Loot table, rating issues, blue posts, mobile

[Boubouille]

Welcome to another update without any 2.4 information, however we do have a few interesting blue posts from the community managers and it's looking a bit more interesting than the beginning of the week.

The secrets behind the loot tables
There's always been a lot of question around this and Drysc decided to explain how everything works.

Loot is generated upon creation. As soon as you step into an instance, or a mob is created in the world, the loot that's going to drop has already been determined.

is it based on some attribute of the players in the raid, or the raid leader?
Heh, no. I believe it uses a time stamp to seed the generator. So, there's nothing you can influence within the game that would alter or coerce the generator.

Does it mean that killing the same boss at the exact same time each week will get players the same loot everytime ?
No, the time it uses to seed would have no real implication into the final outcome of what loot its given. On a long enough generation table, you may see some type of pattern based purely on a random generators inability to truly be random. But we're talking about astronomical numbers, something ridiculous like hundreds of billions of generations. Nothing you would or could see a pattern in during your time playing the game.

What you're seeing is pure and basic laws of probability. Have a few thousand people roll a pair of dice and you're bound to see hundreds of people able to roll snake-eyes 10 times in a row. (not that dice are truly random either)

Personal Rating Issue
The bug affecting some players and removing them from the wrong arena team when attempting to leave another one has been identified, however it can't be fixed without a patch and support teams won't be able to reimburse any lost ratings during this time.

An issue has been identified that is sometimes causing players to be removed from the wrong Arena Team when attempting to leave a different team (being removed from the 5v5 team when trying to leave the 2v2 team, for example).

As a direct result of this some players are inadvertently losing some of their personal rating.

We expect this issue to be resolved in an upcoming patch, but we regret to inform you that our support teams will be unable to reimburse any lost ratings during this time.

Alliance / Horde balance
PvE servers are full of night elves and TBC PvP servers are full of blood elves, but it's not that bad actually, we could have had gnomes instead.

That's a bit more complex. Old timey PvE realms, which are generally the ones queuing as far as PvE goes, are all Alliance heavy. The only realms that are Horde heavy are TBC launch day PvP realms. How many people do you think want to transfer from their PvP realm to a PvE realm?

However, Malygos, has a pretty close 2:1 Alliance/Horde ratio. Which, while isn't necessarily ideal, has been the going rate for PvE faction balance since the launch of the game.

That's a good transition for the following post, with Drysc answering to the people asking if it will be possible to transfer from alliance to horde in the future. Short answer : no.

It's always been talked about within the community and so it's something we've always been aware of. I think the undertaking is just so complex and potentially dangerous to the game that it's not something we're currently investing in. The Blood Elf addition to the horde, as well as the shaman/paladin swap were probably the biggest attempts at encouraging better faction balance. Trust me when I say US realms have it really great as far as faction balance goes.

Other blue posts

Is there any plan to increase the speed of mounts even more ?
Probably not. We've stated a few times that the higher end flight speed right now is right up to the limit (and maybe a bit faster) of the speed we want players traveling at. It's unlikely that we'll allow it to go too much faster. (Source)

New non-transfer realms
At this time we have no announcement to make regarding a new non-transfer realm. (Source)

Beastiary update
It will be updated, but it hasn't been up even one week yet, heh. Being updated "regularly" doesn't mean a direct timeline, but it will get numerous updates before the expansion launches and we will likely post about them on the forums as they come. (Source)

US Realms - Free character transfers and new server
US Realms are getting a LOT of free character transfers, and also a new server (Ghostlands) to help some of the most heavily populated realms.

We will be offering free character moves from selected high population realms to lower populated realms, assisting in population dispersal. The ability to move a character on the selected source realms will become available on Thursday, January 31 at 3:00 PM PST, and are scheduled to run until Thursday, February 7 at 3:00 PM PST.

In the event that a realm meets our transfer goals before the scheduled end date, the transfers to that realm will be disabled. We highly recommend that if you are planning to transfer that you do so at your earliest convenience. No characters will be eligible for these free moves once the transfers have been closed.

Once the transfers open you can begin your transfer by visiting the Character Move page located here: https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/character-move.html

The realms chosen consist of source realms with the highest sustained queues, and destination realms with the lowest population. The numbers gathered are directly from our data, and depict the realms in most need of these transfers. We will be continuing to monitor all realms and open additional free transfers in the future where necessary.

Source A (PvP) - Arthas, Burning Blade, Illidan, Skullcrusher, Warsong
Destination A (PvP) - Balnazzar

Source B (PvP) - Mal'Ganis, Mug’thol, Sargeras, Tichondrius, Twisting Nether
Destination B (PvP) - Onyxia

Source C (PvP) - Gorefiend, Kel'Thuzad, Mannoroth, Shattered Hand, Smolderthorn
Destination C (PvP) - Malorne

Source D (PvE) - Aerie Peak, Aggramar, Alexstrasza, Alleria, Argent Dawn, Blackhand, Cenarius, Doomhammer, Hellscream, Whisperwind
Desination D (PvE) - Ghostlands*

(*) Ghostlands is a new realm. Character creation for this realm will be turned off for the duration of the transfers.

World of Warcraft services on mobile phones
According to Blizzplanet, a few weeks ago Blizzard trademarked something named "Battlechat" used for "Virtual network telecommunications services, namely, providing an interface of the electronic transmission of messages and data including voice, test, and message transmission."

This follows another rumors based on a comment made by Paul Maglione (Vivendi Games Mobile boss) during an interview with pocketgamer.co.uk

Pocketgamer - We had a chance to get the official line, when Vivendi Games Mobile boss Paul Maglione was sitting in the audience for one of the panel sessions at MGF, and was asked directly about mobile World of Warcraft.

"Mobile aspects will become part of all MMOs," he replied, with a distinct smile on his face.

There is nothing official from Blizzard, and it doesn't look like a WoW service at all for the moment (Battlechat is very close to Battle.net, which is mainly used for the RTS games from Blizzard). However it wouldn't be too hard to find a few things to offer to people to let them manage their character from their mobile.

Video - Azerothian Super Villains 5
Made up of the most evil of all of Azerothian's evil villains, the "Azerothian Super Villains" are by the far the most evil and corrupt. Core members Illidan, Kael'thas, and Archimonde attempt at their evil plans of taking over the world every day! Will there plans come to fruition? Will they take over the world? Or will things simply become messed up as usual? Stay tuned!

In Episode 5, "The Stockade Redemption," Illidan becomes tired of his cohorts messing up all of his plans and asks them to leave. Coincidently, at the same time the FBI finally arrives and captures Illidan once and for all, leaving Kael’thas and Archimonde to run the Azerothian Super Villains for themselves. Will Illidan suffer the rest of his life in a mediocre prison for his life of crime? Will Kael’thas or Archimonde come to the rescue or will they run the gang into the ground?

[Mecco]

Nice to know how loot tables are created finaly! :-*

[Sil]

This was explained by a blue ages ago but i guess the majority has forgotten it or either just likes to put the blame on the Masterlooter

[Azain]

This was explained by a blue ages ago but i guess the majority has forgotten it or either just likes to put the blame on the Masterlooter

pre-tbc (and i mean early MC and such) loot tables were generated differently however, correct? because i remember people getting repeated drops quite easily, and we even attempted to repeat seeds at times ourselves.

on another note, my guess at the whole blizzchat or blizzmobile thing could be some instant messenger type thing where your friends on the wow tab show up and you can message them or maybe write mail or possibly even setup auctions and such from your mobile phone, adding a whole new dimension to things. while i don't think something like that is necessary it would be interesting to see if that is the route they take.

[SimTex]

Wow it took more than 2 years to state how their loot tables are generated. Well it seems like the most obvios method anyway.

[Liitho]

just open the pve->pvp paid character transfer

:>

[mindstrike]

Be really nice if Blizz made a special seed on your account that registers when you have made a visit to the same instance for the 30th time to help the drop rate of a item (that is tailored to your class) have better odds of Dropping...


*cough* Baron!

;P

[valeea]

one more day, one more proof: 2.4 = hoax

[FISKER_Q]

pre-tbc (and i mean early MC and such) loot tables were generated differently however, correct? because i remember people getting repeated drops quite easily, and we even attempted to repeat seeds at times ourselves.

on another note, my guess at the whole blizzchat or blizzmobile thing could be some instant messenger type thing where your friends on the wow tab show up and you can message them or maybe write mail or possibly even setup auctions and such from your mobile phone, adding a whole new dimension to things. while i don't think something like that is necessary it would be interesting to see if that is the route they take.

I don't believe it's ever been different, i don't know if any blue has ever disclosed the concrete information, but the mobs in blasted lands, which have been like that from the beginning confirmed that drops were generated at spawn.

[Draxinusom]

2.4 infos trinkle in:

You’ll find here after some excerpts of 2.4 patch notes. Enjoy!

Dungeons and Raids

* All 25- player raid bosses that drop set tokens will now drop and additional token!
* Gems obtained through Heroic difficulty instances are no longer Unique-equipped.
* Loot dropped by Doomlord Kazzak and Doomwalker has been changed to Bind on Equip. In addition, the cash dropped by these bosses has been significantly increased.
* Scale of the Sands reputation will now be awarded in Hyjal at a much higher rate.

Src: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....geNo=1&sid=1#0

[Rondarth]

I´m Pally and I feel very buffed...





not?





WTF? where´s the PvP Balance crap everybody was talking about? Well... WotLK is still to come, with it the Paladin Nerf. Yeah - PvP Pallys still rule.