New Battle.net desktop client datamined

MMO-Champion have been very busy datamining, as is their way, and have happened upon some files that indicate that a new launcher may well be appearing before too long. What they have found indicates that there is a battle.net launcher coming that will shift away from separate game-by-game launchers, towards an integrated launcher for all Blizzard games. Looking at the background files which have been datamined, it looks like WoW, Diablo, and Starcraft will be included, but also the older Warcraft RTS games.

Each major game group appears to have its own section, which itself includes breaking news, general information, and links to things like patch notes, guides, account management, help and support and more. There is also a news section which encompasses the news across all the games you have installed.

It is important to note that this currently appears to be datamined information and should be treated appropriately. It is always best not to pass judgement on such things until an official position on the veracity of early reports is released. But, that being said, whatever this turns out to be looks great.

Tags: battle-net, battlenet, breaking, datamining, launcher, new-client, new-launcher

Filed under: Blizzard

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Patch 5.3 PTR patch notes and datamined changes

A new PTR build went up last night, but the notes didn't hit the Blizzard site until today, probably in an attempt to avoid the assumptions that their latest build was an April Fool's joke. The PTR notes have been updated, and highlights as well as full notes are below, but there was some more information posted on Wowhead about the latest build, which hasn't made it into the patch notes:Glyph of Mass Dispel: This has changed for the glyph to offer the usual "non-dispellable effect" benefit as something that you have to glyph for.. Ghostcrawler later confirmed on twitter that the cast time reduction is baked into Mass Dispel for Holy and Discipline.Glyph of Unleashed Lightning: Glyph of Unleashed Lightning has been replaced by Glyph of Lightning Shield, which reduces damage taken by 10%. This provides some additional mitigation for DPS shaman, and the ability to cast while moving is now baseline for elemental.Atonement now seems to heal for 80% of the damage dealt, down from 100%.There is a five-minute cooldown Void Shift for Discipline and Holy priests now, but also a new 10 minute version for Shadow Priests.Please note that the above is datamined, not patch notes, and should be treated as such. Hit the break for the new patch notes, which include:
A huge amount of pet battle additionsNew Brawler's Guild Bosses!More steps have been built in Dalaran Arena!More information on the Darkspear, Orgrimmar, and just exactly what's going on in the BarrensMore Legendary Quest Information!BlizzardWorld of Warcraft PTR Patch 5.3

General Please note: During the 5.3 PTR, not all the content listed may be available for testing, or may only be available during a limited testing window. Keep an eye on our PTR Discussion forum for details.New Battleground: Deepwind Gorge
In the new Battleground situated in the Valley of the Four Winds, the Alliance and Horde continue their war for Pandaria's precious resources. While the two factions battle for control over mines, they must also protect their own resources from being stolen and turned against them!New Arena: The Tiger's Peak
Gladiator hopefuls have a new location to test their mettle amidst the Kun-Lai mountain tops, in the training grounds of the powerful Shado-Pan. Players must make use of the looming tiger statues and fenced platforms to gain an advantage that will bring victory and glory!Heroic Scenarios Heroic scenarios require a pre-made group to join.Heroic scenarios offer bonus objectives that will reward additional valor if completed.An option to run a random heroic scenario has been added as a drop-down in the scenario tab in Dungeon Finder.Players can complete a normal or heroic scenario for bonus valor each day, but not both.Six heroic scenarios will be available in patch 5.3. Four are new and two are upgrades of existing normal scenarios.Battle of the High SeasBlood in the SnowDark Heart of PandariaThe Secrets of RagefireCrypt of Forgotten KingsA Brewing StormQuest Campaign: Escalation
The Darkspear Trolls are in open rebellion against the Warchief! Aid your faction in preparing to rout Garrosh Hellscream from OrgrimmarAlliance heroes will scout Orgrimmar's outskirts and engage in SI: 7 espionage to weaken Garrosh's power structure.Horde heroes will help Vol'jin's insurgency survive a Kor'kron assault and advance towards the Horde capital.Visit Lorewalker Cho at the Seat of Knowledge in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms to begin questing.Battlefield: Barrens
Put the stranglehold on Orgrimmar by undermining the Kor'kron supply chain in Northern Barrens.Collect resources by killing Kor'kron loyalists and their supporters.Get a group together to kill Kor'kron leaders for bonus resources.Escort your faction's caravans across the zone for even more additional resources.The Darkspear Rebellion will reward your efforts to undermine the Warchief by helping you upgrade Latent Kor'kron Armor into useable gear.Participate in the Escalation Quest Campaign to learn how to engage in the Barrens conflict.The Legendary Quest Continues
Journey with Wrathion to the four corners of Pandaria to speak with the August Celestials.Champions will have had to complete Wrathion's earlier tasks (including "Heart of the Thunder King") to continue.New Brawler's Guild Bosses
Test your might against two new tiers of bosses in the Brawl'gar Arena in Orgrimmar or Bizmo's Brawl Pub in Stormwind.New VIP areas are now accessible for brawlers at or above rank 8.Bizmo has raised the floor in his arena to hide the bodies. Or... maybe to improve the sight lines. We'll never know for sure.Special "Challenge Cards" can now drop from mobs or reward satchels, allowing you to summon and battle unique bosses.
Classes

Druid

Talents Force of Nature is no longer on global cooldown and summons a single Treant. The Treant no longer has a control bar, immediately uses its special abilities on the Druid's current target, and accumulates 1 charge every 20 seconds up to a maximum of 3 charges.Restoration version of the Treant now casts Swiftmend on the Druid's target when summoned. This version of Swiftmend does not require or consume a heal-over-time effect on the target.Glyphs Glyph of Solar Beam have been removed and replaced with Glyph of Omens.New Glyph: Glyph of Omens: While the Druid is not in a Solar or Lunar Eclipse, the following abilities will generate 10 Solar or Lunar Energy: Entangling Roots, Cyclone, Faerie Fire, Solar Beam, Faerie Swarm, Mass Entanglement, Typhoon, Disorienting Roar, Ursol's Vortex, and Mighty Bash.Balance Solar Beam is now more responsive when players enter and leave the beam's area-of-effect.
Hunter

General Hunters now have 50 pet stable slots, up from 20.
Mage

General
Teleport: Vale of Eternal Blossoms and Portal: Vale of Eternal Blossoms now have new icons.

Creatures

Oondasta Shiny Pile of Refuse now has a chance to contain a Primal Egg, and a number of Dinosaur Bones.Spitfire Beam no longer increases in damage with each jump, deals a flat 200,000 damage(up from 150,000 damage), and jumps to 99 targets (up from 20 targets).
Pet Battles

General Pet Battle Duels are now available in all dungeons and raids. Enjoy!Pet Battles in the wild and duels are now viewable by other players in the world.Hit Chance is now displayed for all abilities.Abilities no longer have a base chance to miss or be dodged by opposing pets of the same level.Reduced the chance to miss when fighting higher-level opponents from 5% per level to 2% per level.Blistering Cold had now deals 100% more damage.A series of new achievements and rewards have been added for max-level matchmaking PvP pet battlesWins for max-level, matchmaking PvP pet battles can now be tracked in statistics.Battle pets' recent ability loadouts will now be saved when pets are swapped in and out of battle slots.Species specific Flawless Battle-Stones are now Bind to Battle.net account.Battle Pets A number of new battle pets have been added to the Throne of Thunder and Isle of Thunder. Happy hunting!Whispers from pet tamers in the north have spread word of an elusive new battle pet that can be found in the frozen tundras of Northrend. The Unborn Val'kyr awaits.Battle Pet drops have been added to Burning Crusade raids. These new pets can be obtained from raid bosses in Karazhan, Tempest Keep and Serpenshrine Cavern. Obtaining all of these new pets will reward players with a new battle pet, Tito!Ethereal Soul-Trader has been returned to his original, larger size.Battle Pet Quests Beasts of Fable daily quest has been broken into three separate chapters. Players can now choose to do any or all of the chapters each day. Rewards have been modified to include a new consumable that will boost battle pet XP for a limited time.All Beasts of Fable and Spirit Tamer quests will now reward experience and lesser charms.Increased the difficulty of elite pets on the Beasts of Fable quest.A new weekly quest for max-level, matchmaking PvP pet battles has been added.

PvP Resilience gems and enchants will continue to be available and remain unchanged.4-piece PvP set bonus for all Season 12 and 13 armor sets that granted 1000 Resilience now grants 1000 PvP Power instead.Season 13 Tyrannical gear had their item levels increased to ilevel 496, up from ilevel 493. Weapons and shields/off-hand items remain unchanged at ilevel 498.Season 13 Tyrannical Elite gear had their item levels decreased to ilevel 496, down from ilevel 512.Glorious Tyranny weapon enchantment now grants 600 PvP Power instead of 400 PvP Power and 200 Resilience.New weapon enchantment: Bloody Dancing Steel is functionally equivalent to Dancing Steel, shares the same visual effect as Glorious Tyranny, costs a scroll of the base enchant, and requires a 2200 rating.New weapon enchantment: Spirit of Conquest is functionally equivalent to Jade Spirit, shares the same visual effect as Glorious Tyranny, costs a scroll of the base enchant, and requires a 2200 rating.Tyrannical Gladiator's Tabard and Tyrannical Gladiator's Greatcloak are available as new prestige items at 2500 rating for 1000 Conquest Points.
Battlegrounds and Arenas
Dalaran Arena: Masons of Dalaran have been hard at work installing steps in the two remaining corners of the arena.Eye of the Storm: The starting platforms have been lowered.

UI A new option to display pet tamers on the world map has been added. This should help players looking to find unlocked pet tamer daily quests.
Tags: breaking, featured, patch-5.3, patch-5.3-heroic-scenarios, patch-5.3-mounts, patch-5.3-ptr, patch-5.3-pvp-gear, patch-5.3-scenarios

Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria

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Ghostcrawler: Not all things datamined will be in patch 5.2

In what could potentially be filed under the "duh" category, but still something that has to be mentioned just about every time any datamining news comes out, Ghostcrawler makes it crystal clear as to what to take away from the recent waves of datamined info:

@tweetsrdumb Players have also datamined a lot of stuff in 5.2 that isn't going to be in 5.2 either. Shrug.

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 6, 2013

Including things in the PTR and game files that are not present is an age old tradition at Blizzard. The Emerald Dream and Hellfire were in the game files in extremely early development form for ages. As were never released battlegrounds and crazy spells.

Patches tend to get things that don't make much sense to us when we're looking at them from the outside in. On Blizzard's end they must make some sense, although it does seem the amount of seemingly useless data (for lack of a better phrase) has decreased over the last few years. But then again, how do we know it's useless? We don't.

Bottom line, a good reminder from top to bottom that you shouldn't read into datamined stuff very much. Tags: datamined-info, ghostcrawler, patch-5.2, wow-datamined-info, wow-ghostcrawler, wow-patch-5.2

Filed under: News items

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Goldrush: Another new datamined battleground?

The good folks over at Adriacraft have been busily mining through the data in the Patch 5.2 PTR, and unearthed another new battleground map! Adriacraft's Stevan informed us that this map is currently titled Goldrush BG, which, given the titles of Eye of the Storm (Netherstorm BG) and Gilneas BG for, well, Battle for Gilneas, it seems relatively likely that this is another new battleground map.

Looking at the map itself, which Adriacraft have provided an overhead screenshot of, this seems like a far smaller map than the previously datamined Defense of the Alehouse. It's likely for 10 or so players, and appears to have, or intend to have, two bases, as well as at least two resource nodes. Given the name of the battleground file, it's possible that these are gold mines, but from the map there are three small golden bits in the middle, also visible at five seconds into the video, so perhaps it's a spawning node capture.

Stevan also informed us that there are human models in the patch 5.2 PTR files, and therefore speculated that this battleground could have NPCs in it, bringing gold to players, who might have to defend resources that allow the NPCs to carry out their task. Or, to bring my own speculation into it, perhaps there are mines or nodes that can be captured, which permit players to ferry gold back and forth, and the NPCs mine up the nodes or gold.

Naturally, this is datamined information, and should be treated accordingly, not as confirmation of any new element of the game. But, it's fun to speculate, and encouraging indeed to see new PvP content appearing in the patch 5.2 PTR.
Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Tags: adriacraft, defense-of-the-alehouse, dota, gold-rush, gold-rush-battleground, mists, mists-of-pandaria, new-battlegrounds, patch-5.2, patch-5.2-battleground, patch-5.2-ptr, patch-5.2-pvp

Filed under: News items, PvP

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Patch 5.2 PTR: Warlock area datamined

Adriacraft have been at it again, datamining what is believed to be the containing zone for an element of the warlock-specific "green fire quest" area. On first look, the zone itself, though not the map, appears to bear a striking visual resemblance to the zone in which the Obsidian Sanctum raid takes place, but with additional items added.

It seems from a brief glance at Wowhead's warlock-specific quests that the majority of the currently known quests refer, as expected, to the Black Temple, without mentioning another zone. Could this "island" be an instanced area accessed from within the Black Temple? It looks far too fiery for that to me at least, but with the little we know about the Council of the Black Harvest, also known as the Council of Six Daggers, and their ties to other, older zones, it could be that this is some area associated with that group.

What do you think? I know I'm really pleased I leveled my warlock, these quests look really exciting, even with our very limited knowledge of how it will all unfurl. Do note, as ever, that this is datamined information, and place an according amount of weight upon it. Let's hope this leads to more class-specific quests in future!
Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Tags: class-quests, codex-of-xerrath, council-of-six-daggers, council-of-the-black-harvest, datamining, fel, fel-fire, green-fire, green-fire-quests, mists, mists-of-pandaria, patch-5.2, warlock-area, warlock-quests

Filed under: Warlock, News items, Mists of Pandaria

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Patch 5.2 Throne of Thunder datamined preview

Have you been wondering what's behind the doors in that preview image of the Throne of Thunder that was posted last week? Players have commented that the place seems reminiscent of both Ulduar and the Black Temple -- in a good way, as both raids were incredibly popular when they were current content. While there isn't an official preview for the raid just yet, datamining has uncovered a glimpse of the raid zone in its raw state.

Reddit user Silencerr put together the above video as a tour of sorts of the new raid zone. Because this is just datamined files, it likely won't look exactly like this on live servers -- the lighting isn't present, and any filler doodads, mobs, or bosses are absent. Basically, it's the sandbox version of what the raid will look like -- and anything can change between the PTR and now.

However, the video is actually pretty neat. It's dark, it's gloomy, and the broken halls are frankly kind of disturbing. It almost reminds me of those creepy crypts underneath Karazhan, although there are no Upside-down Sinners floating around. More importantly, this raid appears to be massive, and definitely on the scale of zones like Black Temple or Ulduar. It's huge, it's menacing, and I can't wait to see what it looks like fully-realized and implemented in game.

Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Tags: mists-of-pandaria, patch-5.2, patch-5.2-ptr, patch-5.2-raids, raid-zone, throne-of-thunder, thunder-isle, thunder-king, world-of-warcraft

Filed under: Mists of Pandaria

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Patch 5.2 PTR: Tier 15 models datamined

The intrepid minds over at Wowhead have been busy datamining as much of the new 5.2 PTR as they can, and they found the models for the next round of tier gear. While tier 15 doesn't appear to have names just yet, the models are pretty representative of what will likely be a very primitive-feeling raid, with animal and tribal themes throughout. The looks are incredibly detailed, iconic, and honestly I think as far as the rogue set is concerned, this is one that I'm not going to transmog over.

Tier 15 also seems to have some of the most interesting belt designs I've seen in a long time. Some of the sets have belt buckles that are even animated with sparks and other oddities. While not all of the tier sets are complete and available for viewing, each has at least a few pieces that you can check out if you're so inclined. Take a look at Wowhead's post for still images and 3D models of each of the different tier sets.

Tags: 5.2-patch-notes, lei-shen, new-raid-tier, patch-5.2, patch-5.2-notes, patch-5.2-ptr, patch-5.2-raids, thunder-isle, thunder-king, tier-15, tier-15-models, tier-models

Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria

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