Curse

In the latest Wrath of the Lich King beta build (8770) there's been changes made to the threat meter, among those are several new visual features.

Threatmeter Changes

Scrolling Combat Text

Percentage warnings have been replaced with the following text messages: "Lost Threat", "High Threat" (yellow glow/dot) and "Attacking You" (red glow/dot).

Player/Enemy Frame

• Yellow glow on your and the target's unitframe means you have high threat with that mob and you are very close to getting that target to attack you, this is when you have to use your threat reduction abilities (i.e feint, feign death, cower, etc...). when the target starts attacking you, your unitframe will glow red.
• Red glow means you are being attacked by a mob, there can be several red glowing unitframes in the party based on the number of targets your party is in combat with. You can reduce your threat with threat reduction abilities (i.e. fade, vanish, feint, feign death, disengage, cower, etc...) or let the tank gain aggro by waiting.

Tooltip

The % threat percentage is still there, however Blizzard added 2 colored dots, yellow dot (you have high threat) and red dot (you are being attacked).

At this point it is unknown exactly at what percentage will you see the high threat warning. Also the threat meter is only active in groups with 3 or more members.

WotLK Blue Beta Posts

Spells Missing

This is not a bug. Also, this was announced. Misses actually miss now, in the log and visually. Misses aren't treated as resists anymore. [Source]

"Cower" emote duration

The current length of /cower is unintended. The animation length has been increased and will appear in an upcoming build. [Source]

Druid

Armor and Bears

Armor is one of the most important stats a tank can have. We aren't trying to keep bears from getting it.

The change to itemization was done solely to avoid having so much diversity in the items we could drop. It's lame when you're leveling up to keep seeing quest rewards that are itemized for your spec (which TBH is still a problem we haven't solved for Feral weapons and idols). It's lame when your raid kills a boss and he drops say elemental mail, healing leather, and a spellpower mace, none of which your group can use. Having bears, cats and rogues all desire the same leather drops isn't a panacea -- it helps some problems, but it creates others. Having bears run around with as much armor as a rogue would be a big, big problem.

Fortunately there are plenty of ways to give bears the armor they need -- through talents (like the crit resistance one) or through Dire Bear form itself for example. Even if another tanking class ends up having slightly more armor than a druid, the differences should be so minor that neither of you is at a significant disadvantage on a boss.

I am glad someone mentioned the hunter example. I am really hoping you guys have the same reaction when you see the next pass on druid talents. [Source]

Hunter

The new "Kill Command"

Kill Command was initially created as a reactive ability, something you hit when an event happened (a critical strike). The problem was that the event happened too often, and players just stuck it into a macro. Kill Command basically just became a flat damage increase. Players are right to assume their DPS has jumped because of shots not interrupting the auto-shot timer (it has, our tests show a ~140 DPS increase in some trials), so I think it's fair to say the class' sustained DPS will be okay. [Source]

Growl

Growl sucks. We'll fix it. [Source]

Boars & Charge

We actually debated this issue quite a bit. In the end it came down to a call about whether it was more fitting to boars to keep Charge or whether it was more fitting for the boar to be a tanking pet. The tanking pets were all going to get Intervene instead of Charge, since it let them be more useful as an OT, and we didn't think it was worth the cost of making changes or exceptions to that design just to preserve boars Charging.

In the end, we decided that boars are feared because they are tough. They have leathery skin, a stubborn disposition and had a reputation for fighting on long after their wounds should have killed them. In short, they felt like a tank. We tried to keep the feeling of the old Charge with the bonus component to Gore.

It was very difficult to come up with a whole new system for pets without losing any aspect of the old system that might be important to players. We are genuinely sorry though if there is a change you don't like. [Source]

Priest

Upcoming Shadow Changes

We're going to do some further tweaks to Shadow soon. [Source]

Shaman

Downranking and Earth Shock efficiency

We're working on a rank-1 Earth Shock equivalent spell. Not sure when it will be in, though. [Source]

Totem of Wrath stacking

Bug. Probably will also get another re-design too. [Source]

Wrath of the Lich King Cinematic will be unveiled at Games Convention 08

The opening cinematic for WotLK will be showcased at Games Convention this year.

Just wanted to let you all know that Blizzard will be unveiling the opening cinematic movie for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King at the Games Convention in Leipzig. The cinematic will be shown at 1:00 p.m., Thursday 21 August at the Blizzard Entertainment booth (D01 in Hall 5). A Q&A session featuring members of the cinematics team will immediately follow.

Blizzard’s lineup of activity will also feature hands-on gameplay with StarCraft II and Wrath of the Lich King, Q&A sessions with members from the StarCraft II and Diablo III teams, and more.

WoW Comic Contest

Yet another comic from the Blizzard Comic Contest.