Well today as anticipated, 3.3.2 has dropped!    Season 8 of Arena has started, Frostwing Halls have opened in Icecrown Citadel, a few buffs and nerfs have been added, and a few bug fixes.  The patch was about 170Mb.  Not too bad.  Took about 8 minutes total to download and install on my connection.

Season 8 of Arena:  As most of you who PvP know, once a new season opens, the last season’s gear becomes available for sale without requiring Arena Rating.  This is good for those of us who like to PvP in battlegrounds, but don’t do arena much.   There’s controversy though about it.  Some say it’s “welfare epics”.  You know what, screw that.  I still work hard for those honor points to buy the gear.  I’m not a raider,  I am casual.  I rarely do dungeons.  I don’t have time to raid every night like some do.  I enjoy the battlegrounds, and so the gear I can get is a good reward for all the time I do put into BG.

Icecrown Citadel:  Recently I did do a random dungeon and landed in Forge of Souls, and had a lot of fun.  I’m really going to try this year to do more dungeons and maybe even some raids.  Now that the final wing of ICC is open maybe I will start doing more randoms and see what happens.  I need to gear up though.

Buffs and nerfs: Lots there, I’ll let you read the notes about that.

The official patch notes are as follows:

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 3.3.2
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The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

The latest patch notes can always be found at

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

Dungeons & Raids

-  Halls of Stone
Brann Bronzebeard has been getting into shape and now feels comfortable walking faster when escorted.

-  The Forge of Souls
The Devourer of Souls will now cast Mirrored Souls less often.
The Spell Reflect ability has been altered on several creatures. It now has a cast time, only has 2 charges, and has a 75% chance of reflecting spells.

-  The Nexus
Anomalus will now use the Create Rift ability only once, down from 3 times.

-  The Old Kingdom
Elder Nadox now only gets one Ahn’Kahar Guardian during the encounter.
Jadoga Shadowseeker now only ascends once during the encounter.
Several enemies between the Befouled Terrace and The Desecrated Altar have been removed or had their pathing altered.

-  Pit of Saron
Players can now zone back into the instance if they are dead while encounters with Krick and Ick or Forgemaster Garfrost are in progress.

-  Utgarde Pinnacle
Skadi the Ruthless can now be removed from his drake with 3 harpoon strikes, down from 5.
Svala Sorrowgrave now casts Ritual of the Sword 1 time during the encounter, down from 3.

-  Vault of Archavon
Toravon, the latest boss to join the Vault’s giants and masters of the elements, is now accepting challengers in 10- and 25-player formats.
-  The Violet Hold
The time between a boss being defeated and a new portal opening has been decreased.

PvP

-  Arenas
Season 8 has officially begun featuring all-new rewards!

Druids

-  Talents
-  Balance
Earth and Moon: This talent now increases the druid’s spell damage by 2/4/6%, up from 1/2/3%.

Shamans

-  Talents
-  Elemental Combat
Shamanism: This talent now provides 4/8/12/16/20% extra spell damage to Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning, up from 3/6/9/12/15%, and 5/10/15/20/25% to Lava Burst, up from 4/8/12/16/20%.

Warlocks

-  Talents
-  Affliction
Shadow Embrace: This effect can now stack up to 3 times, up from 2. However, the periodic healing reduction effect has been reduced from 3/6/9/12/15% to 2/4/6/8/10% per application.
-  Demonology
Demonic Pact: The damage bonus granted the warlock by this talent has been increased from 1/2/3/4/5% to 2/4/6/8/10%. The buff granted to a raid or party by this talent remains unchanged.
-  Destruction
Conflagrate: The damage-over-time effect of Conflagrate has been increased to 40% of the spell’s total damage, up from 20%.
Empowered Imp: The pet bonus damage provided by this talent has been increased to 10/20/30%, up from 5/10/15%.
Improved Shadow Bolt: Damage done by Shadow Bolt increased by 2/4/6/8/10%, up from 1/2/3/4/5%.

Warriors

-  Talents
-  Protection
Shield Slam: The damage scaling from block value for this ability now diminishes faster and diminishes starting at a lower block value. The difference should be negligible for players in high-end tanking armor. In addition, the threat caused by Shield Slam has been increased by 30%.
Warbringer: This talent no longer allows Charge and Intercept to break roots or snares. Intervene remains unaffected.

User Interface

-  The party leader is now referred to as Guide in chat when a group is formed via the Dungeon Finder.
-  Fixed a bug where players with Raid Assist capabilities were unable to perform a Ready Check.
-  Fixed a bug where the first couple of tutorials were not displaying upon logging into the game.

Items

- New strength-based melee DPS rings are now available from representatives of the Ashen Verdict.
- Tier-9 Sets: The Aspirant vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds have worked out a deal with merchants in Dalaran so that all item level 232 set pieces will now be available on armor vendors in the city. Set pieces which require trophies will still be available for purchase only from vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds.
- Tier-10 Balance Druid 4-Piece Bonus: Fixed a bug to allow for this bonus to properly trigger.
- Tier-10 Elemental Shaman 4-Piece Set Bonus: Redesigned. Successful Lava Burst casts now increase the duration of Flame Shock on the target by 6 seconds.
- Tier-10 Tank Sets: The gloves and chest pieces for warrior, death knight, and paladin tanks have had their stats adjusted slightly to provide additional armor value.
- Tier-10 Warlock 4-Piece Bonus: This bonus should now correctly be applied to the warlock’s pet.

Technical Support

- The cvar ‘processAffinityMask’ controls which CPU cores are available for the World of Warcraft client to use. Previously the game client was limited to 2 cores as a default which players could override in the configuration file. In the past this provided a performance boost on some CPUs and operating systems. We have identified several systems that are experiencing severe performance issues with this restriction and have removed it. Players who would like to restore the old behavior can do so by updating the Config.WTF file by adding: SET processAffinityMask “3″.

Wow just became fun again and less of a chore.  Ed (AKA Theshat) and I have discovered battlegrounds.  Until Monday night, I had never stepped foot into a battleground.  As it turns out, we needed to get some PvP honor kills for an achievement for Hallow’s End, so we decided the fastest way to rack it up is to go into a BG.  Testing the waters, we went into Warsong Gulch, a simple Capture The Flag type.  Well we lost that first battle, but we decided to go in a second time, and that time we won.  We started getting hooked.  I needed to go into some BG’s for my final cooking achievement, so we went into several more, and won all of those.

Tonight, we went in again, and didn’t do so well.  We lost all of the battles, but we still got a lot of honor kills, and honor points.  I went back in tonight for a while.  I never got much into PvP before until now, but now I’m hooked on BG.    Granted, you win some, you lose some, but it’s still fun to pwn someone’s face.

FOR THE HORDE!

Well, the doctor at the hospital decided to send her home instead of keeping her longer.  We’ll see how things go here.  She’s not in any immediate danger, but her mental state is pretty well agitated.

I don’t often talk about my personal life, but tonight a lot happened.

My wife Kathy has dementia.  She has it really bad.  Tonight, she had a major seizure and wound up in the hospital.  At the hospital she had another seizure.  At the moment, she’s unable to talk or respond to anyone.  She had to be restrained to the bed because she would try to pull at her EKG wires and also might try to get up and walk away.  Not a good idea right now.

Tonight a difficult decision had to be made.  It came to the point that I realized my grandfather and I can no longer give her the care she needs.  The nurse and doctor at the ER also agreed with this assesment.  For the last couple of months, I have been unable to get her to take a bath or shower.  Believe me, I’ve tried, but trying to get her to take a shower lately has been an exercise in futility.  She is extremely underweight, even though she does eat.  I don’t know why she can’t seem to put on weight.  Because of these factors, the hospital admitted her under “failure to thrive”.  She most likely will never come home again.  She will be in the hospital’s care until we can get her into a nursing home.  She needs 24 hour care at this point, and we just can’t do it any longer ourselves.

The main problem is, the only income we have is her social security and grandpa’s social security.  I haven’t worked because I’ve been having to be home with her most of the time.  We’re hoping social services can do something to help.

I don’t know what else to say really, so I’ll end this post here.

I’ve got a challenge for any professional musician who wants to take it.  No, there’s no monetary incentive by me for this challenge, or it wouldn’t be a fair challenge.  Before I get to the challenge though, I want to talk for a moment about the use of autotune and editing.

I’m not going to dispute that autotune is a great invention.  Yes it can help people who can’t carry a tune record something that can be almost considered music.  Yes it can be used very well for splicing together pieces of tracks to correct slight pitch problems.  It can even be used for some interesting effects.  HOWEVER, these days, it’s used way too much.  All these pop singers nowadays assume you’re going to run them through the box and fix their voices.  The end result, is a lot of these “divas” now sound alike.  Also, it’s masking the real voices of some of these singers, so there’s no soul to their sound.   Even country singers are using these boxes.  There are a handful that still refuse to use it, which I’m glad of.

I remember a time when musicians sat in a booth and recorded everything in a few takes, with no editing, no voice or sound corrections, just pure real music.

So, here is my challenge.  I dare….no, I TRIPLE DOG DARE, any musician who thinks they’re so good, to cut a new album, following some criteria:

1. Everything must be done in one take.  No do-overs, no mulligans.  What is recorded the first time is what goes into the album. If someone messes up, it goes into the album.
2. Everyone does their parts on their microphones together in one room, all at the same time.
3. No editing.  No splicing together of parts, samples, etc.
4. IN FACT, NO SAMPLING!  Everything must be recorded live.  Nothing can be pre-recorded, period.  ALL music must be done with live instruments.  And I mean, REAL instruments.  Guitars, strings, woodwinds, brass, drums, pianos.  No drumkits, no synthesizers, nothing electronic.  Electric guitars are ok, as long as they’re plugged into straight amps, nothing that synthesizes.
5. No special effects, no voice changers, no autotune.  Nothing is to be corrected.
6. The album must be recorded from start to finish in one hour.  12 songs at 4 – 5 minutes per equals 48 – 60 minutes.  you can do it.  one hour.  Cut the recording up for the individual songs after everything’s finished.
7. EDIT:  you can cut any song you want, even if it’s a cover of your favorite song that you already did, or someone else’s even.  I dont’ care. as long as it’s music

So, is anyone up to the challenge?

I will make you this promise too.  If you cut such an album, I will BUY a copy and listen to it.  I will put it in my ipod permanently.  Even if I don’t like your style of music, I will listen to it.

I hadn’t realized I haven’t posted since I got home from Blizzcon.  I’ll try to keep up with it more again.

For now though, bed.

G”night

Well, It’s day 1 of Blizzcon.  Yesterday I arrived at my hotel, got settled in and went down to the convention center to get my goodie bag and my badge.  There are some really cool items in the goodie bag.  I’ll post pics of it all later.  I’m staying at the Anabella Hotel, which is about a 5 – 10 minute walk to the convention center.   The working out I’ve been doing has been paying off, as the walk got me less winded like it usually would.

Right now I’m just waiting for my breakfast order (coffee, oj, and oatmeal), before I go down to the convention itself.  The opening ceremonies are at 11:30, so I have time to get in line right away for the store and then buy some loot.   There’s also a quest that was in the goodie bag.

“Catch Me If You Can”

Any Northrend angler worth their salt knows about lures, bait, and bobbers.  I bet you didn’t know that a set of lures exist that can help you catch treasure.  It’s true.

Go to Brady Mercantile located in the Merchant’s Quarter.  Marcia Chase has left instructions with some of the workers there:  they will give you a bag and a map.  Follow the instructions carefully; find and bring together the complete set of mysterious lures – but be warned, the only appear at defined times in specific locations.

If you are able to gather them all, return in the evening, when Marcia visits the shop…perhaps she will have a reward for your due diligence.

DESCRIPTION
Marcia Chase seeks your help.  She has left instructions with a local merchant – Brady Mercantile.  She needs heroes to collect a set of 5 mysterious treasure-fishing lures.  Brady Mercantile can be found in the Merchant’s Quarter.

REWARDS
Lure bag
Map

I’ll attempt it today.  Who knows?  It could be something interesting.

I also realized this morning after looking at the goodie bag, I’m going to have to do some creative repacking to get everything into my suitcase and laptop bag to take things home.  Oiy.

Well, gonna sign out for now.  I’ll take lots of pictures.

And I’m off to the airport to blizzcon!  See y’all in a few hours.

Heading out to Anaheim later today to go to blizzcon.  I’ll make one more post before I go.