Shadow of the Necropolis Public Test Realms Live!

[Cairenn]

Shadow of the Necropolis Public Test Realms Live! - Ordinn on 5/19/06

The public test realms are live! Players can now try out all the changes and additions coming in World of Warcraft's latest content patch: Shadow of the Necropolis. The highlights of this patch include Naxxramas, a new world event, mage and shaman talent improvements, and a host of other exciting features. Read the Shadow of the Necropolis test realm patch notes to learn more.

Players who had an active account as of 12:01 AM PDT Tuesday, May 16 can participate in the test realms by creating a character, using a pre-made level 60 character, or copying their characters from existing realms to the test realms. To copy a character, visit our Public Test Realm Page. Pre-made character copies are available anytime during the testing period while personal character transfers to the test realm are available from 3:00 AM to 3:00 PM PST Monday through Friday. The test realm game client, which can be downloaded at the same page, is available for both PC and Mac.

Please be aware that the test realms are designed to allow us to test major content patches before they go public. Therefore, some changes may be introduced to the public test realms during the testing phase, before a patch goes live, and some changes may be introduced to the patch after the test realms have closed. To read more about the test realms, please review the Test Realm FAQ. We truly appreciate our players taking the time to help us test the latest changes to the game; thank you all!


News of immediate interest to the modding community:

User Interface

* Text that a raid leader sends to chat will now be displayed in a different color and will have the [Raid Leader] label.
* There is now a new raid warning chat channel available to raid leaders and assistants. Text that is sent to this channel will appear in the center of the screen for all players in the raid. The channel is called raid warning and text can be sent to it with "/rw"
* Raid leaders now have a Ready Check button on their raid interface. This can also be sent with /readycheck from the chat line. A ready check sends an "Are you ready?" Yes/No dialogue to all players in the raid. The raid leader will get feedback in 30 seconds on all the players who were not ready or who did not respond.
* Players now have a Raid Info button on their raid interface that functions the same way /raidinfo worked before. This function will display a pane showing all of the raid instances that a player is saved to, rather than displaying it to the chat window.
* Players in a party may now select an option that allows them to reset an instance.
o You only get the reset instance option if you are a party leader.
o The UI option appears if you are a party leader, you have one or more instances open, and you are not currently in an instance.
o The UI option is a right-click option off of your own portrait (like party loot options).
o You get a warning dialogue when you select this option asking if you really want to reset all instances.
o If you select reset all instances, all non-raid instances will be reset to their starting condition.

Full Test Realm patch notes may be also be read here.