Warlords Menu, Death Knight and Rogue Tier 17, Horde Garrison, Blue Posts, News Recap

Update (6:50 PM EST): Added Watcher's post about Warlords of Draenor guild levels.

This Week In Review, Funny and Lucky Moments #51

Warlords of Draenor Menu
If you don't follow the news every day, it can be hard to find content after it falls off of the first page. A site specific search can help, but we are also adding a menu to the front page with links to all of the bigger recaps we do. This should make it easier to find content later on.



Warlords of Draenor - Guild Leveling Removed
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
What you're seeing in the current build is a change that's mid-implementation. Since the introduction of the guild system in Cataclysm, the nature of guild leveling and guild perks has shifted from being a reward for dedication and collective effort, to effectively being a penalty and barrier to entry for new guilds. We've made it easier to level guilds over the years, allowing low-level quests to count fully towards guild experience, and removing weekly caps on progress. That helps ease the barriers, but it's more of a band-aid than a true solution to the underlying problem.

Our current plan for Warlords is to effectively remove guild leveling (you could also think of it as "all guilds are automatically level 25"). We originally came up with two dozen perks in order to offer something at every guild level, but without the continued need for that granularity, we can streamline the system a bit. Many perks can just be rolled into default behaviors, since a majority of players already had them and the world was designed and tuned around their existence: Flight path taxis can just inherently move 25% faster instead of requiring "Ride Like the Wind"; Honor rewards and item costs can be balanced as if you had "Honorable Mention"; and so forth. For most players, who are in max-level guilds, nothing should perceptibly change.

We still want to incentivize guild membership, aside from the social benefits, so we're keeping conveniences like faster mount speed, instant guild mail, Mass Resurrection, etc., as exclusive benefits to all guilded players. The guild achievement system, and unlocked items and other benefits through completion of guild achievements, will remain as-is. We'd like to emphasize that system a bit more as a yardstick for collective accomplishment, rather than guild level which primarily just reflects individual effort.

The Cash Flow perk is obviously popular, though in most guilds it actually contributes less gold to the guild bank than something like Guild Challenges, since it only applies to looted coins. However, it also fuels some degenerate player behavior: if you've made an alt lately, you've probably noticed that you can't go more than a minute or two without receiving a guild invite - typically from "leaders" who are looking to recruit armies of often-unwitting players to both level guilds for later sale, and to increase the amount of Cash Flow gold that is siphoned into coffers to which only they have access. It can be a meaningful amount of gold for one player's pockets, but for something like a raiding guild, Cash Flow gold barely makes a dent in something like total repair costs. We're removing the Cash Flow perk in Warlords.

We do recognize that it's essential for guilds to have ways of financing their costs, and we will offer alternative, and more lucrative, options for doing so in Warlords (for example, bringing back some Bind on Equip epic drops in raids).

Warlords of Draenor - Death Knight Tier 17 Armor Set
Today we are taking a look at the Death Knight Tier 17 set, added in the latest alpha build.

Warlords of Draenor changes things up slightly by using one set of art for Raid Finder, one set of art for Normal and Heroic, and one set of art for Mythic difficulty. You can find the Raid Finder armor sets in our Raid Finder armor sets preview.






Warlords of Draenor - Horde Garrison Preview
The latest alpha build updated the Horde Garrison to show the lower level garrison that everyone starts with, which does not initially include an Orgrimmar portal, mine, fishing area, or other areas from our earlier preview.





Warlords of Draenor - Rogue Tier 17 Armor Sets
Our high quality Tier 17 Rogue set preview has been updated to include the previously missing Mythic shoulders.





Warlords of Draenor - Faction Hubs
Lore let us know that the cities in Frostfire Ridge and Shadowmoon Valley haven't had any work done to make them into faction hubs.



Warlords of Draenor Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Warlords of Draenor Theorycraft Discussion
Working on the dummies not showing up on some/all servers. Will try to catch up on this thread again soon; sorry for the slowness. Just swamped this week.

Last time I tested them, those dummies were acting like normal mobs instead traditional dummies; they kept me in combat even after a minute without perform any attacks, instead of allowing me to leave combat 1 or 2 seconds after no combat action done.
Yes, this is intended. You should still be able to run ~50yd away to drop combat.

EDIT: Reason being that there are some occasional wonkinesses related to combat and dummies, and we wanted to avoid all of that for your theorycrafting purposes. They're normal mobs that can't die (well, a couple can), and are permanently stunned.

Specials that are avoided don't give Vengeance/Resolve. It's mostly for a technical reason; auto attacks are much more standardized and so we can just check what the average auto attack would do and based it off of that. Specials can do all kinds of things, so are much harder to reliably handle, and are rare enough that we can handle balancing around them not granting Resolve.

Has weapon normalization changed? How is the damage stat on the character panel caculated? On live it displays the min/max damage of your current weapon after normalization.
Character sheet has not, and still doesn't, include normalization. Character sheet damage should be simply weapon damage + weapon damage from AP.

With the auto applied serpent sting for survival hunters does the first tick go off instantly on each application to make up for imp serpent sting being removed?
Currently, yes, though that's effectively an extra SS tick on every Arcane Shot which is kind of hidden. May simplify it out; the Arcane/Multi itself provides instant damage, so we could tune around that.

The new stat attunements read "You gain 5% more of the X stat from all sources." However, according to the character sheet, this only amplifies ratings. For example, on a Destruction warlock (who is crit attuned), gaining the 5% crit buff increases your crit by 5%, not 5.25%, and using Dark Soul: Instability grants 30% crit, not 31.5%. Is this intended?
Yes. Subtle distinction between the "Critical Strike" stat, and "X% increased critical strike chance". All of the attunements are multipliers on your ratings. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
PvE
So 25man raids award relatively more loot than 10man raids. Is this another way to encourage 25manning?
It's a recognition of the logistical challenge of running a larger group. In Warlords the ratio will be constant for all sizes. (WatcherDev)

Will 20 Mythic bosses drop 4 items or 5?
Most likely 5. (WatcherDev)

Is there max level normal dungeon in Warlords? Currently there aren't any announced for it.
There are 4: Shadowmoon Burial Grounds, Grimrail Depot, UBRS, and "Overgrown Outpost" (name not final). (WatcherDev)

Would like to know this as well. Will N/H flex up to 30?
30 is still the goal for the top-end, pending server performance analysis during beta. (WatcherDev)
Same for Raid Finder? 2 tanks / 8 heals / 20 DPS?
No, Raid Finder will still matchmake for 25, but can scale down as needed if people drop. (WatcherDev)

PvP
Are you guys even balancing BG teams? Facing off against a team of 6 healers with none in your team sucks.
We are but there might be times when we have to ignore that restriction to get a match going. (holinka)

any chance the bg part of the legendary will be removed soon? It's not fun for pve'rs or pvp'ers.
No plans to change the existing Wrathion legendary questline. Definitely lessons learned for the future, though. (WatcherDev)

are u going to balance silvershard mines anytime soon? very horde biased.
how is it horde biased? Alliance can get lava first but never tend to go for it in random for some reason. (holinka)
rated win rates on the map are 50/50. Random tends towards horde even though map is fairly balanced now. (holinka)

conquest gear BoE account Wide?
no chance (holinka)
I think BoA Conq gear isn't a good fix, but I feel zero compromise isn't an option unless you want alts to die.
Tanking MMR will die. I'm not concerned Alts will die. Because I have alts, and I don't tank MMR. (holinka)
The majority of people are not comfortable spending 20 minute dampening games to cap an alt with a 20k cap mid season.
Less than 0.5% of games are 20 minutes long. (holinka)

For myself I can say that I'll never gear up another character that way and cap 25k points with 180 per win. Thats complete madness
I don't tank MMR when I gear up my alts and I've done this on numerous characters. (holinka)
I'm helping friends cap at low mmrs on my mage. We need 4-5 hours to cap around 20k points
I'm sorry, but that does not sound like an outrageous amount of time. (holinka)
How that's not an outrageous amount of time? considering you have NO GEAR and that makes it not fun at all.
4-5 hours to have your character almost fully geared? That's not even a full week of raiding for most people. (holinka)

Professions
Can you make all professions give equal benefits including gathering ones, it is annoying to give up a gathering prof for stats.
That's precisely why we're removing the passive stat perks from professions - pick the prof you want, not the optimal one. (WatcherDev)

Weekly News Recap
Here is your chance to catch up if you missed a day of news this week!

This article was originally published in forum thread: Warlords Menu, Death Knight and Rogue Tier 17, Horde Garrison, Blue Posts, News Recap started by chaud View original post
Published on 2014-06-29 09:54 PM
104 Comments
Comments 104 Comments
  1. Treno's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by BassZ1890 View Post
    Can you give a source? Every Blizzcon 2013 panel is on youtube, surely it would not be too hard to find right? Do you know what panel it was in at the very least?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TKO...ailpage#t=1577 @26:18 he starts talking about Bladespire fortress, @26:30 he calls it the capital city for the expansion.

    @30:00 they talk about Karabor being the Alliance Capital and

    @30:15 - they call both of them the capital we'll work from this expansion.
  1. nekobaka's Avatar
    Nice to see changes to the guild system. Sad to see things like cash flow removed due to leaching dbags. Always a minority that has to ruin the enjoyment of others.
    Quote Originally Posted by cowtongue View Post
    Cash flow removed?

    Wellp. Time to remove any sort of guild repairs for anyone other than raiders next expansion.
    Not sure what you are saying. Repair costs have become fairly trivial over the past few expansions and those who receive the most repair costs are those who receive lots of deaths through PVE. Outside of selling BoEs and raid only craftables for those who can capitalize on the market there is little gold to be gained from raiding and raiding is mostly a consumer of resources that require the support of non-raiding activities. PVP is the only other activity which requires players to support themselves in another activity, but only suffers normal wear and tear durability costs.
  1. Kathranis's Avatar
    Don't mind the removal of guild levels if they effectively retain the important perks for players and keep guild achievements.

    It had gotten to the point where you were better off finding and joining a big level 25 guild rather than making one for yourself and your friends to play around with, which resulted in each server having just a few big leveling guilds and a few progression guilds.
  1. foxHeart's Avatar
    Glad guild perks are gone. Now I can move all my characters from guilds full of people I don't like/know instead of sticking around for guild perks. No more "LF level 25" guild in trade chat. No more greedy asshole GM's profiting off people just looking for the experience bonus for leveling. Guild levels stopped serving a purpose shortly after they were introduced. When guilds all started hitting 25, people started to feel pressured to join guilds. Glad that pressure's going to be gone.
  1. Alayea's Avatar
    I never thought Guild Levels was such a good idea, especially in the first few days of Cataclysm when they had to do a rollback. It puts too much emphasis on being in a guild for the perks instead of being in one because you actually enjoy the people in it. It also plays a part in which players are much more reluctant to leave a guild that they're not satisfied with (speaking from personal experience).

    I also agree with the removal of the Cash Flow guild perk. While there's no way the change will completely do away with those extremely irritating mass-spam guild invites, it will at least give less incentive for some to take advantage of others.
  1. dirtside's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Treno View Post
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TKO...ailpage#t=1577 @26:18 he starts talking about Bladespire fortress, @26:30 he calls it the capital city for the expansion.

    @30:00 they talk about Karabor being the Alliance Capital and

    @30:15 - they call both of them the capital we'll work from this expansion.
    Blizzard has also stressed, countless times, that everything is up in the air and can change at any time while they're developing. Unless you're completely new to how Blizzard does things, making changes like this is par for the course during expansion development, as has been for years. There's a difference between "So Bladespire will basically be your capital city. [months later] Ok we're changing that, actually," and "We promise that this will be your capital city, and this will not change. [months later] Ok we're changing that, actually."

    I'm sure it's disappointing to not have Karabor and Bladespire be the faction capitals, but a lot of the the butthurt reactions (not necessarily yours, don't take this personally) are really overblown. I've seriously lost count of the times—going all the way back to Vanilla beta—when Blizzard made some change, and board posters solemnly proclaimed that this would doom WoW and everyone would quit and go play [Everquest II/Rifts/SW:TOR/Wildstar] instead. And yet, miraculously, WoW is still here.
  1. Byucknah The Red's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Treno View Post
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TKO...ailpage#t=1577 @26:18 he starts talking about Bladespire fortress, @26:30 he calls it the capital city for the expansion.

    @30:00 they talk about Karabor being the Alliance Capital and

    @30:15 - they call both of them the capital we'll work from this expansion.
    Fair enough, I did not remember that. Thank you for the link.
  1. Littleraven's Avatar
    i saw that guild leveling change coming from a mile away. every time they were asked about adding new levels and new perks they kept dancing around it. i dont really feel strongly either way but honestly it WAS a pretty weak system in implementation. on paper it sounds awesome but even IF they kept adding new levels they would eventually just run into the problem we are seeing with abilities now. too much bloat.

    i do however like the idea that guilds are just guilds again. i know im not alone in judging a guild if its not 25. i know its totally superficial but hey. a lot of stuff is.
  1. Treno's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by dirtside View Post
    Blizzard has also stressed, countless times, that everything is up in the air and can change at any time while they're developing. Unless you're completely new to how Blizzard does things, making changes like this is par for the course during expansion development, as has been for years. There's a difference between "So Bladespire will basically be your capital city. [months later] Ok we're changing that, actually," and "We promise that this will be your capital city, and this will not change. [months later] Ok we're changing that, actually."

    I'm sure it's disappointing to not have Karabor and Bladespire be the faction capitals, but a lot of the the butthurt reactions (not necessarily yours, don't take this personally) are really overblown. I've seriously lost count of the times—going all the way back to Vanilla beta—when Blizzard made some change, and board posters solemnly proclaimed that this would doom WoW and everyone would quit and go play [Everquest II/Rifts/SW:TOR/Wildstar] instead. And yet, miraculously, WoW is still here.
    From what I can gather, part of the issue here is that there's a considerable discrepancy in time between their decision to make the bases off of Ashran the capitals and the revelation of such data to the public. Lore's comment that little to no work was actually put into Karabor and Bladespire Fortress to make them capitals eludes to them having changed their minds rather early, quite possibly even before pre-orders went up. If that is the case, then it would mean Blizzard was selling a product on false pretenses. Of course this still relies on enough speculation that I wouldn't hold it to absolute truth, it's just what I've been able to gather from reading over the last day or so.
  1. ben-'s Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Azrile View Post
    If you have even 3 people in your guild, there is no way you aren´t lvl 25 unless you never play those characters.. in which case you are not a guild. I think leveling 3 characters from 85-90 will get an entire guild to 25 as long as you don´t do it by herbing or pet battles.
    Ive leveled more than 3 characters in my guild 85-90 (and multiple other alts) on questing and am only level 13. Guild leveling is a good idea but bad concept as it encourages people to be somewhere they dont want to be. Good riddance
  1. Spotnick's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by GGA1759 View Post
    /10 char bullcrap because with 20 posts it doenst show the posts until it flips to 21. Then it divides it into page 1 and page 2. GJ with the programming MMO
    Just change the page number in the url and you're done.

    - - - Updated - - -

    If they remove cash flow from guilds, I really hope they reintroduced BoE drops in raids so we can fill the guild banks for repairs.
  1. Byucknah The Red's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Spotnick View Post
    Just change the page number in the url and you're done.

    - - - Updated - - -

    If they remove cash flow from guilds, I really hope they reintroduced BoE drops in raids so we can fill the guild banks for repairs.
    If you read the post they say that they are reintroducing BoE epics in raids near the end.
  1. dirtside's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Treno View Post
    From what I can gather, part of the issue here is that there's a considerable discrepancy in time between their decision to make the bases off of Ashran the capitals and the revelation of such data to the public. Lore's comment that little to no work was actually put into Karabor and Bladespire Fortress to make them capitals eludes to them having changed their minds rather early, quite possibly even before pre-orders went up. If that is the case, then it would mean Blizzard was selling a product on false pretenses. Of course this still relies on enough speculation that I wouldn't hold it to absolute truth, it's just what I've been able to gather from reading over the last day or so.
    It's plausible, but unlikely at best. Placing vendors and such (the things that make an area a city) is almost certainly something they do near the end of development. They have to build the mesh geometry of the whole place first; placing vendors and such would by necessity have to happen later. Furthermore, the final decision to make this change may not have happened until recently, if it was under discussion for a while.

    February: "Let's not start putting NPCs in there yet... we're talking about moving the faction capital somewhere else."
    Feb-May: *internal conversations about where the capitals should be*
    May: "Okay, we're going to move the faction capitals to bases outside Ashran. Let's work out how we're going to release this info in a way designed to minimize people going batshit."
    June: *info release happens, everyone flips out*

    Blizzard has given plenty of warning that anything can change during development. If someone wanted to buy a copy as soon as possible, knowing full well that things might change, that's really not Blizzard's problem. (And let's face it; anyone who bought the pre-sale copy a couple of months ago is not likely someone who's going to change their mind about buying WoD. If they were on the fence, why did they buy a copy so early? It's the hardcore fans who buy early. Blizzard would have gotten those sales either way.)

    The idea that they nefariously planned to bait-and-switch is, frankly, laughable. For one thing, the location of the faction capitals in an expansion is not, itself, a particularly strong driver for purchases. (There's not a lot of people who would say, "Eh, I'm not going to buy this expansion... wait, the Alliance capital is Karabor? Sold!") This isn't to say that it wouldn't be a factor among other things (enough cool points might be enough to sway someone who was on the fence), but Blizzard is not historically in the habit of trying to trick people into buying their games. (Why would they need to be?) The worst plausible scenario is that they were too optimistic about what they planned to do, and didn't couch it in enough "but this might change" warnings. And frankly, anyone who would actually care that Karabor is no longer the Alliance city should know full well that Blizzard might change things.

    Franky, I'm surprised that Blizzard releases as much info as they do during development. They know full well (from years of experience) that whiners on the Internet will complain about changes, pretty much no matter what happens. And if they don't announce anything, then people whine nonstop that they're not releasing any "real" info. They can't win either way. The alternative to the current situation is that they just don't tell us anything until it's all finalized. (Which wouldn't bother me at all. I don't know why people expect video game development to provide a constant stream of information about the upcoming content. If movies did this... imagine seeing script pages released every few weeks for an upcoming Marvel movie. That would do nothing but ruin it. I know there are whole sites dedicated to "leaking" (aka spoiling) as much info as possible about upcoming movies, and I avoid them like the plague.)
  1. Jarsham's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Alayea View Post
    I never thought Guild Levels was such a good idea, especially in the first few days of Cataclysm when they had to do a rollback. It puts too much emphasis on being in a guild for the perks instead of being in one because you actually enjoy the people in it. It also plays a part in which players are much more reluctant to leave a guild that they're not satisfied with (speaking from personal experience).

    I also agree with the removal of the Cash Flow guild perk. While there's no way the change will completely do away with those extremely irritating mass-spam guild invites, it will at least give less incentive for some to take advantage of others.

    If you check "Block Guild Invites" you don't get them. I think its a crappy idea to get rid of the perks after guilds spend so much time grinding to get them. They already removed the "Guild Summon" And "Chug-a-lug"
    And being in a guild to enjoy the people in it has nothing to do with the other (emphasis on guild perks) that is why there are so many guilds to choose from pick the guild that suits you.
  1. Stellan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Azrile View Post
    If you have even 3 people in your guild, there is no way you aren´t lvl 25 unless you never play those characters.. in which case you are not a guild. I think leveling 3 characters from 85-90 will get an entire guild to 25 as long as you don´t do it by herbing or pet battles.
    It takes considerably more than that. I have a level 25 alt guild and it took me multiple alt levelings. I really didn't get it all the way to level 25 until my realm was connected to another realm and I got an extra 11 toons I could roll and add to the guild.
  1. Nathiest's Avatar
    The Cash Flow perk kept my non-raiding ass in the guild. With out it... I'm fucked.
  1. Stormykitten's Avatar
    I always feel like they try too hard to not make it look like class sets for variety sometimes. DK, rogue, is the top contenders I can think of. Easy to picture what type of armour they'd have, but oftentimes the sets are just straying from the idea of deathly plate or sleek leathers way too much.
  1. Alayea's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Jarsham View Post
    If you check "Block Guild Invites" you don't get them. I think its a crappy idea to get rid of the perks after guilds spend so much time grinding to get them. They already removed the "Guild Summon" And "Chug-a-lug"
    And being in a guild to enjoy the people in it has nothing to do with the other (emphasis on guild perks) that is why there are so many guilds to choose from pick the guild that suits you.
    1.) I know about the block ginvite checkbox, still doesn't change what I stated.

    2.) Blizzard is only getting rid of Cash Flow, not all perks. (I still miss "Have Group, Will Summon" though.)

    3.) Guild levels do have an effect on player behavior. I have seen it myself, I have heard stories from others in cross-realms, I have read about it on websites other than MMO-C. Perhaps your experience has been otherwise, but you're kidding yourself if you think that guild levels didn't factor at all into choices made by players.
  1. Sacrelis's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Alayea View Post
    3.) Guild levels do have an effect on player behavior. I have seen it myself, I have heard stories from others in cross-realms, I have read about it on websites other than MMO-C. Perhaps your experience has been otherwise, but you're kidding yourself if you think that guild levels didn't factor at all into choices made by players.
    Oh how I love those "LF Leveling Guild, Guild level X minimum" shouts in trade and who can forget recruiting for raiders...oh who am I kidding, raiders all instinctively avoid guilds below max level.
  1. mmocf77227e8ed's Avatar
    Good riddance, guild levels. The experience perk especially was ridiculous. Maybe the spam invites will finally stop and guilds will become actually social again.

    Although, this one gives more fuel to the fire for the "everything is removed in WoD" clan.
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