WoW Wednesdays

WoW Wednesdays are the one day of the week I'm allowing myself to write about WoW. I've decided to use these Wednesdays as a palate cleanser from our downtime on Tuesdays (and it will totally give me something to do when WoW is down for maintenance). I'm going to give you an update on the week behind us. News on updates, patch releases, and just anything exciting that happened.

This week was a busy one, lots of blue posts on the WoW forums for us. I'm going to start off at bat with some not so fun news.

With the up coming release of Patch 3.5.5, everyone is awaiting the highly anticipated new level 80 dungeon, Ruby Sanctum. This may not be the case though, says the blues. Zarhym, a Blizzard rep states:

"Due to the fact that we will be delaying the release of patch 3.3.5 in Europe, Korea and Taiwan in order to ensure the patch process in all regions is as smooth as possible, the Ruby Sanctum will not immediately be available on North American realms upon the release of the patch. Once patch 3.3.5 has been released in North America and we are confident about a time when we can open up Ruby Sanctum, we will provide an update here on the forums."

 An update for anyone who has not been previously informed, Ruby Sanctum is the newest dungeon and the one that kicks off the storyline to be revealed in Cataclysm. This raid will be like most in that you'll be able to run it as a 10 man or 25 man on either Normal or Heroic. Ruby Sanctum has been up on the play testing realms for a short while now if you can't wait for it's official release.

Patch 3.5.5 will be an interesting one as it will greatly effect many of the ways players socialize in the game. Something I'm excited about is new Battle.Net System. This new system will basically allow players to know when their real life friends are online, without being on the same server. And since Battle.Net is used for all Blizzard's online games, you'll be able to be on WoW and see your friend playing his game on Starcraft. The huge caution with this release is that you use this with people you actually know. You'll be giving out your Battle.Net email for people to find you which could make it easy for someone to hack your account. If you are like me, then you probably have a few character alts on servers with friends. I'm hoping this new system will make it easier for me to level alts on servers with friends. I'll be able to see a certain friend is online and switch over to that server and play with them and level that character.

Other new chat features with Patch 3.5.5 is that you'll be able to take chats out of the main chat roll and have a separate tab. I like the idea of being able to have a separate tabbed chat for my whispers or even raid chat. I know I can lose whispers easily if I'm in an area with the trade channel going on.

The last thing I'd like to touch up on is more of a reminder. Tomorrow is the start of the first batch of tickets to be sold for Blizzcon 2010. The ticket sales start on June 2 at 7:00 p.m. PDT/10:00 p.m. EDT. If you can't make it to the first batch of tickets being sold, the second date is on Saturday, June 5 at 10:00 a.m. PDT/1:00 p.m. EDT. As we all know these tickets go fast and you have to be prompt and ready if you want to purchase them. Blizzcon 2010 will be taking place this year on October 22-23 in Anaheim, CA. Tickets are $150 each and as usual, for those who are unable to make it, DirectTV will be having their PayPerView option for Blizzcon for $39.95.

I sadly will be unable to make it. But there are always hopes for next year. Good luck to those buying tickets, as we all know those tickets will be gone in seconds and up on ebay for a hell of a lot more.