WoW p5.3 this week, highlights include

Patch 5.3 notes are out, for the Prod drop on May 21st. Ref: MMO-Champion – Patch 5.3 Live This Week for a full summary. I expect downtime to be bigish, with the downloader churning away. This means the cycle is less than three months between patches, and if the next patch comes quickly we might see a staggeringly fast end to the Pandaria story-lines. Blizzard’s website also has a nice prep summary.

I’m pondering the amount of ilevel 500+ gear which is being made available in one time rewards, and perhaps it is time to consider the offset as a priority.

A few highlights for me are:

• the return of the Item Upgrades, via that vendor. Yes, we can again decide if an existing upgrade is better than buying off-loot (” items upgraded with Valor will now cost 250 Valor Points to upgrade per 4 Item Levels, for a total of 500 Valor for 8 Item Levels per item “). Cool. Mr Robot and others will have their systems ready too if what I read is true.
• the ilevel 600 cloaks from the Wrathion quest chain. ilevel 600 is huge, and worth it for everyone. I want it, and want three of them.
• the Heroic Scenarios is a boon I’m looking forward to, not because I want to see that older content again, but because of the chance for the ilevel 516 gear. Including a quest that has a reward of a 516 built in. Wowhead has a comment which lists the rewards by armour type. Why on earth are these using the Pandarian models for blue and green loot? Lazy. A re-colour at least might have been nice – all emeralds and ruby.
• the Heroic scenarios need item level 480 to enter, and use a pre-made team of three. Still hopefully should be not too hard at ilevel 510.
• the new scenarios for the lead up lore/story to the Siege of Orgrimmar. Assuming that is the big deal in patch 5.4, this should get all the players happy with killing Orcs and agreeing that the War Chief is a bad guy, not a good-bad guy.
• a quest has been added that reveals the final Sha and some ilevel 502 boots. Nice upgrade for the slow and unlucky guys like me. Shamefully I’m planning on getting better than this, so I might just take the Tanking option instead of the Dps option.
• I know I should try the brawlers guild soon.
• the Darkspear Rebellion Quartermaster will sell re-colour of popular old Tier gear, upgrades to ilevel 489 which is nice for the alts and new main toons. I don’t mind at all they the stuff is available in a different way. They’ve chosen some nice sets, and as a DK I had access to my set anyway.
• we can now transmog from the Bank and Void Storage directly. Good. Nice change.
• the Heirloom Shields are in. Great news for alts. I’ve been saving the odd Justice Point for this.
• Lastly – I’d love a Hearthstone Beta. I’ve ripped on it recently as a distraction, but I am curious. HINT. Too strong? Nah. HINT HINT.

Overall I’m looking forward to the 5.3 patch. It is not a huge patch for content, rather is a prep patch. It is a great patch for gearing your toons. The folk who don’t get much are those who are already geared up beyond 522 or higher. Sorry guys, only the cloak for you.

I did not finish collecting the Wrathion tokens from boss kills in patch 5.2, but will get there soon. I also don’t run the downloader often, so I’m going to kick that off before bed tonight.

Happy Killing, TyphoonAndrew

Mortigen gets a Dress

Ah the wonderful Tier 14 Breastplate for DPS and Tanking are finally mine. I have the choice now of transmog, or look like a frigg’n idiot. I chose to transmog it back to the Breastplate of the King’s Guard. Here is a snap before “the change”.

Alternate Transmog Idea

Transmogrification is one of those features which supplies endless variety and no actual benefit to killing monsters. As such it is a very interesting game feature to watch going forward to see if any other innovations are added. At the very least it removes us from suffering clown suits while we play; which is darn good.

I had an idea for TransMog v2.0 which would allow an illusion set to be set in the same way a title is selected. This is a specially prepared illusion which displays one set regardless of what you are actually wearing. The character would prepare the gear in the same manner as transmog, and then an illusion of that set appears “always on”.

Thus a leveler or raider who replaces gear often will always look as intended. The cost might be high, perhaps even applied by carrying a specific item which sits in backpack in the same way a haunted memento gives you a shade which follows you. If it was really meant to be for the high rollers, and a profession push was needed it could be a craftable item which needed a synergy of several conflicting professions to craft.

Just a thought.

Related articles

• Shadow Pirate (bubblesofmischief.com)
• Azerothian Pickers (the-dancing-tree.com)

Cosmetic Glyphs are a great idea, more please.

Short comment today to note – I love the fact that we have cosmetic glyphs in the game. Ideally I would have said that we could have kept major & minor glyphs and trivial levels, but its a call that Blizzard made and its not worth crying about.

What I would like to suggest is that the options get expanded for all classes. Paladins for example have a number of cosmetic effects, while DKs have a few that affect out pets. I’m sure Shadow Priests have some (something about being less shadowy) just as examples. More please, perhaps even non-class specific effects too.

A side effect of adding so many new glyphs might be a massive effect on the market, but I think adding very rare glyphs from some other sources or drops is a good thing. In fact I’d like to see some of the rare or lost weapon and armour patterns added to the Blacksmith profession as well.

How about these glyphs:

• (all characters) Burning red flames, blue and white arcane glows and wisps, smoldering smoke, leaves dropping from them, and shadows writhing on the character – as aura effects. These would be translucent effects which surround the character in a subtle way when out of combat.
• (all) The Footsteps of Illidan card where you leave burning footprints effect as a permanent effect.
• (all) Ioun Stones (from dnd, similar to the Shaman watershield), Floating Orbs, etc as special rare find glyphs for Inscription only characters. ie. They get a rare pattern which creates a BoP Glyph. The pattern might be tradable (allowing a market effect) but the glyph is not.
• (all) switch your casting, special weapon swing, standard weapon swing to an alternate animation. Meaning that this will give a fixed alternative for each race, and adding the glyph might make that the default, or even let the toon choose randomly from the set of options.
• (all) Change of default voice, to a different sub-set.
• (all) different Death animation, as many raiders spend a lot of time on the floor. Perhaps the character even twitches a little.
• (all) race specific powers have a chosen colour tint. ie. Let the Draeneo healing effect be a purple aura on my DK, rather than normal.
• (Death Knights) Path of Frost animation whenever a Frost run is used.
• (Druids) As forms are a key part of the class, perhaps allow a greater degree of switching and swapping? Allow a horde model to be used by Alliance. Swim form as a shark, nessy, or Crocolisk.
• (Racial, e.g. Worgen) Make your Worgen form look like the very cool Northrend Worgen instead of your normal model. Likewise for the Dark Iron Dwarves for Dwarves, etc. The roleplaying potential is huge, mechanical effect nill.
• (Engineers) A transporter mistake offers a much wider range of changes, or always one, depending on the glyph used.

What else folks? What is your dream animation, change, or effect?

Related articles

• New and changing glyphs for patch 5.0.4 (wow.joystiq.com)
• Glyph of Disguise (bubblesofmischief.com)
• World Today: This Looks Safe (irez.me)

Transmogrify – Old Rep Gear

Edit: as this look uses primarily white items, its not really a transmog set; more an rp set.
More cool old gear, now from the Bloodsail Buccaneers – you know, the bad guys hanging around near Booty Bay. Arrrr.

Remember too that it is Pirate Day soon, so expect a few scallywags and such to shiver your timbers. The Rep gives you all the basic kit, Hat, Shirt, Pants, etc. the groovy weapons are from elsewhere.

The be all and end all of this rep is that its bloody long and hard to do, it makes you hostile with a variety of Neutral cities, and you get to look like a Pirate. Whats not to love about a huge red hat, fluffy shirt, and a ship’s wheel as a shield. Nuff said really.

Image is straight from wowhead, a pirate surrounded by corpses was too sweet to resist.

Transmogrify – Old Rep Gear

More cool old gear, now from Honor’s Hold rep – the Alliance guys in Hellfire Pen.

Transmogrify – Old Rep Gear

With the whirlwind of news about reusing gear models, I though a mention of the cool old-ish rep gear, like the gear from Shattered Sun Offensive from The Burning Crusade. When you’re pondering gear for that special set – consider the old reps you’ve already earned but don’t offer traditional tiers – they’ve got some great stuff.