Developer Journal: Multiplayer Improvements

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Patch 5.3 PTR Notes Update - April 2

Patch 5.3 - Blood in the Snow Scenario Intro
Some of the new scenarios in Patch 5.3 will have an intro by Lorewalker Cho, starting with Blood in the Snow. Unfortunately the new scenarios are still not open for testing, so you cannot progress further than this one yet.



Patch 5.3 - Tyrannical Gladiator's Greatcloak
Another PvP vanity item appeared in a recent PTR build, the Tyrannical Gladiator's Greatcloak.



Warcraft April Fools
Zarhym addressed the lack of a Warcraft April Fools joke this year today.



Patch 5.2 Hotfixes: April 2
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
General

Quests
  • To the Skies!: Fixed an issue where players would remain on Thunderwing and be unable to progress to Stage 3.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
  • Throne of Thunder
    • Assassination Rogues should no longer be receiving non-dagger agility weapons from bonus rolls and Raid Finder.
    • Vampiric Cave Bat now deals less damage in Raid Finder difficulty.
    • Durumu the Forgotten
      • Eye Sore and Mind Daggers now deal less damage on Raid Finder difficulty.
      • Amber Fog, Azure Fog, and Crimson Fog now remain visible after being revealed on Raid Finder difficulty.

Items

Ask the Devs - Upcoming PvP changes
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Current Status
LOCKED — Questions and voting will begin soon.

Topic
The topic for this Ask the Devs is, “PvP changes on the PTR”.
Be sure to stay on topic, as questions that stray from this won't be answered.

How it works:
  • Voting will begin on 09/04/13 and end on 11/04/13.
  • The thread will be open for 48 hours, after which time it will be locked and you’ll no longer be able to post or vote for questions to be sent to the developers.
  • Once the thread has been locked, we’ll tally up the votes and send the top questions off to the World of Warcraft developers.
  • We’ll provide answers directly from the developers during the following week. Watch the blog for their responses!

The Rules:
  • There’s a limit of one question per post.
  • Stay on topic. Questions that are not related to the chosen topic will not be sent to the developers, even if they’re rated highly.
  • Only post questions in the Ask the Devs thread – discussions are not permitted. If you would like to discuss the questions or a related matter, please do so in another thread.
  • A question being highly rated does not guarantee that it will be answered. We will, however, try to get as many questions answered as possible.
  • “Disliking” a post will not count toward its tally. Only “likes” will be counted.

Some Tips:
  • Don’t post or vote for questions that you know we cannot or will not answer. This Q&A is designed to give you more insight into the changes that are happening on the PTR, not to make announcements about future projects, expansions, or release dates. This includes questions not related to the Ask the Devs topic.
  • Make your questions as short and concise as possible so that they’re easy to understand for us and other players.
  • “Like” a post if you’d like to vote for it. Don’t bother “disliking” a post, as this will not influence our decision on which questions are sent to the developers.
  • Vote for any of the questions you’d like to see answered, but keep in mind the above tips.

Small Client Patches
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
As you may have noticed there have been a few small patches being downloaded and installed by the World of Warcraft launcher. These are part of a new bit of tech we’ve been testing that allows us to quickly release small client-side patches without needing to build and release a large scale patch. These allow us to now make client-side changes quickly and easily, very similar to the server-side hotfixes we’ve become used to for all these years. We treat them the same as server-side hotfixes, so they’ll be noted in the usual hotfix blog as it’s updated.

Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
UI / Addons
Hey Greg! Any chance you guys are going to break Feat of Strengths into subcategories? I currently have 55 and It overwhelms.
Gratz! We think our achievement UI needs some work, including filtering. (Source)

need to make ui able to see absorbs from ss,da, & pws to let me know when they are capped to make sure I dont overuse.
You can see absorbs in 5.2. You can't see their caps because we couldn't solve that to our liking but mods might. (Source)

Yo GC, would love to see a in game tabard u.i similar to titles. Drop down menu > tabard > check to equip or display none.
Agree. We just have to solve a few that have a clicky effect like teleports. (Source)

If you can redesign WoW from scratch, do you still think it's good to support custom addons?
Yes, though we might have aimed more for supporting more customization and less automation. (Source)

Guild Wars 2 Aprils Fools
The team went all out with an 8 bit style 3D world full of jumping puzzles and adventure! You can see GW2Guru's writeup here for more details, or watch the video below.



This article was originally published in forum thread: Blood in the Snow Scenario Intro, PvP Vanity Cloak, April 2 Hotfixes, GW2 April Fools started by chaud View original post
Comments 60 Comments
  1. Magellann's Avatar
    Is it just me or are eggs a problem every year of Noblegarden? Glad I did that crap 4 years ago.
  1. Rapti's Avatar
    Blizz 0:1 Anet when it comes to Aprils fools. Poor excuse on Blizz side... what real content? Where is it?
  1. Nibi's Avatar
    the GW2 Super Adventure Box thing is brilliant


    Lots of fun and i hope they expand on it rather than just being a joke they put in
  1. Pebrocks The Warlock's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rapti View Post
    Blizz 0:1 Anet when it comes to Aprils fools. Poor excuse on Blizz side... what real content? Where is it?
    It's on the PTR and in 5.4.

    I sort of understand why they didn't do a April Fools joke. While I am sad that they didn't do one, I understand it at least.
  1. mmoc52fe769775's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rapti View Post
    Blizz 0:1 Anet when it comes to Aprils fools. Poor excuse on Blizz side... what real content? Where is it?
    I think that still leaves Blizz rather far out in front when it comes to ''Quality of game''. Are you really going to ballache that we didn't get another fake blog about something likely to only be half funny at best?
  1. hunteromg's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rapti View Post
    Blizz 0:1 Anet when it comes to Aprils fools. Poor excuse on Blizz side... what real content? Where is it?
    i am sure you run out of dailes so they need to produce more
  1. Kaleredar's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rapti View Post
    Blizz 0:1 Anet when it comes to Aprils fools. Poor excuse on Blizz side... what real content? Where is it?
    Well, Blizzard HAS done 10 years of April fools jokes, so....


    yeah...
  1. StGank's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rapti View Post
    Blizz 0:1 Anet when it comes to Aprils fools. Poor excuse on Blizz side... what real content? Where is it?
    Why? You believe that jokes don't require additional work? Plenty of real content, if you haven't noticed 5.2 barely came out and 5.3 is already on the PTR and 5.4 will surely follow suite soon enough. I would much rather have Blizzard working on making good on that promise for faster patches than some waste of time jokes just so a couple of people could get their jollies. Plenty of other websites and developers had their 'jokes' some more disruptive than others, go look those up if you care about jokes that much.

    Also... vanity cloak? Really? Cloaks look goofy on half the races and as far as that one goes, its nothing special. Half the people don't have cloaks turned on, and even if they did, most people wouldn't recognize the look of the cloak because, it's a cloak and isn't that the whole point of the 'vanity' items. Recognition.
  1. Slutty's Avatar
    I sort of understand why they didn't do a April Fools joke. While I am sad that they didn't do one, I understand it at least.
    What about the Ghostcrawler Clippo ripoff? or is that there all the time?
  1. Pebrocks The Warlock's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Slutty View Post
    What about the Ghostcrawler Clippo ripoff? or is that there all the time?
    He's been here the last few times. It doesn't take much to reuse something like him, which I wish he was there everyday.
  1. miguelcrespo85's Avatar
    wait So the Dark ranger class was real?
  1. Jeego's Avatar
    Blizzard makes April Fools joke -> QQ Blizzard isn't spending time on actual content and doesn't care about players.

    Blizzard doesn't make April Fools joke -> QQ Blizzard didn't so anything for April Fools and they don't care about players.
  1. Pebrocks The Warlock's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by miguelcrespo85 View Post
    wait So the Dark ranger class was real?
    It was fan made photoshop. Never take anything posted on the first seriously.
  1. miguelcrespo85's Avatar
    ahh ok, i thought it was real >< ll
  1. Suwide's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rapti View Post
    Blizz 0:1 Anet when it comes to Aprils fools. Poor excuse on Blizz side... what real content? Where is it?
    trolololololol, not enough content currently? not enough content coming? and then rather would like to have them doing useless april fool jokes, some are just here for trolling or are just plain braindead.
  1. Ieatsouls's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaleredar View Post
    Well, Blizzard HAS done 10 years of April fools jokes, so....


    yeah...
    You might want to look back at everything ANET did in Guild Wars 1. This isn't their 1st time doing something either
  1. Nerraw's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rapti View Post
    Blizz 0:1 Anet when it comes to Aprils fools. Poor excuse on Blizz side... what real content? Where is it?
    I'm guessing the fastest content patches in the history of the game doesn't count as content.
  1. Yunru's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by StGank View Post
    Why? You believe that jokes don't require additional work? Plenty of real content, if you haven't noticed 5.2 barely came out and 5.3 is already on the PTR and 5.4 will surely follow suite soon enough. I would much rather have Blizzard working on making good on that promise for faster patches than some waste of time jokes just so a couple of people could get their jollies. Plenty of other websites and developers had their 'jokes' some more disruptive than others, go look those up if you care about jokes that much.

    Also... vanity cloak? Really? Cloaks look goofy on half the races and as far as that one goes, its nothing special. Half the people don't have cloaks turned on, and even if they did, most people wouldn't recognize the look of the cloak because, it's a cloak and isn't that the whole point of the 'vanity' items. Recognition.
    You dont need more than 5 min too make 1. 3 years ago i made 1 2 years ago i made 2 , last year i made 1 and this year i made 3. (+2 if you count other mmo games)
  1. Swizzle's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rapti View Post
    Blizz 0:1 Anet when it comes to Aprils fools. Poor excuse on Blizz side... what real content? Where is it?
    When Arena.net has an Arenacon equitable to Blizzcon, then we can talk about equitable allocation of resources.
  1. greyghost's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaleredar View Post
    Well, Blizzard HAS done 10 years of April fools jokes, so....


    yeah...
    So has ArenaNet.

    What, you didn't think there was a "GuildWars 1"? GuildWars has ALWAYS had fun and brilliantly effective April Fool's jokes every year, and this is from someone who's played both GW and WoW for years and years. ArenaNet always has just done this better, period.


    Quote Originally Posted by Suwide View Post
    trolololololol, not enough content currently? not enough content coming? and then rather would like to have them doing useless april fool jokes, some are just here for trolling or are just plain braindead.
    Yeah, putting in a 3-level dungeon and whole weapon set while also releasing a whole weapon set just a one week previous, AND had been doing substantial content patches monthly since January?

    The braindead person is the one who's only played just the one game and runs their mouth about what they want to believe is happening elsewhere.

    Quote Originally Posted by I-Swizzle-I View Post
    When Arena.net has an Arenacon equitable to Blizzcon, then we can talk about equitable allocation of resources.
    As someone who's been to Blizzcon? Like, really, I've been to Blizzcon?

    No.

    Stop man.

    That's not even what's being compared here. So I don't even know why you think "Oh blizz puts zero effort into April Fool's days jokes compared to x company but at least we have our own Convention!!!" is a good argument. What's being compared here is "One game company invested time in a project they felt was fun and would be great to play around in for a short while while another one delegates 2-3 people on the art team to make a silly webpage and silly writeup, for the 4th time in a row."

    Have you seen the other newspost from yesterday where ElvUI had its joke? A user interface mod writer team made a more visible & visceral April Fool's joke than Blizzard did. Imagine if Blizzard ever took the time to make it so that suddenly your UI began to dance in-game? Or if everyone was cosmetically race-swapped for 24 hours? ANYTHING in game, where all it takes is just a bit of time for the coders and art team to do something silly to share wit fans, and not just some equivalent of a banner on the wall outside of the themepark.

    And secondly? Blizzcon is a crapfest compared to actual gaming conventions, ie PAX. It was great at the beginning when there was more space and emphasis on community stuff (artist galleries, for example) but in 2011 it was like walking through a giant Blizzard commercial. Blizzcon didn't happen in 2012 because having Blizzcon in a year where they have no new expansions to announce is a waste of time financially and logistically, which is point proven that they really don't care about it being a fun annual gathering for fans anymore. It's rather depressing to think about, really. Just don't use it as a "WELL THIS IS BETTER BECUZ--" because anyone who actually goes to conventions is just gonna shake their head at you and laugh.


    TL;DR, coming from one of those weird people who managed to have the capacity to like more than one MMO?

    WoW has its good things. And GW2 has its good things. Just on April Fool's, GW2 did something better. Deal with it.

    If it really hurts your feelings that badly, just keep in mind that RIFT is still an overhyped failure of a game. We can all point and laugh at RIFT together.

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