Heroic ToC first kills, Blue posts

[Boubouille]

Trial of the Grand Crusader First Kills by Forgotten Heroes
The heroic version of the Trial of the Crusader was unlocked yesterday on US realms and apparently, Forgotten Heroes got all the first kills for the first three bosses.

They are now working on Twin Valkyrs and still have 32 attempts left, we will probably see more first kills on US realms soon.

Koralon the Flame Watcher has Arrived
[blizzquote="Bornakk;http://blue.mmo-champion.com/12/19595732445-koralon-the-flame-watcher-has-arrived.html]Coinciding with the launch of Arena Season 7, Koralon the Flame Watcher will be activated in the western wing of Wintergrasp Fortress and awaiting the controlling faction. Koralon will drop loot for slots similar to Emalon, which includes both raiding tier items and PvP gear. Both 10- and 25-player versions will drop Emblems of Triumph as well. See you in Wintergrasp! [/blizzquote"]

Blizzard Entertainment at PAX

Blizzard Entertainment will once again be representing in full force at the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo, taking place this weekend, September 4-6 in Seattle, Washington. PAX attendees will have access to playable versions of Diablo III (including the recently announced Monk class), the earth-shattering World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion, and the engrossing StarCraft II single-player campaign. Community managers will also be in attendance to chat with attendees about the past, present, and future of Blizzard Entertainment games. We hope to see you there!

http://www.paxsite.com/

Blue posts

Arena Tournament Realm Status – Offline
The Arena Tournament Realm is now offline with the conclusion of the 2009 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament. The realm will be offline until the start of the next Arena Tournament season. We want to thank everyone who participated in or followed this year’s tournament and welcome you all to return next year! (Source)

Mage
Combustion
There are two slightly entwined problems here. One is Combustion just not keeping up with other mage talents. That's a problem we want to fix. While there are plenty of examples of talents that aren't as popular as they should be, we consider Combustion to be a pretty core talent to the Fire mage experience, and thus we consider it a bigger problem. (And no, we aren't ready to announce a change yet.)

The other is that character stats are much higher than we originally predicted. This is less of a big deal for things like Str and Sta that can just keep growing, but it gets messy with the ratings like crit and avoidance. While more crit is generally always better, you do run into weird scenarios when players can realistically think about 100% crit chances (if not now, perhaps in Icecrown).

The reason the stats got so high is that the Ulduar model of gear (where hard modes offer higher ilevel) was something we added after ship and therefore after the core combat mechanics of Lich King were already in place. We designed the system with lower numbers from gear than we are ultimately going to end up offering. You might be able to guess at the highest ilevels in Icecrown and those are higher than we originally planned on them being. The alternative was that hard modes didn't offer better loot.

Anyway, we can tweak the combat formulae to some extent, but short of "Icecrown Radiance" that drops your crit by 10%, some of these issues aren't going to go away until the level cap increases and we can adjust all of the combat ratings again. (Source)

[Brudish]

Banned. So much for being first eh?

[LavaDuck]

Congratulations to Forgotten Heroes!

[Elementium]

Grats to them! Can't wait to see how the others are doing.

[tialol]

3/5 down.... When is 3.3 hitting? I think in 3 Weeks the First Guild cleared heroic without wiping once... :/

[Sellest]

The reason the stats got so high is that the Ulduar model of gear (where hard modes offer higher ilevel) was something we added after ship and therefore after the core combat mechanics of Lich King were already in place. We designed the system with lower numbers from gear than we are ultimately going to end up offering.

I would like to disagree here. Soon after players farmed out Naxxramas gear they were pointing out on ridiculous gear stats which were on par with endgame sunwell % stating "how come I have such ridiculous amount of crit after first tier of raiding gear." (this was at least case for warriors, wasn't reading other classes forums) Blizzard adjusted this in Ulduar where actually upgrading from t7 to t8 meant loosing a lot of crit but they had to add other stats to be sure players would update their gear. I think this was mistake they had to notice before and blaming it to hardmode gear doesn't feel right.

[tialol]

The healing Stats are loooooooking a little Bit Strange/low?

[Deleted]

Not fair they are getting the "first", because there is still alot of server down.

[Nixia]

Congratulations to Forgotten Heroes!

[bbr]

Apparently the hard modes aren't " that " difficult.

It's rather silly to be claiming "first kills" on a dungeon that's going to get facerolled by most of the world before tonight. Ah well, good for them and back to Ulduar I guess, the new dungeon doesn't seem to be that time consuming.

EDIT: First! :P And c'mon man, fix combustion all ready!! /cry

You've been a member of these forums long enough to know what's coming now, right?
Allow me to be the "first" to congratulate you with your incoming forum vacation.

[GnomeEU]

damn, 10 man heroic already cleared

25 man in a few hours then....

gogo ensidia

i just hope my casual guild wont have to much problems...

with this difficulty level if icecrown wont launch until the next arena season(which will be in 6 months i guess) then a lot of players will be pretty bored pretty soon

well, we still have onyxia, who will be one shotted too i'm afraid :>

[chrisminis]

yawn. just gotta start a raid at server launch and you get the first kill..

Show first 0 wipes heroic raid and atleast 50% will care now. content are just easy-

[Draginclaw]

grats to them....I'm on the one of the servers where there was no anub, which made for a boring night.

[mmocfd1b0ab5a3]

USA > EU now dont think Ensidia can kill even 2 bosses today.

[yatesl]

Unless I'm missing something, Premonition already has the World First in 10 Man Heroic.

Edit: Turns out I need to click links before posting. Didn't realise it was 25 man.

[hypertesia]

Gz FH.

Koralon is easymode..

[pilch]

So no combustion fix before cataclysm? Can't say I'm surprised.

[Lumidar]

i really like how our server was down for over 19hours and apparently FORGOT to update our server, we never got the new bosses....

we have to wait till tonight for us to finally be able to try Anub'arahk and then heroic >_>

i hate blizzard

[Elementium]

Gz FH.

Koralon is easymode..

1 tank 2 heals 7 dps on 10 man.. Stats are just way too extreme now, with 40k unbuffed tanks. Although I don't mind becsuse I see WotLk as a testing ground for these new modes. Next time i'm sure blizz will perfect it.

[Beltaine]

Once you start to get in the realm of 60%+ crit you're already getting massive runs of crits thanks to the RNG.

You want to talk "Diminishing Returns" a talent that gives you a 10% crit buff for 3 crits every 3 minutes is neither class defining nor game-changing once said class is over 60%.

Do you think you can tell the difference between 60% and 70%?

90% and 100%?

Blaming it on extra ilevels is an excuse. Normal ToC gear is higher ilevel than Hard mode Ulduar. They knew when Wrath released, they'd be adding Ulduar, ToC, and Icecrown before the next expansion.