Dev Interviews, Unlucky Roll Streaks, ToT Progression, Blue Posts, TCG Art Update

[chaud]

Legendary Dyes Still in the Works, Blue Posts, Fan Creation of the Week: Crimson-Shirou Cosplay

Isle of Thunder US - Stage 2 Unlocked

Patch 5.2 Dev Interviews
Let's take a look at another of the dev interviews today, the NowGamer interview with Ghostcrawler.

• In Cataclysm, players who hit 85 and were not in a raiding guild or a serious PvPer didn't really have much to do, so Mists of Pandaria aimed to solve that problem.
• Thunderforged Weapons were supposed to be a way to keep loot somewhat interesting, even after farming the same bosses for months. The increased drop rate in 25 player difficulty was just a way to give players a reward for the increased logistical challenges.
• It is much easier for a 25 player raiding guild to drop to 10 players than it is for a 10 player raiding guild to grow to 25 players. Blizzard still likes 25 player raiding though, as it offers a more epic experience, more opportunities for players, and a more resilient raiding group.
• There is a good chance that item upgrades will come back in odd numbered patches, as players have run out of new gear to buy with Valor. This also increases player power to help them through progression if they are stuck.
• If item upgrades come back, it is likely that they will be much cheaper, making it practical to upgrade everything.
• The Patch 5.1 legendary quest that required 6,000 Valor was likely too high, with a number closer to 2,000 or 3,000 being more appropriate.
• There is a lot of interest on the dev team in turning old player favorites into challenge modes.
• Challenge mode participation rates are higher than Blizzard had predicted.
• Adding new class abilities is exciting for current players, but adds something new to learn for returning players. Striking a balance between keeping things fresh for existing players and not making a larger barrier to returning players is challenging.
• Blizzard has talked about getting content out faster for a long time, but is really starting to deliver on it now.
• Adding new things that last one expansion, but not forever is part of the plan, with the farm in Mists of Pandaria as an example. Otherwise you end up with a system like guild leveling that must be supported forever.
• WoW on a console would be very challenging, but possible. There would be a lot of design issues to solve.
• Patch 5.2 is an example of the the type of content players can expect year after year, for as long as players keep playing. World Of Warcraft is alive and well!

Solution for Unlucky Bonus Roll Streaks
One of the ideas mentioned in the interviews was a increasing chance to win something to offset unlucky streaks, and Cory Stockton shared a little more about it today!

Throne of Thunder Heroic Progression
Not much progression today! Exodus, Экзорсус, and Apex joined the 8/8 club, but no one has been able to down Dark Animus yet. You can keep up with the kills on Manaflask, our forum thread, and WowProgress.

Patch 5.2 Hotfixes: March 15

Classes

• Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Fixed an issue where Chilblains may fail to apply its snare effect.
    
  
  
• Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Symbiosis will now cancel properly if the Druid and the target remains separated for a period of time.
    
  
  
• Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Dire Beast summons should now have the Avoidance aura.
    
  
  
• Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • General
    
    • Incanter's Ward is no longer transferred to a Mage who Spellsteals it, but is dispelled from the target.
      
  • Talents
    
    • Living Bomb now deals 70% of its damage when used against other players, down from 100%.
      
    • Nether Tempest now deals 70% of its damage when used against other players, down from 100%.
      
  
  
• Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Divine Purpose should no longer activate from unsuccessful attempts to cast Inquisition.
    
  
  
• Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Glyph of Die by the Sword should now only apply its effect for Warriors that have that it set as an active glyph.
    

Quests

• Be Raptor: Fixed an issue where the final cutscene may not display correctly. Players should now be able to obtain completion credit and turn the quest in.
  
• Liquid Gold: Players should now be able to loot supply crates and complete the quest.
  
• Lunk's Adventure: Rendan's Weakness: Iron Summit Guards should now join the conga line, allowing players to complete the quest.
  

Creatures

• Arcanital Mara'kah's barrier spell now lasts 30 seconds, up from 20 seconds.
  
• Players of both factions are now eligible to receive loot from Nalak when at least one of the factions has fully unlocked the Isle of Thunder.
  

Pet Battles

• Resilient should now properly prevent Critter pets from being stunned by Rupture.
  

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

• Throne of Thunder
  
  • Council of Elders
    
    • Fixed an issue where the Council of Elders did not always drop 2 items on 10-player normal mode.
      
  • Durumu the Forgotten
    
    • Azure Fogs are now no longer able to be damaged by area-of-effect spells when they are not revealed.
      
  • Twin Consorts
    
    • Suen's Fan of Flames now has a 50-yard range.
      

PvP

• Tyrannical Conquest achievement for both factions now requires a character to obtain 25,000 Conquest points in Season 13, down from 27,000 Conquest. The tooltip and progress indicator will still display that the character needs 27,000 Conquest. This will be fixed in a future patch.
  

Items

• Reduced the higher than intended drop rates for Shado-Pan Assault Insignia from Sunreaver Bounty.
  

UI

• Fixed an issue where stage progression on the world map for Isle of Thunder was not displaying correctly for players outside the isle.
  
• Reduced the amount of spam on Local Defense - Isle of Thunder channel while engaging Kirin Tor or Sunreaver NPCs.
  

Bug Fixes

• Using a potion while under Stealth/Invisibility no longer causes the potion to go on permanent cooldown.
  

Blue Posts

Treasure Room is Far Too Confusing
Hey now, my first time I killed the boss and got out with Tenwu. But of course, I went to youtube to look this stuff up before my first time. I'm not sure that's a good thing for players to feel like is the *right* approach. And right now, that is very much the right approach. You are simply cheating yourself if you don't make use of third party resources on this.

I'm also not a fan of the term "tutorial." People hear "tutorial" and they think of pop ups, NPC's offering tips, and the like. It can be fun to explore yourself. It's not fun when exploration feels punishing to your weekly five-minute long opportunity.

I admit, if this were just a series of rooms linked together with no major goal other than hopefully opening chests, I'd feel different. In large part, my feelings about this are influenced by the fact that they also decided to attach achievement parts to it. Five minutes a week to try to learn the place for these achievements just feels obnoxious.
But that's true of anything. You're at a disadvantage for anything if you don't look at a guide first. And certainly if you're an achievement hunter you would. If you're just a casual player you might jump in, go WHAT IS HAPPENING and run around furiously trying to open chests ... and that's kind of what it should be like. It should be high stress. There are supposed to be traps and events to slow you down that you aren't aware of. If you didn't open a ton of chests that's ok, it's free stuff even if you only open 1.

Yes you're at a disadvantage if you don't buy the strategy guide for every new game that comes out, but discovery of the game, its mechanics, trying to interpret the design intent, and overcoming those challenges is part of what makes games fun. At least for me. If you want to look up videos for everything before trying them though you can.

I think the disconnect here is if you feel like this is a piece of content that owes you something; a minimum reward level and you feel cheated if you're not allowed to achieve that. It's not. It's free stuff that isn't directly related to character growth or improvement. You can run it every week or never run it and probably not be any better or worse off in the long run. It's just fun. If fun is looking up the strategies beforehand, cool, and if not, good luck! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Throne of Thunder LFR Drop Rates
i have done ToT lfr, first normal run so i got the bag from every boss + i used 3 coins, and once with only coins, totally i spent 6 coins and no loot at all. srsly is the droprate on 5% on every boss or what!? it's freakin lfr!
The coins have a low chance of awarding you items, just as it was in the 5.0 raids. On the other hand, a handful of 6 examples is a rather limited sample to draw conclusions on what the droprate is, or how useful the Raid Finder of Throne of Thunder is, particularly for those folks that have been running mostly the 5.0 Raid Finders but nothing else beyond that difficulty.

However, if you're a normal raider, it's likely that, in the long run, Raid Finder won't hold many interesting items for you, since Normal gear has a higher item level (522 as opposed to LFR's 502). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets

PvE
Will there ever be an option for LFR where we can chose Off Spec for the loot rolls since its personal loot?
Likely, yes. (Source)

So did the failbag changes not make patch 5.2 release ?
Yeah, they should be in. Remember: just for Raid Finder's personal loot bag. Bonus roll doesn't give a bag. (Source)

why can we queue reg randoms for JP with guildies like we could in Cata? Hate being FORCED into heroics when I feel not ready
So many people wanted to jump right to heroics that we weren't sure there was an audience. In retrospect there seems to be. (Source)

God forbid you increase the spawn rate. Or allow players to tap a mob without allowing people to grief others.
Increasing the spawn rate of quest boss mobs is weird. They already respawn almost instantly when someone kills them. (Source)

Not that I'm opposed: why are you now going back to the TBC model where a boss is not intended for most players?
It's 1 boss in the 30+ we've made for MoP. I think most players can live with that ratio. (Source)

PvP
Any plans to use lfr engine to match random battlegrounds (especially to balance healers numbers?)
Yes. (Source)

Why its still possible in 2013 to get 4 healers team against non healers team in random battleground?
It's possible because the BG queue system is like 5 years older than the LFR one. We want to redo it though. (Source)

Do we have a new resilience formula with 5.2? Same values show different tooltips for 5.2 and 5.1.
Yes. It's a linear curve instead of an exponential one. Lower ilevels might get a buff. Higher ilevels should stay the same. (Source)

So you don't like uncounterable things. But for some reason that doesn't include ... blanket silences?
We don't like blanket silences, but without them, instant heals couldn't be countered. (Source)
Change blanket silences to only affect instant casts?
That's interesting. Would have to think about it more. (Source)

gorefeinds into a vortex into a solar beam surrounded by a rof is a huge part of high Rbgs play, seems too strong, thoughts?
It's definitely potent. I hate to just nerf everything that's an effective strategy though. (Source)

Altho, you cant really compare rets to holy, they need to be viable in comparison to other melee classes.
Now that sentiment I agree with. I was just pointing out how much the healer respec issue complicates interpreting representation (Source)
I pay to play ret. Zero interest in playing holy thanks. I expect to be on a par with other melee. Not unreasonable.
No, that's totally reasonable. I was just explaining why looking at representation can give a skewed perspective. (Source)

Are you happy with the FACT that high end raiders are useless in PvP with their heroic gear
They definitely aren't as powerful as folks who earned actual PvP gear, which seems like the superior design, no? (Source)

TCG Art Update
Blizzard has updated the Trading Card Game art gallery to feature ten new pieces.

[Deleted]

Patch 5.2 is an example of the the type of content players can expect year after year, for as long as players keep playing. World Of Warcraft is alive and well!

Good to see Blizzard wants to keep rolling out patches in a similar fashion to this one. This patch delivered, and if anything in the future is quite the same I'll be happy enough

[Deleted]

"In Cataclysm, players who hit 85 and were not in a raiding guild or a serious PvPer didn't really have much to do, so Mists of Pandaria aimed to solve that problem."

Lol. I had really good time leveling alts and gearing them, farming transmog gear etc. Now i can still do the same, but it's so frustrating like building a sand castle with pincers and one sand grain at time. Oh well, they are not doing this game just for most uniquest snowflake like i am.

[KaoGen]

I wonder when theyll fix Warlocks Metamorphosis allowing a couple of later unlocked passive ability effects before youve unlocked them.

[Smeller]

"why can we queue reg randoms for JP with guildies like we could in Cata? Hate being FORCED into heroics when I feel not ready"

I'm sorry, but I dont get what the person tried to say, can somebody clarify?

[Prokne]

If gear upgrades arent coming back can we have the old gear info? The new style is ugly and disjointed.

---------- Post added 2013-03-16 at 07:30 AM ----------

"why can we queue reg randoms for JP with guildies like we could in Cata? Hate being FORCED into heroics when I feel not ready"

I'm sorry, but I dont get what the person tried to say, can somebody clarify?

I guess they want to queue for normal TotJS, SSB, SPM, and MSP. I dont know why since anyone with a 400 ilvl should be able to do the "heroics" in MoP. They are basically the lvl 90 normal dungeons so you can already queue for them and if you want more JP queue for more.

[Deleted]

''WoW on a console would be very challenging, but possible. There would be a lot of design issues to solve.''

Hooo shiiiiyt.

[MysticalOS]

Considering you can plug a mouse and keyboard into a console. i don't see what's challenging, unless they just WANT to put it on a gamepad. They do remember final fantasy made it on a console right? With the right accessories

[Vesci]

So many things in this interview scare me......consoles.......claiming everything is AOK..........the continued pattern of "yeah, that was too much.......is this thing off??? oh, HAHAHAHAHAHA, they'll TOTALLY buy that SHIT" and 5.2 being what we can expect year after year, my god....Warlocks will be forever nerfed.

[Rayaleith]

The mage changes shows that Blizzard cannot solve the PvP balancing problem without doing something that they never wanted it to; having spells behave/do different (damage) on PvE and PvP.

[Deleted]

Why its still possible in 2013 to get 4 healers team against non healers team in random battleground?
It's possible because the BG queue system is like 5 years older than the LFR one. We want to redo it though.


if there gonna redo random bg ques maybe they should take a look at how many people who que for them are botters

[Deleted]

The mage changes shows that Blizzard cannot solve the PvP balancing problem without doing something that they never wanted it to; having spells behave/do different (damage) on PvE and PvP.

lets hope they will finally decid to go full scale on it

[Magellann]

The mage changes shows that Blizzard cannot solve the PvP balancing problem without doing something that they never wanted it to; having spells behave/do different (damage) on PvE and PvP.

Precisely my reaction Ray. It started with stuns having diminished effect between PvE and PvP (something I'm well aware of on my rogue) and this is yet another step. Maybe they'll finally have it all split by 6.0?

[F-Minus]

If gear upgrades arent coming back can we have the old gear info? The new style is ugly and disjointed.

---------- Post added 2013-03-16 at 07:30 AM ----------



I guess they want to queue for normal TotJS, SSB, SPM, and MSP. I dont know why since anyone with a 400 ilvl should be able to do the "heroics" in MoP. They are basically the lvl 90 normal dungeons so you can already queue for them and if you want more JP queue for more.

Why I would do it, is because of Transmog PvP gear. It's so much easier to grind JP with running normal dungeons and convert it to honor as to farm honor in BGs where you end up mostly with bots on your team and lose 8 out of 10 bgs.

---------- Post added 2013-03-16 at 11:17 AM ----------

The mage changes shows that Blizzard cannot solve the PvP balancing problem without doing something that they never wanted it to; having spells behave/do different (damage) on PvE and PvP.

It's what they should've been doing from the get-go when they introduced proper PvP to the game, somewhere in the year 2005. The game would feel totally different now as classes would still be more unique, and not every class would have dispel all button, mana burn would still burn shit loads of mana in PvE while be the crap it is/was in PvP etc.

In fact they should completely split PvE and PvP so that no balance change impacts the other.

[Deleted]

Dark Animus seems to be very hard...I like!

[F-Minus]

Also raiding both 25 and 10, depending on how many people are online, I say that the size doesn't make the raid more epic/legendary whatever, but it's the raid itself that makes that. For example Throne of Thunder feels epic, MSV/HOF/ToeS on the other hand felt super non epic weather I was running them 10 or 25.

I'd say AQ40, Classic Naxx, ZG, Karazhan, SSC, BT, ZA, Ulduar, ICC felt epic, rest of the raids pretty much felt like a drag and something put together to drop gear for players, including MC, BWL, AQ20, TK, MH, SWP, TOC, BoT, BWD, FL, DS, MSV, HOF, ToeS, actually not bad raids, but not epic, nothing amazing in instances, just boss grinds weather I was doing them on 40, 25, 10. And lets not mention the 1 or 2 boss instances, that mostly WotLK was full of, most boring filler content in history.

[Aesahaettr]

Patch 5.2 is an example of the the type of content players can expect year after year, for as long as players keep playing. World Of Warcraft is alive and well!

So, no new 5 mans, and tons of really fucking dull dailies. Nice.

The raid's nice but everything else failed hard. I'd rather all the dailies and crap weren't implemented so I wouldn't feel obliged to do them.

[Deleted]

Didnt Blizzard say they wanted every spec to be fun in pvp? Why nerf arcane mages? Make it for fire and frost only, or take your words back.. well atleast frost bomb got a +5% buff.. seriously hate when they nerf it for every spec.

[Tenjen]

going back to the TBC model for exclusive bosses?

what? That isnt even what that ONE boss is. Theres no link between this context and the TBC bosses context.

the heroic only bosses have occured both in Wotlk and cata. and just 1 extra bonus boss each time that was a level above the other heroic one's in difficulty.

[Yig]

So, no new 5 mans, and tons of really fucking dull dailies. Nice.

The raid's nice but everything else failed hard. I'd rather all the dailies and crap weren't implemented so I wouldn't feel obliged to do them.

No, don't take it as literally as fucking possible, unless you're looking for something to cry about, then go right on ahead and don't let me stop you.
He's talking about the overall level of effort and the magnitude of content, he's not saying it's a literal transition of the same exact content, that's just an overly dramatic interpretation. We've never gotten anywhere near this number of brand new art assets for one single patch, and we usually have gotten one patch per expansion of this magnitude. Now we're going to have around 3 per expansion, with 2-3 5.1 smaller patches as well.