“The blood elves have harnessed the power of the Light for their own needs, and the Horde recognizes the value of these renegade blood elf paladins. Meanwhile, the draenei have been granted the wisdom and strength of the elements, and a number of draenei now follow the path of the shaman.”

I really don’t understand this change. I mean it can’t just be a raiding balance cop out can it? And I don’t think they can really claim it’s to give people the chance to play something “they always wanted to play”, because the game is about massing alts and it’s super easy to have both Horde and Alliance characters. I suppose it could be to mask some of the no-new-classes-ness of the expansion, but a Horde Paladin isn’t a new class.

I don’t even know how to take this or where they are coming from, but this is one of the most controversial things to occur in the game since it was released.

Edit: The day after I posted this it clicked with me why this change was likely made. I suppose it is valid and hopefully the classes will really start to go in opposite, unique directions. It’s still largely a solution to a problem Blizzard itself created though, so I can’t help but keep one eyebrow partially cocked. Also, the silly-named duplicate spell versions they are now forced to create (Bloodlust = Heroism etc.) are bvvvvvvvvvvp.

www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/worldofwarcraftexp1/news.html?sid=6151428&print=1

“We’re going to do a 10-man raid instance called Karazhan on the raid save timer. That should really feel like endgame content for people that don’t want to raid with anything more than 10. That’ll just be the tip of the iceberg for the real raiders that want to go out and experience the big, epic content.”

Thanks Jeff. Here’s your scraps of toy content noobs, go gum that while we spend 90% of the dev money on real content for the real players. Even the stuff they talk about like Hellfire Citadel where the instance starts off as 5-10 man is instantly moot because it ends with a 40 man raid. We might let you noobs open a few doors, but LOL you aren’t worthy to kill the real bosses. Please sweep the floor and hug the wall on your way out.

Let’s take a look at the notes, shall we?

- Arcane Power: It is no longer possible to gain the benefit of this
spell and Power Infusion at the same time by careful timing. ( www.bvvp.com/slimx/bnd.html )

- Garrote: The damage from this ability has been increased
approximately 50%. lawl

- Sap: Enemy rogues will now always lose stealth when you Sap them. That’s a shame. I actually liked the fact that you could imp sap a stealthed rogue and no one else ever knew.

- Windfury Totem: The weapon enchantment from this totem will now only
trigger off normal melee swings. This means abilities such as
Sinister Strike, Mortal Strike, and Hamstring will no longer trigger
the Windfury Totem. WTB BoK Totem, you dumb son of a bitch

- Shield Slam: This ability will sometimes no longer remove more than
one beneficial effect from the target. Incorrect wording or stark honesty?

- Clarified the tooltips for the Stormshroud armor and Kalimdor’s
Revenge to explain that they deal Nature damage. F! Changed my favorite wording in the game. Whatever bastard at Blizzard decided on that change needs to be instantly lightning shocked.

- Uldaman
Reduced the number of Shadowforge Ambushers that attack after
looting the quest chest.
Shadowforge Ambushers are no longer elite.
The respawn of the Stone Stewards has been changed to 2 hours
(from 30 minutes).
- Zul’Farrak
The respawn of the 2 Troll/1 Basilisk patrollers should now be 2
hours.
Reduced the damage dealt by the Sul’lithuz Abomination and
Sul’lithuz Sandcrawler.
Dead Heroes are no longer elites.
Theka the Martyr will now only remain immune to physical damage for
30 seconds before reverting to normal.
Antu’sul’s Sul’lithuz Broodlings now only hatch 4 at a time and are
significantly weaker.
Witch Doctor Zum’rah will no longer call as many dead heroes to his
aid when aggroed.
Weegli Blastfuse now has slightly more hit points.
Antu’sul’s Warden no longer attempts to knock adventurers into
Antu’sul’s lair.
Sandfury Cretins who engage the party during the pyramid event are
no longer able to cast shadow bolt. Woooaahhh. Holy shit. Changes to Uldaman and *ZF* of all places, this long after release. Easing up on the lvl 60 dungeons while leaving some old ones requiring real teamwork from leveling-specced PUGs was pretty funny, I admit.

- New floating combat text has been added to the game with a number
of options. You can see when you take damage, when you are healed
and how much, when you acquire and lose auras and much more. You can
turn on the new options in the newly revised options screen. Lawwwwwl. Does the creator of SCT get royalties?

- The Need Before Greed and Group Loot countdown timers will now have
a 3 minute countdown when there is a bind on acquire item on the
corpse. This should allow a bit more time in making a decision to
roll for an item. Nice try.

Full notes here: forums.worldofwar.net/showthread.php?p=3741990#post3741990

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