I couldn't agree more with that.

I really don't see why they have to make a long awaited 25man instance a realm effort when there are guilds who have running BT/Hyjal for so long they could do it blindfolded but that's not all of it.
Guilds that are totally into PVE want the perfect raiding enviroment and that's why my guild moved from a daily 600queue to a dead empty realm to get some good standards. Now most will say why? we made a decision to move before Sunwell but what options did we have?
A) Stay on a realm with tons of guilds raiding Sunwell and future content at the same time with a daily 600queue.
B) Move to a dead realm with no queues and more or less just us in the instance.
The A option would make a safe journey into Sunwell most likely if the whole Sunwell concept is population based but then with the queues and so many guilds raiding..it would turn into a disaster.
So yeah B option seems to me alot more valid but does it matter what we do as raiders? Seems like it always goes against us in someway. If naxx was such a great thing blizzard did for us then why not learn from it?
I don't know exactly how the whole idea will work and what we actually will have to do to get it open yet but i know that every little nobody will get a freeride into Sunwell with the proper realm if that's how it's gonna work. Alot of reflection on my own guild of course but there are other guilds out there on not very populated realms who probably agree.
As XI said..if it is a AQ gate thing this will be a disaster. PTR will be interesting aswell seeing as people these days think PTR is LIVE which it really isn't. Just wait and see...or wait for another explaination about Sunwell that doesn't give anything.

I actually like Hyjal, mostly because of the lore behind it. Somewhat like how I like black morass or durnholde, from a lore point of view. On instance design tho, BM is close the the most terrible idea ever, and hyjal is just an improved version of it.

As for Sunwell, we've only seen a few screenshots(1?). Maybe it'll change between different areas, having some new and shiny newly rebuilt places, and some still in ruins. Hell even if you just add a layer of corruption and darkness on the blood elf architecture, you'd end up with something rather interesting, somewhat vampire-like, with stylized architecture yet opressing atmosphere. A bit hard to describe in words when my native language isn't english tho.

Oh and one thing I forgot about why I like open air fights. Travel form. It feels so much more fun to be able to travel form to go from one place to the other, instead of staying in treeform the whole time. That's why I like archimonde, going around doomfires to go decurse people far away when no one else can get there in a timely fashion.

Well, whether there is a world 'race' or not won't make or break a raid instance. Too few care for that aspect ...guys from D&T, Nihilum, Forte (as exemplified by this thread) and such guilds represent a very, very tiny group. Most of the Kel'Thuzad kills (and no one would claim that to be an easy feat) came in November/December 2006. Only really good guilds made it that far - most of them farming Illidan for long months nowadays. These raiders weren't part of this world race which only concerns a few hundreds. They beat the content because they were very good guilds and they liked it because it was also very well-made. The race aspect got nothing to do with it apart from the fact that so few actually finished it -- which makes it feel very, very exclusive and in the realities of TBC (where content is more accessible although still limited to 1.5% of the raiding population) it also makes it feel very nostalgic - "those were the best days of my raiding life.." feeling. Don't let this warp your judgment.

Because of the PTR, Bosskillers, the 'culture' of releasing kill movies and above all the Sunwell server event (no matter how it turns out it will still mean some servers will unlock the last three bosses faster than others) the "world race" will hardly have any meaning. To be honest, this isn't even something new. Because of the good US PTR, Naxxramas was at first dominated by US guilds. Because of the good EU PTR, it was three European guilds which dominated BT progression. AQ40 and Naxxramas both had encounters that served as a 'leveler'. AQ40 had C'Thun 1.0 which leveled the playing field. Some guilds reached C'Thun faster than others but in the end it didn't matter. 24 hours after the hotfix, tens of kills started to pour in. Likewise, the Four Horseman (because of its technical and practical requirements) halted Death and Taxes for a while giving the chance to Nihilum and the others to catch up. Once the 4H tactic went out, many more kills poured in. To cut a long story short, world firsts and the 'world race' doesn't mean much. It was never fair and it will never be. But for some it's fun and a reason to play. But those are so few that's very insignificant.

Nowadays, it is "server races" that count most - if you want to mention races. They involve thousands more players and the race is held on the same server which will mean a lot in Sunwell because of the unlocking event.

However, races apart, what is most important and what will make or break Sunwell is not the race aspect. We want bug-free, creative and challenging content. Encounters which leave a good taste in the mouth after you defeated them. More C'Thuns, Less Kaz'rogals. C'Thun wasn't late Naxx, wasn't even a gear check but it was an encounter which left almost everybody satisfied. Let's hope Sunwell isn't a rush job.

This has been posted on Mmo-champion's board.

No idea if it's real or not, but if it is, makes sunwell interesting ... to say the least.

I checked out the screenshot with interest, some sweet items. Would love to know the ilvl of some of those.

The weapons look to be about ilvl 156, with a strong possibility of some of them being 161. I don't know the formula for converting DPS -> dmg or healing. Sunflare and Crux look like they're a higher item level than the majority of the other weapons.

The main thing that makes me think it is real is that there are 3 different melee daggers and 2 melee swords. But the pic is probably fake because the druid staff is reasonably well itemized.

Er, a bit more seriously now: Love that trinket for healing (the instant heal one), real or not, its a damn cool idea.

yeah

Pretty cool idea

Pallys will LOVE this one ( shamans too )

I prefer the glimerring sliver

Another question

If those are true, does this means we can hope to see 2.4 ptr up really really soon ? ?

glimerring sliver, insane mp5..

i thought most of those leaked loots are real, those 5mins cd make the trinket so powerful but not tooooo much IMBA

You can also see the item icons and some of the graphics behind the text of each item. Seems real to me. Hopefully they'll spread these items out correctly and give them drop rates that are non-dumb. That healing trinket is awesome, and the Shard of Contempt is almost better than trinkets like Madness of the Betrayer and Tsunami Talisman for enhancement shaman even without the proc counted in.

Anyway, where the axes is?!

The fact that you can see the item icons, most of the items seem about the same item level, the tooltips are transparant and the names are very related to Sunwell either makes these real (my guess) or the best fake items I've seen since WoW launch.

I think those are fake. Since when does blizzard use abbreviations in item desciptions?: Glimmering Naaru Sliver: "sec"

edit: i really need to look at my own trinkets, lol. Ignore the above

They do that all the time. Look at like any trinket.

[Dragonspine Trophy]

Well all trinkets now use the abbreviation sec.

Some of those items seem way to powerful, and some of the equip bonus' just seem off to me.

Overall, those items just seem way to good on the itemization, something blizzard has not been known to do.

If these are real, I'm disappointed with continued presence (indeed, it seems more common) of haste for casters, since it still doesn't affect dots (spriest, aff lock, demo lock), and is less valuable for all locks due to increasing the need to lifetap. Plus it causes issues for any class with a spell rotation (e.g. ele shm.)

I'm not sure how happy the healers are with haste either.

The staff should have strength and agility swapped for being "reasonably well itemised", but it is indeed a good step forward.


Unless they changed how itemisation works, it would be the following way:

Early bosses: +266 damage, +500 healing, +1197 feral AP, 108 DPS 1H
Ilvl estimate: 154

End boss(es): +292 damage, +550 healing, 115 DPS 1H, 149 DPS 2H
Ilvl estimate: 165/166



Note: Due to the way how itemisation works, caster/feral two-hander DPS scales a little bit with item level. Thus, the feral and the caster staff are the same ilvl, whereas the healer staff is higher.
Ilvl estimates: +dmg/healing on caster weapons scales seemingly linear with ilvl. ilvl 141 ~ +236 dmg/443 heal, ilvl 151 ~ 259 dmg/486 heal, extrpolated for the listed weapons.

Though it obviously can be fake, IF it's true it's from an internal build, and it's common for typos to slip in during early phases of any product.

We are not amused.

There was a long discussion on this topic, haste for healers shares all the problems of haste for DPS casters, but got added issue of DPS being always useful (even if not all DPS spells benefit from haste), while HPS is not always the most critical for succesful healing.

Typos have slipped into live versions before as well. [Totem of the Maelstrom] used to say it reduced the mana cost of "Heaing Wave" for a while, and [Wristguards of Determination] used to be called the Wristgaurds of Determination.

Doesnt mean much, we've all seen spelling mistakes on items before. Sometimes fixed before release , other mistakes slipping through.

Mmo-champion.com says they're fake, and from a private server.

2.4, Blue posts, UICentral, WoW Comic

I think we all remember that the warrior ZG enchant used to increase Black value too

Well the front page of MMO champ says that they are definately fake so who knows.