Everyone has been busy lately with family and friends for the holiday, but i am so glad we all still had a chance to hang out with our guildies for the holiday's also! I would like to post our pics from our Secret Santa Event. i must say i was so happy to see all of the people that came to it. it was nice to get alot of the guildies in one area for even a short time. i hope you all know how much each and every one of you mean to our guild!
I would also like to announce a great deal of thank you's for the guildies that have been donating pets, for guild event prizes, (Pat, Zoinks, if any others please mesg me and i will add your name also!) **With out these donation we would have a hard time with prizes.**
**Grats to Zoinks and Dinka for winning the Amazing Race on Christmas Eve!!!**
*Huggles* Deathkaraz
*Be sure to join us for our guild meeting Next Saturday Jan 5th!!**
Chief Security Officer Wray here, Today Blizzard released a nice little video about how to add and remove both type of Authenticators from your battle.net account. I highly recommend that everyone watches this.
This CoveritLive chat features a panel of some of our most veteran customer support representatives, who always seek to clarify support policies and procedures, help players to better understand the philosophies that shape how we assist them, and show a bit of the personality behind those GM tags.
While this chat was focused on customer support for World of Warcraft, our panelists were equipped to field some questions about Diablo III and StarCraft II support policies as well.
Click "Replay" on the window below to view the full transcript.
Welcome to another edition of Platinum News! I took a day off yesterday, shame on me, I shall now punish myself by getting legdropped:
This week, Wowjuju interviewed Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street. His interview had so much depth I decided to re-post the entire thing there.
5.1
came with two more factions and a few more daily quests. From now on we
should expect only daily quests when a new factions is going to be
introduced? Are there going to be some Scenario/Dungeon daily quests in
the future?
GC: We know one of the biggest risks of
dailies is burnout. You can only kill 12 Mogu so many times. We want to
keep adding new dailies to keep it as fresh as we can, but that doesn’t
have to mean it’s always in the same way or the same amount. For
instance the 5.1 factions don’t have as many dailies per day as Golden
Lotus and Klaxxi, which keeps it from feeling like we’re just doubling
the number of dailies with every patch. With the expansion-launch
factions we could have more available, but the new factions have a
number of dailies we think is a more reasonable for a later patch.
We would consider scenarios and dungeon dailies, but there already is
some motivation to do scenarios and dungeons every day and we don’t want
to make them so attractive that there is no motivation to do the
outdoor quests at all.
The
idea behind Brawler Guild is pretty cool, and is nice to keep
everything “hidden”, but I notices some people complaining about queue
times for it. Are there going to be more arenas added for it?
GC: Brawlers’ Guild is a new kind of
feature for us. One of the designers got excited about the idea, and a
lot of other developers pitched in to make it happen. The vision of the
feature though was that you go to this secret underground location in
the cities and participate in a series of fights. We weren’t trying to
recreate an instance experience – the game always has ton of those. We
wanted combat, that you could see, to be frequently occuring in these
areas. We understand that it would be more convenient for players to be
able to burn through all of the fights as quickly as possible without
having to worry about the inconvenience of other players. That’s just
not what the feature is supposed to deliver. We like that players take
their turns. It helps build up some of the excitement. We don’t think
queue times are something we need to jump at and design a solution for,
because it’s such a new feature it’s obviously going to be busy. Also
one thing people may not know is that they’re prioritized in the queue
if they haven’t fought that day, which means longer queues if they wiped
and are looking for another shot. Like I said it’s not intended to be
something to burn through in a single day, and that’s just the mentality
a lot of people go after things with.
Regarding
Brawler Guild again, if you go there as a group you can benefit from
all the group buffs. Is this intended, because those going alone will
have a big disadvantage?
GC: It is intended to be solo content
(perhaps with a few others cheering you or the crocolisk on). If players
aren’t being restricted to the solo limitation, then it’s probably a
bug that we’ll fix, depending on the severity of the issue.
As
it is now, it will take about 6 months to upgrade your gear fully. Is
intended not to have all the gear pieces fully upgraded?
GC: We’re constantly trying to develop
content faster, and I believe 5.1 was our fastest first expansion
content patch - and 5.2 isn’t far behind. When you know content is
coming soon it tends to deincentivize going for current upgrades because
you know something better is right around the corner. If you aren’t an
obsessive min-maxxer then you may decide that upgrading a peice like a
bracer or belt just isn’t worth it if the next tier will be happening
soon, and hopefully the tiers won’t be very far apart. Because of that
the goal is still getting the best items you can, but it isn’t then this
hardline division, and is instead a more consistent progression from
patch to patch and expansion to expansion.
It's
been mentioned numerous times that Blizzard wants to reward 25 man
raiders for the extra effort required, any update on this? As far as I
know there were/are some tests on the Asian realms...
GC: It will be interesting to see how EU
and NA players respond to the Asian model, but really we weren’t trying
to use Asia as an experiment. We were trying to provide what a lot of
the players there say they want. Remember that the payment model there
is pretty different from what EU and NA players are used to, which
inherently effects how they digest the content.
As far as 25-player raids go, we absolutely want to offer some
compensation for their increased logistical complexities. We don’t think
that just having 25s offer higher ilevel rewards is the right answer,
because then it just makes all of the 10 player guilds feel like they
have to ramp up to 25. There isn’t an easy answer to the problem, but
we’re going to keep working on it. We like 25 player raiding – in some
ways it offers a better experience than 10s -- and we don’t want to see
it go away.
We can upgrade the quality of our battle pets now, which is great, but how about some pet gear?
GC: The original design we presented at
BlizzCon had pet collars and gems for those collars. We pushed off that
part of the design because we felt the feature already had plenty going
on to the point of risking it being overwhelming. Once players get more
comfortable with pet battles and it feels like they are starting to run
out of content, we’ll evaluate whether bringing back the collar or if a
gear idea makes sense.
How
come the Brawler Guild is located within the main cities? I know you
like people to be active in as many areas as possible. For example the
Farm and Daily Hubs are great points of interest and it keeps the
players scattered around Pandaria.
GC: The vision of the feature felt like it
made sense to take place in an urban environment. They are underground
fight clubs that would spring up in the dark underbelly of the cities.
There is still a lot going on in Pandaria, the changes from Cataclysm as
far as getting people out into the world appear to be pretty
successful. We’re not in danger of players abandoning the new continent.
It
was recently announced that some transmogrification restrictions are
going to be lifted in the future. Can you explain more about this?
GC: Our plan (and like any long-term plans,
it might not come to fruition) is to allow main-hand and off-hand items
to be transmogrified to each other. We are also going to allow weapons
that use the same animations to be used. This means specifically that
one-handed axes, maces and swords can be transmogged to other one-handed
axes, maces and swords and that two-handed axes, maces and swords can
be transmogged to two-handed axes, maces and swords. In addition, staves
and polearms can be transmogged. So for example you could have a
one-handed axe look like a one-handed mace, but not a polearm look like a
two-handed sword. We will probably continue to relax restrictions over
time. It’s one of those things where we can take one misstep and never
take it back, so we’re being pretty cautious with how we altar the
transmog rules.
Golden
Lotus is pretty much mandatory for players who want to gain reputation
with Augustus Celestials and Shado-Pan. What’s the reason behind it?
GC: Both Golden Lotus and Klaxxi have a lot
of quests per day, and the number grows over time in the case of Golden
Lotus. We didn’t want players to feel compelled to do all of those
quests AND do August Celestials and Shado-Pan, grinding away like crazy
for weeks, and then run out of things to do. We just wanted to pace them
out a little more. As we’ve said a little recently, we think we overdid
the daily questing design just a bit. There is a razor’s edge between
optional and mandatory, and the daily model leaned a little bit too much
to the latter when players felt like they had to max quests every day
in order to hit Revered as quickly as possible.
Lore-wise:
Undercity was taken by the forsaken a long time ago now. Alliance did
nothing to get it back. Why are King Varian not advancing and retaking
the homeland? Yes, he is running a big campaign in Pandaria now, but I
think the forsaken are pretty weak at the moment.
GC: Varian actually did make an attempt
once already. Players who have played through Western Plaguelands since
Cataclysm can see the result of a failed Alliance campaign to retake
Lordaeron. Sylvannus, partially because of her activities in Gilneas,
had just become more powerful than anyone expected. Players might also
want to check out „Edge of Night” the Sylvannas short story written by
our own Dave Kosak, where she (slight spoiler) has a vision of the
Alliance rolling through Andorhal and up into Lordaeron if she’s not
there.
For the moment, Varian is already having to fight in Pandaria, while
seeing Kalimdor slowly slip through his fingers, so there are only so
many places the Alliance forces can be at once. One imagines that in the
King’s mind, once he wins Pandaria and reverses the Horde’s advances
against the night elves and Theramore, that he will turn his attention
once again to the fallen human city.
As a final question, if possible, what should we expect from Black Prince future quests?
GC: Wrathion is very much planning for a
long term battle. The current „squabble” over Pandaria is just a
distraction that he wants resolved as soon as possible, with your help,
to focus on things he believes really matter. Players can expect for
Wrathion to call upon them every content patch, at least in this
expansion, in return for increasingly more powerful rewards.
Why is Dark Intent inferior to Arcane Brilliance?
GC: We balance class buffs around the whole
class, and not 1:1 skill comparisons. Arcane Brilliance provides spell
power and crit, but warlocks can also bring the Stamina buff in addition
to Dark Intent.
Comparing horde racials with the alliance ones, and seeing how some top
guilds switched to horde, we can say horde is once again one step ahead.
Can we see some racials fixes in the future?
GC: The design intent for racials is to
provide a small amount of flavor and not be the major motivation for
picking a certain race. Keep in mind that top guilds are trying to
conquer raids as fast as possible, meaning they are approaching the
encounters with much less powerful gear than the encounters are designed
around. In that environment, every tiny bonus out there counts. They’re
going to be doing things that even the higher tier progression guilds
that are playing and gearing normally don’t need to consider. If we see
more mainstream players swapping races just for racials, then we’d
likely take action.
Sha-Touched sockets are going to be for weapons only? Because some Heroic Elite weapons are better than Sha-Touched ones.
GC: I believe the only weapon in contention
is Regail’s Crackling Dagger. Very few guilds will have access to the
heroic version of this weapon. It’s possible some casters in normal may
use this weapon instead of a sha-touched one, but we think that will be
short-lived until players get farther along the 5.1 quest chain. We
don’t think there is much danger of raiding players ignoring the
legendary quest line.
That's all for today, I will be back on the ball tomorrow with blue posts and such, be on the lookout this coming weekend for photo's from our guild's christmas party! have a great day!
Welcome to the latest edition of Platinum News! today we have more interviews and the usual blue posts, plus some upcoming events in the guild that will have their own postings soon! And now, celebrate!
ConvertToRaid recently did an interview with Ion Hazzikostas (Lead Encounter Designer) . As usual MMO-Champion has provided us with a nice overview to snipe repost!
Looking back at the daily quests, anything that rewards
player power feels mandatory to raiders, but this has to be balanced
with giving purely cosmetic rewards. There has to be enough of a reward
to encourage players to do some quests, but not so much that it feels
mandatory for everyone.
The Patch 5.1 daily quests took
in to account the Golden Lotus daily quests that rewarded you with more
daily quests and kept the number being added this time more reasonable.
Blizzard
wants to keep delivering content and storyline progression through
daily quests, because it gives you a better understanding and connection
to the faction you are assisting. Tabards ended up with the player
running dungeons for rep and never learning anything about the faction
whose tabard they had on.
Valor Points being necessary
for raiders due to item upgrades feels better than daily quests because
of all of the different sources for earning Valor Points versus only
being able to do daily quests for reputation.
Brawler's Guild is working out well, with the limited invites keeping queues reasonable.
Showing the number of LFR bosses that are dead was making it very slow to fill groups.
The
addition of LFR has allowed Blizzard to target Normal difficulty more
towards organized guilds that play together regularly and use voice
chat. Previously, Normal difficulty was used by both organized guilds
and PuGs, which made it somewhat easier than intended.
Staggering the release of the raids worked out well.
Heroic
Sha of Fear was a worthy end boss in terms of the amount of time it
took to defeat. It is almost impossible to make encounters that the best
guilds won't be able to beat in a matter of days when they are spending
so much time raiding. Only 28 guilds have killed Heroic Sha of Fear so far.
Larger
patches in the past needed everything to be complete before shipping,
which sometimes caused delays. With separate patches for raids and the
other content, we are able to see more frequent patches.
Patch 5.2 is coming Soon™
and will include a large and more traditional raid tier. It has been a
while since we had a raid zone that was as large as Ulduar or Icecrown
Citadel. Blizzard will talking about what will be in it and how many
bosses soon!
Blue Posts, Tweets, Hotfixes, etc.
Bug Fixes
Pet Battle Abilities that use a shoot or missile animation will now properly display their visual effect.
Disabling
Loss of Control in the Interface menu will now also disable the red
cooldown swipes on the action bar in addition to the notification in the
center of the screen. Loss of Control Alerts can be disabled in the
Game Menu by going to Interface > Combat > and un-checking Loss of
Control Alerts.
When Loss of Control Alerts are
enabled, the red cooldown swipes will not be displayed for abilities
that were already on cooldown and in situations where that cooldown will
last longer than the loss of control.
Night will now fall at the proper time on all realms.
Objective icons in Scenarios will no longer incorrectly persist until the Scenario is complete.
Fixed an issue that could cause crashes during Pet Battles.
Mac
Fixed an issue that could cause a crash to occur during in-game cinematics in OSX v.10.6
The Mechanized Fire should now be easier to reach in the course of completing "Dream of a Better Tomorrow".
Players
that have completed "Better With Age" and "Crime and Punishment" can
now properly acquire the quest "By the Sea, Nevermore" from Zer'ik in
the Dread Wastes.
Players on the quest "Sentry Wards" will no longer be placed in the incorrect phase.
The quest "Enemies At Our Door" can no longer be shared.
Pet Battles
The Battle Pet ability Stone Rush now has a 1 round cooldown (was 0).
The Cinder Kitten is now has increased health. It looks like that armor helps a little after all.
Several Battle Pets now appear during times of day more appropriate to their ecology.
Singing Crickets are now considered Rare pets. This change does not apply to pets that have already been acquired.
Damage from Rain of Fire will no longer prevent enemy players from capturing flag objectives.
Havoc will no longer duplicate attacks directed against targets that are affected by Banish or Cyclone. These attacks will not consume any charge of the spell.
Fixed an issue that could cause in-game cut-scenes to be skipped when sound is disabled.
Fixed an issue that allowed players below level 85 to see and loot certain Treasures of Pandaria.
Fixed
an issue that could allow the Healing Ward provided by Vol'jin during
the Dagger in the Dark Scenario to function outside of the instance.
Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Patch 5.2 Monk Changes
The following changes are currently on the table for 5.2:
Life Cocoon will be undispellable and won’t interrupt the cast at the end of the effect (and players will also be able to jump as well).
We’re working to resolve the issues with Renewing Mist not being able to be used while mounted, though it will dismount the caster after it is cast.
Soothing Mist will no longer be able to be Purged, so it will work in a manner similar to the Priest's Penance. It will still be considered a periodic Heal.
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums) CC in PvPCC in general is totally out of control, too much instant !@#$ going on
We would very much like to make it so that more crowd controls start
going back to having a cast time. We feel that instant cast spells
should be something that's rare to see and we admit that they have
become far too common. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) LFR Boss Counter Removal Feedback"oh no someone decided they didn't want to chaperone the
mouth-breathing astounding idiots, we better penalise them for valuing
their own time." Your logic, and apparently Blizzard's too.
One of the reasons why the counter was removed was to reduce the amount
of players fishing for a fresh instance. It was something that was
becoming an issue for all the players that were stuck in on-going groups
waiting for new players to join.
When those groups were waiting at, say 2/3, the queue would start
looking for new replacements, those replacements would see the queue and
decided to skip it in favor of a fresh instance, creating and endless
loop for the guys inside the instance where more people would leave as
they grew impatient, making it harder to complete the run.
As it is right now, if you enter an on-going run, you're pretty much
guaranteed a fresh instance on your next visit. In addition, the
developers are considering adding a buff that players in LFR might
receive if they wipe on a boss that would boost their stats, which they
also hope it might help those impatient players that will leave their
current LFR run after a wipe. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Future Challenge ModesWill you guys ever consider adding more CMs, perhaps old dungeons like Ragefire Chasm/Wailing Caverns?
Actually, the developers would like to add Challenge Modes to existing
dungeons from previous expansions. No timelines or anything, though, but
it's definitely something they're considering. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Bonus Roll Feedback
While I understand that getting an item that you already have can be
somewhat frustrating, this is actually nothing new, since the very
beginning of WoW that players have been killing bosses and getting
completely randomized loot.
The Elder Charms of Good Fortune are supposed to be an extra chance at
getting loot, if anything, having this option the way it currently is,
might be already too loot “friendly” in my opinion.
This option was added because we understand that sometimes players can
be after a specific item (remember those Dragonspine Trophy hunting
days…), this way they get to decide which bosses are the most important
for their characters and have a higher chance of grabbing a specific
item that they’re so anxious to get their hands on. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
CharacterRE: Player Model Upgrade difficulty; Greg, can you elaborate for laymen what makes the project "huge"? Implies more than skin.
Look at the Pandaren as an example. New textures need new models which need new animations. (Source)
I would say overall "too little to do" has not been feedback we have heard often for MoP. For Cataclysm, yes. (Source) Can a new 90 alt catch up gear-wise this arena season with conquest being usable for item upgrades? MoP seems alt-unfriendly.
We agree we need more alt solutions. MoP was designed to be compelling
without alts. That means if you have alts, there's too much (Source) Hey can we get an option to mail guild invites to alts?
Would love to see that (with some kind of guildmaster control). (Source) Yes that may be true but did you guys ever stop to think and listen to people saying gating isn't fun.
Yes. The opposite of gating tends to be epic grinding followed by nothing to do. We try to strike a balance. (Source) "There was no alternative to the head enchant. There are plenty of alternatives to valor gear." what are they?
Killing raid bosses for one. (Source) UI / AddonsThe new item tooltips are a mess. Whoever though this looked or conveyed information better was wrong. Please revert.
We like it. Can you elaborate? (Source) The addon that let us paint the world? That could've been fun, but you engineered the game to stop that.
it wasn't to nerf fun. It took all the individual responsibility out of raiding. (Source) Talent/Glyph + D.Journal taint bug is starting to drive me nuts. Reload UI 2-3 times to use stuff Bliz pushed as key features?
Taint bugs are almost certainly caused by mods trying to access stuff they shouldn't. (Source) Hey will WoW's taint detection be worked on? I am pretty fed up of my addons being blamed for things they don't even look at.
If the addon goes after a protected feature, it gets the taint. It's pretty cut and dried as far as I know. (Source)75% of my raid has to /reloadui to change glyphs/talents. Taint spreads like defile! Very difficult to debug.
I am sympathetic, but we can't debug all of the addons players develop. There are great sites out there that attempt to do so. (Source) Why are UX /UI changes slow in WoW vs. system changes?
Depends on the change, but UI often involves code changes while many class changes can be done through data (by designers). (Source) Can we have a UI feature to show how much of an enemy absorb we have left to break through? Absorb Absorb Absorb isn't helpful
Yes that's definitely on our wish list. (Source)
Also of mention, the game, expansions, and pets are on sale until January 1st, excluding the Cinder Kitten:
Looking for great stocking stuffers for your friends or
guildmates? Blizzard’s got you covered. For a limited time only, you can
snag the following holiday deals in the online Blizzard Store:
Select World of Warcraft pets for $5 -- 50% Savings (Offer includes all Blizzard Pet Store pets except the new Cinder Kitten charity pet...but you should probably adopt a Cinder Kitten anyway since 100% of the purchasing price goes to a great cause).
Be sure to get your Winter Veil shopping done soon, though -- these deals end January 1, 2013 at 11:59 p.m. PST.
Also Do not Forget that this Thursday 12/13/12 we are having our first Christmas Party! Be sure to be festive and if you signed up for Secret Santa, send me your gifts so I can divvy them out! Random gift giving is not only allowed, but encouraged! :D
Welcome to the latest edition of Platinum News! I took the weekend off, so I will be doing this mostly during the week to keep everyone updated. However, on the current pace we will be shattering our monthly posting record! So, Rejoice!
Recently, Tom Chilton, Lead Game designer for WoW, gave an interview for ArenaJunkies, thankfully, MMO-Champion has given an overview for us to pilfer report to you, our wonderfuly members!
Steps are being taken to balance healers, especially
Shaman, in PvP. This is being done incrementally to avoid a knee jerk
reaction and going too far in one direction. Moving totems back into the
schools of magic was one of the changes to bring them more in line.
Discipline Priests and Monks will be buffed somewhat to bring them up to par. We should expect to see those changes on the Patch 5.2 PTR soon.
War Games will be possible Cross realm at some point in the future when time allows for the change.
It may be possible to ban one arena map in the future, similar to the map banning in random battlegrounds.
Part
of the reason Tol'vir was added was to increase the chance of getting
the Nagrand style map. It also is nice to have a change of scenery
rather than just getting Nagrand more often.
Burst damage is still too high, making healing too high as well. Once burst comes down, the healing can be decreased as well.
One
of the goals for WoW as an esport is to make it easier to watch. Part
of this will be accomplished by making it easier for addon authors to
create nice tournament UIs.
The DotA style battleground is still on hold, waiting for new tech to be worked on.
MMR
works pretty well for matching people up, but preventing the exploits
that have popped up is difficult when keeping the system balanced for
all levels of players. Blizzard will keep watching for exploits and
taking appropriate action.
WoW was never built from the
ground up to be an easy to watch and perfectly balanced eSport, so the
improvements that can be made are limited. That being said, Blizzard
wants to keep improving things as much as possible.
When
asked about arena balance: Burst is too high, non burst damage is too
low, there are some disparities between the different healers with
Shaman / Paladin being good, Druids being okay, and Discipline Priests
and Monks lagging a little bit, and the amount of offensive instant cast
crowd control being used.
Blizzard likes the player run tournaments and is evaluating what they can or should do to support them.
PvP
Power worked out really well, with players able to use their PvP gear
in PvE. Using PvE gear to start PvPing isn't working quite as well, as
it was intended to be able to take raid gear and start PvPing without
feeling like you were very fragile and dying very quickly.
Blizzard
likes when the PvP and PvE part of the game operate the same, but is
willing to make them work differently to make the game work better.
BLUUUUUUUE POOSTS!
Trinket Burst Damage AdjustmentsInstead of addressing the strong classes
I just want to point out that this is only one step in a process. We
will continue to assess classes and individual abilities and make
adjustments as necessary. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Trinket Burst Damage AdjustmentsSeems a buff for frost dk's, and if human they can align proc with on use and PoF...
You could say the same for several classes where this will help them to
align their trinkets with their damaging abilities more often. However
smaller burst every 60 seconds is a lot easier to survive than a much
larger burst every two minutes.
The same goes for players that play human, they could take two of these
trinkets and cycle them every 30 seconds with their burst abilities. Do
not forget though, if a human wants to take advantage of these changed
on-use trinkets will need to take two of them and give up the not-nerfed
proc trinket. The idea is good, but what gona happen with the proc trinkets?
I just answered that above for you. At this time we have no plans to be
nerfing the proc trinkets, but this may change in the future. But, an idea would be to increase resilience on the "tweaked"
trinkets by; I don't know, maybe 20-25% to make them more attractive
compared to PvE trinkets etc.!
We're fairly certain that it's unlikely for players to start using PvE
trinkets because they would suffer a significant loss in PvP power and
resilience. Do understand that we will be keeping a very close eye on
the situation when this hotfix goes live and, if necessary, make the
appropriate adjustments where we see they're required. This doesn't mean
that the change we make would be to increase the resilience on trinkets
like you suggested above, however if we do plan to make further
adjustments we will let you know about them. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Updating Old ContentI often wondered why blizzard doesn't take advantage of the content
people loved. Sure, new content and raids are fun but how much time
would it really take to upgrade Kara to current gear levels.
I mean why in gods name wouldn't you do things like this, the Ony
upgrade was great but even now its outdated by two expansions. The
scarlet monastery was good but you didn't even have to redesign the
dungeon, just leave them as they were.
Can you imagine if Apple decided to completely change the Iphone every
release? Sure a few things are changed on each version but the core
design, style, and functionality are all there and people still flock to
get the latest version. Why is that, its because they have a good thing
going.
I'm going to sound a bit like a broken record, so forgive me, but when
we are working on updates to the game, we're looking at what works well
for the ongoing development of it. Sometimes that means taking a look at
previous content and updating, and sometimes it means leaving it as it
is. Overall though, it's about where we want to take things next, what
fits into the larger scheme of development, what can we devote resources
to comfortably and still deliver the best possible experience we can in
a reasonably solid time frame.
There are a lot of things that people keep bringing up that they'd like
to see again, or revisit in a new and fresh way. We're not unaware of
this. But, at the same time, we have to keep asking ourselves, "Does it
make sense and if it does make sense, does it make sense right now?" In
contrast, there are those detractors who are often upset when we do go
back and refresh content. In some cases it's because they're new enough
that they haven't seen it yet, in others it's because they feel we
should leave well enough alone, and to others yet who feel that it's a
development "cop out" and a mere recycling effort. That's not to say
that these things aren't possibilities "someday", but what seems simple
to you may not be quite so simple as all that.
An example of updating things on a very large scale, is Cataclysm. There
was so much work done from the starting quests to the environments to
the very flight paths, but to those who didn't go through the refreshed
content, it was a "waste" of time. We also then had what many felt was
far too little at the upper end of content for them. So, despite best
efforts to refresh a significant amount of content, not everyone was
pleased with it once the immediate blush was off the rose. What we must
fight against is time, nostalgia, "What do I get to do/take part in?",
or even "where's my challenge?" So, no, it's not as easy as that. In a
perfect world, maybe it would be. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Class Forums and Blue PostsDo blue posters avoid class forums? If so - why?
The main reason that we don't make responses in the class forum is
because if we post in the forum of class A, then classes B through K
will start complaining about favoritism or something similar. While we
may not post in threads on the class forums, we do pay attention to the
opinions and feedback presented there. And where are we supposed to turn in order to get the "official" Blizzard PoV on, for example, major nerfs to a certain spec?
These forums are designed and built in order for players to give their
feedback and opinions about the current state of our games or even
upcoming changes so that it can be relayed to the developers. They are
not for the purpose of having a direct line of communication and
discussion with blue posters. If we have some information that we can
provide, we will post it, but you should not be actively searching for
this as the forums are for you as the players to bring up and discuss
topics. Do we really have to post immature, whiny post in order to get attention?
Definitely not. As said above, if we have information on a given topic
of discussion we will provide it. We are also more inclined to do this
with more well written and presented threads rather than ranty or
"whiny" posts. you're on EU forums enough said. Blizzard doesn't care about you,
they don't want your opinion, the blue post always say the same thing.
It is always sad for us to see these types of comments because it is
something that is simply so far from the truth, it is unreal. The
European community team work tirelessly to forward on and present your
feelings, feedback and opinions on to the developers. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
QuestingYour ridiculously gated rep AND VP system for gear cost me one of my raid leaders and you a sub. Just an FYI.
players quit for a variety of reasons. We're sad when they do, but can't be held hostage to "change X or I quit." (Source)No Greg, but if a lot of peple quit for a reason and a lot of us dont quit but dont enjoy it, then somthg is wrong
of course. That's why hearing feedback is so important to us. In fact, it's more useful than threats. (Source)If your reaction and filtering of feedback wasn't so slow compared to other games, you wouldn't get threats.
A poor justification I'm afraid. Good arguments win arguments, not threats of consequences. (Source) I dont understand why rep grind has to be one way. Let questers do dailies, raiders do dungeons and pvpers pvp...
We want players out in the world. We don't think WoW will have enough
legs as an instance only game. Convenient != best design. (Source) Mate, don't let the "rep tabard" brigade get you down. We're better off shedding instance only players from the playerbase.
Well, we don't want to shed anyone. Concern is that instance-only is
convenient short term but causes loss of interest in the long. (Source) Making dailies a requirement for rep seems like a VERY poor way to get people out of cities and make the world feel populated.
What do you want to do out in the world? (Source) For the love of god don't buckle to the "we are forced to do dailies" minority. Don't change a thing!!!
it's just a question of volume. 12 quests a day isn't bad with some optionals. Doing GL and Klaxxi every day felt like a lot. (Source) Well I'll just try asking again tomorrow, I realize you're busy. If you see this tweet, check my profile for the initial ?
we've heard a lot of feedback on dailies, and we'll likely try some
tweaks to keep players out in the world but address concerns. (Source) For 5.1 can we have a short term (20min?) LFR buff that simulates the rep tabards for the last rep we did dailies with today?
Talking about some ideas. So long as someone can't finish rep in one weekend by chain running, we're open to it. (Source) ClassesSo many classes and specs are overpowered right now, why won't you apply hotfixes rather than waiting months for patch 5.1?
We can't hotfix everything and it's frustrating for players to constantly suspect ninja nerfs. We hotfix egregious stuff. (Source) Do you think it's still possible to add new class in the game without too much redundancy ?
I hope so. (Source) Alot of people were complaining about "Stampede". Not the Bestial Wrath ability. Critical mistake on your end
We nerfed Bestial Wrath and Avatar. We're regretting offensive abilities that prevent CC. Encourages tunneling and burst. (Source) talent system is awesome btw. Way better than anything before.
We agree. A few talents aren't quite there but the system is much better
IMO. I see players changing talents for the first time. (Source) As a rouge i have problems getting a clean opner in arena and duel because of the amount of aoe effects in the game. toughts?
TBH, it kind of bugs me personally that AEs are so efficient at breaking stealth. Would be a huge change to revert though. (Source) Ever thought of smaller patch changes? Like changing an ability dmg in 5% increments a week instead of 25% all at once?
One risk of small changes is players don't notice. Flashy changes can sometimes get players to try a class / talent / strat. (Source) Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Any word on healing mushrooms? They are pretty useless but have so much potential.
Agree they aren't there yet, but we want them to be sutiational, and not used on cooldown. (Source)Any chance for some 5.1 love? Thank you for responding to my first tweet ever!
Maybe not for 5.1. We want to make sure there's time for players to try out any changes. It's on our radar though. (Source) Did static mana pools really gave you the freedom you needed to design better enocunters? Are we balanced?
The problem with +Int providing infinite mana didn't manifest until later tiers. Still like the change though. (Source) And of course, would love to hear how you feel healers compare for PvE and how Mistweavers have played out.
Pretty happy with healer balance overall. MW were too good in 5.0.
Raiders discovering Disc now and we have to keep an eye on it. (Source) Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)In your eyes are Shockadins a legitimate form of Raid DPS, or is that unintentional or unwelcome? Not even sure if its viable.
Holy isn't a dps spec. We tried to provide some support for players who like it, but it will likely stay a niche. (Source) Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)I really like to know what you guys think about Holy and Disc priests perfomance in PvP. Not many people want them.
Most teams just want Resto shaman. We think we'll see more priests in 5.1. (Source) Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Nobody uses Tricks of the Trade anymore in Raids. You found a way to make that useless too! Get a dev 4 rogues. ur useless.
Quick poll of the raiders in my office, and they all use Tricks of the Trade. Small sample size is small. (Source) playing devil's advocate a little, if the 5.1 changes don't 'fix' rogues, will further changes happen immediately or in 5.2?
Depends on the degree. If I say "immediately" though, then I'll just hear about how I broke promises, so I can't say. (Source) serious question, does blizzard have numbers on how many people have taken versatility as a talent? I'm betting its VERY low.
We do, and it is low. We're looking at all unpopular and too popular talents and considering changes. (Source) Saying Cold Blooded made us not care about crit as a stat is terrible logic since crit is now our worst stat by a long shot.
Last I looked, crit was behind haste and mastery for Combat, but not by much, and even better for the other two. (Source) Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)I'm just a wee bit :O at the totem nerfs. What's the thinking behind it? Will Tremor still break fear? Don't like this change!
We thought they were too hard to counter. Have a lot of utility (not just group buffs) in 5.0 and you just have to endure them (Source) Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)with "bring player, not class" policy, why did you implement Stormlash and Skull banner?
They are very minor DPS increases. You don't need them. (Source) Ever had a thought about warrior's shockwave? Every 20 seconds for an AoE stun and damage seems a bit much versus rogue KS.
It's something we looked at, but we nerfed warriors a lot for PvP and we don't want to overdo it. Not all are taking SW yet. (Source) Do you not think it's a little unfair that Fury has never been good in Arena? Other specs had their time to shine except Fury.
The bigger topic is whether it's fair to players (or reasonable to balance) to have 34 viable 3v3 Arena specs. (Source)
ClassesOn a related note: Do you still feel that number changes are preferable over mechanical changes for all specs during an XP?
Ya. More players quit because of constant class changes than quit because of balance concerns. Hard to believe maybe but true. (Source) But GC in all fairness we have other classes standing up for us, its not us shamans vs the world
Also "my warrior alt agrees with my shaman main." See the problem?
That's not the same as an actual discussion with back and forth from
both sides. Players never agree 100% with anything. (Source)Yo GC, try and show some respect to your playerbase /cast Busshock
I respect our players a great deal or I wouldn't make such an effort to
do this. That does not mean game design is up for a vote. (Source) Why the huge nerf to glyphs in MoP? They seem, well, underwhelming. #wow
They were a DPS increase before, but not an interesting one. Most players picked the highest DPS glyph and never changed them. (Source) Do you think abilities such as Destro Rain of Fire or Halo should break Rogue's stealth? And if so why? It's too easy to break
I would love to see only Flare and a few others break stealth, but that's a potentially destabilizing change. (Source) Have you ever considered changing a spec from a pure dps class to a tank/heal spec?
yes, but I don't think every one of those pure players would like that
(& you can't just say they can ignore the new roles). (Source)With druids now having 4 specs to choose from, wouldn't it be possible to add them¬ remove any specific spec?
Druids have always been hybrids though. Maybe a rogue doesn't want to have to be considered a tank. (Source)I dont think most people would have to consider it. I assume if your in a raid you have a designated tank.
Not that simple. If you have a tank as a class might be less room for
DPS of same class. Also has gear, DPS, dual spec implications. (Source) some classes/specs does not bring anything useful generally, hunters rogues come to mind these problems -continued
We don't like balancing around awesome raid utility - just shifts the problem to who has strongest utility. (Source) Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)¨What do you think of DK survival in pvp? I quit mine because I realized in premop patch that we were going to be easy target
If you can get a DK to blow all def cooldowns, then they're easier to kill, but you still have Blood Presence. (Source) Why is Blood getting nerfed PvP wise? We have no mobility what so ever.. we are easily kited.WTF. Compensate for the nerf?
We don't like invulnerable tanks in PvP even if they are slow. Blood had too much self-healing in PvP. (Source) Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)I'm not sure why you just don't throw a 1 min CD on Healing Shrooms and scale them properly and be done with it at this point.
that might get druids to use them, but that makes them like a lot of other spells and the game needs more variety not less. (Source)why not have mushroom healing to be increased based on a proc you receive by using another spell, like regrowth, etc
potentially. Want to be a little careful not to add too many RNG procs though. (Source) How long are we going to have to wait to see shifting out of snares removed?
Not on our radar ATM. We don't want to nerf every counter in PvP, just the ones that feel super frustrating. (Source) Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Is there a possible warlock-style redesign for hunters in future? New talents seem to cause button bloat and spread dps thin.
We don't think hunters need a massive revamp (beyond range and ammo changes they already have). They do have too many buttons. (Source) Regarding hunters, why is BW, a skill untouched for years suddenly OP? Also 5.1 changes nothing regarding MM being weak in pvp
We don't think defenses used offensively makes good gameplay. They tend to get blown immediately not strategically. (Source) Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator) Any chance Mages could get rune of power castable on the move?
Don't want it to be a buff you just hit on cooldown. Agree it needs a little work. (Source)Any word on IW or Invocation?
Invocation works for Arcane, but feels too maintenancy for others. IW is a bigger topic. (Source) Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Hey GC with the change in 5.1 making totems act as spells was it intended to nerf all specs or just resto ?
it was intended as a nerf to totems. Now that they do things (not just buffs) they were hard to counter. (Source) Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)How's the banner experiment working out? Have you guys contemplated any other cool banner style abilities for warriors?
honestly, not sure yet. Still like the concept. Not sure if it's delivering on the fantasy. (Source) PvPWhen you or one of the blizzard staff mentioned the 30% healing nerf in Battlegrounds, I hope you mean hybrids only.
Nope. We suspect healing overall is too potent once burst is toned down.
You shouldn't need to 100% CC a healer to score a kill. (Source) Make PvP abilities a mod to PvE abilities = PvP changes isolated. Add PvP Stance for equipment/glyphs, fallback to PvE gear.
We make abilities work differently as a later sort, but I for one don't want to have to earn two different rule sets. (Source)greg making two rule sets is the only way to fix the PVE vs PVP issue. have you not learned that yet?
Disagree. Also even if true, perfect balance gains us nothing if a bunch of players leave because the rules are inscrutable. (Source) A flightless Tol Barad-type zone is essential for world pvp. Do you regret not making one for MoP or plan to make one?
We had done those zones 2 expansions in a row so felt it was time to let
it rest a bit, but I bet we try them again in the future. (Source) Why are the PvP achievements so limited? No 2,4k in 2v2. No 1k arenas won? 5k arenas won? Hot Hot Hot streak? #possibilities
We'd like to add more but we need to make sure they don't encourage strange behavior. Ach farming in PvP can get silly fast. (Source) I believe an open mind is more important than a title, experience after that. Sadly, even glads can be very biased.
People who like to eat don't always make good cooks. That doesn't mean they can't tell you what they like to eat. (Source)Do you take advice from a master chef or some guy who just happens to enjoy food?
Both. (Source) So why nerf all specs? Reducing the benefit of mastery in PvP would fix resto, but ele isn't even viable pre-nerfs.
We don't think it's all about the healing, and Resto PvE healing is fine. We think totems are too good. (Source)people will stop complaining about resto pvp nerfs if you nerf frost bomb/ warrior cd stacking/ resto drood control
There are mage and warrior nerfs in 5.1. Keeping an eye on Cyclone for now. (Source) I'm not giving up on skirmish arenas, never, ever. You know we want it. inb4 block :<
We aren't either - it's just not going to be super soon. (Source) Everyone agrees with him/her. This upgrade gear thing is going to make people quit the game. PvP is dying.
claiming to speak for everyone always makes me suspicious. (Source)well, not everyone but the majority i think. btw, i would love to have that pvp forum on the US.
just make good arguments and don't worry about invoking a huge crowd to agree with you. It's not a vote anyway. (Source) MiscMoP was meant to get people out in the world, PvP was supposed to be king this xpac. Why nerf guild perk Quick and the Dead?
dying is supposed to have some penalty. Since you have unlimited lives, downtime is the main one. (Source) You ruined the joke just like you ruined Age of Empires and WoW...Changes no one asked for - Rpg home city. Homogenic empires and Clunky/Bad combat. Quite similar to WoW now
.you don't get good games by just giving people what they ask for. Game design isn't just polling. (Source)Look at League of Legends Mr. Street, I'm sure it'd love to beg to differ.
we're friends with all those guys. Pretty sure they don't turn over design to their community either. (Source) What happened to balance/bug fix patches (eg 4.0.6)? It's frustrating to wait for next content patch to see much desired fixes
We don't characterize patches that way. There are big patches (new raid
tier / PvP season) and smaller ones. 5.1 is the latter. (Source) But there is something to be said about testing your games.
we do test our games. We have a huge QA department and we invite players to try out betas and PTRs. (Source) just curious... do you collaborate w/ the other blizzard games, or does everyone stay in their own game areas?
We collaborate a fair amount. Great to get outside opinions and see how
others solve problems. Several temp or perma moves too. (Source) Regarding items that aren't intended to ever go into the game (i.e. heroic raid trash), why are they made? Just curious.
if we change loot tables late, then we already have the items ready. (Source) ... what to listen to, consciuously or not. You reap the results of that (horrible PVP, constant whines).
I read the role and PvP forums regularly. Feedback is always valuable. It just doesn't always result in immediate change. (Source) You need to listen to the people who play this game even more than the ones who created it.
We do listen to them. We just don't let them order up game changes on their own. That would be interesting though. (Source) Is there anywhere we can beg an audience with The GC with a longer character limit?
I'd love to in a theoretical sense, but there are too many of you and one of me. (Source)
And for a special note, take a look at this video of the Death Knight Mionelolsolo killing Madness of Deathwing!! I remind you, that it took 10 of us, mostly level 90's, to finally down him, so I'd say this is a huge accomplishment, good work Mionelol!
Thats it for today, look forward to further updates!
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