LFR Loot Exploit
If you are getting loot off of a boss twice then it is an exploit. This has always been the case in World of Warcraft, and we expect players to know better.
We’re in the process of implementing a hotfix to fix the exploit, and are deciding what steps we'll be taking for the gear that was already obtained. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Fury's Deep Wound Nerfed
In 4.3, we fixed a bug where Deep Wounds was benefiting from the 40% auto attack bonus from Precision. Deep Wounds should only be triggered by crits, not passive damage.
We also found a bug introduced in 4.3 (and reported by several players) that Deep Wounds was not triggered by attacks such as Heroic Leap, Intercept and most importantly, Raging Blow. We are deploying a hotfix to fix that bug.
Deep Wounds should not benefit from spell enchants, such as Avalanche. In general, enchant procs should not have synergistic effects with talents or class mechanics.
From what we have seen so far, Fury’s damage is still where we want it to be in 4.3. We will see how things change as more data comes in. If we think Fury’s damage needs to increase through Deep Wounds or some other mechanic, we will be sure to do so. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Well of Eternity Lore
The accent Tyrande has was bad.
The same voice actress is responsible for her voice then and now.
The explicitly sinister Illidan, despite this being before he absorbed the skull of Guldan, and even before he was imprisoned and chained for 10,000 years, is worse.
He was already blinded and making use of demonic power by this point, however. I'm not quite certain what you mean by 'explicitly sinister', but he was already largely estranged from his fellows and pursuing his own research at this point. In that light, we thought it would be more interesting to show a little bit of corruption even before he consumes the powers in the skull as opposed to just having him look like a straight-up night elf.
The pre-Deathwing Neltharion model complete with body ruptures and metallic jaw/plates is just laugh-out-loud ridiculous.
I know that this might be a bit tough to swallow for some, but the use of the current Deathwing model in that scene was a matter of efficiency. A ton of work went into 4.3, and we squeezed in as much as we could, but it didn't make sense to dedicate the huge resources it takes to create a custom model for that one cameo, and we were concerned that using a generic black dragon model wouldn't have the same immediate value of recognition.
Modifying the Illidan model made more sense because you actually spend some time running around with him in the dungeon.
On that note, I should point out that creating custom models actually consumes substantial resources, so they're precious to us. Tyrande didn’t have her own model for seven years, Sylvanas didn’t have her own model for several years, etc. We'd love to have custom models for every character, for every scene at every point in the timeline, but the resources simply don't exist to make that happen. In the meantime, we hope that players can use a little bit of imagination and still enjoy the dungeons anyway, even if a given model isn't always a perfect reflection of the character.
The resources don't exist?
I didn't say they don't exist. They were just directed toward other efforts.
For example, there's a lot of new item and environment art in this patch. There are new mounts, new armor sets, new weapons, new pets. Ultimately, while we would love to do everything, at the end of the day we always have to make choices about how and where the resources are spent.
I know you have to be all "PR responsible" and stuff, but that's a pretty lame answer in my opinion. In fact, every time someone complains about something not being of top-notch quality, it always comes back to this answer.
We always come back to that because we have x development resources which must accomplish y goals in z time. It's very common that there will be some give and take during the process. All of this is in service of trying to get the most out of the time we invest to create the best experience possible. That's incredibly important to us, and hopefully we've created some very worthwhile experiences not only in these instances, but all the other patch content too. Still, whether it's a reality of game development or not, I acknowledge that it's probably not a very satisfying answer when it seems that we've missed something that was important to you.
What exactly are the people Blizzard has hired doing then? If all their efforts are resorted to weapons and mounts, instead of the prime focus of your latest patch, that's ridiculous. Unless you find the prime focus of the patch to be the weapons and mounts, then that's just sad.
Our artists were busy creating new models for weapons, mounts, pets, new environments, among other things (including an entire future expansion which is currently in development). It's easy to make all those things seem unimportant, but we disagree - we want the stuff you pick up, wear and keep to look awesome whenever we can make that happen. These dungeons were an important part of 4.3 (I think the term 'prime focus' overstates the case a bit, though) and actually, a tremendous amount of effort went into making them not only fun and engaging, but also as lore-appropriate and visually authentic as possible. It's a little unfortunate that the majority of that effort is being completely overlooked.
You couldn't have taken a random black dragon, increased it's size... Gave it more texture, etc? Heck, you could have taken the current model of Deathwing and modified that.
All of those were possible courses of action, sure, though I suspect that using a different existing model would likely had the same result. Slight modifications to an existing model may not even have been noticed, given the light show going off in that scene. Also, as others have pointed out, he was already wearing the armor at that point. In the end, we're currently having a long discussion about a single model which appears for a few seconds, and is wreathed in gold lightning for much of that time. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)