My logic for the 16th not being the patch date was that I didn't expect Blizzard to have a few million people come home at 12:20am to install their new expansion and not be able to log on. Having to wait until the end of extended maintenance is one thing, but with the risk of another 24+ hour patch day I think that they will push this on the 9th and cancel scheduled maintenance on the 16th.

I was not aware of the blue post stating that there wouldn't be another patch pre-expansion. Patch release dates are always rampant speculation anyway, the only difference this time is that we have an absolute maximum date to work against.

Word on the street has it that beta testers with fresh 60's on the PTR cannot create new Blood Elf or Draenei characters, nor can they gain experience beyond level 60 (even while killing and questing in Outland.)

This is one of those bugs I certainly hope they plan to fix...

For non-beta Testers, the PTR is just like as if you did not buy the expansion. You can see the 70 items on the AH, but cannot enter the Dark Portal nor Ghostlands.

I queued for some BGs, you get the BG entering sound every few seconds (I unqueued after that).

Its not a bug, when you try you get an error to the effect that the character/class is disabled. Presumely this will allow them to push out the client and server ahead of Jan 17th, and flip a switch on Jan 17th to allow new races/classes and XP past 60 with a valid TBC key attached to your account.

Funny, I got the test client in like half an hour, but as for the "live" preload data, which is most likely exactly the same 144 mb of data, I got 256kb. I've been running the downloader for nearly 20 hours.

Sorry if this is mentioned somewhere else, but I haven't noticed it.

I just checked on both the PTR and TBC Beta, and rogues no longer lose combo points on a target if they switch to another target.

If you get 1 point on target A, then switch to a new target, target B, you'll have 0 points on target B.

If you switch back to target A, you'll still have one point on him. you can hit him again to get more points.

If you try to build points on target B though, all your points on target A are lost.

So no more losing points on someone while blinding/kicking/crippling his friend I guess.

I heard Rampage is 20 rage cost now. Can't confirm because I'm at work, and probably won't be able to login until after Christmas since I'm going straight to my parents' place after work.

If this is true it actually makes it worth getting.

Edit: Well, considering I have it now and use it all the time, I guess I should mean it'll be a lot easier to use, and may even actually feel like a 41 point talent, rather than just a "I have 45 points in fury already... might as well..." talent.

Can anyone comment on this? Seems to be a massive change that's oddly slipping under the radar.

Odd phrasing, and I'm not sure what they're referring to. I haven't noticed different mana costs in beta than on live for the same skills at the same rank.

Best guess: It might mean that for skills that cost a percentage of base mana, the percentages are all being reduced.

Probably related to the fact that they're jacking up base mana and hp pools by default in TBC.

I just checked and Dispel Magic and Abolish Disease are about 15% cheaper on beta than on live, so maybe that's the change. I haven't gotten on PTR yet to check though (character not copied).

That'll be a very welcome change. I'd essentially thrown in the towel when it came to big finishers on hunters and rogues in PvP. It's par for the course to build up a few points and go in for the finisher, only to be thwarted by a well-timed Feign Death or Vanish. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but I'd almost always lose those points after instinctively mashing Tab to pick up the target again and fixing on another player instead. Adios, combo points.

(Yes, I know I should use Target Last Target more often.)