New Sunwell details from Swedish mag Level

Acacia sent a tip that Swedish magazine Level has released their annual WoW issue, and there are some juicy tidbits in there about patch 2.4, which as you probably know will feature the last expected instance before the next expansion, the Sunwell. Jeff Kaplan did the deed in an interview, and let us know that:

Sunwell Isle will be off the north coast of Silvermoon.

Magister's Terrace will be the 5-man instance, and the Sunwell Plateau will be the 25-man raid, designed to close off the Burning Crusade storyline (although Kaplan admits there are a few more stories in progress in case they need to delay Wrath at all)

There will be quests outside the dungeons, too, and they will tell the story of Tempest Keep

And with those quests, there will be a new faction, called the "Shattered Sun Offensive."

Finally, the limit of daily quests will raise in 2.4, from 10 to a whopping 25 (which is all the quests in your log. Money money money!)

There are a few more good story notes, but those are spoilers, so we'll put them after the break. If you don't want to know what you'll find in the Sunwell, don't click the link below. But if you're fine with hearing about it ahead of time, feel free to hit the link and move on.

EBGames has fun with WotLK listing

Reader Kevin G (thanks!) sent along a tip about EBGames having some fun on their listing for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. As you can see (we've saved the listing for posterity above), the entry jokes about the listed 11/03/08 release date being unofficial, and determined by overpowered warlocks rolling 20 sided dice. The price, listed at $40, is also made up, and they say that if the price jumps by more than $1,000, they're all headed off to the Caribbean. Considering how many copies Burning Crusade sold this year, yeah, no kidding.

It's nice to see that EB is up for having a little fun with an unannounced release date. Good for them.

WoW logo gets completely frozen

If you haven't visited the forums or the official site in a while, you'll probably not have noticed that the ice we'd seen before on the logo has now overtaken it. Not too surprising-- the background on the forums and the homepage has changed as well, and considering that Winter's Veil is here, odds are that Blizzard is just getting a little seasonal with their graphics.

Or are they? The original ice showed up more than a month ago-- way back, according to our readers, when Wrath of the Lich King was announced in August. And so, despite the candy canes, it's hard not to wonder if this signals a turning point in the WoW universe. We've still got the Sunwell coming before the expansion, but is there a chance that this icy winter could be here to stay? Northrend ahoy?

Death Knight "interview" and lore on official site

The official Wrath page is slowly accreting information, which is good, because it started out pretty dang empty. The latest addition to it is an "interview" about the Death Knight class with the developers, along with a page on lore. I put "interview" in quotes because it doesn't feel like a real interview; it reads like an excuse for the devs to give the same information we already have. Which is fine and all, I just think "interview" is the wrong term for it. Here's a summary in my own words:

Why did you pick Death Knight for the new class?
They have a connection to Arthas and Northrend, and we needed more tanks. The playable DKs will be allied with the Horde or Alliance, fighting against Arthas.

What will adding another tanking class do to the group/raid game?
We want all tank classes to be equally good in general, so you can use any of them for a 5-man, but we want them to have distinct raiding roles. (They also took this opportunity to reiterate for the nth time that "hero class" doesn't mean it's more powerful than other classes, just more different.)

How is the DK different from other tanks?
No shield, powerful melee abilities, magic attacks. The devs are making sure they have the core tanking abilities of keeping aggro and mitigating damage, while still making the DK feel like its own thing.

Will we see some classic DK spells and abilities?
Yes, we're taking a lot from previous Warcraft material. One thing that will set them apart as a new class, but still tie them into WC3 DKs, is the rune system.

The lore page is less decipherable to me, since I don't actually know a lot of the background information of the Warcraft universe. It gives a relatively short overview of the evolution and status of Death Knights. Is it new information that "modern death knights consist mainly of paladins who lost their faith and pledged their souls to the Lich King in exchange for the promise of immortality?" If DKs come from paladins, why can we make them in non-Paladin races? So Blood Elves don't get even more popular, I guess.

Design your own death knight

It's way too soon, of course, to know exactly what powers and abilities the death knights will have; the developers themselves haven't entirely decided. Only they know exactly what stage of the design process they're in, but today let's pretend that we ourselves are the designers, and now we're in the brainstorming stage of what the death knights are going to be like, how they're going to play, and how they're going to be different from other classes. What abilities would you give them and how would you balance them against the classes already available in the game?

While brainstorming ideas, keep in mind that players want the death knights to feel fresh and interesting, so they'll be wanting unique abilities other classes don't already have. At the same time, you can't make the death knight class overpowered in relation to all those other classes -- they will want to keep having fun, too, after all. So every ability you give the death knights has to have its counter in something other classes can do, like rock-scissors-paper. If you're feeling particularly professional this morning, you can go into detail about all these balance issues, or else you can just write the idea you think would be cool.

A new class, why not a new race?

The DK is coming in WotLK, adding another class to the mix along with the concept of Hero Classes. In a forum post yesterday players voiced their desire to play new races in addition to having access to the Death Knight class. Looking at it logically, it only makes sense that since the first expansion brought us two new races we would see new classes in the next one. It's like a new-content see-saw. But some of us don't look at things logically, and I can totally understand this too. I mean, yes I want to play nymphs and Pandaren and Worgen. I would also like to have a viable MageTank set that gives me enough armor to stand up against Illidan. Oh, oh and infinite mana. And a pony. It simply isn't going to happen.

My concern is not that we aren't getting new races. I am worried that adding only one class will toss things out of whack. When TBC was announced, they let us know that the Horde would be able to play paladins, and so for balance they added shaman to the Alliance side. Balance is the key word here. When we have Death Knights added to the game, there will be only one Hero Class, albeit available to both factions. I get the feeling that this will throw off the balance more than they realize. Not so much because there will be another tanking class, but more because Blizzard cannot anticipate how players will actually play the character. Sure it's a tanking class, but if players start using it as a DPS class despite the best intentions of the devs, things could go badly.

Considering the magic-centric storylines in Northrend, I would feel more comfortable if they added the Archmage along with the Death Knight. Adding the Archmage would allow players to play a mage of any race, opening up a whole new world of role play possibilities. Or how about the Demon Hunter? With so much going on in Outland, couldn't we use an anti-Illidan to clean house, so-to-speak? What do you think? Is Blizzard making a mistake by adding only one class into the game?

Bringing the mohawk to Azeroth

Mr. T hacked the game and put in a Night Elf mohawk of his own, but will we be able to do the same with the next expansion? Could be-- Bornakk says that he hopes every class gets a mohawk to choose from when the new hairstyles come down in Wrath of the Lich King, but the actual model from the commercial was custom-made for Mr. T.

A mohawk might not be your first choice, but it will be nice to have some new customization choices out there-- I was showing off all of my alts to a friend the other day, and it occurred to me that I must have created an alt for almost every look out there. Not every combination of looks, surely (there's got to be tons of those), but at least every look that appealed to me. Just like many players, I'm definitely ready for new looks, whether they look like Mr. T or not-- if we've got the mohawk coming, does that mean we'll get a mullet for Blood Elves?

"Good" items in the land of the Lich King

Silrad has an interesting request for the next expansion: he would like some "good" looking items, please.

No, not necessarily "attractive" items-- rather, he wants some items that look like they could be wielded by someone fighting for right, for truth, and for justice. Since Blackwing Lair in vanilla WoW, most of the higher level items look scary-- they're black and spiky, with dark magics streaming around them. Not exactly the kind of thing that a true worshipper of the Light would want to be seen with. I get what Silrad's saying-- he's not a hardcore RPer, but he wants to look like a good guy, and it's tough to do that when your shield has skulls all over it.

Unfortunately, considering who we'll probably be going after in Northrend, odds are that we're in for more gothic, frosty death armor. But there is good news-- Blizzard has already said that even though we're headed into a place where they have something called the Frozen Throne, it's not going to be all ice and snow. There will be at least one Dwarven instance, and you know those Dwarves are interested in: your regular old shiny, gleaming, good-guy steel.

True, if you're playing a class called a "Death Knight," your armor can't really be pink and frilly-- it's got to have some skulls, black plating, and blue magic on it. But hopefully the artists on Wrath will find a few places to put some good old "knight in shining armor" armor out there for us.

Doomguard & Infernal getting buffed

Yesterday, a player posted on the official WoW forum asking about the current state of the Doomguard and Infernal Warlock pets. It's a hassle to learn how to summon these demons, requiring the completion of multiple quests for each, and summoning them requires reagents, including the death of one of your party members (for the Doomguard at least). With all these requirements, one would think the pets would be worthwhile, but their cost and unpredictability (they have to be continually enslaved, which is on diminishing returns and may break at any time) make them worse than the normal Warlock pets.

Eyonix answers the original poster, saying that the devs are concerned about these pets and will buff them sometime in the future. That "future" may be the next expansion, but this is a better answer than the class has received on the subject in a long time. To the best of my knowledge, previous answers were something along the line of "These spells may have situational uses and will not be changed from that role". Now there is once again hope that these cool and iconic (watch the original WoW cinematic, if you don't recall) Warlock pets will become more than simple novelties.

When I begin to consider the possibilities of changes to the Doomguard and Infernal, my mind boggles. There is such a large range of buffs that could occur, it is difficult to focus and speculate in one direction. At minimum, one would hope that these demons would see some inclusion in the Warlock Demonology talent tree, which currently benefits all their other pets. At most, we could be looking at the new ultimate raiding or PvP pets. What are your thoughts on this subject? Are there any gaps in the Warlocks arsenal that could be filled by changing these pets? How would you change them?
Tags: blue-post, buff, demon, demons, doomguard, expansion, infernal, lock, lock-pet, lock-pets, warlock, warlock-pet, warlock-pets, wotlk, wrath, wrath-of-the-lich-king

Blizzard wants feedback on your class

With Wrath of the Lich King looming on the (far) horizon, it turns out that Blizzard may actually care what you want in it! They've just opened feedback threads for every class on the official forums, asking players to list one or two sentences about their top three problem areas, and their top five problem talents/spells/abilities for their class, along with what talent trees you tend to invest in and what sort of content you play most (PvP, raid, solo, etc.). It's a highly structured format, and you're also instructed not to engage in discussion with other posters or put suggestions on how things should be improved. Just point out what you have a problem with.

The posts note that when they feel they have collected enough feedback, the threads will be closed, so make sure you get your opinion in before that happens. Here are the links for the various classes on the North American forums: Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior. And here are the European links: Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior. It's possible that all the players speaking their minds have brought down the forum servers, since I can't get them to load, but I'm sure they'll be back presently. And you may not be allowed to have discussion in the Blizzard threads, but feel free to use the comments on this post: what's wrong with your class? What do you think they should do to fix it?

New WotLK screens

A couple of days ago the European WoW site updated their Wrath of the Lich King page with a couple of new screenshots. If you're like me, any chance to devour new information about the expansion is welcome. You can see the first new shot at the top of this article and I've included the second below.

The first shot looks like a different angle of an area we've seen in previous pictures. There doesn't seem to be a lot we can glean from this photo, but you can see a Forsaken town in the far distance. If I had to guess from the terrain, I'd wager that we're looking at one of the starter zones, the Howling Fjord. What do you think? See anything I'm missing?

The second shot contains some unknown architecture. While it looks similar to the top of Utgarde Keep, it is different enough to still warrant speculation. What do you think we're looking at here?

Potential traffic jams in WotLK

Adding up all the traffic jams in World of Warcraft would probably make an insightful list-- I can remember some crazy days in Ironforge, a huge mess near the battlegrounds when they first opened, a lot of clustering during the AQ World Event, and anyone who logged on in the early days of Burning Crusade knows that Hellfire Peninsula was a laggy mess as well.

But Blizzard claims, once again, that they've finally learned their lesson, and in Wrath of the Lich King, things will be different. Shattrath will be designed to stay up in the air (even if landed on by thousands of players), and when we played the expansion at BlizzCon earlier this year, we already saw one way Blizzard plans to split the load: Horde and Alliance players are starting at different zones on different sides of the continent.

I doubt things will be perfect-- it seems like players always think of some way to ruin even the best laid plans of Blues and men. But we can say this about Blizzard-- they are visibly learning from every iteration they release. It'll be really interesting to see what they've come up with to improve upon the expansion experience in Northrend.