World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Darkmoon Faire Hotfix
A hotfix was deployed last night in order to solve the issue and the monthly quests should now be available again. However, if your character had already encountered a bug with some of the monthly quests, then you will need to wait until the next Darkmoon Faire starting on February 5 in order to complete those quests and the related achievements.

Once again we apologise for any inconvenience this issue may have caused. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Vial of Shadows Ranged Attack Power Bug
Just want to confirm: Vial of Shadows working only with melee attack power and not ranged attack power is indeed a bug. Barring unforeseen complications, this will be fixed in an upcoming hotfix.

Lock and Load not being caused by Arcane Shot is an intentional change. As many players have pointed out, there is just no need for it any longer. We also intend to make sure Black Arrow is used over Explosive Trap, probably by buffing Black Arrow slightly.

We are looking a lot at hunter DPS right now. We think it is in a good place when compared to other ranged DPS specs (in equivalent gear), but falls short when compared to ranged DPS with Dragonwrath. The guilds currently posting heroic combat logs have a lot of Dragonwraths, and unfortunately, hunters are the only ranged DPS who don’t have access to a legendary weapon. When more hunters have Deathwing weapons, their DPS will go up compared to the Dragonwrath users who won’t be upgrading their weapons, and we’ll see what hunter performance looks like.

It’s likely that future legendaries won’t be usable by so many classes and specs. For the present situation, one option is to just buff hunters to make up for their inability to have legendary weapons, but when you look at DPS casters who have no legendary, it's a tough option to take. We’re not sure yet of the future of the attack power buff in Mists of Pandaria, but in the short term we want to make sure that there are some situations where melee can do really high DPS rather than routinely coming in below ranged DPS (which is how we felt about the last two raid tiers).

If we buff hunters, it will more likely be through other avenues. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Gurthalak, Voice of the Deeps Balance Issues
Gurthalak should not proc off of Censure. The bug was with Seal of Truth, so Souldrinker will proc less for paladins as well.

The specific bug was that paladins running Seal of Truth had two chances with every swing to trigger the proc with Gurthalak or Souldrinker. They now have one chance.

For other classes, the sword overall does the damage we intend, but it's variable, so a few spectacular numbers are occasionally posted. Those shouldn’t be accepted as typical. Likewise, random burst can sometimes cause high damage in PvP, but we don’t think those situations with Gurthalak are reliable or severe enough to be a balance problem. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mists of Pandaria PvP
There will be PvP additions for Mists of Pandaria. We'll have more information/details at a future point in time.

Just as a quick FYI, here's a link to the BlizzCon article we posted outlining the panel contents that were covered.

We'll be sharing more details before much longer on many aspects of the expansion. Don't worry. Just to add on to this, the Developer Q&A in October also touched on PvP including world PvP.

We're quite aware of the desire for more world PvP. We're also aware that there are those who do not want to be "forced" into it either. We have plans that we think will help assuage that "dilemma". (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Watered Down Lore in Mists of Pandaria
We're always open to constructive feedback as long as it stays constructive. There are a few different types of thoughts from the community on these things that I've heard via podcasts or read on fansites and the forums here.

First, we've gotten lots of feedback through the years that it's difficult to learn the story of World of Warcraft. Many players have expressed that they have concerns over too much story having to be found outside the game and not enough in the game, or even not being led to the story in the game and thus missing it. Obviously, this is something we've been trying to correct where we can and trying to find a balance between the two. We're aware that Azeroth's history and story is pretty vast and with each new expansion, we're given the opportunity to expand on it even more.

Second, we've heard (as you've stated) that once through, it's not as fun the second time. We've obviously experienced this as well in the past via Culling of Stratholme. As you saw there, we did eventually make it possible to skip this portion of the event, but there are risks involved with that too. For newer players or those that aren't on the front edge of progression, this can cause them to miss out on being able to see this story unless they're with people who are willing to let it play out so they can experience it.

That said, I can't say that we'll do the same for the current dungeons (allowing the "skip"), but I can say that we'll continue to take constructive feedback on these aspects of the game as often as we can. We want to make sure we're giving the story that people want, while still making sure it's as fun as possible to be a part of it.

As for Mists of Pandaria and the storyline there, we definitely want to continue down the path of offering up story where we can. We feel that this can only enhance the experience of the game. We're not unaware though of the concerns on both sides of the fence. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)