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NAO Invitational Qualifiers
Curse, Skill-Capped, and Logitech are sponsoring a player run Arena tournament with over $4000 in prizes. You can find the list of prizes on ArenaJunkies. See the structure and rules for more information about how the teams are selected.

The remaining part of this week's qualifier rounds will be held on the 28th from 7-11pm EST. The second qualifier round will take place on Febuary 3rd/4th 7-11pm EST. The Tournament itself will take place on February 17th / 18th /19th. You can watch the stream of all of them here.



Dragon Soul Difficulty Changes
Don't forget that the previously mentioned Dragon Soul changes are supposed to be going live next week, so this will likely be your last chance to complete the encounter before everyone has access to the 5% buff.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
During the scheduled server maintenance on the week of January 31, the Dragon Soul raid will become enveloped by the “Power of the Aspects” spell, reducing the health and damage dealt of all enemies in the raid by 5%. This spell will grow progressively stronger over time to reduce the difficulty and make the encounters more accessible. The spell will affect both normal and Heroic difficulties, but it will not affect the Looking for Raid difficulty.

The spell can also be disabled by talking to Lord Afrasastrasz at the beginning of Dragon Soul, if a raid wishes to attempt the encounters without the aid of the Dragon Aspects.

For those of you who raided in Firelands and/or Icecrown you’re no doubt aware that as time goes on we want to keep people progressing by adjusting the difficulty. For any number of reasons a group may be having difficulty on a specific encounter each week, and our intent in adjusting the content is to ensure the ability to keep progressing, enjoying the content, and gearing up. With Icecrown we progressively buffed the players, and while this slow progression (and ability to opt-out of the buff) were both beneficial, it led to an expectation of your characters power, and once you left the raid you could certainly feel less effective. For Firelands we attempted to fix that by nerfing the content instead of buffing players, but we nerfed the content difficulty all at one time, which was counterproductive for players who really didn’t need as severe a change as we made. With Dragon Soul we’re attempting to do the best of both by having a progressive nerf to the content, keeping player power constant while providing small increases in assistance over a long period of time, as well as allowing players to opt-out of the assistance by speaking to Lord Afrasastrasz.

We hope you continue to enjoy Dragon Soul, and that these changes encourage you to attempt a higher difficulty, or just keep pushing to down that next boss.

Mists of Pandaria PvP
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
One of our upcoming goals in Mists of Pandaria is to make the gap between the overall DPS/healing of both PvE and PvP items smaller. In fact, we have design plans for new PvP combat mechanics that will make PvP gear and weapons markedly better in PvP than equivalent level PvE gear and weapons.

The overall goal is to reduce the barrier for crossing between PvE and PvP (and vice versa), as well as to also ensure that PvP gear is the best in PvP, and PvE gear is the best in PvE. More details on these upcoming changes will be posted as they become available.

Regardless of anyone’s rankings past or present, the process of learning and striving to improve never stops: it helps even the most battle-hardened gladiator remain able to go toe-to-toe with their fiercest opponents.

In team-based combat such as Arenas, pressuring an enemy in order to go for a kill or striving to protect your comrade from being the brunt of a focused assault are part of the experience, no matter what classes are driving to get the job done. Most matches are an incredibly complicated dance between combatants: a push and pull of offensive and defensive tactics, of coordinating switches, interrupts, dispels, crowd control, and of learning when to use your particular cooldowns or abilities, and when to change your tactics on the fly. Depending on who you ask, what class they are, what brackets they are in, and what team compositions they run, you are likely to get a totally different answer as to what particular class gives them the most trouble at any given time.

As far as the current balance of various classes: it’s something we are, as always, keeping a close watch on. We welcome you to post constructively about your observations in the appropriate threads, and the more focused and on-topic you can keep it, the better.

While it's not possible to address every individual thread or concern of the community, rest assured we are listening, regardless if you see us post within a particular thread or not.

Comics: Dark Legacy and Teh Glad
Dark Legacy Comics #323 and Teh Gladiators #308 + #309 are available!

This article was originally published in forum thread: NAO Invitational, Dragon Soul Difficulty Reminder, Mists of Pandaria PvP, Comics started by chaud View original post
Comments 50 Comments
  1. joltcola1234's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Doombringer View Post
    What are you, 12 years old?

    WoW has been riding on the shoulders of other MMO giants -- Everquest, Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies to name a few -- and have borrowed many fundamental ideas, from simple concepts to complex systems, from these games.

    Blues have even gone on record, on the forums, saying that Blizzard does not innovate, they mainly put polish on others' ideas.
    Can you please show us the quote where Blizzard stated on the forums, on record, "we do not innovate".

    right....

    I didn't think you could.
  1. lilbuddhaman's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by joltcola1234 View Post
    Can you please show us the quote where Blizzard stated on the forums, on record, "we do not innovate".

    right....

    I didn't think you could.
    You're hanging a bit too literally on his words. Blizzard has stated that a HUGE number of the mechanics / aspects of the game were copied/borrowed/evolved from earlier MMO titles, several of which the founding members of wow's dev team loved and enjoyed (sidenote: those people aren't working wow anymore). His main point is that anyone claiming that SWTOR is "stealing" from wow is ignoring that wow "stole" from every other past mmo. Had wow not existed, swtor could have easily existed. There is not a SINGLE specific aspect of the game that you could directly tie to being influenced by wow. You could easily substitute EQ, DAoC, Ultima Online in on any number of elements swtor uses. And I'm ignoring the more niche or less remembered titles which each had some pretty interesting elements themselves such as Asheron's Call and Shadowbane.
  1. chaud's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by joltcola1234 View Post
    Can you please show us the quote where Blizzard stated on the forums, on record, "we do not innovate".

    right....

    I didn't think you could.
    http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3595372038#11
  1. Shamocra's Avatar
    I thought people would atleast have a bit of fun on the nao invitational team names but NOOOOOOOOOOO. We all start to argue about who stole game ideas from who. I shall tell you something what te f does it matter if the product is great i dont mind if they took something out of other games. The wheel has already been invented so dont try to reinvent it try to improve it. Point is all games take something from other games its not stealing its just you are not going to reinvent something that already works great.
  1. mmoc013cd5b5e5's Avatar
    Dragon Soul Difficulty Changes Don't forget that the previously mentioned Dragon Soul changes are supposed to be going live next week, so this will likely be your last chance to complete the encounter before everyone has access to the 5% buff.
    hmm seeing us wiping on 2-7% on some bosses this will help us but I think it's a bit too soon to nerf DS
  1. Mucupurulent's Avatar
    Those are last weeks comics, btw.
  1. bbr's Avatar
    The gladiators is... getting worse - if such a thing was even possible. I keep wondering why they keep getting put on the front page. Are they paying MMOC for the linkage?
  1. Notos's Avatar
    Heh, DLC never fails to amuse; darn those meatless bears!
  1. Alayea's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Notos View Post
    Heh, DLC never fails to amuse; darn those meatless bears!
    Don't forget the hooves!
  1. lazzy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Woa View Post
    I see removing the gap between pve and pvp a big mistake. They're already giving baseline resilience. I know personally I love blowing up noobs who have no gear. Its part of the learning curve. If you don't ha e that what the hell are the new guys striving for? To be only SLIGHTLY better? Cmon now. Blizzard is removing everything that takes a bit of work and rewards you with a feeling of accomplishment. They already gave every class a mortal strike and a self heal. What the hell are they doing. They're going to end up with o e big lame bg with everyone hitting like they're weilding nerf bats.If you hit everyone for 20k, that's alright. But when you hit that one guy for 50k, that's awesome. This is BS. Stop trying to reinvent the bicycle.
    PvP should NEVER be about gear just skill. So your argument is dumb.

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