Blizzcon 2011: WoW Open Q&A
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
As a 10 man raider there is a lot of difference between 10 and 25 man. When heroic magmaw came out 25 man raiders couldnt do it in 10 man heroic, when are we seeing the difficulty for 10 man being higher?
That's pretty fun because in Korea the 10-man guilds are usually the ones considered hardcore while the 25-man are considered easier. They are definitely hard to balance, 10 players might not always have the buffs they need like with 25 man.

Is there a chance that youll go to a 10 vs 20 man to make balancing easier?
I honestly think that wouldnt make stuff easier, we would still have a lot of problems.

Do you have any plans to implement some sort of spectator mode for raids or battlegrounds?
That's something we've wanted for a long time, spectator mode and replays, but it's just a question of getting around to doing it so ... some day, hopefully.

Do you have any plans on adding more options to the guild leaders UI? So as I can give more options to a banker or to my different officers since Im the only one that can turn guild repairs on and off
Yeah, thats definitely a good reason why we would want to do that. We need to make sure how much control we can give to people that are not the guild leader. It sounds like something that can be useful.

Wouldnt that be the GLs decision?
It is but if something goes wrong it comes back to us to fix it

With the upcoming expansion coming, are all the purple you get from Firelands going to get replaced with greens on first day?
Green is the new purple, so yeah. The problem is if we don't upgrade equipement too much we are cheating those players from the leveling experience, so usually by the 2nd or 3rd zone your gear should be replaced to make sure the content is still a challenge for you. Hopefully in the future we will have a way to "track" your progress in the past and make sure there's a way to record your accomplishements in each expansion to make sure that all your progress isn't "lost" at the beginning of each expansion.

How are you guys going to fit Draenei and the BEs getting monks?
We will probably throw it in like its always been there.... We'll make it work!

Hunters and Crowd Control: Currently with Wyvern Sting having a DOT it makes it a little difficult to quickly Wyvern Sting and then trap something after. Before Cataclysm we had the option of removing the dot with Scorpid Sting but it was removed, is there going to be a way to remove that DoT in the future?
It's probably something we're not going to do in 4.3, and 5.0 is such a big reset for all the talents that I can't really answer that now. It's definitely a problem but we also don't want everyone dotting up their characters before they crowd control, we don't want crowd control to always break on things like that and we'll see in 5.0.

Wind Shear change shouldn't hurt enhancement shamans, but most don't take Reverb. It also hurts Resto Shaman, any plans to fix this?
Raids usually have enough people, so it won't hurt the raid. PvP might force you to make the choice, but it is still an interrupt with a longer cooldown.

Do you hate enhancement shamans? DPS sucks, in PvP they suck, any plans to fix them? / Any plans for Illidan to come back?
Lets answer the Illidan question. Do you want to see Illidan come back? We will think about that.

This is a problem, just like frost mages dont do well in PvE but the difference is you can't tell an enhancement shaman "hey just go elemental". In PvP it will be much easier in 5.0 but for PvE we will try to adress some of the issues in 4.3

Do you want combat rogues to use cooldowns more often or hold off until 30% and use all the cooldowns at once?
You should follow the guidance from Restless Blades.

Is the guild name change service going to be in 4.3 or 5.0? Will it fall to the wayside like Dance Studios did?
One of these days we are going to unleash Dance Studios to the world and it will be awesome. But not today. We are releasing the new guild services within two weeks.

Your design in MoP are you bringing more healers into 25 man raids because there is a new healing class as a monk healer and 25 man guilds will usually have two people per class. Are you going to design your raids to bring more healers into raids?
I dont think we will change the number of healers needed for a raid.

Will challenge modes put us under the hit cap or affect core stats when the gear is tuned down?
There are some details to work out, people should be able to do roughly the same DPS and Healing as everyone else.

Are we going to see account bound mounts?
Hopefully some day, i dont think that will happen in 50 but somewhere down the line its likely.

Can we have an option to require auth on login every time
Soon.

What are your plans for the moonkin form, are you going to do the same thing you did for warlocks?
We are going to update the art on the moonkin form as we see fit. Its too early to tell what we will exactly be doing.

Race changing breaks quest progress for some quests, any plans to address this?
We might try whitelisting some quests, like the important legendary quest. We need to be careful to not bog down CS with this kind of thing though.

In the future are you going to make BoA items actually transferable account-wide?
Maybe some day! Probably not in the immediate future. The databases dont do the best job of talking to eachother right now.

The past few patches brought Arcane Mages and Feral Druids that are two button classes, any plans to make sure the Monk isn't easy like those classes/specs?
AoE rotations weren't a big focus at first, we want to make it a little more interesting. Arcane mages do have some mana management gameplay, we are adding back Arcane Missles to their rotation.

Do you ever plan on altering spells or maybe adding a new spell to Arcane mages and maybe nerfing arcane blast a little bit?
In 5.0 Living Bomb is a spell all mages will have.

Will enchanters be able to make epic wands in the future?
Yes

What are your changes going to be for gathering professions in the new expansion? Crafting gives you the best stuff but gathering isnt very useful
No sweeping change has been planned for the perks of these professions but we'll look at it. We dont want people to feel like they need 2 crafting professions.

Will you be able to craft different quivers?
Little visuals like that is something we want to add to all classes, it isn't really clear on how we can add that just yet.

I have a priest with a benediction staff but the quest for that was removed. I am very excited to transmog that. But I am worried that you might open up the models for other players, which would be unfair to the players that worked for it at level 60
One way we have solved that problem in the past is to offer the model with a different texture or something. We did something similar with the ZA bear mount

Ret has one clear choice for the Level 90 Tier in the new talent trees, any chance to balance it better?
We feel like they will be balanced once we tweak the numbers.

You are nerfing wind shear for resto PvP, do you intent to make a trade off or to not let them have it completely?
Ideally we would not want them to have it

In that case why dont you hardwire it into the spec masteries so enhancement and elemental dont have any effect?
That would have been another way to go, but this is a fairly big change and we dont want players to feel like everything is being changed. In 5.0 it might be a good oppurtunity to take away Wind Shear completely but we have not made a decision on that yet.

Will MoP bring us mounted combat?
No

Will MoP bring more craftable mounts?
Maybe a Jewelcrafting mount.

Any plans to fix Heroic Leap?
Heroic Leap has a lot of technical problems, people keep trying to exploit it. Works fine when it is flat, not so much when there is a height increase

Where are the LGBT characters in WoW Lore?
Everything is gravy as long as its just a great character. There is the possiblity of adding them, as long as the story is compelling, might see it in the future.

It seems that in a 10 man model there are huge negatives with class representation and wasted loot. Is there a possibility to change the 10-man model to a 15-man model? If not, maybe make some kind of smart loot system that checks if the loot is useful for your raid?
It might be a good idea to make the loot system slightly more intelligent, but moving up to a 15-man model would be very hard for us seeing existing 10-man guilds would have to recruit 5 more members.

Are you going to add more visuals for druid forms? Will effects such as Fandral's Flamescythe be transferable by transmogrification?
Maybe, we are connecting them with items so that it isn't something everyone has forever. We don't want you to have to go back and get different forms.

As a hunter who has played that class for 5 years I want to thank you for the pet challenges that came out in 4.3, that being said and how much we are so proud of all the pets we have obtained. Its a shame when you cant use these pets in a dungeon without being spec'd beast master, i was kind of hoping this might be a change in the future
We'd like to let hunters chose any pet with Tenacity/Ferocity/Cunning in 5.0. It doesn't solve the problem of MM losing Beast mastery pets but BM DPS is pretty good.

Gallywix is in charge but he's the bad guy, what happens to him? Also, blinding shield for paladins, what happened to that?
We haven't had a discussion about Gallywix in a while, he's interesting but I don't know if we have a core decision about him. Most of our discussions lately have been about pandaren characters and how to make them interesting.

This is not set in stone but Blinding Shield is currently the paladin level 87 ability.

The new shaman talent points seem to be geared for resto and not to a damage point, I know you said you want hybridization is coming more into play but what about DPS?
There are DPS options there, some of the tiers are based around movement, totems, etc ...

In End Time, we kill Murozond, is this the last we see of the Infinite Dragonflight? / Any plans to add player housing?
No player housing anytime soon, too expensive in terms of time to make if you still want dungeons, raids, models, and other stuff.

Infinite Dragonflight is done, at least for now, but the concept is cool and useful for the world. The timeways will always exist and there will always be bad guys there, there's no current plans for it but we could bring it back if it's cleverly done.

Jewelcrafting endgame is boring, can we have trinkets, rings, or necklaces?
We want to add some items, not every tier though. We need to keep it balanced compared to the other professions.

I'm pretty sure I understand how you pick Alliance and Horde as a Pandaren, do you guys have any idea how pandaren's factions will be distinguished at higher levels?
We have seen in arenas that the only thing that really matter is the Red Text and stuff, the UI is primarly the biggest indicator to see what faction they belong to. We explored going down the path were Horde Panda's were more feral and wild but it come to that they don't look like Pandaren anymore.

Will we see raid leaderboards, including wipe and kill counts?
There is a lot we could do to track player accomplishments, we could see it being extended to raids in the future.

Theres lots of people wanting the reskinning for old races, I was over at the art panel and the pandaren just looked so amazing. They were talking about being 10-20 in the fact alone, is that also something they are looking into for reskinning the new races?
Its the one thing we really want to see brought up to the pandaren level. There are about 10 times more bones in the pandaren models compared to the current character models. We dont know when this exactly will happen, because we are still not unsure how to roll this out because some people might not like the new models as much as they do the old models.

What will the theme for raid art and gear going to be?
Brewing, bamboo, everything crafted, respecting the Asian feel we have in the starting zone and expanding on that
This article was originally published in forum thread: Blizzcon 2011: WoW Open Q&A started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 137 Comments
  1. slimj091's Avatar
    "Jewelcrafting endgame is boring, can we have trinkets, rings, or necklaces? We want to add some items, not every tier though. We need to keep it balanced compared to the other professions." balanced as in how blacksmithing, tailoring, leatherworking, and engineering get new item's to make with every tier? oh wait what am i thinking.. JC gets epic gems to cut, but with a slim chance to nil of actually getting any epic gems to cut. sounds balanced to me.

    ---------- Post added 2011-10-23 at 12:07 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Dyre View Post
    WTB newer engine for better graphics/models. Stop being cheap Blizz.

    Poor work around answer.
    the graphics/models still look better than 98% of other MMO's out there. no need to fix what is not broken.
  1. Dacia Ultan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by slimj091 View Post
    the graphics/models still look better than 98% of other MMO's out there. no need to fix what is not broken.
    "Better" by what standard?
  1. Soeroah's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Farseer Lolotea View Post
    "Better" by what standard?
    Consistency? Cartoony-style characters in cartoony-style world look better than slightly awkward models in a realistic world, in my eyes anyway.
  1. Lemontime's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Jarrad View Post
    It was actually a lady that asked.
    Regardless, this is a ridiculous question to ask. The age-old argument being "Why does this matter at all?" rings very true here. Why do we not see openly heterosexual or asexual people? Where are all the eunuchs? Blizz hate eunuchs omg! It's something that has no bearing at all in a fantasy world and the stupid argument and demands for LGBT characters in-game should really end.
  1. Soeroah's Avatar
    Regarding Murazond being Nozdormu, as far as I'm concerned, it's still ambiguous. Not that Murazond is Nozdormu, just that he is OUR Nozdormu. Since Twilight of the Aspects, the Caverns of Time have been revealed to include alternate timelines (that may fizzle in and out of existence due to not being the 'correct' timeline). Murazond could be a Nozdormu from an alternate timeline, rather than the future version of our Nozdormu. Ours might never turn into Murazond. And regarding the death in a 5 man, I have no problem with that, since in the lore it would be something relevant, not five random people killing him. Dungeons are game mechanics. Now, in response to Blizzard's answer, THAT I have a problem with. I wanted the Infinite Flight to continue being a threat, and I didn't think it was too hard to be able to logically keep Murazond a threat in the future because, come on, time travel. Killing him in a possible future doesn't mean he will be gone for good. In one theory of time travel, us preventing that future would prevent him from being killed. In another theory, the Murazond we kill could be at the end of his lifespan, and all versions of him WE see in OUR future are PAST versions of him. In OUR future, we could even find a way to weaken him, allowing our past selves to finally kill him. In fact, the entire Infinite Dragonflight could be dicking around in future parts of Azeroth for hundreds of years and still be past versions of the ones we killed in Old Hillsbrad. Assuming, of course, the 'horrible end time' Murazond says he's trying to prevent isn't for a while. They wouldn't affect history after the date for that.
  1. Dexiefy's Avatar
    but BM DPS is pretty good.
    /facepalm... how hunter class can evolve if retards are in charge?oO BM is a fucking joke since naxxrammas nerfs...
    No player housing anytime soon, too expensive in terms of time to make if you still want dungeons, raids, models, and other stuff.
    i couldnt care less about housing but the answer is really interesing... dungeons? just a few out there per expac and some of the rehashed raids? in cata we got 30% of content that was promised to us in mop 6 bosses for first tier... fucking joke not raid content models? cata brought how many new models exactly? cause only updated elemental model comes to my mind... rest is the same we already had but with different textures, so what models are you guys exactly working on? other stuff? what stuff? pokemon minigame? couldnt care less... NDS>ripoff
    Its the one thing we really want to see brought up to the pandaren level. There are about 10 times more bones in the pandaren models compared to the current character models. We dont know when this exactly will happen, because we are still not unsure how to roll this out because some people might not like the new models as much as they do the old models.
    Thats the thing you said are going to do in one of the cataclysm patches... and you are just fucking lazy... nothing else... You abrely push any content out, you rehash as much as you can, most mobs we encounter are rehashed models with different textures and you cba even to update 6 year old models. Problem with ppl not liking new models? np... dont change them... jsut add more polygons to smooth them out, thats all you need to do... and in order to give ppl choice, just give every1 1 free race change.. problem fucking solved.
  1. CaptainArlong's Avatar
    Someone saying it's unfair for other players to have certain items? What is with the "you can't have this!!" attitude so many people have over video game items that you earn by pushing keys on a keyboard? And why would someone ask if Fireland epics will be replaced when MoP is released? Of course they will, Dragon Soul is the last raid of Cataclysm with the highest level gear. Firelands will be some raid no one runs anymore for loot.
  1. Dacia Ultan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Soeroah View Post
    Consistency? Cartoony-style characters in cartoony-style world look better than slightly awkward models in a realistic world, in my eyes anyway.
    But WoW's player-character models aren't consistent at all. There are old but still basically okay models, old and bad (as in, you can see the glitches) models, newer and basically okay models, new but buggy models, and...well, goblins. "Consistency" would be everything at the same level of quality (preferably goblin level, but blood elf/draenei level would be acceptable).

    Quote Originally Posted by Lemontime View Post
    Why do we not see openly heterosexual or asexual people?
    What are you talking about? We see a lot of openly heterosexual characters.

    It's something that has no bearing at all in a fantasy world and the stupid argument and demands for LGBT characters in-game should really end.
    ITT: any suggestion that doesn't concern you is "stupid" and out of place.
  1. shyturtle's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lemontime View Post
    Regardless, this is a ridiculous question to ask. The age-old argument being "Why does this matter at all?" rings very true here. Why do we not see openly heterosexual or asexual people? Where are all the eunuchs? Blizz hate eunuchs omg! It's something that has no bearing at all in a fantasy world and the stupid argument and demands for LGBT characters in-game should really end.
    I'm sick of this BS saying it doesn't matter. I'm going to quote my partner who posted about this elsewhere since it pretty much sums up my feeling on the topic.

    At the lore panel at BlizzCon, someone asks if there will ever be lgbtq characters in World of Warcraft. Of course, this question is of direct interest to me, and I've been dying for a little lgbtq-love (if you know what I mean) in WoW, cuz currently, we only have Anren and Tholo, and even them are mostly slash-fodder. Blizz has a very noncommittal response, which was sad but expected.

    But the internet buzz immediately jumps to a combination of:

    1) keep gays out of warcraft
    2) there is no sexuality in warcraft.

    Both are frustrating.

    #2 is particularly frustrating, however, because people are so blinded by heteronormativity that they never see the constant bombardment of heterosexual messages. No sexuality in warcraft? Like there was never a Jaina, Thrall, Arthas love triangle going. Like Thrall didn't get married in patch 4.2. Like Mankrik didn't spend 3 expansions looking for his wife. Like Princess Theradras didn't do the dirty with Zaetar (and one's an earth elemental and the other is a half-stag!) Like there aren't countless quests involving wives, or girlfriends, or lust, or cheating spouses, or tracking down lost wedding rings, or whatever.

    This blindness to the norm is what is most frustrating. That people find the request for the inclusion of just ONE gay character an offense is sad. But the argument that there should be no gay characters, because there is no sexuality in the game is just foolish.
    The type of mentality that's rising up here reminds me of the similar response from a bigoted gamer regarding BioWare's game Dragon Age in which he felt they were "catering" to LGBT players. He got a good reply from BioWare that should probably be any gaming company's policy regarding inclusion and diversity.
  1. F-Minus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lemontime View Post
    Regardless, this is a ridiculous question to ask. The age-old argument being "Why does this matter at all?" rings very true here. Why do we not see openly heterosexual or asexual people? Where are all the eunuchs? Blizz hate eunuchs omg! It's something that has no bearing at all in a fantasy world and the stupid argument and demands for LGBT characters in-game should really end.
    To tell you the truth, when she walked up to the mic, I totally expected this question from her, I don't know but I spot those lesbian feminists from half a kilometer away. And when she got the answer from Metzen, she wasn't quite happy with it either, almost felt like she wanted to start a discussion about what kind of pigs men are and that he is a great example.
  1. blacklamb's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lemontime View Post
    Regardless, this is a ridiculous question to ask. The age-old argument being "Why does this matter at all?" rings very true here. Why do we not see openly heterosexual or asexual people? Where are all the eunuchs? Blizz hate eunuchs omg! It's something that has no bearing at all in a fantasy world and the stupid argument and demands for LGBT characters in-game should really end.
    Tyrande and Malfurion. Thrall and Aggra. Arthas and Jaina. Rhonin and Vereesa. All the dragon Aspects and their consorts. I could go on and on. There are tons of heterosexual relationships in WoW, they are the default. Asking for a little representation isn't a crime, as much as the spoiled majority would like it to be.
  1. Lemontime's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Farseer Lolotea View Post
    ITT: any suggestion that doesn't concern you is "stupid" and out of place.
    ITT: People accusing me of being ignorant when I call someone out on asking a question that has absolutely no relevance to the game, is misguided and foolish.

    I know there are plenty of heterosexual relationships, but it's not written anywhere in lore that "Malfurion is a heterosexual male", it's implied through his representation (and obviously his relationships). Why does there NEED to be any LGBT characters in game? Does the LGBT community seriously feel so offended that there are't any outwardly spoken LGBT characters in a fictitious, fantastical world within a computer game? Does this not say something about the communty?
  1. Nefastus's Avatar
    Instead of making better models for the races we have been playing for years they are busy with animating pandas and their gigling bellies when they walk.This CANNOT be serious. I hated the lorelol of draenei back at BC but this is way worse. Pandas and the WHOLE new content about pandas. Its not just a race. The equivalent would be BC being JUST about blood elves and their areas / architeture everywhere. It IS just about pandas. Raids panda themed, dungeons panda themed, items panda themed. It would be "ok" it it was a levelling part like elves have and space goats, goblins and worgen. But EVERYTHING around it is like being stuck in the goblin island for an ENTIRE expansion. People are missing that point.
  1. Dacia Ultan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by blacklamb View Post
    Tyrande and Malfurion. Thrall and Aggra. Arthas and Jaina. Rhonin and Vereesa. All the dragon Aspects and their consorts. I could go on and on. There are tons of heterosexual relationships in WoW, they are the default. Asking for a little representation isn't a crime, as much as the spoiled majority would like it to be.
    Amen. It seems to me like there's always a certain subset of fans who think that if they're not being exclusively catered to, they're being somehow infringed upon.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lemontime View Post
    ITT: People accusing me of being ignorant when I call someone out on asking a question that has absolutely no relevance to the game, is misguided and foolish.
    So...why is heterosexuality so relevant? And if it's not relevant, why is it ubiquitous?

    I know there are plenty of heterosexual relationships, but it's not written anywhere in lore that "Malfurion is a heterosexual male", it's implied through his representation (and obviously his relationships).
    Bingo. It's implied. At all.

    Why does there NEED to be any LGBT characters in game? Does the LGBT community seriously feel so offended that there are't any outwardly spoken LGBT characters in a fictitious, fantastical world within a computer game? Does this not say something about the communty?
    See above. It seems to me like the only people getting "offended" are the people who are against it.
  1. Lemontime's Avatar
    I'm fairly certain the writers don't go out of their way to present a characters sexuality. Whether a relationship between them is hetero or homosexual is irrelevant, it's just a relationship. Is it really so ubiquitous that LGBT people feel offended by it? Do you go outside and see a man and a woman kissing and think "WOW! How rude, I don't think that way!"? I'm not offended or against LGBT characters in games, I would be perfectly okay with them being in a game, I just think it's a bit silly that people get so uppity about the lack of representation.
  1. Dacia Ultan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lemontime View Post
    I'm fairly certain the writers don't go out of their way to present a characters sexuality. Whether a relationship between them is hetero or homosexual is irrelevant, it's just a relationship.
    So, again: why is heterosexuality so ubiquitous?

    Is it really so ubiquitous that LGBT people feel offended by it? Do you go outside and see a man and a woman kissing and think "WOW! How rude, I don't think that way!"?
    I'm female. I'm married. To a man. Why would that "offend" me unless they're being really obnoxious and slobbery about it? (See: teenagers.)

    I'm not offended or against LGBT characters in games, I would be perfectly okay with them being in a game, I just think it's a bit silly that people get so uppity about the lack of representation.
    So if you'd be "perfectly okay with" it, why are you getting so "uppity" about the idea of them being added?

    Seems a hell of a lot sillier to complain that people want to see it added than to complain (and I use the word loosely) that there is none.
  1. Lemontime's Avatar
    I'm not complaining about them being added. I'm just annoyed that people are so offended and demand that there be LGBT people in the game. Not. Relevant. At. All.
  1. Dacia Ultan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lemontime View Post
    I'm not complaining about them being added. I'm just annoyed that people are so offended and demand that there be LGBT people in the game. Not. Relevant. At. All.
    And you're complaining that people have asked why there are none (not "demanded that they be added), and insisting that it's "not relevant."

    So, since you haven't answered my question: why is heterosexuality "relevant," then? And if it's not "relevant," why is it ubiquitous?

    Seriously. You are not acting like you think it's "not relevant." You are acting like you think it'd somehow be some skin off your nose if more canonical same-sex pairings were added, no matter how much you may protest otherwise.
  1. Lemontime's Avatar
    Well that's not how I mean to act, sorry if it comes across that way. I don't think heterosexuality is relevant at all, I don't think sexuality as a whole is relevant at all. I can't answer for why it is so ubiquitous, as I don't write the story. But as far as I know, no major story elements are based on the sole fact that someone is a heterosexual. I'm very happy to be proven wrong if you find an instance of this.
  1. Dacia Ultan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lemontime View Post
    But as far as I know, no major story elements are based on the sole fact that someone is a heterosexual. I'm very happy to be proven wrong if you find an instance of this.
    I don't think anyone—including, most likely, Blizzcon chick—is asking for any major story elements to be based around the sole fact that someone is gay. Hell, a good number of people would probably be happy if those two druids in Hyjal were confirmed to be a couple.

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