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Patch 7.3 - Vile Fiend
Patch 7.3 adds the Vile Fiend mount.






Patch 7.3 - Heirloom Neck
Patch 7.3 adds a new Heirloom neck item, the Man'ari Training Amulet. This item allows you to sacrifice 10% health to increase movement speed by 40% for 10 sec.

It is rewarded from the Assault on Felfire Armory Order Hall mission.



Ghostcrawler Tweets
Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard.
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Back when you were working on WoW, how much did the concept of “theme park” vs “sandbox” influence the drawing board? Did you guys identify with one side more than another on a scale, or did you consider WoW to be it’s own entity, and introduce features to fit the current trend of gameplay?
WoW followed the theme park philosophy pretty strongly. Before WoW, MMOs were much more about creating an “interesting” (quotes intentional) world in which players could go find “fun” things to do. But often that fun devolved into grinding mobs. WoW was explicit about constantly providing directed gameplay, largely through quests. Rather than the quests petering out and reaching the point where you have to grind, in WoW the quests just never ran out. There are even way more quests than you need in order to reach max level, and increasingly there are even quests at max level. Quests aren’t even the only system that provides stuff for players to do.

Beyond just WoW, I’ll be a little controversial here and say that I worry that the importance of sandboxes to successful game design gets overstated. I’ve also noticed that it is game reviewers who get really excited about open-ended gameplay, and I’m sure part of that reason is because they have to play through so many games at a frenetic pace that something where they get to set the rules is appealing.

And I do get the appeal of sandboxes. It’s just that so often the game can’t often deliver on the massive expectations of what a sandbox really is. I get really bored of games where I have to go find the fun or invent my own fun, usually because games can’t ever really deliver on “Anything that you can conceive, you can do.” Instead I always find myself bumping into the limitations of the system. I can’t really be a thief who just survives stealing from other players. I can’t really be a merchant or a politician or a prophet because the game systems aren’t robust enough to support that. Minecraft lets you make ridiculously elaborate architecture. GTA is funny when the cop AI collides with semi-realistic car physics. But both are still pretty limited in terms of sandboxes.

(My favorite game is D&D, where a human dungeon master does allow you to do almost anything you can dream up. Computers are far behind.)

I could talk a lot about Breath of the Wild. It is a fantastic game. But I also do get bored sometimes when I climb a mountain just to find nothing interesting up on top. Yes, it’s great that the game lets me climb any mountain. That freedom is amazing. But I’m going to stop doing it if I keep finding boring mountaintops. Watching the different systems interact in ways that you would expect (”Lightning is attracted to metal!” “Bombs can move things when they explode!” is fun to witness and maybe entertaining from a creative expression standpoint. But that doesn’t automatically make it fun. I still want something engaging. If it can be an engaging open world game, great. But if it’s just an open world game, I’m going to move on to another game quickly.

I completely realize this is personal preference, but I’d rather designers give me an experience that they think would be fun for me, rather than giving me a tool set and letting me invent the fun. But I’m a guy who loves Lego, but never builds anything other than the model the boxed sets are designed to make. YMMV. (Source)



Dark Legacy Comics #595
DLC #595 has been released.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 7.3 - Vile Fiend Mount, Patch 7.3 - Heirloom Neck, Tweets, DLC #595 started by chaud View original post
Comments 46 Comments
  1. Myranda01's Avatar
    Sounds like a useless trait on the heirloom neck tbh... Can't use for speedrunning as the buff only lasts 10 seconds every 5 minutes ... There are better loom necks in the game.
  1. Myzou's Avatar
    ...they add a new heirloom from legion content, but it starts scaling to level 90 instead of 110? Are they idiotic?

    That effect might HAVE been useful in things like WSG before they removed Use: effects.
  1. Kaleredar's Avatar
    I feel like players keep trying to bait ghostcrawler into some sort of "gotcha" question in which he'll "admit" that Blizzard took some massive turn so that the person asking can justify their reasoning for why "WoW just isn't as good as it used to be."

    And I like that GC keeps giving honest answers that basically smack down any notion of that. People have been bitching that WoW "has lost it's sandbox feel." It's good to hear GC's perspective that it was never really "sandbox" to begin with. And, frankly, I agree with him. Not only in respect to WoW but in regards to the fact that games that make players "make their own fun" ultimately lose a lot of people because it stops feeling rewarding. No Man's Sky really came to mind in that regard.
  1. Daedius's Avatar
    Useless necklace... should be a permanent effect.
  1. tristannarutofan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Myranda01 View Post
    Sounds like a useless trait on the heirloom neck tbh... Can't use for speedrunning as the buff only lasts 10 seconds every 5 minutes ... There are better loom necks in the game.
    I mean...you are objectively wrong....

    the only other neck is one that gives a very small heal.

    the fact that some people still use those boot rockest that can almost kill you is proof there is want for this. I'm sure you'll lag behind in dungeons while players who know how to play are already engaging the boss because they use stuff like this in places you cant mount.

    maybe dont insult the devs just because you lack vision
  1. Lightbull's Avatar
    Very good post by Ghostcrawler. The whole sandbox thing has never really been implemented well, I don't understand why so many people are expecting so much from those games. Breath of the Wild has come close to making a truly fun sandbox game though.
  1. ElDoorO's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by tristannarutofan View Post
    the fact that some people still use those boot rockest that can almost kill you is proof


    I'm not sure you know what the word "proof" means. Perhaps you mean "it can be inferred" but this isn't "proof" and nowhere near "proof".
  1. Felfaadaern Darkterror's Avatar
    So... a wingless bat? At least the colors are darker, like I imagine such things to be. Why can't we have one like this (with wings) for our DH class mount?
  1. 8bithamster's Avatar
    rofl.. people whinging about the neck effect, as if they never saw the current neck heirloom effects.. or the JC crafted necks for 110

    <3
  1. Misskittyy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Felfaadaern Darkterror View Post
    So... a wingless bat? At least the colors are darker, like I imagine such things to be. Why can't we have one like this (with wings) for our DH class mount?
    I would imagine this mount doesn't fly, therefore it doesn't need wings.
  1. Polarthief's Avatar
    Great neck RUINED by a stupid 5 minute cooldown. Why must they do that with everything?

    If they want 110s to not use this thing, just make it cease to work once the XP bonus stops working.
  1. TyrannicalPuppy's Avatar
    Do we really need another heirloom neck? Really?

    Why can't they spend that development time on boots, gloves, bracers, and belts instead? The incomplete sets drive me up the bloody wall.
  1. Psygon's Avatar
    Nice Murloc mount!
  1. Eleccybubb's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by TyrannicalPuppy View Post
    Do we really need another heirloom neck? Really?

    Why can't they spend that development time on boots, gloves, bracers, and belts instead? The incomplete sets drive me up the bloody wall.
    Can always buy those sets from Darkmoon Faire with tokens or go Molten Core for that one plate set.

    They are basically Dungeon Tier 1 or 2 if I recall. Except the one Plate one that uses the T1 look.

    Who knows maybe they will complete them eventually.
  1. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by TyrannicalPuppy View Post
    Do we really need another heirloom neck? Really?

    Why can't they spend that development time on boots, gloves, bracers, and belts instead? The incomplete sets drive me up the bloody wall.
    It's less about development time (non-visible items are just database entries anyway) and more that they probably don't want every slot filled by heirlooms. I may be wrong, but I swear I read something somewhere where they said something to that effect.
  1. mmoc3d7f422663's Avatar
    "in WoW the quests just never ran out"

    Bullshit spotted.

    You had to grind quite a lot in vanilla because there weren't enough quests in the game.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Lightbull View Post
    Very good post by Ghostcrawler. The whole sandbox thing has never really been implemented well, I don't understand why so many people are expecting so much from those games. Breath of the Wild has come close to making a truly fun sandbox game though.
    Ultima Online was actually a great sandbox. You could live just by stealing from players, just by trading, just by crafting etc.
  1. huldu's Avatar
    My only problem is that it's a necklace. They have wrist, hand, feet and belt to work with. The 5 min cooldown is a bit long tho, I would have put it at 2 minutes and that would have been awesome for dungeons and people raging on the forum because you're moving too fast.
  1. Cynical Person's Avatar
    Why does anyone care what Ghostcrawler has to say?

    He's a dead meme guy.
  1. ThatsOurEric's Avatar
    Very disappointed with the heirloom neck. Considering the amount we already have.
  1. mingarrubia's Avatar
    That GC quote actually explains a lot about Cataclysm and the revamping of the old world content.

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