By now you've heard the news: Patch 2.3 will lower the XP requirements needed to level from 20-60 by 15% per-level. As an extra bonus, Blizzard is adding 60-odd new quests to Dustwallow Marsh. I would prefer they do this than add more zones specifically for mid-level content .

New mid-level content is always a hot topic, especially by people who are on their third or fourth trip to the well. We've all got those "If I never, ever, see this zone again, it's too soon" zones. The solution often bandied about is to create alternate progression paths so we never, ever, go back to Stranglethorn Vale. I'm going to put forth a different idea: Fix what is broken. This will help minimize unused zones, and maybe not spread out the lower-levels so new players can actually find groups.

Which seems to be the step Blizzard is taking with 2.3. In terms of quest progression and rewards, Blizzard hit it out of the park with TBC. You've got quest-givers nicely clumped together and often they all send you in the same direction. The cash, XP, and item rewards for completing the quests are excellent. When you compare the expansion quests against original Azeroth it becomes apparent how frustrating quests could be. It seemed like completing most of them involved long griffon rides for mediocre rewards. Quests felt like they were, well, I was going that way anyway...

Looks like we got a little ahead of ourselves. Before we see 2.3 on the PTRs, we're going to see 2.2.3, a small patch that is supposed to bugfix a lot of the sound problems that players are having. Patch notes are complete below, and I'm betting that if the Kael event isn't fixed yet, a fix for that will also be included in this patch. We can only hope that we'll see a small PTR appearance for 2.2.3 (so test it extra fast, folks), and then the gloriousness of 2.3 will grace us with its presence.

PTR 2.2.3 Patch Notes

• Clients utilizing OpenGL video modes will no longer experience graphical anomalies and missing textures after minimizing/maximizing the window.
• Fixed an issue that caused Fel Eye Stalks during the Legion Ring event to not despawn when the event is completed.
• Fixed an issue where zoning after mounting and summoning a pet was disconnecting players.
• Fixed an issue where the Shift key would get stuck in game.
• Using a /equip macro while affected by certain crowd control spells will no longer cause the items in the macro to be stuck in your inventory.

Continued after the jump...

[ via MMO Champion ]

Players on US and EU realms have all had a couple of days of playtime in Blizzard's latest release -- patch 2.2. And though all we're hearing about recently is the upcoming changes in patch 2.3, but patch 2.2 is what we're all playing right now. I'm guessing we've all had enough playtime to come to our own conclusions, so I'm asking what you think of patch 2.2! Are you loving the new voice chat feature (it's not running on my realm yet, so I can't comment), annoyed with issues in the battlegrounds, or find it impossible to deal with the new delay on auction house profits? We want to know -- tell us about your 2.2 experience.

Patch 2.2.2 (currently on the PTRs) doesn't just feature Oktoberfest... er, I mean Brewfest event -- there are also some changes to the regular Hallow's End event, in the form of a daily quest to summon the Headless Horseman from inside the Scarlet Monastery graveyard. And the Horseman isn't just here to celebrate the occasion -- MMO-Champion reports he also has an epic loot table featuring both useful gear and toys. On the useful side, there's a DPS caster ring, a healer ring, a physical DPS ring, and a DPS plate helm. But more interestingly, he can also drop broom mounts of four types, one for each level of riding skill. The downside? Your new cool broom mount is single-use only.

[Thanks Darkbeard and Boubouille!]

Here's a really interesting undocumented note from the latest patch: Angelhunter on LJ says letters (as in saved copies of mailed ingame letters) are now soulbound. And that's a huge deal, apparently, to roleplayers -- they used those little scraps of paper for everything from treasure hunts and "official" documents to invitations and tickets.

Now, I'm not quite sure exactly why this change would be made -- for what possible reason would you want to keep people from trading saved copies of in-game mail? It's not like it would stop anyone's communication -- anything goldsellers could say in these sheets of paper, they could say in in-game chat just as well. And I can't think of any possible way that these saved letters could be used to do something devious like pass secret letters or communicate across factions-- there's no reason to make them soulbound by default.

Of course, it may just be a bug -- that's what someone was told by a GM, so maybe Blizzard will put a fix in, and RPers can have their murder mysteries again. Unfortunately, I can't seeing it justifying a hotfix -- odds are that even if it is just a bug, RPers will be waiting quite a while until they can trade letters again.

There was a flood of patch 2.3 news yesterday, which almost certainly means the CMs hit some sort of release date for 2.3 info (not to mention that they said they'd talk about 2.3 after 2.2 released, though we didn't realize it would be the day after). At any rate, the CMs made a lot of people happy yesterday-- from numerous amazing class changes (Fear Ward! No Blind reagent!), to info about new Engineering flying mounts and daily PvP and cooking quests, 2.3 is looking pretty groovy all around. Finally, something to get excited about again! Sure, there's the next expansion, but it's tough looking forward to something Blizzard hasn't even designed yet.

And the best news is that patch 2.3 is likely to show up sooner rather than later. Eyonix, at the very beginning of the big Blue forum rampage yesterday, once again cited voice chat and the new sound system as the reason for the long wait on 2.2. It wasn't a class balance or content patch, it was a completely technical one. And that's why it's been three months since new content. It'll be interesting to see if Blizzard ever tries something technical like this again-- lots of players have asked about upgrading the graphical engine, but if their efforts on the sound engine are any indication, that's just too large an undertaking for them to handle while also being expected to release new content.

But hopefully 2.3 will make up for lost time-- while the coders were working on editing sound channels, hopefully the developers were thinking up new ways to make the classes more powerful and interesting. Of course they haven't announced any release dates (this is Blizzard, after all), but my guess is that we'll see 2.2.2 with a week or two, and 2.3 about a month or so after that, definitely before Christmas.

Like the rest of the classes, Mages are getting a glimpse of the love coming their way in patch 2.3. Drysc has hopped on to the Mage forums with all manner of exciting news about the next major content patch:

• Mages will be getting a "Ritual of Refreshment" which, like the Warlock's Soulwell, will be conjured by the Mage and allow multiple players to pick up food and water. (source)
• The damage coefficient reduction (commonly called the "damage tax") will be removed from Fireball and Frostbolt. (source)
• Evocation is being changed to restore 15% of your mana every 2-seconds, instead of being spirit-based. (source)
• Arcane Meditation is being increased to give 10/20/30% mana regeneration in combat instead of 5/10/15% mana regeneration in combat, in line with similar talent changes for Druids and Priests. (source)
• Ice Barrier will gain additional benefit from spell damage bonuses, but the base absorb values of rank 5 and 6 will be reduced. (source)

And we have hints at more changes to come -- though what exactly they are, Drysc isn't saying.

Since we've seen patch 2.2 rolled out on US and EU servers by now, we're starting to get glimpses of what's in store for patch 2.3. So far, Nethaera has confirmed the following:

• Circle of Healing, Prayer of Healing, and Holy Nova (healing side) will receive additional benefit from +damage/healing.
• Circle of Healing's base healing will be reduced, but the amount of benefit it gains from +healing will be increased. (If you have more than 1338 healing, it will heal for more. If you have less than 1338 healing, it will heal for less.) Update: Related, Power Word: Shield's base absorbtion is being reduced for ranks 10, 11, and 12, but the effect of damage/healing gear on it will be increased. Though Nethaera didn't give us exact numbers, I'm hoping this equates to at least a small buff to the ability.
  

With more 2.3 info here:

• Pain Suppression being reworked. It will be castable on any friendly target and it will reduce their threat by 5% and reduce their damage taken by 40%. Update: Nethaera clarifies that this reduces the target's current threat and not their threat generation.
  
• Meditation to be increased from 5/10/15% mana regeneration while in combat to 10/20/30% mana regeneration while in combat.

Changes we know are coming, but don't have any release dates on (some of them as far out as WotLK) include:

• A change to the +healing stat to also give healers an amount of +damage. Most recently, Nethaera mentioned that they were considering adding 1/3rd of total +healing on an item as +damage as well (though this could still change). This has to be the change I'm looking forward to more than anything else.
• Unknown changes to spirit to make it a more viable tool for mana regeneration were mentioned at BlizzCon, saying that "The Spirit stat in general will be improved for WotLK."
• Possible changes to the discipline tree to give it more focus. We don't have any detailed information about this, but it was mentioned at BlizzCon. (Says Nethaera: big discipline revamps are likely to come in the expansion.)
  
• Fear Ward to be "spread around," again, not likely until the expansion.

I have to say I'm intrigued by the idea of the new Pain Suppression and honestly excited about Meditation (yay for more mana regeneration!) , though I doubt the healing tweaks will be major enough to make a big deal in either direction. And the future? I can't wait for Blizzard to add some damage to my healing gear, though I'm holding out on full details on these changes before passing judgment.

As is common with any major patch day, there are a few issues. Here are a few from the forums and what I've experienced:

Instance servers are crashing on many realms.
From AV to Tempest Keep, players are having a hard time completing instances. Raiding is particularly hard hit.

It's OK to delete the Auction Sale Pending notice from your mailbox.
You will still get your cash when the new 1 hour delay is up. And, yes, everyone else seems to hate the new delay, too.

Windows resolutions and UI Scaling have been tweaked.
It's not your imagination and it also, according to Hortus, isn't a bug. Changing resolutions of the same aspect ratio will only give you a higher or lower image quality, but otherwise your view will not change. Windows are automatically resized to maintain aspect ratios and to reduce issues with stretching and distortion. If you aren't happy with the new size of your UI, turn on UI Scaling in the Video menu and adjust it accordingly.

Hopefully the instance servers will have been fixed by the time the patch is live in Europe. Sometimes it's better not being first.

I also recommend checking out the undocumented patch notes.

It's a familiar cycle with every patch -- some changes get properly documented in the official patch notes while other changes are sadly forgotten. However, industrious inividuals on the forums always band together to collect even the tiniest of changes into a community collection of undocumented patch notes. For 2.2, these are being compiled by Viral of Stormrage -- with the help of many an attentive player. The current list, for those of you who don't have access to the forums, is after the jump, but full details (complete with lots of rumor and debate) you have to go to the source.

You know the sleuths at the BRK Patch Notes Spelunkers and Code-Crackers Institute have been hard at work delving into an ASCII-text dump of the new patch. They get paid little, get zero vacation, and are injected daily with vaccines and growth hormones. Their sacrifice is done for your benefit and our profits; they should be praised loudly and often.

But we're a little busy, so we're putting that on our BRK To-Do List.

Unfortunately, the results of several mangled code-scanning attempts had to be trashed, including what we thought was a new demon-minion for Warlocks but was really just the rantings of a highly-tortured programmer venting his misery in the code-comments. But we now think we got the parsing right and are ready to proceed. All systems are Go.

Since the blue-posts have been made and the workings have been finalized, we can release our report.

Believe us, it's a doozy.

As any long-time player of World of Warcraft knows, the public test realms open up to allow players to help out Blizzard QA by giving future changes a good stress test. The test realms open as soon as Blizzard has a stable build of the upcoming patch and the test realms close as soon as Blizzard is satisfied that their patch is as polished as it's going to get. Hortus announced this morning that the PTRs were going offline, concluding public testing for patch 2.2. To me, this means we're going to see patch 2.2 coming our way very soon -- perhaps as early as next week! However, we have known Blizzard to close the PTRs weeks in advance of an official patch release, so a final date continues to elude us.

So what major changes should you expect come patch day?

• An updated sound engine
• Voice chat (on select servers -- it will be rolled out in stages)
• The continuing shrinking shoulders adventure (Night Elves, Draenei, and Orcs to the best of our knowledge)
• Movie capture for Macs (sorry, PC users!)

Blizzard CM Drysc announced that the Voice Chat feature will be implemented onto the live realms in stages and that only a select few will have integrated Voice Chat enabled when Patch 2.2 is released. All realms will be getting all other features of Patch 2.2, but some of the realms will have to wait until the following week for Voice Chat to be enabled.

Drysc goes on to say that Voice Chat will be on separate servers from the actual game realms:

Voice chat doesn't run through the game servers. This test is of the voice chat servers themselves, not the game realms. If there's an issue voice chat won't be available, the realms themselves shouldn't be affected. In any case, that's what this initial set of realms is to test, how voice chat handles and interacts with the realms on a wider scale.

I don't know if this means we are getting Patch 2.2 on Tuesday 9/18 or not, but I do know that I won't have Voice Chat to play with on my main realm until the week after its release.

Check out our hands on look at Voice Chat and look for the list of realms getting Voice Chat first after the jump.

If you've been keeping up with the news here on WoW Insider, you already know the information that has been updated on the WoW Under Development page. But it's nice to see it in black and parchment.

Under Almost Ready, Blizzard lists the highlights of Patch 2.2: Voice Chat, Mac Movie Capture and the Improved Chat Interface. They also include a link to the current PTR Patch notes. These changes will be released in the next major patch, which unfortunately looks like it will be a while.

The Coming Soon section lists things that will be in upcoming patches, presumably before the expansion. They don't link to any further official info for this section, but I've provided links to WoW Insider details:

• Zul'Aman - A high-level 10-player instance located in the Ghostlands
• Guild Banks
• Sunwell Plateau - A high-level 25-player instance located north of Silvermoon City

The On the Horizon section is all about Wrath of the Lich King. The highlights they list are the new level cap, Inscription, Northrend, Death Knights and Character Customization. For more info, they link to the official WotLK website.

I was hoping for more official info on the Coming Soon topics -- and something more than just 3 items. I don't expect the expansion to be here for another year, so an official sneak preview of some more of the free goodies we're going to get in the meantime would be nice.

What are you most looking forward to being added to the game before the expansion? Or will nothing satisfy you except for new hairstyles, ten new levels and another continent?