Moof

Its most likely the Paladin, DK and Warrior sets follow the same pattern.
With Alliance = Thassarian, Turalyon and Wyrnn (all human)
Horde = Koltira, Liadrin (both Belf) and a notable Horde warrior (my money's on Saurfang or Hellscream)

 

Crossbones

Lady Liadrin is the blood knight matriach, thus the horde paladin set. Koltira Deathweaver is the DK on the horde airship in Icecrown, so DK set. Hellscream should be horde warrior as well.

 

Xabora

There is a good chance for Hellscream to have it, but it might be Saurfang.

I've also updated my posting.

 

Jagiya

It's Hellscream. The complete item lists have been up on MMO-C's DB all day.

 

◊ Talanik

Is Windrunner the correct one for both Horde and Alliance? I would think maybe Rexxar would be one for the Horde Hunters.

 

Keldin

Another interesting thing is why are there 2 different hunter sets? Separate set for BM hunters? Or if the Horde's hunter tier isn't Rexxar or someone else could it be that one faction is getting Pursuit, the other Battlegear?

 

Vaccine

Why would it be Alliance? Given that Windrunner Village is in Horde territory, one of our faction leaders is Sylvannas Windrunner, and that the High Elves are now Blood Elves it seems like it is an obvious Horde set name. The only link Alliance really has is Alleria who has been missing a long long time now.

 

Jagiya

Yep, one for Sylvanas and one for Vereesa. The items even have seperate ID's (#48814-48818 and #48819-48823)

EDIT: Vaccine, Vereesa is the Leader of the Silver Covenant. That's exclusively an Alliance affiliation.

 

Vaccine

Actually looking at the quests datamined from MMO-Champion there are three dailys that deal with the captured beasts. One is to gather eggs to feed the worms, one is to find Snobolds for Gormok so he is the Magnataur. The third is to find shark meat for Icehowl, who it says is a Yeti.

What do you feed a Yeti anyway?
Breakfast of Champions
Gormok Wants His Snobolds - Sigrie

 

Varuk

Van'Cleef's Battlegear is, erm, slightly underwhelming. Is that really the best they could do? Kinda sad.

Now, if only it looks like defias leather. That would be epic.

 

Jagiya

I've been trying to think of another noteworthy Alliance Rogue and the best I can come up with is the SI:7 guy in the Cheese Shop.

Besides, there's the whole "in-game level doesn't dictate real power" thing, which is nice because I think this kinda gives Van'Cleef a bit of the respect/glory he deserved for all his hard work rebuilding Stormwind.
(Murder and treachery aside!)

 

Munorion

I think that's up to personal taste, really. Most members of my guild love that name. The SI:7 guy would be Elling Trias.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...s/MuLepton.png

 

Jax883

Regarding release dates and loot availability to raids who are not in the top 10% of their servers: I think we're overlooking a driving fundamental. In a phrase: Follow the money.

It is worth repeating that Blizzard is a for-profit business, and as such they are going to time the releases of their major expansions around the time when people are spending a lot of money (i.e.holiday shopping seasons). WotK was released in early November to coincide with the holiday season, as was TBC's original release date, as was the original game (which was the Warcraft series' 10 year anniversary- guess why). I personally wouldn't expect to see 3.2 until late September/October at the earliest.

Blizz is addressing is the casual gamer and their progression for the same reason they began the 10-day free trials: to bring in people who may not be interested in hardcore, balls-to-the-wall raiding but still wish to enjoy the experiences of World of Warcraft. Again, follow the money: it explains the raid encounter nerfs, the homogenization of the classes, the ease of accessibility to top tier loot.

The casual gamers are and will comprise a larger and larger percentage of the server populations. This is why I feel there is no need to release 3.2 when most of this population has not breached the inner realms of Ulduar (going back to the repeated statements to allow the casual gamers to see more raid content). Blizz will throw a bone to it's hardcore, dedicated gamers with very trying encounters initially and the best loot available initially, but they need the income of those casual gamers and thus will make their latest content (whatever it's form) easier to get, and quicker to get. Follow the money.

 

Shadout

I doubt anyone is ignoring that Blizzard is a business. Obviously Blizzard will keep nerfing older content over time, to make it more accessible. Its a strategy which has proved to be very successful. Releasing a new instance is in itself a way to make Ulduar more accessible too, due to the better gear available.

Following the money-logic is basically flawed though. Sometimes businesses take decisions which might make less economic sense in the short term due to long-term concerns (or arbitrary non-economic concerns for that matter), and thus its really hard to predict their behavior through a simplistic rational economic point of view.
If not, everyone would be making FIFA 200whatever.

It is a bit surprising they seem to be releasing 3.2 so 'soon' after 3.1, because of the huge amount of content in Ulduar. But lets not forget that there are more than raiding to WoW. 3.2 is released with a BG, a 5man, new daily quests etc.
And then a raid instance on top of it, which clearly seems to be a bridge between Ulduar and Icecrown.
I see no reason why 3.2 shouldn't be approximately as long as earlier patches on PTR, and thus be released in late August or so.

 

Ptoleman

Don't forget VanCleef's incredible power to have five heads in any situation.

Quite right, Shadout. Sometimes Blizzard will make "less" profitable decisions in order to maintain a long-term demographic trend or portion of the player-base. Blizzard is a business, but not all business decisions must (or even should) turn out the greatest possible amount of profit for the company. Sometimes quality-of-life issues take precedence; sometimes the most profitable path in theory is just too difficult in practice; and sometimes it just goes against the mindset and way of the company. FIFA 2000-style games just don't fit Blizzard as we know it. :P

On a side note, I am a bit concerned that the concept of quickly clearing easy content for lots of badges will become popular again with the "upping" of all badge levels in Naxx-25 and such. I suppose Blizzard decided that forcing a new 80 to gear through Naxx, then Ulduar, then the Coliseum was too much of a grind. At least this time around the raiding badges will be one tier below the latest content, so the "fiasco" of BoJs won't be repeated--at least not in the same way. We'll see what we'll see.

Jeff Goldblum is one of the most powerful units in all of Warcraft.

Stealing Children for the Walrus Men since November 2008.

 

◊ arison

Haven't prospected any titanium yet (bank toon is still pelding copy), but I did check out the recipe vendor. Five JC tokens gets you a new recipe, and the recipes require 450 JC. Fifteen Emblems of Heroism gets you an epic gem. There is also a repeatable quest to turn in 10 titanium powders (probably the same as adamantium powder).

 

Darian_TruBlade

My only concern regarding this issue is the potential for players to get lazy and avoid higher tier content in favor of the lower tiers. Otherwise it's a godsend in terms of helping guilds such as mine catch up, as well as providing altoholics like myself a way to keep alts raid-worthy if they're needed in a pinch.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Leviathon

If you mean underwhelming in how it looks then you need to remember that every single set is using placeholder models right now.

 

Talgog

Calling it a grind is fair. You can add a lot of Heroics or gold grinding step for people who wouldn't be carried by a cooperative guild since most semi-open Naxx groups don't want DPS that has nothing to contribute. There's also a much more legitimate complaint about a new tank or a new healer. Those people had trouble getting in a VoA 25 pug when it was just Archavon, nevermind anything else or VoA now that it's Emalon and the presumably T9 one.

One thing I would like to see is *some* route of getting a 213+ weapon other than hitting Kel'Thuzad over the head in Naxx 10 or slogging repeatedly through Naxx 25, getting the drop, and then winning a roll that's generally a 1/4 proposition at best (frequently 1/10 on the really good stuff). The mathematical expectation of getting what you need here is simply abysmal.

I was around during BC; I fully understand what Blizzard is reacting against. But really, when it's two tiers behind cutting edge, is it really too much to ask to have something that's not entirely dependent on two fractional probabilities.

 

Camaris

The Alliance has no-one famous like Garona. Technically, the head of SI:7 is Mathias Shaw, but who knows that name? Van Cleef is a name with history.

To summarize again,

Tier 9:
ilvl 232, "of Conquest" (10m)
ilvl 245, "of Triumph" (25m, 10m heroic?)
ilvl 258, "of Triumph", new "Heroic" tag (25m heroic)

I wonder how the instances work now. It seems easiest to make 10-man and 25-man different instance portals now, each with a heroic toggle.

 

Douglas

I think this will inevitably happen, and the question is just a matter of degree. I mean, I know a player (a co-worker) who decided he could completely avoid higher-tier content because of the tournament weapons.

Some percentage of the player base is going to skip any content that's "too hard" no matter what the rewards are. Some percentage of the player base is going to do challenging content even if it doesn't have any rewards at all.

The trap the 3.2 design avoids is, the players who will do the least difficult work required to get the best (buyable) gear can't avoid the higher tier content, as they could in TBC. So the question is, what percentage of players will opt for the "penultimate" buyable gear in order to skip the higher-tier content? Seems to me that this is a great balance point, though I really wish it had been done in a more gradual manner (ie. that badges moved up one level when Ulduar was released rather than two levels with the coliseum).

It's also important (I think) to note that this is not the last tier. If it turns out that a bunch of players do skip the coliseum, I would bet the pattern is not repeated for the next content patch, to coax people along. I'd rather have Blizzard run the experiment now and collect the data than just guess and make a decision they can't back out of later.

 

Adremma

Currently on the PTR, there are now separate settings under the character portrait menu for Dungeon Difficulty (with the usual Normal/Heroic choices) and Raid Difficulty (10 player/25 player/10 player (Heroic)/25 player (Heroic)). Not the solution I expected, but quite handy.

 

Rhaegal

I think my favorite outcome of all the BS datamined information yesterday is GC's handling of the T9 "set bonuses" discussion.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Tier 9 set bonuses

In two short sentences he gave everyone who thinks these are anything other than placeholders a place to voice their concerns and feel like someone actually cares, without actually saying they're real or not. Then he just walked away and let them duke it out in a single ignorable thread that will go out with the trash, instead of hundreds of individual QQ threads. Brilliant!

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

KTalisman

I'm guessing you missed the part where the tournament grounds collapse in revealing an underground Nerubian cave?

 

Dubbleutyeff

PTR's traditionally last six weeks (3.1 was the longest PTR they've had at seven weeks). That clocks 3.2 going live in early to mid August, assuming this PTR follows past trends.

That icon was added for Anub'arak in the 5-man. They also added a bunch of Achievement_Boss_* icons for all the other 5-man bosses.

http://wotlkwiki.info/up2/pages/news...s_Anubarak.png