Patch 2.4 News Hits the Forums

Just when we were all beginning to despair of seeing more 2.4 info, the Blizzard team hit the forums in force this afternoon to deliver info on all kinds of nifty new changes. How excited am I? Pretty damn excited. But see for yourself:

General Changes

• New fishing daily quests!
• Spell haste is being changed to reduce the global cooldown on spells (down to a minimum of 1 second).
• Loot off of Kazzak and Doomwalker will now be BoE.
• When respeccing, you'll no longer have to retrain every rank of a talented spell.
• Enchanters will now be able to convert void crystals into 2x large prismatic shards, on a 24 hour cooldown.
• A combat log overhaul is in the works.

PvP Changes

• No more diminishing returns on honor. None!
• Instant honor calculations. No more waiting until the next day to buy that piece of gear, huzzah!
• Vendors for AB/WSG/AV will now offer level 70 blues for sale for gold, for players of sufficient reputation.

Dungeon & Raiding Changes

• 25-man raid bosses will now drop three tier set tokens instead of two, as well as significantly more gold.
• Scale of the Sands reputation rate gain increased.
• Heroic-level gems will not be unique-equipped anymore.
• Improved loot options for bind-on-pickup items (and no more confirmation window for things like Badges of Justice).

Class Changes

• A ret pally reitemization is in the works.
• Players will now be limited to 80 Conjured Manna Biscuits in their inventory at one time. (Take that, mage table ninjas!)
• Priests can now cast fear ward in shadowform.
• Warlocks inside an instance will now be able to summon players who are outside the instance.
• Warriors' Endless Rage will now provide significantly more rage, and off-hand Whirlwind crits will now trigger Flurry and Rampage.
• Healing Grace will now reduce the chance of shamans' spells to be dispelled by 10/20/30%.
• Druids' Lacerate will now scale with feral attack power.

You can find the source for all of these at Bluetracker, or check out Eyonix's weekly roundup.

Patch 2.3 Scheduled For Next Week

It's official. From Drysc:

The start date for Season 3 is purposefully planned to be one week later than the release of patch 2.3, which is currently scheduled for November 13. We will be closely monitoring the testing of the 2.3 patch, and if it looks like it won’t make the November 13 date, we will announce a delay.

Guess it's time to start figuring out what I'm going to do first once I get my addons up and running.

PTRs Are Going Up Tonight!

Hortus drops the bomb on the WoW boards. Looks like I might see some ZA this weekend! Meanwhile, salivate over some new tidbits I've plucked from the official 2.3 PTR patch notes:

Guild Banks

• Will be accessed through "guild banker" NPCs.
• Will have 6 "tabs" containing 98 item slots each. Each tab can be given separate access permissions as far as who can view, deposit, or withdraw gold or items, which the guild leader can set up.
• Will keep a log of the last 50 banking transactions.

Weapon Skill and Expertise

• Expertise rating appears to be the new weapon skill. Each point of expertise reduces the chance your opponent will dodge or parry your attack by 0.25%.
• Most items with weapon skill have now been changed to grant expertise rating. Ranged weapon skill has been reitemized to +crit or +hit.
• Dwarves will now gain +1% crit with guns instead of increased weapon skill.
• Trolls will now gain +1% crit with bows and throwing weapons instead of increased weapon skill.

Reputation-Based Vendor Discounts

• A change to the faction vendor system now gives increasing discounts as your rep goes up. 5% for friendly, 10% for honored, 15% for revered, 20% for exalted.

Pets

• Will try to get behind their targets in melee now.
• Will not trigger items or abilities that proc "on killing an enemy" when they die.

Auction House

• Will now allow you to sell items for 12, 24, or 48 hours.
• Now sports reorganized categories.

Mail

• Will now let you send up to 12 items in a single message.
• Right-click will now place an item in the outgoing mail.

Daily Quests

• Will now show up as blue exclamation points.
• Have been added to one random battleground each day, and can be picked up by the battlemasters in capital cities.
• Have been added to Outlands 5-mans, as well as CoT. One random heroic and non-heroic dungeon a day.
• There are now daily quests for fishing.
  

New Azeroth Quests Coming Soon!

Some great new information released on the tweaks to the pre-60 leveling curve today -- dungeon tweaks, some more on the increased Azeroth quest XP and decreased XP to level from 20-60. But what especially caught my eye was this note:

We've also added approximately 60 new quests in Dustwallow Marsh. This should help players who find themselves lacking quests in the 30-40 range. The Steamwheedle Cartel is building the new town of Mudsprocket in south-west Dustwallow Marsh, so you'll have to wait until construction is complete to learn more about these changes.

New level 30-40 content! No more killing panthers for Hemet Nesingwary until you want to cry. . . now you can go get ganked in Dustwallow, the new STV.

Friday Forum Firestorm

This week on the World of Warcraft official forums:

• Drysc suggests that Northrend will provide some closure as to the mystery of the King of Stormwind's whereabouts.
• Polls hit the World of Warcraft forums.
  
• Nethaera weighs in on the possibility of group queueing for Alterac Valley with the upcoming changes in 2.3 (short version: maybe).
• The true story behind Griftah being kicked out of Shattrath.
• The Cenarion Expedition's new epic flying mount is confirmed as a hippogriff.
• Endugu of the EU WoW boards provides a handy reference to hunter enchants.
  
• When Wolpertingers Attack: rogue killed by vorpal jackalope.
• More details on mages' upcoming Ritual of Refreshment - it'll dispense manabiscuits, which give 7.5k health and 7.2k mana over 30 seconds.
  
• And lastly, if you get an email inviting you to the closed beta for "Worlf of Warcraft," it's probably a scam. (Sorry, BRK.)