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Why You Standing There? U Can't Touch This! The Glorious Immunity Card Design Competition

Battle.Net Patch 1.9 Build 9397 - Now With Emoji Support
The Battle.Net App was updated today to group your favorites, sort your friends by activity, additional emoji support, and more!



Netherlight Crucible Update
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
Hey guys!

We’ve been seeing a lot of discussion going back and forth on the Crucible lately, so we’ve had some conversations with the development team and I wanted to pop in and share a few points that came out of it.

Regarding comparisons to Reforging – Reforging was always a simple, mechanical choice. Players were, at the end of the day, simply replacing their worst stats with best stats on every item that didn’t already have your best stats up to a mechanical limit. The Crucible, by comparison, is only affecting a small subset of items and presents much more varied situations than say “change 30 Hit Chance into Haste”.

We’ve also seen a bit of discussion around players desiring the ability to respec the Traits that are locked on the second and third tiers of relics. We feel that the ability to respect Traits would lead to players picking traits based on perfect optimization for any given situation, which could lead to players leaving a raid to change to AoE-centric traits for the next fight during raid progression. While we feel that’s a nuisance in itself, this would also make the system feel like a watered-down version of talent rows, and would undermine the choice that is made when selecting your Relic Traits.

That being said, Relics are items and will be replaced; we do expect players to make choices and experiment with this system. Since there is still new content ahead of us in Antorus, better Relics will be available and players who make choices they may not like now will have the opportunity to get new Relics before long with a potentially new set of Trait choices.

As a note, we are also fine with the current state that Relics Soulbind on inspection in the Crucible. We believe the alternative of everyone porting in and out of the raid to pass the relic around and see who it’s best for is far, far worse. Players are smart and will be able to make educated decisions based on the information that’s available to them. As I said, we do expect experimentation however.

A final note: I saw the post on Reddit laying out three choices for Relics, asking players which one they would pick -
Relic A : 930 Ilvl BiS main trait, 3rd BiS bonus trait, but forces worst tier 2 crucible trait
Relic B : 915 ilvl BiS main and bonus trait and 2nd BiS crucible tier 2 trait
Relic C : 940 ilvl 2nd and 4th BiS traits and BiS crucible tier 2 trait.The poster responded by saying the only way to know is to sim it. If you’re generally a player who simulates gear upgrades to make decisions, you’re probably going to do that anyway, and that’s fine. If you’re a player going off basic guidelines such as “I play a fire mage so I want Critical Strike” you will get by as you always do in this situation and pick what you think is best for your particular class or spec.

Thanks for all the feedback on the topic so far, I’ll be on the lookout for future discussions, as always.

The Mythic Dungeon Invitational Weekend 2 This Saturday and Sunday!
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
The competition has begun and with weekend one behind us, we’re looking forward to weekend 2 with teams from Europe and the Americas teams taking their shot this weekend.

Weekend 2: Europe and The Americas
Europe: Saturday, September 23 at 5:00 a.m. PDT
The Americas: Sunday, September 24 at 9:00 a.m PDT

We’ve chosen 32 teams who have pushed themselves to the limit and proven they are ready for their next challenge in the Mythic Dungeon Invitational. Eight teams from China, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Americas will compete over the span of three weekends to see who will make it to the top 8 before moving on to the semi-finals and finals.

Check out the teams in the official post!

So, What's Next?
Each team will compete over three weekends head-to-head within the Mythic Dungeons. Two teams will advance from each region during a single-elimination, best-of-3 format. These teams will need to balance speed, skill, and strategy to claim their victory over their opponents. Keystone levels and affixes will be determined by Blizzard and all competition will take place on special tournament realms in which all players compete on an even playing field.

Check out the list of Keystone Affixes that we’ll be putting into play during the competition:

Affix 1
  • Sanguine
  • Teeming
  • Bolstering
  • Raging
  • Explosive

Affix 2
  • Quaking
  • Volcanic
  • Explosive
  • Grievous
  • Volcanic

Affix 3
  • Tyrannical
  • Tyrannical
  • Fortified
  • Fortified
  • Teeming

Event Schedule
The competition all begins this weekend on Twitch Friday, September 15 and Saturday, September 16 when the top teams in China begin their bid to make it to the Global top 8.

Here’s the full schedule of events:

Weekend 1: China and Asia-Pacific
China: Friday, September 15 at 9:00 p.m. PDT
Asia-Pacific: Saturday, September 16 at 9:00 p.m. PDT

Weekend 2: Europe and The Americas
Saturday, September 23 at 5:00 a.m. PDT
Sunday, September 24 at 9:00 a.m. PDT

Weekend 3: Global Top 8, Semi-Finals, and Finals
Saturday, September 30 at 9:00 a.m. PDT
Sunday, October 1 at 9:00 a.m. PDT

Where to Watch
You can catch all the action in English on the official Warcraft Twitch channel https://www.twitch.tv/warcraft. Hosts Adrian "Healingstat" Archer-Lock, Daniel "AutomaticJak" Anzenberger, Martin "Treckie" Meiner, Richard Campbell, Robert Wing and Ted "Sloot" Bacinschi will be on hand to provide commentary and expertise on all the action.

We’re also working to provide additional language support for this event, so check back soon for more listings. You won’t want to miss a thing!

Learn more about the Mythic Dungeon Invitational in our previous announcement or head over to the official World of Warcraft Esports site.

Play Overwatch Free September 22–25 on PC, PlayStation® 4, and Xbox One
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
Attention, recruits! If you haven't already had the opportunity to suit up and save the world as one of the heroes of Overwatch, now's your chance.

From September 22–25, we're calling on all prospective agents: assemble your team and dive in during the Overwatch Free Weekend on PC, PlayStation 4, or Xbox One!

For this free weekend, we're making Overwatch's full roster of 25 heroes and 16 maps available for play in a variety of modes, including Quick Play, Custom Games, and the Arcade. Players will also have the ability to level up, earn Loot Boxes, and unlock a variety of different customization options.

Plus, if you decide to purchase Overwatch after test driving the game, you'll get to keep any progress that you made during the weekend—just be sure to use the same Blizzard, Sony Entertainment, or Xbox Live account that you played on.

For more details and to learn how you can participate, read on below!

Deployment Schedule
The Overwatch Free Weekend will run from September 22–25. PlayStation 4 owners with a PlayStation Plus membership, Xbox One owners with an Xbox Live Gold membership, and Windows PC users with a Battle.net account will be able to download and play Overwatch for FREE during this period—no special keys or sign-up codes needed!


The free period will begin on September 22 at 11am PT and end on September 25 at 11:59pm PT in all participating regions across all platforms. If you'd like to see when the weekend will go live in your region, check out the guides below. For additional time zone assistance, please visit timezoneconverter.com.

The Overwatch Free Weekend may not be available on all platforms in all regions. See our FAQ for details.

This Week in WoW History
We're taking a look back at old MMO-Champion posts and World of Warcraft news that occurred during this time in previous years.

Legion Max Level Content Unlocked
Legion allowed players to take their time leveling, delaying most of the max level content that people had previously rushed to level for until a few weeks after release. During this week, Normal and Heroic Emerald Nightmare unlocked, World Bosses started spawning, Mythic+ Dungeons opened, and the first PvP season started.



BlizzCon 2015 In-Game Goodies Round-Up
BlizzCon 2017 is rapidly approaching and we've already seen the new Horde and Alliance mounts that we will get this year. Looking back to 2015 we see the final in-game goodies roundup that included the incredibly cute and dangerous Murkidan, a Nexus Battle Beast Mount in Heroes, Hearthstone card back, Starcraft II Portraits, and a Pennant, Pet, and Portrait for Diablo III players.



Warlords of Draenor In-Game Cinematics
During Warlords of Draenor Beta, Blizzard released all of the cinematics from the initial Warlords of Draenor campaign at once. This was done because the team was aware that some players enjoy spoilers and would seek out the cinematics on fansites. These included the iconic scene with Garrosh and Thrall, Yrel, Velen, the Warlords, and more.



Mists of Pandaria Zone Previews
As more and more of Mists of Pandaria was being revealed, players finally got a chance to check out what some of the zones would look like. The previews included Krasarang Wilds, Dread Wastes, and Townlong Steppes. These offered some different environments and creatures than players had ever before scene, introducing the Klaxxi, Yaungol, and more Sha. Krasarang Wilds was a vibrant forest-like area teeming with all kinds of flora and fauna, Townlong Steppes housed the Shado-pan Garrison, and the Dread Wastes was an ashen and torn environment being overrun by Klaxxi.



Appear Offline Coming "Soon"
It may not seem like it, but it now has been five years since the Appear Offline "Coming Soon" notice was posted! Questions about the status of the feature is a favorite among BlizzCon Q&A topics. In the years since, we got an update about adding Appear Offline to Overwatch in 2016, another update in 2017, and strings that refer to appearing offline were added to Hearthstone this year. For now, the Appear Offline feature appears to still be coming "Soon".

This article was originally published in forum thread: Battle.Net App Patch, Netherlight Crucible, Mythic Dungeon Invitational, WoW History started by chaud View original post
Comments 76 Comments
  1. dark666105's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by meroko View Post
    You couldn't be more wrong...
    Are you going to expound on why he is wrong?
  1. Jeezy911's Avatar
    I can't wait till they add support characters for just $3.99 and gems. Then they can send phone notifications and daily treasures when you log in. RIP wow.
  1. Somarlane's Avatar
    So much doom and gloom over emoji. Has it occurred to none of you that this may have been a popular feature request, and that any modern/contemporary chat client supports emoji? The only big surprise (but not, considering the developer) is that it took Blizzard this long to add them.
  1. Tupolew519's Avatar
    oh cool. emoticons.
  1. Swizzle's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by meroko View Post
    You couldn't be more wrong...
    I'm actually trying really hard to think of an expansion filled with more design choices outside of the player's control and I can't think of one. Which one were you thinking?
  1. huldu's Avatar
    I've played since vanilla, through every expansion and in my honest opinion Legion is the worst one to date. The first month or two I thought it was pretty good, but the more you play it the more you see all the flaws and it just makes me not wanting to play. I could go through what's good and what's bad in the expansion but most people are already aware of everything, it's all on the wow forums.
  1. Clbull's Avatar
    Now imagine if Blizzard worked on stuff that players wanted, rather than dedicating their resources to adding emojis in the Battle.net desktop client!
  1. Eleccybubb's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Clbull View Post
    Now imagine if Blizzard worked on stuff that players wanted, rather than dedicating their resources to adding emojis in the Battle.net desktop client!
    And what do you want the Battle.net team to design for the Battle.net app specifically?

    Or are you under the illusion that the WoW or Overwatch team did this?

    I don't like emojis either but this probably took the efforts of 1 person.
  1. mmoc1b67afd830's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tyrathius View Post
    Glad to see they're focusing on the important stuff.

    Seriously though, who asked for emojis in bnet? Who benefits from it?
    I see that they have focused on this instead of the planned "soon" appear offline feature

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Eleccybubb View Post
    And what do you want the Battle.net team to design for the Battle.net app specifically?

    Or are you under the illusion that the WoW or Overwatch team did this?

    I don't like emojis either but this probably took the efforts of 1 person.
    Hmm.. Well, that explains why we have waited years and years for a "appear offline" feature added to the thing. Yet to blizzard , they keep saying soon to be added.... Battle net team VERY busy with something else maybe? oh, Emoticons ! That's what most people were asking for! Game changing stuff
  1. Eleccybubb's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sarlix516 View Post
    I see that they have focused on this instead of the planned "soon" appear offline feature

    - - - Updated - - -



    Hmm.. Well, that explains why we have waited years and years for a "appear offline" feature added to the thing. Yet to blizzard , they keep saying soon to be added.... Battle net team VERY busy with something else maybe? oh, Emoticons ! That's what most people were asking for! Game changing stuff
    Well Battle.net isn't a game. It's an application for accessing the games . Appear offline isn't exactly a riveting addition either.

    And as I said this was probably done by 1 person in their spare time.
  1. mmoc1b67afd830's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Eleccybubb View Post
    Well Battle.net isn't a game. It's an application for accessing the games . Appear offline isn't exactly a riveting addition either.

    And as I said this was probably done by 1 person in their spare time.
    Well it is for a few people.. If they have them added on WoW, via Bnet, Xserver, and they want to just log on and have a break from people possibly asking constantly "do u wana do something? can u come help out in a raid, can u do this" that and the other It helps out quite abit, even if they wanted to enjoy a different game without "get on wow lets do something" or "help out the guild please as your online." etc.

    Alot of people want the offline feature :P not emoticons haha.

    Especially when we can LITERALLY put ", , :P, xD" list goes on, it's not exactly like we missed a 'feature'.

    edit- I can't even get away from it in the MMOChamp threads, a normaly smiley face written with a keyboard auto turns it into one, Ugh :P
  1. Aurimas's Avatar
    Reminds me of this snark:
  1. Konteil's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fixup View Post
    maybe they titanforge to Gifs and stickers
    lmao fucking brilliant mate. almost lost me coffee there
  1. Miyue's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MMO-Champion View Post
    These offered some different environments and creatures than players had ever before scene, introducing the Klaxxi, Yaungol, and more Sha.
    I usually don't notice typos, but wow.
  1. Clbull's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Eleccybubb View Post
    And what do you want the Battle.net team to design for the Battle.net app specifically?

    Or are you under the illusion that the WoW or Overwatch team did this?

    I don't like emojis either but this probably took the efforts of 1 person.
    1. The Appear Offline feature which was promised five years ago. There are no options for hiding your online status to Battle.net friends and the only workaround is to block a port on your router which completely disables communication functionality between friends. Since you can already change your status to Busy or Away, this surely can't be too hard to implement?

    2. Rolling out Blizzard Voice for more games and not just Overwatch. This isn't really a dealbreaker because Discord, Teamspeak, Raidcall, Ventrilo, Mumble, Skype and the Twitch client already exist as voice chat solutions. Something official integrated into each Battle.net game would be great though, especially after the barely functional mess that WoW players got a decade ago.

    3. Support for classic Blizzard games in the client. The only classic Blizzard game to be supported in the launcher is StarCraft and that's the premium Remastered version. It's a bummer that we can't download, install and launch WarCraft II, WarCraft III, Diablo or Diablo II, or the other titles Blizzard released from the launcher.

    4. More Activision games? Destiny 2's inclusion shows this isn't outside the realm of possibility.

    5. Bug and optimisation fixes? I actually have the Battle.net desktop client close whenever I launch a game because having it open causes conflicts with my graphics drivers which makes them freeze and restart.
  1. Eleccybubb's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Clbull View Post
    1. The Appear Offline feature which was promised five years ago. There are no options for hiding your online status to Battle.net friends and the only workaround is to block a port on your router which completely disables that functionality. Since you can already change your status to Busy or Away, this surely can't be too hard to implement?

    2. Rolling out Blizzard Voice for more games and not just Overwatch.

    3. Support for classic Blizzard games in the client. The only classic Blizzard game to be supported in the launcher is StarCraft and that's the premium Remastered version. It's a bummer that we can't download, install and launch WarCraft II, WarCraft III, Diablo or Diablo II, or the other titles Blizzard released from the launcher.

    4. More Activision games? Destiny 2's inclusion shows this isn't outside the realm of possibility.

    5. Bug and optimisation fixes? I actually have the Battle.net desktop client close whenever I launch a game because having it open causes conflicts with my graphics drivers which makes them freeze and restart.
    1. Fair play. They have said this is on the back burner for god knows how long now. Personally I won't use it but I imagine there are people who would.

    2. People really use that?! I figured with Discord people would just flock to that since it's free.

    3. Probably takes a lot more work than you imagine. Which is why they are doing remastered versions. Diablo 1 used a really barebones form of Battle.net to be fair back then. The problem with the older games is that it doesn't use the same Battle.net structure that the modern games do either.

    Warcraft 3 assets do exist in the app but it's just background borders. So it's either going to be a remaster or they might be able to port it since that one used a really advanced form of Battle.net with lobby features, matchmaking and custom games. But I imagine for the sake of money it will get remastered.

    4. Destiny 2 is only published by them. I imagine in the future though Activision will want their games on it. Will be amusing watching people throw a temper tantrum over it and how it ruins the integrity of Battle.net

    5. Can't say I experience these bugs however I have heard of people reporting them so again fair play.

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