Diablo 3 - Demon Hunter - Inferno Diablo Build, Legendary Buffs, More Hotfixes, EU Account Security Alert: Riot Games, Blue Posts, Digital Strategy Guide

Pandaren Language
Even if you haven't listened to a Pandaren speak Pandaren, it might be familiar to you...



Beta PvP Gear Vendors
If you are one of the lucky players in Beta, you can now purchase ilevel 483 Gladiator's gear from the PvP vendors on top of the Gate of the Setting Sun! For a full lit of the PvP gear, including the Monk PvP gear, check out WoWDB! Wand spellpower values are accurate compared to what is displayed in game, but the value is very unlikely to be final.



Female Pandaren Hair Updates
Female Pandaren got some new hair options in the latest beta build, along with some earrings! You can see a larger amount of the color in the new textures.







Account Security Alert: Riot Games / League of Legends
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
As some of you may know, Riot Games recently announced that certain League of Legends player account information in European databases was compromised by an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into their network: http://eu.leagueoflegends.com/news/l...security-alert

The data accessed included email addresses and encrypted account passwords, and they have determined that more than half of the passwords were simple enough to be at risk of easy cracking.

If you are a League of Legends player and happen to use the same password for your League of Legends account and your Battle.net account, we strongly encourage you to reset your Battle.net password at this time. To complete a password reset, go to Account Management > Settings > Change Password. You can also visit this page if you've forgotten or lost your Battle.net password: https://eu.battle.net/account/suppor...ord-reset.html

Additionally, if you used your Battle.net email address to sign up with League of Legends, you may also wish to update your Battle.net email address via Account Management as a general security precaution. To update your Battle.net email address, go to Account Management > Settings > Change Email Address.

If you are unable to update your password or email address and believe your account might be compromised, please contact our customer support staff by using the Account Recovery Form: https://eu.battle.net/account/suppor...-recovery.html

For additional security tips and suggestions, be sure to check out the Account Security Awareness guide at http://eu.battle.net/en/security/

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Rogue (Forums)
Rogue Class Design
What annoying things have we had to deal with that you're fixing?
I'll just use one example because in our opinion it's the biggest. Layered ramping mechanics were the single biggest weakness rogues have in Cataclysm (and have had for some time). Some ramping is desirable, but too much can really hurt target switching, prohibit fast burst damage, etc. (Don't take this to extremes -- we don't need posts from every class pointing out situations in which they can't go from 0 to 60 when target switching and therefore arguing how they need to be redesigned.)

In Mists, we want combo points to be the ramping mechanic. Deadly Poison doesn't need to be a ramping mechanic. Bandit's Guile doesn't need to be a ramping mechanic. We changed the way both of those work.

You may not have thought it was a problem, but we did, and we heard about it a lot from rogue players, so we fixed it.

I sincerely want to know by what measure and according to what data you conclude rogues are "fine" in PvP right now.
What I meant was that we didn't see any crippling design flaws in rogues that needed overhauling in Mists. Sub rogues probably are too good in Cataclysm PvP, or at least 3v3 Arenas, which many players use as synonymous with PvP. It's hard to tell if Assassination and Combat are really weak, or if Sub is so strong that any sensible rogue just plays Sub. It's also entirely possible that it isn't even Sub that is too powerful but just Prep and Shadowstep. In any case, my comment was addressed towards the group of players that believe rogues have this giant list of issues that must be addressed, and at another (perhaps overlapping) group of players that just want us to change things up for the rogue because they're getting bored. Sorry for any confusion.

The combo points issue is a symbolic one, though. This is something a large number of rogues have wanted for a very long time, and the issue gets consistently ignored. I often feel as if there's no point in giving feedback at all when the devs can't even see eye-to-eye with players on how our resources should work.
The feedback doesn't get ignored. We just disagree, which we have to be allowed to do if we're actually going to design the game rather than just letting players vote on how every mechanic should work. We like the way combo points work (meaning on the target). I also suspect you're being a bit presumptuous assuming that all rogues want combo points on the rogue. Yes, rogues would be easier to play if you didn't have to worry about which target your combo points were on. Do rogues need to be easier to play? If so, are combo points the right change? We could eliminate combo points and just give Eviscerate a cooldown. Would that be easier? Would it be more fun? I'm not trying to be dismissive -- I think those questions are legitimately hard to answer.

A lot of people say killing spree is poorly designed because it doesn't work on those fights, but I firmly believe those situations are a failure of encounter design, not class design. Killing spree and backstab are fine; Blizz needs to learn to take them into account when they design bosses.
We do. But it is not our design intent that every spec can perform the exact same rotation on every fight. I'm certain that if we solved the backstab issue then the next complaint to come up (from some class) would be that every boss fight needs to have 3 targets, because multi-dotting works the best with 3 targets and their DPS will be lower when there is only one target. What do you think the DPS difference is among the 3 rogue specs on Ultraxion? (You can't just look at posted logs to answer that question, because mostly what those logs tell you are that most rogues (and presumably many of the best ones) go Combat for that fight.) What is an acceptable difference? 5%? 1%? 0%?

Obviously I don't have the numbers Blizzard does, but we do know that at least before the legendary daggers rogue was one of the least active classes. No matter if that remains true or not I think it says something when one of the, if not the best designed classes is also one of the least popular. It says that maybe it works great from a design standpoint, but how is that translating to the players?
We look at those numbers of course, but it's really hard to determine cause and effect there. Paladins are nearly always the most played class, but there are just as many paladin players demanding change as there are rogue players (actually, given the population sizes, probably more). So why are some classes more popular than others? It's probably a mix of need, power, kit, flexibility, visuals and a host of other objective and subjective criteria. The hybrid vs. pure issue plays into that a little bit, but it's not the whole answer by a long shot. I definitely don't think it's as simple as if we make a bunch of changes to rogue rotations, now more players will play rogues (consider for starters that we'd almost certainly lose some rogues as well).

I agree that this is how the design should be, but this raises the question of whether or not our finishers are powerful enough to warrant this design decision. Compared to the power we lost by having the crit bonuses of our primary abilities taken away, they just don't feel like they're as strong as they should be right now. There are fewer combo points flowing in due to generating talents being taken away, so the gaps between finishers feel unrewarding because the finishers themselves feel unrewarding.
I think it's safe to say that if we find we need to buff rogue damage for any of the specs that we'd look to finishers as a place to increase damage.

My big problem right now is that I feel very similar to feral druids and Windwalker monks, without the added benefit of being able to radically change my gameplay on a spec switch. I don't need that radical change, I suppose, being a pure DPS. In PvP it's not a problem as I feel very much like a rogue there, but it's hard to translate into PvE and I end up feeling like a warrior in leather that attacks a bit faster.
I hope Windwalkers feel different. Cat druids were designed from the outset to play like rogues, the same way Bears were designed to play just like warriors. We've eroded that a bit over time, but the bones of it remain.

As far as the pure vs. hybrid thing goes, that is a really tricky problem to solve. We could turn all classes into hybrids of course, though I'm also not sure every player would rejoice at such a change. It has been very challenging to make pure specs play fundamentally differently. If the Mists warlocks work out well, then they may feel pretty different (of course they also run the risk I mentioned before of feeling like 3 separate classes and not like warlocks). Some players in this thread mentioned that mages play totally differently, but I think to be fair they feel more different than they really play because fire vs. frost vs. arcane is such a strong theme. It's harder for "I'm an assassination" to have a completely different feel from "I'm a swasbuckler" or "I'm a sneaky guy." We've had the same challenge with hunters. Presumably Marksman hunters are great at using ranged weapons. Okay, what does that mean for Survival? They use traps? Melee? Poison?

Also, a lot of our skills are kind of boring and could use just an aesthetic change. Edit: Oh, the actual question is: Is updating rogue animations and making them more unique especially across specs on the table?
I think that's a totally fair criticism, especially of rogues and to a lesser extent warriors. Melee classes just have fewer opportunities for very showy visuals. We could add them anyway, but then the classes feel like they're casting spells and aren't doing melee attacks with weapons. That said, we have tried to give rogues a few great-looking visual effects in Mists. Longer term (meaning it's unlikely for Mists) we'd like to do more with character animation so that all rogue attacks aren't using the same one-handed stab motion (Mutilate at least has its own animation). Historically, player animations have taken us a very long time, and that time only gets worse as we add races. However, for Mists we have some new techniques that let the animators apply the animation from one model more easily to another. It still takes a great amount of time -- just less than it did before. It is most easy to see the benefits of this advance in all of the new animations for the monk class. It's too early to call that technique a success, but assuming it is, we could do the same thing for rogues and warriors and have a lot more variety in the attack animations. (Animation in this sense has a very specific jargony term, which is the movement of the model itself. All of the spell effects are a different system generally handled by a different team of artists.)

Then why did you make changes to rogue rotations? This is what people are complaining about. Go play Assassination on live and then go play it on beta at 85, then come back and tell us that Assassination is more fun without Puncturing Wounds and Ruthlessness.
Puncturing Wounds is just crit. We can add more crit if we need too (like we recently did for warriors), but it also risks making crit unattractive at high gear levels. "Why did those stupid designers put crit on rogue gear? Don't they know we don't value it?"

Puncturing Wounds (through Seal Fate) and Ruthlessness can deliver more CPs, but also contribute a lot to getting stuck at 4 CPs, which is something rogues have complained to us about, because it means you need to do a weak finisher or risk overflowing CPs on your next Mutilate. In Mists, Assassination does fewer finishers, but at the same time we introduced the Blindside proc to help the rotation from feeling too static.

To use one of my soon to be patented bad analogies; I feel like every expansion is kind of like Winterveil (to not alienate anyone) and all the classes are opening their gifts to see what this expansion is going to bring them. Some are getting entire new mechanics, some are getting new flashy spells and skills, but rogues are getting Auntie Maven's sweater for the 5th time. Sure it's gonna keep you warm and get you by, but you kinda knew you were going to get it and it's certainly not flashy or exciting.
I honestly believe this is one of those grass is greener deals though. As someone who receives class feedback from both barrels (not that I'm complaining), nearly every class argues that they got a lump of coal and the other guy got something awesome. You'll see a few players saying some new ability or talent is awesome, though they'll do so quietly for fear that we think they are content. In fact, I would challenge you to name those classes and specs (not counting monk) that you think got a really good deal in Mists. They'll be here in a second defending their argument that a new spell might appear flashy or sexy but it has Serious Issues or the Real Issues Have Not Been Addressed.

That probably sounds cynical, and I'm honestly not a cynical guy, but it's also what we've come to expect. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

SWTOR Going Free to Play?
It definitely isn't set in stone yet, but SWTOR might be going free to play in the future! After announcing that the game will be free to play until level 15 and allowing free server transfers, lead designer Emmanuel Lusinchi had some interesting things to say in an interview!

Originally Posted by SWTOR
I think it’s more than the free-to-play model – it’s more that there is a lot of competitive offers. If it was just free-to-play games and they weren’t very good it wouldn’t even be a question but there are definitely good games out there and good games coming out, so of course all of this competition impacts your plan with what you want to do.

Asked whether it would be feasible to adapt The Old Republic to a free-to-play model, Lusinchi coyly suggests that the wheels may be in motion for a drastic change.
The MMO market is very dynamic and we need to be dynamic as well. Unless people are happy with what they have, they are constantly demanding updates, new modes and situations. So we are looking at free-to-play but I can’t tell you in much detail. We have to be flexible and adapt to what is going on.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Pandaren Language, PvP Gear Vendors, Female Pandaren Hair, Blue Posts, SWTOR Future started by chaud View original post
Comments 177 Comments
  1. MasterHamster's Avatar
    ;

  1. Schaapa's Avatar
    Blood in the Water(Feral druid talent) was called "Nom nom nom" in Cataclysm beta. So don't get your hopes up that it's staying. It's just a humorous placeholder.
  1. Guavasaur's Avatar
    .. Man, I'm convinced. I'm convinced that even if Blizzard were to give everybody 5k gold come MoP, people would bitch and moan about it. Sheesh, they seriously can't do ANYTHING with this expansion without people complaining for WHATEVER reason.

    Needless to say, I'm excited! I really like the earrings, and the highlights are lookin' real nice.
  1. mmocd12f42ecc6's Avatar
    The PvP Vendors (both of them) are currently missing some DPS agility pieces: belts, bracers and boots.
  1. Throrion's Avatar
    The exapnsion has jokes in it; therefore, it must be a joke!

    Sad to report WoW has been one big joke since 2004 by that logic
  1. MasterHamster's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Throrion View Post
    The exapnsion has jokes in it; therefore, it must be a joke!

    Sad to report WoW has been one big joke since 2004 by that logic
    Indeed, I think the game is nothing but a platform to promote different franchises through various pop-culture references, it's so obvious now!

    (ps, it's OBVIOUSLY just a placeholder, just like the Nom Nom Nom talent. back then they said it was too silly to name a talent after a, hmpf, short lived meme)
  1. Clockwork Pinkie's Avatar
    The highlights are hot. :/ And ToR thinking about going free to play? Whoda thunk it...
  1. Sugarpixie's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Alayea View Post
    I like having additional hairstyles and the highlights for the female pandaren, but why can Blizzard not comprehend that people want variety in facial expressions? That, imho, is more important than having hair highlights (as nice as they are).
    This is something that really annoys me as well. There've been so many threads on the beta forums asking why there's no face variety, and no replies whatsoever. I like what they did to the model, it's great, and all these hairstyles, wonderful, but why can't there be variety? Right now all the female pandaren look like the same individual with a different "paint job."

    What I'd really like to see would be diffent -individuals-. A more pissed off looking pandaren, maybe, or an older looking one. Just.. yeah.. variety, please. :3
  1. DrakeWurrum's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by greyghost View Post
    And regarding SWTOR going F2P until level 15? Not news. WoW's been F2P till 20 for nearly a year now, and Rift's also done the same thing about 4-5 months ago. In fact I wouldn't even call it "F2P Till (low level cap)", just a never-ending game demo. Not really that game-changing/breaking.

    However, what WOULD qualify as game-changing is if SWTOR went FULL F2P. That would definately be worthy of being deigned as 'drastic change' as noted in that snippet there. But knowing that EA would be looking over such a transition, SWTOR wouldn't just go F2P, but it'd likely wind up being Pay-to-Win horsecrap.

    We'll see.
    Worth noting: They could make it so you pay money for the install/account, but no actual sub (i.e. B2P), and then put in a convenience/vanity-items-only cash shop. This is exactly what GW2 will be doing, and other games have done similar models without making it "pay to win" in the past.
  1. F-Minus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Megara View Post
    ^ No, they design the game for themselves. Any developer or artist who starts to listen to media or the fan base goes wrong very quickly.
    To listen to media is dumb, since they're spending time with the game at most a week or less, but listening to your loyal customers can sometimes turn out to be a good idea. Now ofc, you have to filter like an idiot to get to a proper nice suggestion or idea how to change or balance something, but there people who understand the game just as well if not better as developers.

    id Software comes to mind with the Quake series and Quake 3 especially, where the community made quite a few suggestions & changes in from of competitive mods OSP/CPMA which made it into the official point releases (patches) later, and from which the community only gained benefits. If they didn't listen to the community and mod authors, Quake 3 Arena wouldn't have been as popular as it was/is. Same goes for other companies who value their playerbase like Valve and even Blizzard.

    As said, you have to filter through a lot of shit, but some players might know what they talk about, and ofc a MMO is harder to balance as a generic FPS, but some people have it down to understand and see what the problem is and how to fix it, and those people should be heard and their ideas at least considered to be privately tested by Blizzard.

    ---------- Post added 2012-06-15 at 08:47 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by DrakeWurrum View Post
    Worth noting: They could make it so you pay money for the install/account, but no actual sub (i.e. B2P), and then put in a convenience/vanity-items-only cash shop. This is exactly what GW2 will be doing, and other games have done similar models without making it "pay to win" in the past.
    Well, considering GuildWars is not really an MMO aside from the HUB City part and ends up being more like a Diablo game where you only roam with your party or solo, they have less server hardware to worry about and potentially less bandwidth to cover. Diablo 3 is also not sub based, cause there is a ton less costs to run the server as for a true MMO for example, so yes it makes sense for GuildWars to be B2P, and rest being free with micro transactions or DLC as it's popular today. If GuildWars had a sub, nobody would play it.

    Don't really follow GuildWars 2 much, but I guess it's the same principle as GuildWars 1, hub with losts of players, roam out of the hub, you only see people that are in your party, equals not an MMO.
  1. Wargon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by anaxie View Post
    RIP Bioware, say hi to Westwood and Bullfrog when EA dismantles you.
    They wont dismantle Bioware, just make them pump out a new Mass Effect game every year.
  1. silhantcat's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by F-Minus View Post

    Don't really follow GuildWars 2 much, but I guess it's the same principle as GuildWars 1, hub with losts of players, roam out of the hub, you only see people that are in your party, equals not an MMO.
    It's actually going away from that and it will have players in the world zones as well.
  1. mmoc76f50992c4's Avatar
    Best language to date.
    And the hair, colour and ear ring options are really neat! Hope they bring as much customisation to the old races when they get an overhaul.
  1. Taurenburger's Avatar
    I hope that language is a placeholder, the rest is quite nice.
  1. mmocef71e99c15's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Megara View Post
    ^ No, they design the game for themselves. Any developer or artist who starts to listen to media or the fan base goes wrong very quickly.
    Exactly. Design by popular vote is the surest way to stop innovation and fresh ideas, as well as steering the product away from an overall stratety in favour of short-sighted opportunist moves, because the mob will always go for what it already has, and always tend to prefer the conservative option (while hypocritically claiming to want the opposite), or possibly the option that sounds most alluring regardless f long time consequences. That's why the vast majority became part of the consumer majority, not the creative minority in the first place.

    You build it, and people will come - if they like what has been built.
    Or they don't come, and you build something else and try again.
    Most likely though, you build it, and if it is good, some people will come, some won't. That's the nature of creation.

    Asking "hey guys, do you have any ideas for us that we can build for you" might work, but mostly as a publicity stunt. You hardly ever get a usueful result from that. If someone out there actually did have a brilliant idea, they would already be working on it themselves.
  1. Nekovivie's Avatar
    Nom nom nom, nom om om nom.
  1. Sabsy's Avatar
    sadly, if bioware was a bit smarter with pvp and end game, and had cross realm dungeon finder available from day 1.... this game may have done soooo much better :/

    i actually really enjoyed my playthrough from 1 to max level.... but upon reaching max level (loving doing bgs for a few days with friends, and heroic dungeons were fun too) i realized that it's the exact same as wow except with less content :/ and a clunky pvp system

    make kotr3 already bioware
  1. Omedon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by khalypso View Post
    Gotta love all the people hating on the expansion cos it's not "serious" enough. Come on, WoW has never been completely serious. It wouldn't be WoW if it was.
    I'll bite on this.

    Yes, it's a game, it's meant to be fun, and WoW has always been on the lighthearted side, but there has been an increasing violation of a very simple rule that many immersive players, including myself, live by:

    If my character is going to be the butt of a joke, in a situation that I am paying to be entertained, it should be as I choose it, when I choose it, to a degree that I choose it.

    Having an entire expansion with an opening aesthetic of "duh-huh-yuck, bouncy drunks y'all" goes too far. The only way to correct an opening presentation like that is to OVER-correct it, which would likely involve an uncomfortable swerve toward the depressing that is even less appealing.

    At the end of the day, this is all opinion, and exists all in personal subjectivity and I am not entitled to demand Blizzard angle their game to appeal to me in a way that will make me want to immerse in this chapter of their story...

    But they're not entitled to my money, either.
  1. bewbew's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by bregtann View Post
    Exactly. Design by popular vote is the surest way to stop innovation and fresh ideas, as well as steering the product away from an overall stratety in favour of short-sighted opportunist moves, because the mob will always go for what it already has, and always tend to prefer the conservative option (while hypocritically claiming to want the opposite), or possibly the option that sounds most alluring regardless f long time consequences. That's why the vast majority became part of the consumer majority, not the creative minority in the first place.

    You build it, and people will come - if they like what has been built.
    Or they don't come, and you build something else and try again.
    Most likely though, you build it, and if it is good, some people will come, some won't. That's the nature of creation.

    Asking "hey guys, do you have any ideas for us that we can build for you" might work, but mostly as a publicity stunt. You hardly ever get a usueful result from that. If someone out there actually did have a brilliant idea, they would already be working on it themselves.
    This doesn't even make sense, specially applied to a game.

    Of course they should not design the game exclusively with what ideas players voice. However, some of the ideas the players do create are really good, and the fact they listed it doesn't mean it isn't creative. Not every WoW player is in a position to be working on their own MMOs and implementing such ideas there.

    For instance, on the beta forums, there is a rogue that suggested lvl 90 Rogue talents being about modifying your Smoke bomb, and all of the effects are very creative. To assume he could just be working on a MMO of his own and not share the idea just because it's a good one is silly at best.
  1. mmoca6967c3bea's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by koji356303 View Post
    /sigh

    Om nom nom for the pandaren langauge and scene highlights in the female pandaren hairstyles...

    "This expansion is not a joke." - Blizzard

    Getting REALLY hard to not see it as one, guys.
    /nod

    I know right I'm having to open with an in-game emote just to express how disappointed I am, even ending this sentence with the tripple dot...

    "Blizzard have NEVER used anything as a placeholder." - Nik

    Getting REALLY hard to continue to deal with you guys.

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