DK First 80, Blue posts, Free transfers

[Boubouille]

The release of Wrath of the Lich King is now behind us ! It means a few things for this site :

• Over the next few days, I'll deploy the missing content pages for Wrath of the Lich King, there are a few interesting things I didn't have the time to finalize but I'm sure you'll be happy to see some of them.
• I will eventually start answering my mails again, I apologize to anyone who mailed me in the last few weeks and didn't get an answer but the expansion really took way too much time and I eventually forgot to answer to a lot of people
• I will probably start talking about recruitment again, the pre-WotLK beta recruitment wasn't really succesful and I'm still looking for people to update the site/moderate the forums. (Don't start spamming my mailbox now, a post will be made later)

Death Knight first level 80
It took some time to figure out who was first and who wasn't, but it looks like Dessembrae from Eternal Corpse Council (EU-Mazrigos) was the first Death Knight to reach level 80 in the world on November 15 at 19:00 CEST ! Congratulations to him.

According to the reports, Essay (US-Tichondrius) was the first death knight to reach level 80 in the United States a few hours later, at 10:00PM server time.

Congratulations to both players !


Wrath of the Lich King digital upgrade now available
If you didn't have the time to buy a key for Wrath of the Lich King, you might be happy to know that the Wrath of the Lich King Direct Online Upgrade is now available on both european and american official sites.

Blue posts
It's not like there is a lot of activity lately because developpers are obviously super-busy now that the game is live but there is a bunch of free realm transfers and a few other things.

Collector's Edition Pet
It is an account-bound item you can send in the mail to any of your characters on that account. (Source)

"Breadcrumbs" quests
These quests are considered "breadcrumbs", Honker... burger. So if you've already been to Stars' Rest in Dragonblight and taken Courier Lanson's quest to fly to Wintergarde the Private Casey quest will no longer be available.

We do not count breadcrumb quests toward zone achievements FYI. (Source)

Respawn rates
We're hotfixing respawn rates that we deem problematic as we find them, folks. Sorry for the inconvenience. (Source)

WotLK Account / TBC Client
Yes, you can play with a Burning Crusade account on a Wrath of the Lich King client. But, you cannot play a Wrath of the Lich King enabled account on a Burning Crusade client. (Source)

Where did the developers go ????
The game just shipped. We've been a little busy. (Source)

DPS of Healing specs
1) Our goal was never to make all specs exceptional at dps. We did want to improve the dps of all the healing specs though.
2) We do think Holy paladin dps is too low.
3) Resto shammy and druid probably aren't that great either.
4) We do have plans to improve these, but we don't think your dps is so awful that you will have difficulty leveling. Certain classes and specs have always excelled at leveling, which means others are going to be slower. If your leveling rate is too low for your comfort, you can respec. (Source)

Druid (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Upcoming feral tanking itemization changes
I have made so many Feral threads that I actually chilled on it a little because there were so many cries of favoritism. But I think on reflection, and as this thread suggests, I can't win on that regard so I might as well just reply to whatever threads I want to.

If your Ulduar gear has more armor on it than your Naxx gear (and it does), then it scales. You still need rings, necks and trinkets with tanking stats on them. You are just free now to look at other things beyond just the bonus armor value (which is still useful BTW).

Your Dodge diminishes, but it diminishes slower than warrior Dodge, since it's all you have. You get a huge benefit to Stamina (around 50%), so it scales very well.

We're not that worried with what Feral tanking stats will be in later raid content, but as always, if one class ends up outstripping the others, we'll compensate for it. (Source)

Swipe
One quick question. I'm sure you've seen all the threads-- do you still believe bears are adequate AE tanks? Can you please answer our concerns with swipe's limitations and thorns' lack of scaling?

Thorns really isn't designed to be something like Damage Shield. That is an avenue to explore if bears started to fall behind for any reason.

I don't personally have any difficulty using Swipe (and I've tried all four AE abilities). It requires slightly more positioning to use, but not so much that I really fear that bears won't be brought on raids. Although I understand why Ferals like to downplay it, warriors do have concerns that bears will be more desired because of heals, Innervate and Rebirth. It's going to be difficult to really make everything identical, and that's not really the goal. (Source)

Hunter (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Hunters and PvP

• Do we think hunters were underpowered in the previous Arena seasons? Yes.
• Do we think they will continue to be underpowered? We don't know yet.
• ZOMG didn't the beta prove that hunters are still underpowered? This requires more explanation. PvP relationships are notoriously difficult to theorycraft. Mostly it just takes a lot of games. While we had some talented players in beta, it's still a very small sample size. Nobody was playing with their "real" character. Few players went through the effort to gear up (meaning enchant, gem and try out options) the way they will on Live. The balance in beta was changing very rapidly, including many bug fixes. We did give hunters some new abilities, some of them potent, and we did change several other aspects of combat that will affect balance. Hunter dps is by most accounts on the top of the charts in PvE, so clearly the problem is more complex than just buffing dps. We also realize that PvP balance can change over time without us doing anything? How can that be? Well, players experiment and adapt. New strategies and counters arise. Now that isn't an excuse for us to never address balance problems, but it is an acknowledgement that balance is dynamic, not static, even without our involvement.
• Will we take steps to adjust hunters if they continue to be weak in Arenas? Yes. This is absolutely a concern of ours. To some extent my reputation is on the line here because I keep trying to assure players that we will make adjustments, and I know you'll throw it back in my face if we don't deliver. The game has only been out for a few days though, so it's just premature to make sweeping changes yet. I realize some knowledgeable hunters are convinced the changes we made were not enough. At the end of the day though, it is us, not the players, who need to make decisions about game design. We will always listen to your feedback when making our decisions though. (Source)

Paladin (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Protection Tree
There are several similar threads on Prot paladin issues so forgive me for only responding to this one. My thanks also go out to other players who have tried to respond here. I will comment on a couple of things --

Righteous Defense -- We're not sure yet if we want to change this ability (possibly through glyph) or just add a normal taunt (for free -- not the 11 point talent). Both designs have their advantages.

Health -- While I do think the "huge differences" between warrior and paladin health pools are a wee bit exaggerated, we do have an opportunity to provide paladins with a little more health when we change Divine Protection and Divine Shield. The benefit of Sacred Duty to remove the attack speed penalty will be unnecessary with this change, so we thought we might add additional Stam to this talent instead. (The cooldown could stay the same.)

We're keeping a close eye on tank performance in general as players start to run the Northrend instances. (Source)

Tanking and TPS
Seriously though, it was the latter. The TPS may be an issue or it may not be. Players sometimes get worried about scaling (which is a totally valid thing to think about), but forget that some relationships won't show up in the current expansion. To use an extreme example, if one class outstrips another class when both have 20,000 attack power, then it's not something we're really worried about.

I will also add that paladin TPS started to eclipse warrior TPS in Black Temple just because the former scaled so well. A lot of the warrior threat at the time was just +threat abilities, while the paladins did more damage to generate more threat. They were really only limited by the lack of gear.

I don't point that out to say it will or won't be a problem. I just point it out to point it out. (Source)

Warlock (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Tapping mobs with DoTs
We just talked about this and agree that it's dumb you have to go to such theatrics just to tag a mob. We'll try to get this fixed. [...] No, we should just be able to make a spell tag regardless of how it does damage. That would be the more robust implementation. (Source)

Free character transfers

Free Character Moves for Oceanic Realms 11/16
We will be offering free character moves from selected high population oceanic realms to a brand new PvE realm, Saurfang, to assist in population dispersal. The ability to move a character on the selected source realms will become available starting on Sunday, November 16 at 3:00PM PST, and is scheduled to run until Sunday, November 23 at 12:00PM PST. Saurfang is an Oceanic realm in the Vengeance battlegroup.

In the event that these realms meet 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.

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

Source B (PvE) - Caelestrasz, Nagrand, Aman’Thul, Dath’Remar, Khaz’goroth.

The following PvP realms are also included in this transfer set to this PvE realm - Dreadmaul, Barthilas, Thaurissan, Frostmourne, Jubei’thos

Destination B (PvE) - Saurfang

Free Character Moves - US Realms (Source)
With the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, we’ve seen a very active and growing population for many realms. As we continue to see players actively participating in the new expansion, we are keeping a watchful eye on any resulting queues from high realm populations. In order to better facilitate communication in regard to possible opportunities for realm transfers for these realms , we have created this post to contain information on any available realm transfers. We will update this post as any new transfers become available.

In the event that these realms meet 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

We are now offering free character moves from selected high population realms to two PvP realms, Dentarg and Haomarush, to assist in population dispersal. The ability to move a character on the selected source realms is now available , and is scheduled to run until Thursday, November 20 at 4:00PM PST.

Source A (PvP) - Arthas, Magtheridon, Mal'Ganis, Kel'Thuzad, Dragonmaw, Shattered Hand, Bleeding Hollow, Ner'zhul
Destination A (PvP) - Dentarg

Source B (PvP) - Burning Blade, Cho'gall, Illidan, Mannoroth, Skullcrusher, Lightning's Blade, Korgath
Destination B (PvP) - Haomarush

Source C (PvP) - Kil'jaeden, Destromath, Blackrock, Tichondrius, Mug'thol, Sargeras, Stormreaver
Destination C (PvP) - Chromaggus

We will be offering free character moves from selected high population realms to a brand new realm, Galakrond, to assist in population dispersal. The ability to move a character on the selected source realms will become available starting on Saturday, November 15 at 4:30PM PST, and is scheduled to run until Saturday, November 22 at 12:00PM PST.

Source A (PvE) - Aggramar, Alleria, Alexstrasza, Argent Dawn, Arygos, Blackhand, Doomhammer, Greymane, Hellscream, Hyjal, Medivh, Proudmoore, Thrall, Silvermoon, Whisperwind, Zul'jin

The following PvP realms are also included in this transfer set to this PvE realm - Boulderfist, Crushridge, Stormscale, Bloodscalp, Bonechewer, Laughing Skull, Dark Iron

Destination A (PvE) - Galakrond

[EU] New migration PvE realm
A new PvE realm has been opened as a migration realm. Character creation is disabled on the realm for now. Migration will remain open until Tuesday November 18.

Realm name: Chamber of Aspects
Battlegroup: Misery
Realms with migration to the new realm: Aggramar, Aszune, Doomhammer, Draenor, Emerald Dream, Silvermoon
Added source realms November 16th - Azjol-Nerub, Bloodhoof, Nordrassil, Runetotem

As always, please note that this migration may be closed at any time should the destination realm's population rise too high.

[EU] Free character migration (Source)
The following Free Character Migration will be available from November 13th to November 18th:

• Al'Akir --> Bladefist
• Argent Dawn --> Darkmoon Faire
• Burning Legion --> Chromaggus
• Frostmane --> Laughing Skull
• Grim Batol --> Genjuros
• Kazzak --> Karazhan
• Magtheridon --> Emeriss
• Neptulon --> Shattered Halls
• Outland --> Auchindoun
• Ravencrest --> Spinebreaker
• Stormreaver --> Burning Blade
• Stormscale --> Boulderfist
• Sylvanas --> Jaedenar
• Twilight's Hammer --> Vek'nilash

Please note that this migration may be closed at any time should a destination realm's population rise too high.

Additional migrations added November 16th, also running until November 18th for now

• Crushridge --> Ahn'Qiraj
• Drak'thul --> Dentarg
• Ragnaros --> Xavius
• Shattered Hand --> Haomarush

Dark Legacy Comics #165
Dark Legacy Comic #165 is here!

[Wilhelmi]

Tagging mobs with dots is a warlock topic, not warrior

[Sinzar]

Heya, I'm not good with time zones, but I made 80 Death Knight at 3:39 pm central standard time on the 15th, Sinzarx from the guild Crimson on Greymane Pretty sure that's before 10:00pm on a US server time. Unsure on Europe stuff.

[fr0hzn]

First lvl54 Death Knight! Breaking News!!1

[LavaDuck]

Warrior (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Tapping mobs with DoTs
We just talked about this and agree that it's dumb you have to go to such theatrics just to tag a mob. We'll try to get this fixed. [...] No, we should just be able to make a spell tag regardless of how it does damage. That would be the more robust implementation. (Source)[/blizzquote]

Warlock, not warrior

edit: Digital purchase has been enabled in EU. Haven't tried to see if it actually works though.

[Boubouille]

Warrior/Warlock error fixed, I just paste all my class headers and add the posts later, sometimes it just falls under the wrong line. ^^

[Drakoo]

They're both ORCS! W00t! ;D

[LavaDuck]

Orc and Tauren are awesome-looking melee classes. Big shoulders, and badass meele weapon = pwnage!


edit: https://www.wow-europe.com/account/w...agreement.html is working.

[Kurist]

ok so... not sure about this but it seems Essay's SS might be fake..

first off, look at the level-timer he has in his chat box... 3 minutes..

then notice that the achievements are still up over his skills.

also notice that the level-up graphic is still displayed and the experience gain is also still displayed.

So either that timer is for level 79 and he did the entirity of lvl 79 in under 4 minutes. Duely impossible, even for a rush-gamer.

Or this is a fake with achievements and stats posted over the SS itself.

[insidelane]

Here's a wild guess:

As soon as he dinged 80 he would have taken a SS and immediately logged off to avoid the 10 million whisper spams.

When he logged back on after it had calmed down a bit he took a SS of his /played and photoshoped it into the screenie. Simple really.

[Elektrik]

Here's a wild guess:

As soon as he dinged 80 he would have taken a SS and immediately logged off to avoid the 10 million whisper spams.

When he logged back on after it had calmed down a bit he took a SS of his /played and photoshoped it into the screenie. Simple really.

That seems like a lot more work than typing /played and then hitting print screen. Not probable.

[Dagdä]

first off, look at the level-timer he has in his chat box... 3 minutes..

then notice that the achievements are still up over his skills.

also notice that the level-up graphic is still displayed and the experience gain is also still displayed.

So either that timer is for level 79 and he did the entirity of lvl 79 in under 4 minutes. Duely impossible, even for a rush-gamer.

If you look more closely at the image, it's actually clearly made from two pictures:
* on the right, a screenshot taken when he reached 80
* on the left, a screenshot taken 4 minutes later (probably after he dealt with all the congratulations from his guildmates, friends and complete strangers), hence the 3 minutes and 58 seconds played at that level (80).

[sirvalden]

i was on when essay dinged its real

[Luminair]

i was on when essay dinged its real

[Celesse]

Tich represent!

[Solgryn]

Yea congrats to the two lvl 80 DK's, congrats with having no life...

[Elementium]

man you look at all these world firsts.. apparently you don't mess with EU-Horde..

[Tangent]

What UI is that in the first pic?? Looks really clean. I want!

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...ssembrae80.jpg

[Tangent]

This one too D : Either one.

[Mahtamori]

Some part of me just want to say: Warlocks should be glad they've got a ranged pull at all, some spec(s) still don't.