Category: Warcraft

The Impending Release

Posted on by Gazimoff

There’s currently a lot of theorycrafting about the upcoming release of Cataclysm. Almost all commentators are agreed that it’s going to be out soon, but none of us quite agree on when exactly it’ll happen. Add to it the amount of work that still needs to be finished in the current beta, and you begin to wonder if it’ll be released this year at all.

The gauntlet has been thrown down by MMO-Champion, who are now predicting a November 2 release date. It’s a fair prediction as well: patch 4.0 has just hit the PTR servers, bringing with it the new spells and talent trees that are a core part of the Cataclysm changes. Never mind the new levelling content and dungeons – the PTR should give players an immediate feel for the mechanics of their class.

One of the pre-expansion events has also made it onto the live servers. Operation Gnomeregan and the Echo Isles quests are now active, being a clear mark that the expansion is approaching. It’s new content, but only of a sort – the events take only half an hour to complete, making them more of a light snack rather than a feast of new stuff for players.

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Inspiration for A World

Posted on by Gazimoff

I recently had the luck to visit Avebury for a weekend. It’s a fantastic place if you like to get away from it all – there’s no wi-fi, no mobile phone signal. The whole area feels like it’s some kind of Bermuda Triangle for modern data communications, which makes it perfect for those who crave a little peace.

While I was there I did a little exploring. There’s a stone circle that surrounds the town, a barrow den on a nearby hill and a large stretch of heath and farmland. It felt a lot like the Arathi Highlands, you could just imagine Forzuk lumbering around a raptor-filled countryside.

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Mementos and Keepsakes

Posted on by Gazimoff

I think that as much as I hate to admit it, I’m a creature of habit. Over the years I’ve managed to collect vast quantities of technical gubbins that I keep thinking will be useful “one day”. The gizmos that were once geek fashion items, but have since been consigned to the plastic crate of a gadget graveyard. And it’s not just smartphones that have lost their shiny sheen – all manner of clips, cables and converters are lying around just waiting for a chance to become useful again.

Separate from all this electrical junk are the things that help to mark parts of our lives. Things like my collection of collector’s editions. Things like the architectural schematic of a lighthouse that hangs on the wall, marking the place where my wife and I married. Things like the huge Lego kit that I bought with my first paycheck. Stuff that probably has little monetary value, but are still things that are very important to me.

It’s not just in the real world where I have my keepsakes or mementos. The BlogAzeroth Shared Topic this week was about these virtual items that take up space in the back of our bank vaults or the bottom of our bags. The stuff we can’t bear to part with, even though it’s no longer useful. I’m no exception, so let me show you the stuff that a mage carries around through the expansions.

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Getting the Guild Appeal

Posted on by Gazimoff


I don’t know if I’ve talked much about it, but a while back I was searching for a new raiding guild. I was lucky at the time – one guild came from a recommendation and responded to me making enquiries in trade chat, while the other was a guild that I had real-life friends in. For me, they were easy choices.

This might not be relevant any more – after all many raid guilds are in a holding pattern until Cataclysm comes out. Several are taking a summer break, while others have shut down completely. Others are struggling with membership, either having to recruit to keep raiding, or in just retaining their existing members. It’s summer, there are some fantastic new games out and the choice between the same grind and the big shiny is an easy choice to make.

One thing I have noticed is that there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of new raiders out there looking for a spot. But often I hear complaints about having to gear up new recruits, or help them learn the fights, or similar. And it becomes a chore, and guild progress fades, and you’re dealing with discontented raiders. And the last thing you want is for the thing you’ve built together to implode, but you can feel it on the horizon. I don’t think it has to be that way though, although I think as raid guilds we’re our own worst enemy sometimes. Let me explain.

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Cataclysm UI: Mage Auras

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’m a big fan of the Power Auras addon. Ever since I got to grips with it, it’s been a huge boon to my play, purely because it displays high priority information in an easy-to-digest manner. Since it arrived on the scene, it’s been a must-have for anyone looking to customise their UI.

It’s no surprise then that Blizzard have decided to incorporate a large chunk of the Power Auras capability into the Cataclysm beta. With last week’s build (number 12857) this capability has been switched on by default. But what do they look like for mages? Hopefully this handy video will explain all

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Mages Making Money

Posted on by Gazimoff

By most estimates, Cataclysm is two to four months away from release. With it, everything relating to crafting and professions changes again. Some materials will become junk for a time, while others will soar in value. People are also playing less, raiding less, crafting less. Demand seems to be down for materials everywhere. My gut feel is if I’m going to be making money in this expansion, this is the last chance I’ll get to do it.

As such, I’ve been taking a good hard look at my bank contents, my professions and my gathering skills and trying to work out just how to turn it into a healthy amount of gold. There are still a few things I’d like to pick up on my main (like the Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth), plus there are a couple of alts I’m planning to level that will need riding skills and so on. I’m trying to lay the groundwork now while there’s little to do so that I’m not having to scrimp and save when the expansion hits.

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Entering The Youtubes

Posted on by Gazimoff

Spoiler Warning: Video of new mage Cataclysm spells and Fire mage rotations. Filmed in Ironforge, so no location-based spoilers in this one. There’s more to come, so subscribe to the Youtube channel!

One thing I promised to do as part of my beta coverage was produce some videos of the mage changes in Cataclysm. They say that a picture tells a thousand words, and sometimes it’s more helpful to produce a video showing something than a blogpost describing something.

This is the first video, covering an intro to the new spells and effects and a quick look at rotations. I’m hoping to put subsequent videos together to go into further detail on particular aspects.

Apologies for the low quality. Although I’ve bought a copy of FRAPS, I’m going to have to wait a few weeks before I can get a copy of Sony Vegas. After that, things should definitely improve.

If there’s anything that you’d like to see in a video, feel free to ask and I’ll do what I can. No promises though!

Thanks for watching!

Will My Computer Run Cataclysm?

Posted on by Gazimoff

The most common question I get asked about Cataclysm is “will it run on my computer?” Not something about mages, not what the new zones are like. Not even how I’m finding it, or how much testing I’ve done. It seems the biggest worry I come across is if people have to buy a new machine so that they can play Blizzard’s latest expansion.

As a result, I’ve done some basic testing in order to be able to answer this simple question. Trouble is, it’s not an easy one to answer. There are so many variables to consider – do you raid, what graphics settings do you use, etc. The best I can hope to do is give you a relative idea of how my machine performs in the beta and provide you with enough information so that you can make your own comparisons.

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Beta Patch – The Pyromaniac’s Impact

Posted on by Gazimoff

Spoiler Alert: Discussion of Mage changes in patch 12759. In this article, I’ll also be focusing on Impact, Pyromaniac and AoE talents and how they’ll work together in a solo, dungeon and raid environment.

A whole slew of mage changes came out in the most recent patch. The main ones were around armour specialisations and talent masteries. Wearing our normal gear (complete cloth armour) nets a handy 5% increase in Intellect. For fire mages, Mastery now gives us a tasty bonus to the DoT component of our spells. Both the specialisation and mastery appear in our spellbook once we’ve learned them from the trainer.

The new teleport bar that I mentioned after the previous patch has now been fleshed out with all teleport spells. The only snag is that only the Dalaran and Shattrath spells work now, meaning that for most mages it’s now a two-hop trip to wherever we want to go. Even so, it’s still better than catching a boat everywhere.

Apparently there are new teleport and portal spells available to the new Tol Barad PVP zone, although I haven’t had a chance to test these yet. There are currently no teleports or portals to Vash’jir, Deepholm or Uldum, although there are static portals at Stormwind and Orgrimmar.

The other big change is that creature damage has been heavily ramped up from level 65 onwards. Level 82 outdoor creatures now do four times as much damage as they used to, which is horrendous news for cloth classes with little to no damage mitigation.

Currently, solo questing involves constant use of mana shield, counterspell and frost nova. And that’s for every single pull, just to stay alive. Going toe to toe with mobs in Deepholm is an excruciating experience – you have to work hard to take down a single mob. If you have anything add to the fight, you’re toast. Don’t forget that Polymorph won’t help you there as almost everything you fight is an elemental of some description.

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The Quest Converyer Belt

Posted on by Gazimoff

Spoiler Alert: Discussion of the phasing technology used in Cataclysm, it’s history, application and the problems surrounding it. Some allusion to in-game events/quests, although no specific details.

Back in Vanilla, Warcraft was mainly a scattering of quest hubs, each with their localised set of quests. Sure there may have been prerequisites such as a minimum level, but by and large you could quest where you liked. In Cataclysm the experience is streamlined into quest tunnels that guide you through a zone from one end to the other. To help with this, phasing is the toy of choice in the quest designer’s toolbox.

Phasing as a technology started out with a single quest in Burning Crusade. “Intercepting the Mana Cells” was added in patch 2.4.0 as part of the daily quests for the Shattered Sun Offensive. These quests were part of the overall Sunwell Plateau content update, adding the final dungeons and raid instances before the release of Wrath. In the quest, the player used a device to move “out of phase” and be able to interact with the items they needed to complete the quest.

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