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Patch Notes Oct 11, 04Follow

#1 Oct 11 2004 at 3:12 PM Rating: Decent
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http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/patch10-11-04.shtml


Durability
Item durability is now in the game. Item durability is an important aspect of World of Warcraft that will work to stabilize the economy, decrease inflation specifically in the high end game, and in general keep prices of player sold items lower than normally would occur without such a feature. Durability should also add additional depth to the game since players will have more variety in their items and more abilities will be added over time to interact with durability. Item durability is different from item decay in that players will never lose items through item durability.
Durability key points

All armor and weapons have durability, but not trinkets, cloaks, shirts, guild tabards, necklaces and rings.

Items remain at full effectiveness until they have no durability. Their power does not degrade.

Items cannot permanently break.

All armor/weapon vendors can repair durability in exchange for cash.

When an item reaches zero durability, it no longer gives the player any benefit; it acts as though it does not exist until repaired.

Professions cannot repair durability, but we will discuss ways for the professions to interact with them in the future.


Raid Groups
Raid groups will no longer receive quest bounties and collections. In the future, we plan to have raid-specific quests that will be possible to complete in raid groups.

General

If you log out while in flight, you will continue flying when you log back in.

All enemy targeted spells should now require the target to be in front of the caster.

Starting characters will now have hearthstones automatically located in their inventory.

Swimming has been tweaked. To dive, you have to tilt your direction downwards a certain amount with the right mouse button.

Spirit no longer affects item proc percentage. Item proc percentages are now independent of stat attributes.

The camera will now stay above or below water depending on which side you are on.

Your camera view angle and distance are now saved when you exit the game.

You won't accidentally skip gossip text if you double-click the NPC responses.

You should no longer be able to breath at the bottom of lakes and ponds.

Pets swim underwater now, although not all pets have swimming animations.

Pets no longer use combat abilities while in passive mode.

Your corpse shows up underwater after you release, however it decomposes when you revive.

Starting NPCs show their horde or alliance crest.

Locked boxes show the word "Locked" in the appropriate color for their difficulty.

Scarlet Sentinels will use their Overpower ability in combat.

Looting range is now the same as melee range.

PVP

Goblin guards will attack players who are fighting each other and not dueling - it's bad for business.

Goblin guards no longer flag you for PvP and they may not be healed or buffed.

When you finish a duel, debuffs applied during the duel will be removed.

Resurrecting a PvP-enabled player corpse will flag you for PvP.

Area effect spells and totems now work correctly in duels.

Town guards will no longer follow dueling players.

Zones

Scholomance, a level 57-60 instanced dungeon in Western Plaguelands is now open.

Ashenvale has gotten a facelift to include more points of interest, and significant changes were made to make it easier to navigate.

Ragefire Chasm, a low level instance dungeon in Orgrimmar, is now available.

Deadmines: The Miners in the Deadmines are no longer elite monsters.

Blackfathom Deeps has been moved to the Zoram Strand in Ashenvale forest near the border of Darkshore.

More quests have been added for Eastern and Western Plaguelands.


Professions

Runecloth added to the world as the high end cloth.

Tailoring now complete with recipes up to skill 300 available.

The herbs needed to support high end alchemy have been added to the world.

Rich Thorium Nodes will now drop Arcanite.


Talents

All warlock talents are now available.

Many talents for all classes have changed location in their tree or had their effects modified.


Druid

Travel Form is now only useable outdoors.

Cower, Growl and Challenging Roar are now useable against targets that are immune to physical attacks.

New Spell: Hibernate (Level 18).

Shapeshifting now breaks roots, snares, and freeze effects.

All Shapeshift forms now include an immunity to polymorph effects.

Bear Form - HP gain increased.

Dire Bear Form - HP gain increased.


Hunter

Cower, Growl and Disengage are now useable against targets that are immune to physical attacks.


Mage

Polymorph no longer affects Dragonkin or Giants.

Blink now counters stun effects. Cooldown timer has decreased, and mana cost now scales with level.


Paladin

Resurrection and Redemption range has been reduced.

New Spell: Seal of Freedom (Level 20)


Priest

Holy Smite renamed to Smite.

Holy Word: Fortitude renamed Power Word: Fortitude.

Holy Word: Shield renamed Power Word: Shield.

Resurrection and Combat Resurrection range reduced.


Rogue

Kidney Shot is now subject to diminishing returns.

Vanish now breaks root and snare effects.


Shaman

Stoneclaw Totem is now useable against targets that are immune to nature attacks.

Rebirth range reduced.

Ghost Wolf is now only useable outdoors.

Earthbind Totem movement slow effect has been reduced.


Warlock

Soothing Kiss, Suffering and Torment are now useable against targets that are immune to shadow attacks.

Seduction now only works against Humanoids. Banish now works against Demons and lementals only. Cooldown timer and reagent removed, duration increased, replacement added. Curse of Agony - Now deals its damage in three stages, damage increased, mana cost slightly increased.

Enslave Demon - Soul Shard cost removed, duration reduced.

Life Tap no longer interrupts mana regeneration.

Sacrifice now grants the Warlock damage absorption, rather than full immunity. Duration has been increased.

Soulstones have been changed to now resurrect the soulstone holder automatically 5 seconds after death.


Warrior

Taunt and Challenging Shout are now useable against targets that are immune to physical attacks.

Hamstring - Movement slow effect reduced.

New Spell: Berserker Rage (Level 30)


Mac:

The Mac OS X client has all shader-based features disabled for this patch. The GUI for those preferences will be grayed out. A number of GPU driver issues are being addressed by Apple, ATI and NVIDIA - when these fixes have been completed and made available to the public we will re-enable these features in the game.


Bug Fixes:


You should no longer drown in the air while in certain caverns.

Firegut Brute will use his Torch abililty.

Fishing catches fish again, provides skillups, and doesn't leave bobbers around.

Yorus Barleybrew no longer cheers for himself when you complete The Rethban Gauntlet.

Colonel Kurzen won't engage you in melee combat at a distance after using a smoke bomb.

You can access your user interface again while in flight.
#2 Oct 11 2004 at 3:53 PM Rating: Decent
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1,073 posts
And now, let the commentary begin...

"Durability"
After re-reading this several times, the main point seems to be this: If you don't want to be totally hosed, you will need TWO of every armor and weapon you carry. The last thing you want is to be halfway through an instance and have your breastplate break... Since you can't permanently lose things, it pretty much means re-farming instances or reforging crafted items.
What it MIGHT do is increase the value of crafted items, depending on how much time/effort is required to produce crafted items relative to drops. Even if there's a quality difference between the sword drop you really like and the crafted sword your buddy forged, if you only need the crafted sword as a back-up...

"Raid Groups
"Raid groups will no longer receive quest bounties and collections. In the future, we plan to have raid-specific quests that will be possible to complete in raid groups."

Just like they said they'd do. They're trying to stop people from zerg-ing non-raid content. Sad for the moment, though, because it means less testing of the raid system.

"All enemy targeted spells should now require the target to be in front of the caster."

Well, that stifles about twenty irate posters with class-envy in the Blizzard forums...

"Spirit no longer affects item proc percentage. Item proc percentages are now independent of stat attributes."

Unfortunate. But, since they were moving to time-based procs anyway, I guess the math was getting too hard. I dunno, it saddens my shaman because he always had considerable spirit gear.

"Goblin guards will attack players who are fighting each other and not dueling - it's bad for business."

A stop-gap measure to stem the tides of blood in Booty Bay, methinks. It might even work.

"Ragefire Chasm, a low level instance dungeon in Orgrimmar, is now available."

Very interesting! So the Horde has an instance now before level 20? As I said, interesting. I never played on the Alliance side, but what's the level for the first Alliance instance?

"Runecloth added to the world as the high end cloth.
"Tailoring now complete with recipes up to skill 300 available.
"The herbs needed to support high end alchemy have been added to the world.
"Rich Thorium Nodes will now drop Arcanite.
"All warlock talents are now available."

A LOT of people will now be very happy.

"Travel Form is now only useable outdoors." [Note: same change made to Ghost Wolf.]

Ironic. Being able to use it indoors was something Katricia used to insist made travel form good. I just don't see it being a big deal.

"Shapeshifting now breaks roots, snares, and freeze effects.
"All Shapeshift forms now include an immunity to polymorph effects.
"Bear Form - HP gain increased.
"Dire Bear Form - HP gain increased."

Blizzard continues to push Druids to shapeshift, even if they don't want to. At least Mr. FunHooves will be happy. [Note: he's a high-level druid and the biggest advocate of heavy in-battle shapeshifting.] I'm also glad they did this by means of bonuses rather than nerfs. It appears Blizzard was listening to a degree, given the increased HP of Bears. However, I also seem to remember the main complaint was bears not having enough armor. I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

"Mage
"Polymorph no longer affects Dragonkin or Giants.
"Blink now counters stun effects. Cooldown timer has decreased, and mana cost now scales with level."

Polymorph sees its glory days dwindle... however, I like those changes to Blink. Makes it a sort of a "get me the heck away from this Rogue" type spell.

"Holy Word: Fortitude renamed Power Word: Fortitude.
"Holy Word: Shield renamed Power Word: Shield."

It only makes sense, because those are technically "Discipline" spells. Still, I can just hear the whining from the priests... "A new patch and all we get is a stupid name change?"

"Seduction now only works against Humanoids."
I didn't know it worked against non-humanoids before... thank you, Blizzard, for giving me way too many bad, bad mental images.

"Sacrifice now grants the Warlock damage absorption, rather than full immunity. Duration has been increased."

Well, they had to do SOMETHING about the Sacrifice/Hellfire tactic. I thought for sure that they'd make it so Sacrifice lets through Hellfire's self-damage, but I suppose this works.

"Fishing catches fish again, provides skillups, and doesn't leave bobbers around."
See above comments about lots of people being happy.

And the game marches on towards completion... Remember how Ordinn said there would be "Patches" before Open Beta? This is a patch. The next will make two patches. Draw your own conclusions.
#3 Oct 11 2004 at 3:53 PM Rating: Decent
Yep, I got back home at around 4:30, read the entire thing, and was just about to make the same thread...

Eh, anyways, what do you guys think about the patch - I like the durability issue. Takes money out of the economy.

Also, I like how they made it so when fishing bobbers don't stay around - I reported that bug to them ^^.

So... What's everyone elses' opinions? o.O


To Chahdrash: If you've ever played a game with durability on items, you'll notice that the durability does not break in 5 minutes, it takes 10-30 minutes just for 1 point in the durability to break, in which most armors/ weapons will most likely have 30-50 durability. Lower rated items (grey) will have less durability. Point being - you won't have to carry a bunch of bulk around so you don't lose your armor in the middle of a cave.

Edited, Mon Oct 11 16:55:35 2004 by Creamed
#4 Oct 11 2004 at 6:08 PM Rating: Decent
Yet another warrior nerf....
#5 Oct 11 2004 at 6:50 PM Rating: Decent
I don't really get this. They did a lot of things that didn't really need to be done right away like durability and didn't bother to finish putting in talents for the hunter and paladin so there will be two unfinished classes when open beta starts and possible when the game comes out.
#6 Oct 11 2004 at 7:08 PM Rating: Decent
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1,073 posts
"I don't really get this. They did a lot of things that didn't really need to be done right away like durability and didn't bother to finish putting in talents for the hunter and paladin so there will be two unfinished classes when open beta starts and possible when the game comes out."

So let's PANIC!!!!!

Seriously, there's still at least one more patch before Open Beta begins. Still more than a month before release, and that's assuming mid-November (which is possible but not likely). Relax. Even if they release open beta before Paladin and Hunter talents, who dies? It's still BETA.

I don't think you quite understand how some of these things work. It's not as if the same group of people is attacking tasks one at a time, with the whole group concentrating their efforts on individual jobs before moving on. Actually they have multiple teams of people with distinct areas of responsibility. I doubt, for example, that the people who programmed the durability code have anything to do with talents.

It's unfinished. We know. It's also Beta. Chill.

"To Chahdrash: If you've ever played a game with durability on items, you'll notice that the durability does not break in 5 minutes, it takes 10-30 minutes just for 1 point in the durability to break, in which most armors/ weapons will most likely have 30-50 durability. Lower rated items (grey) will have less durability. Point being - you won't have to carry a bunch of bulk around so you don't lose your armor in the middle of a cave."

All of that seems reasonable. I'd been trying to determine what the purpose of the durability change was, and that was what occurred to me. (I've never actually played a game where durability was a factor.) The thing is, if it's as minor a factor as you suggest (and can be repaired simply by going to a vendor)... then I have a hard time seeing what the gameplay value of it is. Aside from just being another way for players to spend money, what might the point be? The way they talked about it helping to "decrease inflation" made it seem like it'd be a larger issue. We'll just have to wait and see, neh?

"Yet another warrior nerf...."

Well, let's see now: they changed it so you can use abilities on targets you couldn't before, they added a spell, and they brought the warrior's snare more in line with the abilities of other classes. Some nerf.
#7 Oct 11 2004 at 7:21 PM Rating: Decent
Actually I think having classes finished and somewhat tested by retail is more important then many of the things they added in this patch. No it's not the end of the world if they aren't, but it would make people think twice about playing those classes when the game comes out. I myself will probably not play hunter when retail first comes out, but switch to rogue or mage.
#8 Oct 11 2004 at 11:00 PM Rating: Decent
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6,678 posts
I absolutely can't stand that they added durability to items. At least it's not decay, but it's still something I don't want for any number of reasons. I'll wait until I actually get in the game before I try to give any real commentary though.
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#9 Oct 12 2004 at 1:01 PM Rating: Decent
Durability so far is a bit of an annoyance. Sometimes you have to grind exp to level up since around level 20 the quest become to high to do solo until mid 20s. Basically you have to go back to town every few hours and repair your armor. It also takes away from your money and it gets worse the better armor you have. I could live without it.
#10 Oct 12 2004 at 1:18 PM Rating: Decent
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4,520 posts
The developers have said that durability of items is suposed to last for at least 1-2 days, unlike what it is now.
#11 Oct 12 2004 at 5:50 PM Rating: Decent
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243 posts
The way it reads is that there will be NO decay, only a decrese in the items durability because you have been USING it. This reminds me of item durability in D2.

Which means we might see items that repair themselves or find way to add that ability to an item.

#12 Oct 12 2004 at 6:19 PM Rating: Decent
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4,520 posts
I doubt it, the reason they put durability in game was to create a money sink for everylevel of gameplay. If they were to put in self repairing items it would be pretty much just a way of putting money strain on lower levels.
#13 Oct 12 2004 at 6:29 PM Rating: Decent
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More likely is that, like they suggested in the patch notes, there will be ways that tradeskills can interact to extend durability. Self-repairing items defeat the purpose. While some items might have exceptional durability, I can also see those items costing exceptional amounts to repair when they do wear out.
#14 Oct 12 2004 at 6:34 PM Rating: Decent
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243 posts
Yep, didnt think about that Vamp. True True. Either way, I still think it reads like it will work like it did in D2. I just dont want people to freak out and think they will need to buy 2 versions of each item.

Just make sure to set your homepoints in the last town you were in and when the armor breaks or nears breaking return and fix it. Its not that much of a hassle and I doubt it will be that big of an impact on our cash flow.
#15 Oct 12 2004 at 6:34 PM Rating: Decent
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243 posts
Good point.
#16 Oct 13 2004 at 12:43 PM Rating: Decent
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6,678 posts
It works just like it did in D2. Haven't made any judgements on it beyond my initial condemnation. =p
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