We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• WoW in an Hour really enjoys doing the new raid weekly quest — nice raid rewards, under an hour of play.
• Chill of the Grave has some great suggestions for Death Knight gear to be found in the new 5-mans.
• HTFTMFW takes you through quick strategies for the first four bosses in Icecrown.
• Starnaglethron has a declaration of love for the Dungeon Finder (which most of you would probably echo).
• And finally, Pike has some bad news for you Glyph of Bestial Wrath addicts. There’s a new glyph in town and he’ll up your DPS.

Following up on their neat entry for Ulduar, Blizzard has released their newest Bosstiary, this time for The Frozen Halls, the collection of new Icecrown 5-man dungeons coming with Patch 3.3. The site serves as an encyclopedia of information on the many and varied bosses of the Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection.

The Bosstiaries often have information that the dungeons never really give you; for example, who knew that Auriaya was the Titans’ librarian? Nobody, that’s who. We just wondered why the heck she was wandering around Ulduar with a bunch of cats and a bad attitude. But now you can go into the Frozen Halls and know exactly who you’re fighting and why, replete with marks on the map indicating the position of the bosses and the instance entrance.

The Forge of Souls sees us freeing the souls of innocents from Arthas’ Soul Grinder machines, run by Bronjahm, Godfather of Souls. Guarding the machines and preventing souls from escaping is the Devourer of Souls.

The Pit of Saron is Arthas’ saronite mining operation; Krick, a leper gnome, oversees the operation from atop his abomination, Ick. Forgemaster Garfrost shapes the saronite into weapons of destruction under Arthas’ command, and Scourgelord Tyrannus lords over the pit with his fearsome Scourge powers.
The Halls of Reflection are Arthas’ private quarters, guarded by his lieutenants in life, Falric and Marwyn. Inside, Arthas himself keeps Frostmourne locked away from those who would try to use it against him.

It seems like every Wrath patch brings with it more items than the last by an order of magnitude. It was eight hundred of ‘em for 3.1, between the Argent Tournament and Ulduar, and now Ghostcrawler says that 1400 more PvE items will be packed in every box of Patch 3.3, including our big orange buddy up there.

Given the recent interview with Cory Stockton and our man GC, it seems like there’s a lot of attention going into itemization for all of the Icecrown gear, and thus it’s actually a little surprising that there’s so darn much of it. And there’s a ton of new kinds of procs, set bonuses, et cetera, building on the “Epic. Cool things. Proc’y stuff.” mentality that GC says Icecrown items are all based on.

Then again, with what’s going down with items in Cataclysm, fourteen hundred new items seem downright mundane in comparison. It must seem that way to Ghostcrawler, too, given that this whole comment off-handedly came out in a post where someone was loudly complaining about an itemization bug on a piece of Icecrown gear. That’s casual conversation for ol’ Greg. “Yeah, put the finishing touches on 1400 new items today. Figure later I’ll get the number of that waitress at Applebee’s. Tomorrow I personally reitemize all of the old-world quests for Cataclysm. I’ll get up around noon, probably leave work at 3:30 or so.”

Wowhead has been a go-to site to track what’s going on on the PTR for quite some time, and now there’s even more reason to go there. Their improved new items in patch 3.3 page features the following improvements:

• Categorization by item level, with breakdowns for the five levels of items that are coming at us (219, 232, 251, 264, and 277).
• You can now filter the new items and search within them.
• Items are also sortable.

And this isn’t a new feature, but it bears mentioning, at least if you’re a major news geek like me: you can get an RSS feed of the new items added to the Wowhead database. If you wanted to you could probably hook this up to Twitter, or put it on your blog, or whatever.

Anyway, if you want to know what items are coming at us along with Icecrown Citadel, I think there’s no better place to be. What items are you most excited about?

Blizzard has just released a lengthy statement on the way the new Icecrown raid in patch 3.3 will be progressively accessed. Some of the key points:

• Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live.
• The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. “Several weeks” until the next encounters become available.
• Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. The same goes for 25 mans. This means no heroic Icecrown until after the Lich King is defeated, which will apparently be, at the earliest, in a couple of months.
  
• The four most difficult bosses have a limited number of attempts on them each week. Once those attempts are gone, you have to wait another week to try again.
• There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity).
  
• In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available.
• Over time, after all bosses are defeated, players will begin to get a buff, making defeating bosses easier.

This is a jam packed statement from Blizzard on the mechanics of the raid zone, and outlines exactly what your raiding guild will be doing in the weeks and months ahead. If you are going to ever set foot in the Icecrown Citadel raid, you need to know this information.

The full statement after the break.

The full statement from Daelo:

Icecrown Citadel testing has been progressing very well over the last few weeks, and this has been a huge help to the encounter design team. I want to thank everyone who has logged onto the PTR and tried the encounters there.

As we’re now getting closer to the release of 3.3.0, I wanted to talk about our plans for access progression within Icecrown Citadel. Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point I can’t give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates are known with more certainty, I’ll update the community so they can plan appropriately.

The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. Progress beyond that point will be prevented for several weeks. Then the Plagueworks will open with Rotface, Festergut, and Professor Putricide becoming available. After another period of time, the Crimson Hall will open and you can then fight the Blood Princes and Blood-Queen Lana’thel. The final Frostwing Halls unlock then occurs after that, making Valithria Dreamwalker, Sindragosa, and the Lich King available. We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace.

There are other elements that gate access along the way. Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. Similarly, players must defeat the Lich King in a 25 player raid before they can attempt a Heroic 25 player encounter. So players must master every normal difficulty encounter in Icecrown Citadel before attempting Heroic difficulty.

The Lich King may not be attempted until Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, and Sindragosa are defeated. Furthermore, the Heroic difficulty of The Lich King encounter may not be attempted in any week unless the three aforementioned encounters have been defeated in Heroic difficulty that week.

The Ashen Verdict provides reinforcements and material for players to assault Icecrown Citadel, but this support is not endless. Raids will have a limited number of attempts total each week to defeat the four most difficult encounters in Icecrown Citadel: Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. As these boss encounters are unlocked, the number of attempts available per week will increase. The initial number of attempts provided for defeating Professor Putricide is only five. When Blood-Queen Lana’thel unlocks, the amount of total attempts remaining will increase to 10. Then when Sindragosa and the Lich King unlock, 15 total attempts will be available to defeat all four bosses. After a raid has exhausted their attempts for the week, the Ashen Verdict must withdraw their support and the four most difficult bosses all despawn and become unavailable for the week. The limited attempt system is a feature of both Normal and Heroic difficulty.

There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity).

In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell’s effect if they so wish.

We’ve been waiting to see the end rewards for Patch 3.3’s Quel’delar questline, purported to be capable weapons, and it looks like this latest build revealed the stats for all of the weapon’s incarnations.

Swords:

• Quel’Delar, Ferocity of the Scorned
• Quel’Delar, Cunning of the Shadows
• Quel’Delar, Lens of the Mind
• Quel’Delar, Might of the Faithful

And if you can’t use swords, you can turn Quel’delar in for:

Maces:

• Cudgel of Furious Justice
• Hammer of Purified Flame
• Lightborn Spire

The stats are pretty good, actually! Not a bad reward at all. No tanking sword, though. Weird!

Sindragosa. Her very name strikes fear into the hearts of mortals. This once majestic dragon was a former member of the blue flight. In fact, she was a consort of Malygos. Sindragosa was available for testing earlier this evening and she’ll be another boss in the upcoming patch 3.3 Icecrown raid. If she looks familiar, you might’ve seen her in the Wrath of the Lich King intro cinematic. It’s the same dragon that Arthas summoned.

Of the two encounters I’ve seen so far, Sindragosa has proven to be the most fun to heal in Icecrown. I’ll tell you what you can expect when your raid faces her behind the cut below. Also, our Icecrown gallery has been updated with more Sindragosa screenshots.

Today, the gates to the instance promptly opened up. They were on time which was great! Unlike the night before, we didn’t have to wait around for half an hour before being able to go in. Our crew of 10 waltzed in and took the teleporter up to Sindragosa’s lair. Some fancy camera work revealed that there would be several trash packs to clear out before the blue dragon herself would face us.

The trash

We gathered at the top of the stairs and opted to pull conservatively. Ended up having 2 paladins tanking many whelps (left side). Nothing special as they’re just whelps who happen to shoot bolts of frost at range. Both groups also had handlers looking after them. They didn’t last long either.

Once we cleared out a set of trash, one of the frost wyrms would land on the platform as if though to taunt us. It’s best to proceed with engaging whelp trash first and then the corresponding frost wyrm. One of the big wyrms has a fear ability. Start the pull by clearing out the whelp group on the right.

Spinestalker and Rimefang

If you followed my advice, Rimefang should be the first frost wyrm your group will deal with. Rimefang starts off on the ground doing standard dragon things like breathing before taking off and hovering in the air. The big ability that Rimefang will do is target players and drop patches of ice on top of them while she is in the air. Don’t worry, Rimefang will mark the locations with a giant blue rune. You can’t miss it. Not only do these patches slow down movement speed, but players will take damage while standing in them until they are clear of it.

Stay out of the ice (not fire).

Spinestalker will touch down after the left whelp pack gets cleared out. I’d say he’s a little easier to deal with compared to Rimefang. All he does is an AoE fear which can be mitigated with Fear Ward or Tremor totem. I don’t remember them being Dispellable or anything like that. It’s reminiscent of Onyxia except without the many whelps nor the air phase.

Once that part of the trash is done with, it’s time for everyone to get back up the stairs. Make sure you’re actually not on the stairs when Sindragosa lands. She has a massive aggro radius and will go after players who are even on the 4th step from the top. One of our tanks picked an unfortunate time to go AFK and he found that out the hard way.

Before moving on, I hope your raid has some type of Frost Resistance Aura. I’m not sure if frost resist gear is needed as the damage is healable from what I’ve seen.

Sindragosa’s ground phase

The first thing I noticed was she had 9.76 million health.

Toggle on that Frost Resist aura as Sindragosa herself radiates her own Frost Aura debuff which deals a solid 4000+ damage to the entire raid every few seconds. I happened to be sneaking a peek at several livestreams that were going on at the time to gain some idea of what to expect. The tank was directed to pick up Sindragosa and have her facing the stairs (entrance). The rest of the raid stacked on the left side of the room.

Why?

As all dragons do, Sindragosa has a Tail Smash which will knock players back. She also has a conical Frost Breath which will knock out any players who are stupid enough to stand in front. Now tanks aren’t stupid but they can at least survive one of these. So don’t stand in front of her.

Oh and she Cleaves.

Every once in a while, she’s going to Icy Grip the entire raid directly on to her position. Stop what you’re doing and run outwards. Violet Hold’s Cyanigosa was part of the blue dragon flight. She must have learned that icy grip and explode ability from Sindragosa. 5 seconds after Sindragosa death grips you in, she’ll cast Blistering Cold which will blast anyone too close for 35000+ damage. It might be possible for the tank to stay in. We had ours run out but it might be easier for the sake of positioning to simply eat the Blistering Cold and rapidly heal him up after the fact. Otherwise Sindragosa will end up chasing after your tank.

For casters, there’s another specific ability to watch out for and this one is a real pain in the butt. It nuked me the first time before I realized what had happened.

2 players on 10 man will get a debuff applied called Unchained Magic. Healers, this is an ability you will specifically wish to add to your debuff window. This debuff stays for about 20 seconds. When it is active, you must be careful of how many spells you cast. Every time I healed, I gained 1 stack of a debuff called Instability. After 8 seconds of not casting any spells, Instability will go off resulting in 2000 damage multiplied by the amount of spell casts before it.

In other words, if I have Unchained Magic and I cast 8 Flash Heals followed by a Circle of Healing and a Power Word: Shield, after 8 seconds I’ll take 22000 damage. It seems to happen also when the Unchained Magic debuff itself wears off. Whatever Instability stacks are on the player when Unchained Magic wears off will immediately detonate.

If you have Unchained Magic, take it easy for the next several seconds. Slow down on the spell casts. Use your spells in quick bursts and let Instability go off before opening up again.

Mages and paladins, it appears to be possible to render yourself immune and wipe the ability. Ice Block and Divine Shield will remove Unchained Magic.

I do believe her phases are tied to time elapsed on the fight. I didn’t notice a specific percentage that would trigger Sindragosa’s air phase as we were DPSing all over the place.

Sindragosa’s air phase

This is where we separate the pretenders from the contenders. This is one of Icecrown’s biggest situational awareness check fights and I’ll tell you why. This part strongly reminds me of Sapphiron.

She’s going to mark several players in the room with a Frost Beacon. A few seconds after that, they will be completely encased in a block of ice. The ice serves an important purpose. You see, Sindragosa is going to fire Frost Bombs in the area. The bombs have a large radius and will damage anyone who is within line of sight. The ground will have a slight swirly effect which signifies where the Frost Bombs will land. When I did this, I called out the direction of where the raid should be running to on vent (North, south-west, and so forth). Stay close to the Ice Tomb to reduce the amount of movement you need when strafing around.

As you can guess, the objective is to position yourself in such a way that the Ice Tombs containing frozen raid members are between the raiders who are still free and the location of the Frost Bombs. After the first few attempts, we decided that all marked players should run to the middle of the room. Unmarked players should stand near the bottom of the stairs before moving up close to the Ice Tombs.

Unlike Sapphiron, the Ice Tombs do not simply wear off. On 10 man, they had around 270k health. It’s up to your raid to DPS them down at the same time during this phase. Another benefit of having marked players together is so that the rest of the raid can deal incidental AoE damage to them as they are focusing on breaking down the blocks. Players inside the Ice Tomb will die of Asphyxiation if they aren’t broken out of.

Note that any player who gets caught in the radius when an Ice Tomb is cast will also get tombed even if they are not marked.

After she fires 4-5 Frost Bombs, Sindragosa will land again. Pray that your main tank is free and is able to pick her up. Feel free to place her on top of any Ice Tombs still up so AoE damage will still damage them.

Low health phase

Once she gets to about 30% (I didn’t catch the actual percentage), Sindragosa will no longer take to the air. At this point, the raid is in a full burn phase. You have a soft enrage timer to compete with.

Sindragosa will Frost Beacon a random player every few seconds and then encase them in a block of ice. If a player gets the Beacon, they have to run out of the raid immediately as far as possible or they will get Ice Tombed along with any players around them. There is no time for the raid to break down the Tombs. I believe she gets progressively stronger (or the raid gets weaker). Either way, this is the Heroism/Bloodlust portion of the fight where full DPS must be wielded.

All in all, I’d give this a 9 out of 10 for encounter fun-ness as a healer. The encounter mechanics are simple in theory but can be difficult to execute. There’s a ton of damage going around and if a player is even a sliver out of position, they will die. It’s certainly a tense fight that will keep any healer on the edge of their seats and zeroed in on their raid frames.

I’m on a boat!

That was the first thing that came to mind as I entered Icecrown for today’s Gunship encounter that will be coming in patch 3.3. It was another fun fight against those foul Horde forces although there were a few slight bugs in the mix. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to complete it because the Alliance cannons just didn’t seemed to be working properly. The goblins must have sabotaged it. Either that or someone forgot to reload them.

I added some screenshots of the event into the Icecrown gallery.

Anyway, it’s time to grab your sword and fight the Horde!

After teleporting up to the exterior area where the gunships were held, our raid group immediately engaged several Horde vermin. I was worried that it was going to be Faction Champs for trash. We easily swatted aside this healing druid (who wasn’t even in tree form) and ripped apart a blood elf priest. The hunter and rogue fell swiftly underneath the might of the Alliance task force after that.

Once we rescued our fellow Alliance NPCs, we had two ways to go. Going right would mean we would have to get by this abysmally large frost wyrm. It looked like some Horde attackers were trying to keep him at bay. Going left meant plowing through more orcs and their allies with the Alliance gunship, The Skybreaker, docked. Even though it would have been fun to sandwich the Horde units between us and the wyrm, we decided to head for the alliance vessel.

After all, we had an event to start.

Just as we were approaching dock, a large shadow appeared overhead. We looked up only to discover that the frost wyrm we left alone earlier blocked the path between us and the ship. Naturally, we did the only logical thing that came to mind and charged in. The frost wyrm put up a good fight but was soundly dispatched.

We boarded The Skybreaker and who did we see?

It’s our friend Muradin Bronzebeard!

His buddy beside him offered us a gift. It’s a jet pack that we get to wear in our ill-often used shirt slot. Activating it allows us to jump to any point within several yards. Supposedly it’s meant to be a safety device in case we fall off the ship. But we’re a little more ambitious than that. We’re going to use these jet packs (pictured in the very first image of the post) to board the other ship.

The premise

The basic idea of the encounter is that both the Alliance and Horde gunships will be squaring off against each other. Throughout the encounter, your raid team will be busy fending off intruders from the opposite faction as they board your ship. You’ll have several players manning the deck guns as they open fire on the other ship. Once the health of the ship drops to a certain percentage, the mages on the other ship will encase the guns in a solid block of ice preventing them from firing. It’s up to your team to then take the offense to them and knock out their mages and their rocketeers so that you can resume pummeling their ship and until it crashes and burns. Not only will you have to mess with opposing faction NPCs, you get to deal with High Overlord Saurfang. If you’re Horde, you get the pleasure of trying to stop Muradin Bronzebeard (and no one can stop a dwarf).

Attempt 1

Once we were ready to begin the encounter, it was time to ascend Icecrown. We talked to Brann and he gave the order to fire up The Skybreaker’s engines. The course was pre-plotted and we decided to take the scenic route. The architecture was admired. Bone dragons were spotted circling around the tower.

But then we were beset upon by the Horde gunship, Orgrim’s Hammer. They called for us to stand down and retreat. Of course Muradin was having none of that and said the dwarven version of “Hell naw!” and basically ordered us to open fire. Both gunships leveled off in the air and virtually hovered side by side.

Unfortunately, we came across a slight malfunction. Our cannons appeared to be ineffective (bugged as I had mentioned earlier). We discovered this while dodging incoming rockets. Without being able to do much of anything else, a group was dispatched to board the other ship to attempt to stop the rockets and take out the mages. Sadly, they didn’t last very long without any real support and we wiped as a result.

One thing I will say is that it seems to take a while for the encounter to reset after a wipe. Once every player died, we’d have to wait to zone in because the encounter was still in progress. It seems like it won’t reset until the Alliance gunship is destroyed.

Attempt 2

We dusted ourselves off and went back once we were clear. Knowing that the cannons were bugged, we decided to try something else and see what the trash did. We talked to Muradin and we were up and away!

All of us decided to forgo the cannons and simply board their ship. We looked for a safe zone which appeared to be toward the… bow of the ship. My naval terminology fails me but I think that’s what it’s called.

Axethrowers

These were annoying. All they do is throw axes and it seems as if they are able to hit players from any range. They weren’t difficult to take down.

Sergeant

They’re the main muscle for the Horde. Sergeants have a nasty whirlwind effect which is capable of decapitating clothies such as priests within their range. Players hit with a Wounding Strike will have the effectiveness of healing spells on them reduced by 25%.

Rocketeers

These are the enemies that are shelling the Alliance gunship and they are a priority target. Take them out and the ship will experience some relief from their rockets for a while. The rockets they fire are easy enough to spot and dodge. Players can even see the runes on the ground that show rocket impacts before they strike. Simply stand out of the rune and you won’t take damage. If you do take damage, it’s easy enough for healers to handle. But that doesn’t mean get careless.

Battle Mages

Mages are the key. Take them out and your cannons will be free to fire again.

By the time we figured out the individual abilities, High Overlord Saurfang had approached us and began systematically dismantling all of us one by one. The clothies had no chance. When he was on the tanks, the damaged appeared to be marginal. The tank I was with reported that Saurfang gained a stacking buff that would increase the amount of damage the orc would do. This lead me to conclude that a tank would be needed specifically for Saurfang while the rest of the raid was working on the other NPCs on the ship. We would have a limited window of time before Saurfang tore us apart and it was best that he be held off to the side. Once the NPCs were taken care of, it was time to strategically retreat to Alliance ship and continue firing cannons (if they were working).

Healing this fight is going to be random. There’s a lot of stuff to keep track of and if you’re caught looking the wrong way, some players could drop to 0 fairly quickly. Saurfang’s tank will need a set of heals especially when that stacking buff starts piling high.

All in all, it was a fun fight and a nice preview of the mechanics that are involved. At the present, it’s still a bit buggy with the guns and without them we can’t beat the encounter. We ended up staying a few more attempts after that just to get a firm handle on the mobs. Again, I’m not sure if the encounter is properly tuned yet. The trash went down much quicker than expected. To be fair though, this isn’t meant to be Faction Champions 2.0 in the skies or anything. This is certainly one of the encounters I will be looking forward to in Icecrown.

Oh I forgot to add. You can’t kill Saurfang. When he reaches a certain point, he just lays the smacksdown on the entire raid. We found that out the hard way by pouring massive DPS on him. Nope, didn’t work.

There’s another new build on the PTR, which means we’re one step closer to seeing the new patch 3.3 drop. And while of course Icecrown probably holds its place as the biggest feature of the new patch, there’s a whole slew of other changes to look ahead to, from updated achievements and a new faction to run, a brand new LFG interface with cross-realm instances, the Kalu’ak fishing derby, speeded-up Northrend reputation grinds, and lots of other things. Man oh man this patch is building up to be quite the event.

So the question today is: what are you most looking forward to? Personally, I remain a fan of the 5-man instances — I’ve already run two of them on the PTR, but fighting enemies co-op in a small group like that is really why I play the game. And of course cross-realm LFG will probably be a big part of the excitement for me as well. While I do expect there to be a few issues, hopefully it’ll make jumping into a group as quick and easy as possible. And I’m looking forward to that fishing tournament, too — the last one was a good idea, but hopefully a new implementation will help freshen things up.

What are you looking forward to in patch 3.3?

Breakfast Topic: Looking ahead to patch 3.3 originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EST.

There’s been a few achievements that have been added in the latest patch 3.3 build.

• As you can guess, taking down the Lich King has its rewards. If you manage to defeat Arthas in Icecrown Citadel in 10-player heroic mode, you will henceforth earn the title “Bane of the Fallen King.”
• A new faction for you to earn reputation with will be established as well. The Ashen Verdict, if you manage to earn exalted with them, will grant you a title reward that adds “Of the Ashen Verdict.” No serious details yet on how to grind out rep, but when I was on the PTR clearing trash to Festergut, I noticed I was gaining Ashen Verdict reputation by killing various mobs. They’re similar to the rates players earned rep with when working through Black Temple for the Ashtongue.
• Arena players have a new title and a Frostwyrm pet to look forward to for season 8. Good luck on earning the Wrathful Gladiator title!
• The players who are more into battlegrounds will be experiencing change as well. The achievements to gain exalted with Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Alterac Valley factions have been removed from their Meta-Achievements. You’ll gain special titles if you manage to reach exalted with the factions at least.
• Glory of the Hero Meta-Achievement has been slightly changed. The Party’s Over achievement which involves killing Prince Taldaram on Heroic with under 5 people is no longer part of that particular meta. Although, personally I don’t think it’s that difficult to take out that boss with 4 players.
• Lastly, in case you missed the news earlier, Master Angler of Stranglethorn has been changed. It will be changed to Master Angler of Azeroth instead. You can gain this achievement by winning the Kalu’ak Fishing Derby or the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza.

Patch 3.3 PTR: New and updated achievements on the PTR originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 02:30:00 EST.