PTR: New Features!

So far, I like this feature. It’s informative enough to help you get where you are going, but lightweight enough that it doesn’t get in the way. You can turn it on/off with a simple mouse click, and I really like the new tracking and map feature. Blizzard has poached another addon, and is doing it well. It’s not very customizable (i.e. no level/zone/group filtering, etc), but if all you want is to know where your quests are, this is a way to do it without having to download and maintain an addon.

I also want to say that I love love the new map.  The fact that I can make it so it’s not full screen (meaning I can move my character and interact with things with the map up) was the main reason I went with a map addon in the first place.  So while there’s still not the same level of customization, I will definitely use it if I need to conserve memory.

The new LFG feature?  Well I’m going to have to wait till it goes live to address some of my concerns about it.  However, I do like the interface.  It’s easy to use and understand.  I hoped in and with a few seconds was whisked away to a random heroic (Halls of Stone to be exact).  But I realized I didn’t want to be in a random one.  I wanted to try Forge of Souls.  So, I bailed.  But the pulls hadn’t started yet and I was just dps-ing so I imagine a new replacement was found fast.  I got two debuffs from it.  One started from the time I entered the instance.  The other started from when I left.  Both lasted 15 minutes and did the exact same thing: made it so I had to wait to queue up for something else.

After you queue, you get a little eyeball icon attached to your minimap.  If you hover over it you will see 5 slots (tank, heals, 3 dps).  When those slots are filled up, the icon lights up.  It also tells you what you are queued as.  If you right click on the eyeball LFG icon you can select “leave queue.”

The one really annoying thing is that once your group is all together, if one person doesn’t click accept in however long, you get dumped back into the queue.

I’ll let you know what I think of the Forge of Souls…if I ever get in it.  This is the first time ever I’ve waited for a dps.

“[Insert clever sign off phrase here]“

~Fizz

An open letter to the folks on the public test realm.

Dear players on the World of Warcraft Public Test Realm Broxigar,

I think there has been a bit of a miss-communication.  Either you forgot (despite having to click on ‘public test’ every time you log in), or no-one told you (maybe they installed the PTR on your computer without telling you?) but you seem to have missed the fact that this is the public realm.  For testing.

I’m going to repeat that, for emphasis.

Public.

Realm.

For testing.

The PTR

Well now that I have the space on my hard drive I’ve decided to download the PTR.  I’ve been super bored in game lately.  Also, I don’t know if you’ve heard, it’s been kinda on the down-low, I’ve also been pretty lonely and aimless.  So I thought the PTR might be a nice way to add a little spice to my life.  I’m going to take advantage of the feature that lets you create a pre-made level 80 and try out the two classes I’ve never played before (hunter and priest).  Also, I’ve always wanted to try having a horde warrior and an alliance shaman.  So this is a nice way to do that without having to commit to a paid faction change.

And don’t worry, as I try things out and see what’s new, I’ll let you fine folks know what I’ve discovered.

My first impressions? It takes a long time to download.  It’s been 4 hours so far, and I’m still patching.  Granted, I’m also playing WoW in the background so my bandwidth isn’t exactly unrestricted.

“[Insert clever sign off phrase here]“

~Fizz