Depth Diggers Changes Explained, Fetish Counters, Tempest Rush Changes, Paragon Levels on UEE, Play Your Way Thursdays

Naxxramas Not Releasing on July 15th, Heroic Card Back to be Shown Before Naxxramas

Into the Nexus #12, Authentication Maintenance - July 16th

Warlords of Draenor - Darker Nights
The darker nights that Mumper mentioned recently appeared in a few locations in Beta. Below we have a few examples of day time from beta, nighttime from live, and night time from beta. The video also shows a complete day/night cycle for each location.








Chris Hardwick Hosting Blizzcon 2014 Contests
Jay Mohr has been hosting the contests at Blizzcon for several years now, but according to him Chris Hardwick will be giving it a shot this year. Hardwick has recently been hosting the Talking Dead and The Nerdist Podcast.



The Gaze of the Black Prince Returns
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Beginning Tuesday, July 15 at 9:00 a.m. PDT, through Tuesday, July 29 at 9:00 a.m. PDT, we’ll be applying the Gaze of the Black Prince buff which will increase the reputation gained with the Black Prince by 100%. It will also increase the chance of obtaining items from his foes needed as a part of the Legendary Cloak quest line including: the Secrets of the Empire, Sigil of Wisdom, Sigil of Power, or Titan Runestone.

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Warlords of Draenor Theorycraft Discussion
It's me or Crackling Jade Lightning in Stance of the Wise Serpent with Jade Serpent Statue don't proc Eminence (Statue) ? Is it intentional?
Yes, Eminence only works for the Monk in Crane Stance. (Xuen still causes Eminence regardless of the Monk's stance)

1. For stat calculating purposes, how does the Night Elf racial Touch of Elune determine whether its currently night or day?
Server time.

Possible to get current proc rates/data on the various new weapon enchants?
They're extremely untuned still. Once we get them at least ballpark tuned, I'll provide that data. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Classes
Any chance Combo Points can update a bit faster than they currently do?
Yes! (Celestalon)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
still looking for Hunter changes. 3 BA's on premade 100 and only 1 single proc of LnL.
Of course, because you're not Multistrike geared yet. (Celestalon)

Monk (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Have BrM monks received all the ability pruning they are gonna get...they still seem to have a lot of buttons&redundant skills?
No more major changes planned there, no. (Celestalon)

Priest (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Healing beta. Priest. Should I start treating flash heal as greater heal, not flash heal? In usage amounts, comparing early Cata
Kind of. It's similar in that it's your high-throughput heal. (Celestalon)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Can multistrike proc Lightning Strike & Eruption too? 1 Lava Beam w/ 2 multistrikes gen 15 charges = 5 eruptions from 1 cast?
Nope. (Celestalon)
Shame, could've looked pretty awesome to see a few go off at the same time
Oh you definitely can see a couple go off at the same time, just on different targets. (Celestalon)
That's great, it looks very aesthetically pleasing. Was secretly hoping to see it rather frequently
Get a bunch of Mastery and spam Chain Lightning; it'll be frequent. (Celestalon)

Now that Elemental has no overload will our spell damage be increased to compensate?
Elemental did not lose Overload; it got merged with Multistrike. (Celestalon)
But everybody has Multistrike will all classes be balanced around the possibility to "overload"?
Elemental's Multistrikes are different; much stronger. (Celestalon)
(But yes, all classes will be balanced around the existence of Multistrike.) (Celestalon)

Earth Shield does not seem to have an internal CD on procs in the WoD beta. Sometimes gone in a couple of GCDs. Intended?
I believe we're trying it out as such. Much more effective as a heal this way. However, may be too strong, or annoying. (Celestalon)

Warlock (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Average? It's literally within the bottom 4 overall for 25HM SoO and bottom 3 for 10HM. It's underperforming overall
Looking at rankings for Demo is entirely deceptive, because most of the top Warlocks are Aff/Destro. (Celestalon)

Any demo buffs? Literally no demos on ladder. Feels bad, man.
That's a tuning issue. (And to be fair, it's a tuning issue with Aff/Destr, not Demo).We haven't done tuning yet. (Celestalon)
It is a tuning issue with demo, actually. Demo has little ability to kill and little pressure against other players.
Oh, apologies, I was talking PvE. (Celestalon)
So does this mean demo is going to stay same and des/aff is going to be slightly nerfed?
It should come as no shock to hear that Aff/Destro are overpowered on live. (Celestalon)
It's HIGHLY underrepresented in medium to top end guilds, that isn't a coincidence
Demo is underrepresented because the Warlocks up there strongly favor Aff/Destro, not because it's weak (Celestalon)
lolwut. It's underrepresented because it underperforms compared to Destro/Aff.
That's... exactly what I just said? (Celestalon)
You can re-read your last post, if you'd like, to see where you're wrong.
Yeah, I don't get it. Demo is not UP; Aff/Destro are OP (in PvE). Thus, top guilds' Warlocks are mostly Aff/Destro. (Celestalon)
While they are OP, Demo is underpowered compared to almost every other single spec in the game. Again, bottom 4 25HM/bottom 3 10
And again, those rankings are useless. (Celestalon)

Art
Can taurens get around 2 feet back? watching beta streams I noticed they lost a lot of height. They should look taller imo.
That's strange man - we matched skeletons one to one on all new PC's. It might be illusion w/ movement. We'll take a look (artofcgrobinson)

Any chance of the old models of shaman totens being updated to match the new char models? great work on those models btw
I'd love to, it's on my radar. Totems are so cool, we could do a lot with updating them. No ETA, but I agree they need it (artofcgrobinson)

Will we possibly see white skin color for Worgen in WoD? It's becoming a bit depressing being black, grey, grey or grey.
its now on the list. This would be something we might add after PC update. (artofcgrobinson)

Will there be new faces added for each race or even the accessories you were looking into, like panda highlights?
Not at this stage. This is only an update of existing options in game. Would like to do so at some point, no eta (artofcgrobinson)

Please tell me female draenei are getting longer tails that have animation. I'm so tired of of sausage tail!
This would be something we might add in the future after we update existing features. (artofcgrobinson)

loving chars in beta, playing the chars is better then seeing in artcrafts, sad feather option for tauren horns is gone.
We might bring the feather back (artofcgrobinson)

Knowing that nothing is yet final, are there any plans for an brighter orange dwarf hair color like the old one?
Been thinking about that, I agree we missed the value on that color. I'll look into it (artofcgrobinson)

Thank you for taking a second look. We just want some feeling of diversity in the faces.
I hear ya, that's definitely our desire and goal at this stage. (artofcgrobinson)

Is the new human female model definitive or is it subject to change? Can't see my old char reflected http://t.co/ycgWabMIef
Definitely subject to change, we're now fine tuning each face, altering base pose to more closely match original structure/emotion (artofcgrobinson)
in this case we will be adjusting eyebrows, as well as looking at eye color, lip color, mouth shape, etc. (artofcgrobinson)
This is all part of our plan to address "same face". I had hoped to get out an Artcraft for this but tendon in finger detached - (artofcgrobinson)

What about the undead empty eye socket faces? Any chance we'll get those back?
When we're finished - you should have everything you started with. We don't want to cut/lose any features. (artofcgrobinson)

Male or female trolls next maybe? Pretty please? I think it's high time they've gotten an artcraft or at least*some* reveal
They'll be coming up soon. Had to model mouth in flat line, then use animation posing to form lips around tusks. Showing them (artofcgrobinson)
without that posing would have been disastrous. Hence the wait They look great now - we'll get something out asap (artofcgrobinson)

PvE
Chance we could have Beta Shatt Target Dummies on Live servers? Maybe a special room that is phased? Able to learn a lot there
It's something we're considering, but we'd want to kit them up a lot more. (Celestalon)

PvP
will lower level skirmishes give XP? Would be a nice change from questing/dungeon leveling. Maybe like as much XP as a quest?
We're planning on granting some XP from skirmishes. (holinka)

Will Ashran have solid trees, for LoS cover?
Trees have never had LoS in WoW for technical reasons. We're avoiding putting them in contested gameplay spaces. (holinka)

Are there any plans to bring back mana burns/drains? From what I see, a lot of healers not getting punished for standing in los.
There are no plans to bring back mana burns/drains. (holinka)

UI / Addons
will the limit of 50 mails be raised with wod?
No plans to change that - you can have far more than 50, but only 50 get displayed at once. (WatcherDev)

Garrisons
How big will our garrisons grow eventually? Won't fit all of the buildings, I fear? Pick & choose the best ones? Can we rebuild?
Pretty large, but not large enough to have everything. You can bulldoze and change buildings as much as you want, though! (Muffinus)

I thought there were 4 small plots has that changed now to 3? Also is the current design of requiring Alch to progress just for beta
On plots, current plan is 3 smalls at Tier 3 now. (mumper)
So the fourth small is scrapped?
No tier 4, the Garrison upgrades from 1 to 3. Lots of iteration still in progress, hence "current plan" (mumper)

how many large plots at the max teir and is that barracks, alchemy lab, town hall teir considered tier 1 for garisons?
Tier 1 currently has a small and a large plot for buildings. (mumper)

No previously made statements imply that having a gathering prof improves the overall yield from your mine/garden/barn.
Both the Mine and Herb Garden will let folks without the matching gathering skill create work orders for mats. (mumper)
Having the matching gathering skill will let you harvest the local garrison nodes in the mine/garden. (mumper)
so will we get enough mats out of our garrison & should drop gathering or it will must supplement miserable ground based gathering
Will still be valuable to have gathering skills, don't want to lose that. (mumper)

World
Is the return of darker night going into places like Elwynn Forest etc as well?
The plan is to get it in as many places as possible. (mumper)

Warlords of Draenor - Like Father, Like Son
Garrosh and Grommash meet up in Draenor and have some fun in this video.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Warlords of Draenor - Darker Nights, Gaze of the Black Prince Returns, Blue Tweets started by chaud View original post
Comments 95 Comments
  1. noblez17's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fiannor View Post
    Seems like a problem with darker nights is that if your RL schedule only allows you to play at night server time, then you are always playing in the dark. This makes everything harder, from gathering to seeing mobs to finding quest locations. Not to mention it gets depressing eventually. Might think about making the night cycle very short, say from midnight to 3 or 4 AM server time, with the other periods being full day and the current twilight kind of darkness?
    Then play on an opposite coast server.....

    - - - Updated - - -

    I wish - the day/time timeframe was every 2 hours or something....instead of based off a 24 hour timeframe.
  1. kamuimac's Avatar
    just cant wait for the incoming whining topics of "we want lighter nights again" as soon as wod drops
  1. ApeDosMil's Avatar
    Chris Hardwick is definitely nerd royalty, so I am okay with this.
  1. -Zo-'s Avatar
    It was months before I ever saw daytime in Wow. When I first happened to log on during the day, I was stunned, and even now if I play and it's daytime, it's like a whole other world. I kinda like the real time clock in the game, it somehow makes the game feel more real and persistent.

    That being said, darker nights looks cool, but lighter nights plays better. A lot of monitors lose a ton of visibility with darks too, some are just tuned too dark, or are at the wrong angle, or are in a very bright or glare-filled room, it's a tough thing to expect everyone to have set up right.

    IMO, give us a night darkness slider (or script variable if you don't want to add more UI). Or maybe there's already a gamma setting that would help somewhat.

    Also, if they're going to do this, do it all way, give us torches, let our mounts breathe fire, let engineering/night vision goggles work, elves and dwarves get infravision, etc
  1. Lumineus's Avatar
    The clock tower in Lakeshire used to be illuminated. :\
  1. grexly75's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by RoWR View Post
    It was months before I ever saw daytime in Wow. When I first happened to log on during the day, I was stunned, and even now if I play and it's daytime, it's like a whole other world. I kinda like the real time clock in the game, it somehow makes the game feel more real and persistent.

    That being said, darker nights looks cool, but lighter nights plays better. A lot of monitors lose a ton of visibility with darks too, some are just tuned too dark, or are at the wrong angle, or are in a very bright or glare-filled room, it's a tough thing to expect everyone to have set up right.

    IMO, give us a night darkness slider (or script variable if you don't want to add more UI). Or maybe there's already a gamma setting that would help somewhat.

    Also, if they're going to do this, do it all way, give us torches, let our mounts breathe fire, let engineering/night vision goggles work, elves and dwarves get infravision, etc
    Exactly there is a reason there are very few games that have a proper day / night cycle because if it is too dark you can't see squat, or you are squinting so hard at the screen to see where you are it plays havoc on the eyes..

    Case in point go out on a night with no moon and little to no light pollution and you will find it pretty much impossible to do anything with out the aid of a flashlight..

    What they have done here is just right, it is not too dark you can't see where you are and not too light that you would think that it is daytime like it is now..
  1. RumlyD's Avatar
    This is good news. Current night time looks weird because the terrain looks virtually the same, while sky goes darker.
  1. lagmoose's Avatar
    I wonder if Blizzard would be open to having the game world be on it's on day/night cycle, instead of real-time. Maybe it's too late for that change though. :\
  1. Orange Joe's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sigma View Post
    The Sun, the Moon, They both Rise and set in the same place! What magic is this ?
    The planet only half spins on its axis.......

    I noticed that too. For some reason it is really irritating me.
  1. mmoc3514689de5's Avatar
    I can only play late in the evening. Thanks Blizzard for another important reason not to buy your shit.
  1. Farabee's Avatar
    ...and not a single fuck was given about Gaze Of The Black Prince.
  1. Mazzic518's Avatar
    Why can't they just make the day-night cycle 5 hours? 5 hours light 5 hours dark rinse repeat.
  1. lazzy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Wayne25uk View Post
    That's because he is politely saying "SHUT THE FUCK UP AND WAIT YOU IMPATIENT SHITS!"

    Seriously i dont get why this generation think things take 2 seconds to make or build and they demand it NOW NOW NOW or else the toys are going out the pram!

    *Prays for a bus to hit all said people.....please!*
    I'd say it has to do with Blizzard having a ton of money and never really doing much with it. They throw money at side games more than they do WoW.

    We should never be waiting 6+ months for new content at this point. I don't like games like Gw2 But jesus they have more content updates than Blizzard does and it doesn't require a sub.

    Really no excuse for them to pump out content at slug speed. They're only doing it because they know enough retards will keep playing the same patch for 6+ months and let them stretch out content.

    There is a difference between pumping out side content to fill the gaps and to make a xpac.

    The fact that you're okay with waiting that long kinda boggles my mind.
  1. tankbug's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by lazzy View Post
    I'd say it has to do with Blizzard having a ton of money and never really doing much with it. They throw money at side games more than they do WoW.

    We should never be waiting 6+ months for new content at this point. I don't like games like Gw2 But jesus they have more content updates than Blizzard does and it doesn't require a sub.

    Really no excuse for them to pump out content at slug speed. They're only doing it because they know enough retards will keep playing the same patch for 6+ months and let them stretch out content.

    There is a difference between pumping out side content to fill the gaps and to make a xpac.

    The fact that you're okay with waiting that long kinda boggles my mind.
    So only retards plays the same content for 6 months+ aye? I have lots of left to do in MoP because I play casual and have alts, not exactly the same as being a retard. What if I called you a most likely unemployed, uncreative loser for burning out the game by playing 24/7 and instead of doing something else when you're done, you come in here to complain? That would be rather unfair, don't you think?
  1. Voidism's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Farabee View Post
    ...and not a single fuck was given about Gaze Of The Black Prince.
    I did give one; if EU will get it too. :P
  1. LemonBabby's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by luifervm View Post
    I don't get all the excitement for darker nights... don't get me wrong, i'm glad, but... we had this 10 years ago... Blizz is just silly sometimes... *sigh*
    Exactly my thought. The nights don't look any different from before Cataclysm was launched. When they said darker nights, I didn't expect them to just revert to the nights they had previously.

    http://i.imgur.com/fxLgg3b.jpg

    This is an example of a darker night. Why every night has to have a full moon is beyond me. Blizzard really needs to step it up with their sky boxes. They've gotten no better than they were in 2004 and that's sad.
  1. grexly75's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by urieliszcze View Post
    I can only play late in the evening. Thanks Blizzard for another important reason not to buy your shit.
    So because Blizz reintroduce a day / night cycle you are calling it rubbish and not buying it.. If it was something game breaking then maybe but then again seems they can't please some people..

    I mean if it was really really dark then there might be something too it, but this reintroduced night cycle is hardly that dark..

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by LemonBabby View Post
    Exactly my thought. The nights don't look any different from before Cataclysm was launched. When they said darker nights, I didn't expect them to just revert to the nights they had previously.

    http://i.imgur.com/fxLgg3b.jpg

    This is an example of a darker night. Why every night has to have a full moon is beyond me. Blizzard really needs to step it up with their sky boxes. They've gotten no better than they were in 2004 and that's sad.
    Well the way this seems in the video is so that you get a sense of it being dark, but not that dark that ya can't see two feet in front of you..

    What i call dark is look at the PC version of Skyrim with one of the many ENB Presets out there, some of them make the nights so dark that you really do need to have a torch because you can't see more than a foot in front of you.. While you do get a real sense that it is dark it does make it hard to play the game because of it..
  1. LemonBabby's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by grexly75 View Post
    So because Blizz reintroduce a day / night cycle you are calling it rubbish and not buying it.. If it was something game breaking then maybe but then again seems they can't please some people..

    I mean if it was really really dark then there might be something too it, but this reintroduced night cycle is hardly that dark..

    - - - Updated - - -



    Well the way this seems in the video is so that you get a sense of it being dark, but not that dark that ya can't see two feet in front of you..

    What i call dark is look at the PC version of Skyrim with one of the many ENB Presets out there, some of them make the nights so dark that you really do need to have a torch because you can't see more than a foot in front of you.. While you do get a real sense that it is dark it does make it hard to play the game because of it..
    While I'd like for nights to actually be that dark, that's not what I'm asking for.

    I was simply stating that just reverting nights to what they were before isn't "darker nights". The picture I posted is a perfect example of a happy medium; A night taken seriously without the outcry of not being able to see. Hell they could even add the option for adjustable nights via video settings.

    Regardless of their definition of darker nights, their skyboxes are downright pathetic. If anything their skyboxes need to be reworked completely.
  1. bison91's Avatar
    why people so excited about darker night? you wont be able to see anything
  1. Stormspark's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by bison91 View Post
    why people so excited about darker night? you wont be able to see anything
    Because having "night" be "daytime but with stars in the sky" is stupid, and the art team should've been embarassed by it. I fully understand that realistic nighttime is out of the question in an MMO (at least one where day/night goes by real time), barring some sort of gameplay element to let you see. But it should at least look darker at night than during the day. Vanilla WOW was fine with its day/night cycle. I actually quit playing until the darker nights were announced, because the way it is now absolutely *destroys* immersion.

    The only way realistic nights could happen in an MMO is if the day/night cycle wasn't the same every day (like ESO, where you get 2.5 hours of day, then 2.5 hours of night), AND there were gameplay elements to let you see at night. I don't think anyone is asking for realistic night. But night should at least look *somewhat* like nighttime.

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