Monday, July 13, 2009

The less obvious in Patch 3.2.

Some of the new features in Patch 3.2. are being discussed to death, like extended raid lockout, the change in emblems, and the coming of tier 9 for example. But there are also some new features in 3.2. that are getting less exposure, and I do still think that these are really nice and handy features that are being implemented.
Mounts
The cast time for summoning any ground mount is now 1.5 seconds, down from 3 seconds.
Earlier today already I touched quickly on this. I had to laugh about the wording in the patch notes, since it felt as if the writer of the patch notes was unsure about this specific part of the patch himself.

As Chris said in his comment earlier, they did indeed decided at first to have 1.5 seconds for ground mounts and 3.0 seconds for flying mounts. Going through some forums it seems as if accidentally it might have been 1.5 seconds for all mounts in the beginning, which they even reverted to their original decision of two different casting speeds at first (since it was a bug). And now it seems they have in the end decided to have flying mounts on 1.5 seconds cast speed after all.

This is not a major massive change of course, but it will still make life a little bit more pleasant in the game. And it does feel like another small move towards the whole concept that Blizzard seems to follow now, that the game should hold as little annoyances as possible, and that gameplay should focus on the actual game and not on the holdups.

I read a blog about traveling in WoW this week (and ack I forgot where, if you read this let me know and I will link you in!), and how one of the reasons behind traveling time is the whole 'making the world feel bigger' thing.

I can totally understand this reasoning, but these sort of small tweaks just make me a little bit happier each time. Granted it will be slightly harder to catch someone in pvp if they're trying to mount to get away, but boy will it feel nice to wait less long every time we mount.

Item Comparisons
Holding the shift key while hovering over an item will now display the stat differences with the item currently equipped in the relevant slot.
Normal item comparison has been in the game for as long as I can remember. While holding shift you mouse over an item, and next to the item you're mousing over, it will show the item you currently have equipped.

New in Patch 3.2. is that they have added a stat list to the comparison box, and you can actually see how much you will be going up or down on certain stats if you would switch out this item.

Currently I'm using a mod to do this for me, called ratingbuster, but yay, yet another mod that I might be able to take out and just use the Blizzard functionality.
Item Level
A new option has been added under Display in the Interface Options to show the item level on item tooltips.
Another little thing that they have added, and that doesn't really go under item comparison, but does under item, is item level. You will be able to see which item level your gear is without mods from 3.2. onwards.

Very handy since it still happens quite often now that you get a whole list of gear links before FL asking which item has the higher item level. And frankly, the moment vehicle combat started scaling with your gear, item levels should have been introduced simultaneously.

Vendor Prices
Vendor prices will now be listed on items whether or not players are at a vendor.
And another little piece of addon that could potentially go. And actually I do hope that the mods that this is incorporated in will revisit their code and see if this is actually something that can take some of the weight off their addon.

One comment here though, I actually went to check out this new bit of information on the PTR quickly and I have to say that I don't like the words they used. Sell price is just not correct, it's vendor price. And this can possibly be confusing to newbie players.


Interuptable?
Casting bars under a target's portrait will now indicate whether or not the cast can be interrupted.
I've been watching various spell casters, and no matter how long their cast was, or which spell they were casting I have no idea what I was supposed to see.

We tried this on targets with and without interupt abilties, but on neither character could we see any change. Maybe this is still not in?

Random
That was it for today, might stick more up tomorrow, might not, we'll see.

As a random fact..they give all classes 4 stacks of drinks on the PTR so while Thrornir was going through his bags he almost fell over from my dots because bandages wouldn't stick and they didn't give him food. Silly Blizz, DKs don't use drinks...

2 comments:

  1. Kind of stinks that I won't be able to buy stuff on the AH cheaper than you can vender it anymore, but the item comparisons/lvl and faster mount casts are always a positive.

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  2. Oh, I don't know. There were of course two types of players sticking it up lower in AH then you could sell it for on the vendor: newbie players and noob players. I have no doubt that the second category will still stick it up in AH quite regularly, but for the first category...they might just be your raiding mate of the future ;)

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