The blues have been busy today and lots of new information is available. Below are some of the more important blue posts from the past couple days:

PTR Information

Ulduar testing schedule now available

Daelo
Ok, we’re going to attempt to have some playtest sessions for Ulduar starting tonight and through this weekend.

The following is the tentative schedule for this weekend:

On the North American test realms:
Hodir - Thursday night, February 26, starting at 7pm EST/4pm PST.
Iron Council - Friday night, February 27, starting at 7pm EST/4pm PST

On the European test realms
Thorim - Friday night, February 27, starting at 7pm CET.
Freya - Friday night, February 28, starting at 7pm CET.

This schedule could change at a moment’s notice due to server, bug, or patch status. I’ll try to keep everyone informed as much as possible. Ulduar and the bosses to be tested will remain also open a variable length of time. How long they stay open depends upon a host of factors including designer availability, bug status, etc.

We also hope to have the zone open on Sunday for each respective realm for a longer period of time. We have a couple special versions of Patchwerk setup. One of them is called Patchwerk (DPS Test) and is essentially a massive training dummy for your raids. The other is Patchwerk (Tank Test), and he does not have a Hateful Strike, but his melee damage increases over time.

We’re very interested in seeing combat logs and parses for all raid testing on the PTR.

Quick Ulduar FAQ:

Q) Will there be testing available on Oceanic, Korean, or other time zones?
A) There will be some testing available. We do plan on allowing for extended testing on Flame Leviathan, and possibly other bosses. We want encounter designers to be present during testing, which makes testing during some time zones difficult.

Q) Where’s all the trash?
A) We don’t have everything turned on for these tests, and this sometimes includes trash creatures before each boss encounter.

Q) Where’s the loot?
A) We don’t have this attached to bosses yet, but we’ll have loot hooked up soon.

Q) What about achievements?
A) These aren’t implemented yet.

Character Transfer Streamlining

Crygil
In order to streamline the character copy process, we will no longer be carrying some information from live realm characters to test realm characters. In particular, characters on the PTR will no longer be copied with their achievement history. This will allow us to increase the speed and availability of character transfers to the Test realm.

Upcoming Glory of the Raider Reward Changes

Vaneras
Upcoming Glory of the Raider Reward Changes When 3.1 goes live, the rewards for “Glory of the Raider” and “Heroic: Glory of the Raider” are being removed. These achievements will still be active, however, players will no longer receive the Plagued Proto-Drake or Black Proto-Drake for completing them. Similar to our decision to remove the Amani War Bear from Zul’Aman, the goal is to ensure that such mounts retain a degree of rarity in the game; and with raids progressing into Ulduar in patch 3.1, we feel obtaining the rewards for “Glory of the Raider” and “Heroic: Glory of the Raider” would be somewhat trivialized. For this reason we will be offering new fast mounts (310 speed) as rewards for completing select achievements associated with 10 and 25-player Ulduar.

Death Knight Info

Why the aura change?

Ghostcrawler
Unholy Aura was becoming mandatory as a raid buff. We considered giving it to other classes, but realized we would just be accepting all players moving faster all the time (which subsequently also makes some boot enchants look bad). Frost Aura was kind of lame, but I’m sure we could have come up with something better. Mostly, the mechanic was just a little awkward and hard to explain. We like the new one better.

Players often wish for a buff so awesome that it guarantees them a raid slot. But that is exactly the mentality we were trying to prevent with our big buff and debuff overhaul. In the Sunwell era, raid slots were already so precious that there is a good chance a DK might not have even earned a spot, and having more than one would be a total waste… unless we gave them two mandatory buffs, in which case the Retadin, Boomkin or dps warrior might have gotten the heave ho.

The new model is designed to let you get as many buffs as you want through several different configurations of classes and specs and still have some slots left over to bring who you want.

Virulence and Morbidity swap?

Ghostcrawler
We ended up moving Virulence because every PvP DK had to have it. That isn’t a problem in and of itself because there are mandatory talents in lots of trees. However, it cut out whole options for DKs — once you were two tiers deep in Unholy doing say a Blood-Frost spec got a whole lot hader.

It’s probably something we will continue to mess with, but feedback is appreciated.