Finally! All the 3.3.3 goodness is upon us!

Yes! On this sunny (at least over here where I live) tuesday's maintenance, we are getting patch 3.3.3 live on the servers.


Personally, I have to admit I've been expecting this patch for a while now, specially since I heard about the abolition of battleground marks. Exchanging them for 2k honor points each, that's just awesome.. 185 honor points each.. it's .. you know.. good, now I just have to find something good to get for my hunter...


There are a lot of things changing in this patch, most of them minor things mind you, but still, they all add up to a great amount, lest see the ones that caught my eyes:


- Changes on the AH

• If the Auction House on a realm is unavailable for any reason, an alert will pop up informing players who attempt to access it.
• Players can now Right-Click to place an item in the Auction frame.
• Entire stacks of a specific item type can be placed in the Auction frame and several options have been added for choosing how to list auctions.
• Stack Size: If a stack of items has been added to the Auction frame, players can select the size of the stack they wish to sell. If an invalid stack size is entered (i.e. a stack of 21 Saronite Ore), the Create Auction button will be grayed out.
• Number of Stacks: In addition to selecting the size of a stack, players can select how many stacks of an item they wish to sell (i.e. if a player has a total of 43 Saronite Ore in the Auction frame, they can choose to list 2 stacks of 20, 4 stacks of 10, 8 stacks of 5, 43 stacks of 1, etc. If the number and amount of stacks listed results in a remainder, the left-over items will be placed back in the player's bags automatically).
• Stack Size and Number of Stacks are linked mathematically so that altering the variables of one may automatically calculate the amount of the other (i.e. if a player puts 20 in the Stack Size field and 43 Saronite Ore are in the Auction frame, the Number of Stacks field will change to 2 by default. If a player only wishes to sell one stack of 20 Saronite Ore, the Number of Stacks field can be manually changed to 1).
• Price: Players can now choose to input the price of an item Per Stack or Per Item by selecting either option from a pull-down. If Per Item is selected and a player is selling a stack of that item, the Auction House will multiply the selected Per Item price by the amount of that item in the stack. If Per Stack is selected, the player can enter the total price he or she wishes to charge for each stack of that item being listed.
• Auction Post Completion Bar: If multiple items or stacks of items are being listed at once by a player, a Posting completion bar will appear showing the total progress of each individual auction being listed once the Create Auction button is selected. The greater the number of individual listings being made in a single press of the Create Auction button, the longer this process will take. Players can still browse the Auction House while the Posting completion bar is in progress, but moving around will interrupt the progress, similar to moving while attempting to create multiple bandages with First Aid. Just as with creating bandages, auctions that were completed prior to the character moving or otherwise canceling the action will successfully be listed.

So, the big new thing here, is the change to the AH's interface. They've re-worked the posting section, to make it easy for you. All I can think about when reading this is... Auctioneer *cough*. It's true, it's not the first time blizzard takes a great addon and incorporates it's functionalities into the game. Don't get me wrong, it's great that they do this, at least for the end-user. Personally, I'm going to keep using Auctioneer, since it still provides a lot more features than the in-game AH naturally does.

- Dungeon Finder

The changes to this revolutionary and controvertial system are meant to improve the gamer experience. 

For instance:

• The Deserter debuff's duration is now 30 minutes, up from 15. This right here, is a direct attempt at solving the most common issue with the new pugs form using the new LFG. Group forms, group pulls, group falls apart because people start leaving. With a 15 minute debuff, if you were the original deserter, then you'd just keep minding your busissnes and before you knew it, the debuff would be gone and you'd be ready to queue up again and mess with another group! Now it's a bit harder, 30 minutes is a bit more time, hopefully, it'll help to diminish the rate at which this happens. Personally, I think it'll help, but not that much.
• A reason for the kick: I see this as a minor but helpfull change. Normally, when a kick vote was initiated, everyone almost everyone would know why. Now there is a change to let all know why is it that you want to kick that good for nothing tank!
• More generous level requirements when creating a random group: I don't fully understand this. Does it mean you'll also look into the gear or achievements of a player when creating a group? Or does it mean that if you have 3 80's and 2 73's you'll take those 73's into a lvl 80 dungeon? Because if it's the latter, then this is not really good. Actually, it can pretty much undo everything the 1st point is accomplishing by getting lower-than-recommended lvl healers/tanks into higher instances. Let's hope i'm mistaken though.

There are other minor changes, which I chose to ignore, but they stay within the same general guide line: improving user experience, wether through changes in the UI or through obstacles to keep bad players from doing bad things.

- Changes to the economy

I'm not one to talk about WoW's economy, really, I'm not really a rich player or anything, but I try to keep an eye open for good business when I can.

With the coming of 3.3.3, a new vendor will be available at Dalaran, Frozo the Renowned. He will sell materials, used for some profesions in exchange of Frozen Orbs, here is a list, take from the official forums:

Note: They all cost 1 Frozen Orb, unless stated otherwise in parenthesis.

• Crusader Orb (6) 
• Runed Orb (4) 
• Eternal Fire 
• Eternal Earth 
• Eternal Water 
• Eternal Air 
• Eternal Life 
• Eternal Shadow 
• Frost Lotus 
• Pattern: Frosty Flying Carpet [Tailors Only] (6)

Also, recipes which required Frozen Orbs have had their materials reduced: This is meant, I guess, to cope with the extra use for the orbs. 

This will also impact, I'm guessing on a negative way, the prices of these items, since Frozen orbs are relatively easy to obtain nowadays. You can pug a few heroics and you'll eventually have enough of them or you can actually buy them for 10 Emblems of Heroism, which you should have, since you've been farming heroics for the orbs anyways :) In the end I predict (don't take my word for it though), that the price for these materials will drop quite a bit. If you were getting your money from all the Frost Lotus you've been farming, I would recommend to start looking for something else to sell.

- New Random Battleground option

Here is one of the few mayor changes into the game in this patch and, at the same time, not really. Let me elaborate:

Yes, it's mayor, since you have the whole PVP change, in which honor points for every HK will be increased by 100%, and if you queue for a random BG, you'll get more honor as a reward (amongst other things), but it's not new when it comes to assembling the group.

Yes, I know that right now it's just for lvl80's, still, I'm guessing next patch they'll let everyone queue, I see no reason for this restriction, really.

Anyways, as I was saying, random battleground is.. well, just that... queue up, and let the system chose which BG you'll be doing. There is no real change at the group assembly part. There is no gear score checks, or anything like that, groups won't be more balanced. Right now, groups are as random as they can be, and that is not going to change.

What I see here, is just an attempt at making players do all BG's not just the one they like the most, which normally, are the same ones for almost everyone else (same thing happened when they introduced the Weekly Raid quests.. giving players a reason to visit forgotten content.. this is the same thing!).

Now, thanks to this change, the daily BG quests have been removed. I'm guessing this will affect only the lvl80 quests, since all other players can't queue for a random bg just yet. 

There is also the whole "no more honorable marks" thing. This is cool, really, just give me the honor points, makes the system simpler and my life less complicated :) Making me lose 30 Warsong Gulchs so I can get my freaking pvp mount was not cool blizz and will never be >.<

Anyway, this was a minor overview of what we can expect after the patch is done, and our maintenance there are ofcourse a lot more things coming with the patch, for a complete list, go check it out here.

Have fun reading!