Update #4 - Extended US Maintenance
Servers are up!
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
10:40 PDT 07/12/11
All realms are now available for play. Thank you for your patience and we’ll see you in game!

Method vs Baleroc (25 Heroic) - World First Kill Video
Method released a video of their Baleroc Heroic world first kill and it will probably be useful to all the guilds still working on that boss. At the moment, about 30 guilds in the world defeated him in Heroic Mode.


Also, the guild Karfagen released their video of their kill of Fandral Staghelm in 25-Man Heroic Mode.



Ask The Devs 11 Healing Answers Coming Friday
Blizzard heard you like blue posts, so they made a blue posts about a blue post so you can know when it's blue posted.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
The subject line says it all.

We will be posting a new sticky thread with the answers to thirteen of your most popular questions (on the subject of healing) on Friday, July 15th at 9AM PDT.

US Maintenance from 1AM PDT to 7AM PDT
Tomorrow's maintenance was moved to a weird time slot for unknown reasons, and I guess it might have something to do with Cataclysm launching in China on July 12. That would explain why this is an "exception to the norm".
Originally Posted by Nevalistis (Blue Tracker)
There's a number of reasons as to why we might change around maintainance times, Sèrènity. They may be longer or shorter depending on how much needs to be accomplished in that time. What we need to accomplish may change over time too, and times and schedules can be affected by that.

Some of you noticed the maintenance time was shortened by a couple of hours - that wasn't a typo, that was a change in plans. It was decided less needed to be done this week, so less time is allotted for the maintenance.

As for why maintenance is a little earlier, some things may need to be done within a specific window of time. In addition, we want to make sure that window interferes as little as possible with your play time. There's very little chance we can ever do maintenance at a time when it won't inconvenience SOMEONE, so we do our best to pick and move times where appropriate to impact fewer players.

I know this is all wonderfully cryptic, but I hope it provides at least a bit of the insight you were looking for. >^.^<

I live in Perth, so local time is 4pm-10pm, which eliminates any possibility of play for me. I'm not using this as a reason against it, since you can't please everyone (Someone needs to get hit by it), but I assumed the previous time slot was the most ideal, is all. Has that changed at all?
No, that has not changed. This just means there are certain situations or circumstances where we'll change the maintenance window to align with other tasks and ensure as little downtime as possible.

For all intents and purposes, tomorrow morning's maintenance window is an exception to the norm. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Curse is Hiring!
Curse's network of websites now reaches over 14 million unique users each month. As a result of this growth, the team here at Curse is looking to fill a few positions in the near future!


If you're looking for a chance to get into the industry, this may be the opportunity you've been seeking . At the moment, we are looking to fill the following positions:



For more information on working at Curse and for a full job listing, please head to our Jobs page on Curse.com. Thank you for your interest!


Leaders Of The Alliance And Horde -- Baine Bloodhoof
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Of all the heroes of the tauren tradition, Cairne Bloodhoof stands highest among them for his contributions to his race. Uniting a people who had been nomadic for countless generations, securing an alliance that saved his race from extinction at the hands of the centaur, establishing the first permanent capital city the tauren had ever known -- the list of his accomplishments grows with each retelling.

As the new high chieftain, Baine Bloodhoof now struggles to hold together the legacy that his father helped create. In the face of increased dissension from the tribes over Garrosh Hellscream's ever-present demands, Alliance incursions from the Barrens, and quilboar assaults on his people, the young chieftain finds his leadership tested as never before.

Hamuul shook his head as if to clear it. "We existed in a time before the coming of the orcs, if you'll remember. Your father may have owed a debt to Thrall for all he did for our people, but this is a new Horde. I have heard whispers of other tauren. Some are wondering if this Horde is really something we should be a part of anymore." He snorted. "The Horde has done much and we owe much to it, but you must admit that their sentiments are not completely without merit."

Baine pulled a map from the shelf and began looking for all known water wells in Mulgore. "As you say, my father may have owed a debt to Thrall, but he believed in the Horde he helped shape. Though my father may be gone, and despite these changes we face, I still believe in the Horde."

Blizzard Entertainment is proud to present the latest entry in the Leaders of Azeroth short story series: "As Our Fathers Before Us"!


Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Legendary Staff - 25 Embers, now what?
If you've reached the Delegation portion of the legendary quest line, it's a puzzle that intrepid raiders will need to solve starting on your next instance reset. Keep on the lookout for key hints and items during each boss fight in your raid after the next maintenance period. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

New Raid Encounters Design and Tuning
We think one of the biggest challenges in encounter design for a 7-year old game is coming up with mechanics that long-time players haven’t seen a dozen times before. To that end, we're really reluctant to put too many constraints on encounter design. The majority of our fights have 2 tanks and we think that’s close enough. Shoe-horning a 2nd tank role into a fight for which it doesn’t really fit doesn’t make that 2nd tank feel any more heroic – they are often just soaking cleaves, doing taunt swaps, or corralling adds or something.

On normal mode Firelands, the numbers are tuned such that you can get away with comps with fewer tanks and healers, if you’re overgeared or fairly skilled. In Heroic mode, there is only one fight (Majordomo) designed as a single tank fight. Some guilds use one tank on Baelroc, but that puts a lot of stress on the healers, and we see a lot of guilds use two as well. We also see DPS sometimes try to tank, or see tanks tank in DPS gear. It depends a lot on what your group can manage.

I’ll also point out that we had a much more inconsistent number of tanks before dual spec was introduced. It’s not really a dual spec issue at all. We wouldn’t expect a lot of zero tank or five tank fights. But again, it’s more important for us to have diverse, fun encounters than for everyone in the raid to get equal time in the spotlight on every single encounter. If you never get your time, that’s another matter, but I don’t think we’re there. On the other hand, some fights (Shannox and Alysrazor) give two tanks some really fun things to do.

7 also isn’t a lot of bosses (in terms of pure head count, not content or quality), so it’s hard to extrapolate a lot of “trends” at this point. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Goblins Alchemy Racial Bonus
We picked the +15 to Alchemy bonus for goblins because there has always been a strong association between the race and the profession. Not only do goblins have a notable, if not sometimes-deadly penchant for experimentation in World of Warcraft (just take a look at Goblin Rocket Fuel, for example), but there was a Goblin Alchemist unit in Warcraft III, as well as a goblin alchemist building in Warcraft II. So the bonus fits both thematically and in terms of precedence.

Of course, you might feel differently and think that alchemy meshes a little better with another race, or that another profession (like mining) might be better suited for goblins, and that's cool. We're pretty happy with where goblin racials are currently, but we certainly always appreciate your feedback -- be it about something as large as class balance or as specific as how racial bonuses tie in terms of lore. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Insane in the Membrane in Cataclysm
Yes, you can still earn the Insane In The Membrane achievement, which grants the title.

Cataclysm made some aspects of it a bit easier, and some even more insane than before. Ravenholdt reputation in particular, if you didn't work on it prior to 4.0, is simply punishing.

Have fun out there! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Guild Reputation and Guild Permissions
We know that players would like to see more guild management options based around guild reputation, be that in terms of setting up bank permissions (like you've suggested) or simply sorting the roster by current reputation level. While we don't have any plans that we can share with you right now on that topic, we've definitely been listening to your feedback and this is something we're considering iterating/improving upon for future content. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Battle.net Authenticator Recent Changes
This isn't a money saving scheme since your not actually spending anything to generate the code, nor are you impacting bandwidth in anyway. While your concerns are noted, your account no less secure than it was before, the only change is that you will only be prompted once a week to enter unless you change IP address, from where you'll need to enter your authenticator code.

There are a lot of valid concerns, which our developers are aware about, however we cannot give a direct response to all posts made.

Never the less we are not ignoring any feedback posted, its read and noted.

As for authenticator information, this is managed server side not on your actual system. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
This article was originally published in forum thread: Baleroc World First Kill Video, Jobs at Curse, Baine Bloodhoof, Blue Posts started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 92 Comments
  1. forek's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sinister Knight View Post
    So, from the mouths of Blizzs': "It was decided less needed to be done this week, so less time is allotted for the maintenance." And here we are, 3 hours later and still working on issues. Yeah this is a bit of a QQ post, but seriously, was looking forward to actually logging on this morning before bed, and Bam denied by the typical extended maintenance. I only comment because it amuses me that they themselves said it shouldn't be as long a maintenance. Le sigh.

    Should just always keep the regular hours stated and if they come back up early its a win for all.....
  1. Aerion's Avatar
    Seriously...

    Try to understand that things can and will go wrong sometimes and even backups can fail. I've no idea why is it taking so long to get the US realms up and running, but I'm certain this is not a minor hiccup.

    Prime example that you should all remember was the day Curse Network went down along with MMO-Champion. Everything was done to prevent it, but it happened anyways and it took few days to fix it.



    And as I wrote this, the servers came back up. So now you can stop bitching about it and go play the game.
  1. Triggered Fridgekin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by forek View Post
    Should just always keep the regular hours stated and if they come back up early its a win for all.....
    It's hard to imagine why they still provide us with a time frame which is often not met. One of the first things I was taught during my training for technical support was to always, always, always provide the client with a much more broad time frame so you don't shoot yourself in the foot in the event of hardware or software hiccups. Clients will be much happier with it coming up sooner than expected in spite of the larger amount of time stated rather then to be told to wait multiple times. The worst thing you can tell a frustrated client is to wait longer and it *might* get fixed within that time.

    There simply seems to be no grey zone when it comes to their maintenance. Either it's on time, it's way off (for better or worse) or not done at all for the week.
  1. Aerion's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rustweaver View Post
    It's hard to imagine why they still provide us with a time frame which is often not met. One of the first things I was taught during my training for technical support was to always, always, always provide the client with a much more broad time frame so you don't shoot yourself in the foot in the event of hardware or software hiccups.

    There simply seems to be no grey zone when it comes to their maintenance. Either it's on time, it's way off (for better or worse) or not done at all for the week.

    True, but even if you try you cannot possibly account for all the scenarios of things going horribly wrong. And as far as I know this was one of those cases.
  1. Triggered Fridgekin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Aerion View Post
    True, but even if you try you cannot possibly account for all the scenarios of things going horribly wrong. And as far as I know this was one of those cases.
    Unfortunately, Blizzard is usually stingy on the details beyond using vague technical terms so it could be caused by anything. They allow their clients to fabricate obscene reasons as to why this may have happened (good staff on vacation, spilling coffee on the servers, meltdown etc..) when all it could be is minor bug encountered along the way. When the company I work for encounters bugs in the software or hardware which pushes a live release back or if we encounter failure along the way, we inform the clients asap via email or phone (if they call in).

    One thing I've always had issues with Blizzard is that they are very good at keeping their clients in the dark. I mean, the fact that they have the forums tied in with the rest of the services is pretty unbelievable because there is no method to communicate with the customers beyond the breaking news segment on the login screen which makes the 140 character limit on Twitter look like a dictionary.

    I think that if they provided a reasonable method to communicate what's going wrong when things go wrong, it would relieve a lot of flak which they get when they go over their time frame not once but several times.
  1. Alayea's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rustweaver View Post
    You were still able to complete it by running up the left side of the ramp while only taking minimal fire damage. It's actually much quicker then the intended method.
    Oh, I know. I've simply been wanting to talk to Matoclaw so I can knock off one more NPC for the Fireside Chat achievement, and the Pyrelord can be tricky to solo on some toons.

    Edit: Bad info, sorry. No Matoclaw like I thought.
  1. skylla05's Avatar
    Man, Front End Developer is my dream job. As a web designer/developer for the last 10 years... I've come to realize that I *hate* designing, but building is a ton of fun. Especially when you are forced to do it in XHTML 1.0 Strict mode. I'm a masochist though.

    The woes of being entirely self taught for the last decade, and never really bothering to learn Javascript
  1. Argroth's Avatar
    call me when the contest for pathetic losers is over and MMOchamp actually starts posting interesting stuff again.
  1. Aoewy's Avatar
    "In Heroic mode, there is only one fight (Majordomo) designed as a single tank fight. Some guilds use one tank on Baelroc, but that puts a lot of stress on the healers, and we see a lot of guilds use two as well. We also see DPS sometimes try to tank, or see tanks tank in DPS gear. It depends a lot on what your group can manage."

    "We see a lot of guilds use two as well" -- Really Blizzard? Come on, Method use one tank, and can't beat the enrage even if they are one, if not the best guild in the world. They have to use some specific mechanic such as Deterrence to beat him, cause he has too much HP left when he enrages. What make you think that average guild would bring 2 tanks and beat the 6 min enrage timer better than the best players in the world?

    If its a 2 tanks fight, lets just say that you'll nerf it eventually. But dont say a "lot of guilds use two" thats a terrible lie. In normal mode yes, not in heroic.

    Grats Method and good luck for the world first Rag kill.
  1. Grudger's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Aoewy View Post
    "In Heroic mode, there is only one fight (Majordomo) designed as a single tank fight. Some guilds use one tank on Baelroc, but that puts a lot of stress on the healers, and we see a lot of guilds use two as well. We also see DPS sometimes try to tank, or see tanks tank in DPS gear. It depends a lot on what your group can manage."

    "We see a lot of guilds use two as well" -- Really Blizzard? Come on, Method use one tank, and can't beat the enrage even if they are one, if not the best guild in the world. They have to use some specific mechanic such as Deterrence to beat him, cause he has too much HP left when he enrages. What make you think that average guild would bring 2 tanks and beat the 6 min enrage timer better than the best players in the world?

    If its a 2 tanks fight, lets just say that you'll nerf it eventually. But dont say a "lot of guilds use two" thats a terrible lie. In normal mode yes, not in heroic.

    Grats Method and good luck for the world first Rag kill.
    It's not a lie at all. H Baleroc was designed for 2 tanks, it was also designed to be done in 380+ ilvl gear. Turns out if you are trying to beat the enrage in gear that is lower you have to resort to unique tactics like single tanking and going well past the enrage timer.
  1. Zof's Avatar
    Lol. "I JUST CAME!"
  1. valiorik's Avatar
    Why don't you state salaries for jobs? As much as I would like to commit to Curse development it's silly to send cv, references, letter and start communication with your human reseources specialists just to find out that you are offering less than I need for living? Stating something like: 70k $ annual salary would save your and our time.

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