World Wide Invitational - Day 2 Panels

[Boubouille]

We've got two WoW panels today, the Raid & Dungeons panel just finished and the PvP Panel will start @ 13:30 CEST. This post might be updated with some pictures of the new dungeons when they're available.

PvP Panel

This post will be updated in a few minutes

Lake Wintergrasp

• PvE elements are being added to this PvP Zone, for example the equivalent of Elemental Plateau in Outland is in Lake Wintergrasp.
• Siege Combat will be in both Lake Wintergrasp and the new Battleground (see below)
• Siege vehicles incude air combat with flying vehicles.
• You can destroy the buildings within Lake Wintergrasp and in the Battleground.
• Lake Wintergrasp will feature an attack/defend game type. Just like the Auchindoun Spirit Towers, when your faction holds a tower it will keep it for a certain amount of time and retain all the advantage for a few hours.
• Northrend "Spirit Shards" will be used to reward players. When your faction controls Lake Wintergrasp all the bosses in Northrend will start dropping them. You can then use these shards to buy rewards from a merchant, they won't be more powerful any other reward but just an alternative to other sources of equipement (like gearing up for PvP very quickly).
• "Wintergrasp Marks of Honor" will drop as well and will be redeemable for items through the honor system and other NPCs.
• Bridges will be used as "choke point" in the map, siege vehicles can't travel through water.
• The goal of Lake Wintergrasp is to capture the "Wintergrasp Keep", everything in that keep is destructable and you will have to break into the keep to capture the point.
• Players will be able to control stationnary cannons on each tower to defend the keep.
• Bridges are very large and very tall, players should be able to see them from anywhere in the map. They're also totally destructable as well.
  

Siege Vehicles
The Demolisher

• The Demolisher has both short and long range attacks
• It is meant to bombard players and buildings from a long distance, it's also equipped with a ram to siege buildings.
• It can hold up to 3 passengers, passengers are exposed and can be targeted individually. However, players can cast while the vehicle is moving if they're in it.
  

Forsaken Catapult

• The catapult is faster than the demolisher but its range is slightly lower.
• It does slightly less damage.
• It cannot hold any pessenger.
  

The Siege Engine

• This is the siege weapon with the longest range.
• The gunner is sitting in the turrent and has full control of the turret.
• The driver is only moving the vehicle.
• The passengers in this vehicle are fully protected but can't shoot other enemies.
• It's also got a very powerful ramming attack
  

Flying machine

• Flying Machines can bomb enemies, they're swift but very vulnerable to anti-air attacks.
  

Goblin Shredder

• The shredder is an anti-air vehicle.
• It will use anti-air rockets, they're long range homing missiles.
• This is a personal armor suit, if the vehicle is destroyed the player just jumps out and keep fighting on his own.
• You can use your sawblade as close range melee attacks.
• The shredder can jump into the air just like rocket boots for players. This can also be used to jump over walls.
• The shredder is very vulnerable to siege damage.
  

Arenas

• The point is to keep arenas simple, while leaving room to innovate.
• Stream lost at this point, will update later.
  

Dalaran Arena

• The arena is fairly small and mounts won't be allowed here.
• Arenas will introduce new "movable" objects, changing the line of sight of the battlefield every few seconds in the arena. For instance pillars might go up and down randomly, on a timer, etc ...
• There is a pipe coming from the ceilling, every once in a while a column of water will start dropping from this pipe.
• Each team will start in a pipe on one side of the map, as the match begins a column of water will "push" the teams out of their pipes to prevent camping.
  

Orgrimmar Arena

• There might have objects dealing damage to players, pillars moving up and down based on a timer. There will be visual signs on the battleground to warn players before something happens.
• Triggered objects will deal damage to players, for example when the pillars go down spikes will come up.
• Teams will be very close to each other at the beginning of the match. Players will start in elevators rising from the ground and will start 10 yards away from the enemy team.
• Mounts will be allowed in this arena.
• If you stay on a pillar when it rises up you go up with it.
• There will be spikes around the elevators, they will go down a few seconds after you reached the fighting area to let you the time to check what classes you're facing.
  

Northrend Battleground

• This battleground is located on an island south of Dragonblight
• This is also an attack/defend game type battleground.
• One team will attack and the other one defend, you will have a specific amount of time to succeed. After the end of the round teams will switch sides.
• Attackers will come from boats and defenders will start in the middle of the beach.
• There are 3 sections of walls in the Area, after each wall there are capture points and graveyards to make the attack on the next points faster.
• Attackers will get more siege vehicles depending on their progression throughout the siege.
• The battleground will be either 10vs10 or 15vs15, this isn't decided yet.
  

Q&A

• The battleground reporting system is being tuned to let player police themselves easier.
• A spectator mode is planned, but devs keep in mind that some players won't want to have other players spectacting them.
• Everything is done to make outdoor PvP more pleasant and prevent server crashes. All objectives in Wintergrasp are all spaced appart to prevent players from gathering at the same point, that's also why there are a lot of rivers in the zone.
• There isn't any plan to add racial abilities to each race.
• PvP rewards won't be changed, you will still be able to get some of the best item for some slots from the honor system, and the 5-part set from the Arenas.
• Battlegrounds starting without even teams is definitely a problem. Some changes will be made to the queue system to prevent the overlapping between the queues of each battleground and make sure that matches start with the same amount of players on each side.
  

Raids & Dungeons Panel

Raids & Dungeons

• There will be 8 Level Up dungeons and 4 Max Level Dungeons.
• There will be a 10/25 players mode for each raid dungeon.
• Heroic dungeons will be made slightly easier, at least devs are going to make sure you don't necessarily need a specific class like a prot warrior to complete it.
• Some dungeons were too long in Burning Crusade and completing a dungeon shouldn't take more than an hour.
• Quests didn't feel as connected as they should and dungeons quest should implicate a bit more in the background of the instance. Killing bosses might even have an impact on the world.
• Gun'drak will be a level 80 Dungeon and the last objective of a huge questline going through the whole zone (Zul'Drak).
• Black Temple and Hyjal Summit were released too early, on a second thought it would probably have been better to release Zul'aman first instead of postponing it for more than a year. Developpers are going to make sure that Arthas is and feels like the final boss of Wrath of the Lich King.
• Attunements to enter Heroic instances will be removed.
  

Reputation

• You will be able to earn reputation toward a specific faction by becoming its "champion", for example by wearing a Cenarion Circle tabard while running Hellfire Ramparts you will earn reputation for both Honor Hold/Thrallmar and Cenarion Circle. Obviously tabards reputation requirements will be changed to something like friendly/honored.
  

Itemization

• More PvP gear will be delivered through the PvE system, it won't be the best gear but it will give you a chance to get started.
• More PvP gear will be added as reputation rewards.
• More items will drop from 25-man dungeons.
• Items will be changed by removing "unecessary" stats to make them usable by more classes at the same time.
• More recipes and plans will be added to the game, with a better representation between professions. Even if some recipes will still drop from a specific boss in a dungeon like in BC, devs will try to make some of them easier to obtain.
  

Death Knights

• Death Knights will be able to tank 5-man, heroics, raids dungeons, but in a "different" way. It will also fill a few more roles and won't be here just to tank.
  

The Oculus (LVL 80 Dungeon - Borean Tundra)

• The dungeon will allow players to use flying mounts, parts of the dungeon will allow you to get a drake and combat while mounted by using different abilities of each drake. Some drakes will be able to tank, some will heal, others will DPS.
  

Halls of Stone (LVL 77-79 - Storm Peaks)

• Halls of Stone will be located in Ulduar in Storm Peaks.
• All the dungeons in Ulduar were built by Titans and will really feel huge, however devs didn't want players to need a mount or anything like that to go through it and tried to keep it small.
• The storyline of Uldaman will continue in Ulduar.
  

Caverns of Time: Stratholme (LVL 80 - Tanaris)

• The faction requirement on the Caverns of Time teleport will be removed.
• The dungeon is fully scripted just like Old Hillsbrad. There are a couple of timed encounters, it will be non-linear and you will be able to choose your encounters.
• Players will be fighting alongside Prince Arthas before he falls to the Lich King.
• The same voice acting as Warcraft 3 will be used in the instance. (Jaina / Arthas / Uthar)
• The Infinite Dragonflight storyline will continue here.
  

Q&A

• Whenever it's possible, devs would prefer to deliver legendary items through quests like Atiesh instead of having them just drop from Bosses.
• There won't be any attunement for heroic or entry level raid instances. The remaining attunements will be very simple to understand.
• "Wipe management" is a very important part of the design and developpers are doing their best to make sure that corpse run in dungeons aren't too long.
• Titles might be added for kills, entering a specific area, etc ...
• More tokens will drop to minimize the impact of randomization, sometimes increasing the amount of items dropping from a boss isn't enough.
• Dungeons aren't going to be overall easier, but will be more accessible. Bosses might not be easier to kill but will be easier to understand for new players.

[mrchee]

OK

[Tergeron]

The pvp dev panel, where fur will fly and fists will meet. BOOOOO DRUIDS

[veovis]

There will be 8 Level Up dungeons and 4 Max Level Dungeons, a 10/25 players mode for each dungeon.

Does this mean every 5man dungeon will have 10 and 25man raid versions? that could be cool.
I wonder how they will make it worth finding enough for the 25man versions.

[Boubouille]

Does this mean every 5man dungeon will have 10 and 25man raid versions?

Woops, fixed, that's what happen when you write down things too fast. ^^

[veovis]

Woops, fixed, that's what happen when you write down things too fast. ^^

aww

[Firen]

# The same voice acting as Warcraft 3 will be used in the instance. (Jaina / Arthas / Uthar)

Wohoo, awesome! I really hoped they do that, but feared that they won't. Also i hope they do that for the german version as well *fingers crossed*.

[omglazor]

Does this mean every 5man dungeon will have 10 and 25man raid versions? that could be cool.
I wonder how they will make it worth finding enough for the 25man versions.

From what I remember reading a while back, Blizz wants 25-man rewards to be a step above 10-man rewards and while you could progress all the way to Arthas through 10-mans, to get the best stuff you'll need to run 25-mans.

[WyriHaximus]

Reputation

• You will be able to earn reputation toward a specific faction by becoming its "champion", for example by wearing a Cenarion Circle tabard while running Hellfire Ramparts you will earn reputation for both Honor Hold/Thrallmar and Cenarion Circle. Obviously tabards reputation requirements will be changed to something like friendly/honored.
  

Ok that sounds interesting . That means you can work on 2 factions at the same time, less time needed to grind 2 factions . To bad the tabby's are less exclusive then .

[Belazor]

Reputation

• You will be able to earn reputation toward a specific faction by becoming its "champion", for example by wearing a Cenarion Circle tabard while running Hellfire Ramparts you will earn reputation for both Honor Hold/Thrallmar and Cenarion Circle. Obviously tabards reputation requirements will be changed to something like friendly/honored.

OH. HELL. YES.
I pray to <insert name of deity you believe in here, pick random if ateist> that they do actually make these Champion tabards available for ALL reputation factions, even Vanilla and TBC factions. I'm a reputation junkie but I just can't make myself go back to the old world and doing stuff that gives me no benefit beyond reputation with a certain faction.
Plus, I'm currently addicted to my Ret Pally, which not only further takes away the ability to grind rep, but gives me another character to grind rep with.

If anybody is there and has ability to ask questions, could they please ask the devs if they have plans for creating tabards for all factions?

[Lunkens]

There will be 8 Level Up dungeons and 4 Max Level Dungeons

Only 4 lvl80 5-man dungeons sounds not that many
that would be disappointing

[Sulika]

Only 4 lvl80 5-man dungeons sounds not that many
that would be disappointing

TBC is much the same:

Level Up:
Ramparts,
Blood Furnace,
Underbog,
Slave Pens,
Auchenai Crypts,
Mana-Tombs,
Setthek Halls

Max Level
Steam Vault
Shadow Lab
3x Tempest Keep.

So its 7-5 instead of 8-4. Remember you will still have heroic mode in all dungeons for level 80.

[chrisek]

• Dungeons aren't going to be overall easier, but will be more accessible. Bosses might not be easier to kill but will be easier to understand for new players.

[sirius3100]

TBC is much the same:

Level Up:
Ramparts,
Blood Furnace,
Underbog,
Slave Pens,
Auchenai Crypts,
Mana-Tombs,
Setthek Halls

Max Level
Steam Vault
Shadow Lab
3x Tempest Keep.

So its 7-5 instead of 8-4. Remember you will still have heroic mode in all dungeons for level 80.

CoT?
But 12 5man will be enough to begin with. They just have to patch in a new one each content patch.

[Dustybrown]

CoT?

Yep 2 in CoT and Shattered halls too. So it's more like 9-6 to 8-4. 4 level 80 dungeons sounds really disappointing

[Deleted]

Yep 2 in CoT and Shattered halls too. So it's more like 9-6 to 8-4. 4 level 80 dungeons sounds really disappointing

The idea ofc is that heroics are more accessable, so in blizz's minds its 12 at 80. they expect heroics to be jumped into right after 80

[Nathanyel]

To bad the tabby's are less exclusive then .

I could bet there will be two: a grinding tabard, less "shiny", and an exalted one.

[Mascotte]

Yep 2 in CoT and Shattered halls too. So it's more like 9-6 to 8-4. 4 level 80 dungeons sounds really disappointing

Hardly, with more 10 player instances available people will be more willing to switch over to them.
Right now your avarage player does a couple 5 mans a week and maybe 1 kz if they are lucky, with more people willing to do 10mans it will be easier to find pugs for those instances.

And as said, every dungeon will still have an heroic version so the 5man lovers still have plenty of stuff to play with.

Dungeons aren't going to be overall easier, but will be more accessible. Bosses might not be easier to kill but will be easier to understand for new players.

This does bother me, sounds as if we are going to have a shitload of dull long fights with maybe 2-3 "special" parts because the majority of wow fails and still cant understand Fire is Bad after 3 years of wow? :>

[WyriHaximus]

I could bet there will be two: a grinding tabard, less "shiny", and an exalted one.

Good point, would be great in that cause. Gives people still something to show off .

[bootlegapparel]

Heroic dungeons will be made slightly easier, at least devs are going to make sure you don't necessarily need a specific class like a prot warrior to complete it.
Some dungeons were too long in Burning Crusade and completing a dungeon shouldn't take more than an hour.
Quests didn't feel as connected as they should and dungeons quest should implicate a bit more in the background of the instance. Killing bosses might even have an impact on the world.

bout freaking time, less time in dungeons = better