Molten Giants, Black Temple Map, May 11 Hotfixes, Firelands Preview, Blue Posts

[Boubouille]

Monster Model - Molten Giants
The model for the updated molten giants are now in the game files! They look like super awesome version of the old Molten Core giants and you might recognize the face from the Warrior Tier 12 Model Preview.

Black Temple Raid Instance Map
Better late than never, the map for the Black Temple raid is finally being added to the game in Patch 4.2!

Patch 4.1 Hotfixes - May 11

May 5-11

General

• There were several situations on transports or moving objects where players were receiving Movement Enforcement Error messaging, which should now be corrected.
• Players using Mobile Guild Chat should no longer sometimes receive error messages incorrectly stating they are not in a guild.
• Mail sent from the Auction House should no longer sometimes display incorrect information about the transaction. This also applies to those using the Mobile Auction House.
• Parties will no longer disband immediately after all members log out. There is now a 5-minute grace period before the group is disbanded.

Classes

• Characters who are resurrected by a player on a moving platform should now be transferred to the caster’s world position, rather than the location they were in when the spell was first cast.
• Select classes are no longer able to aggro and pull a single enemy NPC from a linked group through various measures of sneakiness.

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Stampeding Roar (Cat) should always properly cost 30 energy when used.

Hunter (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Hunter pets no longer lose talent points when a Beast Mastery hunter gains a level.
• The Disorient effect from Scatter Shot should no longer immediately break if Scatter Shot hits the target immediately after a buff on the target fades.

Warlock (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Molten Core now correctly enhances all three Incinerate spells cast while the buff is active.

Dungeons & Raids
The Bastion of Twilight

• The Blood of the Old God aggro radius during the Cho’gall encounter has been dramatically increased.

Blackwing Descent

• Fiends should no longer cause any quirky despawning issues during the Atramedes encounter, particularly after Atramedes is defeated.

Zul’Gurub

• Kill credit for Kilnara for the Here, Kitty Kitty... achievement can no longer be carried over to the next kill.

Items

• The Miniature Voodoo Mask dropped in Zul’Aman is now a Greed-only item. No class can roll Need on this item.
• The Voodoo Hexblade and Amani Scepter of Rites are now properly labeled as Main Hand and can only be equipped as such.

PvP

• Players should no longer sometimes become stuck or crash while in a Battleground or Arena queue.

Quests & Creatures

• Players should again be able to successfully complete the quest The Firelord in Mount Hyjal. NPC heroes should be functioning correctly.
• The Horde NPC Kadrak is visible for players to turn in the quest Mor'shan Caravan Delivery after completing the quest To the Rescue! in Northern Barrens.

Remote Guild Chat and Auction House Free Preview Ends

The Remote Guild Chat and Remote Auction House free-preview period has come to a close. Access to both of these features is now only available with a subscription to World of Warcraft Remote. Thanks to everyone who participated in the free preview -- we appreciate your feedback on the new Remote Guild Chat feature, and we hope you’ve enjoyed the chance to play the Auction House from the web or your mobile phone. To learn more about either of these features, visit the World of Warcraft Remote page, or go here to subscribe.

To download the free World of Warcraft Remote app for Android, click here. The World of Warcraft Mobile Armory app is also available as a free download from the App Store℠ for iPhone® and iPod touch®.

The Firelands: Lord Rhyolith & Baleroc
Blizzard updated their preview of the Firelands and added 2 bosses screenshots. Interestingly enough, Lord Anthrycist lost his controversial-weird name and is now named Ryolith.

Hey all,

We've added new images for Lord Rhyolith and Baleroc [The Gatekeeper] to our patch 4.2 preview of the Firelands.

You can check them out here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2682944

Blue Posts

Raid Mechanics and making them more transparent
Even so, it's not unreasonable for a player to feel that some of the game mechanics in World of Warcraft could be made more transparent, be that through additional interface options, better encounter alerts, or a type of in-game guide. That may not be the exact complaint here, but it's still valid and worthy of consideration.

In fact, we agree that there's room for improvement. As already mentioned, we're introducing the Dungeon Journal in patch 4.2. While this new feature won’t completely eliminate the need for one to "study" certain encounters, it should make it easier for players to pick up new fights, and hopefully a lot more fun (the journal looks pretty darn sweet, if you ask me, and even includes a little lore, too).

Speaking to the future, we're also looking into ways that we can incorporate some "raid/dungeon"-style gameplay into solo environments. To a small degree, there's a bit of this in the new daily quest hubs coming up in in 4.2. While the goal isn't specifically to prepare players for dungeons and raids -- rather, just to make content that's fun and cool -- the quests themselves and some their related achievements encourage the use of tactics that you'd might see in dungeon and raid encounters.

For example:

• "Burn Victims" is a "heal the wounded NPCs in the field" type of quest, which will give players a salve to use on burn victims in the Molten Front. Healers will be able to use their healing spells, however, and complete the quest much more easily (since most heals are ranged).
  
• "Strike at the Heart" is a quest with randomized bosses, all of which have raid-style environmental damage. There's even an achievement (currently named "Ready for Raiding II") for killing all five of those random bosses without taking damage from their avoidable environmental effects.
  
• Some other achievements in the areas promote more skilled, "raid-style" play, too. "Flawless Victory," for example, asks players to solo kill a Molten Behemoth (found in the Molten Front) without taking any damage from two its abilities: Molten Stop and Fiery Boulder. And "Master of the Molten Front" requires players to kill a variety of flamewakers in arguably non-standard ways (e.g. pwning a Flamewaker Shaman with his own Flamewave).

Although these quests won't magically turn an inexperienced raider into an experienced one, we think they have the chance to make the daily content more interesting, as well as provide more opportunities for players to familiarize themselves with the style of gameplay one can expect within a dungeon or raid. (Source)

[Venziir]

Looks good and sounds good.

[Viceversa]

except they are in molten core.

[niki]

blizzard is going all out with the models for 4.2!
/sarcasm off

[Ragu]

Digging the new Giant model.

[CaptainDarin79]

Black Temple Map = Black Temple heroic 5 man inc

[Soldan]

Awesome molten giants.

[VitesseEOD]

anyone else think the lava/fire theming will get very dull, very quickly? Molten Core managed to be a fire themed raid without ramming "lol fire/lava!" down our throats with every mob/boss/mount/enviornmental object!

[nickeb]

Oh herrow Baleroc, you shall not pass mejt!

[Kaneiac]

Molten Core managed to be a fire themed raid without ramming "lol fire/lava!" down our throats with every mob/boss/mount/enviornmental object!

No...it didn't.

After the first 2 months of "oh my god 40 man raids!" the novelty wore off VERY, VERY quickly and the palette of black/grey/red/orange got extraordinarily old. I feel a bit sick just thinking about it.

Every single object and mob in there was a fire themed mob, how the hell was that not "ramming it down our throats" ?

[Angarin]

Molten giants look sexy. Wonder why theres a green lava one though. Maybe just testing colors?

[Punks]

anyone else think the lava/fire theming will get very dull, very quickly? Molten Core managed to be a fire themed raid without ramming "lol fire/lava!" down our throats with every mob/boss/mount/enviornmental object!

Lol.....yeah ok.... Someone didnt play MC

[Virandile]

Hi Balrog... oh wait.

[Apathy -]

New molten giant's :O I likes

[Shanto94]

Damnit, why did the gnomes accept to change Anthrycist to Rhyolith? ):

[lios]

anyone else think the lava/fire theming will get very dull, very quickly? Molten Core managed to be a fire themed raid without ramming "lol fire/lava!" down our throats with every mob/boss/mount/enviornmental object!

No, MC was just the same. The forums were full of whines about Molten Bore.

[steamrice]

anyone else think the lava/fire theming will get very dull, very quickly? Molten Core managed to be a fire themed raid without ramming "lol fire/lava!" down our throats with every mob/boss/mount/enviornmental object!

not sure if serious... and you havn't stepped in BWL? The whole place had a red/black theme as well straight after doing MC. Besides, MC was the first real raid for WoW and it didn't really get tiring much because it took players months to clear and not a whole lot of guilds even got to ragnaros or even killed him in Vanilla.

[dotSeed]

anyone else think the lava/fire theming will get very dull, very quickly? Molten Core managed to be a fire themed raid without ramming "lol fire/lava!" down our throats with every mob/boss/mount/enviornmental object!

I find it shocking that Firelands would have the theme of fire and molten rock.

(PS: You can't use Molten Core as a reference for any comparison because half the bosses were the same goddamn model!)

[...] Besides, MC was the first real raid for WoW and it didn't really get tiring much [...]

There's a reason it was called Molten Chore by people back in the day. It was a tedious raid that you were forced to run for T2 pants and legendaries even if you were clearing BWL or higher.

[Lauyia]

Screw you all, I'm excited for this new raid!

Gatekeeper is sexy even if he uses the same skeleton as a doomguard.
Molten giants look exactly like mountain giants cause they are... Asking for a molten giant that doesn't look like the other giants is like asking for a gryphon that doesn't look like an eagle.

[Lockula]

Hmm... interesting concepts in that last blue post. Maybe taking some of those training ideas that were on the forums a few months ago.