1561

I wonder who’s getting fired for that delay. I don’t quite understand how they went from saying they would release an xpac every year (they stated that right after the TBC launch) to taking over 2 years to release this one. It’s really a giant cluster fuck of a mess in regards to potential profits being lost because of how slowly they roll out content.

I like the game and all but 2 years of the same dozen or so dungeons and 3 1/2 raid zones (ToGC doesn’t really count as a full zone in my books), one of which was just rehashed content from Vanilla is pretty lackluster. They have brought in a few nice things, one of which is the Dungeon Finder, but from what I can tell they’re axing portal hubs of Dalaran / Shatt and unless if they come up with a nice hub in Cata I don’t get what their reasoning is behind that. No-one likes travel time. Sure 5 minute flights are ok, but anything more than that is at the point of no-one wants to deal with that anymore. I don’t think anyone really enjoyed travel time after going through the zone a couple of times, but they tend not to get that in these types of games.

I have a feeling once Diablo 3 comes out I’ll end up quitting WoW altogether because rehashing zones is not very exciting in my books. I spent enough time in the barrens over the years I really don’t feel like going back to it even if it’s been transformed by some sort of crazy event.

1562

I don’t understand; Dalaran (or Shatt) can continue to be your portal hub. Just leave your hearth set to Dal, and you won’t have any travel times. Unless they stick raid instances out in Winterspring or something.

1563

They removed the portals in dalaran and shatt.

1564

What? They removed the Shatt and Dalaran portals? Why? It doesn’t make sense. Unless they are going to let you set your HS to multiple places. At least make it so that you can make a round trip.

1565

They want it to be about the Old World, I guess. Not hearthing to Shatt/Dalaran when you want to get from Thunder Bluff to Undercity.

1566

Yeah, this makes the most sense. Portals to all the vanilla cities made sense when nobody needed to go there anymore

1567

Ugh, also MMO-Champion has the price of Justice & Valor items. Two interesting points:

  1. The cheapest item is 950 justice points, which is 350 converted Frost badges. A chest piece is 2200, or about 830 converted Frosts
  2. Justice items are all blues, not epics

Does anyone know how many Justice points you get from a regular dungeon clear?

1568

They better have some better way for travelling between Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms then. I hate the boats. I’m using the word “hate” here, about a part of a video game. That’s how much I don’t like them.

1569

Except people did need to go there. Just for the AH alone, but also because of doing older content for farming runs for mounts or achievements, or just farming / skilling up trades.

Then add in alts, and just how many there are now in this game and how frustrating it would be travel wise if they didn’t have the portals around to easily zip around. I don’t know anyone who didn’t bind in Dalaran / Shatt once the hubs were available and just used it as a staging point to zip around between areas for questing and that to reduce the travel time greatly. Yes even with the new Dungeon Finder option it’s still used like crazy just from the questing standpoint of things and being able to zip back and retrain with your trainer and then head back to your questing hub while you waited between dungeons.

The hubs have been around for 4 years now, so taking it away at this point (if that’s the route they’re going) won’t go over very well with people.

1570

Those are incidental things, and time spent on your alt. When you’re at max level, you have never had the option to quickly teleport around the world map of your max level unless you’re a mage.

I always just bought and mailed stuff from the AH using my bank alt. And sure, I would use the portal if I needed to train, but they put trainers where the portals used to be, and all my level 80+ characters will be bound to a Azeroth capital city from now on, which all have Auction Houses and trainers.

1571

We’ll also be able to fly pretty quickly from one old city to another (as long as they’re on the same continent), especially with 310% speed being purchasable. Still, we’ve gotten pretty spoiled with our portals, and it’ll take some time to adjust. And if you can’t adjust, well just roll a mage. :)

Does anyone know how many Justice points you get from a regular dungeon clear?

A quick Google search shows bosses giving around 15JP in a heroic. Someone said they killed Marrowgar and got 23JP. The weekly raid quest gave 137JP.

Given this info, and the price of the current frost/triumph items on the PTR, I’m really amazed at the low conversion rate for frost and triumph badges. I guess they’re trying to keep people from farming up a bunch of badges before the patch and having a real meaningful amount of JP when they convert, but with the caps in place, it doesn’t make much sense.

1572

What are you talking about? You’ve had options to quickly teleport all around Dalaran for portals or to other places without needing a mage. You have your hearth stone, your dalaran ring, tabard for the tournament, locket from shadowmourne quest, dire brew remote, necklace from black temple, wormhole generators if you’re an engineer etc etc.

People use the portals more than you might think and if the travel time is increased drastically over what it currently is, like I said, some people will get annoyed. Having ease of transport in for 4 years and then yanking it isn’t going to further the cause for people to enjoy the game.

They added in the dungeon finder and automatically port people in to and out of the dungeon, so they’re aware how much people hate to travel in this game. I’m just pointing out that it’s going to create an issue with a lot of players.

As for the judgement point conversion I think they’re making it scale so low due to the fact that they’ve decided to give you money for the remaining points that are over and above what you have and at a rather generous amount in regards to what you can currently farm up. From their current rate it looks like I’ll make about 24k from the PvP conversion alone right now and I haven’t even decided to go on a farming spree.

1573

How much is that going to cost? Like, 50,000G?

1574

Old world flying cost $250 Gold

1575

310% flying is 5,000g before faction discounts.

Edit: And you should still be able to get it for free through the usual means like completing the world event achievement. Whether or not 310% mounts will be given for future raid meta achievements is somewhat unknown, but I’m almost 100% sure they’ll remove them from the current (ICC and Ulduar) metas.

1576

I had been trying to get the seasonal festival achievements (for the 310% flying mount) for the longest time until I realized how impossible the School of Hard Knocks achievement was for me (and I had completed most of the other seasonal stuff at that point).

I was very disappointed, so it’s nice to see Blizzard finally just making the damn things something you can purchase.

1577

It will be nice to have it affect all the mounts i own, I get tired of the purple proto drake.

1578

5k gold is pretty easy to come by

1579

Boy if you’re into WoW lore and exploring the whole map, this is the expansion for you. I’m levelling a druid through the new Night Elf starting area, and there are NPCs tucked away all over with little expository scripted events for your enjoyment.

But the redesigns make the whole getting-to-20 process much quicker and more pleasant, I must say.

1580

Has anyone reported on how much you get for a Cataclysm heroic clear?