Project Lore: Five dudes. Four cameras. One World of Warcraft.

Sorry, ladies and germs! It’s been a bit of a long weekend for me, so I haven’t been able to get to this any sooner, but a new build of 3.3 (10676, to be specific) was pushed onto the Test Realms on Friday. We’re far and away from the major updates of the early iterations. It seems that each successive version of the patch is made to introduce one or two key features and only a handful of small tweaks, otherwise. 10676 is no difference, and the marquee subject this time? Mostly UI Enhancements (and the Kalu’ak Fishing Derby, which you can read more about here). Here’s the complete rundown:

General

• Character Creation: The descriptions for races, classes, and race/class combinations have been improved to provide new players with a better idea of the roles and advantages of each class and race.
• Knockbacks no longer dismount players. If on a flying mount, you will be knocked back a short distance before being able to resume flying.

Druid
Balance

• Force of Nature: Health on the treants has been increased.

Feral

• Predatory Strikes: The Predatory Swiftness buff from this talent now has a 5-second duration.

Restoration

• Gift of the Earthmother: Redesigned. This talent now increases spell haste and reduces the base global cooldown by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of its previous effect.

Mage

• Mirror Image: Health on the mirror images has been increased.

Paladin
Protection

• Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin’s health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases. Finally, damage which reduces the paladin’s health below 20% now cancels the effect early.

Rogue

• Vanish changes reverted.

User Interface

• 

  The new Tutorial system features extended tips, UI highlights, and helpful graphics.

  Many of the default Interface Options settings have been changed for greater ease of use by new players. Existing players who create new characters may want to review the Interface Options in the event that the default settings feel different.

• Buffs and Debuffs: This is a new section added to Interface Options.
• New option - Castable Debuffs: Enabling this will cause only debuffs you have cast on an enemy target to appear.
• New option - Consolidate Buffs: Enabling this adds a buff consolidation box near the mini-map. Very short term buffs (e.g. Replenishment) and very long term buffs (e.g. Prayer of Fortitude) are filtered into the buff box. The icons are stacked here, but they can still be seen by moving the mouse cursor over the buff box. Long term buffs will move out of the box when they are about to expire. Buffs such as important procs (e.g. Art of War, Lightning Overload), cooldowns (e.g. Bloodlust / Heroism, Combustion) or limited in range (e.g. totems and paladin auras) are always displayed.
• Tutorial System: The tutorial pop-ups are now larger, contain images, and better try to direct players to the relevant locations or user interface elements on the screen. In addition, several new tips have been added, while some existing tips will now appear at more appropriate times for new players.
• Dungeon & Raid Difficult Display: A group’s dungeon or raid difficulty setting will now be displayed via an icon off of the mini-map.
• Group Disenchanting Option: In addition to rolling “Need” or “Greed” on items, players now have the option to elect for an item to be disenchanted. “Disenchant” works exactly like “Greed” except if a player wins the “Greed” roll, they will receive the disenchanted materials instead. Players who choose “Need” will always win the item and will always beat those that choose “Greed” or “Disenchant.”
• Lag Reports: Players can now report high latency or lag by accessing the Help Request menu.

Professions
Fishing

• The all-new Kalu’ak Fishing Derby, a test of fishing skill with a healthy dash of luck, has come to Northrend! Every Wednesday beginning at 8 PM players can try to catch the elusive Blacktip Shark. Elder Clearwater sits in Dalaran for one hour awaiting the return of the quickest, most experienced fisher to bring him this shark. This champion fisher will be rewarded in-kind for returning with the first catch. Those who aren’t able to return with the first catch will still receive just reward for getting the Blacktip Shark to Elder Clearwater before he takes his leave. It is said that these sharks’ favorite meal are the bite-sized Pygmy Suckerfish. Perhaps a hook in their waters will do the trick.

Achievements

• The Achievements to get exalted with the Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Alterac Valley factions have been removed from their respective “Master of” Meta-Achievements. Special titles will be offered to those who reach exalted with these factions.
• “The Party’s Over” has been removed from Achievements and is no longer a part of the “Glory of the Hero” Meta-Achievement.
• “Master Angler of Stranglethorn” has been changed to “Master Angler of Azeroth” and can be achieved by winning either the Kalu’ak Fishing Derby or the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza.

Items

• Arena Set Bonuses: The two-piece set bonus for all Wrath of the Lich King Arena sets now provides 100 resilience and 29 spell power or 50 attack power. The current four-piece bonus will remain, however it also now provides 88 spell power or 150 attack power.
• Shaman Tier-9 4-Piece Set Bonus (Elemental): This set bonus now places a damage-over-time effect on the target when Lava Burst deals damage instead of increasing the size of the Lava Burst.

So, as you can see, Blizzard continues to work diligently on the newbie experience. While most of the major changes to the content will come with Cataclysm, it’s clear that they’re trying to iron out the mechanical side of things right now. Even after all these years, with so many existing subscriptions, they haven’t forgotten about the little guy (and ultimately, it helps the rest of us, too).

I had a chance to check out the revamped Tutorial system, myself. I jumped right in by creating a new character (in this case, a random female Draenei Hunter). After the usual intro movie and introductory quest, a big old question mark appeared on the bottom of the screen. Unlike the old system, where the familiar exclamation point boxes pop up in a row until you click on every individual one to get rid of them, all tutorial elements are filtered through the singular aforementioned icon.

In other words, when you close one box you either click on the question mark to open the next one, or you can set them to pop up automatically when you want to move on. This greatly reduces the clutter and, I imagine, the confusion a new player must feel when they’re bombarded by things popping up all over the place.

The new tooltips may incorporate graphics when appropriate, such as bringing the attack icon that appears when you mouse over an enemy to attention, and it also highlights what parts of the UI a player should be looking at to find out specific information. In the photo to the left, for instance, you can see that upon completing a quest, a flashing, golden light appears around the mini-map. This shows the player that this is where they should look to find the quest NPC.

Overall, it’s quite a bit more eloquent than the old system. It manages to be both comprehensive and more concise at the same time.

But if there’s something else about 3.3 that I’d like to honestly address, it’s this: what’s in it for the Rogues? I know this seems like a petty complaint, and honestly, no changes are probably better than being on the receiving end of a the nerf bat, but I’m really eager to know more about the future of my class! Here’s hoping that the expansion has some cool stuff in store, because Blizz certainly isn’t doing a whole lot with them right now other than waffling on how exactly Vanish should work (and that’s a skill that’s been virtually broken — not necessarily in the imbalanced sense — since the game’s launch).

Oh goodness, I’m getting a little verklempt! How about I continue QQing about my poor, neglected Rogue in the corner while you talk amongst yourselves?

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Related Posts: PTR 3.3: New Tutorial System Incoming, The Back-and-Forth Saga of a 3.3 Vanish Fix, BigRedKitty: Baby Hunter 2, Rogue Changes For Patch 3.0.3, The Weekly Wrap Up: 12/20/08,

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