Burning Crusade Flash Mini Site

Bored? Feel like a game of "memory," WoW style?

In the category of old news, I'd like to mention The Burning Crusade Flash Mini-Site. I was trolling around for information on the next expansion and saw this link from the last one, but somehow had never visited it.

Once you're past the intro video, you can navigate to different areas of the site (there's 5) using the orbs in the lower right hand corner. Each section gives you an overview of what the Burning Crusade Expansion offered ... but the interesting thing is that there are tiny little quest givers in each section:



For a quick diversion, click on each NPC you find and complete the puzzles (a simple game, different for each section, each one takes less than a minute).

Your reward for completing all five? A few wallpapers and the ability to play the theme music from Silvermoon. Not a big deal, but a fun way to spend five minutes if you're ever waiting for maintenance time to run out.

Burning Crusade Release Estimate Changes to January 2007

I have to mention this. I first saw it on WoW Insider this morning. Burning Crusade release date was previously Q4 2006. Now it's January 2007.

The link they provided is this post from Eyonix (emphasis is mine):

IRVINE, Calif. -- Blizzard Entertainment® today announced that the release date for World of Warcraft®: The Burning Crusade™, the highly anticipated expansion for World of Warcraft, will be in January 2007. By adding a few extra weeks to the development cycle beyond its original target date, Blizzard will be able to extend the closed beta test and further refine the new content that will ship with the game.

“We appreciate the enthusiasm surrounding World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, and we’re excited about putting the finishing touches on all of the new content,” said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We feel confident that the extra time spent polishing the game will result in the high-quality experience that our players expect and deserve.”

Blizzard began the closed-beta phase of testing on World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade earlier this month. The January 2007 release window will allow extra time for current beta testers to participate in the final stages of development and continue providing valuable feedback.

Further information on specific worldwide release dates, pricing, and other details will be announced in the near future.

Amazon
I was surprised Amazon responded so quickly - here's their message as of today:

Note on release date: Blizzard has officially announced that The Burning Crusade expansion has been delayed until January 2007, and no other information is available at this time. Our listed release date of January 30 is an estimate and not official information. Please check this page later for updated information.

Earnings
I wonder how this decision impacts Blizzard's earnings. Is it better to have the influx of cash in 2007 vs. 2006? Does it squeeze out another few months of same ol' content from people who have time off at the holidays? Or does this risk players' giving up altogether for something unpredictable and too far away? And do they lose income from students who might have played it during their holiday but now can't?

Was the lack of a Non-Disclosure agreement on the beta intentional to keep the excitement up?

What will be on everyone's Christmas list now?

/shrug

Ninja Buffs - They're Alive!

There has been a flurry of posts out there today describing changes to mods that we should expect with the Burning Crusade. I liked the chronological outline of this one.

I think I've shown in the past my love of the Ninja Buff. Here (divine spirit) and here (nice days). And the provider of all things ninja buff - Benecast. (With Benecast you can stand in a major city and buff anyone as they go by. No worries about "too high for that level" or otherwise cluttering all your bars with all the levels of a buff - yup - I did that for a while before I gave it up to free up action bar space.)


So when I noticed the frequent references to mods' no longer being able to "intelligently pick spells or targets" I was about to get really upset. Would this be the death of my beloved ninja buff?

But then I did some research in the forums and found this post (#25):

New in WoW 2.0:
If you cast a buff that's too high level for a friendly target, the game will automatically use the appropriate rank of that spell instead.

(WoW 2.0 referring to the Burning Crusade.) And the follow up that said it works with Single Buffs but not AoE Buffs. Also confirmed here (#227).

I'm shocked frankly. Normally when there's a big nerf of something related to other people's play styles (i.e. raids) mine (i.e. solo) gets wrapped in with it in a really bad way. But in this situation:

It's like someone literally answered
my little wish to still be able to give and get buffs...
from strangers...
as I run by....

Yeah, it totally sounds weird when I say it now.

Anyway, there's a lot of other information in the thread that I must admit I didn't really understand for all the UI jargon. If you want a quick way to view them check out the posts by Slouken. He's the Blizzard poster providing the UI change information

I'm Expecting! (So are you)

I know that once the Burning Crusade comes out, I'll be playing it. Chances are that you will too.

What preparations are you making in anticipation of your new baby Draenei or Blood Elf?

Individual play styles will change how we all prepare for new character(s), of course. But I thought I'd offer some suggestions based on my style and readings:

Character Slot

Make room on your preferred server by deleting unused alts

Select name(s)

If desired reserve a preferred name for your future character by creating a placeholder Alt with that name (which you will have to delete later of course)

Tools & Equipment

Buy Bags (preferrably Traveler's Backpack, Mooncloth Bags and/or Profession Bags)

Save Money for training, bank slots, flying, mounts, flying mounts, ...

Save up materials & recipes for Profession Leveling; perhaps ore or gems for your budding Draenei Jewelcrafter (+15 to Jewelcrafting) to raise his or her level in mining and jewelcrafting? or enchanting materials (or disenchanting fodder) for your new Blood Elf (+15 to Enchanting)

Buy your preferred Armor or Weaponry (for me... I bought some blue wands of course).

Save up those transferable Quest or Faction items like Blue Pearls or Un'Goro Soil. (Focusing on quests for levels 20+ after you leave the new Burning Crusade areas.)

Other

Decide on your Burning Crusade Spells & Talents

Look over the mods that might be appropriate for your first Shaman or Paladin

Check out your World of Warcraft Account to make sure you're in the subscription plan that makes sense for you.

BC Dance Music Video

I thought this video did a good job showing some of the Burning Crusade Dance Moves in a simple yet entertaining way.



Although it could definitely use some clothes.

Home is Where the Hearth Is

What do you consider your hub for town activity? Ironforge? Orgrimmar? Well apparently Blizzard thinks that we'll all flock to (and stay in) the new cities once the Burning Crusade is released:

From this gamespy article:

We also got brief tours of the expansion races' home cities -- Exodar for Draenei and Silvermoon for Blood Elves -- as part of today's demo, and suffice it to say that Blizzard is predicting that these areas will replace Orgrimmar and Ironforge as their factions' premier gathering hubs. They're anticipating the rush by putting two banks and auction houses in each city.

And from Sprawl's Scrawl:

The fully functional Silvermoon City is so large, there will be "translocation portals" placed through the isle to help with travel. The capital city is outfitted with multiple Auction Houses and Banks to accommodate the overwhelming stress this new town will see come release day.

I would be happy just as long as there was no indoor lava moat.

p.s. This picture is my PC's background. If you like it, you can see more like it here, where I got it.

Burning Crusade Racial Mounts

This Gamespot.com article includes references to the racial mounts for the two new Burning Crusade classes.

Like with all other standard mounts in the game, both the elekk and cockatrice will, as Chilton puts it, "look cool and go fast," though they won't possess any exceptional powers.

Information is Growing
Little is known about them at this time, and in fact this picture is not confirmed as the Elekk (although it is suspected). The links below are "under construction."

The Draenei Mount: The War Elephant
www.wowwiki.com/Elekk

The Blood Elf Mount: The Mythical Cockatrice
www.wowwiki.com/Cockatrice

Also keep watching The Burning Crusade Bestiary for more information as well.

Hoarding for Jewelcrafting?

In a Blue Post from Tseric we learn that:

The exact jewels used in Jewelcrafting have not been finalized, but we plan on using existing gems and creating new ones. Obviously, we are going to avoid any gluts in the market by not announcing them, so hoard at your own risk. ;)

The prospecting skill of Jewelcrafting will operate similarly to smelting, in that you will use the skill to extract gems instead of making bars. While mining is a complimentary profession for this, there are other methods of gathering gems, such as through drops or from other miners(Auction House).

You may want to also check out my older Jewelcrafting Notes.

I have personally found mining to be a good money making skill set so based on this kind of information I can't wait to make my Jewelcrafter/Miner.

Update 10/4/06: I found a post with a description of some BC Jewelcrafting information. I'm not sure how credible it is but here is an exceprt I pulled from it. This could be a list of gems that we see today that might also later be useful in jewelcrafting.

Cut Agate
Cut Aquamarine
Cut Azerothian Diamond
Cut Citrine
Cut Emerald
Cut Jade
Cut Malachite
Cut Moonstone
Cut Opal
Cut Ruby
Cut Sapphire
Cut Shadowgem
Cut Tigerseye

Amazon Now Says November

I keep checking Amazon to see if the release date for The Burning Crusade is updated. It's different on so many sites as wowinsider points out because the retailers are just guessing.

Recent Developments: wowvault says there was a blue post that Blizzard is looking at November 31st (31 days hath November? ha ha.). But it was this post (an obvious error) that made me peak at Amazon one more time to check out the release date.

Ooooh, it's updated. But not in a good way. Amazon was kind of an outlier by saying October. Now it says November. Again, I think this is just an updated guess based on the information you see in the posts above.

New Burning Crusade Picture on Amazon

I noticed this new picture for the Burning Crusade on Amazon.com. I thought this might be good news that things were being updated "officially" and we might have a better estimate on a publication date. Unfortunately, it still says the release date is scheduled to be October 15, 2006, so no change; no update. Just a pretty picture.

Jewelcrafting Notes

I got my Warcraft Weekly #8 email and saw that Blizzard now has a Jewelcrafting site under the Burning Crusade section of the website. Well I guess that means I need to break out the Jewelcrafting notes.

Blizzard Burning Crusade Announcement

Jewelcrafting, Socketable Items, and More: Crafters will be pleased to know that the expansion adds an all-new profession to the game: Jewelcrafting. With Jewelcrafting comes the advent of socketable items in World of Warcraft, which will give players additional variety in how they can customize their gear. In addition, existing professions will be enhanced to take advantage of the increased character-level limit.

Gamespot Burning Crusade Q&A

Jewel crafters can also cut gems. Let's say a star ruby drops in the world. A jewel crafter, in addition to making cool items that people will want, can cut that star ruby to make it a socketable gem. The first key to that is that I'll need to get a socketable item, which can be made by other trade skills, dropped in dungeons, that sort of thing. Socketable items, for example, can have three slots. It doesn't compete with enchanting. If I wanted to put gems in all three slots and have an enchantment, I can do that.

wowwiki.com/Jewelcrafting page

At this time, Blizzard has confirmed their plans to allow those who have not purchased the expansion to be able to use items and material created by Jewelcrafting, they state that only those having purchased the Burning Crusade will be able to learn the Jewelcrafting Profession.

Jewelcrafting. First Look." - 2 Small but Zoomed in Screen Caps

E3: Jewelcrafting in Detail (updated) - Watchingwow.com (May 18th, 2006)

The cut gems needed to create socketed jewels amongst other things are said to be mined from mineral nodes

Update August 15, 2006:

One small, interesting tidbit emerged about the new jewelcrafting profession. There will be "meta gems" that can be equipped in your helm slot whose attributes play off of the variety of gems you have socketed on your character. For example, one meta gem might give you a +4 bonus to agility for every blue gem you have equipped; another might confer some kind of bonus for every different-colored gem you have. Certainly some fuel for the min-maxers out there. Source: Gamespy Article

Draenei!

Well, a computer with an internet connection jumped in front of me. Let me tell you how tough it is to go a week with no internet connection. I should've made a t-shirt that said "I'm AFK - tell me what's going on at E3!"

So the first thing I do upon finding this PC is scoot over to Blizzard and there it was, the Draenei are the new Alliance Race. And frankly, they look pretty freaking cool. And proud. In a good way.

For me WoW needs something to reenergize it. I've been reading about Spore in USA today (don't you read that too when you travel?) and I started dallying with the thought of playing different games. Then I saw an article for Seed (anyone know much about this MMORPG?). Sorry, WoW, I'm thinking of cheating on you. But maybe the Burning Crusade will do it. The new races will be fun to experiment with.

So here are some links I'm going to come back and read more in depth once I'm home:

Wowinsider.com points to a New York Times article and has some great screenshots with an interview with a Senior Producer at Blizzard.

Screenshots from the floor of E3 via wowvault.ign.com

The worldofwar.net E3 portal

Update: More Articles referenced on the Blizzard Website

tentonhammer Hits the Burning Crusade

Gamespot's Burning Crusade Impressions

Joystiq Hands On

Gamespy Article

That's about all I have time for. Family thinks I'm getting bottled water. ;)

The Race for the Race

This is a fun page on WoWWiki. It outlines the rumors and hypotheses for what the Alliance race will be in the Expansion (including the recent Quilboar rumors). Rumored Races - WoWWiki

Burning Crusade - Review & Dance Preview

World of Warcraft Vault had some neat Burning Crusade finds: A Preview of the game from gamedaily.com A video of what the /dance will be for the blood elves (the video is apparently from BlizzCon last year)

Expansion Pack Available on Pre-Order

Is that what you think it is?

Yup. It's the pre-order for the Burning Crusade available on Amazon.com.

There's a big write up on it, but here's a juicy excerpt:
"Availability: This item will be released on October 15, 2006."

Now, we all remember going through this when we were originally waiting for WoW. Stores would post it for pre-order and list a date that made no hint it was just an estimate. But we quickly caught on as we saw the different and updated dates. So as of now, it says October 15. Let's see if that sticks.