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. Lyeranth'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 has more than him, quite a bit more actually.
  1. Resentful's Avatar
    Poor poor sport STARS

    I had lots of respect for them in Yogg Zero

    =(
  1. Cactrot's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kikazz View Post
    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.
    Err why couldn't blizzard do shit about it? Server transfers already prevent this. I believe in the US and EU faction transfers also do, it's just that they have some behind the times servers. I'm not 100% on that though. Either way, blizzard damn sure can do something about it. Aside from banning them if they felt inclined, they could also make sure that raid ids persist across all transfers.

    Can't, won't, and haven't are 3 very different things.
  1. Baygon's Avatar
    regardless of whether or not it's classed as cheating, the Boss is dead, 6 more for heroic to go across the world, will it last 6 months? nope.
  1. Zehroh's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Oznob View Post
    Did they or did they not get PTR inv? Truth on that needs to be clear.
    I thought it was said somewhere that TW players didn't even have acces to beta.

    Anyway.. gz to them, I think it surprised some of the top guilds.
  1. dascylus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cactrot View Post
    Err why couldn't blizzard do shit about it? Server transfers already prevent this. I believe in the US and EU faction transfers also do, it's just that they have some behind the times servers. I'm not 100% on that though. Either way, blizzard damn sure can do something about it. Aside from banning them if they felt inclined, they could also make sure that raid ids persist across all transfers.

    Can't, won't, and haven't are 3 very different things.
    Yes, atm Faction transfers for US and EU realms do not wipe raid lockouts... otherwise this would have been happening back at the beginning of Cata. If you need proof, it's in their FAQ faction transfers.

    "Will my raid IDs be reset following a Faction Change?
    Your pre-existing raid locks will not be removed or reset completely, but your character will be assigned appropriate raid IDs for those bosses you have already defeated earlier in the week"
  1. Ethes's Avatar
    Grats 2 them! Shows some real dedication to transfer with your whole guild.

    As far as im concerned fair kill! As they just did the fight.

    We'll see what blizzard does soon enough!
  1. Zendashi's Avatar
    Gogo Stars! They transferred factions and it reset their raids, it's just how things work. I don't think that Blizzard expected guilds to be working on heroics this early though, so I'm wondering how done the fights actually are. I hope they get to Heroic Rag soon!
  1. Zdrasti's Avatar
    Just gotta point out, if you supported Blizzard in allowing faction changes as something that doesn't give you an in game advantage, you can now eat your own words.

    Grats Stars and good job on driving this point home as powerfully as it possibly can. Good luck on future bosses.
  1. Pancho's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by dascylus View Post
    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.
    I pretty sure that rule apply to players under same realm or battlegroup, not across the world (or else US is always "obtaining a competitive advantage over UE players" same for the for UE and TW etc..., and people with high spec computers or high bandwidth connections are always "obtaining a competitive advantage over other players" who dont have)
  1. furydeath's Avatar
    Whaa non wow info n a wow site... how dear you bla bla fan boy bla
  1. Swiftstryder's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pancho View Post
    lol, thats why I think that the guilds that were 13/13 pre patch, should be able to get to HMs right away (this gray hat things wouldnt exist) :P
    This wouldn't do so well due to the fact that the US servers will be up well before EU so they'd get a huge headstart.

    Good on stars i say, Fucking transfer the whole guild haha thats awesome
  1. twilightsamus's Avatar
    Blizzard's not going to consider it exploiting if the exploit (faction transfers) just netted them $750+.
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Sometimes I wonder if I am being silly for paying $15 every month to play a game.... Then someone does something that puts it all into perspective. These guys all really paid for a faction change just to get world firsts on one or two bosses? I may must buy a sparkling pony now...
  1. mmocae32a73ae6's Avatar
    just proves most people from asia are cheaters and gold sellers in wow, basically asiA Is bad for the wow community.


    you want to bai some wow gold it cos 100 dorror im the guy from chitty wok off south park :P


    Infracted.
  1. Shmeh's Avatar
    Fucking bullshit on the staff item drop rates.
  1. Vintage's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ShiroRX View Post
    pissing other players off = less money.
    No. Blizzard knows that people will forget about this in less than 2 weeks. So no It doesn't matter, they paid, so they most likely wont get banned. No one will quit WoW due to ONE first kill that was only possible due to blizzard's policies. Come on, let's be logical.
  1. Pancho's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Swiftstryder View Post
    This wouldn't do so well due to the fact that the US servers will be up well before EU so they'd get a huge headstart.

    Good on stars i say, Fucking transfer the whole guild haha thats awesome
    lol then start to count the first in absolute time (time since is the content is available until is down per server time)
  1. miguelcrespo85's Avatar
    WoW What a bunch of losers...
  1. Kenzor's Avatar
    I can see Blizz taking this away from them but I don't agree with it, just because of their own way of thinking that they've stated in the past. When talking about multi-boxers they claim it to be fair because that option is available to everyone if they choose to go for it. Same thing here. Server changing is available to every single one of us. It may have an unintended effect but its one that has been known for a while and one that, in my eyes, was available to anybody that wanted to pursue it.

    Props for having the balls to do it.

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