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. mmoc80dbf3c0c8's Avatar
    All this will still fall on blizzard, they have NOT fixed the faction change service (in almost 2 years), they cannot bann them for using a service regardless what they are using it for, would send a bad msg to people paying for it. As I said before, they should not have allowed faction change first week of patch, just disable service for that week or something, or just fix the lockout / raid id. I figure the ID / Lockout thing is quite complex to recode for that change.
  1. mmoc8c32716f2c's Avatar
    How exactly is it an exploit? It's a PAID SERVICE which Blizzard openly promotes and everyone is welcome to use it if they wish, if you don't have the money then I guess that's tough shit. If Blizzard don't like this particular situation then it's a design failure, not a user failure - at the end of the day, STARS paid their money.

    I take my hat off to STARS on a job well done, and after Blizzards intervention I would request a refund for everyone and a free faction xfer as they've done nothing wrong.
  1. Archermit's Avatar
    who asks these questions?I mean the person who asked the question claims that "casuals" will be 1 teir behind and that he should unsub...casuals do raid and do kill bosses quite regularly in currant content, firelands is out 2 days and we have killed our first boss now with a 9 hour a week raiding timetable ( still have sundays raid to go ). Its teh bads who will be 1 teir behind and its the bads that will think they need to unsub, maybe they should then maybe there will be less "its too hard" QQ on forums
  1. brirrspliff's Avatar
    ROFL @ STARS. how cheap is that? you won't even come near paragon with that style... you have no class.

    edit:
    tidders, that's complete crap. it's a flaw/bug, and STARS exploited it. they were'nt the first to do so, but that does'nt make it better. imagine changing factions every 3 days. 2 kills of every boss per week. intended? surely not. so they just exploited a cheap bug to sneak them to the top. but they won't be applauded for that, only pitied and laughed at.
  1. Poppasan's Avatar
    Blizzard had shitloads of time to fix this, can't be Stars fault.
  1. Thanatoss's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tidders View Post
    How exactly is it an exploit? It's a PAID SERVICE which Blizzard openly promotes and everyone is welcome to use it if they wish, if you don't have the money then I guess that's tough shit. If Blizzard don't like this particular situation then it's a design failure, not a user failure - at the end of the day, STARS paid their money.

    I take my hat off to STARS on a job well done, and after Blizzards intervention I would request a refund for everyone and a free faction xfer as they've done nothing wrong.
    For EU and US servers the faction change transfers your raid lockouts. It was a recent change made.
  1. ashblond's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ShiroRX View Post
    pissing other players off = less money.
    This is true, the money gain from Stars' faction is literally little to nothing for blizzard.

    If others hardcore guilds lost their world first kill to Stars because they dont faction, im sure they will get really pissed and blizzard will get big blame.

    Tbh, you cant blame Stars. They are not doing anything against rules, nor are they the 1st to do this.

    It is just poor game design that gives people this unfair advantage.
  1. Vargur's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pariah View Post
    Any major raiding guild recognizes WoWProgress as the official rankings.
    I agree.
  1. axxey's Avatar
    On a completely unrelated note to all the bitching it's nice seeing the damage crosssection of different dps classes competing at top levels.
    7 different classes in the top 7. 8 in the top 10 with their only warrior being prot and their shaman resto.
  1. Stixxz's Avatar
    Not world firsts in my eyes.
  1. Yeorgaki's Avatar
    I never once heard a blue state that world firsts were a race between top guilds and unfair advantages like transferring or race changing can result in bans. You cant honestly ban Stars without having to ban a quarter of the wow population because so many people use this to their advantage, multiple times, Blizzard specificly made transfers and race changes so that they RESET raid lockouts and daily quests. Now I ask one question. Who said it was a race?
  1. Alianthos's Avatar
    the rage in this thread is delicious.
  1. Zumazurama's Avatar
    This is just one less guild in the competition for the real world first race, not like Stars was any threat in the first place.
  1. mmoc6af618f320'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.
    You seem to have it totally backwards there. Whether some random website (one of many) counts this or not is close to irrelevant.

    Not to mention Stars always had to start so much later I wish them the best luck.

    Also thanks for the Steam ad, kinda forgot about the whole thing and those prices are crazy.
  1. Swagger's Avatar
    Gotta love all the American fanboys raging on the forums that this is an exploit. Blizzard clearly knew that guilds were going to start doing this to try and get world firsts, if they didn't they are just plain stupid. If you're gonna attempt to be a world first guild, pull out all the stops and use all the features the game has to offer, otherwise don't try for world firsts.
  1. MasterHamster's Avatar
    Clever use of "game" mechanics, lawl
  1. Vasz's Avatar
    I don't think anyone should be able to gain an advantage over anyone else by paying real money, especially the race for world first.
  1. Medivh's Avatar
    Doesn't count. If they had the raid lock ID, it means that they couldn't do repeat in heroic mode. It should be chaotic if all superhardcores request factions change in order to repeat the instance(ok blizz do lots money but at start of path the management can be chaotic with alots of character to be transfered).
  1. discombobulate's Avatar
    everyone had the option to do so. and blizz sells ingame shit for real life money now. buying a world first is perfectly acceptable. they should be allowed to clear the whole thing, if one follows the rules blizz and bobby knotik have laid down.
  1. Ciscokidd12's Avatar
    So they got one kill early. Next week when it resets and they just happen to get the first kill time wise still would be first. This whole situation is funny, other top ranked guilds have done worse than this(oozeling, Saronite bombs, stacking druids, leaving people in brain room, etc, etc) and didn't get this much QQ. They didn't do anything that lessened the kill mechanic wise.

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