehow enjoy Kologarn for some reason. Something about the death rays and his screaming "OBLIVION!" all the time amuses me.

Ulduar has quite a few weapon drops to consider for us shamans, especially as more and more gear is being discovered every week. So let's take a look, starting in 10 man and then moving up to 25 man, at the various staves, fist weapons, maces, daggers and axes of Ulduar. We'll probably end up having to come back to cover more, as I mentioned they're constantly discovering new gear in this raid.

[Expand 5 Paragraphs]

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

I was going to follow up Adam's cute cat picture with a picture of my own pets, but since my landlord doesn't let me have any, I figure you're not interested in pictures of my roomba. It's quite cute in person, but unfortunately it comes across as a bit lifeless in pictures. It's a bit camera shy.

jet242 asked...

[Expand 1 Paragraphs]

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW Insider's series of fantasy death matches. This season's bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.

Zuramat the Obliterator sent Hadronox and his poison to the void this week in this week's Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves fantasy matchup. Despite the choking clouds of poison Hadronox laid down for Zuramat's Void Sentries, Zuramat overpowered the giant spider in a tightly contested battle.

[Expand 2 Paragraphs]

A good note from the EU side of things today. There will be a minor bug patch to the client side of the game in the next few days. This patch will bring the game up to version 3.1.1a.

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

Another day, another round of fixes...

This daily list doesn't really seem to be getting any smaller. While some might call this patch "extremely buggy" or "unbalanced," I think the reason we're seeing all these small notes about the encounters is that Blizzard is being more transparent with their in-game updates. Three years ago there was not nearly as much public scrutiny on the launch of AQ40 as there is on the launch of Ulduar.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

digg_url = 'http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/04/23/wow-insider-exclusive-popcap-releases-peggle-for-wow/'; Yes, when PopCap released their Bejeweled addon a while back, the first question on everyone's minds was: when are we getting Peggle? And here you go: as of this morning, you can download the brand new Peggle for WoW addon from PopCap's site (we're told the download should be up soon).

WoW Insider got a chance to play with the addon from its early beta on, and it's extremely impressive -- not only will you find the usual addictive peg-hitting gameplay that we've come to know from Peggle, but PopCap and creator Michael Fromwiller (whom we interviewed about Bejeweled, and who we're told is actually being hired on full-time at PopCap as soon as he finishes school this spring) have really added a new level to the game by tying it right into World of Warcraft. The game rewards you with "Talent points" that can change the gameplay itself, and you can challenge other players within World of Warcraft to duels and score battles. There's even a "Peggle loot" setting, which, when used as Master Looter, will let your guildies and friends with the addon actually take Peggle shots against each other to determine who gets loot drops.

[Expand 1 Paragraphs]

And now, for something completely different, check out Yumfries's Sisqo + WoW = The Gnome song. I was tipped off to this video by Selserene, and I'm really quite glad for it. This video is a lot of fun, and it has more than a few "laugh out loud" moments.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

No one's kiling any folk here today, on account of we got a really tight schedule. -- Mal, "Trash."

Seemed to have some good luck with a previous Firefly quote, so why not? We're all set in Ahn'kahet, so let's pop over to Azjol-Nerub and lay waste to some bosses there.

[Expand 10 Paragraphs]

Dear Blizzard: Give me all of your gold and Ghostcrawler will be returned unharmed. If my demands are not met, I will be forced to put my cooking skills to use and prepare a wonderful crab meal for the rest of my guild. Please make checks payable to: Phaye, c/o Disdain, 1834 Riptide Avenue, Orgrimmar, Kalimdor, 01754. You have 48 hours to respond.

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

Everyone has a list of WoW loot they must own. For some it's Frostmourne. For others it's the prestige of having all of the Limited Editions and in-game pets. Well, WoW packrats, pay attention! BlizzPlanet is reporting that the Peninsula Education Foundation is auctioning off $3,500 worth of precious Blizzard loot.

The auction is being held online between 17th-27th April and all proceeds are going to the Peninsula Education Foundation in order to support all schools in the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District. There are lots of different items on auction but Blizzard fans will be wanting to pay special attention to the World of Warcraft basket which has a starting bid of $1,100 and includes:

• World of Warcraft: Collector's Edition (autographed by the development team)
• World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Collector's Edition (autographed by the development team)
• World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Collector's Edition (autographed by the development team)
• Spectral Tiger Mount Loot Card (Upper Deck)
• World of Warcraft - one year free gift card
• Limited Edition Arthas Helm (Sideshow Collectibles)
• Limited Edition Cinematic Art of WotLK book
• The Music of Blizzard (Echoes of War), deluxe Eminence CD set
• 2008 BlizzCon exclusive World of Warcraft Hardback comic collection
• Deluxe edition, World of Warcraft miniatures Game, Core Set
• Talking Murloc Plush Toy
• Vindicator Maraad Deluxe collectors action figure


[View Remaining 1 Lists]

A bunch of blogs have come up with this interesting discussion lately, with Saresa over at Twisted Nether collating all the posts on the topic. It's a pretty good question and some World of Warcraft bloggers have taken it upon themselves to answer the question -- we've got someone who wants to be a Mage; another who thinks he'd be a Warlock; while this lady believes she fits Paladins best; and finally one lady who actually wants to be a bear. We thought this was a clever idea and decided to share it with you for this morning. It might kick off a post for your own blogs, as well.

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

Minor Bug Fix Patch 3.1.1a
Quote from: Aratil (Source)In the next few days we’ll be releasing a minor bug fix patch to version 3.1.1. This sort of patch is very small in size, and we use them to fix specific issues that can’t be hot-fixed. Most patches require a lengthy testing procedure before release, but because this change is focused solely on a client tooltip, its testing process can be accelerated to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

In 3.1.1, the paladin ability Exorcism cannot damage other players, but the player game client does not display this change properly. Patch 3.1.1a will fix the tooltip to display the appropriate text; it also displays an error message when a player tries to use it against other players.

[Expand 2 Paragraphs]

Another round of rolling restarts will be hitting realms in a few hours, starting at 5 AM PDT. Rolling restarts tend to be relatively painless, so you can probably expect your home server to be back up within a few short minutes unless they're doing something other than the simple restarts.

[View Remaining 1 Paragraphs]

Project Marmot: Auriaya Video Guide

The fine folks over at TankSpot -- headed up by Ciderhelm -- have begun to publish their video guides for the bosses in Ulduar.  Below is the Auriaya guide, but they've released quite a few so far with the rest currently in the works.  Head over to TankSpot to check them out!

Auriaya Video Guide @ TankSpot

Blue Tracker Updates

A few minor updates to the Blue Tracker.

• The "quote" areas have had their corners rounded off.  It's a subtle aesthetic change, but I personally think it looks less blocky and more pleasing.
• The Blue Tracker now updates every 2 minutes, rather than the old time of 6 minutes.  This should ensure more timely tracking of blue posts.

There are a few things in the works for the Blue Tracker that are of far greater scope than minor updates; I should have more details on those soon.

Minor Bug Fix Patch 3.1.1a

Quote from: Aratil (Source)

In the next few days we’ll be releasing a minor bug fix patch to version 3.1.1. This sort of patch is very small in size, and we use them to fix specific issues that can’t be hot-fixed. Most patches require a lengthy testing procedure before release, but because this change is focused solely on a client tooltip, its testing process can be accelerated to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

In 3.1.1, the paladin ability Exorcism cannot damage other players, but the player game client does not display this change properly. Patch 3.1.1a will fix the tooltip to display the appropriate text; it also displays an error message when a player tries to use it against other players.

[Expand 3 Paragraphs]