Blizzard has recently announced that the 3.1.2 patch for World of Warcraft has left the public test realms and entered the live realms today.

Featured in said patch is everything you would expect, class changes, bug fixes, the like. However, the big thing that Blizzard introduced with this patch is the Equipment Manager which they describe as:

When enabled from the Interface Options menu, this feature will allow players to store sets of equipment, easily swap between saved sets using hotkeys, and pull items directly from backpacks or bank slots (must be at the bank to equip inventory from the bank).

This will ease the pain when you have to switch from your PvP set to your PvE set.

Full list of changes after the break.

World of Warcraft Client Patch 3.1.2 – (2009-05-19)

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

General

• Equipment Manager
  • When enabled from the Interface Options menu, this feature will allow players to store sets of equipment, easily swap between saved sets using hotkeys, and pull items directly from backpacks or bank slots (must be at the bank to equip inventory from the bank).
• New art textures have been added for Argent Tournament mounts. Any mounts already purchased from the Argent Tournament vendors will be updated automatically. Argent Tournament mounts with the old textures will still be available for purchase from the Argent Tournament vendors for a small Champion’s Seal and gold cost (standard faction requirements apply).

PVP

• Vehicle health and damage output in Strand of the Ancients and Wintergrasp now scale with the item level of the operator’s gear. Power scaling is now 1% damage and 1% health per average item level.
• All Wintergrasp daily quests have been changed to a weekly format. The honor and Stone Keeper’s Shards rewarded for completing these quests have been increased to compensate.
• The bonus honor for winning the battle in Wintergrasp and controlling/destroying towers has been reduced.

Death Knights

• Improved Death Strike: This talent now also increases the healing from Death Strike by 25/50% and the tooltip has been adjusted to reflect the actual functionality after the hotfix in 3.1.0.
• Ghoul Frenzy: Now has a 10-second cooldown.

Druids

• Innervate: This ability has been redesigned to grant 450% of the casting Druid’s base mana pool to the target over 20 seconds.
• Improved Moonkin Form: Now grants 10/20/30% of spirit as spell power.

Hunters

• Disengage: Cooldown reduced by 5 seconds.

Mages

• Mirror Images: The images summoned by this spell will now target the creature that most hates the Mage, and should no longer cast Fire Blast or Frostbolt on targets that are affected by crowd control debuffs that break immediately on damage unless they are already casting these spells when crowd control is applied.

Paladins

• Blessing of Wisdom and Greater Blessing of Wisdom: Now grant 92 mana per 5 seconds to prevent being overwritten by Mana Spring Totem.
• Exorcism: Can no longer be used on player-controlled creatures.

Priests

• Divine Hymn: Healing and healing scaling reduced by 30%. Buff on affected players changed from 15% to 10%.
• Renewed Hope: Effect can no longer be dispelled.
• Soul Warding: Mana cost reduction is now 15% down from 30%.

Warlocks

• Conflagrate updated: Consumes an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the enemy target to instantly deal damage equal to 12 seconds of your Immolate, or 8 seconds of your Shadowflame.
• Fire and Brimstone: Now increases the damage done by your Incinerate and Chaos Bolt by 3/6/9/12/15% on targets afflicted by Immolate, and increases the critical strike chance of your Conflagrate by 5/10/15/20/25%. In addition, the increased critical strike chance of Conflagrate provided by this talent no longer requires the Immolate effect to have 5 seconds or fewer remaining on the target.
• Nether Protection reduced to 30% damage reduction, down from 60%.
• Sacrifice (Voidwalker) redesigned: Sacrifices a portion of the Voidwalker’s health, giving its master a shield that will absorb X damage for 30 seconds. While the shield holds, spell casting will not be interrupted by damage. 1-minute cooldown.
• Shadow and Flame: Now also includes Shadowburn.

Warriors

• Juggernaut: Critical strike chance bonus reduced to 25%, down from 100%.

Items

• Arena weapons with an item level of 239 have had their rating requirements increased to 2350.
• Darkruned Battlegear 2-Piece Set Bonus: The bonus critical strike chance for Frost Strike and Death Coil has been increased from 5% to 8%.
• Furious Gladiator’s Staff and Furious Gladiator’s Greatstaff: The agility values on these two items were too high. They have been reduced by 50%.
• Glyphs
  • Glyph of Innervate: Has been adjusted to grant the Druid 90% of his or her base mana pool over 20 seconds.
  • Glyph of Mass Dispel: Now only decreases Mass Dispel cost by 35%.
  • Glyph of Rapid Charge: Reduced to 7%, down from 20% cooldown reduction to Charge.
• Guise of the Midgard Serpent: The base attack power on this item has been lowered to balance it against items of a similar quality.
• Increased the health and mana restored from Northrend food and drinks.
• Most scopes now have a level requirement and will bind the item to which they are applied.
• Nightsong Garb 4-Piece Set Bonus: Chance for Insect Swarm to trigger an instant Starfire changed to 15%.
• Scourgeborne Battlegear 4-Piece Set Bonus: The runic power gain has been reduced to 5 runic power from 10 runic power.
• Ulduar 10-player hard mode weapons have been updated to item level 232.

Professions

• Fishing
  • Jewel of the Sewers: You can now fish in all parts of the Dalaran sewers for this quest.
  • Phantom Ghostfish: Can now be caught from Nettlefish schools in Sholazar Basin.

Bug Fixes

• Death Knights
  • Anti-magic Shell: Tooltip error corrected.
  • Blood Boil: If no target is available for Blood Boil to hit, the spell will now cast and consume a blood rune but generate no runic power.
• Druids
  • Maim: Rank 2 of this ability is properly considered a stun and can be escaped by Blink.
• Hunters
  • Go For The Throat: Explosive Shot critical strikes now trigger this talent.
  • Lock and Load: The tooltip has been corrected to display its actual chance to occur.
  • Rabid: This Hunter pet talent no longer lists a percentage chance to be triggered, as that chance varies by the attack speed of the pet.
• Paladins
  • Divine Sacrifice: Damage done to the Paladin while this is active will no longer cause the effect to break early, and if it is dispelled or cancelled early, the damage counter will reset correctly the next time the spell is cast.
• Rogues
  • Shadow Dance: Issues with action bars and ability use arising from using Stealth while Shadow Dance is active have been fixed.
  • Tricks of the Trade: To prevent exploits, this ability can no longer be cast on non-player targets.
• Warlocks
  • Demonic Sacrifice: This spell will no longer appear in any Warlock’s spellbook.
• Professions
  • Tailoring
    • Swordguard Embroidery: Now correctly increases ranged attack power.
• Dungeons and Raids
  • Ulduar
    • Hodir should now reset in a timely manner if a group fails to kill him.
    • 10-player bosses that drop Runed Orbs will also sometimes drop the recipes that use those orbs.
    • The Spark of Imagination: Characters that release in part of the boss room will no longer be ported to Westfall or The Barrens.

It seems taht the Chinese government is at it again, and this time completely rejected Blizzard’s attempt to release World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King in the area. But why?

Well JLM Pacific Epoch says that the rejection was due to the game including city raids, and skeleton characters.

City raids and skeleton characters, huh? Aren’t those 2 of the things that made World of Warcraf fun? Probably not, but it seems that the Chinese government is afraid people will use WoW to concoct plans to overthrow the government, or something like that.

Ever since its November 13th release date, the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for popular MMORPG World of Warcraft, has pretty much reigned supreme in terms of PC software sales.

Well, it looks like the expansion has finally been toppled; recent software sales show that THQ’s Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II is the new leader, pushing WotLK to number 2.

Below is the top 10 in terms of PC software sales for February, showing both the title and the games developer:

1. Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II / Relic
2. World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King / Blizzard
3. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe / EA Maxis
4. The Sims 2 Deluxe / EA Maxis
5. Spore / EA Maxis
6. World Of Warcraft Battle Chest / Blizzard
7. World Of Warcraft / Blizzard
8. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin / Monolith
9. The Sims 2 Apartment Life Exp. Pack / EA Maxis
10. Crysis Warhead / Crytek

Read (BlendGames)

It seems like Blizzards latest expansion for the popular World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King, has been out here in the states forever but the same could not be said for China.

Apparently, the expansion’s release date has been delayed even further, but why?

Well speculation has circulated that Blizzard and The9, China’s WoW distributor, are in a bit of a quarrel. Apparently, Blizzard wants more money for WoW’s license and the9 doesn’t want to give it. Oh you two.

Read (IncGamers)

It hasn’t even been a month since Blizzard launched the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, and already they are talking about the next expansion. 

Blizzard’s COO Paul Sams was quoted in a recent interview with PCRetail, when asked if they have plans for the next exanpsion, to have said:

Well, we don’t have anything to share on that but the development team has a very long forward look, and they don’t know all the specifics elements of the future, but the general framework is in the heads of the production staff, designers and team members. So they do know where it is going to go, but a lot of specifics they determine along the way”. Sams continued “We have a lot of creative people on the team and they have no shortage of great ideas – it’s a matter of figuring out the right ideas for each content update or expansion that fits the story that we’re trying to tell. Every time I talk to that group the ideas just keep overflowing, so we feel there’s a lot still to do.

But just how many expansions is Blizzard going to keep pumping out until they move onto something like World of Warcraft 2? Sams went on to say that while there is a significant user base playing WoW, Blizzard will continue to support them and add new content.

According to the developer, the previous game to hold the title was its own title – The Burning Crusade – which sold 2.4 million copies on day one. It launched in January 2007.

Wrath of the Lich King was released on November 13 and adds the frozen continent of Northrend, Death Knight hero class, increased level to 80 and more. World of Warcraft is currently the most popular MMORPG in the world, having over 11 million subscribers.

To all of you WoW-addicts out there, don’t forget that Wrath of the Lich King is dropping tomorrow so say goodbye to your social life, or what you have left at least.

Just to refresh your memory a bit, here’s a list of features in the next expansion taken from the game’s Wikipedia listing:

- Level cap raised to 80
- Battle with the Lich King at the Frozen Throne
- One new playable class: Death Knight
- A new continent: Northrend
- The creation of a new profession: Inscription
- Profession level cap raised to 450
- New items, quests, dungeons, creatures, spells and weapons
- Siege weapons and destructible buildings (for PvP)
- New character-customization options, including new hairstyles
- First completely PvP zone (regardless of what kind of server you play on)
- Improved Graphics Engine (applied to shaders, flame effects, water appearance and detailed shadows)
- New factions including the Tuskarr (Walrus-men), Frenzyheart (Wolverine-men), The Oracles (evolved form of murlocs) and the Taunka, a racial cousin to the Tauren

Due on November 13, eager gamers can start congregating at the Times Square in Best Buy where Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime and Frank Pearce will be present along with Geoff Keighley to be among the first to get their hands on the game at the stroke of midnight.

Attendees will get to take part in interviews, trivia and prize giveaways, among other things. It is the only event planned for the US east coast.

"World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King will only be available on DVD, not on CDs," wrote a Blizzard representative on WoW’s European forums.

The Burning Crusade, the first expansion pack for the popular MMO, was released in both CD and DVD formats; it was also released on digital distribution sites a few weeks after launch.

It will add the frozen continent of Northrend, the Death Knight hero class, an increase of the level cap from 70 to 80 and more content.

Gamers will have to part with $40 of their hard-earned money for the expansion; those who cough up $30 more will get a Collector’s Edition that includes a 208-page artbook, a soundtrack CD, an exclusive in-game pet, a behind-the-scenes DVD and two WoW trading card starter decks.

If you thought that Wrath of the Lich King would be the end of WoW, think again.

Word has it, there are talks over at Blizzard about expanding the world of Azeroth past that of what WotLK will bring. In other words? More expansions are imminent.

Tom Chiltern, lead designer of the upcoming expansion, has this to say about new areas for the game:

“Certainly, [a lot of] the major landmasses that we talked about heavily in previous Warcraft game[s] have already come to fruition,” he said. “Although there are still areas of the game that we’ve talked about and set up story-wise that we haven’t revealed yet. So there’s definitely more to go.”

Via: Boomtown