nvitations to World of Warcraft's beta for the upcoming expansion Cataclysm have gone out, but for those of us stuck on Earth, there's the recent live-server release of Patch 3.3.5.
Patch 3.3.5 brought both the somewhat controversial addition of the Real ID system of cross-game and cross-faction/server communication with close friends. The main concern seems to be related to how Blizzard previously changed account names to the associated e-mail address, the same address that is used to add a player to your Real ID friends list.
While the additional functionality is nice, most of the people I would add via Real ID already have several ways of contacting me out of game. Thus, unless I am doing something in WoW that requires solid concentration, I can just send them a note via another chat program. And if I am raiding, carrying on a conversation isn't the most viable idea
The second addition of 3.3.5 is the raid of Ruby Sanctum, which, like the Sartharion encounter, involves three mini-bosses and one actual boss: the dragon Halion. The circular design of the dungeon struck me as relatively boring, and it seemed somewhat off for the mini-bosses to prove less difficult than the normal trash mobs, though part of this could be attributed to how we used crowd control on the trash, which utilized abilities some players hadn't used since the previous expansion.
The Halion fight itself proved interesting, and similar to the Kalecgos encounter from Sunwell Plateau in some respects. However, at least in terms of the difficulty I experienced and the general appearance of the dungeon, Ruby Sanctum is not as intimidating in terms of setting up the eventual return of the dragon Deathwing as I would wish.
