Dev Interviews, PTR Class Balance, OpenRaid Events, Curse is Hiring, The Daily Blink

[Gabron]

Hope it's not the "Dance Studio", would be disappointing if it was the "new awesome feature".

[Satanous]

Am I the only one who would have prefered a special class quest for each over townlong :P

[Seja Victrix]

bet it's the DOTA battleground we saw datamined a while ago.

scaled dungeons would be cool but he said "new" content.

[Snuzzfizzle]

This coming week.

10:29 Mod zarhym: Yes, the plan is to release patch 5.2 this Tuesday. A final "go / no go" meeting will take place later this afternoon to make sure we're ready!

[NatePsychotic]

Well, that interview was lackluster.. Gary was offered 10 more minutes to answer a few chat room questions and he turns it down. Why has no interviewer this week asked about model revamps, it annoys me.

[Reyzzz]

Well, that interview was lackluster.. Gary was offered 10 more minutes to answer a few chat room questions and he turns it down. Why has no interviewer this week asked about model revamps, it annoys me.

What's the to ask about them? We know they aren't coming before the next expansion, so why waste time pondering it?

[NatePsychotic]

What's the to ask about them? We know they aren't coming before the next expansion, so why waste time pondering it?

Because an update every few months would be nice, to see how far along they are with their progress. What really pissed me off is the fact the interviewer turned down 10minutes to answer as many chat room questions as possible, really thinking about their viewers... Seemed as if he was happy with having his own personal questions answered while not giving a fuck about the very people that help keep him streaming.

If it weren't for the viewers, he wouldn't have the popularity and the chance to get these exclusive interviews.

[Leonard McCoy]

It's the mentoring feature from Rift. It's been awhile since they ripped something off from another game, pokemon not withstanding.

As for the dailies feeling mandatory, it's because they very much were mandatory. They provided an alternative path to gearing that could be exploited by everybody and in the case of raiders it was. Juts like 10s and 25s. Blizzard went to a shared lock out for that very reason because it felt mandatory to do both. In mists they bucked and ignored all of that and let the dailies ring and they lost subs. Will be resubbing when 5.2 hits. Looking forward to it.

[kos1085]

I am betting its Dynamic Events like other MMOs have been doing.

[Dark Exerus]

Lor themar as warchief? Maybe but who would be the orc leader? probably Garrosh considering Thrall had to fight Gallywix and still gave Gallywix leadership of the goblins.

[F-Minus]

The unannounced feature will most likely be gear/level downscaling for older dungeons/raids, so that you can still have a challenge while doing them, and as a reward for doing it this way you'll get some form of level-appropriate reward, such as a ilvl 496 item at the end boss.
If you rather want to do the old version, you don't get the current rewards of course.
Can't think of any downsides to that.

The downside is, that that's not new or fresh content, that "doing the old dungeon with gimped gear". I know I'm not speaking for everyone, but for me personally dungeons are means to level and get starting gear for proper content and from that point on, I just do them maybe couple of times a week to get some valor nothing else. I don't want to revisit Maraudon for level 90 appropriate loot, neither do I want to do Shadow Labs, Violet Hold or Zul'Aman for the 5000th time. I've done them enough in the past, and I've got my rewards and fix from them.

What you're describing is essentially what they did with Challenge Mode dungeons, and as fun and valor profiting they might be, they are not among the most popular things to do, in fact they are ignored by quite a large population that plays WoW, because without proper group pairing your prospects for beating a time are dim, and if you are lucky enough to find a good group and get the medals, there's no need to revisit at all.

There's a reason, time constrains are left out of most modern games, cause it's the most retarded/cheesy method to keep you failing, especially in a game that has so many variables of what could go wrong or right. It worked in arcades back in the days, since they made more money, when the timers in gems were set super low and people had to spend quarter after quarter to keep playing, but having timing and a fail state in modern games you bought is just wrong.

That said, there is nothing challenging in Challenge Mode Dungeons, but the timer itself, and because of it, the dungeons become hard, not because the content in them, you pull too fast, oom, die, you don't pull fast timer ticks, pull too much of scare, die, etc. And when you look at the leader boards of that said game feature, you'd see that it's populated by pretty much the same classes etc.

I've done them up to Silver, on my Fury warrior, can't be arsed to do them again for Gold, and I don't think I will be tempted anytime soon to revisit, just as I wont be tempted to revisit old dungeons made hard by exorbitant boss health and trash hit power, and a timer that say "Yo dawg, you got 5 minutes remaining if you want that supa cool turtle mount!" - not my coup of tea.

Random generated content in from of dungeons/instances on the other hand would be fresh each time I'm doing it (if they get it right) and would actually be interesting to play.

[Count Zero]

What happened in the live interview today ?? Figured there'd be a transcript / summary up by now

[nekobaka]

Random generated content in from of dungeons/instances on the other hand would be fresh each time I'm doing it (if they get it right) and would actually be interesting to play.

Lets just take a moment to look at the random generated content in DIII.

[Inahu]

He even said that just one class quest takes to about the same length of time to do a zone. You can call them lazy all you want but I'm sure they'd have had more complaining and sub losses when Cataclysm lasted even longer because they were doing 11 class quests rather than content everyone could do.

What happened to that line that we heard a lot when they were defending Pokemon Lite - that the devs working on that area only worked on that particular section of the game (user interface)? Should we take what he said as revealing that was a blatant lie - or is it just okay to compare two different areas of game development only when it's convenient for Blizzard?

Personally, I find it extremely difficult to believe, without any external verification, that developing just one class quest takes the time involved with creating one zone. Zones have several chain quests, one or two story arcs, and a number of minor 'vignettes'. There is the zone itself to design, what NPCs are going to be required, possibly new models to create, mobs and AI to do, and it all has to come in the release patch. By contrast, class quests can utilise existing resources and do not have to be completed in the release patch - in fact, are probably better staggered with subsequent patches to progress as the expansion moves along.

[F-Minus]

Lets just take a moment to look at the random generated content in DIII.

D3 randomness is poop, but there's plenty of games where it rocks, for instance Torchlight (karma is a bitch, I know).