Goodbye green soloing weapon

vs

Based on this evidence The Essence Focuser, previously a healing mace, now beats Kam's old green spell damage dagger on the PTR. Also notice that the enchant on the Focuser is +43 Spell Power. That used to be Major Healing with +81 healing and +27 damage. So does this now give the same healing but more spell damage? Very nice if it does.

Tips for PTR testing

Here are a few tips I've figured out from my literally many hours of PTR testing. I'm only on the servers for 10 or so minutes at a time, but I tend to log onto them to see the new shinies.

• Copy early. Usually the character copy is available before the PTR is up or the client can be downloaded. Keep an eye out on WoW Insider or some other news site for when the US copy is up; in my experience the EU one is up too. The wait time when the client isn't available was 4 hours for 3.0.2.
  
• Patch often. You download the PTR client, install it, logon, then you get a patch. You install the patch, logon then you get another patch. You don't log on for 5 days and get another patch. It is best to logon every day even if you aren't actually going to play on the PTR just to get any patches.
  
• Download a PTR patch while playing real WoW. You cannot log onto the PTR and real WoW at the same time, but you can get the patch downloader started, then play WoW.
  
• Log on even if you have no toons. You can log onto the PTR even if your characters are not copied across. This will get any patches downloading. So if you have the PTR client and are waiting for your toons to be copied, log onto the PTR anyway and grab those patches.
  
• Report everything. I tend to report anything I find however minor. The reporting interface is pretty good and quick to use. For obvious stuff, other people have probably already reported it, but maybe not. You can report anything which seems odd or wrong as a suggestion; I hope Blizzard take notice of such reports, after all they have added a suggestion feature to the PTR client.
  
• Clone your gold. Send all your gold to the toon you are copying. Make a copy. Make another copy of the same toon. Repeat until you have enough gold on the PTR for whatever you want. When on the PTR, send all the gold to the one toon. Voila, mucho cloned gold.
  
• Have fun. Obvious really :)
  

Anything else anyone has?

This 302 PTR client is somewhat big

It seems to be installing a completely new copy of WoW into a subdirectory, the installer even asked me where to put the PTR client. Usually they just get on with it and make a "Wowtest" directory. And it is taking ages. But I'm sure once this is installed there won't be any more patches for me to pick up and I can jump right in and check out the new stuff.

Edit: hah after logging in I get to download another patch. But here's the interesting thing, the login screen is not the Burning Crusade one, oh no we have the Icy Northrend login screen, complete with flying thingie. Most cool.

Let's go Public Realm Testing

Grr argh.

An open letter to the Kirin Tor

Dear Sirs,

As a deputized agent of the Violet Eye, charged with keeping Karazhan free of the Burning Legion, I wish to complain about the lack of assistance rendered to myself and other agents by the Kirin Tor.

Despite the dangers, I and many others selflessly keep the tower clear of Demonic Presences, we continuously Assess the Situation and have retrieved several ancient artifacts, among them Keanna's Log. This we do because we believe in the great responsibility bestowed upon us to stop the Burning Legion.

There is however a growing dissatisfaction among my fellow agents over the lack of assistance given to us when we travel to Karazhan to bravely defend Azeroth. The remote location of Deadwind Pass discourages casual visits, the route from the Outlands is quite arduous, even though we must fight the Burning Legion in the Outlands.

Other factions are more willing to assist their agents; the Bronze Dragonflight have recently stationed a representative in the World's End Tavern, who will teleport those in good standing to the Caverns of Time. The Shattered Sun Offensive faction Maintain a Sunwell Portal in Shattrath city for quick travel to the Isle of Quel'Danas.

Your own Supreme Commander of the Alliance Expedition, Archmage Khadgar, has opened portals in Shattrath city to major cities. Perhaps he is not aware of The New Directive which sends many agents into the accursed tower time and time again, otherwise I feel sure he would open a portal to Deadwind Pass.

There are rumours that the Greatstaff of the Guardian Medivh, Atiesh, still survives and can be used to teleport a group of agents to Karazhan. However relying on rumour and supposed legend is folly.

Already interest in fighting the Burning Legion in Karazhan is waning, I urge you to act before the agents of the Violet Eye turn their attention to fighting other threats, and the Burning Legion renews its attacks while you stand powerless in the sidelines.

Yours,

Kam

Image courtesy of Lainey Powell.

Guild bank security - what if someone was hacked?

Recently we have had an account hacking incident in our guild. One of the Officers who had just left was hacked and their alt was able to clean out our "Last Chance" tab where all the vendor trash is stored. They also removed their maximum allowance from the "Free For All" tab, the Jewelcrafting and the Enchanting materials tabs. We also have an "Ask an Officer" tab where all the good stuff is stored, but only Officers can access that. Luckily we didn't loose too much and it wasn't worth a lot anyway.

However, some of our Officers have up to 7 alts, all with Officer access to the guild bank, access which lets them withdraw up to 7 stacks of items from each tab. If they were hacked, well, they could grab a lot of goodies from the guild bank. So something had to be changed.

After some head scratching, AblazeTheMage our guild bank man and one-of-4 GMs, came up with the following scheme:

• All Officers have 1 character with Officer rank, their main. This rank has the same privileges as before, so this is what Officers use to withdraw items from the Ask-An-Officer tab for guildies.
  
• All alts of Officers have the rank Officer-Alt, which can take only 1 stack from each tab, apart from the vendor trash tab, where they can take 10 stacks. The maximum damage which can be done now by a hacked Officer is 1 withdrawal from the Officer tab per alt.
  
• All members have 1 character with Member rank, their main. Accesses are as before; they can take only from the enchanting, jewelcrafting and free-for-all tabs.
  
• All alts of members have the rank Alt, which can take only 1 stack from the enchanting, jewelcrafting and free-for-all tabs. Again if a member was hacked, the number of items they could withdraw is limited.
  

Hopefully this will protect us a little from hacked accounts. I've heard the WoW bank UI is a lot rubbish and it seems very odd that you cannot restrict withdrawals to a number of items, only stacks, because a stack of Large Prismatic Shards is fairly valuable.

So I urge anyone setting up a Guild Bank to consider not just what a trusted guild member could remove, but what could they do if their account was compromised.

I am becoming... Prepared! (updates)

In the endless quest to become prepared for some major world-changing event coming real soon now, I have been levelling my Druid enchanter to 50, which the sharp-eyed might have guessed from my comments on 4tehfite. This is because the minimum character level to raise tradeskill professions above 300 is level 50, so that's what I need to be able to disenchant most Northrend greenies.

I am levelling as feral and mostly cat; a lot of melee combat broken up with some self-heals and a bit of magic. Sound familiar? The experience has given me a taste for melee combat, so I am itching to try out the Enhancement spec on Kam, for soloing and, if I can hoodwink convince our Raid Leader, in some raiding action.

To get enchanting up ten levels, I also need vast amounts of Illusion Dust. From what I've read this is best obtained in level 60 old world instances... such as Blackrock Spire. How handy that I need to complete the Onyxia chain for Kam, and am crazy enough to try to solo it.