Siegecrafter Video, Conquest Update, Connected Realms, Blue Posts and Tweets, TCG Art

[chaud]

Wyatt Cheng on Negative Effects of Inconsistent Health Pools, RMAH Delay Issues Resolved, What Business Would Each Follower Want to Run?

Heroic Siegecrafter Blackfuse Video
Method has released their video of the Siegecrafter Blackfuse encounter.

Conquest Cap & Gear Update

As many of you are aware, there have been several hotfixes regarding PvP gearing over the past week. We wanted to take a moment to not only explain what exactly went wrong, but also what we’re going to do about it.

The problems started with an error in calculating the season "catch-up cap". As you may know, this cap is calculated on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, for some players, these calculations began before Season 14 had officially begun. So, when the season did start, those players essentially had an entire season’s worth of catch-up credit added onto their normal weekly cap of 2200.

As soon as we recognized the error, we despawned the Conquest vendors while we worked on and tested a hotfix to correct the artificially inflated Conquest caps (and remove extra Conquest that had been earned). We also created a hotfix that was intended to solve the initial error with the catch-up calculations during maintenance in other regions, but were unable to apply it before the issue had spread to other regions.

Once the hotfix to correct Conquest caps was completed, it was applied to all regions, and the Conquest vendors were respawned. At the time, we believed that the hotfix would take effect without realm restarts. That, unfortunately, did not turn out to be the case, so over the weekend, a number of players were able to acquire several pieces of gear that they should not have otherwise been able to. On top of that, a small number of players were able to earn the Grievous Conquest achievement, which then allowed them to purchase Conquest gear with Honor points.

We’ve since been working hard to correct our mistakes, and as of right now, here’s where we stand:

• All players who had an inflated Conquest cap have had those caps corrected
• The Grievous Conquest achievement vendors have been despawned temporarily, as no one should have access to them through normal play at this time
• The Grievous Gladiator weapons have had their level requirement hotfixed to 91 temporarily, as no one should have access to them through normal play at this time

However, there is still the matter of the extra gear that some of these players were able to obtain. We need to remove this extra gear to maintain a level playing field for all of our players, but we also have to be extremely careful not to remove extra gear that players earned legitimately (as drops from world bosses, for example). To that end, here’s what we’re planning to do:

• We’ve already begun manually investigating players with multiple pieces of Grievous Conquest gear, starting with the most abusive cases
• For less abusive cases, we intend to apply a hotfix during the next maintenance period that should clean up any remaining extra gear
• This hotfix will also remove the Grievous Conquest achievement from those who have earned it prematurely
• In both cases, our plan is to convert excess Grievous gear into its Tyrannical equivalent, to ensure that no players are accidentally left without an item in a given slot

We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience this has caused, and are working around the clock to fix things as quickly and cleanly as possible. Thank you for your patience.

Hopefully those with full or near full sets actually get fixed. Lots of people running around with too much season 14 gear.
Many of those cases have actually already been resolved. We're working hard to get through all of them as quickly as possible.

Connected Realms Update

We have completed maintenance to join Boulderfist and Bloodscalp into the first pair of Connected Realms. These realms should now be live once again, and we sincerely appreciate your patience during this maintenance period.

We would like to take the time to make players aware of a couple of known issues that we are currently investigating. The first of these is that players who do not have their macros cached locally may need to re-create those macros. Additionally, we have received reports of the guild message of the day not being displayed for some characters. At this time we’re unaware of how widespread these issues may be, and will investigate and resolve these issues before connecting any additional realms.

Blue Posts

Virtual Realm Progress
They can't just implement it to servers, they need hefty testings and need to decide which servers to connect. It's not as simple as switching lights on.
Pretty much this. Connecting realms is not as simple as flicking on a switch.

Patch 5.4 added a lot of new content to World of Warcraft, and it added some neat things behind the scenes as well :-)

We now have the technology in place to connect realms, and we will do it, however there are a lot more factors than just the technology that needs to be taken into consideration when deciding which realms to connect. We are working on it though, in fact we have been working on it for a while now, and hopefully soon we will have a final list of the realms that will be connected.

If you can't do it why advertise it? It's like those offers you see during sales they advertise on TV, a certain item reduced by 50%, the problem is they have had it on the shelves for twice the price it should be. PCWorld are the worst for it.
We can do it, and we will do it! What I am saying is that patch 5.4 brought the technology that makes this possible and now the only thing that remains to be done is to decide on the best way to optimally connect those realms that needs a population boost.

I would say that it was more of a preview than actual advertisement, at least that was the intention behind the blog about connected realms that we posted before the patch went live - We wanted to provide more detailed information to people about what this feature actually entails so that people will know what to expect before realms get connected.

I can respect that but there is alot of questions unanswered still that surely by now you have made a decision on? Like will the BMAH be crossrealm, what about challenge mode times and realm first achievements?
Sure, some decisions have been made by now, but I'm afraid I can't go into much details on them right this moment. Hopefully it should not be too long until we are ready to share more information about connected realms.

4 of the 5 English speaking EU RP/PVP realms, are according to wowprogress data, amongst the 4 worst populated realms in the entire EU.

Frankly, since it has ALREADY been said that like type realm will be connected with like type realm, I fail to see the delay in connecting at least those 4 realms together right now if the technology is there. They will still be pitifully small re total player numbers unless they are all then connected to Defias Brotherhood, the high popped 5th RP/PVP realm, but hey, at least it would be a start.
Even though some realms were likely candidates to be connected together right from the start, like it is the case with some RP realms, there is also a matter of following the right procedure... things must be done in a certain order to ensure smooth implementation and to avoid mishaps that will be hard if not impossible to correct. I am fairly sure that we will not start connecting realms until final decisions have been made and we have a complete list of which realms to connect. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets

Misc
I thought a game being 10 years old would be a good reason for radical changes.
No doubt there are some former players sitting on the sidelines waiting for the right feature set to jump back in, but... (Source)
I imagine a lot of former players just aren't tuned in anymore & wouldn't even know or care about the most radical changes. (Source)
Meanwhile, those still playing the game might be pretty happy with the way things are and risk walking with too much change. (Source)
Strategically, radical change probably would lose more players than it would gain. (Source)
What evidence or basis do you have that suggest you'd lose more players with radical changes?
The track record for MMOs with radical changes is not a good one. (Source)

Out of curiosity, was there a great deal of churn among players who were not raiding during BC?
We've always had a lot of churn. Historically we were able to attract more new players. (Source)
I believe in BC things like leveling an alt or grinding professions was still novel enough to motivate a lot of non-raiders. (Source)
In LK we had achievements which helped provide something to do, but 25 Naxx was also insanely popular because it was so easy. (Source)
We added LFR to try and fill that void. Flex should help too. (Source)

any chance on a lighting engine update? NPCs pacing with lanterns looks very silly.
To be clear, we have updated the lightning engine every expansion for as long as I can remember. (Source)

not smart ass Q. Saw in dev interviews team is ~40% larger and adding more. Why now and not back when subs were much higher?
We've said for yrs we want to get content out faster. Staffing up is non-trivial though - takes a while to find right people. (Source)
Is there a critical mass number of people you can hire? Too many voices; hard to rein in coherently, right?
There isn't a magical number, but concerns about hurting our process or culture by overhiring are quite legit. (Source)

Are you admitting that radical changes to the vanilla world and talents have backfired on you?
I think we're using different definitions of radical. A radical change would be overhauling the combat engine to allow dodging. (Source)
More recent games (not just MMOs) have more active combat. Maybe that would be cool for WoW. Massive and risky change though. (Source)
God please NO! I highly dislike the newer games active combat systems!
Yeah, exactly. A change of that magnitude would be a huge risk to the game and therefore extremely unlikely. (Source)

whats patch day like for you? Is it hectic or just a "normal" day and operations staff does most of the work on the servers?
No, it's very hectic. Even on smooth launches (knock on wood) there are inevitable hotfixes and ops concerns. (Source)

Who is responsible for choosing and confirming the next WoW expansion theme in Blizzard? Mike Morhaime?
It's an organic process, but mostly it comes from the WoW team. We ask lots of smart people to weigh in of course, inc. Mike. (Source)

Losing subs + more dev's working on the game. Isnt that somehow conflicting? Profit and so on?
Players often assume that numbers are driven by specific design decisions. Frequency of content is often a much bigger driver. (Source)

Quick question, do you think we may see WoW on consoles one day.
The input system (mouse + keyboard) would have to be radically rethought. (Source)

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

[BlamedAbyss]

The track record for recent MMO's that aren't WoW isn't a good one.

[snuzzle]

The posing in this piece is interesting. I know the orc is supposed to be backhanding the human, but it more looks like he's just turning around and accidentally hit him. "Oh man, whoops, I didn't see you there! My bad, my bad!"

[Delicious]

Am I the only one who doesnt really look forward to kill videos anymore ever since vodka broke up? Kina made the BEST videos

[Muezick]

That Method Kill video was INTENSE .... Damn I Felt like I was there, I kept trying to touch my keyboard to move in the direction the raid leader was issuing orders.

This fight looks SO FUN

[Solidusbr]

Damn, Heroic Blackfuse looks hard as hell.

[Delicious]

Also, why aren't guilds waiting anymore until other guilds kill it? Now, guilds are just streaming their progression and releasing videos ASAP. I am rooting for Method, I hope they win the race, but I hope they wait to release their Garrosh video

[nooty]

Ken raiders released the first heroic video ..

Well compare to Ragnaros hc this was not really hard to adjust too

[Dark_Spirit]

First pic: thats an earth totem... where does the fire come from...?

[noralya]

Also, why aren't guilds waiting anymore until other guilds kill it? Now, guilds are just streaming their progression and releasing videos ASAP. I am rooting for Method, I hope they win the race, but I hope they wait to release their Garrosh video

Eh, it looks like they release videos as soon as other guilds have killed the boss too, which I think has been the way it's been done for a long time now. that's why no video of Paragons is released.

[Deleted]

Also, why aren't guilds waiting anymore until other guilds kill it? Now, guilds are just streaming their progression and releasing videos ASAP. I am rooting for Method, I hope they win the race, but I hope they wait to release their Garrosh video

Kind of challenge ?

They don't even bother that the others see how they managed to kill it.

Why did the guilds kept their videos before ? For secret more than making the perfect video I think. They wanted to keep all their "secret strategy".

Method decided to challenge them all and give them the possibility to join them back if there's some points where they struggle.

And I find this very community friendly, they want to share their knowledge ! Methodpedia for Paragon & co.

[Khetagurov]

sparkuggz has been farming a hell of a lot of warbringers/scouts.

[Crazozourus]

Paragon got the Paragons...

[Deleted]

Method has released their video of the Siegecrafter Blackfuse encounter.

This is not the official video by Method, the video posted is of one of their raiders, the one that should've been posted is the multiple POV one and for all effects the official one present on Method's youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJb1xoOOicM

[Dignam]

MW video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdvfeHIp-bI

[ahrr]

[0bsessions]

What evidence or basis do you have that suggest you'd lose more players with radical changes?
The track record for MMOs with radical changes is not a good one. (Source)

Somebody remembers Combat Upgrade and New Game Enhancement...

Man, original build SWG was awesome and Sony gave all MMO developers a prime example going forward of why radical changes for the sake of radical changes are the best possible way of absolutely destroying your userbase.

[furydeath]

You just watch the Heoric Blackfuse video you might also like,No, this is patrick.

[Spammeister]

So why would anyone care about the TCG now that it's officially KIA?

[Jawstrock]

Gotta give it to method, they really got that fight down to a science. Compared to the other guild which felt a bit more messy and "everyone for themselves" :P But I guess once you get everything is placed in a very predicatble pattern, it gets "easier" to make a fight pattern in there. :/