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Episode 289

Ren
Finished Fisherfriend of the Isles
ALMOST finished Lucid Nightmare
Got into Beta, but no time to do anything about it
On Sylvanus server, copied my Horde paladin Krystoff onto it and created a Warcast channel

Mike
Nothing
Well, did some beta w/Ali but basically covered the same ground as pre-reset.
Guild moving to horde

This Week in WoW
Pet Battle Bonus Event
Next week: Cataclysm Timewalking
Midsummer Fire Festival starts Thursday, June 21
New from 2017: Set of Matches toy (500 Burning Blossoms), Igneous Flameling pet (350 Burning Blossoms), Illusion: Deathfrost from Ahune (Slave Pens)

News

BfA news

8.0 prepatch live on the PTR
Players gain access to a multitude of features and system updates in the pre-patch, including Communities, War Mode, the new Honor System, overhauled Professions, and Legion's final storyline leading up to Burning of Teldrassil and the Battle for Lordaeron.
Artifacts will be disabled when the pre-patch goes live. Player power will be buffed to compensate for the power loss.
Class Changes
A stat/item squish
Legendaries won't work past level 115.
Retired artifacts lose all their traits and become normal weapons, with stats scaling with relics installed in the artifact weapon. The main artifact effect of each spec's weapons is becoming a talent instead, as are several class specific legendaries.
Underlight Angler was originally showing as disabled, but the latest build fixed it.


WoW Classic
Will start with 1.12 Drums of War: Features introduced in 1.12 included:
Cross realm battlegrounds (Alterac Valley, Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin)
World PvP
Some of the past things from previous patches that will be included as a result:
Ruins and Temple of Ahn'Qiraj - so this will be after opening those
Blackwing Lair
Darkmoon Faire
Raid dungeon timers, calendars and lockouts
The high level class dungeon armor sets
Weather
Quest experience for gold at level 60
Final destination flight paths
Linked auction houses
Some world holidays
Soul shard bags (!!!)
Expected issues with the first prototype
didn't recognize current video cards and was incompatible with the current login/authentication server (authenticator became available 2 Jun 2008, almost 2 years after 1.12's release on 22 August 2006)
Does not support modern security and anti-cheating capabilities
Second prototype: instead of going forward with old code, work backward: take the modern back-end code and use it to process Patch 1.12 game data
Start with modern architecture, security and stability - catalogue any differences in behavior between the development build and the Patch 1.12 reference build
Three types of game data:
Table data: numbers - hit points, stats, spawn timers, etc.
File data: dense data such as 3d models, textures, animations, terrain, user interface, and art models (don't use the same file formats as commercial art tools - no jpgs, tifs, etc.
Lua scrips: custom behaviors for server side logic without needing engineering knowledge
Engineering challenges
All classic data is in original form since launch, but format has changed substantially over the year. Modern client is not compatible with old data.
Master data problem: from single line on a master table to multiple linked tables catalogued by ID number
much richer environment but not compatible with the single line system
For example, spells could only apply up to three actions on a target in classic
In current form, spells no longer limited to three effects and are formatted differently
Almost all other data such as items, characters, creatures, NPCs, AI, spawning and more) have had their database formats changed