76 – The Instance: "2.2 is HAWT!"

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Here comes WoW 2.2
-Voice chat -Reporting AFK rep farmers in the BGs -New Chat Channel controls -The Tempest Keep dungeons difficulty has been tweaked down a little bit. -New recipes from the Violet Eye faction.

What 2.2 does not have: -Guild Banks -Zul’Aman -New Heroic Badge rewards -PvP Reward Hawkstrider or Elekk mounts

Post Blizz-Con Updates
WoW Lead Designer Jeff Kaplan is over in Germany at the European Game Conference, and all sort of tidbits have been flowing this week:

-We already know about the L70 instance called Utgarde Keep in the Howling Fjord zone. Now we learn that there will be a second wing of the instance for L80 players called Utgarde Pinnacle. Both dungeons will have Normal and Heroic modes. -The new Inscription profession will do more than increases effectiveness of spells and abilities. Devs are playing with the concept of using Inscription to improve other elements like range, duration, etc. -The “increased leveling curve” of levels 20-60 is going to be accomplished two ways: reduction of the amount of experience required per level and increasing the amount of experience a quest grants by 30%. -Blizzard is considering a Woodworking profession. -No new mount skill increase is planned in WotLK, so no reduction in price is planned for the epic flight mount training cost. -The art for the expansion will look more like classic Warcraft (gothic fantasy), and less like Outlands art (high fantasy). -Sunwell Plateau will be coming in a patch before the expansion. It will include both a 25-main raid and a 5-main instance. -Kaplan has also mentioned that future Hero Classes could be Demon Hunter, Archmage or Blademaster.

Some other stuff we talked about in the show:

Patrick on another show

The Instance on WoWwiki