MMO-Champion - Paladin and Priest Challenge Mode Gear, Dev Interviews, Blue Posts, Blizzard News

Paladin and Priest Challenge Mode Gear, Dev Interviews, Blue Posts, Blizzard News

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Paladin and Priest Challenge Mode Gear Procs
Tonight we take a look at a little bit more flare for the Challenge Mode gear! Each set has a special proc that will go off during combat or other actions. Some of the sets even have multiple procs or slight variations depending on what you are casting.

You can find the Challenge Mode set previews on our Challenge Mode Gear page, found in the menu in the navbar. Each class has a proc for their set, so keep checking back to see your class's set!





Developer Interviews
The developers are doing interviews as we get closers to launch, so here is a recap from the first few. Thanks to ArenaJunkies, Gamespy, and wowcrendor.

Quests
  • Patch 5.1 will release "shortly after the game is out".
  • Phasing is only used for major events in Mists of Pandaria.
  • You can see your friends while in a different phase and each of you will see a different phase.
  • It will take a raid of roughly 40 players to take down the Sha of Anger. He will appear in different areas of the zone and change what is spawned around him.
  • Scenarios are a replacement for group quests that you won't have to wait in queue for a long time for.
  • Challenge Modes will require you to be on the same server as other players. (This conflicts with Ghostcrawler's tweet)
  • Questing is less linear and you should be able to skip some of the quest hubs without missing too much of the story. Jade Forest is more linear than the rest of the zones.
  • The daily quests that are available change every day and change based on your reputation with the faction.
  • You have a NPC companion that fights alongside you when doing Shado-pan daily quests.
  • Cataclysm was more content than had ever been done before because of the 1 to 60 revamp, but many people just looked at the 80 to 85 experience.

PvP
  • Blizzard follows the player run and professional tournaments, but realizes that it is a hard to watch eSport and is hard to watch. It isn't likely that arenas will be as popular as Starcraft ever, but the goal is to make them fun for the players are are interested in playing.
  • The addition of a tournament UI is still on the list of things that would be nice to do as soon as there is development time for it.
  • Rating decay may not be the best solution, especially during longer patches like 4.3 when people may not be interested in playing every week. Players should play because they enjoy it and not avoid playing because they might lose rating.
  • The current rewards system is working well and the improvements to PvP gear through PvP Power and Resilience should make the gear more attractive.
  • The battleground queuing system is old and could use work, it may take advantage of the LFD system and perform faster and smarter in the future. This could include queuing with groups to fight other premades.
  • Blizzard believes that the PvP weapons will be stronger than the heroic PvE weapons due to the PvP stat changes.
  • Many players are worried that overpowered abilities will allow players to reach high rating within the first two weeks and camp it for the rest of the season. Whether or not Blizzard makes huge sweeping changes is just going to depend on the magnitude of the problem, as it really upsets players and can seem unfair after they have already formed teams and started playing.

Ghostcrawler (Misc)
  • If Ghostcrawler could change one thing about Cataclysm, he would move all the zones into one continent. The teleporting between zones didn't feel like WoW should.
  • Cross-Realm zones were designed to fix lower level zones that are dead, not low population realms. The game isn't likely to support people that want to opt out of Cross-Realm zones.
  • A Cross-Realm Auction House has been talked about, but it would be hard to do it right and dynamically. It is something being considering for the lowest population realms though.
  • Cooking has been improved for Mists of Pandaria. Similar changes might come to other professions depending on player feedback.
  • Fishing still isn't where it should be. Making it more like minigame or adding more complexity to the system might be solutions in the future.
  • Burning Crusade raid progression went through all of the content, but Wrath of the Lich King made old raids obsolete quickly after each patch. Mists of Pandaria uses Raid Finder to keep older content relevant to gear up alts for new content.
  • Gearing up was too fast for alts or people returning in Cataclysm and WotLK, so in Mists of Pandaria characters that are still working on normal modes when a new raid tier comes out should want to still complete the final bosses before moving on to the new raid. Burning Crusade took too long to gear up new players, making it necessary for them to go through all of the old raids.
  • Players expected Theramore to be a big event, rather than a preview of how the Scenario system works. It was a systems preview and not an event.
  • Scenarios have no tank, so you have to rely on your own skills a little bit more compared to dungeons and raids.
  • Making challenge modes for raids is difficult because of length of raids compared to dungeons. They also make trash important, as it is much more difficult in challenge mode. Even in heroic difficulty raids the trash isn't very difficult.


Battle Chest and Wrath of the Lich King - Together at Last!
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Haven’t yet ventured to the frozen reaches of Northrend? Beginning today, September 19, players are now able to get the original World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade, and Wrath of the Lich King for only $19.99 (EU: €14.99) as part of the newly upgraded digital Battle Chest, available now on Battle.net. In addition, all World of Warcraft subscribers will now automatically have access to all of the content and features of both The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, even if they never purchased either expansion, at no additional cost.

It’s time to sail north, adventurer — the Lich King awaits!

Your Guided Tour Behind the Mists of Pandaria
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We’ve been hard at work preparing one of Azeroth’s biggest content updates, and giving you even more gameplay options in World of Warcraft than ever before. See for yourself what the latest expansion, Mists of Pandaria, has to offer in our most recent Twelve-Day Journey Into Mists of Pandaria Facebook campaign. The video provides a complete overview showcasing eight zones, seven scenarios, nine dungeons, three raids, two battlegrounds, one arena, 300 daily quests, monks, pirate monkeys, and so much more!

Head over now and if you like what you see, be sure to “Like” it on Facebook and share it with your friends, guildmates, vague acquaintances, random strangers, and anyone else you think would enjoy seeing some of the wonders that lie waiting behind the Mists of Pandaria.



Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Cross Realm Fishing Derby
We’ve looked into this issue and have a fix in the works to make the fishing tournaments behave in a more predictable manner. Unfortunately, this will require a patch in order to take effect, so we are disabling the fishing tournaments until we can deliver the fix for them in a future patch.

As a side-note: we’ll be posting about some larger CRZ concerns in the very near future, so hang in there. We’re listening, and we’re working to address those concerns just as quickly as we can. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Stormstout Brewery Challenge Mode
Our thanks and congratulations go out to all of you who tested the Stormstout Brewery Challenge Mode with us. Here are the top six times we recorded on the beta servers:

#1. Time: 14:49.1
#2. Time: 16:40.6
#3. Time: 18:34.4
#4. Time: 20:57.9
#5. Time: 28:13.7
#6. Time: 30:19.2 (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Scenario Difficulty
Just read a quick word on scenarios @ mmo from blizzard twitter, where i became rather.. confused by a certain statement

"Scenarios aren't intended to be particularly challenging endgame content. Similar to old group quests"

No one is asking for endgame content difficulty, however facerolling through trash for 5 minutes can't be considered challenging in any way. Old group quests such as ring of blood in nagrand actually required certain tactics back in burning crusade, you couldnt just faceroll the elite mobs, some had certain tactics, one ressurected, one absorbed spelldamage and did more damage to the tank ect.. none of this exists in the theramore scenario.

We agree that Theramore's Fall was too easy, which is why we have increased the HP of all enemies in this scenario through a recent hotfix. It is not our intent that scenarios should be steamrolled like what we saw with the release of Theramore's Fall.

It should be said that scenarios in Mists of Pandaria will be more tuned for players in quest gear and dungeon blues, and as such will not be tailored for players in raid gear. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Challenging Content In Mists of Pandaira
Regarding challenge modes specifically, there're a few bits of information that the developers have commented over the past days on live chats and social media, which I believe might be interesting for you:

  • Challenge modes have no lockout (so you can try them as many times as you want in a single day).
  • These are harder than level 90 heroics, you can't outgear them (gear will be normalized inside), and certain things, such as set bonuses will not work. Trinkets do, though. At least for now.
  • The developers hope that the time required to get "gold" in challenge dungeons is similar to achieving Gladiator in PVP. Meaning, someone sporting a whole set of challenge gear should be akin to seeing someone in a Gladiator mount.

The theory is that challenge modes will fill this niché, but if past experience is anything to go by it will either be too easy or will be subjected to nerfs. Still, can always hope.
The developers have commented this several times. They do expect that most players will be able to achieve Bronze as long as they play properly. Silver is a step up in that regard, but you might still be able to stop and consider your next move before further progressing on the instance.

And finally, the design philosophy for challenge dungeons is so that the developers don't intend to lower the bar to get silver/gold.

Problem with challenge mode is it is restricted to 5 man. 25man guilds will have to pick the best and make groups. If this was in raiding part of wow then yes players would be happy.
Well, on raiding, as it's been mentioned on the thread, you'll be awarded a Feat of Strength for defeating the final bosses of each raid instance without the debuff. And the Protectors of the Endless encounter in Terrace of Endless Spring has even better loot if you defeat Protector Kaolan last (which makes the encounter harder, in a similar way as it happened with the Iron Council in Ulduar depending on your kill order). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mists of Pandaria Characters
Blizzard is displaying some information about Mists of Pandaria characters on their Facebook page.



Blizzard Games News
Lindsay returns to update us on Diablo 3, the Worlds Inc. Lawsuit against Blizzard, and Mists of Pandaria.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Paladin and Priest Challenge Mode Gear, Dev Interviews, Blue Posts, Blizzard News started by chaud View original post
Published on 2012-09-20 06:28 AM
78 Comments
Comments 78 Comments
  1. moveth's Avatar
    The Challenge Mode times seem awesome. The fact that the 1st time and 6th time are nearly double/half of each other makes me think that some comps might be dominating though
  1. Galeos's Avatar
    Who is this new girl from Curse :$
  1. Alixie's Avatar
    Cast
    *scratch scratch scratch*
    Cast
    *scratch scratch scratch*
    Cast
    *scratch scratch scratch*

    Dont use cows anymore for previews...
  1. ProfessorTjc's Avatar
    Challenge mode armor for Pallies is looking mighty awesome. On another note Blizzard is getting sued by Worlds Inc. for violating the patent "system and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space". Cool I will patent "The method for disposing of body waste from your Male/Female gland or butt." and if I win I get lots of money too.
  1. 93sika's Avatar
    The still picture of the Curse video is a tad scary D : !
  1. Lypo's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Alixie View Post
    Cast
    *scratch scratch scratch*
    Cast
    *scratch scratch scratch*
    Cast
    *scratch scratch scratch*

    Dont use cows anymore for previews...
    Agreed. Armor looks so terrible on Taurens.
  1. Numsefisk's Avatar
    Activision Blizzard getting sued again.... What a surprise -_-
  1. Stormreage's Avatar
    That looks so cool but why did you use a tauren priest
  1. 93sika's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Stormreage View Post
    That looks so cool but why did you use a tauren priest
    I'd like to think the Tauren is being used to show the effects the best - as their shoulderpads and belts are all a ton bigger than any other race =)!
  1. Ryme's Avatar
    Paladin set looks amazing, the priest set looked good, until you went shadow, then all I could see was this face O_O lighting up all the time.
  1. Banzhe's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Galeos View Post
    Who is this new girl from Curse :$
    Can't say, all I can say is that this is the first time I've cared to watch the curse news (Wouldn't mind a bit less; Blizzard got served)
  1. Descense's Avatar
    Hm i read the article and i stil dont understand what they are suing abauth. Something abauth server thingy and how many players can play together or something. Any1 got a wiki link that explains this technology (but i think it has to do something with blizzard cross realm world thingy).
  1. lios's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Descense View Post
    Hm i read the article and i stil dont understand what they are suing abauth. Something abauth server thingy and how many players can play together or something. Any1 got a wiki link that explains this technology (but i think it has to do something with blizzard cross realm world thingy).
    'About'

    OT: Everyone is getting great visual effects and all hunters get is their shoulder catching on fire. It's hideous The whole set is, actually, but the visual effect is even worse. I might make my mage my challenge mode main. That set looks very good.
  1. Kuja's Avatar
    Pico got booted? About time :P This girl's so much better.
  1. Domiku's Avatar
    I'm not normally one for caring who is a video host as long as they are good and easy to understand. Pico was horrid, she was ugly, awkward to watch and ginger.. I could go on but I CBA encase she reads this.

    The new chick seams more professional also she is not ginger and just a joy to watch.

    I hope she is the new host for good and this is not just pico on holiday temp thing.
  1. Getreuer's Avatar
    Ghostcrawler (Misc)

    Someboy have listened to wowcrendors interview :P
  1. Dajmedol's Avatar
    The challenge sets are screaming : "Hey! Look at me, I'm a street lamp!"
  1. Stormykitten's Avatar
    Ah, the venom some cast about them without care...

    Anyway, liked the paladin set - but the priest one, it was almost disturbingly annoying that the glow didn't turn into a shadow one for shadow spells.
  1. Aveline's Avatar
    I only see the paladin set proc on both videos? Even the priest one starts rolling the paladin preview.
  1. Kipling's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Domiku View Post
    I'm not normally one for caring who is a video host as long as they are good and easy to understand. Pico was horrid, she was ugly, awkward to watch and ginger.. I could go on but I CBA encase she reads this.

    The new chick seams more professional also she is not ginger and just a joy to watch.

    I hope she is the new host for good and this is not just pico on holiday temp thing.
    I always thought pico was kinda hot =p

    OT priest set looks good, looking forward to working towards that on my new priest main. although i kinda thought the shadow spells should've had a shadow effect rather than holy . . .

    i dont really get why paladin melee abilities have a different effect . . .
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