Discover how I make over 1500 gold a week even with low level characters using easy and completely legal gold making strategies.

• Recently Written

  • Closed Beta News
  • BlizzCast Episode 3
  • Druid Spell Changes Leaked
  • WotLK Priest Enhancements
  • New Voice Chat Tools for WotLK
  • Instance Issues Fixed
  • Lich King Beta Key Scam
  • More Death Knight Q&A
  • Flying Mounts in Northrend
  • More on Runes

• Categories

  • Beta
  • Character Customization
  • Death Knight
  • Gameplay
  • General
  • Inscription
  • New Content
  • News
  • PvP
  • Rune System
  • Spells

• Archives

  • June 2008
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007

• Related Links

  • World of Warcraft
  • World of Warcraft Guides
  • 1500 Gold a Week…Legally!
  • Sitemap

• Search

In case you missed it, Blizzard produces a periodic podcast that features World of Warcraft - especially the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Episode 3 has just been released - here’s an excerpt:

Bornakk
The first dungeon many players will explore in Northrend is Utgarde Keep. Can you tell us what players can expect to encounter throughout the various wings of this dungeon and how it will compare to Hellfire Citadel, which is the first dungeon people explored in The Burning Crusade?

Jeff Kaplan
Sure thing, Utgarde is a really cool dungeon that is in a zone called Howling Fjord. It is filled with these guys called the Vrykul, who are these huge sort of half giant barbarian-like creatures who have turned very nasty and evil. They’re actually trying to get into the good graces of the Lich King by doing evil deeds and when they die they are risen up and sort of taken into the Scourge. So they are really evil guys, unlike the Horde and Alliance who want nothing to do with the Lich King, only want to defeat them, these Vrykul guys think the Lich King is so cool that they want to do even worse deeds to get in his good graces.

The dungeon is filled with them, the first room in Utgarde Keep is this massive forge room where they are forging weapons to go against the Horde and Alliance. They are also these famed dragon riders, if you look at their architecture they have stretched dragonskins over their village huts and that sort of thing. So the second room you come to is this really cool Proto-Dragon stable and the Proto-Dragons were sort of the early version before dragons really evolved into the sentient, beautiful majestic creatures that they are in Warcraft right now; they were these sort of primitive things that the Vrykul really lorded over.

So you get to fight a variety of bosses, you also get your first interaction with the Scourge in this dungeon. You’ll find out that there is a Scourge ambassador and that the Vrykul are trying to get in with the Scourge then you’ll fight one of the Warlords and get a bit of lore about who is leading the Vrykul. And when you’re a max level player you can go up to Utgarde Pinnacle which is the max level dungeon that’s at the top of Utgarde Keep. So again, it’s kind of like a two wing dungeon with an entry-level level 70 wing on par with let’s say The Ramparts and then a max level wing that would be like the equivalent of Shattered Halls.

So I think it’s a pretty cool place, we try to vary up the architecture from room to room so it feels a little bit different, it looks different, we use different creatures in the different rooms, we try to give various crowd control types, so the dragons can be hibernated, there is humanoids, undead for the different crowd control types all have options in the dungeon and then do some really cool scripted boss fights too.

If you’d rather read the interviews instead of listening to the podcast, here’s the transcript.

In a recent interview, Blizzard’s Jeff Kaplan has this to say about the a few issues introduced in Burning Crusade r.e. the difficulty in accessing certain instances:

“I fully agree with you, we did learn many lessons from The Burning Crusade. We’ve already fixed the access issue with recent updates. I can’t tell you a lot about the progression system in Wrath of the Lich King, but we’re exploring new paths to make this add-on accessible to everyone.

For example, we could imagine some open content for a server rather than for a specific guild, like we did with Ahn’Qiraj. We could even push this basic concept a little further. You could also imagine a system which would allow you to grant access to all your characters once you’ve unlocked it with one of them. It’s a very important matter for us; we don’t want to remake what I personally consider a mistake in the Burning Crusade.

We want to re-examine all the trade skills one by one. For example, the leather craft in the Burning Crusade was interesting only in the first level of the add-on. It became rather obsolete later compared to the objects you could take from the monsters, get as rewards for quests or find inside dungeons. In the Wrath of the Lich King, we want everyone to be satisfied with the trade they choose and we want it to be rewarding. Therefore we’re going to analyze everything we did with The Burning Crusade and previously to work out what was good and what was missed out.”

There’s been a recent rash of phishing emails claiming to be from Blizzard and offering the chance to get into the Wrath of the Lich King beta.

It claims to come from ‘WotLK Development Team <wotlkBETA@blizzard.com>’ and reads:

Greetings,

You have been selected by Blizzard Entertainment to take part in our special World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King BETA testing. To participate simply log into your account at the special World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King site at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wotlkbeta . After logging in and confirming your identity, you will be taken to a download page for the Worlf of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King BETA Client. We thank you for your help and participation in this process, as customer feedback is one of our most powerful tools in creating an outstanding game for all of our customers. If you do not wish to participate, simply take no action, and your account will remain as it is now.

Blizzard Entertainment Inc
Account Administration Team
P.O. Box 18979, Irvine, CA 92623

Regards,
Wrath of the Lich King Development Team
Blizzard Entertainment Inc.

But, the actual link takes you to http://wowtlk-beta.awardspace.co.uk/index.html where you’re asked for your username and password for your World of Warcraft account which (obviously) you should never provide outside the actual World of Warcraft website.

Just an FYI to let everyone know this scam is going around.

Just a quick bit of news - Blizzard poster Bornakk confirmed that new types of flying mounts will be available in Wrath of the Lich King expansion:

We currently have no plans to add another tier of riding skill in Wrath of the Lich King, but we do plan to add more kinds of mounts to the game. We’ll let you know what kinds when things get closer to launching the expansion.

The official Blizzard Wrath of the Lich King forums are now open:

U.S. Forum

E.U. Forum

Among the interesting bits of news from the first few blue (Blizzard poster) posts:

• There will be one hero class per expansion
• Zeppelin and Boat routes will be available to Northrend
• The level restriction for using flying mounts in Northrend has not been finalized

If you take a look at the EB Games entry for Wrath of the Lich King you’ll see a 11/3/08 release date all but confirming that the expansion won’t be released for at least a year. Although I wasn’t expecting a Christmas 2007 release I am a little surprised that the projected release date is over a year away.

On the World of Warcraft forums Blizzard poster Nethaera commented that this isn’t an official date yet and that they’ll be announcing an official release date on once one has been established:

We haven’t announced a release date as of yet. When we do, you’ll see it up on the official web site here. Retailers have to put some sort of a release date in order to list a game for sale and accept pre-sales for those games. When they do put down a date, it’s generally an educated guess.

One of the bonuses attendees at last month’s BlizzCon received was a beta key for an unnamed future Blizzard project. Since then, there has been a lot of speculation about what game these beta keys are going to be for. Blizzard also announced Starcraft II at BlizzCon and has an un-named project in the works (code named Hydra) that makes for three potential betas.

Blizzard forum poster Nethaera asserted that they’re still not sure for which project the beta keys can be used but the important thing for the rest of us is that the beta keys from BlizzCon aren’t the only way to get into any potential Wrath of the Lich King beta:
Read more

More news from an EU forum, this time from Denmark.

I have a friend who works in a media agency that handles banner advertisements for various larger portals in Denmark.

He has informed me that they have gotten an inquiry regarding the launch of WotLK in Denmark and running advertisements on Danish sites from the 1st of November until December 24th.

He also says that the expansion is slated to be in store shelves somewhere close to Christmas 2007, with the latest release as late as February 2008.

Of course this is all conjecture (I personally think Spring 2008) but I’ll keep you posted.

From an interview that the French site Monde Persistants did with Lead Designer Jeff Kaplan and Art Director Chris Robinson in Leipzig:

- Before the expansion, Blizzard intends to release new daily quests along with Sunwell Plateau.

- The first level 70 5-man instance in the expansion may be The Nexus.

- Death Knights may be able to do inscription on any weapon, with their Rune powers.

- The next Titans instance encounter will be in Ulduar, which will be a raid instance.

- There will be a few instances underground at Azjol’Nerub, and they will be populated with Nerubians.

- The main boss in the Caverns Of Time: Stratholme instance will be Mal’ganis.

According to a Blizzard press conference at last months BlizzCon, the Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack may require you to have the Burning Crusade installed to work. Blizzard isn’t sure if this will require an additional purchase, or if they will bundle it in at no extra cost.

I’ll post more news on this when and if it becomes official.

Next Page →