World of Warcraft at Allakhazam.com

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has posted an update regarding feral druid changes that are coming in the next patch. To sum it up, bonus armor on items will not receive the bear armor multiplier and weapons in the game will no longer improve feral attack power. An improvement in the Survival of the Fittest talent should basically compensate for your current armor bonus, and here's his take on feral weapons:

We are no longer going to have weapons in the game which improve feral attack power. Instead, your attack power will scale based on the dps of the item. Practically speaking this means almost no change for any gear you currently use -- you should not see your dps change. What it does mean is that we can create the occasional dps staff that could be used by druids or hunters (or very undergeared warriors), and that Ferals may occasionaly use two-handed dps maces.

GC's full post can be found here or below.

Episode 6 of BlizzCast, the official Blizzard podcast, is now online, and it contains an hour of interviews regarding World of Warcraft, Starcraft II and Diablo III.

In the sixth epic episode of BlizzCast, we spend a day with a developer and find out what life is like for World of Warcraft Lead Tools Programmer Monte Krol. Next, we take a look at StarCraft II unit design from concept to creation with Senior Art Director Samwise Didier and Lead Game Designer Dustin Browder. In our third segment, Bashiok spends some time with Anthony Rivero, senior artist for Diablo III, and discusses "bridging the gap" in the series’ character design. Bornakk wraps the episode up by answering some questions from the community.

You can download an mp3 of the show here or read the transcript here.

You killed your raid content mobs, you topped out your player versus player (PvP) rewards, you leveled to the cap only a month after the last expansion and, in only a few weeks (or days), the newest content addition to the game is coming out; the dreaded expansion.

Most MMOs that offer expansions which increase the level cap cause depreciation of old content. Let me explain. While features or content are not removed, and backwards compatibility is maintained, the content previous to the expansion often becomes obsolete or out of date. There is little reason for players to go through old content when there's obviously a new and better way of doing things.

Blizzard has prepared for Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) by making previously challenging raid encounters significantly easier, forcing some folks to cry foul as their hard work becomes "cheapened". The drops now pull from the same loot tables as they did before the change, but with significantly less risk and challenge.

So my question to you is, do you care?

Some of the folks on our World of Warcraft board discussed this very thing last week, and the replies, barbed though they were, elicited strong responses on either side.

Due to the overwhelming popularity of the newest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, and the absolute hordes of players descending upon Northrend, Blizzard has just announced that there is a new feature available for all of you who have not yet taken the plunge into the frozen wastes yet. As discovered and posted over in our WoW General Forums by Kelnoen the Malevolent :

I’ve had the opportunity to conduct some fun interviews over the years but sitting down with Jeffrey “Tigole”  Kaplan felt like I was hanging out with an extremely knowledgeable gamer, not a big wig at a major studio. From the moment I met him he had this pleasant aura about him which made it extremely easy to talk about our previous lives as hardcore ‘EverQuesters’. Once upon a time Jeff was the GM of a guild that many of you reading have likely heard of, “Legacy of Steel”. He’s used his love and knowledge of gaming and the end result is World of Warcraft.

The following is from my talk with Jeff Kaplan on Wednesday night at the official Blizzard Wrath of the Lich King Launch event in Anaheim, California. Special thanks go out to Humphrey Cheung from TGdaily.com for the pictures and to Blizzard PR for sneaking me inside Fry’s.

Allakhazam : Hey Jeff, thank you so much for agreeing to talk with us tonight. We know there is a lot going on so we appreciate your time.

Jeff : Well I really appreciate being here and I'm a huge fan of Allakhazam so it's my pleasure.

Allakhazam : Thank you! So what were some of the major challenges you had developing Wrath of the Lich King?