Beta Blog 4: Wrath of the Lich King

Liz Skuthorpe | Sep 11, 2008 2:43 PM

Liz Skuthorpe ponders the nature of beta testing and flashbacks to the past.

It’s been a less eventful week than I was hoping, WoW-wise but as I settled in front of the computer over the weekend I was looking forward to getting a couple more levels under my belt and seeing some more zones. Sadly it’s wasn’t to be.

This weekend just past the developers released a new patch for the expansion and it seriously kicked the hell out of the servers – stability was practically non-existent, and for every solution there seemed there were three new problems. It was a significant patch and included a talent point refund for every class as well as the introduction of some big things like Icecrown, the Storm Peaks and some new PvP zone buffs for Lake Wintergrasp.

It’s not like these kinds of things are unexpected, that’s what beta phase testing is for. As frustrating as it was to suffer constant disconnections and roll-backs, it was interesting to be in the thick of things as users discovered different spells, abilities, or quest lines that behaved in new and world-crashing ways.

Even the King of Stormwind is not immune to fashion.

World phase quest lines
Death Knights seemed to bear the brunt of the patch shenanigans – a new quest in Ebon Hold (which should be part of the phased quest line before the characters join the Alliance or Horde) required DKs to return to the starting area and regain control of the lower floor from rampaging Scourge (Arthas is such a trouble maker). Another quest had DKs doing a walk of shame through Stormwind to plead their case before Wrynn. Completing this quest is a requirement to be able to interact with NPCs in SW; if not you’ll have fruit thrown at you forever by the noble citizens. This quest is a great addition to the Death Knight story line plus you get to see the King’s rockin’ new hairstyle… I guess he went to the new barbershop.

But, back to Ebon Hold; accepting Mograine’s quest meant players were granted a buff which gave them enough health and power to take out Patchwerk. However, the buff was reapplied every few seconds and since the zone was now packed with Death Knights of every level and persuasion… down goes the server. Unholy Blight (Rank 2) also caused significant problems and was eventually identified as being directly responsible for crashing the servers; you might say the DKs are a wee bit over-powered (don’t tell them I said that).

Move over Murky, there's a new kid in town.

Non-Death Knight Alliance players copped some of the Death Knight flack when entering Stormwind, with NPCs throwing fruit and spitting on all and sundry. And the new PVP buffs such as Tenacity in Lake Wintergrasp applied up to twenty times on the same players (and usually not the players who were supposed to receive it) thus ruining the attempt at balancing group efforts in a PvP environment.

That’s the nature of beta servers: strange things happen. However, everything is made better by Chilly the Penguin, I’ll be sad to leave this little guy behind when the beta is finished.

Glyphs and item enhancements
Inscription has come a long way since its first introduction a couple of weeks ago. As suspected, enchanters and scribes are able to put their wares up on the Auction House rather than having to spend hours hawking their trade skills in a major city – a time consuming and frustrating endeavour for people selling and often frustrating for buyers who had trouble finding people with that skill when they’re online.

Glyphs have been added to the game and these class specific enhancements should be very interesting to play with. A Glyph panel has been added to the Spellbook featuring three major and three minor Glyphs. As part of this week’s shopping spree I picked up Glyph of Insect Swarm, Glyph of Entangling Roots, and Glyph of Rebirth for my druid. Unlike enchantments, there’s sometimes a payoff to be made when using these kinds of glyphs – for example the Insect Swarm glyph increases the damage done by the spell, but removes the element which reduced the targets +hit.

I’m very much looking forward to testing mage glyphs such as Glyph of Improved Scorch (which applies all five applications of the Scorch debuff when one scorch is cast). There is a one-hour cooldown for this (and many other) glyphs; It will be interesting to see how these new elements play out in the game and whether they affect party balance – it may affect play-style for people who mainly solo or run five-man instances.

World lore
I’m a bit of a lore-geek, truth be told, and yes I love RP servers, so it was great to come across some Arthas-oriented quests in the Dragonblight zone. A Wintergarde Keep quest line sees you following in Arthas’ footsteps and using seeing stones to see visions of the past – in this case Arthas finding Frostmourne in a cavern in Northrend. It’s a great little scene and interestingly includes some of the different human models that you find scattered throughout the new continent. Having watched this now, through, I can say with authority that even when he was human, Arthas was a bit of a jerk.

Arthas - a prat even before he died.