Patch 6.2.4 PTR Update, Dalaran, Legion - Epic Battle Pet Stones, Tweets, DLC #527

[chaud]

Stone of Jordan Feedback, Sprinter / Speed Racer Conquest Tips

March Ranked Play Card Back - Riverpaw Ruffian - Hogger (Animated!)

Maintenance & Xul Release, Rotation for March 1, 2016, Weekly Sales, WTF Moments #39

Developer Update - Ranked Play, Matchmaking, Server Connections, Closed Beta

Patch 6.2.4 PTR Update
Another small patch went out tonight, with a few changes:

• Mythic Hellfire Citadel was added to the Group Finder
• Timewalker difficulty was renamed to Timewalking
• A new achievement criteria was added "H20 - Promo"

Legion - Dalaran Island
Dalaran got a new small island floating near it recently.

Epic Battle Pet Stones in Legion

Hi everyone!

First and foremost, thank you very much for testing pet battles in the Legion Alpha. We’ve heard your concerns and have decided not to move forward with epic pet battle stones in Legion.

To explain a bit about how we arrived at this point--

When designing rewards for the new battle pet features in Legion and the revamped pet store in Dalaran, we considered epic stones a potential direction to go. Some players are nearing the cap of max-level, all-rare pet teams, and we wanted to see if this space would satisfy their needs for a long-term future level of investment.

You have correctly identified a few of the issues that come up with this feature:

• New players now have a harder time catching up (though we could mitigate this by speeding up the early leveling process).
• Players with 600+ rare pets that felt as if they were nearing completion of their pet journal are back to having 600+ pets to level.
• Power Creep – older content is now easier, future content is harder for new players entering pet battles.

One of the things we like about pet battles is that much of the early content stays relevant through all of the expansions. Similarly, the collection aspect of battle pets works well when it’s wider (more pets to collect, more variety in abilities) rather than taller (more levels). Both of these are very good reasons to avoid adding epic pet stones.

This direction also pushes us to create content that tests max-level-pet-battlers in a way that is not purely numbers, but use of abilities, use of specific pets, and memorization of enemy strategies. The Celestial Tournament was a good example of pet battle content that rewarded a varied and filled pet stable. We have some exciting things in mind for future battles versus tamers!

It’s worth noting that this feature was not intended to replace any gameplay content. We’re working on all sorts of pet battle updates that we’d like to make in future patches.

Thanks again for all of your feedback. We really appreciate your great ideas and discussion!

Blue Tweets

people want their classes to have burst aoe because of how fights end up on farm, 1 second lived adds, will legion change this?
Is performance on farm more or less important than performance on progression? (Celestalon)

Ghostcrawler Tweets
Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard.

Would you say that participiation was low because ToC released too soon, or not many tried it properly?
Players were really spread out. Some couldn't beat the first boss and others were done. (OccupyGStreet)
Previously only the done players would move on to the next tier. ToC began everyone moving up, maybe not finishing (OccupyGStreet)

At what point do you just say "if you hate that role, you're playing the wrong class?" SP's were always like that.
Back in the day, rerolling was not easy and players had a connection to their main. Saying they chose poorly was harsh. (OccupyGStreet)

Overwatch Developer Update
Jeff Kaplan gave the community another update on Overwatch today, addressing ranked play, matchmaking, sever connections, and beta status.

Dark Legacy Comics #527 - Old Maid
DLC #527 has been released.

[Deleted]

people want their classes to have burst aoe because of how fights end up on farm, 1 second lived adds, will legion change this?
Is performance on farm more or less important than performance on progression?

Hahahaha... there we go again, a typical Celestalon quote.

[Otaka]

Hahahaha... there we go again, a typical Celestalon quote.

Its obvious... almost always these questions are stupid as hell, and here we go again...
The answer is only obvious... do you really care about farm that much? i dont... progression is what matters and the game should be balanced upon. :P

[pyrostorm9001]

Its obvious... almost always these questions are stupid as hell, and here we go again...
The answer is only obvious... do you really care about farm that much? i dont... progression is what matters and the game should be balanced upon. :P

Well to be honest no. Progression is certainly important but there comes a point where some classes continue to excel and others plateau or even go backwards based on encounter make up and I feel its important to take this into consideration.

Eg. lets take a fight that has a few adds here or there that are required to be killed as a priority. During progression and low gear a dot spec is just as useful as a direct damage spec in that both specs have abilities that contribute to the kill.

Weeks or months later (depending on how scaling goes) You might find that a dot class is looking rather pathetic simply because the add is being killed faster than the dots can do their job. Even if you are 100% aware that this is just what happens, it still feels rather crappy to be that player.

Now in today's game its possible that you have another dps spec to change too, but in Legion it certainly seems rather difficult to move from your "garbage" spec to your "viable" spec.

[Deleted]

I don't care at all for whatever balance or performance in "farm". It's a waste of time for Blizzard. Only if there is catastrophic bugs (unplayable) then developers should correct, else no. Let people use the old content as it is.

[Deleted]

Its obvious... almost always these questions are stupid as hell, and here we go again...
The answer is only obvious... do you really care about farm that much? i dont... progression is what matters and the game should be balanced upon. :P

You progress, then you go to farm after you complete all. If you dont care about your farm much, and not attend raids anymore -
1. you get replaced/gkickd.
2. you perform bad, and get bad logs, and get replaced later.

>>>>3. after you dont have guild anymore, you cant join new with same progress, because your logs suck.

Yes, i care about farm as much as progress.

[Deleted]

I'm excited for the pet battle updates, it's a great pass time when I'm in a bit of a lull, plus I just love collecting stuff.

I hope they invent a new way to upgrade pets to epic, it should be an accomplishment rather than a necessity I feel. Seeing as they are worried people will be going 'oh no 600+ pets to upgrade again!' they need to figure something out that makes people happy, but they can't take away the whole epic thing now they've mentioned it, I was looking forward too much to making my Baby Blizzard Bear epic, cos he was one of my first team I got to 25 =p

I personally wouldn't mind daily quests, or even so they did it that you have to battle other epic pets MoP style in order to get Epic EXP to gradually level them to epic. I dunno, but I don't want the concept to be given up on. Any pet lovers who get me on this? :P

[Teaon]

You progress, then you go to farm after you complete all. If you dont care about your farm much, and not attend raids anymore -
1. you get replaced/gkickd.
2. you perform bad, and get bad logs, and get replaced later.

>>>>3. after you dont have guild anymore, you cant join new with same progress, because your logs suck.

Yes, i care about farm as much as progress.

if you got kicked because of point 2, then your guild sucks and your raid leader sucks, he needs to l2p and you need to join a better guild than understand how raiding works.


end of line.

[Tatakau]

They should put the decision makers behind the pet battle sytem in charge of the whole game, they seem to have their head screwed on!

[Deleted]

Celestalon's answer was correct. Class balance only matters on progression, anything before or after that is not important.

Not to mention it's extremely hard to balance everyone on farm, because certain classes just scale a lot better when the fights become shorter, because their extended burst sadly enough accounts for the majority of the fight duration, whereas on progression it wouldn't even account for 1/10th of the duration.

[Amerissis]

Aw, no epic pets

[Baneleaf]

I believe it is painfully obvious that WoW developers either do not play their own game or they mainly play LFR. You would think with people like Lore on staff they might listen to some of those players experience but instead we get a game that we have now. I think there will be a lot of people very disappointed with Legion and sub numbers will drop to a breaking point very soon.

[ItachiZaku]

The shadow priests I played with actually knew how to DPS, so we were a lot more than just a mana battery.

[Kryos]

11 years... from kid to adult... but that has nothing to do with the declining subs, right?

- - - Updated - - -

Aw, no epic pets

I'm happy with that. I have over 700 blue level 25 pets. It was a pain in the ass to level them all and turn all blue. One expansion wouldn't be enough time to level them all to epic and level 30 or whatever the new cap would have been. Or they need to make it so easy, it's pointless.

[Tenjen]

I believe it is painfully obvious that WoW developers either do not play their own game or they mainly play LFR. You would think with people like Lore on staff they might listen to some of those players experience but instead we get a game that we have now. I think there will be a lot of people very disappointed with Legion and sub numbers will drop to a breaking point very soon.

no they keep their eye on what is healthy for the game as a whole, not what we think is awesome or cool or convenient because of personal preference.

[Bullerick]

Patch 6.2.4 hype!!!

[Mormodes]

Wow that DLC really hits home...

[Raynre Valence]

People complaining about having to level their pets again must go into conniptions whenever a new expansion rolls around and they're not at max ilvl anymore.

[Mhyroth]

Patch 6.2.4 hype!!!

And it has more content as the 6.1 patch !

[Logwyn]

Is that the Alpha dalaran or the Wotlk one? Nice looking island that we'll have to hmm portal too in legion? Fly too? Just look at?