Character Leveling Stats, Tweets, Blizzard and Diablo Anniversary Party at BlizzCon

[chaud]

BlizzCon: Diablo's 20th Anniversary Party, David Brevik & Bill Roper at Blizz HQ

HCT 2016 European Last Call Begins Saturday - Decks, Brackets, & Info!

Samuro the Blademaster is the Next Hero to Enter the Nexus

Overwatch Halloween Event is Coming, Developer Update with Jeff Kaplan: New Maps, New Heroes, Symmetra

Legion - Character Leveling Stats
Today we are taking a look at the percentage of characters of each class that made it from being Level 100 a few months before Legion to Level 110 as of this week.

• Some characters were lost to name changes, realm transfers, faction changes, and database issues.
• The absolute percentages here have little meaning because of those issues, so they should only be used for comparing one class to another.
• Demon Hunters were not included, as the set of characters being checked was from a few months before the pre-expansion patch.
• We did the same thing during Mists of Pandaria and Cataclysm. Keep in mind that both of those were later into the expansion.

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Class	Leveled to 110 in Legion
Death Knight	11.0%
Druid	13.8%
Hunter	12.3%
Mage	11.6%
Monk	8.3%
Paladin	14.0%
Priest	10.9%
Rogue	10.3%
Shaman	11.9%
Warlock	10.0%
Warrior	12.7%

Blue Tweets

BlizzCon
One of the cool things about a content-heavy patch cycle is that there is always fun stuff to talk about at Blizzcon (Muffinus)

Future Content
At this point in your Legion progression, what sort of content would you most like to see added? (Muffinus)
Brawlers guild with new bosses, legion spaceship I can use to explore the universe and planets to conquer with my followers
you sound EXACTLY like Sargeras right now (Muffinus)

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

Seeing the post on reddit in which you basically say that LFR is the worst design decision you've ever made, I'm wondering what was the idea/mindset behind making it? To allow people who aren't that good at the game to experience raiding?
Yeah I expanded a little in that answer. I said that the goal of getting players with less time or willingness to wipe for 3 hours into raiding was a noble goal. Raiding is fun. It's the most epic part of the game IMHO. A lot of storytelling happens in raids and you get to see some great art and interact with famous characters. We definitely spent a lot of dev time on raiding, so getting it accessible to a larger population made sense.

The problem with Raid Finder was that when the content was too tough (meaning easier than normal raiding, but not a cake walk) then people would tend to drop the raid after a wipe or two. You'd get these revolving doors where the raid itself was stuck on a boss but the individuals in the raid had cycled through maybe 100s of players after a few hours. There was no "Okay, boys and girls, let's call it a night," moment that you get from a raid leader in an organized guild. For that matter, there was no leader who could kick problem players, dictate strategy or explain the fights. For most players, Raid Finder was a weirdly silent and anonymous affair.

The altenative was to make the difficulty level so easy that you'd probably steamroll every boss and that's sort of where we ended up, but it meant you weren't really doing a rotation, lots of people were AFK and these famous bosses hit like kittens.

Daelo (Scott Mercer) was the other designer who worked with me on Raid Finder, and if I had to do it all over again, I think I would advocate we try something more like a group builder where a leader would invite (and be able to kick) people. I did a lot of pug raiding over the years, and some of them worked fine, which leads me to believe that model has promise. I *think* WoW has something like that now? Not sure.

I have a lot of faith in those guys. They will eventually figure out a good solution if they haven't already. The original question and answer were both targeting my career as a designer, not an attempt to take a shot at WoW.

Blizzard 25th Anniversary and Diablo 20th Anniversary Party at BlizzCon 2016

25 years ago, a small group of gamers set out to create the kinds of game experiences they loved playing—and Blizzard Entertainment was born. Since then, the team at Blizzard has transported millions of people around the world to fantastic worlds of fantasy and science fiction—including Diablo’s Sanctuary, which first invited players to descend into the terrifying labyrinth beneath the Tristram Cathedral 20 years ago in 1996!

Please join us in celebrating these anniversaries on Friday, November 4 from 8 p.m. until 10 p.m. in the Grand Plaza outside the Anaheim Convention Center during BlizzCon 2016. This event is open to everyone, whether you’re attending the convention or just happen to be in the neighborhood, and admission is free. We’ll also have some great food, special anniversary-themed drinks, entertainment—and even a surprise or two.

An Epic Night of Live Music
The main stage at the celebration will feature BlizzCon Talent Contest winners Songhammer performing live—so grab some armor from your closet and get ready for an epic rock show.

When:
Friday, November 4, 2016 from 8 p.m. through 10 p.m. PT

Where:

• Anaheim Convention Center Grand Plaza
• Open space between Marriott and Hilton outside BlizzCon—no BlizzCon ticket required!

What:

• Performance by Songhammer
• Specialty beverages celebrating Blizzard’s 25th and Diablo’s 20th anniversaries
• Food Trucks
• Epic Fun

You’ll be celebrating the occasion alongside a fun-filled crowd of game developers, staff, and a swarm of fellow Blizzard gamers. You won’t want to miss a moment of this special event—we can’t wait to see you there!

Legion VFX Reel
Terrie Denman shared some of the art she worked on for Legion.

[Deleted]

Monk seems to be by pretty much every measure the least desirable class to play. Something needs to be done about that, badly.

[SgtDidymus]

no Demon Hunter stats?

[TylerWildstar]

Monk seems to be by pretty much every measure the least desirable class to play. Something needs to be done about that, badly.

I'm having a ton of fun playing WW. I think the other 2 specs could use some work, however.

no Demon Hunter stats?

These stats are 100s that made it to 110. Doesnt really apply to demon hunter.

[Shullski]

Monk seems to be by pretty much every measure the least desirable class to play. Something needs to be done about that, badly.

Eh, its a blast to play. Especially WW. It is simply a newer class that has always been seen as difficult to play. Not to mention the fantasy is kind of hit or miss for people.

[amythist]

Eh, its a blast to play. Especially WW. It is simply a newer class that has always been seen as difficult to play. Not to mention the fantasy is kind of hit or miss for people.

yeah Monk has never really been OP enough to draw in fotm rerolls, and way too much of the classes lore/fantasy is based in/on Pandaria, the expansion that a lot of people seem to really hate

on top of that starting from level 1 on a class added so much later than the others is kind of a turn off for many people with more established characters already

[Generical]

So how long do you have to sit in the channel to receive the title? For now I'm just muting and minimizing it while I play WoW.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

Time to get fucked over on a title for the second time, boys and girls!

[Deleted]

Monk seems to be by pretty much every measure the least desirable class to play. Something needs to be done about that, badly.

I love my monk (MW (healer)) and less people means, my monk is more unique. So, it's the best to be a monk.

[Deleted]

Time to get fucked over on a title for the second time, boys and girls!

I wanna know too

[Generical]

I'm sitting in the channel and a mod auto posted this message:

Wondering about the Patron of War achievement? Now that you’ve visited the stream, the achievement will be rewarded within the next two weeks! http://blizz.ly/NARegionals

Guess that means as long as you at least open up the stream with a linked account you'll be eligible.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

I'm not upset about the scrubby title which, in theory, requires little to no effort. I can live without it since Herald of the Titan is my perma title. It's more about how Blizzard seems to be unable to properly monitor and reward the title for their own promotion especially if they've historically had issues with Twitch.

[Tech Priest Bojangles]

I'm only watching to see Brazil fail and i'm not disappointed.
Let's hope this Twitch thing actually works this time.

[Deleted]

I connected my twitch account with battle.net had the stream opened in the background paused for 30 minutes while playing wow and i got the title yesterday (from the EU stream)

[Gadzooks]

I get what Ghostcrawler is saying, but is it a design problem, or a player problem? I spent a lot of time in LFR in Pandaria, and there were all kinds of players there - some who would rage quit after one wipe, some who'd stick around for a while, or for a specific boss, and then people who were there for the whole ride - and were willing to talk strats and such. And a LOT of runs where we'd get a good group, and start chain running LFRs together. It wasn't the design, it was the players who made it what it is. I think the devs need to step back and let the players define what it's going to be, rather than try to force behavior through design. They do that with pugs, after all. I saw the exact same behavior in normal pugging back then, too - rage quits on a single wipe, etc.

You'll never cater to everyone with LFR. He thinks they'll be able to - but just like with class "balance", it's kind of a pipe dream. But trying endless varieties is job security for game designers, so they'll be tinkering with it forever.

I think LFR was perfect in MoP. Just hard enough to provide an end-game for the casual players, some reward to get the more serious players in there, and it was a legit step in the progression. I know I felt a LOT more comfortable stepping into normal raids once I knew the basic layouts and fights from LFR.

I love the design reel at the end there - there's some cool design on FX in the game, but fights are so damn cluttered these days you can't see most of it. Or were, I havent actually played since the first week of WOD. I always wanted a filter, that turned off other player's spell FX, or made them fainter. I couldn't even tell you what rogue FX looks like, even though I played one for 10 years - it was lost in the clutter from everyone else.

[Trinora]

I get what Ghostcrawler is saying, but is it a design problem, or a player problem?

As a designer you only have influence over the design. You can't change people.

[mischievous]

So how long do you have to sit in the channel to receive the title? For now I'm just muting and minimizing it while I play WoW.

I'm doing the same and was wondering this exact thing.

[lichbane]

I think LFR was perfect in MoP. Just hard enough to provide an end-game for the casual players, some reward to get the more serious players in there, and it was a legit step in the progression. I know I felt a LOT more comfortable stepping into normal raids once I knew the basic layouts and fights from LFR.

This ×1000

Doing LFR gave me the confidence to raid normal. It let you get the concept of the raid, though more simply first .... and once getting the "lay of the land" move on to normal. I'm just lucky right now in that I have a decent group to do normals with first.

But I think they've gimped EN LFR a bit too much. I've tanked it with a mate and used all the tips I've learned from DPSing normal; we pretty much breezed through, but we learned a bit too. But going in as a DPS, the tanks in LFR just ignored mechanics .... because they can. MOP LFR had just the right level of difficulty so that (in the beginning at least), LFR was a good training ground to go forward. Now its easier than heroic dungeons.

[JemiS]

This ×1000

Doing LFR gave me the confidence to raid normal. It let you get the concept of the raid, though more simply first .... and once getting the "lay of the land" move on to normal. I'm just lucky right now in that I have a decent group to do normals with first.

But I think they've gimped EN LFR a bit too much. I've tanked it with a mate and used all the tips I've learned from DPSing normal; we pretty much breezed through, but we learned a bit too. But going in as a DPS, the tanks in LFR just ignored mechanics .... because they can. MOP LFR had just the right level of difficulty so that (in the beginning at least), LFR was a good training ground to go forward. Now its easier than heroic dungeons.

While this may be true in the perceptions of players starting to raid, in actuality it's the opposite.

In WoTLK, 10 man normal PuGs expected people to come in not knowing the fights. Explaining was relatively commonplace.

By MoP, with the introduction of LFR, the expectation became that everyone should know the fights and be able to do them even in Flex(Normal) mode.

IMO, this is the indirect cause of a lot of the lack of tolerance and teaching that happens in normal PuGs, due to the expectation that you can have already done it in LFR.

Especially given that LFR (even in MoP) didn't teach the fights correctly most times, it's a bad assumption and leads to people trying to step up from LFR to anything else have a bad experience more often than not.

[ZeroWashu]

such low percentages overall may reflect that its not an alt friendly expansion and additional steps may be needed to fix that. I would suggest spreading AK across all characters but it might be a balance issue