IRVINE, Calif. - December 23, 2008 - Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®, its award-winning subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, is now played by more than 11.5 million subscribers worldwide. This new high was reached following the November 13 release of the game’s second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King™.

Within its first 24 hours of availability, Wrath of the Lich King sold more than 2.8 million copies, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time. In addition to winning a number of editor’s choice awards from major gaming publications, the expansion has now gone on to sell more than 4 million copies in its first month, setting a new record for monthly PC-game sales. Both sales records were previously held by World of Warcraft's first expansion, The Burning Crusade.

“We’re pleased to welcome the new and returning players who have helped World of Warcraft reach these new milestones, and we appreciate the enthusiasm and support that the game’s global community has continued to show,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We look forward to providing all of them with an excellent entertainment experience for a long time to come.”

“Not only is Wrath of the Lich King still doing well, the base World of Warcraft game and the World of Warcraft Battle Chest® are performing better than last year,” said Bob McKenzie, senior vice president of merchandising at GameStop. “That type of traction is very impressive for a game that is going into its fifth holiday season and speaks to the enthusiastic player base Blizzard Entertainment products have.”

Je'Tze's Bell - correction
I was incorrect, unfortunately. The item will remain soulbound. My apologies for the misleading information. (Source)

Target DPS for each class
From our perspective, we don't want to tell you how much dps you should be doing and don't want to make it too easy for you to figure out how much dps you can do. It depends greatly on situation to situation, and on your gear, skill and the comp of your group.

I also think it takes a little of the fun out of the game if the numbers are posted and made official for everyone to see. The discovery aspect adds a lot of depth to the game.

Don't ask us what your Xmas presents are. Go open them. (Source)

"Vehicle" mounts
Yep it was me. All vehicle-style mounts will be changed to function as normal mounts, which should theoretically alleviate many issues people have with them. When? Probably 3.1 but this isn't confirmed. (Source)

Being in a guild disconnecting people on PTRs
This should be fixed in the next PTR build. (Source)

Russian PTRs
There are no current plans for RU PTR access. May I remind you that our Russian forums are found by the link below. Please can you use the RU forums for all Russian-language related queries. Thank you! (Russian language WoW Forums: http://forums.wow-europe.com/index.html?sid=5)

Class balancing in WotLK
We overhauled the classes for LK moreso than BC and introduced a new class for the first time. Also remember that when BC launched, nobody knew what Arenas were or what they would do to PvP (or the microscope under which they place cass balance). I also think we have just been more open this time around. Certainly we didn't address the community with this degree of candor when BC launched.

You have to realize that Blizzard is it's own worst critic. From our point of view, we can always improve every aspect of the game. When we talk about bugs or things we still want to work on, that doesn't mean we shipped the game before we were ready. It means that we hold ourselves to a very high standard, honestly a lot higher than most of the players do. If there is something that annoys you about the game, it almost certainly drives us nuts.

WoW is a gigantic game with a huge player base. Please don't mistake our open discussion about things we would like to improve as our feeling that Lich King is in any way a failure. We are enormously proud of it and most players I speak to are having a blast. (Most of those players aren't the ones posting on forums.) (Source)

New roles forums (Source)
If it's a class specific issue, then the class forums may be a better place for that. They are useful for questions such as: What spec should I use? What glyphs should I use? What gear do I want? How do I beat a Frost mage?

The reason we launched these forums is increasingly we'd see a thread where someone would say "Our class is the worst. Everyone agrees." Then someone from another class would post "Um, you are exaggerating" and the first class would respond "GET OUTTA OUR FORUM INTERLOPER!"

Yet, we think there is a lot of benefit of having different classes talk to each other. Sure it's going to get heated sometimes, but it also can offer a lot of perspective to you and to us. The start of the Arena season brought out a lot of (often redundant) posts on this and the healing forum, but that shouldn't be a huge surprise. Overall, I think these forums have evolved nicely from their initial launch.

Since I'm up on a soapbox already, here are my suggestions for getting the most out of them:

• Talk to other players. The worst threads are the ones asking for blue responses and ignoring any response that isn't blue.
• Don't spam, troll or QQ. I know a lot of players are used to that from other forums. We don't want it here. You are welcome to disagree with our design decisions, and many players do, but you need to do it in a mature, intelligent and civil fashion.
• Don't waste other players' time. Don't post about how much Blizzard hates your class or how you feel neglected or how you wish your thread got a blue response instead of some other thread. Please don't drive the smart players away.
• Don't expect your suggestions will get implemented. It happens, but it is very rare. Don't mistake having access to the developers here for being able to make demands. We love suggestions, but understand that the nature of how we work is that the vast majority will get filtered away.
• Don't get frustrated. If I can be patient, you can be patient.
• We read all the threads. We appreciate it when players can read a lot too. "I didn't read the whole thread" is a particular pet peeve of mine, because it feels like you are saying your opinion is important enough to be heard, but those of other players are not important enough for you to read them.
• Have fun. It's a game.

Druid (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Restoration druids mana issues
When I see Resto druids run out of mana, it is often because they stacked spellpower and forgot about spirit, mp5 and int. On shorter fights it can be attractive, but on the longer bosses like Saph and KT, that mana pool and regen really start to count for something. (Source)

Rogue (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
51 Point talents
I think you are expecting more out of the 51-point talents than we are. The death knight may be the best example. They are useful 51 pointers, but none feel mandatory and the trees aren't balanced completely around them. Unholy Blight is probably the closest to feeling necessary, but really only for tanks.

We do still think that those comments about Hunger for Blood still stand. However, it's not a simple fix because Assassination can do very high (if not the highest) dps (in a world without HaT bugs), but only for a skilled player who invests a lot of time into it and only on long fights. That means to juice up the tree in some places we'd need to nerf it in others in order to avoid Assassination becoming THE PvE spec. It is something we're working on -- just too early for any announcements. (Source)

Rogues in WotLK
The "lackluster talent" thing is something almost every spec throws around. In almost every case, we weren't trying to make the 51 point talent the best in the tree and we weren't trying to make the 51 something you use as part of your standard rotation.

As I have said before, what we wanted to do with rogues in BC included getting poisons back into the game, making sap a more useful CC, and getting rogues to pay a little more attention to the rest of the group (with things like Tricks). (Source)

Ranged vs. Melee DPS
I do think there is a melee disadvantage, and I do think rogues are probably not quite doing the damage they should in ideal situations.

Be careful with Patchwerk though. It's an ideal situation for rogues, but it's an ideal situation for any dps that doesn't have to move or run around. You need to look at the LK equivalent of Void Reaver (and I'm not sure there is one -- Grobbulus maybe) where the ranged dps have to move and the melee can more or less go crazy. Another problem with Patch is that the fights are short. You can burn all your cooldowns and have them active for a decent percentage of that fight. Rogues typically need to lay down a groundwork before they really start pumping out the dps, and they really start to shine in situations where the casters have to start worrying about mana.

We knew this was the risk with introducing the combat dummies, but some players do have the tendency to generate numbers from those tests and then expect to see that dps in a raid. Usually encounters are much more complex than that. (Source)

Rogue AE changes in 3.0.8
We aren't trying to turn rogues into an AE class. We just want them to have something to do in AE situations besides making Heavy Borean Leather. The new Fan works pretty well for that.

We do think rogues might be a little low on single-target bosses, but we're also cognizant of the fact that they tend to do much better with good gear and good buffs. We have some plans in mind. (Source)

Warrior (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Developer Q&A (Source)
1) Is generating no rage on shielded targets considered to be a balanced mechanic or are possible alternatives being considered?
It's not something we think is broken. Rage is not an unalienable right. You get it when you hit things. When you hit a shielded target, you aren't hitting them.

2) Is it intended for the new Arms tree to be so heavily dependant on RNG or was it maybe taken a bit to that extreme, and if so are there any plans to making the damage from that tree seem more on demand?
We're okay with it for now. Various specs have more or less RNG baked into them. Fire and Frostfire mages are enormously RNG at the moment, but many players are okay with that. Incidentally, it is usually the Fury warriors I see accidentally pulling aggro.

3) When comparing overall damage to survivability ratio between the three plate wearing classes (Paladin, Deathknight and Warrior) do you feel that things are balanced?
I assume you mean dps specs, not tanks? I gather from your question that you think it isn't, so why don't you bring up the specific issue instead of tying to test me on whether I am aware of it?

4) Are stance restrictions for certain abilities such as 1) Pummel 2) Rend 3) Overpower still considered a functional and desired warrior mechanic? Mostly in regards to Pummel as Arms is lacking a convinient interrupt due to it being balanced around battle stance.
Yes, we like stance restrictions. That is really the major thing that makes stances unique. Despite the changes we made though, I still think Battle Stance is a little neglected and that is something we'll be looking at.

5) Is weapon swapping invoking the GCD while in combat something that is considered to be ok, namely for a class like warriors which rely on frequently switching between a 2 hander and sword and board to use basic functions such as spell reflect, shield wall, and possibly shield bash? This could also help with the issue of Arms not having a readily accessible interrupt if equiping a shield didnt invoke the gcd to interrupt.
It's supposed to be a decision on whether to use a shield or not, not something you can macro around. If we wanted you to use spell reflect without a sheild, we would have just done that. (Trivia: we did consider a deep Arms talent to let warriors spell reflect and possibly even bash with a two-hander.)

6) Is changing charge to a 1 second root mechanic, similar to druids feral bear charge being considered, to help alleviate some of the issues warriors are facing in terms of not landing near their opponent, the stun not landing and lastly by invoking an early DR on stuns?
You're talking about changing the mechanic just as a work around to technical limitations. That is a last resort if we can't make the tech work the way we want. The movement code in WoW is something we need to update. We are using it a lot more (consider even things like Disengage and Death Grip) than the original architects probably intended. If we can't make it work, then we might change charge. If we do DR on stuns, it won't be because of warriors.

7) When comparing the damage sacrifice warriros take by equiping their shield and going into defensive stance to up their survivability to a druid going to bear form or a deathknight going into frost presence (which is further being buffed) are things considered balanced?
Yes. To really benefit from bear form, a druid has to have certain talents. If they have those talents, they probably do not have as many +dps talents. A death knight, like a warrior, gives up a lot of damage by going into Frost Presence. The buff was made because we nerfed abilities like Icebound Fortitude and Bone Shield. You also don't have to use a shield and Defensive Stance together every time. It depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

Now, I'll assume you are wearing plate. I am less sympathetic when warriors wear leather "because it's better for us" and then complain about survivability.

8 ) With a resource like rage which can be plentiful or crippling scarce, is the 30 rage transfer between stances (if speced) considered to be a reasonable ammount or are there any considerations of possibly slightly increasing the amount retained through stances?
This is something we might end up changing. Losing access to certain abilities might be enough. But again, the druid and death knight both pay a resource cost for changing. Remember it is supposed to be a decision, not a test of your reflexes to see how fast you can switch.

9) >>Open ended question<< Ultimately I made this last one for you to write anything you think the warrior or general wow community would be interested in.
I'll just throw out a couple of thoughts on warriors, since I haven't done it in awhile.

• Protection - very happy with the tree overall. One of our best success stories in LK I think. Still a viable tank, but with some more interesting abilities and actually a better PvP presence. Critical Block and Damage Shield may present scaling problems down the road.
• Fury - Titan's Grip is cool overall, though we still worry about whether Fury has enough buttons to push and too much rage. Whirlwind Glyph change should be nice. Might generate too much threat (with no viable dump) when blowing cooldowns.
• Arms - probably the tree that still needs the most love. Some of the new talents are very cool, but mid-tree may be a bit lackluster (we don't want to make the upper tree any more attractive to Fury). Deep Wounds is probably too high a percent of overall damage, but we don't want to nerf it without compensation elsewhere. Sudden Death may be too RNG, but we'll see. Bladestorm + Retaliation can make a nice tank.