Reporting Live from 3.2

I must confess, I did not always play World of Warcraft the way I play it today; looking under the hood, bothering to understand its mechanics, or with progression in mind when entering dungeons. As such, I never actually bothered with the thought of PTR, but now, with 3.2 patch in the horizon and indeed available for testing, I told myself I was crazy as a boot if I did not give it a go.

So here I am now, flying over Icecrown, wearing a full tier 8 suit, looking around and marveling at all the interesting changes. As odd as it might seem, changes do not just jump at you from behind a corner. You have to look for 'em and I knew exactly where to go for my first one; the Argent Tournament.

The place has changed quite a bit since the last we saw it, importantly, the coliseum has been finished and dominates the landscape. The old tents and npcs are still on their familiar places, practice rings of valiants and the challenge arena for champion, but there are some new features as well. One of them is a place, just north up the slope from the grounds where the scourge has setup a fortified position, seemingly ready to assault the tournament. I have no doubt there are quests that lets us investigate it further, but I could not yet find them. I suspect, it is for crusaders only.

The emblem of triumph vendors are in place and their goods, as one might guess, look very appetising. From death knight's perspective, nice ones include the two new sigils; Insolence and Virulence. Another update that blizzard has done, concerning item tooltips, is that it provides the same function as the Ratingbuster addon, which is provide easy to read information how the change between the new and old item, would affect your stats.

Next interesting update comes from Cartier & Co. Fine Jewelry, a location familiar to all my fellow jewelcrafters. Firstly, what we have all been waiting for, epic gems, which include stones like Cardinal Ruby (convertable to e.g. Bold Cardinal Ruby) and Dreadstone (convertable to e.g. Balanced Dreadstone) are available for between 10 to 20 emblems of heroism.

Along with the new gems, the dragon's eye gems have been upgraded as well. Just as we were told, they are now restricted to their respected color sockets, but in turn, the stats have been increased, even if only in a small measure; currently, the Rigid Dragon's Eye provides a +27 hit rate bonus, while the new version provides a +34 hit rate bonus. These numbers are reflected throughout the spectrum.

I always found it extremely annoying, how slow and painful it was to collect Dalaran jewelcrafter's tokens. Now, we finally have a new way to earn them. Mind you, it is not cheap but easily worth it, in my opinion; Timothy Jones now has a new, repeatable quest, in which you turn in Titanium Powder. The powder, can be prospected from titanium ore. Not only will it increase the competition for titanium nodes, but probably revitalize the titanium ore market.

There are plenty of more very nice updates, but too many to list here now, and so our peak into the 3.2 patch ends with a shot of the much desired druid bear skin. A fellow alliance druid, deep in his thoughts near the landing platform, was happy to volunteer as unsuspecting photo candidate.