I'm sure you will be happy to know that most of the server issues we had post migration are now resolved. The most annoying bugs on the site should be gone very shortly now that there is time to work on it.

Cataclysm Screenshots of the Day Compilation
Blizzard released a screenshot of Cataclysm each day for the past 7 weeks and we have more than enough of them to do a compilation of what we saw. Enjoy!


Abyssal Maw

Abyssal Maw

Abyssal Maw

Abyssal Maw

Azshara

Azshara

Blackrock Caverns

Blackrock Caverns

Blackrock Caverns

Blasted Lands (Tainted Scar)

Blasted Lands (Tainted Scar)

Blasted Lands (Tainted Scar)

Blasted Lands (Tainted Scar)

Blasted Lands (Tainted Scar)

Blasted Lands (Tainted Scar)

Blasted Lands (Tainted Scar)

Brill

Deepholm

Desolace

Forsaken Invasion of Gilneas

Gadgetzan

Gilneas

Grim Batol

Grim Batol

Halls of Origination

Halls of Origination

Lost Isles

Lost Isles

Lost Isles

Mount Hyjal

Mount Hyjal

Mulgore (Red Cloud Mesa)

Orgrimmar

Stonetalon Mountains

Stonetalon Mountains

Stonetalon Mountains

Stonetalon Mountains

Stonetalon Mountains

Stormwind (Bank)

Swamp of Sorrows

Thousand Needles Speedbarge

Thousand Needles Speedbarge

Thousand Needles

Thousand Needles Speedbarge

Vashj'ir

Vashj'ir

Vash'jir

Vash'jir

Westfall


Blue posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Reforging
First, we looked at the recipes for Cataclysm professions and decided we had plenty of content already.

Second, we were concerned about making players feel at all dependent on reforging for income. Reforging is an unusual feature because it's never going to make a best-in-slot item. If we linked it to crafting professions, players would then rightly expect to make some kind of profit off reforging and in turn we might feel pressured to prop it up into a bigger part of the game than we really think it should play.

Third, the idea behind reforging is largely as a convenience feature to players. Forcing them to go to the AH or use trade chat or find a friend or roll an alt to get a specific item reforged would have added at least one more step to a process that is supposed to be pretty quick. Consider that you already have to enchant and gem most end-game pieces of armor. We didn't want reforging to over-complicate that process even more. (Source)

More Badges in 25-Man Cataclysm Raids
We're still messing around with the numbers because we want a system that works not only at launch but once there are multiple raid tiers and perhaps weekly raid quests and the whole nine yards. A very general idea (meaning it could end up being different) is that a group that can clear a 25-player raid can earn all of their points that way, while a 10-player group may need to supplement that income with more Dungeon Finder runs. We also recognize that badges are attractive early in a tier but that they lose their luster once you've earned a few pieces, so they can't be the only incentive. (Source)

25/10 Man Raid Achievements
Will there be a single achievement for killing a boss or will it be divided into 10/25 achievements? It'll really suck if it's the latter and you can't run both weekly.
Single achievement. (Source)

25/10 Man Raid Drops
I think this is one of those cases where it's not going to be possible to please everyone. Setting aside some of the folks in this thread who want to run both 10s and 25s every week to maximize reward potential, most players either prefer 10s and have no use for the 25s or want to run 25s and don't want to feel like they are being inefficient for doing so. In other words, half (I don't know if it's really half, but it makes the sentence easier to read) the community wants an incentive to run 10s and no incentive to run 25s and half the community wants the opposite. On the other hand, we feel like we need to offer both raid sizes in order to make raiding attractive to a broad swath of the community. As a result, I think it's likely that no matter what we do, proponents of each raid size will feel like we're not being fair enough to their side. It's going to be one of those hybrid vs. pure or PvE vs. PvP ongoing debates that never really get resolved because each party wants virtually the opposite of the other. (Source)

Maximum income (gear) per week and shared 10/25 raid ID
We balance around the maximum income possible per week because we know plenty of players will strive to achieve the max per week. The solution in our minds then is to not design a model where you can raid the same content that much. ToC was particularly troublesome because it had four independent lockouts. Yuck. We went to two lockouts for Icecrown based on that experience and are now eager to go down to one. (Source)

[...] Some of you guys are coming from the angle that players should take responsibility for not playing more than they want to. I agree with that of course, but I also think the game design should not be something that puts that kind of pressure on you. We don't want to make a game full of traps or temptations that you should have to resist. It's more fun, I think, if what the game asks of you is reasonable. Killing the same boss twice or four times (as in ToC) or an unlimited number of times (as in the "no loot" model) doesn't seem reasonable. Neither does having to play Alterac Valley hundreds of times in a weekend to get a prestigious PvP rank. Neither does having to grind for consumables for hours every week before raid night. All of those things are theoretically "features" that players could have shown some common sense and opted out of, but realistically they were just boneheaded design decisions that we needed to fix. (Source)

10-Man Difficulty
Remember that in LK the 10s were specifically designed to be easier (with a couple of exceptions where we messed up) and many players ran them with the loot they earned from their 25s, further exacerbating the problem. Given the complexities of some encounters, realistically it's probably not possible for every single battle to be of exactly the same difficulty in both 10 and 25, but we have a lot of room to bring them closer together. (Source)

A message to Blizzard about the Public Beta and the NDA Lift

This article was originally published in forum thread: Cataclysm Screenshots, Blue posts started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 131 Comments
  1. Pleeborstel's Avatar
    Please make the screenshots like you did once, the lightbox module so u can press "next" instead of a new screen, closing it and opening a new one, and "remembering" where u were.. some kind of slideshow thingy would be nice.

    for the rest, nice screenshots ofc, good to have em together
  1. Marzenia's Avatar
    nou
  1. mmoc9b6e6339ec's Avatar
    And the RSSFeed still needs work to be at its old glory
  1. Samin's Avatar
    Gimme nda lift
  1. Pleeborstel's Avatar
    oh, and isnt "Thousand Needles Speedbarge" in there 2 times? ^^
  1. mmoca6967c3bea's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Marzenia View Post
    nou
    uno
  1. Jiposs's Avatar
    Sweet Garfield strip. ^^
  1. S@thi's Avatar
    How long will the NDA stay active?
    Great garfield strip !
  1. Repellerar's Avatar
    Gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme.
  1. Naylol's Avatar
    Why are they making 10mans harder exactly? You can't say everyone is finishing them with ease now. I'm sure most casual players don't see more than the first few bosses in ICC.
  1. Donald Hellscream's Avatar
    so there is building in the new "lush" tainted scar.. interesting also why does the 2 guys behind the group of goblins look like general vezax or atleast faceless ones fused with lobsters?
  1. mmoc73fb8ac2b2's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Naylol View Post
    Why are they making 10mans harder exactly? You can't say everyone is finishing them with ease now. I'm sure most casual players don't see more than the first few bosses in ICC.
    Because 10 mans are working for 25 man gear now, essentially. No more free rides.
  1. Lumocolor's Avatar
    They need to stop talking about balanced 10 and 25 mans. They won't be able to do it, everyone knows it, 10 mans will either be too easy or too hard, 25 mans will either be too easy or not worth doing over the 10 mans.

    My GM, who when the news of the new raid design first popped up said we'd keep running 25's, has now changed to saying that it sounds like 10 mans will be the most efficient way to play and gear up and that if 25's aren't worth running that he will probably quit the game altogether which will in turn probably bring most of the guild to also quit.

    I like to drink Tequila every once in a while but i can't afford a $500 bottle of patron so i drink the $30 stuff. Why does blizzard have to bring the exclusive stuff down to the lowest level possible?? People who can do stuff that others can't should be able to get the benefits and the others will still buy and drink the $30 stuff just as they have been for the last 5yrs.
  1. Mallus's Avatar
    After 4-5+ years, it's fair to say that this expansion will hold many people's interest for roughly 2 months. So many features gone, so many reasons to be in a 25 man guild have evaporated.

    On the bright side, our guild no longer has to recruits people who can't be bothered learning their class just to fill raid slots. :P
  1. rryn's Avatar
    Will there be a single achievement for killing a boss or will it be divided into 10/25 achievements? It'll really suck if it's the latter and you can't run both weekly.
    25man raids will die if there is no distinction between persons raiding 25man and 10man. Even if content is balanced, 25man is harder because you need to find 25man skilled players and solve organisational problems of completely different level.

    IMO fail.
  1. hx9's Avatar
    No way to balance, 25s become obsolete etc.
    Honestly, let's look at some current content where they admit to messing up and see just how hard 10 vs. 25 can be.

    The first thing that comes to mind is unbound plague. In 10 man, unbound plague is amazingly difficult to control because 1 minute across 10 people requires nearly everyone to participate. In 25 man, this isn't the case, with many guilds opting to just let it bounce around in melee for over half its duration. By contrast on the same fight, malleable goo is much harder to deal with in 25 man as well as the two oozes each needing individual attackers. Putricide is the perfect example of a fight which is balanced for difficulty for both 10 and 25 man raids, short of the obvious DPS requirement differences that exist because of how raiding is supposed to work now.

    Let's look at blood queen. 10 vs. 25 may seem like 10 man is easier at first, and you're probably right. You have much more room to spread out across the room for the air phase splash damage, there is less a chanse at dropping the "purple poop" on other players and you only need to link 2 people. The air phases are two minutes apart instead of 1.5 minutes, allowing WotF, Lichborne, PvP trinkets, EMFH and fear wards to be used much more easily.

    So what could happen in 10 man to make it more difficult? Howabout 3 air phases instead of 2 in order to make biting more dangerous? What about still having 3 people link instead of two, causing more motion to be necessary? Two people with the "purple poop" to fill up that space that would otherwise be occupied by 25 people? An added ability? 10 man could just as easily have been upped in difficulty, and in a few cases without really adjusting the fight mechanics.

    But then you will say, 25 vs. 10... why do 25 at all? Well, the reward will be greater in some way, but not so much that you are theoretically "obligated" to do 25s over 10s. The feel will be much more epic. The encounters will be slightly different.

    And even if nobody does 25 mans anymore, can you really be upset about that? Can you really blame people for doing the size of content they want to do? And besides... if there are more people out there like you and I who want to do the 25 instead of the 10, you're damn well sure that we'll not only find the people to make it happen, but we'll have fun doing it.
  1. anaalius's Avatar
    gimme gimme gimme ! ! ! !
  1. mmoc32fbbf5879's Avatar
    I bet that they will remove Reforging, because <insert random lawyer bullshit>, because those blue posts just lead to it.
  1. mmoc0e38fb0ad5's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Repellerar View Post
    Gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme.
    One more gimme should do the trick :P
  1. Astalnar's Avatar
    Is there any way for us to get some kind of slideshow for screenshots, like people already mentioned, what we have now is a bit time consuming.

    Otherwise it is some interesting if not exciting news about reforging. I honestly thought that I will have to drop enig in favour of blacksmith.

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