The Weinercast is go! This week: WoW Patch 3.08.
As always, the Weinercast is available on 
As promised, here come the links:
The Fallout 3 Inauguration and
The Patch Notes.
Please leave us a review or a comment/question, and we’ll address it on air next week!
Tim Schafer’s hotly-anticipated project with Jack Black will be published by EA in the fall of 2009. The game was floating around unsecured after being jettisoned in the Blactivizzion purge. If Brutal Legend is any kind of hit, Blactivizzion is going to feel the burn.
Blizz has announced that World of Warcraft players will be able to change their character design features – hair, skin, gender for $15 beginning soon. It’s key to note that the changes are ONLY design features – i.e. cosmetic stuff. No race or class changes allowed. Blizz considered race changes, but decided against it as the new enhanced racial abilities could conceivably turn into a race-a-day nightmare as players tried to swap out racials like gear. Kudos to Blizz for choosing game stability and cohesion over the choice to make even more money off hardcore swappers.
Players who log in today will earn the special Feat of Strength Achievement “WoW’s 4th Anniversary”. Those same players should check their mailboxes for a beary special gift from the Dev Team – the Baby Blizzard polar bear cub.
Here’s to 78 days, 0 hours, 27 minutes of fun, and hopefully more to come.
Wrath of the Lich King sold 2.8 Million copies in the first 24 hours of its release. My gnome is 77, Araan is 79, and rumor has it that there will be a major content patch right after the new year.
Hello, Weiner fans. Sorry to have dropped off the map yesterday, but it was the first full day of Wrath of the Lich King. Araan and I logged in an 12:01am and are level 72 and 71 now, respectively.
So far, WotLK is everything Blizz promised it would be. Zones are beautiful and expansive. Quests are fun and closely grouped to avoid the annoyance of crossing several zones for no apparent reason. 5-man instances take anywhere from 30-50 minutes with good XP and quest rewards.
Green is not the new purple, as it was in The Burning Crusade. As a high-end raider in BC, I have replaced just one piece of gear, my shoulders, which actually came from heroic Magister’s Terrace. The new shoulders are a quest reward in Coldarra, the site of the Nexus instance. From what I have seen and heard from other players, the goal here seems to replace 1-2 pieces of gear per zone until about level 75, when you can expect to have mostly Northrend gear. That’s a lot nicer than the “sticker shock” we all experienced in Outland.
Blue is the order of the day, both in gear and in art design. If BC was red, LK is Blue. Does this mean the next expansion will be the Emerald Dream? I think so.
I need to get back in game, though – some of my guildies are going to tear through Azjol-Nerub and I want in. And don’t fret – if you’re not playing already, you will.
The Weinercast is go! This week: The Future of DRM.
As always, the Weinercast is available on
Please leave us a review or a comment/question, and we’ll address it on air next week!
Curiouser and curiouser. More details keep leaking out in the wake of last week’s announcement. Today’s snippet comes from Joystiq, who reports that MTV Games won the Beatles video game licensing duel because they showed “more flexibility” than Guitar Hero publisher Activision Blizzard. By “flexibility”, they mean “willingness to not brand the game as ‘Rock Band’ or ‘Guitar Hero’. Apparently the Beatles are still worried about name recognition.
Yes, I tried Hellgate: London. It was fun for a few days, if repetitive. I hoped for so much more. So did Flagship Studios, which closed its doors permanently about four months ago. Today Cryptic studios, maker of Champions Online, announced that Flagship’s co-founder Bill Roper will be joining Cryptic as Design Director. Roper will focus on MMOs, which, given his pre-Hellgate pedigree as the former Director of Blizzard Entertaiment, seems to be an excellent fit.
From Araan:
First they came for the Paladins, and you said nothing, because you were not a Paladin…
The Nerf bat is coming, friends. Check out this recent Blizz blue post Q&A:
Q: Are we going to nerf Ret?
A: TO THE GROUND BABY. Okay, not really, but sometimes I can’t resist. We’ll see how much that quote comes back to haunt me. We will probably be making some changes soon, perhaps even hotfixes. We want to be very surgical about what we do. We don’t want to overdo it, and we don’t want to hurt their sustained PvE damage. When we’ve decided, I’ll make sure you all know. (Ghostcrawler)
“Surgical”, eh? Well, let’s look at the announced changes:
Paladin (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Skills
Holy
Seal of Wisdom now deal [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 1 ] holy damage when unleashed. (Down from [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 1 ] Holy damage)
Seal of Light now has a chance to heal for [ 15% of AP + 15% of Spell Power ]. (Down from [ 28% of AP + 28% of Spell Power ])
Seal of Light now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 1 ] (down from [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 1 ]) holy damage when unleashed.
Seal of Righteousness now grants each melee attack [ 2.2% of Melee Weapon Speed * AP + 4.4% of Melee Weapon Speed * Spell Power ] additional Holy damage. (Down from [ 2.8% of Melee Weapon Speed * AP + 5.5% of Melee Weapon Speed * Spell Power ])Protection
Seal of Justice now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 1 ] holy damage when unleashed. (Down from [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 1 ])Retribution
Judgement of Command Holy damage reduced from 56% to 45%.
Blessing of Might (Rank 8 ) and Greater Blessing of Might (Rank 3) now increase AP by 306. (Up from 305)
Seal of Corruption now deals [ 15% of AP + 8.8% of Spell Power ] additional holy damage over 15 seconds. (Down from [ 19.2% of AP + 9.6% of Spell Power ])
Seal of Corruption now deals [ 14% of AP + 22% of Spell Power + 1 ] Holy damage. (Down from [ 17.5% of AP + 28% of Spell Power + 1 ])
Seal of the Martyr now makes all your melee attacks deal [ 22% of mw ] to [ 22% of MW ]. (Down from [ 28% of mw ] to [ 28% of MW ])
Seal of the Martyr now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of mw ] to [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of MW ] Holy Damage when unleashed. (Old – [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of mw ] to [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of MW ] Holy damage)
Seal of Blood now makes all your melee attacks deal [ 22% of mw ] to [ 22% of MW ]. (Down from [ 28% of mw ] to [ 28% of MW ])
Seal of Blood now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of mw ] to [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of MW ] Holy Damage when unleashed. (Old – [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of mw ] to [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of MW ] Holy damage)
Seal of Vengeance now deals [ 15% of AP + 8.8% of Spell Power ] additional Holy damage over 15 sec. (Down from [ 19.2% of AP + 9.6% of Spell Power ])
Seal of Vengeance now deals [ 14% of AP + 22% of Spell Power + 1 ] Holy damage. (Down from [ 17.5% of AP + 28% of Spell Power + 1 ])
Judgement of Wisdom now restores 1% of the attacker’s maximum mana. (Down from 2%)
Judgement of Light now has a chance to heal the attacker for [ 10% of AP + 10% of Spell Power ]. (Down from [ 18% of AP + 18% of Spell Power ])
… So, does anyone think that those changes above are in any way “surgical”, or that they won’t affect PvE damage? And no one said nerfing Holy and Protection damage was part of the deal, either. Nerfing all seals affects Holy soloing and Protection tanking. A targeted seal nerf would have touched Command and Blood/Martyr only. Of course, it’s not a total nerf. You do get one extra point of attack power from Blessing of Might . . .
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Playing With My Weiner 