Burning Crusade: First Impressions Video

For those that have no Beta Key I have frapsed about 25 Minutes of Gameplay. I have used a resolution of 640×512 so you can actually read the ingame descritptions and icons.

Don’t expect something too fancy, its nothing special, just a fight versus some Monsters, some ganking and a long ride through Zangamarsh, Nagrand, Terokkar Forest and Shattrath City. I like the new Zones, especially Zangamarsh is very nice with its huge giant mushrooms and the blueish glow.

Download the video here.

Slant in Telredor

I used the xvid and lame mp3 codec to compress the file. You can always use the Video Lan Client to watch movies without needing to install any libraries, VLC has them built in.

Burning Crusade Beta: Melee Token Turn In Rewards (Hard Mode)

The Scenery of Burning Crusade is really nice and different from the current environment. Take a loot at Zangamarsh here.

I also frapsed a Video that will give You some impressions from the Look and Feel of Burning Crusade. Its currently 16Gb of Data that I still need to cut together.

Since everybody in general chat seemed to imply that Shattrath City is THE place to go, I decided to make a little Trip. There are portals to every major City and its the perfect Heartstone location.
It is a real big place with several Levels of elevation. There was a central area, an area that made me think of the Slum part up to the higher Levels of the Aldor and the Scryer with thei futuristic looking Mechbots guarding the entrances.

I also found the Token Turn In NPC for Hard Dungeons. Here is a series of Melee rewards starting with an Offhand Dagger. More Melee rewards can be found by navigating.

To be honest I amnot really impressed with it … You seem to need 15 BoP Items to be able to turn them into an reward. I did not find any other weapons, or Tier IV set, yet.

Enchants like the one from Sapphiron (1% crit + some Attackpower) can be bought from the Quartermaster from different factions.
Even though its well designed, the navigation in the city seems rather complicated, due to the different level of elevation. Of course the Guards did not give hints to where trainers are and when I finally found the flight point I was really happy to find out that I did not know any connected flightpoint. So if You plan on riding there, stop by at some outposts first.

The other thing I noticed was thousand of new factions. I do not know if there will be an extensive grind to it, or if raising one faction will drop the other, but my decission to reroll a human Rogue might not be that bad after all 😉

Take a look at the Screenshots above or here in my Screenshot section and stay tuned for a small Video.

Burning Crusade Beta: Gnomish Engineering

Here are some of the gnomish engineering gadgets:

Gnomish Battle Goggles:
21 Stamina, 28 Crit Rating, 100 Attack Power.
Gnomsih Battle Goggles
Gnomish Power Goggles:
+21 Intellect, +56 damage/healing, +28 crit rating with spells.

Gnomish Power Goggles

Nigh Invulnerability Belt:
16 stamina, Absorbs 4000 damage

Nigh Invulnerability Belt

Those look quite nice.

Burning Crusade Beta: Slant has been copied.

I did a qick check this morning if Slant has already been transferred and was excited to find him online. I did scan through his items fast and made some screenshots for you in my brandnew Burning Crusade item gallery.

The first thing I noticed, was a change in the Signet Ring of the Bronze Dragonflight, the one you get at exalted with Brood of Nozdormu. It has been changed to 18 Agility + 13 Stamina & 24 Attack Power.

I quickly gave Slant the new talents but have not been able to test anything, yet. Here are the Skills I use atm.

I hope to be able to tell you more at the weekend.

Burning Crusade Beta: First impression

As first step You should start the download of the client, which took roughly 4 hours for the 2,7 GB. After that you need to upgrade Your existing account for Burning Crusade and start one of the 4 possible character copies or either create a premade character.

After more than 24 hours, my main char is still not copied and the function to create a premade Character is not working. Well I decided to look at the life of a Draenei Shaman. At first I wanted to start a real mean looking mean Draenei but the the faces of the female Dranei looked quite cute so I chose one of them.

Istarted the Game with a clean Interface and it looked quite nice. There was no lag at all and everything was moving smoothly on my old machine. The plain interface look, does not show NPC Names, the Scrolling Combat text is not shown, no instant Quest text but it looks quite neat and clean that way.

Well I started the first quests, some kill quests, gathering Quests and a heal wounded Draenei quest, infuse Moonkin and pickup spare parts fromt he Spaceship. Nothing real unusual.

The area seemed well designed and everything was easy to find for me. There were quite a few of other new Draenei but Alliance-like noone talked 😉

In comparison with the regular client the character screenhas been changed. You can now chose which Information is visible on which side. Base Stats, Melee Stats, Ranged Stats, Spell Stats.

The female Draenei has an eastern europe accent when talking, sounded quite nice and reminded me of someone 🙂

Since our Naxxramas Raid was about to start I did not have the possibility to check things out further. My first impression was that the Expansion looks pretty neat and clean.

Burning Crusade Beta: Patch Notes

Here are the latest Burning Crusade Beta patch notes, taken from the Beta Forum.

World of Warcraft Beta Patch 5991 to 6022 | 24/10/2006 16:26:59 UTC

General

  • Added a Horde Graveyard to southern Hellfire Peninsula
  • Added a new flight path to Swamprat Post in Zangarmarsh.
  • Added meeting stones to the new dungeons.
  • Added a new Alliance base and flight path to Hellfire Peninsula.
  • Non-expansion guards now give directions to expansion Shaman and Paladin trainers.
  • The Giants in Outland are now properly itemized.
  • Various Exodar NPCs have been properly flagged for PvP.
  • Draenei shaman totems have been updated.

PvP

Battlegrounds

  • Added new quests in Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch for level 60+
  • characters.
  • The mini map will no longer switch off and on when events occur in
  • the battlegrounds.

Arenas

  • Arena games will no longer end as soon as they start.

User Interface

    • Players will now receive a timeout message when a group leader switches their instance preference.
    • Corrected some graphical errors with the LFG system menus.
    • Players on your ignore list will no longer be automatically added to a group when using the LFG system.
    • The Hunter ability Mend Pet icon will now turn red when you are out of range of your pet.
    • The Burning Crusade background art when selecting a realm will no longer glow as brightly with the full-screen glow effect on.

      Bugs

      • Fixed several creatures and NPCs that were falling through the ground.
      • Undercity is no longer missing the doors on the elevators.
      • Fixed several building mouse-over tooltips.
      • Captain Bok’ar’s Furious Rage will now stun himself rather than his target.
      • Fixed a n issue that caused temporary enchants to not work with
      • macros.
      • Fixed an issue that cause Draenei mailboxes to be useable by the Horde.
      • Fixed several quest rewards that were unable to be disenchanted or sold to vendors.
      • Fixed a problem that caused players to get disconnected from the server upon accepting certain quests.
      • Fixed an issue that caused the breath bar to sometimes remain on screen after resurrection.
      • Fixed an issue where players leaving a group that was created by the LFG matchmaking system or leaving the group queue were unable to use the LFG system again.
      • Fixed an issue that caused the LFG icon to not display correctly.

      Burning Crusade: Beta Account Upgrade Success

      In order to take part in last years’s World of Warcraft Beta I bought a Pre-Order via Ebay. When the release of the came was about to begin I realized that this would leave me 1 day behind with leveling and I would have had to compete with the thousand’s of other players for mobs.

      So I talked to my personal Gameshop and they agreed to give me a WoW Final 1 day before release, so I would be able to start the first second the servers went up. It was very important to me, since Slant and Myrddin are popular enough to be taken quickly.

      However I never reactivated the first preorder I bought via Ebay until I started to work in Velizy for a company we all know 😉 I did not want them to know my real Account and activated the pre-order Account.

      Just last week I sent this mail:

      To: WoWAccountReviewEU@blizzard.com
      Subject: XXXXXXXX, Char XXXXXX EU2A

      Hello,

      I am the owner of Accont XXXXX, XXXXXXX. I will never ever reactivate the Account again and ask You to delete it and its Chars.
      I have not found an option to do this in the Account Management and thus I am contacting You directly. I got this Account when working in France, but since I am back in Germany now I have no longer any use for it, and also do not want anymore unwanted mails from Blizzard that are referring to this Account.

      Thanks.

      And today I got for my Beta-Key for this Account 😉 So I guess I will be posting new content first hand soon 🙂


      Burning Crusade: Crit, Hit, Haste, Resilience explained

      Eyonix posted detailed information on the new Combat Rating System for the Burning Crusade Expansion. The known critical hit chance and the other stats will be changed for the expansion. Here are the numbers for level 60 Characters:

      With the upcoming release of the Burning Crusade, we thought we would take the time to explain more on a new stat that we are introducing: Combat Ratings. These ratings are being used for any combat stat that previously was percentage-based such as: critical strike chance, hit chance, dodge chance and defense skill. Combat ratings are only used with effects generated by items and do not apply to effects that are generated by spells and talents which will continue to work the same.

      The following combat ratings are currently in use: weapon skill, defense, dodge, parry, block, hit chance, spell hit chance, critical strike chance, spell critical strike chance, resilience, haste, and spell haste.

      *We may introduce others at a later time.

      Combat Skills

      Unlike fixed percentages such as 2% critical strike chance, combat ratings diminish in potency as your character increases in level. 2% crit is the same at every level, while 28 critical strike rating grants 4% crit at level 34, 2% crit at level 60, and 1.27% crit at level 70. This allows us the ability to create and add new and better items to the world without eventually reaching a point where every character has a 100% chance to critically strike.

      Below is the level 60 conversion for combat skills:

      Weapon Skill Rating 2.5 rating grants 1 weapon skill
      Hit Rating 10 rating grants 1% hit chance
      Spell Hit Rating 8 rating grants 1% spell hit chance
      Critical Strike Rating 14 rating grants 1% critical strike chance
      Spell Critical Strike Rating 14 rating grants 1% spell critical strike chance
      Haste 10 rating 1% haste
      Spell Haste 10 rating grants 1% spell haste

      Defense Skills

      The impact on the defense skill and weapon skill systems is slightly more complicated. Many people do not realize these skills actually grant percentage-based benefits already. For example, every 25 points of defense skill grants a 1% dodge chance, 1% parry chance, 1% block chance, 1% increased chance to be missed and 1% decreased chance to be critically hit by physical attacks. Weapon skills have a similar effect for the attacker. Items will now grant skill rating rather than skill directly, and that will convert to an actual skill increase.

      Below is the level 60 conversion for defense skills:

      Defense Skill Rating 1.5 rating grants 1 defense skill
      Dodge Rating 12 rating grants 1% dodge
      Parry Rating 20 rating grants 1% parry
      Block Rating 5 rating grants 1% block chance

      Resilience

      Resilience is a special new rating which we have created to reduce the effects of critical hits against your character. It has two components; it reduces the chance you will be critically hit by X percent, and it reduces the damage dealt to you by critical hits by 2X percent. X is the percentage resilience granted by a given resilience rating.

      Below is the level 60 conversion for resilience:

      Resilience 25 rating grants 1% resilience

      Each time you go up a level, the amount of rating needed to get the same benefit will increase. An example of the scaling involved would be the current implementation of Agility which has always worked this way in the live game, requiring more agility for the same critical strike chance as you go up in level

      Since the ratings scale with level Eyonix also posted the numbers for Level 70 characters:

      We’ve seen a number of players (since we’ve released the combat rating information) display a desire to be empowered with the knowledge of the appropriate level 70 values. As a result, we’ve gathered them for you. Enjoy your weekend of theorycrafting! 😛

      Combat Ratings conversions at level 70 (rounded to 1 decimal point):

      Weapon Skill Rating: 3.9 rating grants 1 skill point
      Defense Rating: 2.4 rating grants 1 defense skill.
      Dodge Rating: 18.9 rating grants 1% dodge
      Parry Rating: 31.5 rating grants 1% parry
      Block Rating: 7.9 rating grants 1% block chance
      Hit Rating: 15.8 rating grants 1% hit chance
      Spell Hit Rating: 12.6 rating grants 1% spell hit chance
      Critical Strike Rating: 22.1 rating grants 1% critical strike chance
      Spell Critical Strike Rating: 22.1 rating grants 1% spell critical strike chance
      Haste Rating: 15.8 rating grants 1% haste
      Spell Haste Rating: 15.8 rating grants 1% spell haste
      Resilience Rating: 39.4 rating grants 1% less chance of being struck by any type of critical strike, and 2% less damage taken from critical strikes

      Burning Crusade: Marks of Honor

      The last week I started to gather Marks of Honor for Burning Crusade. Since You will be able to purchase Items for honor with the new system I figrued it could not really be wrong to start gathering them to turn them in when honor is no more useless.

      Then I also stumbled over this screenshot:

      Purchase your mount for Marks of HonorWar Mount at level 55? needs riding 75, and is a very fast mount.

      Apparently You can also turn in token to receive your epic mount. At the current price it may not been that great (8g for Alterac Mount) but if you look at the other screenshot it seems that you can ride this epic at 55 now with riding skill of 75. So you basically save the expensive riding skill.

      Edit: They changed the mounts to 150 riding required.

      Burning Crusade: A mace rogues dreamweapons.

      I just found the mainhands maces I need to get in BC. Apparently those maces are Hammersmiths only, but with the very uninteresting and dissapointing Engineering updates this might actually become an option after all 😉

      Hand of Fate: BoP, Mainhand, 173-321 Damage, 2.80 Speed, 88 DPS
      Hand of Fate: BoP, Mainhand, 173-321 Damage, 2.80 Speed, 88 DPS

      Hammer of Destiny: BoP, Mainhand, 159-296 Damage, 2.80 Speed, 81,2 DPS

      Hammer of Destiny: BoP, Mainhand, 159-296 Damage, 2.80 Speed, 81,2 DPS