#0 - Oct. 30, 2006, 11:33 a.m.
-New first-person-shooter view for hunters and mages.
-Blizzard has received numerous complaints from the rogue population concerning a rogue’s chance of success when attacking a succubus-armed warlock. Consequently, warlocks will no longer be able to summon a succubus.
-Blizzard has also received numerous complaints from the warlock population concerning the loss of their succubus. In order to keep the combat odds between warlocks and rogues the same as they were before, any rogue that comes within 15 yards of a warlock will spontaneously combust for 68 200 non-evadable fire damage. The warlock will receive honour for this kill.
-The population of Darnassus on most servers was much lower than expected. To rectify this, any player who enters Ironforge or Stormwind will become PvP-flagged. Undead rogues will also be able to teleport to these two cities on command.
-New character class: Mesmer. This is Blizzard’s revenge against everything that Guild Wars has stolen from World of Warcraft.
-Whirlwind, Smite, Taunt, Charge, Fireball, Multishot, Frost Armour, Frost Nova, and Cloak of Shadows have all been renamed so as to avoid confusion with their Diablo 2 counterparts.
-New 41 Shadow Priest talent:
Annihilate Faction
Instant Cast 3 Mana
50000 Yard Range
Instantly kills everyone on the server that is allied with the target. Cannot be cast on friendly targets.
This was implemented to accelerate the inevitable.
-Frostmane Hold is now a 40-man raid instance. Top of the loot table: Sharpened Letter Opener.
-Cross-licensing with LucasArts has allowed for the creation of a new weapon:
Lightsaber
One Hand Sword
1074-2351 damage 1.70
Chance on Hit: Causes the target to become your father.
-There was always a secret cow level. It was renamed Mulgore to keep it a secret.
-From the moment the expansion is released, any computer that contacts the Blizzard server with the request to create a Night Elf or Blood Elf hunter named “xxlegolasxx” will instantly have a virus inserted directly into that computer’s BIOS. The credit card of the user will be drained, and the funds sent to a special Blizzard account dedicated to advertising the higher points of playing a female dwarf.
-Tauren rogues will now be elevated to level 70 upon completion of their first quest.
-Tauren rogues will now be promoted to rank 14 upon acquisition of their first honour kill.
-Tauren rogues are still not an available character class in the expansion.
-New trinket: Wirt’s Left Kidney. Blizzard believes it will start another cross-series phenomenon with this item.
-Hearthstones will have no cooldown when in Outland. This is to compensate for the sheer amount of players on flying mounts that are going to crash into the event horizon, get stuck on a clipping glitch, dismount 2000 miles in the air, disappear from existence, etc etc.
-Blizzard has conducted some research and has found that very few players were choosing the Pinto horse as their mount. To compensate, this mount will now move at 200% running speed and be able to fly in Outland.
-Priests can now equip Might of Menethil in their shoulder slot. Blizzard has remained silent as to how this will affect gameplay.
-Diablo 1 crossover: If you click on a Tauren repetitively, your character will say “Yes, that is a cow.”
-Any level 60+ character that chooses leatherworking as a profession will immediately be moved to a server-automated guild named Idiots Anonymous. They will be unable to join any other guild unless they unlearn leatherworking.
-On second thoughts, all professions except for jewelcrafting are being removed from the game. Given the initial response when jewelcrafting was unveiled, Blizzard does not think anyone will notice or care.
-Anyone that tries to get on a flying mount while in Azeroth will lose that flying mount, unless it is the aforementioned Pinto horse, in which case they will be given a mild reprimand in text format.
-In an absolute first for MMORPG developers, Battle.net has decided to co-operate with Arena.net. They have created a cross-platform battleground, where 20 Alliance and Horde players will team up to take on 20 Guild Wars players. The arithmetic gap between the two games will not be changed, meaning that maxed-out Guild Wars characters (less than 1000 health) will stand little chance against level 70 World of Warcraft players (5000-10000 health). Blizzard expects to expand its subscriber base considerably with this corporate move.
-An enormous amount of complaints were received from players claiming that the racial abilities for Draeni and Blood Elves were overpowered. Blizzard has reviewed this, and found that it was true. The following changes have been made to rectify this.
Races removed: Night Elves, Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Undead, Orcs, Trolls, and Tauren.
Classes added: Draeni and Blood Elves will now be able to choose any character class.
-Rogues can equip plate, and also use two-handed axes. They will also be able to ambush and backstab with them. In future, any rogues that complain they are underpowered will be sucked into an all-consuming vortex and spat out over 500 miles of fiery purgatory. You have been warned.
-Mortal strike was not considered to be “mortal” enough. Here are the revised rules for mortal strike:
Mortal Strike
30 Rage 5 Yard Range
Instant No Cooldown
Removes 100% of the target’s health.
-Death Wish has been changed. It now deals 156 000 damage to the warrior upon activation. Beta testers have agreed that this feels much more like a real death wish.
-Blizzard has received numerous Horde complaints about paladins, and numerous Alliance complaints about shamans. To fix matters on both sides, Blizzard has decided to allow Horde access to paladins, and Alliance access to shamans. You already knew that? Oh.
-Priests can no longer heal. This is because very few priests were making use of the shadow tree.
-Blizzard has noticed that many paladins were not behaving as they were intended to. The paladin was meant to be 70% warrior, 30% priest, and yet most paladins simply heal, buff other players and cast shields. Consequently, paladins can no longer cast shielding spells. Instead they will receive combat stances similar to the warrior’s.
-To make sure that paladins can still employ one of their major PvP tactics, any paladin that attempts to activate their hearthstone will be immediately surrounded by a 200-metre high wall of fire. Any enemy player that attempts to attack the paladin through this firewall will be slain for their sheer arrogance and tenacity.
-In an attempt to expand its market, Blizzard has decided to compensate for lower-end computers by making World of Warcraft a text-based RPG. If this causes more than 75% of the subscriber base to leave, Blizzard will change it back.
-The cost of unlearning talents has been reduced by half. To counter this, the interactive talent trees on the World of Warcraft website are no longer available.
-Blizzard conducted a small research task and found that 90% of foreign-language farmers use AOE-specialized mages to conduct their business. To stop in-game markets from being flooded by an influx of gold and magic items, mages can no longer attack mobs.
-Zeppelins have been armed with side-mounted gatling guns to discourage the occasional griefer from boarding it and killing everyone on board.
-That said, any character who uses fear or mind-control effects to make a Horde character jump overboard will receive an epic flying mount as a reward for braving the challenge boarding a zeppelin.
-Several players on PvP servers have complained that they wanted a fairer system that still allowed for some environmental PvP. Consequently, a generic tier-4 armor set called Furs of the Care Bear has been added to various 40+ instances. Any player that completes the entire set will be unable to attack or be attacked by enemy players.
-Druids in any animal form will no longer be able to use their weapons or armor until they revert to standard form. The exception to this is Bear form, which will be able to use fist weapons.
-Hunters will now be affected by their own traps. Blizzard released this in an April Fool’s day joke some time ago but they are serious about it this time.
-Shamans have been given lag totems. Any enemy player caught in the effect radius of the totem will have anywhere between 5 and 25 seconds to escape it or they will disconnect, depending on the speed of their connection. Their latency will rise constantly as the debuff times down, making it somewhat challenging to escape the totem on a 56k connection.
-It has been discovered that a large portion of the World of Warcraft player base could clear the instance “The Deadmines” with relative ease. To counter this, Blizzard has increased Edward VanCleef to a “?? Boss” and given him several new moves:
Cliché Pirate Chuckle: silences and stuns all players in a 20 yard radius for 10 seconds.
Cutlass Swish: Decapitates the character that currently holds his attention, instantaneously killing them (and any healers that are close enough).
Parrot Proc: Chance on hit to summon a level 15 green macaw parrot that flies around you throwing taunts and insults. If an attack is made on the parrot, the attacking player is Pecked for 50% of their base health and the parrot resumes the taunting.
Eyeball assault: VanCleef rips off his eyepatch to show that
