Calling all heroes: It’s time to draft your BlizzCon battle plan—the BlizzCon 2018 schedule is here! Check out all the exciting developer panels, esports matches, and other events taking place during BlizzCon Opening Week from October 25–29 and at the main event on Friday, November 2 and Saturday, November 3 (note that times in the schedule are displayed in local time).

When you purchase a BlizzCon 2018 Virtual Ticket, you’ll unlock access to live coverage of developer events and community content taking place on the Legendary, Mythic, and Epic stages. With this year’s BlizzCon All-Access Channel, you’ll also be able to keep up with all the big moments that take place during the show—and participate with live Q&A polls and voting for the Virtual Ticket cosplay award!

As always, you can catch Friday’s opening ceremony and all the tournament action on this year’s esports stages FREE here at BlizzCon.com.

Attention Attendees!

If you’re joining us in person in Anaheim, this year’s opening ceremony will be spread across more than one stage throughout the show. The live presentation will be jumping between stages as our developers show you what we’ve been working—stay tuned for more information on where you’ll want to seek out a seat. And of course, everything will be broadcast on screens and stages throughout the convention halls.

There’s also still a chance to get tickets to attend the esports competitions of BlizzCon Opening Week in person at the Blizzard Arena—check out the announcement for all the details, and head to the Blizzard Arena Los Angeles ticketing site to pick up tickets.

Head to BlizzCon.com/schedule to begin drafting your plan!

The BlizzCon 2018 Virtual Ticket is now available for purchase and if you’re a World of Warcraft fan you won’t want to miss a moment of the event—or the WoW extras that come with it, including epic in-game goodies and access to the Blizzcon WoW Classic demo at home!

World of Warcraft® Classic BlizzCon® Demo
Every BlizzCon, we look for opportunities to bring new aspects of the experience to our community around the world. This year, we’re excited to announce that for the first time ever, BlizzCon Virtual Ticket holders will join BlizzCon attendees as the first people to play the World of Warcraft Classic demo we’re creating for BlizzCon at home.

Shortly after the BlizzCon opening ceremony on November 2 (on or around 1pm PDT), players will be able to download the same in-development BlizzCon WoW Classic Demo that will be playable on the show floor. Players will have a chance to explore and enjoy a limited questing experience through a pair of classic early-level zones—one Horde and one Alliance—and experience firsthand our recreation of the original Azeroth.

Once the demo is live, you’ll be able to play until 10am PST on November 8, giving BlizzCon attendees a chance to check it out again once they get back home.

Declare Your Allegiance With BlizzCon In-Game Loot
In addition to access to the BlizzCon WoW Classic Demo, starting today BlizzCon attendees and Virtual Ticket holders will receive commemorative in-game items that will help them proudly display their Horde or Alliance pride as the Battle for Azeroth rages on:

• War Mantle of the Alliance & War Mantle of the Horde: Show all of Azeroth where your allegiance lies with a pair of faction-themed cosmetic cloaks—one for Horde characters, and one for Alliance.
  
• Stormwind Champion’s War Banner & Orgrimmar Hero’s War Banner: Strike fear into your enemies and stand your ground when you plant your faction’s banner on the battlefield.

In addition to this year’s WoW items and access to the BlizzCon WoW Classic demo, the Virtual Ticket provides plenty of great BlizzCon content for your viewing pleasure along with additional in-game goodies from Overwatch®, Diablo® III, Hearthstone®, Heroes of the Storm®, and StarCraft® II.

Learn more about the Virtual Ticket then order yours!

Casual strolls through Sanctuary are always better with friends—and cute companions! In celebration of BlizzCon 2018, we have a special Diablo III gift for BlizzCon attendees and Virtual Ticket holders, available in the Mac and PC versions of the game.


Bring the six-legged Lord of Sin himself along on your adventures next Season with Az-Lo, the adorably evil mini-Azmodan in-game pet—available in-game starting today!

The Tavern in bustling in excitement for BlizzCon 2018! Come inside, pull up a chair, and get ready to open up some packs—we’ve got some special Hearthstone gifts for all BlizzCon attendees and Virtual Ticket holders, available in-game today.




Kick off the celebration with a special new BlizzCon 2018 card back. Then fill out your Hearthstone collection with a bundle of card packs, containing two packs from the Classic, The Witchwood, Kobolds & Catacombs, Knights of the Frozen Throne, and Journey to Un’Goro sets—a total of 10 card packs in all!

We’ll have more exciting in-game rewards to tell you about for other Blizzard games in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

Sharpen your swords and reinforce your boards, because you’re called to the PvP Arena for the hectic mayhem of Skirmishes.

This Week: Arena Skirmishes
All week, from anywhere in Azeroth, open the Group Finder (default hotkey: i), select the Player vs. Player tab on the bottom of the window, and then under Casual, choose Arena Skirmish and JOIN BATTLE. You’ll be matched up with teammates and provided with opponents to kill in the Arena. You can also queue for a Premade group or create your own group within the Premade tab.

Look for the following all week long:

• Chronicler Shoopa in Zuldazar and in Boralus has a quest for you–The Arena Calls. Or, if you forget to pick it up there, you can start it from within the Adventure Journal.
  
  • Quest requirement: Win 10 Arena PvP Skirmishes
    
  • Reward: A PvP loot box
    
• Passive buff: +50% honor gains from Skirmishes

If you’ve been looking to make some Honor gains, this is the week to do it!

Can you even dunk? If you want to win this brawl, you’re going to need to work on your skills because Dunkball has come to Pandaria. You’ll race to claim balls from the map’s center, or northern, or southern mines, take them to your enemy’s base, and then go for a magnificent long range shot or go all in for the dunk.

Classes

• Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Fixed an issue where Rising Mist healed some targets that don't have the caster's HoTs.
    

Island Expeditions

• Resolved additional issues that could prevent players from gaining progress in Island Expeditions for the weekly quests Azerite for the Horde / Azerite for the Alliance.

Items

• Heart of Azeroth
  
  • Fixed a bug that caused Spiteful Apparitions (Shadow Priest) to deal less damage than intended.
    
  • Fixed an issue that unintentionally reduced the damage of Last Surprise (Unholy Death Knight) by 12%.
    
  • Fixed an issue where Reorigination Array would sometimes not grant the appropriate amount of secondary stat.
    

Professions

• Alchemy
  
  • The ratio of Siren’s Pollen and Riverbud required for Battle Potion of Agility has been adjusted.
    
  • Ingredients required to create Potion of Rising Death and Potion of Bursting Blood have been reduced.
    
  • Minimum range required for Potion of Rising Death’s damage effect to reach full value reduced to 20 yards (was 30 yards).
    

Timewalking

• End Time
  
  • Murazond and the Ghouls in the Sylvanas encounter have had their health significantly reduced.
    
• The Stonecore
  
  • High Priestess Azil’s Gravity Well no longer deals excessive damage.
    

Warfronts

• Fixed an issue preventing the "Lost Caravan" event from spawning in the Alliance version of Battle for Stromgarde.
  
• The Research option "War Resourcer" has been changed. It is now: Establish access to resources outside of the Warfront, allowing you enter the battle with 80 Iron and 20 Wood.

World Quests

• “Nez'ara” should now properly reset when she has no enemies to attack.
  
• "Running Interference" should now reset properly.

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to pop in here and give you guys a quick update on some new tuning changes to Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest which will be live momentarily.

Alterac Valley
For Battle for Azeroth, we’ve put scaling on the creatures to make them more of a consistent challenge . Our intent is that the gameplay experience of Alterac Valley remains consistent, as in the creatures remain a challenge as your gear progresses. This system was in place at launch, but we’ve discovered a bug with the scaling which we’ve sent a hotfix for. In short, the creatures should now feel similar as they did during during the beginning of the expansion. Let us know how it feels!

Isle of Conquest
We’ve reduced the damage the Siege Engine and Demolishers deal to players and to the Keep Cannons. This should reduce the power of the Workshop and bolster defense up.

Thanks everyone for your continued feedback to Epic Battlegrounds, and we hope to share with you our future plans of new Battlegrounds we intend to add to the Epic Battlegrounds queue soon.

Oceanic Forum and Collecting Feedback
As of today: Last post by any CM in the Oceanic forums : April 20 2017 - one year seven months.

Last post on the night and day issue by a CM : Sept 30 2016 - TWO years two days.
We've actually been talking about this and coming up with solutions for this problem. Nothing immediately to say but I was actually in a meeting I think two weeks ago where we discussed this issue in pretty good detail along with how to fix it.

Im not ungrateful by any means, but may I also ask why it took this long? Whilst you cant be there every day, those forums are for an entire region and the occasional CM post is not too much to ask. Last one was in April 2017...over a year, Ythisens.
So when it comes to different regions, there are different CMs. I for example handle North America. There is one for Oceanic but they don't post very often. They still report issues and I see their reports. I do agree with you though that you can feel neglected by that. I'll pass that on to that team in the mean time.

What is the actual process for you giving feedback to devs? I assume you aren't just copy/pasting threads into an email. There has to be a system involved. I feel like knowing this would give people some perspective into your job.
There is actually multiple ways that we give feedback to the devs. Depending on the issue itself really determines that. Say for example something is broken and it is critically affecting the game by just not functioning or something like an exploit. In those scenarios we usually send it straight to the individual developers responsible for those things. For everything else it usually falls into the bucket of getting a bit more refined before we send it along at the high level. We obviously need to filter some posts due to language and things of that nature, and we try to get it down to the core mechanical issue. Developers want to know what the actual problem is when it comes to trying to fix or solve something. So we try our best to filter it and rewrite it to their language. Sometimes we actually send things unedited to showcase how sentiment impacting things currently are.

It's a weird thing that you learn how to do. It took me a while to get it down honestly, but thankfully I wasn't posting then as I wasn't a full CM yet.

I know we say this a lot but you'd be surprised how many times we raise something up as an issue and then find out the leads on WoW have already read the threads. They're really good at stalking the forums. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

With a hotfix that we're making to the game today, several changes to Alchemy items will take place:

• The ratio of ingredients for Battle Potion of Agility has been adjusted so that the demand for Siren’s Pollen and Riverbud are more closely aligned in the long term.
• The costs of creating Potions of Rising Death and Potions of Bursting Blood have been reduced. Since these potions have non-stat effects, it has been difficult to judge whether or not you should use them instead of stat potions. In practice, both contribute a similar amount of damage, but these potions are more constrained, since they are direct damage. We’re reducing their costs to make the decision of whether to use them or not more of a question of economics, rather than a question of straight throughput. The goal is for these potions to provide most of the effectiveness of a Battle Potion, at a lower cost.
• To complement these changes, we're reducing the minimum range required for the Potion of Rising Death’s damage effect to reach full value. It will now be a 20-yard range (it was 30 yards).

In the next major content patch, Tides of Vengeance, we’re going to update the Potion of Rising Death tooltip to read “damaging ranged abilities” instead of “ranged attacks”, to make it more clear this potion is functional for casters.

These hotfixes should go live very soon, over the next hour or two, and we'll have them noted in our hotfixes blog post later this evening.

Keep in mind this is still super early info! If the team is committed to making class reworks due to mechanical issues that Shamans, Prot Warriors, Shadow Priests, and (insert your class here) are asking for, then those take a little longer and start coming in later during PTR.

Not saying anything specifically is coming but I know the team has been looking into mechanical issues with class rotations and functionality that have been raised and this is a current goal within 8.1. Just saying this to be as transparent as possible as all that has been seen is just numbers, and that doesn't fully represent what the team is working toward.

TL;DR: more soon™ hopefully™

Hopefully? Is that a "Hopefully I'll have more soon!" or a "Hopefully they'll actually get around to fixing classes in this patch."?
Little of column A, little of column B, but I'd reword the second part a little if it was my words of course.

I say that just because you never know in development. There could be a unforeseen thing that pops up and delays this effort, so just throwing it in to cover all the bases.