File Under A For Awesome (if true)

A few new things coming out of the analysis of the latest WotLK Alpha client patch:

A new Achievement and Time Manager UI. Think of Steam's Achievement system, that's pretty much it. It seems to allow you to check your characters' and accounts progress against a number of goals. Now, if you had the ability to set your own achievement criteria and share them with the WoW community at large I can see this as being quite significant for the longevity of WoW going into its 5th year.

A new Seal:

5/31 16:00:11.880 50907: Seal of Onslaught ()
5/31 16:00:11.930 Instant
5/31 16:00:11.933 The Seal of Onslaught inflicts an attack that ignores enemies armor.
5/31 16:00:11.980 50908: Seal of Onslaught ()
5/31 16:00:12.030 300 Mana
5/31 16:00:12.030 Instant cast
5/31 16:00:12.030 Grants the casters attacks the chance on melee swing to ignore enemy armor

Source. Now hold your horses, lets not get carried away here. This may be a new Paladin DPS Seal, but the lack of a Judgement effect in the tooltip could also indicate it being a NPC ability. Also without any mechanics details of the Proc Rate (indeed if it is PPM or static % a la Windfury), Level of Armour Penetration and Scalability we can't make any sort of definitive judgement on it, but colour me cautiously optimistic :).

'New' versions of Divine Intervention and Hammer of Wrath:

6/1 13:40:50.915 22270: Divine Intervention (NEWTEST) ()
6/1 13:40:50.965 30 yd range
6/1 13:40:50.965 Instant
6/1 13:40:50.965 60 min cooldown
6/1 13:40:50.965 Resurrect the target player with 20% health and mana. Can be used while dead.

6/1 13:44:56.616 24239: Hammer of Wrath (Rank 3)
6/1 13:44:56.666 340 Mana
6/1 13:44:56.666 30 yd range
6/1 13:44:56.666 Instant cast
6/1 13:44:56.672 6 sec cooldown
6/1 13:44:56.672 Hurls a hammer that strikes an enemy for 504 to 556 Holy damage. Only usable on enemies that have 20% or less health.

Source. Of course, take them with a massive pinch of salt. In particular the DI above was mooted as early as July 2005 and never made it into either 1.9 or TBC.

Hopefully there will be more Paladin-centric Lich King news in the coming weeks. *crosses fingers*