WoW PTR Patch 3.3.3 Guides


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For those of you who frequent the Test Realms don’t be alarmed if your characters no longer appear to have any achievement history. In an attempt to improve the copy process characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history. Not a very big deal in my opinion as achievement history will matter little if not at all on any Test Realm.

Items

Glyph of Disease and Glyph of Fireball have been changed. Glyph of Disease now triggers a refresh of Icy Talons when Frost Fever is refreshed. This improves the Glyph and I would think Death Knights using it should notice a small improvement in their DPS. Glyph of Fireball has also changed, sort of. While it no longer increases the critical strike of Fireball, it reduces the cast time of Fireball by .15 seconds. So while you won’t be putting out as many crits, you will be able to cast more Fireballs. Sounds to me like not much of a change was made to this glyph.

Frozo the Renowed will be coming to Dalaran and he wants your orbs! Frozen Orbs that is. Let’s face it Frozen Orbs are pretty much useless. Everyone I know has at least several stacks taking up space in their bank. You cannot sell them on the Auction House for any decent amount of money, and the gear that you make with them is obsolete even for alt characters. I’ve even considered selling them to a vendor just to be rid of them, now I am very glad I didn’t.

On the down side this may spell the end of the huge profits being made by the Alchemy and Herbalism professions. With easy access to some of their most profitable items the prices on flasks and Frost Lotus will inevitably have to fall.

So be sure to stock up on all the Frozen Orbs you can, as they will prove to be worthwhile sometime in the near future. Be warned though, as with anything that is valuable, be wary of ninjas and be sure to set loot rules at the start of an instance so there is no confusion.

Dungeons and Raids

In the Dungeon and Raid department Blizzard will now be allowing players to skip the intro in the Culling of Stratholme once they have completed the dungeon at least once. Can I get a hallelujah? While I enjoy the in game dialog as much as anyone, after hearing it so many times it gets a little old. I can think of several other fights that I would love to see Blizzard implement this option for in the future.

Quests

Blizzard has decided to improve the vehicle mechanics of quests vehicles. They claim the change was made all in the interest of fun. There are no real details as to what changes will be made, however I personally love driving the in game vehicles, so anything that could possibly make it even better is a good thing in my book. However as with all things these changes do have the potential to backfire and actually end up making driving vehicles less pleasurable. Cross your fingers that that is not the case.

User Interface

The User Interface has one of the longer lists of changes, the simplest of which is the updated Alert icons added to the game.

Auction House

More interesting changes were made to the Auction House, many of which promise to help improve the ease of use for all players. For example, now if the Auction House is not available on your realm, when opened players will be informed via pop up. This means no more standing around staring at a blank Auction House screen trying to decide if the Auction House is actually broken, or if lag is to blame.

Players will also now be able to right click to place their items in the Auction House. This is very good news. I can’t begin to tell you how many pots and elixirs I have accidentally used attempting to put them up for sale, and I know I can’t be the only one.

To further improve the usability of the Auction House whole stacks of the same item can now be placed in the Auction frame, and several options are offered to choose how they should be listed, including Stack Size, Number of Stacks, and Price. An Auction Post Completion Bar has also been added. Much like a cast bar if multiple items or stacks are being listed at once this bar will report the progress of each listing. Players will need to stand still during this process as any movement will interrupt it, but they will still be able to browse the Auction House.

Overall these changes to the Auction House seem solid and I personally feel were much needed. I know that many players are in the Auction House “business” and sell large quantities of the materials they collect (leather, ore, herbs, etc) for profit. These changes should make that job at least a tiny bit less tedious. Hopefully much testing is given to it on the PTR, as changes of this sort tend to bring many bugs with them.

Quest Tracking Feature

More big changes here, and like the Dungeon Finder all are being made to make this function more player friendly. Changes include exclamation points over quest items that begin a quest to make them easier to see, quest objectives and exclamation points will no longer appear dim on the map or over quest givers heads for low level quests,
a function to widen the Quest Tracking Objectives Frame has been added, and a short description for a tracked quest is now displayed on the Map.

The Objectives Frame will also be changing, listing the number of quests displayed at the top. Players will also have the ability to sort and/or filter their quests. All of these changes should provide players, both old and new with a better questing experience. I feel these changes will make questing much easier, and in turn make completing achievements such as Loremaster more doable. Also by improving the questing experience it should encourage newer players to continue playing instead of becoming frustrated.