The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild happenings, raid progression rankings, player milestones and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com.
Bored between ICC raids? Looking for some fun to pass the time until Cataclysm? Why not three-man Onyxia? Three players from
"Our strat was to have the warlock focus on the big adds while occasionally seeding down the whelps," Humandude reports. "Consecration and our tank's Seal of Command DPS tank spec took care of the majority of the adds. Our warlock, after (we killed) the big add, took a few shots at Onyxia and dotted her up, then went back to his focus fire and Seed rotation. On a side note, he was destruction, because we needed replenishment."
More on the Onyxia take-down plus several other feats of meta-gaming magic, this week's massive set of Random Acts of Uberness, our new looking for guild section and more, after the break.
Continue reading The Classifieds: Fun stuff to do with a dragon
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The Classifieds: Fun stuff to do with a dragon originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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WoW > WoW Moviewatch: Starcraft in AzerothStarcraft in Azeroth was Kakashisan's entry into Baron Soosdon's machinima contest. It's easy to see how this video is deserving of the prize, a StarCraft 2 beta key. Congratulations to Kakashisan! I know that when I'm in trouble, I'll be reaching for a little murloc marine.
Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.Filed under: WoW Moviewatch
WoW Moviewatch: Starcraft in Azeroth originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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WoW > New scam targets launcher
A post in the official forums today, later confirmed by a blue, points to hackers attempting to take advantage of a new avenue to attack the user -- the World of Warcraft Launcher.
As you can see from the screenshot above (large version here) the real launcher apparently is replaced with a fake launcher that sends the user to a web site that pretends to be official, asking for subscription information (including answers to secret questions and the original CD-Key) in what is meant to appear as the means to restore a supposedly suspended account. One of the telltale signs that this isn't legit, besides the very invasive information requested, is the version number in the upper left corner of the screen. We're way past patch 3.1.1 -- however not everyone might know this.
Ancilorn posts confirming that this is not genuine (reiterating that they will never ask for your password in such a manner, and also requesting that such things be sent directly to Blizzard if they happen to you). Goes to show that as security is increased, those looking to breach it become more desperate.
As you can see from the screenshot above (large version here) the real launcher apparently is replaced with a fake launcher that sends the user to a web site that pretends to be official, asking for subscription information (including answers to secret questions and the original CD-Key) in what is meant to appear as the means to restore a supposedly suspended account. One of the telltale signs that this isn't legit, besides the very invasive information requested, is the version number in the upper left corner of the screen. We're way past patch 3.1.1 -- however not everyone might know this.
Ancilorn posts confirming that this is not genuine (reiterating that they will never ask for your password in such a manner, and also requesting that such things be sent directly to Blizzard if they happen to you). Goes to show that as security is increased, those looking to breach it become more desperate.
Filed under: News items, Account Security
New scam targets launcher originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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WoW > Around Azeroth: Red rider
Our submitter, Shimatsu of Alterac Mountains, managed to snag the Reins of the Twilight Drake from a recent Sarth + 3D run. (Yeah, yeah, old content and all, but it's still a pretty nice mount.) Looking for something to do after the raid, she flew over the magma-spewing caldera in Wintergrasp and decided it would be a good place for a screenshot of her new pet. Just the location to keep your drake from getting too homesick!
Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!
Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word "Azeroth" in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val'kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.
Filed under: Around Azeroth
Around Azeroth: Red rider originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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WoW > WoW.com on NPR
This Tuesday morning while everyone else was lamenting weekly maintenance, I headed down to the local NPR studios to sit in a very quiet, empty studio -- and chat about World of Warcraft with illustrious individuals in distant lands on WBUR's On Point. I joined William Sims Bainbridge (author of The Warcraft Civilization, which is available in stores today) and host Tom Ashbrook for an hour-long discussion on the meaning behind World of Warcraft.
Can we really use events in WoW predict the future? Is WoW the first real afterlife? Is the game world dangerous and addicting -- or a great place to connect with friends and co-workers?
If you're interested in catching our discussion, it's available for streaming online or you can download it (as well as past and future editions of On Point) as a podcast on iTunes.
Filed under: WoW.com Business
WoW.com on NPR originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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WoW > Breakfast Topic: I threw that away, d'oh
This Breakfast Topic is brought to you by WoW.com's guest blogger program! Want to participate in a future call for guest posts? Read up on how to contribute, and keep an eye on the site for program announcements!
On this past St. Patrick's Day, guild members were doing the quest chain in Hellfire that rewards you Mirren's Drinking Hat. At the time my main was doing this chain, I wasn't the connoisseur of hats that I am now. 10 and counting. Yet another reason for Blizzard to make wardrobes (urge to rant rising.) Several guild members have that hat and it provides much laughter when they pull a random brew from it. I, however, am so sorry I didn't save it. 2 gold for selling it was, at the time, a lot of money for a perpetually broke dwarf and I had a "better" hat for questing.
Yes, I know. A dwarf tossing away a drinking hat! That alone is almost sacrilegious. But sold it I did. Now, when guild members pull some brew out of their hats, I regret my decision and I'd go do the quest chain again in a heartbeat just to get that hat. I'd have to toss something from my inventory (Archmage Vargoth's Staff maybe, or Monster Slayer's Kit, neither of which I use but are awesome in their own right) to carry it around in my bags, but I'd do it to get that hat.
How about you? Is there any quest reward that you sold or otherwise disposed of that you'd do the quest chain to get again?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Breakfast Topic: I threw that away, d'oh originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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WoR > Focus: The Anatomy a World First KillIn December 2009, Icecrown Citadel was entered for the first time. Last Friday, over three months later, the Finnish guild Paragon from the EU server Lightning's Blade cleared the instance by becoming the first guild in the world to kill the Lich King in 25-player heroic mode and the only guild to kill it before the 10% buff was implemented. What exactly does it take to achieve a world first kill?PTR testing
For most hardcore guilds, the work starts on the Public Test Realms (PTRs). While they present a chance to get valuable information about bosses and their abilities, the PTRs also bring with them a lot of frustration. "It is something that must be done, but we really don't like it because of the bugs and lag. And there is always the inevitable 'test the door' boss when the developers forget to open some door and we spend one hour in front of it," says Lazeil, paladin tank and raid leader of Paragon.
Back during Ulduar testing, Paragon never got through the door for General Vezax. Lazeil also remembers pulling Flame Leviathan again and again, only to have half the raid instantly disconnect each time. Fortunately, Icecrown Citadel testing wasn't that bad for the Finnish guild. "Icecrown Citadel wasn't a cruel experience in my opinion, just a few hours per boss and they took them down pretty quickly. Most of the normal mode bosses were 20 minute sessions," says Sejta, guild leader and feral druid tank.
"The only time I was starting to get frustrated was when Lord Marrowgar heroic mode was about to be tested. We cleared the trash four times, and every time we got to the boss, the instance server crashed," says Rakez, rogue and officer of Paragon.
While on the PTR, Paragon stay for as long as the bosses are available. Even when they see that a kill is possible, they choose to wipe in order to be able to go again and get more information about the encounter. Still, they didn't feel they gained that much information about hard modes in Icecrown Citadel. "We didn't get to test hard modes that much, and the normal bosses ended up being very easy," says Lazeil.
Gearing up
In Icecrown Citadel, Blizzard used a gating system. The instance's four wings were opened one by one, and only normal modes were available until the Lich King had been defeated. This made for weeks of farming for Paragon. "We knew the normal modes would be easy, so our goal was to farm gear with multiple raids. Gating sucks though, because guilds have to get alts to raid with multiple raids to gear mains for hard modes," Lazeil says.
Each week, Paragon had three 25-man raids going in order to gear up their mains. The raiders in the guild were divided into three groups. In order to make looting as optimal as possible, each of the groups had more or less the same amount of mains needing each of the three different tier tokens. The raids were then filled up with mostly primary alts, but also with some secondary alts.
"We didn't force anyone to level an alt. Everyone did that out of free will, well, not everyone. Some people didn't even have primary alts," Sejta admits. Most of the members did have at least one alt character though, and others again chose to level another in order to try raiding with a specific class.
Paragon started their alt raiding back in Trial of the Crusader. With alts that had gotten the Tribute to Insanity achievement from 25-man ToGC, they had a very good starting point as their alt characters were very well geared. With three 25-man ICC raids going each week, they could funnel loot onto their mains. On top of that, they ran six or seven 10-man groups to mostly gear up their alts further, and at the same time get those few pieces of 10-man loot that their mains needed.
Still, they ran into some problems. "Most of us probably had a decent amount of the random loot drops, but we kept getting Protector tier tokens from every raid. At least for me, the Vanquisher tier was quite hard to get," Rakez remembers.
Alt attempts
Once the hard modes were released, having well-geared characters paid off. "I would be surprised if any other guild had better gear than us, and no one had better gear than our alts. That was a huge benefit," Lazeil thinks.
For hard modes, all the mains were finally united in one raid. While the US servers had a one day head start, Paragon eventually caught up with them. Downing boss after boss at a pretty impressive pace, they eventually turned out to be the only guild that cleared eleven out of twelve bosses within the first reset.
"We started raiding when the server came up, and by then we had already decided some tactics for the upcoming hard modes," Sejta remembers.
Paragon knew some of the hard modes, yet others they knew very little about. Still, bits and pieces of information could be deducted from the progression of the US guilds. "Wowprogress gave away some stuff. For example, we saw guilds one-shotting Gunship Battle and struggling on Lady Deathwhisper, so we knew beforehand which bosses might be hard," Lazeil explains.
After being behind for all of the bosses without limited tries, it was time for the Finns to take over. They became the first guild to kill the three end bosses in each wing, much thanks to their well-geared alt raid. For those bosses, they went in with their alt raid first, which gave them twice the amount of tries.
"The alt raids won us the race, pretty much. We could practice the mechanics, get the hard mode ability timers and so on from alts, and not waste main raid tries on that stuff," Lazeil says.
"Also, we used our alt raid to warm up the main raid for the encounter, even though we knew everything there was to know about it, just to get the feel of actually doing it and then come with mains right after," Sejta adds.
Handling mistakes
While Paragon's alt raid could take them far, it couldn't take them all the way to the last boss in the instance - the Lich King. The alt raid never made it that far, so all the Lich King tries were done with the main raid. "We could have gotten there if we wanted to push it, but it wouldn't have made any difference on the result. It would probably just have burned out a few people. The encounter would have been too brutal for our alts to handle," Sejta thinks.
With limited attempts at stake, the pressure goes up. Each personal mess-up that leads to a wipe means one less try for the guild that reset. In such a situation, handling mistakes becomes crucial.
"We have never given negative dkp for anything. People know when they mess up, and they get instant feedback from other members telling them how bad they are. Usually that is enough," Lazeil reveals.
"People usually admit their own mistakes, and when they don't, we just fish the information out of them about what went wrong," Sejta says.
In spite of that sounding kind of harsh, nobody has ever been kicked out of Paragon because of messing up. Only in rare occasions, someone has been removed from a raid and replaced by someone else. And there has been mistakes. Back in ToGC, one of the shamans cost the guild an Insanity kill as he forgot to put down Healing Stream Totem and his whole group died. And in ICC, the officers once spent half an hour discussing tactics in front of Blood-Queen Lana'thel, only to pull just as everyone got a huge lag spike that wiped them instantly.
With a Lich King kill within reach, the temperature definitely rose in the raid. After some really good attempts at the start of their raid, the guild knew they could get a kill if everything went perfect. Then they wiped to a lot of mistakes.
"It raised some emotions. When that happens, we try to calm people down. If stuff really got out of hand, we would probably just stop raiding. There is no point in raiding when you are angry, people will get angry at themselves and others if they mess up. But pretty much everyone failed on Lich King at some point. The encounter is so unforgiving that even when reacting perfectly, you can still fail because you aren't at the right spot," Lazeil says.
"One fail on Lich King usually resulted in a wipe, and everyone had their moments," Sejta adds.
Tuning tactics
To come up with final tactics for a boss, everyone in the guild pitches in. When trying a boss for the first time, Sejta and Lazeil usually give out the tactics they want to try, and after a few attempts, everyone will give their opinion. Then they evaluate and make a decision on what they want to use.
"All our craziest strats have ended up working out pretty nicely," Lazeil says.
"Kiting Freya in the pool using seal form certainly didn't work - oh wait!" Rakez laughs.
"More of a joke, but we tried that," Sejta admits.
The Paragon officers think that having the entire guild being Finnish has become a big plus, even though it used to be a burden. "It is harder to get recruits, but once we are able to find the right people, it is a huge advantage. Everyone can speak their opinions more openly, and the guild atmosphere is better. Even the shy people can come out and speak in Ventrilo. If the guild was international, certain people would just stay quiet. And personally I can trust people more because they are from the same country, so I would imagine the trust is on another level compared to international guilds," Sejta says.
Rakez thinks that one of the strengths of Paragon is that they have good communication during and between pulls, plus the ability to think new. "I would say that if the boss is really challenging, the main thing you need to do is to keep thinking of new tactics and things in the fight that you can do better, even if the boss seems impossible at first. Brute forcing tries is not the way to go," he says.
For the Lich King, the guild started out with seven healers. When they reached the Val'kyrs, they dropped down to six, and finally the week before the kill, they dropped down to five in order to try and get the dps needed with only the 5% buff active. "We made some changes the last week to optimise dps, and we made changes all along the way when we discovered something new that had to be dealt with," Lazeil explains.
At 23:28 on March 26, Paragon could reap the rewards of their efforts. The Lich King died, and the nerd screams filled their Ventrilo. "It is a relief that all the hard work wasn't for nothing. Usually the first kills require nearly perfect execution, and even if the tactics are in place, you need everyone to perform," Sejta says.
Still, he doesn't think getting world firsts is the most important thing for Paragon. "We played the game before the we got world firsts and as our guild became better and better, our goals got higher and higher. It doesn't make or break our guild, but everyone has the same goal, to be the first guild that kills the boss."
"Obviously it is something we aim to achieve every time, but I don't think anyone's world would come crashing down if we miss a few here and there," Rakez says.
Few sacrifices
One of the common misconceptions is that in order to play in a hardcore guild pushing for world firsts, each player has to make a lot of sacrifices and sit in front of the computer all day. For Paragon, that is not the case.
"In ICC, on normal mode weeks it took us seven to eight hours per week to clear ICC three times, ToC heroic two times and ToC normal three to four times. The only time we had to make sacrifices was the heroic opening week. Everyone was skipping school or work the best they could to be on when the servers came online. That lasted three days, and we only started the raid early the two first days," Sejta says.
Since then, the guild has raided four days per week, each time for about five hours. Now the Lich King is dead, and the guild will go back to raiding one day per week for about three to five hours, which is a lot less than even the most casual raiding guilds. "Everyone can relax now and focus on other things. Then they will be hungry to raid when the next content is released," Sejta says.
The Paragon officers are not afraid of losing raiders. "Taking a small break just makes you want to play more when it's needed. At least in my own experience," says Rakez.WoW > The Daily Blues
Each day WoW.com will take you through all the blue posts and other Blizzard news from around the internet. From Ghostcrawler's latest posts to the lowdown on StarCraft II and Diablo III, we'll keep you informed.
Dubito ergo cogito ergo sum.
Table of Contents
Continue reading The Daily Blues
Filed under: The Daily Blues
The Daily Blues originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 02:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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WoW > PAX East 2010: Turbine on renting vs. owning in the MMO market
Blizzard's presence at PAX East 2010 was even smaller than I was expecting, with two or so Community reps there to oversee the StarCraft II tournaments going on. Boston-based Lord of the Rings Online developer Turbine, though, had a very large demo area which saw a lot of traffic over the course of the three-day event. Con-goers could stop by and demo LotRO, as well as Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited, and hobnob with the Community reps and developers present.
With the WoW-specific news at the event registering somewhere between "literally nothing" and "nearly nothing" on the newsy scale, I decided to stop by Turbine and ask them a few questions about their MMOs. I ended up speaking with their Design Director, Ian Currie.
"I'm from WoW.com," I said, "so obviously I don't normally do a lot of reporting on your games. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever even played DDO, and I've only played a little bit of LotRO."
Currie, the gentleman in dead center of the photo above, smiled and said "You really don't know what you're missing, then, do you!"
"Apparently not," I acquiesced, "but maybe you can help fill in the blanks."
With the WoW-specific news at the event registering somewhere between "literally nothing" and "nearly nothing" on the newsy scale, I decided to stop by Turbine and ask them a few questions about their MMOs. I ended up speaking with their Design Director, Ian Currie.
"I'm from WoW.com," I said, "so obviously I don't normally do a lot of reporting on your games. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever even played DDO, and I've only played a little bit of LotRO."
Currie, the gentleman in dead center of the photo above, smiled and said "You really don't know what you're missing, then, do you!"
"Apparently not," I acquiesced, "but maybe you can help fill in the blanks."
Continue reading PAX East 2010: Turbine on renting vs. owning in the MMO market
Filed under: Events, Interviews
PAX East 2010: Turbine on renting vs. owning in the MMO market originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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WoW > Activision quietly restructures senior management
An article from the LA Times reports that Activision Blizzard Inc. has quietly made some internal changes to senior management and internal organization. The company has apparently split itself into four units, one focused on the military game Call of Duty, another handling internally owned properties like Guitar Hero and the Tony Hawk series, and a third handling licensed properties.
Why these changes weren't relayed to investors or the press is still unknown, but it's likely due to the fact that they could be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Activision has seen flagging sales for two of its former cash-cow franchises, Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero, and a recent very public scuffle with Call of Duty creators Jason West and Vince Zampanella following their ejection from their positions as heads of Activision's Infinity Ward studio painted the studio in a negative light with gamers. This kind of restructuring could point to turmoil within the company, an image that an industry juggernaut like Activision would want to avoid.
So, what do these changes mean for Blizzard, and for World of Warcraft? Apparently nothing, from what can be gathered -- this is Activision's first major change since they merged with Vivendi in 2008 to create Activision Blizzard. While the new departments are interesting developments, Activision states that the fourth unit, Blizzard Entertainment, remains an independent unit, and as such, these changes don't really affect them directly.
Filed under: Blizzard, News items
Activision quietly restructures senior management originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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WoW > Silence!
Something we may not always think about what our spells and abilities actually do in the setting of the game. Sure, for us, the tooltip tells us the basic information and we go on from there, but what are we actually doing? How does Arcane Shot work? Does the hunter just have a special magic arrow they shoot me with? Do they somehow wave the arrow around and it becomes magic, say a few words in Darnassian or Troll or whatever? Some abilities are pretty obviously spells, like almost everything a mage does, but for other classes the border between magic and skill can get pretty blurry... moves like Cloak of Shadows really beggar the imagination to explain in a non magical way.
A recent discussion on the forums about Thunder Clap and its being suppressed by silence effects (it always has, or at least has for so long that I've just accepted it) brings out Ghostcrawler to explain the reasoning. Quite frankly, it's a pretty reasonable explanation: if you're silenced, no one can hear the Thunder Clap going off, and thus, it doesn't do anything.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion
Silence! originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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WoR > ICC Buff Now 10%, Blue PostsIcecrown Citadel Buff Now 10%The Strength of Wrynn / Hellscream's Warsong buffs are now at 10%, 4 weeks after the buff originally started. With that in mind here's the revised schedule you can probably expect for the buff increases. The number of attempts for heroic mode has also been increased to 40.
- 15% - April 27th
- 20% - May 25th
- 25% - June 22nd
- 30% - July 20th
This is of course if Blizzard doesn't decide to speed it up at a certain point.
Quote
Quote from: Zarhym (Source)
We have increased the potency of the Strength of Wrynn and Hellscream’s Warsong buffs in Icecrown Citadel by an additional 5%. These buffs now increase total health, healing done and damage dealt by 10%. In addition, the number of attempts allotted for all final bosses on Heroic difficulty has been increased to 40.
Introducing: the Story Forum
Quote
Quote from: Nethaera (Source)
We are pleased to introduce the Warcraft Story Forum where players can discuss the storylines of the Warcraft universe, as told in-game and through the novels, manga, comics, and short stories that Blizzard publishes. Be sure to visit the new forum here- http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=26354482&sid=1
Blue Posts
Quote
Taunts missing = interesting gameplay? (Source)
I'm going to vote for not interesting gameplay.
At the very least, you should be able to reduce your chance to miss a Taunt to zero if you reduce your chance to miss with a weapon to zero. It's also possible we'll just let them always hit.
DruidStarfall coefficient stealth nerf (Source)
At some point I posted some numbers for Starfall since there hadn't been a PTR build in some time and druids were chomping at the bit to figure out just how much damage it was going to do. The numbers we went with for 3.3.3 were slightly lower than that if I recall correctly, but we haven't made any changes to Starfall since the patch went live. The live Starfall numbers are still much higher than they were in 3.3.
We generally don't try to execute actual "stealth nerfs." The community will nearly always figure it out anyway so we don'y gain much by trying to hide anything. Sometimes "stealth nerfs" are just things we didn't manage to document, but many times they are misunderstandings.
(I'm talking about live anyway. On betas and PTRs numbers are going to change quite a bit -- that's the whole idea.)
WarriorSilence is still preventing Thunderclap (Source)
It is called "Thunder" and "Clap." That implies some noise.
Seriously though, silence isn't a dispel. Dispels are tied to magical effects. Silences are just tied to things that (more or less) logically require an audio component (in the game fiction -- I'm not talking about your sound card) to work. Most caster spells qualify but some other abilities do too.
Reasoning behind Shield Slam / Warbringer nerfs (Source)
Allow me to make some slight edits to your post.
"The reason why Warbringer and Shield Slam got nerfed was because they were overpowered."
What is overpowered is something we, and only we, get to determine. If players bring something up, we typically look into it. Just because sometimes player opinions align with ours does not mean the former drive the latter. There are plenty of counter examples of the community convinced something is a problem that we think is working fine.
The forums are a good source of feedback for us, but don't turn them into some kind of design council.
Icecrown Citadel Buff boosted to 10%
The Icecrown Citadel zone-wide buff has been boosted from 5 to 10%. Players now increases total health, healing done, damage absorption, and damage dealt by 10%.
Quote from: Zarhym (Source)
We have increased the potency of the Strength of Wrynn and Hellscream’s Warsong buffs in Icecrown Citadel by an additional 5%. These buffs now increase total health, healing done and damage dealt by 10%. In addition, the number of attempts allotted for all final bosses on Heroic difficulty has been increased to 40.
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
"Stealth" nerfs
I guess you are using "stealth nerf" as synonymous with "nerf." My general impression of the use of the term "stealth nerf" is that the developers decide to sneakily change a spell or an ability in a way players won't immediately recognize and have to explore and math out. For example, if we thought Exorcism did too much damage, we might lower its coefficient. Players might notice, but it would take a lot of testing before anyone was convinced. Someone mentioned the Windfury ICD above, which is a good example of what I would call a stealth nerf. It was hard to notice. Making a change so that a spell doesn't work on players doesn't really sound like "stealth" because it's going to be noticed immediately.
There is little point in us making actual "stealth nerfs" with the intent to deceive, because players are going to figure it out anyway. (The WF one wasn't made recently.) What you seem to be calling "stealth nerfs" are hotfixes or mini patch changes that came without a GC or other blue post. But there are many of these made regularly, probably far more than you realize. Many of them will never affect your character, but some will. Some are made late at night when good developers are asleep or at blues bars.
We haven't yet come up with a great way to communicate changes that come in between patches. For patches we have the patch notes. Sometimes I'll make a blue post and we've tried to get better about documenting hotfixes. We've considered trying to use the launcher or login screen for breaking news or maybe even have a place in game where you can check out recent patch notes. Again, we make a lot of these, and some of them are too trivial for most players to care, and we wouldn't want the list to be so long that players just skip through it.
If you're defining "stealth nerf" as any change that comes in between patches or any nerf in general, well then you're just using your own private use of the term, which is a big problem with game jargon (see examples just as "cleave," "WG," "dead zone" etc.) (Source)
Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Upcoming Revenge change
In the interest of avoiding the unflattering scent of stealth nerf, allow me to post that we are going to make that change (one Revenge per proc) I suggested above. (Source)
If we change Revenge to basically be one charge then the warrior can still pop the rogue or pet or whatever that triggers the block, dodge or parry, but they'd only get one hit instead of multiples. Such a change should not affect Protection at all.
I guess you are using "stealth nerf" as synonymous with "nerf." My general impression of the use of the term "stealth nerf" is that the developers decide to sneakily change a spell or an ability in a way players won't immediately recognize and have to explore and math out. For example, if we thought Exorcism did too much damage, we might lower its coefficient. Players might notice, but it would take a lot of testing before anyone was convinced. Someone mentioned the Windfury ICD above, which is a good example of what I would call a stealth nerf. It was hard to notice. Making a change so that a spell doesn't work on players doesn't really sound like "stealth" because it's going to be noticed immediately.
There is little point in us making actual "stealth nerfs" with the intent to deceive, because players are going to figure it out anyway. (The WF one wasn't made recently.) What you seem to be calling "stealth nerfs" are hotfixes or mini patch changes that came without a GC or other blue post. But there are many of these made regularly, probably far more than you realize. Many of them will never affect your character, but some will. Some are made late at night when good developers are asleep or at blues bars.
We haven't yet come up with a great way to communicate changes that come in between patches. For patches we have the patch notes. Sometimes I'll make a blue post and we've tried to get better about documenting hotfixes. We've considered trying to use the launcher or login screen for breaking news or maybe even have a place in game where you can check out recent patch notes. Again, we make a lot of these, and some of them are too trivial for most players to care, and we wouldn't want the list to be so long that players just skip through it.
If you're defining "stealth nerf" as any change that comes in between patches or any nerf in general, well then you're just using your own private use of the term, which is a big problem with game jargon (see examples just as "cleave," "WG," "dead zone" etc.) (Source)
Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)Upcoming Revenge change
In the interest of avoiding the unflattering scent of stealth nerf, allow me to post that we are going to make that change (one Revenge per proc) I suggested above. (Source)
If we change Revenge to basically be one charge then the warrior can still pop the rogue or pet or whatever that triggers the block, dodge or parry, but they'd only get one hit instead of multiples. Such a change should not affect Protection at all.
Many people wonder when will the beta of Cataclysm will start, it's time to (try to) answer that question!
As far as I know, the Beta is supposed to start in April. At this point it's not very clear if there will be a Friends & Family Alpha, if there is one it hasn't been widely advertised internally.
This is probably why Blizzard decided to spoil the Cataclysm Prologue in 3.9 a few weeks ago and waaaay before it's deployed on live servers. They're not huge fans of spoilers and the only reason to do it is to make sure people know what's going on when they eventually play on Beta servers.
From a technical point of view, I guess it also explains why most of the assets for both Patch 3.3.5 and Patch 3.9 have been deployed with Patch 3.3. It's probably much easier to maintain a Beta and a Live build at the same time when you don't have to deploy tons of files just because you had to add something on live servers.
Of course, this is a pretty risky news because Beta tests can be postponed if something funny happens but as far as I'm concerned, it should definitely happen in April. If the beta lasts as long as WotLK's you can expect a release of the expansion in September/October, most likely before the Blizzcon.
And before someone smart posts in comments, I do realize it's not hard to predict that. We all know that Cataclysm will be released in 2010, we all know how much time a beta test takes and we all know the beta will start in April/May/June. But I'll just pretend it was an April's Fool joke if I'm wrong, you can do that in May.
No matter what happens, you will NOT get any beta invitation before it's officially announced. Anything you receive is a huge scam to steal your account.
Introducing: the Story Forum
Quote from: Nethaera (Source)
We are pleased to introduce the Warcraft Story Forum where players can discuss the storylines of the Warcraft universe, as told in-game and through the novels, manga, comics, and short stories that Blizzard publishes. Be sure to visit the new forum here- http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=26354482&sid=1
What is Creative Development?
Creative Development (CDev) is a "hub" within Blizzard, facilitating the development of ancillary products and services that tie into Blizzard's game universes. While there are several different divisions of CDev, this Warcraft Story forum focuses on the efforts of the Publishing division.
What does Creative Development's Publishing division have to do with Warcraft's stories and lore?
The Publishing division within Creative Development is the driving force behind every published story you've seen outside of the game: short stories, novels, comics, and manga.
Who comprises the Publishing division of Creative Development?
Publishing is made of two groups:
What is the Publishing division's usual process for developing a story?
What does the Publishing division hope to accomplish with this Warcraft Story forum?
We'd like to give the community a chance to influence the development of our upcoming stories, so we're trying something new; this forum will serve as a direct line to our story developers. Please note that we're not looking for fully-formed stories - save those for the Global Writing Contest (which we operate and judge) - but rather we're looking for specific examples of what people like, don't like, and what they would like to see (story-wise) from us in the future.
What is Creative Development?
Creative Development (CDev) is a "hub" within Blizzard, facilitating the development of ancillary products and services that tie into Blizzard's game universes. While there are several different divisions of CDev, this Warcraft Story forum focuses on the efforts of the Publishing division.
What does Creative Development's Publishing division have to do with Warcraft's stories and lore?
The Publishing division within Creative Development is the driving force behind every published story you've seen outside of the game: short stories, novels, comics, and manga.
Who comprises the Publishing division of Creative Development?
Publishing is made of two groups:
- Story Development: this group focuses on story idea creation, story outlining, and story development for licensed fiction, as well as for internally-written stories
- Historians: this group is the repository for all Blizzard lore, providing counsel for the game development teams and the CDev Story Development group
What is the Publishing division's usual process for developing a story?
- Idea Generation & Outline Creation: Working with Chris Metzen and the designers on the respective game's development team, the Story Development team generates an idea and an outline for a story. The writer on the project is typically invited to our offices at this point in the project, so that they can be in on the ground floor of the story's creation.
- Story Development & Lore Checking: Over the course of the project, the Story Development team talks constantly with the writer, as well as with Chris Metzen and the game developers, in order to help hone the story into a Blizzard-quality tale. At the same time, our Historian team combs through the iterations of the story in order ensure that the story adheres to the universe's established canon.
What does the Publishing division hope to accomplish with this Warcraft Story forum?
We'd like to give the community a chance to influence the development of our upcoming stories, so we're trying something new; this forum will serve as a direct line to our story developers. Please note that we're not looking for fully-formed stories - save those for the Global Writing Contest (which we operate and judge) - but rather we're looking for specific examples of what people like, don't like, and what they would like to see (story-wise) from us in the future.
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Taunts missing = interesting gameplay?
I'm going to vote for not interesting gameplay.
At the very least, you should be able to reduce your chance to miss a Taunt to zero if you reduce your chance to miss with a weapon to zero. It's also possible we'll just let them always hit. (Source)
Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Starfall nerf?
At some point I posted some numbers for Starfall since there hadn't been a PTR build in some time and druids were chomping at the bit to figure out just how much damage it was going to do. The numbers we went with for 3.3.3 were slightly lower than that if I recall correctly, but we haven't made any changes to Starfall since the patch went live. The live Starfall numbers are still much higher than they were in 3.3.
We generally don't try to execute actual "stealth nerfs." The community will nearly always figure it out anyway so we don'y gain much by trying to hide anything. Sometimes "stealth nerfs" are just things we didn't manage to document, but many times they are misunderstandings.
(I'm talking about live anyway. On betas and PTRs numbers are going to change quite a bit -- that's the whole idea.) (Source)
Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Can't Thunderclap while silenced
It is called "Thunder" and "Clap." That implies some noise.
Seriously though, silence isn't a dispel. Dispels are tied to magical effects. Silences are just tied to things that (more or less) logically require an audio component (in the game fiction -- I'm not talking about your sound card) to work. Most caster spells qualify but some other abilities do too.
As soon as I read that I thought, "Man, GC just opened up a can of worms". I understand where you are coming from but now we get to read 10 pages of "Wait, I don't have to make noise to do X, why does it obey silence!?"
That response is certainly possible, but I figure part of what I can do out here (in exchange for all the feedback we get) is offer the occasional intent behind a game decision. Sometimes players can get us to question those decisions, but in cases like this it's going to take more than "It doesn't seem to *me* like silence could stop a Thunder Clap." Trying to arbitrate how the physics of magic should work is a pretty futile exercise. (Source)
I'm going to vote for not interesting gameplay.
At the very least, you should be able to reduce your chance to miss a Taunt to zero if you reduce your chance to miss with a weapon to zero. It's also possible we'll just let them always hit. (Source)
Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)Starfall nerf?
At some point I posted some numbers for Starfall since there hadn't been a PTR build in some time and druids were chomping at the bit to figure out just how much damage it was going to do. The numbers we went with for 3.3.3 were slightly lower than that if I recall correctly, but we haven't made any changes to Starfall since the patch went live. The live Starfall numbers are still much higher than they were in 3.3.
We generally don't try to execute actual "stealth nerfs." The community will nearly always figure it out anyway so we don'y gain much by trying to hide anything. Sometimes "stealth nerfs" are just things we didn't manage to document, but many times they are misunderstandings.
(I'm talking about live anyway. On betas and PTRs numbers are going to change quite a bit -- that's the whole idea.) (Source)
Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)Can't Thunderclap while silenced
It is called "Thunder" and "Clap." That implies some noise.
Seriously though, silence isn't a dispel. Dispels are tied to magical effects. Silences are just tied to things that (more or less) logically require an audio component (in the game fiction -- I'm not talking about your sound card) to work. Most caster spells qualify but some other abilities do too.
As soon as I read that I thought, "Man, GC just opened up a can of worms". I understand where you are coming from but now we get to read 10 pages of "Wait, I don't have to make noise to do X, why does it obey silence!?"
That response is certainly possible, but I figure part of what I can do out here (in exchange for all the feedback we get) is offer the occasional intent behind a game decision. Sometimes players can get us to question those decisions, but in cases like this it's going to take more than "It doesn't seem to *me* like silence could stop a Thunder Clap." Trying to arbitrate how the physics of magic should work is a pretty futile exercise.
(Source)It's nearly impossible for a player to actively watch the positioning and actions of his whole team while also doing his own job, whether it's tanking, healing, or DPS. That's where a powerful suite of UI mods can be extraordinarily helpful. While this article is entitled "The Raid Leader's UI," anyone who wants to better follow and understand (and thus react to) encounters can benefit from some of the UI mod suggestions discussed herein. This can include class officers, raid assistants, or rank-and-file players who want to be on top of things.
There are a lot of mods out there; in some cases many of them perform the same basic tasks. This article is more focused on necessary UI elements than on specific mods, so in some cases I'll be offering multiple suggestions. Let's get started.
Out-of-Battle Mods
WoW Instant Messenger (WIM) Depending on how familiar the group is with the instance and fights that you're working on, there may be a lot of chatter flying around. It can be tough to keep track of it all when 5 people are talking to you at once, making suggestions and asking questions. One mod I find indispensable for keeping track of things is Warcraft Instant Messenger, or WIM. It copies the basic functionality of familiar messenger programs that most of us have used; each time you whisper a player or receive a whisper, it creates a popup chat box that focuses only on that conversation. Even if you close the window, the chat is saved so you can look at it again later if you need to. It's impossible to miss a whisper with WIM active, conversations are easier to follow and mistells are all but eliminated.
ORa. This is a general purpose raid assistant with a lot of helpful administrative features, such as auto-promoting, autoinvites, and an enhanced readycheck window. One of the key features is a cooldown tracker that let's you know whether your rebirths, soulstones, divine interventions and other long cooldown abilities are up.
BigBrother. You are not prepared! Or are you? Big Brother is a mod that will quickly give you a breakdown showing whether your team is fully flasked/elixired and food buffed. Nothing's worse than looking back after a 1% wipe and realizing that one of your DPS wasn't flasked. Big Brother also has some useful in-combat functions, such as notifying you when someone breaks crowd control or casts Misdirection or Tricks of the Trade.
Damage Meters. There are two primary options in this category: Recount and Skada. The primary purpose of these mods is to get a good look at who is and isn't pulling their weight in terms of DPS and to a lesser extent healing. Myself, I prefer Skada for its much sleeker look and built-in "Failbot" like tracker. It doesn't feature the fancy graphs of Recount, however.
XLoot. The base XLoot mod is simply a way to make your loot frames look prettier. The XLoot Master module, however, is quite useful for raid leaders. It allows you to assign loot by class instead of by group, making it much easier to find the intended target. It has a built-in roll-tracker, too.
Battle Mods
Obituary. Obituary is a very simplistic mod that can be incredibly useful, so long as you use it intelligently. Whenever someone in your raid dies, it shows in your chat window what caused the killing blow and how much it hit for. It's great when people are dying to the various, avoidable instant or near-instant kill abilities out there, like Sindragosa's Blistering Cold. It's trickier when there are a lot of damage sources in a fight, such as in Blood Queen Lana'thel - a lot of times her aura will get the killing blow even if it was Pact of the Darkfallen or Swarming Shadows that did most of the damage. You also need to watch out for when players who were already on low health are killed by standing in the fire; it's not entirely fair to blame them if they get killed before they could even move. As long as you use the information from Obituary intelligently, it can be a huge boon.
Unit Frames. Whether you use something simple and compact like Grid, or more complex and configurable options like Pitbull or Shadowed Unit Frames, you need an easy-to-read way to keep tabs on your raid's health. The default UI doesn't provide helpful things like class coloring (it's surprisingly helpful for quickly identifying who is in trouble) and health deficits. The smart debuff tracking provided by these mods is also vital.
RankWatch. Whenever someone uses a downranked version of a spell, this mod informs you (and them, in a very PC manner). If you're in a serious raid guild, you hope to never ding someone with this... but it's better safe than sorry.
Boss Mods. This one pretty much goes without saying. It's mostly a matter of preference whether you choose BigWigs, Deadly Bossmods, or Deus Vox Encounter (DxE).
Wrapping Up
You can get most of these mods over at Curse.com, or use the handy Curse Client.
That about does it for today. Did I miss anything? Are there any mods out there that you find invaluable as a raid leader, or just as a raider in general? What information do you consider "must-have" while raiding? How do you balance key UI elements against screen real estate? Let us know in the forums!MMO > MMO-Champ downtime, Raidcomp, ComicsOops.
MMO-Champion has been down for a couple of hours today, this is what you get when you outsource everything to gnome engineers. The site itself didn't have any problem, it was just an issue with .... some technical stuff that I can't explain. I just cried a lot and spammed my very comprehensive and skilled tech team and we're now back online.
Or maybe it was all part of a bigger plan.
Raidcomp Updated
Raidcomp has been updated to fix tons of outdated stuff. There are still a few bug fixes on the way, but it should look better!
- Armor % renamed to Physical Damage Reduction
- Damage % - Added Arcane Empowerment
- Damage Reduction % - Removed Grace, effect has been moved to Renewed Hope.
- Mana Regen (Pet) removed.
- Mana Regen renamed to just "Mana Regen". Now includes Mana Spring Totem.
- Replenishment can now include Enduring Winter (Frost Mage)
- Attack Power reduction - Include Vindication for Protection Paladins
- Healing debuff - Fury Warriors' "Furious Attacks" delegated to a "maybe".
- Melee Hit Chance Reduction: Insect Swarm and Scorpid Sting are marked as "maybe" since Balance Druids will glyph out of it and Hunters will often use another sting.
- Hunter debuffs that are dependent on pets are declared as a "maybe".
- Raid buff scrolls: Blessing of Kings, Mark of the Wild and Power Word: Fortitude as always marked as "maybe" once there are 1 or more of any class in the raid.
There is a slight bug with tooltips not working properly on spells and a few other things, most of them should be fixed by the end of the day.
The MMO Report
Oh, look, it's monday! And it's the MMO Report because I still like them.
Comics
Dark Legacy Comic #231 and Teh Gladiators #119 are out!
This post is mostly a compilation of information we have so far on the changes to both continents from Blizzcon, interviews, and the Developer chats. I mainly am focusing on the old world changes rather than the 5 new zones since there is quite little that is known about them outside concept maps.
The first thing to look at is the new level flow of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. During Blizzcon we were shown an image of the level flow for both Lordaeron and Southern Kalimdor.
Lordaeron
Southern Kalimdor
From that several other areas are known based on how the arrows work. For example Desolace leading into Feralas means Desolace is 30-35 and then Stonetalon must be 25-30 making Ashenvale 20-25 and so on. The same goes for Eastern Kingdoms with a arrow going into Arathi Highlands showing Wetlands to be 20-25. With that I made a map that is based on that with what I felt the new leveling flow would be. Keep in mind this is my opinion for areas far outside the 2 images we were given. Where do you disagree with my speculation?
Speculated Level Flow
For those that did not see this image back during Blizzcon I will mention what the colors mean. Red colored zones mean the zone will be getting a heavy revamp and will likely look entirely different than it does now such as Thousand Needles having water, yellow means the zone is getting moderate changes like the orcs deforestation of Ashenvale and green means the zone is getting minor edits.
Unfortunately it is too hard to make a educated guess for what the full level flow will be for the southern section of the Eastern Kingdoms. One thing I am sure of is that the there will be a path made between the Swamp of Sorrows and Redridge to make room for the new leveling progression also making Redridge a higher level.
Now for some zone by zone changes based on what has been said through interviews, the developer chat and other news sources.
Kalimdor
Durotar - Orgrimmar will be getting a bit of a revamp with a path that will connect it to Azshara for the goblins. The trolls will also get their own 1-5 questing area with the re-capturing of the Echo Isles prior to release.
Mulgore - With the Barrens now being cut in half the tauren erect a wall to defend themselves from the Alliance advance.
Azshara - Will be completely terraformed by the goblins into the shape of the Horde symbol. The goblins will also build a town along the cliffs where the highborne city currently is with a cannon in the center. Azshara crater will be replaced with a mining operation.
Darkshore - Darkshore will be affected quite heavily by the elements and Auberdine will be completely destroyed by a tidal wave. Due to this the night elves have built a new town further up the coastline. Shatterspear village will also be opened up. The Horde build a camp in the southern section of the zone.
Ashenvale - The orcs continue their push into the forest razing both Silverwynd Refuge and Astranaar while Zoram'gar Outpost is heavily fortified. Much more of the forest will be cut down and it is unknown what offense if any the night elves are making.
Stonetalon Mountains - The zone will be heavily edited with the charred vale being affected by a mini volcano which also opens a path to the coastline. The Alliance town at the peak is destroyed with a new tauren camp on the mountain south of it. The goblins also carve a path through the mountains into Ashenvale where the Talondeep Path currently is. It seems the zone is going to have quite a bit of it opened up.
Desolace - After the Cataclysm Desolace will see new growth and much of the zone will once again be the forest it originally was.
Northern Barrens - The half of the zone that will still belong to the Horde. There most likely will be a new pathway in Northern Mulgore that leads to the Northern Barrens to allow tauren access. The Alliance make a push into the zone and are building a camp near the Stonetalon border. The druid Naralex has succeeded in his plan and both sections of the Barrens will see incredible growth as the zone turns green in many areas.
Southern Barrens - This section of the Barrens will see a large level increase and will now be contested. The Alliance have attacked and razed the tauren town of Camp Taurajo causing the tauren to create a wall at the border to Mulgore. The Southern Barrens is seeing a large amount of regrowth but it is unfortunately being affected by the Emerald Nightmare. There is a new tauren camp in the mountains west of the new rift and Wailing Caverns.
Thousand Needles - The mountains on the eastern coast have collapsed allowing Thousand Needles to once again have water. The zone itself will not be fully flooded and the water will only go up about halfway (it will go right up to where the white salt texture ends in the Shimmering Flats). With this a very small section at the border of Feralas will be flooded.
Tanaris - Due to the flooding of Thousand Needles the goblins at Gadgetzan now have beachfront property. The entrance to Uldum will be here.
Eastern Kingdoms
Tirisfal Glades - The Ruins of Lordaeron will now be fleshed out due to flying now being enabled.
Hillsbrad Foothills - The Alliance town of Southshore has been swept away by a tidal wave.
Western Plaguelands - The plague has been cleansed from the zone allowing it to slowly turn back to normal. The zone will likely see a name change to correspond to the new look.
Eastern Plaguelands - Due to the zones size it will be split n two in some way. A new neautral port will be south of the zone along the coast.
Wetlands - Due to being near sea level the zone will be heavily afflicted by the Cataclysm and by Deathwings Path to Grim Batol. The entrance to Twilight Highlands will be here.
Blackrock Mountain - Blackrock Mountain will have a new 5 man instance added inside and a new raid, Blackwing Descent, which will be accessed via the balcony where the end of Blackwing Lair took place.
Stranglethorn Vale - It's unknown what exactly will change but it has been said that Stranglethorn Vale will be the most heavily modified zone.
Blasted Lands - A large revamp will occur here with the questing (so there are more than 5 quests) and the mountains will be opened up to show a coastline. The Tainted Scar will be edited to contain a Worgen themed area.
Elwynn Forest - Stormwind will have a new Worgen district added.
Dun Morogh - The gnomes will retake the upper section of the city prior to the Cataclysm giving them their own 1-5 questing area.
Below are the 2 videos which show many of the changes listed above for Kalimdor.
A few hotfixes went live Friday night.
Quote
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)
3/26
- The Endless Healing Potion is no longer usable in arenas as intended.
- Warlock’s using a lower rank of Life Tap will receive a reduced benefit from their shadow spell power.
- The damage done by the cannons in the gunship encounter in Icecrown Citadel has been increased and the rate at which their heat decays has been reduced.
- In Alterac Valley, the buffs that the Generals get from the Warmasters and Marshals now grant them negative enemy dodge. This means they will now ignore some of their target's total dodge percentage. The base health of the Generals has been increased and the buff also grants a slightly increased amount of damage and health.
- The cheese items in Dalaran as well as the Kvaldir Berserkers in Icecrown will once again respawn at a faster rate.
- The window that comes up when talking to an NPC should no longer close on its own.
- Some changes to the battleground queuing system have been made to improve performance and group queuing.
- The timer for when the next battle in Wintergrasp will occur should no long disappear.
Blue Posts
Quote
Gold cap in Cataclysm (Source)
To answer your question though, increasing the gold cap is a definite possibility for Cataclysm -- though nothing is set in stone yet.
DruidEclipse and its impact on Balance DPS (Source)
The purpose behind Eclipse was to encourage Balance druids to cast something besides their hardest hitting spell over and over again. From this thread it appears at least some of you were content with a "rotation" like that, but you'll have to believe me that it was a very common complaint we heard from druids as to what they disliked or why they didn't play Balance.
Now it's possible to base a rotation around a single spells. Mages are designed to do just that. However, they also have a lot of procs, cooldowns, secondary effects and other situational events that mean that even though you're getting most of your damage from one button, you're managing a lot.
We could have gone that way with Balance druids. We didn't largely because part of the kit of Balance is balance, and we thought that manifested itself nicely in switching between Arcane and Nature spells, or Starfire and Wrath, or Lunar and Solar.
The problem with Eclipse (as I've stated many times, so I find the comments that we won't address the issue to be a trifle unfair) is that it now accounts for so much of Balance's damage that the random element can be punishing. Having to shift positions right when you get a proc should be a little bit of a bummer on the level of missing a few crits in a row, and not a devastating blow to your dps.
We're keeping Eclipse, but the Cataclysm version is a pretty radical overhaul that we hope to be able to reveal soon. It removes a lot of the random element.
RogueVanish bar replacing Shadow Dance's (Source)
It's technically not a bug. It's just a limitation in how the bars work. Rogues essentially have 3 bars and there are just some technical reasons why we can't go back to the Shadow Dance bar once we've dropped it.
I think the real solution is probably to make it so you can't / don't want to Vanish while dancing. I assume you're Vanishing to get out of roots or dodge spells, but we could solve those in other ways. The spell dodging part of Vanish has been so frustrating to rogues for so long that frankly I'd rather figure out another way to get the same functionality that would feel better all around and leave Vanish as strictly "you want to go back into stealth."
WarriorRevenge and Unrelenting Assault synergy (Source)
We like Revenge on UA and we certainly like the new damage Protection can do with Revenge.
If we make any change at all, it would probably be in the duration of the buff. Currently Revenge operates by giving the warrior 5 seconds in which to Revenge. This works fine when Revenge has a 5 sec cooldown, but UA removes that. Having no cooldown on Revenge is also probably fine if Revenge hits softly for Arms warriors, but it doesn't anymore. That allows a warrior who gets Revenge to light up to hit the button three or possibly four times in the window and do massive damage with each one. If we change Revenge to basically be one charge then the warrior can still pop the rogue or pet or whatever that triggers the block, dodge or parry, but they'd only get one hit instead of multiples. Such a change should not affect Protection at all.
"I Play WoW" Music Video By Jace Hall
Jace Hall recently put out a music video called I Play WoW. Check it out below, or watch it on YouTube!
StarCraft II Beta Reset Complete
If you haven't played StarCraft II in a few days, then you'll probably sign on with an empty friends list as the full reset was completed recently. The only information retained were Battle.net RealID friends.
Quote
Quote from: Crygil (Source)
The beta database has been reset to help test a launch-condition environment. This includes a wipe of characters and identifiers, friends lists, profiles, league placement, and ladder ranks. We thank you for your continued feedback and testing.
Recent In-Game Fixes - March 2010 - 03/26
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)
Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. Keep in mind that some of these changes may not be active until after the realm has been restarted.
03/26
03/26
- The Endless Healing Potion is no longer usable in arenas as intended.
- Warlock’s using a lower rank of Life Tap will receive a reduced benefit from their shadow spell power.
- The damage done by the cannons in the gunship encounter in Icecrown Citadel has been increased and the rate at which their heat decays has been reduced.
- In Alterac Valley, the buffs that the Generals get from the Warmasters and Marshals now grant them negative enemy dodge. This means they will now ignore some of their target's total dodge percentage. The base health of the Generals has been increased and the buff also grants a slightly increased amount of damage and health.
- The cheese items in Dalaran as well as the Kvaldir Berserkers in Icecrown will once again respawn at a faster rate.
- The window that comes up when talking to an NPC should no longer close on its own.
- Some changes to the battleground queuing system have been made to improve performance and group queuing.
- The timer for when the next battle in Wintergrasp will occur should no long disappear.
Blue Posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Gold cap in Cataclysm
To answer your question though, increasing the gold cap is a definite possibility for Cataclysm -- though nothing is set in stone yet. (Source)
Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Eclipse
The purpose behind Eclipse was to encourage Balance druids to cast something besides their hardest hitting spell over and over again. From this thread it appears at least some of you were content with a "rotation" like that, but you'll have to believe me that it was a very common complaint we heard from druids as to what they disliked or why they didn't play Balance.
Now it's possible to base a rotation around a single spells. Mages are designed to do just that. However, they also have a lot of procs, cooldowns, secondary effects and other situational events that mean that even though you're getting most of your damage from one button, you're managing a lot.
We could have gone that way with Balance druids. We didn't largely because part of the kit of Balance is balance, and we thought that manifested itself nicely in switching between Arcane and Nature spells, or Starfire and Wrath, or Lunar and Solar.
The problem with Eclipse (as I've stated many times, so I find the comments that we won't address the issue to be a trifle unfair) is that it now accounts for so much of Balance's damage that the random element can be punishing. Having to shift positions right when you get a proc should be a little bit of a bummer on the level of missing a few crits in a row, and not a devastating blow to your dps.
We're keeping Eclipse, but the Cataclysm version is a pretty radical overhaul that we hope to be able to reveal soon. It removes a lot of the random element. (Source)
Rogue (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Action Bar bug when rogues use Vanish while Shadow Dancing
It's technically not a bug. It's just a limitation in how the bars work. Rogues essentially have 3 bars and there are just some technical reasons why we can't go back to the Shadow Dance bar once we've dropped it.
I think the real solution is probably to make it so you can't / don't want to Vanish while dancing. I assume you're Vanishing to get out of roots or dodge spells, but we could solve those in other ways. The spell dodging part of Vanish has been so frustrating to rogues for so long that frankly I'd rather figure out another way to get the same functionality that would feel better all around and leave Vanish as strictly "you want to go back into stealth." (Source)
Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Revenge and Unrelenting Assault
We like Revenge on UA and we certainly like the new damage Protection can do with Revenge.
If we make any change at all, it would probably be in the duration of the buff. Currently Revenge operates by giving the warrior 5 seconds in which to Revenge. This works fine when Revenge has a 5 sec cooldown, but UA removes that. Having no cooldown on Revenge is also probably fine if Revenge hits softly for Arms warriors, but it doesn't anymore. That allows a warrior who gets Revenge to light up to hit the button three or possibly four times in the window and do massive damage with each one. If we change Revenge to basically be one charge then the warrior can still pop the rogue or pet or whatever that triggers the block, dodge or parry, but they'd only get one hit instead of multiples. Such a change should not affect Protection at all.
I can't believe all this QQ is getting a response from you. Popping shield block and revenge spaming as arms is not new at all.
Nope. And it wasn't a big deal when Revenge didn't hit as hard as it does now. An alternative is to lower the damage Arms can do with Revenge, but we think in this case it's actually a better design that you can do one big Revenge per block / dodge / parry instead of a string of little ones.
I could understand if you think warriors need some balancing but craving into fotm QQ disgusts me. Why are you soo quick to base nerfs off of the community's feedback but soo reluctant to buff them using their suggestions?
Players often complain that we don't implement their suggested buffs or nerfs. This is nothing new. I suspect the volume of nerf posts exceed the buff posts because of the simple math that there are usually multiple classes asking for a nerf and one asking for a buff. We use player feedback to make informed decisions and we place more emphasis on intelligent or insightful points from players rather than a high-volume of low-quality QQ. "Warrior hit me hard" rage with perhaps an attached screenshot of dubious authenticity (tenacity vs. no resilience isn't uncommon) doesn't qualify as an intelligent or insightful point. (Source)
To answer your question though, increasing the gold cap is a definite possibility for Cataclysm -- though nothing is set in stone yet. (Source)
Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)Eclipse
The purpose behind Eclipse was to encourage Balance druids to cast something besides their hardest hitting spell over and over again. From this thread it appears at least some of you were content with a "rotation" like that, but you'll have to believe me that it was a very common complaint we heard from druids as to what they disliked or why they didn't play Balance.
Now it's possible to base a rotation around a single spells. Mages are designed to do just that. However, they also have a lot of procs, cooldowns, secondary effects and other situational events that mean that even though you're getting most of your damage from one button, you're managing a lot.
We could have gone that way with Balance druids. We didn't largely because part of the kit of Balance is balance, and we thought that manifested itself nicely in switching between Arcane and Nature spells, or Starfire and Wrath, or Lunar and Solar.
The problem with Eclipse (as I've stated many times, so I find the comments that we won't address the issue to be a trifle unfair) is that it now accounts for so much of Balance's damage that the random element can be punishing. Having to shift positions right when you get a proc should be a little bit of a bummer on the level of missing a few crits in a row, and not a devastating blow to your dps.
We're keeping Eclipse, but the Cataclysm version is a pretty radical overhaul that we hope to be able to reveal soon. It removes a lot of the random element.
(Source) Rogue (Forums / Talent Calculator)Action Bar bug when rogues use Vanish while Shadow Dancing
It's technically not a bug. It's just a limitation in how the bars work. Rogues essentially have 3 bars and there are just some technical reasons why we can't go back to the Shadow Dance bar once we've dropped it.
I think the real solution is probably to make it so you can't / don't want to Vanish while dancing. I assume you're Vanishing to get out of roots or dodge spells, but we could solve those in other ways. The spell dodging part of Vanish has been so frustrating to rogues for so long that frankly I'd rather figure out another way to get the same functionality that would feel better all around and leave Vanish as strictly "you want to go back into stealth." (Source)
Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)Revenge and Unrelenting Assault
We like Revenge on UA and we certainly like the new damage Protection can do with Revenge.
If we make any change at all, it would probably be in the duration of the buff. Currently Revenge operates by giving the warrior 5 seconds in which to Revenge. This works fine when Revenge has a 5 sec cooldown, but UA removes that. Having no cooldown on Revenge is also probably fine if Revenge hits softly for Arms warriors, but it doesn't anymore. That allows a warrior who gets Revenge to light up to hit the button three or possibly four times in the window and do massive damage with each one. If we change Revenge to basically be one charge then the warrior can still pop the rogue or pet or whatever that triggers the block, dodge or parry, but they'd only get one hit instead of multiples. Such a change should not affect Protection at all.
I can't believe all this QQ is getting a response from you. Popping shield block and revenge spaming as arms is not new at all.
Nope. And it wasn't a big deal when Revenge didn't hit as hard as it does now. An alternative is to lower the damage Arms can do with Revenge, but we think in this case it's actually a better design that you can do one big Revenge per block / dodge / parry instead of a string of little ones.
I could understand if you think warriors need some balancing but craving into fotm QQ disgusts me. Why are you soo quick to base nerfs off of the community's feedback but soo reluctant to buff them using their suggestions?
Players often complain that we don't implement their suggested buffs or nerfs. This is nothing new. I suspect the volume of nerf posts exceed the buff posts because of the simple math that there are usually multiple classes asking for a nerf and one asking for a buff. We use player feedback to make informed decisions and we place more emphasis on intelligent or insightful points from players rather than a high-volume of low-quality QQ. "Warrior hit me hard" rage with perhaps an attached screenshot of dubious authenticity (tenacity vs. no resilience isn't uncommon) doesn't qualify as an intelligent or insightful point.
(Source)Paragon was the first guild in the world to defeat the Lich King in 25-Heroic mode! The 5% buff was used and it definitely confirms that guilds do not need the 10% version to kill him. (As long as they're that good, I guess)
The Lich King dropped Glorenzelg, High Blade of the Silver-Hand, Archus, Greatstaff of Antonidas, and of course Invincible's Reins, which makes them the first guild to get the Invincible flying mount! (The mount is a 100% drop from the Lich King in 25-Heroic)
Raid Composition
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 3.3.3a Fast Patch BLIZ > BlizzCon 2010 Announced!If you've been holding your breath waiting to find out when and where the next BlizzCon would be held, then... you've probably passed out by now. But if you've just been patiently watching for an announcement, then we've got good news for you: BlizzCon will be returning to the Anaheim Convention Center on Friday, October 22 through Saturday, October 23! Just as in years past, BlizzCon 2010 will feature an exciting mix of discussion panels, tournaments, hands-on gameplay, contests, and much more. Check out the announcementBLIZ > New Fan ArtTheBLIZ > World of Warcraft Trading Card Game UpdateWe're pleased to announce that we've partnered with Cryptozoic Entertainment for the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game. Cryptozoic is slated to release the Wrathgate booster set in May, followed by the Class Decks in June. To learn more, visitBLIZ > Random Battlegrounds are Here!The latest World of Warcraft patch (3.3.3) is now live! In this update, players will be able to queue up for combat in the new Random Battleground system, which functions similarly to the Dungeon Finder and allows players to earn bonus PvP rewards. In addition, the new patch heralds increased Honor accumulation rates, a bevy of class changes and profession improvements, a new and improved way to access holiday bosses, a host of user-interface improvements, and much more. Read the full patch notesBLIZ > WoW Comic Contest: Honorable MentionsHere is the next honorable mention from the
The patch notes for the patch deployed earlier today are now available. Quote from: Nethaera (Source) Bug Fixes General
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