1.11 Beta Reports

[MongoJerry]

1.11 PATCH BETA REPORT

Last night, I went on the test realm to mess around a little bit and ended up joining a semi-pug group trying out the first boss in Naxxramas. Here are a few things I noticed.



The new bank interface is fantastic. When you go to the bank and hit shift-B, every bag will open, including your bank bags, and will shrink so that they all fit on your screen.



An elite high level elite flameshocker appeared in the middle of Undercity and battled the town guards and NPC's. I had to hurry to make the Naxxramas raid before I got a chance to find out more about this or figure out how often this happens.




The Bloodsail Admiral's Hat has become more powerful than ever before, as it now has its own unique icon!

Blizzard has tried to lull Bloodsail Admirals into a false sense of security by saying that quests would be added that would allow one to get one's reputation back with the Steamwheedle Cartel quickly. What they didn't say was that these quests destroy your reputation with the Bloodsail Buccaneers. The heresy of it! Luckily, you can still kill the pirates south of Ratchet and build up your goblin reputation without destroying your reputation with the Bloodsail Buccaneers.



An NPC in front of the chapel at Light's Hope named Johnny McWeaksauce automatically attunes players for Naxxramas and provides a free port inside the instance. All those memories of playing in the WoW beta are coming back to me.

I was playing on the RPPvP server, as you can tell by the mounds of skeletons on the ground. The Argent Dawn guards supposedly attack you if you fight at Light's Hope, but the guards are totally inadequate and there are many places where one can stand where the guards won't attack you even as you attack members of the opposing faction.



Inside Naxxramas, Jimmy McWeaksause sells reagents, poisons and Tomes of Tranquilizing Shot. Also, all repairs are free and one can buy as many major mana and major health potions as one wants for free.



Naxxramas has four wings that spread out from the center. The boss who is considered the easiest is the spider Anub'Rekhan.



Here's a shot of the middle of the fight which illustrates a lot of the default UI changes. The off-white text in the middle isn't from CT_RaidAssist. That functionality is now part of the default user interface, along with the special raid leader text shown in the chat window. ("Annoyer" was our raid leader). At the top of the screen, you can see the default UI "Target's Target" functionality, which is showing that Anub'Rekhan is targeting Annoyer. It looks nice, but as a healer, I prefer the CT_RaidAssist's "MT Targets" windows. Also, you can see all the debuffs on Anub'Rekhan very clearly with the new interface. You can also see more than five buffs on friendly players (thank God!). Finally, you can also see the number "20" overlaying my Inner Fire buff, which tells me how many charges of Inner Fire I have left before it goes away.



Here's another shot of the fight. Crypt Guards spawn periodically.



The thing about the Anub'Rekhan fight is that when something goes wrong, everything goes wrong in a hurry. When someone dies, Corpse Scarabs spawn and start running all over attacking people. It's possible to recover from one or two deaths if people are vigilant about killing the Corpse Scarabs quickly, but if people don't, then more people die, more Corpse Scarabs spawn, and it's game over for the entire raid.

My impression of the fight from the two times our pug raid ran it was that it's not too difficult. It reminds me a lot of the Twin Emperors in AQ40 in that everyone has to be on their toes and doing their jobs, but the jobs are pretty simple. I would say the fight is actually easier than the Twin Emps. Any guild who has managed to get deep into AQ40 should be able to get the hang of this fight in only a few attempts.



Outside, there are Scourge invasions all over the world, and the zones with invasions are marked with a skull on your world map. The invasion sites have a Necrotic Shard (crystal) in the center with nonelite undead mobs of various kinds surrounding it. The more Scourge you kill at the invasion site, the weaker the shard becomes.



When the shard gets weakened enough, an elite Shadow of Doom appears. There are various Argent Dawn and Scarlet Crusade quests related to these invasions.

That's about it. A group of us are going to try to give Anub'Rekhan a real try tomorrow, and I'll let you know how that goes.