World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

[George]

Blizzard's physical authenticators are like little keychains with a digital display, carrying one around on your person is like the ultimate anti-vagina.

[Vlos]

Kevin confirmed for WORST OFFICER OF ALL TIME. In other news, did you guys see the end to Iron Man 2? Wow who knew there was gonna be a Thor movie, all of this breaking news I can't take it.

[Mzo]

Amigo! Sabes que?

[MechDeus]

I hear Starcraft 2 was announced.

[dave is ok]

Path of the Titans and the Glyph System

Path of the Titans: Removed!
Blizzard has scrapped the entire Path of the Titans progression system. As it is, it may be coming back—but not likely.

Tom Chilton explained that Blizzard had spent a long time working on the Path of the Titans system, trying to balance making it complicated enough to be interesting, but simple enough to be understandable. At the end of the day, they realized that they had ripped it all down until it resembled an upgrade to the glyph system. Simultaneously, they felt that the Glyph system wasn't as much of a game-changer in WotLK as they had originally wanted it to be, so they've decided instead to scrap the Path of the Titans concept, and instead focus on making the glyph system into the feature they had originally wanted.

Glyph System Changes
To accomplish this, they've added a new tier of glyphs: Medium Glyphs. Tom explained that in Wrath, people were really powergaming their glyph choices—that glyphs, like talents, had gotten to a point where everyone agreed on what the "best" glyphs were for each class and spec, and anyone who chose otherwise was dumb. With medium glyphs, they're trying to break that system up a bit—major glyphs are still critical, but minor and medium glyphs have more flexibility.

On the UI side, there have also been a few changes—I was asked not to take photos, but the glyph UI now lists all the possible glyphs for your class. Tom Chilton pointed out that up until now there had been no way to get a complete list of all your possible glyphs in-game—the only option was to go to the Auction House and look through what was available (or to patronize our own fine establishment).

There was also talk about making glyphs permanent rather than consumable—so that as soon as you used a glyph for the first time, it was added to your "list", and thereafter you could rearrange your glyphs later on as you chose.

Fuck Blizzard. Not that I was very excited for the Path of Titans or anything - but this is the third thing (Aerial combat and dance studio) that they've advertised heavily and never actually got into the game.

Last, but most definitely not least, is Cataclysm's new guild levelling. Again, this has been pared down slightly from the BlizzCon vision, but only very slightly, with the idea of guild talent trees - which would really only have been fun for the leader - replaced with a linear trail of convenience Perks that unlock every guild level. They might be experience or mount speed boosts, reduced repair costs, or mass resurrection or raid teleport skills, and everyone in the guild can use them.

That makes being in a guild sound attractive, but the really important part of the equation is to tie the player to the guild, to mitigate against fickleness or even the sale of advanced guild profiles. This is achieved by every player having a reputation level, just like faction rep, with their own guild, which is advanced by killing bosses, earning guild achievements, winning in PVP with guildmates by your side, or questing. Advancing in reputation unlocks special guild rewards from a vendor (bank slots, flying mounts, standards with a guild emblem). All this is supported by a quasi-Facebook guild pane complete with news feed and browsable roster with links to guildmates' profession panels.

Now Archeaology is pointless and they also are removing Guild Talent Trees. I might not buy Cata.

[dave is ok]

Raids & Dungeons Split
Raid leaders will be able to split an ongoing 25-man raid into up to three 10-man raids. Those 10-man raids will be able to continue from that point on, with bosses already down.

So far it looks like it won't be possible to merge 10-man raids into 25-man raids, for obvious reasons.

Information gathered from other sites:

* Raid IDs should be much more flexible. You will be able to join any raid as long as it doesn't have any bosses up that you have already killed. (Details on Wowhead)
* There will be more Algalon-style encounters—ultra-hard optional bosses for hardcore players only. (Details on Wowhead)

This is awesome at least.

[Thief Silver]

Looks like they just straight up deleted all of my characters. Now that is a pain in the ass.

Also I ran a scan while curse updater was running, and essentially a keylogger popped up. So there's a good chance it was from the Curse Addon updater.

[MechDeus]

So there's a good chance it was from the Curse Addon updater.

People actually still use that thing? Hasn't it been a major source of malware at least three times by now?

[Opaque]

We hit phase three for the first time in Heroic 25 tonight. A kill is getting very close.

That room is no joke in 25 man, though. The damage is intense.

[Vlos]

Were we planning on doing anything tonight? I remember Monday being put up as a possible day to continue. Either way, my cousin has asked me to watch her kids tonight so I won't be able to make it if we are gonna try again.