Stars (TW - Crystalpine Stinger) already working on Firelands Heroic - Shannox World First Kill
A lot of guilds killed all the bosses of the Firelands raid in normal mode already but it seems that Stars (TW - Crystalpine Stinger) decided to take it one step further.

After clearing the encounters in normal mode, the entire raid changed faction to reset their raid ID and started working on heroic encounters shortly after, that kind of thing happened in the past and it's not really surprising to see it used again to grab first kills.

As I write these lines, Stars killed Shannox in Heroic Mode. It's not really my place to judge if something is against the rules or not and I will just keep tracking heroic first kills as they happen.



Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Eternal Embers and Seething Cinders Droprates
You’re assuming the drop chances for embers averages out to .5 per boss in 10’s and 2 per boss in 25’s, which it doesn’t. Whether you’re in 10’s or 25’s you’re going to see an equal drop average for Eternal Embers per player, and the same can be said for Seething Cinders. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

New Content - Differences between PvE and PvP Players
The answer to your question revolves around a common difference in how PvE players and PvP players approach the game. Generally speaking, PvE players want more quests, more dungeons and more raids to experience -- more and new content is king. On the other hand, while some PvP players do want new maps, many others would be happier if we perfected the Arena or BG maps that already exist - or even if we cut existing maps. After all, PvP players don’t graduate out of Arathi Basin or Dalaran sewers the same way PvE players graduate from dungeon to heroic, or raid tier to raid tier. We did make some improvements to the existing PvP maps, such as trying to return Ring of Valor to circulation and changing the way flags work in Eye of the Storm (for rated play).

We’d love to add a lot more maps than we currently do, but we need to do it in such a way that doesn’t make the PvP experience worse for players who are more interested in refining their PvP experience than in seeing new maps. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 4.2 Hairstyles
We had a bunch of hairstyles we threw in for testing on the PTR and the majority of them did not pass the test. (quality, art direction, bugs, etc.) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 4.0 Raids now puggable
We specifically intend for the 4.0 raids to be puggable now that Firelands is out. Grabbing some tier 11 by way of Justice, quest rewards, plus across the board difficulty nerfs should really be enough to get them going.

The patch has only been out a day or so though. I think it'll probably take a little bit before people really get it into their heads that they should be pugging the previous tier because it's not too hard to be successful. It's just getting people used to the various encounters and mechanics.

Maybe people are waiting for the holiday weekend? If nothing else, leading one yourself is always an option. I think we'd agree that we need some better ways to get pug raids together considering we intend to follow the "New Raid is Hard, old Tier is Puggable" format from here on.

Still unsure what that means regarding the final raid (i.e. Deathwing). Do pugs not get to see him until the next expansion is released? (Not saying whether that's a good thing or not, but personally I enjoyed getting to Arthas on some of my alts without spending near as much time as I did on my main.)
In ICC we had a stacking raid buff over time which gradually made the content easier. Not saying we’ll do that exact thing again but the philosophy was around even then that everyone who wants to can eventually see the content, but it’s going to take very organized groups (which typically means raiding guilds) to see the encounters first.

So casuals will constantly be a tier behind for the rest of the life of this game? If that is what is actually coming out of your mouth I'll save myself the time and unsub now. What a piss poor vision for your game. There are normal and heroic versions of raids for a reason. That heroic difficulty was implemented so that the two segments of the population (casual and hardcore) would both have something to do. You are now bifurcating the raiding population AGAIN, by telling casuals that they have to run around in the left overs.
Trying to label all of our players as “casual puggers” vs.” hardcore raiders” is ridiculously simplistic. Among raiders there is an enormous diversity of players. There are those who will raid virtually every night when new content is out, to guilds that raid once a week (and even then will cancel raid nights fairly commonly). If you must try to label raiders, you’d be closer to the Blizzard model if you said normal mode is for organized raids, heroic mode is for more hardcore organized raids, and the previous tier of content (and Baradin Hold) is targeted for pick-up groups. Also consider that even within a raid zone we try to design easier bosses (usually near the front) and more challenging ones (usually at the end) which can help blur those lines and offer smoother transitions for each category.

Overall, we think you’ll have a better experience playing World of Warcraft if you play with friends, either existing or those you meet in game. WoW, while much more solo friendly than most older MMO games, is still intended as a multiplayer game. We provide features like Dungeon Finder for when playing with friends isn’t possible, and as we said above, we’d like to offer more features like that. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Tabards Tab
Are there any considerations for a tab for your tabards?
Yes!

[...] To clarify: he asked if we were considering it, and yes we are considering it. :) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Keyring Removal
On a serious point though some people are upset about the removal of the key ring. While that seems like we're just taking it out to be bullies, it specifically frees up storage space we can then make into useful features. Not that it will specifically be used for 'tabard storage', but we are going to be using the space the removal of the key ring freed up. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Thrall and Aggra's "wedding"
Correct. Their pledging of their lives to one another was essentially their 'wedding', although I'm sure Orcs don't use such nomenclature to refer to these things. Maybe 'life bond' fits better. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Does Blizzard plan on adding the rest of the dungeons and raids to the Dungeon Journal?
Absolutely. With the time it takes to present a single boss in the Dungeon Journal we were only confident supplying Cataclysm content with the release of the feature in 4.2, but we are on a path to filling it out with all dungeons and raids in the entire game. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Steam Summer Sales
In a very, very, very unrelated sidenote, Steam Summer Sales are up. I don't usually news non-WoW stuff but ... well, I like Valve and I'm pretty sure a lot of people will be happy to hear the news. Also, don't forget that we have a Video Games Forum!
This article was originally published in forum thread: Stars Heroic Shannox World First Kill, Blue Posts started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 622 Comments
  1. parabol23's Avatar
    There's no reason why they should be banned, or that it shouldn't count. they took the extra step. wasted money. and now they have the 1st

    It's blizzards responsibility to make sure this doesn't happen. It's no secret that people exploit the game whenever possible, and this specific exploit has been done before.

    And if your all butthurt cuz they beat ya too it, too bad for you it seems. It's ok tho, its an acheivment...
  1. mmoc20f4e54440's Avatar
    HAHA how long would you go for a world first...... only way they have a chance is to pay blizz even more GJ tho guess the boss wasn't that easy
  1. Cactrot's Avatar
    PSN getting hacked, unworthy of frontpage news. Steam sales up, worthy of front page. oooooooooooooooooooooooookay
  1. Matik's Avatar
    Pretty sure its unintended... why would they change it so server transfers don't reset raid ID but faction changes do? Seems more like an oversight by Blizzard ...
  1. Spl4sh3r's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Alterraia View Post
    Doesn't count, they exploited a feature of the game, i.e. cheated, so this is a waste of a post. Don't track crap. I just killed a worg using Thunderfury, wearing a pink dress, and used the rainbow generator trinket while I /kissed my mojo frog. And I had 4 dwarven women doing a sword dance around me, after using the archy item. All of this at once. I'm pretty sure that's world first. That's just as noteworthy as this kill.
    This isn't even possible, Rainbow Generator needs a target to be used since it's an attack, but you said you used Thunderfury to kill the worg so you can't have done them at the same time.

    As for the actual news, grats Stars. I don't care if they cheated or not!
  1. TheConsumer's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pagmat View Post
    Boubouille, you are rapidly approaching your 8000th post. I wonder.. does anyone on this forum have more posts than you? And are you going to do anything to celebrate this momentous milestone?
    While Boub has a big post count i there are a couple of mods with more posts i think Elementium has the most around 12 000.
  1. Demonidze's Avatar
    I hope they will get banned and their world first kill taken away from them ... to make a condition for players "if you want to be world first, pay us extra money" is absolutely wrong.
  1. Matik's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by clockmasher View Post
    I heard GM showed up and locked the instance as they were about to kill a second heroic boss.
    Do you got proof on that somewhere or? There's lots of rumors floating around
  1. plaits's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ShiroRX View Post
    pissing other players off = less money.
    Seriously though, who is going to quit wow because some Taiwanese guild got a world first by faction changing? It doesn't impact on me or 99% of the playerbase in any way shape or form.

    I like that orcs don't get "married" with a "wedding", the life bond thing is way cooler.
  1. Marooned's Avatar
    Asian guilds have always been months or weeks behind in patch releases, maybe this one time one week being ahead is not so unfair..
  1. Terrorbladez's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Terashi View Post
    Wowprogress has a rule against faction change abusers (paying real money for ingame advantage is cheating, no matter what anyone says). So while it may be a "first kill" it really doesn't count.
    Well it does seeing wowprogress dont make the official rankings lol.

    EDIT: i also love how people are like 'omg they exploited the game' when im pretty sure alot of the player base are currently abusing the broken daily reset to get into the quest hub faster...
  1. Rukah's Avatar
    Can't be a new raiding tier without drama.
  1. Ausr's Avatar
    I believe in the ToA or Eula that there is a rule against this kind of thing. And reading the faction change features, it isn't supposed to reset raid lock outs. I'd be very surprised if they don't get some sort of punishment.
  1. parabol23's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Terashi View Post
    Wowprogress has a rule against faction change abusers (paying real money for ingame advantage is cheating, no matter what anyone says). So while it may be a "first kill" it really doesn't count.

    I promise you they won't care, even if it's not acknowledged they'll know they had world 1st, and im sure they are quite proud lol
  1. Pariah's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Optimize View Post
    Well it does seeing wowprogress dont make the official rankings lol.
    Any major raiding guild recognizes WoWProgress as the official rankings.
  1. Oznob's Avatar
    I blame RL social situations for this. I mean lets not keep a man down. Maybe its just the American coming out in me, but they have it harder in WOW in TW on a chinese server, they should get the same WoW chances we all get (server reset being equal also). I mean think about it, they have to try 2 times as hard. You shake a 20oz soda bottle long enough then open it, you can't be shocked it explodes.

    Did they or did they not get PTR inv? Truth on that needs to be clear.
  1. Geckomayhem's Avatar
    Clever STARS, but it is still exploiting game mechanics. I see a three day ban incoming from the start of next week's raid reset and whatever heroic kills they achieve scratched off their record. The reason Blizzard doesn't allow guilds to move straight into heroics after completing normal mode is pretty simple: if the top guilds cleared all the content in one week instead of two, that's one less week they have to work on 3.3.

    Kidding. But seriously, this is exploitative and I can't see Blizzard letting it slip without repercussions. They should have gated stuff more than simply the transition from normal to heroic, too, to prevent guilds even having a shot at heroic Ragnaros for a couple of weeks at least. But at least this time around we can hope that they won't do what they did with LK and nerf heroic mode by 5% every few weeks until someone gets him down.
  1. Kikazz's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pagmat View Post
    Boubouille, you are rapidly approaching your 8000th post. I wonder.. does anyone on this forum have more posts than you? And are you going to do anything to celebrate this momentous milestone?
    elementium i think has about 11000


    on topic though they didnt really cheat the game they just found a loophole blizzard cant do shit about.....

    but on a side note grtz stars youve no pissed off vodka/paragon and all others who are up there.
  1. Asics's Avatar
    Whether or not they had access to PTR the information on the bosses was readily available. To those who don't know, the bosses on PTR are under-tuned and often buggy, often times not being comparable to their Live counterparts. The mechanics are whats being tested most of the time.
  1. dascylus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Ausr View Post
    I believe in the ToA or Eula that there is a rule against this kind of thing. And reading the faction change features, it isn't supposed to reset raid lock outs. I'd be very surprised if they don't get some sort of punishment.
    It falls under "obtaining a competitive advantage over other players" in the EULA. Or in other words, exploiting, which can oftentimes result in permanent account suspension based on the severity of the exploit taking place. The fact that these actions were premeditated won't help their case with Blizzard's customer support staff. You can say you were testing the encounters as much as you want, but the straight facts is you did something with the full intent on gaining a competitive advantage over other players and maximum punishment should be expected.

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