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AWC and MDI Competitive Rulings, Patch 8.1 Hotfixes - December 14, 2018 

by
chaud
Published on 2018-12-15 01:16 AM

Elixir of Tongues Live, Upcoming Tuning, Q&A Feedback, A Message From Heroes Team

AWC and MDI Competitive Rulings
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
The World of Warcraft Arena World Championship (AWC) and Mythic Dungeon Invitational (MDI) programs operate via official rulesets, which were established in order to set expectations around the rules of tournament play and structure, player eligibility, points, prizes, sponsorships, and player conduct. All players accept these rules in order to participate in our tournaments and are expected to abide by them at all times.

We take all violations seriously. This page will be updated as new competitive rulings are issued.

  • Simon "Boetar" Heinks
  • 2018 AWC Ruleset
  • 6.1(a) - Misconduct outside tournament venue
  • Suspension (01/01/2019 - 12/31/2019)

Patch 8.1 Hotfixes - December 14, 2018
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Classes
  • Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
    • Marksmanship
      • Double Tap will no longer be immediately consumed for no benefit if it is activated while channeling Rapid Fire.

Dungeons and Raids
  • Grievous should no longer stack to 2 on the first periodic.
  • Increasing damage of Bursting to 7% per tick (was 5%).

  • Atal’Dazar
    • Removed Infested from several stationary enemies in the instance.

  • Kings’ Rest
    • Adjusted spawns of Teeming in the instance immediately before and after the Golden Serpent.
    • Animated Guardian’s Released Inhibitors only increases Melee haste.
    • Lowered duration of King A’akul’s Hidden Blade to 4 seconds (was 8 seconds.
    • Lowered Embalming Fluid DoT duration to 6 seconds (was 10 seconds).
    • Lowered Golden Serpent’s Animated Gold health by 75%.
    • Lowered Guard Captain Atu’s Axe Barrage to 6 seconds (was 10 seconds).
    • Queen Patlaa’s Dark Shot changed. It now takes 1.5 seconds to land.
    • Reduced Spectral Berserker Severing Blade damage by 25%.
    • Seneschal M’bara is now level 120 and is susceptible to crowd control.
    • Spectral Berserker is now level 120 and is susceptible to crowd control.

  • Motherlode
    • Adjusted spawns of Teeming in the instance.
    • Reduced Venture Co. Mastermind Leech Globule healing by 50%
    • Increased Feckless Assistant Transfiguration Serum recast to 20 seconds (was 10 seconds).
    • Reduced Weapon Testers Echo Blade damage by 50%.
    • Reduced damage of Venture Co. Earthshaper’s Rock Lance by 25%.
    • Reduced Recast of Earthshaper’s Earth Shield to 20 seconds (was 10 seconds).
    • Wanton Sapper casts Final Blast at 10% health (was at 20%).

  • Sethrallis
    • Increased recast of Healing Wave cast by Charged Dust Devil to 16 seconds (was 10 seconds).
    • Reduced duration of Sandswept Marksman Neurotoxin to 4 seconds (was 8 seconds).
    • Faithless Tender’s Greater Heal is now single target.
    • Reduced melee damage of Faithless Conscript by 70%.
    • Increased respawn of Faithless Conscripts to 50 seconds (was 60 seconds).

  • Shrine of the Storm
    • Lowered damage of Temple Attendant’s Wash Away by 25%.
    • Wash Away no longer hits pets and guardians.
    • Runecarver Sorn’s Carve Flesh initial damage reduced by 75%, but is now increased by 70% per tick.
    • Increased recast on Drowned Depthbringer’s Rip Mind to 16 seconds (was 8 seconds).
    • Removed Infested from the Living Current before Aqu’sirr.

  • Siege of Boralus
    • Reduced damage of Blacktar Bomber’s Burning Tar initial damage by 50% and Fire Bomb by 25%.
    • Adjusted spawns of Teeming and Infested in the instance.
    • Increased cast time of Ashvane Commander’s Bolstering Shout to 5 seconds (was 3 seconds).
    • Reduced Hadal Darkfathom’s Break Water unavoidable damage by 25%.
    • Reduced range on Bilge Rat Demolisher Terrifying Roar to 10 yards (was 30 yards), and added a precast visual.

  • Tol Dagor
    • The Sand Queen’s Buzzing Drone no longer melees, but casts Itchy Bite much more frequently.
    • Ashvane Marine’s Suppression Fire initial damage removed, but periodic damage immediately deals damage.
    • Overseer Korgus Incendariy Rounds no longer stacks.
    • Heavy Cannon’s Cannon Blast damage should now scale with the Keystone Level of the dungeon.

  • The Underrot
    • Increased recast on Devout Blood Priest abilities.
    • Reduced Fanatical Headhunter Barbed Spear duration to 4 seconds (was 8 seconds).
    • Reduced duration of Warcry to 8 seconds (was 30 seconds).
    • Elder Leaxa will now only spawn one Blood Mirror clone.

  • Waycrest Manor
    • Deathtouched Slaver is now susceptible to Stun.
    • Maddened Survivalist Freezing Trap is now Magic.

  • Uldir
    • Fixed a bug with the way Fetid Devourer uses his walk. No time to talk.

Island Expeditions
  • Resolved an issue in Jorundall that could cause the Southsea Pirate invasion to spawn a pirate ship in Fatigue waters.

Items
  • Players are now able to purchase Elixir of Tongues from Lizzi Liverzapper. Using and applying the potion will allow players to be able to understand the opposite faction.
  • Captain's Signet of Command is now item level 395 (was 380) to match its Horde counterpart.
  • Scouting Maps should again show up on the Honorbound and 7th Legion vendors and display the Pathfinder requirement to buy it if you do not have that achievement yet.
  • Fixed an issue where Cloak of the Restless Tribes was not scaling properly after exiting a Timewalking dungeon.

Player versus Player
  • Monk
    • Wind Waker will put a spell visual on the Monk when an ally triggers it.

  • Paladin
    • Ultimate Retribution will now cancel when Divine Shield or Blessing of Protection is applied.

World Quests
  • It is now raining additional mana for the Nazmir Assault World Quests "It's Raining Mana" and "Untapped Potential".
14 Comments

Elixir of Tongues Live, Upcoming Tuning, Q&A Feedback, A Message From Heroes Team 

by
chaud
Published on 2018-12-14 11:04 PM

Hivemind Update: Some Monocles have been found.

Season 15 End/Season 16 Start Dates

Rastakhan's Rumble Legendary Cards Worth Your Dust

A Message From Production Director Kaéo Milker

Overwatch Winter Wonderland Patch - Skins, Nerfs & Buffs

Elixir of Tongues Hotfix Live
The Elixir of Tongues is now for sale on Fizzi Liverzapper.



Upcoming Tuning Adjustments - December 18
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
With scheduled maintenance next week on 19 December, we’re focusing on shoring up a couple of specs that fell a little behind with Tides of Vengeance:

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Feral
  • Damage of all abilities increased by 7%.

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Frost
  • Damage of all spells increased by 3%.

Both of these adjustments will apply to PvP activities as well.

Developer Q&A Feedback
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
I know he more then likely didn’t word it right but…It honestly sounds like they only take analysis data into consideration and not their player base…
Which would actually explained a ton about the sate of the current game, class design, and how poor of a state BFA launched…
That Q&A was hard to watch

I guess you’d be surprised just how much we do read and do listen but that doesn’t mean we do knee-jerk reactions to whatever someone says. We do miss things and do make mistakes, we are still human (unfortunately?), but we do try to consider the implications that changes will have for all player types. We, the World of Warcraft community, are a mass of individuals and not a hive mind. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

If you have additional questions or topics to discuss feel free to share those. If there were specific questions you felt weren’t important, please specify those. Keep in mind that what you are wanting answered and what is important to you can easily be different to others… many others. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

A Message From Heroes Production Director Kaéo Milker
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
Yesterday, we announced a difficult decision—the HGC will not be returning in 2019 and we’ll be transitioning some Heroes of the Storm developers to our other game teams. While our extended Blizzard family working on World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Overwatch, and our unannounced projects will be getting an influx of much-needed, extremely talented Heroes devs to help them achieve their goals, it also means that we’ll need to change the cadence of support for Heroes going forward.

So, I’m sad. I’m sad because I love this team and this game that we’ve built together, with all of you, and this past year has been such a great one for Heroes of the Storm. The HGC had its best year yet and I was so looking forward to the 2019 season. On the game side, we’ve had a steady stream of some of the most sought-after heroes, amazing themed events, and impactful reworks. We also made meaningful progress on improving core systems and features across the game. We truly hit our stride in 2018, so I’m disappointed that some of the exciting plans we had for 2019 will have to change.

But all is not lost. The team that remains dedicated to Heroes of the Storm is a veritable Who’s Who of developers who have been driving every facet of the game from the very beginning—from people you know and have seen speak publicly about the game for years, to those who have poured their hearts into it from behind the scenes. In short, we’re continuing to develop the game with an incredible team that has the experience and passion required to support Heroes of the Storm well into the future.

The Heroes of the Storm team and I also have a unique opportunity to rethink things and reprioritize. Because now more than ever, our charge is to focus on taking care of you, our players, and to channel all our energy into keeping the game dynamic and fun. This means we’re still committed to regular hero reworks, themed events, and even new heroes. We’re setting our sights on the new goals and timelines for what we want to do with the game from here on out and we’re eager to share those plans as soon as they’re finalized.

So, I’m also excited. I’m excited for my teammates to bring their hard-won experience from making this game to the other teams at Blizzard to help their games be even better. And I’m especially excited for Heroes of the Storm to continue evolving with a renewed focus and purity of purpose.

Thank you for joining us on the journey so far, and please bear with us through these changes. Your feedback is as critical as ever, and continues to guide our priorities and decisions while helping us be better along the way.

Thank you,
Kaéo
30 Comments

Tides of Vengeance Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas 

by
chaud
Published on 2018-12-14 06:54 PM

Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas
Ion Hazzikostas answered Tides of Vengeance questions today. The next Q&A is coming in early January to talk about Story and Lore.



Communication
  • Patch notes were thorough, but not complete.
  • Profession requirements on crafted gear wasn't an intended change in the form it took.
  • Patch 8.0 crafted gear didn't have the profession requirement like previous expansions, this was fixed as being a bug without the entire team being involved. This was fixed as soon as the team realized what happened.
  • Going forward, in Season 2 crafted gear will have the profession requirement.
  • Some changes would clutter the notes, like belt clipping or typos.
  • Some changes were missed, such as Stealth detection on Underrot mobs. This change was made a while back, and the team forgot by the time the notes were being created.
  • Going forward, the team will try to ensure the notes are more complete.
  • One of the challenges for the WoW team has been evolving their processes as the team size grew. It used to be 5-6 people working on a certain feature, so everyone was aware of what was going on. This is no longer the case, as more people that are spread out are involved with the game.
  • The team wants to provide more reasoning in hotfix or patch notes when changes are made. They have been trying to do that for class changes, but will do it for more things in the future.

Cross-Faction Communication
  • There was a change that broke an addon that allowed players to talk cross-faction for RP reasons.
  • Cross-Faction communication has the potential for toxicity, but it's very different when there is consent. If you are friends with someone or in a community, you can talk to them.
  • The team didn't mean to break the addon, but can't restore the functionality.
  • The team is looking at adding the Elixir of Tongues, allowing you to understand the opposite faction for an amount of time.
  • This Elixir should go out in a hotfix this weekend or early next week.

Deleting Mythic+ Keys
  • This was a quick change that wasn't fully thought out on the team's part. It was hotfixed in at the start of the season.
  • Deleting keystones caused some bugs and led to emerging social issues, where players would cherry pick what seemed like the easier dungeons.
  • Since Burning Crusade, the team has tried to point players at different dungeons. Remember the Mechanar problem? It wasn't the most fun, but it was the best place to go and farm badges.
  • Some Affixes will make some dungeons easier than others, but the goal is for most dungeons to be similarly difficult.

Mythic+ Changes
  • The team made many changes over the months to make dungeons less punishing.
  • Hopefully at the start of next week, another large set of changes is coming focusing on trash packs and abilities.
  • It feels like now there are a lot more pulls that offer challenges than in Legion. The team wanted to get away from AoE stun, cleave, and move on being the solution to all trash pulls.
  • In the past few days, the team got some more logs and analytics for dungeons. They had lots of good analytics on boss encounters, but not as much visibility on what was going on between bosses.
  • The team can see the most lethal trash mobs, which stretches of dungeons take the longest to get through, what areas are deadly, where difficulty changes too much with Teeming. Removing Infested from lieutenant mobs and some trash mobs are some of the changes coming.
  • A lot of the changes that go into a patch were made months ago, sometimes before the team has seen much gameplay in the Mythic+ dungeons.
  • The team balances hotfixing the live game and working on the next patch.

Mythic+ PuG Experience
  • High end Mythic Keystones are meant for coordinated groups.
  • What can the team do to improve the integrated voice chat experience?
  • The first time around, the voice chat integration was not great.
  • This time around, voice chat should be much better and a good solution for PuGs.
  • Are players not aware that they can use the in-game voice chat for their PuG?
  • Do players just not want to use voice chat at all?

Mythic+ and Azerite Trait Timing
  • Cutting Uldir short at this point would be too soon. It's a healthy tier and guilds are still progressing through it.
  • Three months for the first raid tier would be too short.
  • In-game rewards from Mythic+ progress in parallel with raiding.
  • When a new Mythic+ season starts, the item level cap goes up, so it would invalidate Uldir, current PvP gear, and some of the new raid.
  • New raid tier, Mythic+ and PvP seasons all will happen at the same time.
  • The new Azerite traits are tied into the new gear so that people won't have to go and replace existing gear to get the new traits.

Titan Residuum
  • There may not be a way to add a repeatable source that won't lead to the community trying to endlessly grind it.
  • The system was designed to solve only getting Azerite from your weekly chest.
  • In a raid you can bonus roll or focus on specific bosses.
  • The system that has been set up gives you a piece of gear every 2.5 weeks or so.
  • The current setup is one of the most efficient and lucrative systems for getting Azerite gear.
  • The team wants to see how the current system plays out before making changes.
  • Previous in-game currencies were hard capped or a new currency was introduced for the next season.
  • The team will continue to inflate the prices as new seasons start, so each successive season of gear will cost ~10x more than the previous one.
  • It will keep taking you ~2.5 weeks to get another piece of gear in Season 2.
  • If you buy nothing and wait for the new raid, you might get a small head start.

Artifact Knowledge
  • This is the same way it worked in Legion. When Legion came out, the cap was 25, then raised to 40 in Patch 7.2.
  • In BfA, Knowledge is paced to match available content and the needs.
  • Season 2 will come out and Knowledge will resume increasing then.
  • If Knowledge kept increasing until then, there would be a bigger gap. Players that kept farming would be able to unlock all the powers right away.
  • When Battle for Azeroth launched, the team planned for 15 weeks of Knowledge, it happened to line up with the patch.
  • The same thing will happen next season, there will be a pause before Season 3.
  • The team forgot to tell players about this at the start of Battle for Azeroth.

Heart of Azeroth
  • The team has plans to make the Heart of Azeroth more engaging.
  • On the story side, this was initially a B plot. It wasn't essential like the Legion Artifact weapon was. This will change with Rise of Azshara and beyond.
  • A neck is less visible than a weapon, but the team didn't want to use the weapon slot all expansion again.
  • The team has a lot of work to do on the Azerite system side. Deeper and more interesting.
  • There is one central flaw. On one hand, AP should be relevant and you should have goals to work towards.
  • AP in Legion gave you something to progress towards. What felt best was when you had a new gold medal talent to work towards, giving you a power boost. The desire for AP and the appeal of your artifact weapon faded after getting the gold traits.
  • The system works best when there are exciting goals to chase.
  • It feels really bad if you get a new piece of armor and the powers on it are locked.
  • All you have to look forward to is utility abilities.
  • As the team looks ahead, they want to significantly change how they are approaching the system.
  • This will be the last tier that you'll have to unlock the powers on. Moving forward, they will probably be unlocked, giving you armor that presents choice.
  • The team will shift AP to the Heart itself, allowing you to make choices about permanent powers, potentially active abilities. More to share in the future!

Warfronts
  • Arathi Warfront is going to stay at the current item levels.
  • Darkshore Warfront will have rewards bumped up 15 item levels once Season 2 starts.
  • If you want, you can go back for alts, cosmetic things, or achievements.
  • World Quest rewards will go up based on the item level ceiling. This is just keeping the outdoor world relevant, but is based on gear you got from other sources.
  • Warfronts are like raids, this is the one for each tier, and they don't change.
  • Heroic Warfronts might make an old Warfront relevant again for a tier.
  • The team looked at the rotation rate, but in Patch 8.1 there are now two Warfronts. Every week or two you'll have a new Warfront to contribute to.
  • The team is trying to balance giving players a chance to play a Warfront with the rotation speed.
  • If you could do Warfronts more frequently, the rewards couldn't be as good.

War Mode
  • War Mode faction bonuses are region wide. Every weekly reset the system looks at participation in War Mode during the previous week and will adjust the bonuses.
  • Early on, War Mode participation was better, but some bugs and quirks caused players to turn it off.
  • In the last couple of days, players have been brought together by Assaults.

Island Expeditions
  • Rewards from Island Expeditions will continue to evolve over the expansion.
  • It's likely the team will use the vendor to allow you to target more right before the expansion is over so players that are missing a few items can get them.

Vicious Saddles
  • In Season 2, you'll have your progress bar towards the season mount, but this time the bar will reset and go to a Vicious Saddle. You can keep doing this throughout the season.

Class Design
  • The team is never truly satisfied with the state of class design.
  • At a macro level, there was a change 8 years ago in how class design worked.
  • For the first few years, every expansion kept providing more spells and talents. Action bars started to hit their limits.
  • It was no longer clear what classes needed, as they had all of the tools they needed.
  • Getting new stuff is cool and exciting, and something big was lost when the team pulled away from that.
  • There are effectively 36 distinct classes. Years ago the specs weren't as different.
  • In the last couple of expansions, the team went forward with expansion specific systems that gave you abilities. This wasn't as satisfying as the team had hoped.
  • The team is trying to balance short term excitement vs long term sustainability.
  • The pruning was very controversial, so the team took a step back from that in Battle for Azeroth. They actually added a few things back. Currently the team doesn't think they need to simplify any more right now.
  • The team wants classes to not have prohibitive weaknesses that results them in being excluded from groups.
  • It's hard to keep every spec unique.

Legendary Items
  • No legendary items are planned right now, but they could be added where it fits the story and content.

Artifact Pairs and Transmog
  • The team did a lot of work to make Artifact transmog work, but nothing new to share about splitting the pairs right now.
121 Comments

Greek Community Dev Q&A, December 13 Hotfixes, Heroes Developers Switching Teams 

by
chaud
Published on 2018-12-14 09:45 AM

HGC and Heroes of the Dorm 2019 Cancelled, Some Developers Switching Teams

The new single player Hearthstone experience Rastakhan's Rumble Run is live!

World Of Warcraft: Greek Community Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas
Game Director of World of Warcraft, Ion Hazzikostas, answered some questions submitted before the expansion was released from the Greek World of Warcraft Community.


Mythic+ Dungeons
  • Ideally each path of endgame progression will have unique benefits and rewards.
  • Gear swapping in Mythic+ is something the team thought about changing during Legion, but didn't want to do in the middle of an expansion.
  • The team views a Mythic+ dungeon like a single boss encounter, which is why you can't change talents or respec in the middle of the dungeon. Choices are more interesting when you are weighing the entire range of situations that the dungeon is going to offer.
  • If you are just gearing for a specific boss or pull, those choices are fairly easy. You just collect the right gear and set up macros to swap as you go.
  • Your gameplay should be more important than having the right gear swapping macros set up.

PvP
  • The team would like to have space in the game for sustained pressure, with DoT classes wearing down the healers, giving a burst class a chance to jump in and get the kill. Weakness in one area should be made up with strengths in another. If you are less mobile, you should be harder to kill. If you have high mobility, you should probably go down more easily if people are able to focus on you.
  • The team would rather focus on increasing strengths rather than mitigating weaknesses. Always bolstering weaknesses makes everyone more average at everything.

Stat Squish
  • The team doesn't think they will need to do another stat squish for another expansion, and certainly not during this one.
  • With the work that the team has done for the Battle for Azeroth stat squish, it should be easier to do it in the future, with far fewer bugs and issues. The team did a one time rework of every creature and ability in the game for Battle for Azeroth, converting them to a system that allows an easy 30% nerf under the hood. Now it is just changing one number and everything should just work.
  • Stat squishes help to keep numbers from getting out of control while still providing for power gain over an expansion.
  • The team doesn't have a great solution to avoid having to do stat squishes in the future.

The Return of Classic Buffs
  • There is something nice about getting buffed up before a pull, it's almost ceremonial. It feels like you are powering up to go into a fight.
  • The buffs also have a social element and make people stronger in a raid than they would be on their own.
  • The buffs also gave some classes that could use some extra utility an extra reason to be brought.
  • Paladins and Druids traditionally had raid buffs, but in the Battle for Azeroth environment, they already had plenty of utility.
  • The team would rather focus on the unique and strong utility that Druids and Paladins already bring rather than adding more buffs if they feel that there isn't incentive to bring these classes.

Loot Systems
  • Loot used to be much harder to come by, with guilds clearing old bosses over and over because loot was rarer.
  • Drop rates are now higher, there is personal loot, trading loot, bonus rolls, and other opportunities to get loot. The team expects players will get the loot that they want from a raid within a couple of months of doing that tier.
  • It's very rare to actually go a meaningful amount of time into a raid tier without getting the items that you want.
  • Warforging and Titanforging add some level of interest to repeated clears of a raid.
  • You might have been doing Uldir for a couple of months at this point. There is still a chance to earn something interesting and gain more power to keep progressing in the raid.
  • The team doesn't want players to feel obligated to go back and clear lower difficulties every week for the rare chance that something might be an upgrade.
  • Most players aren't feeling forced to go back and clear lower difficulties anymore. In Legion, set pieces were a reason to go back to try and get upgrades, but the game has moved away from tier sets.
  • It's up to players to choose where to spend their time, and what is most rewarding. You are better off doing Mythic+ than going back to lower raid difficulties for a slim chance at an upgrade.

Personal Loot
  • Overall, the team is happy with how Personal Loot is working out so far.
  • The best geared raid groups are still the ones doing the hardest content.
  • The benefits to removing personal loot are three things:
    • On the lower end, there are lots of guilds that churn through a steady stream of trials. Historically, guilds wouldn't give trials any loot, causing them to not have any progression.
    • On the highest end, there are guilds running multiple groups in parallel that would funnel loot to specific characters using Master Loot. This made it 4-5x faster to gear up compared to regular groups that were just doing one run. This led to more and more guilds to start running split raids.
    • Split raids made it difficult to balance raids for everyone, as the top end guilds were overgeared compared to average guilds.
    • If you want to be competitive and try for the Top 100, you can just focus on gearing up your main roster and maybe some backups rather than running split raids.
    • The team is able to itemize differently with Personal Loot. With Master Loot, the team had to design loot tables that didn't have niche items that would only be useful to a spec or two. Now the team can better cater to a wider range of itemization, with more fist weapons, range weapons, shields, and more.
    • For tight knit social groups that weren't abusing any of this, there is something that was lost with these changes.
    • The change for the game as a whole is a step in the right direction. Once you are past the first few weeks of a new raid tier, tradability helps offset these changes.
  • The team is trying to make item level a better guide for what is an upgrade.
  • Personal Loot is here to stay, so let's talk about how we can improve it rather than rolling it back to Master Loot.

Ranked PvP
  • Battle for Azeroth Ranked PvP has worked out well so far, as there is a clear progression system.
  • Unranked PvP isn't a hardcore and competitive environment, it is more relaxed.
  • Solo queue isn't a great fit for WoW because the game is very composition dependent.
  • When you make a Heroes or Overwatch team, players can switch what they are playing to build the right composition.
  • Having good matchmaking with reasonable queue times, a good skill level match, and building reasonable compositions doesn't seem possible to achieve. It would either be very long queue times or wild mismatches in skill / compositions.
  • The team is focused on improving the social tools in the game to make it easier for players to join groups of like minded folks. This also is a more social experience, which is something the team tries to emphasize whenever possible as an MMO.

Raid Difficulties
  • The difficulty structure that the team has settled on is the right one for World of Warcraft.
  • For someone that does Mythic, both Normal and Raid Finder seem like they are the same, but they are serving very different audiences.
  • Normal is for a mix of friends and family groups, and pick-up-groups. There are plenty of groups that spend an entire tier progressing through Normal difficulty. This is a satisfying and rewarding experience for those groups.
  • Raid Finder doesn't provide a satisfying social or progressive experience.
  • In Mists, Normal was similar to Heroic difficulty today. Groups would find Raid Finder to be unsatisfying and asocial, but Normal was too difficult.
  • Raid Finder is for people that don't want to commit to a schedule or raid group. If you have some free time, you can jump in, check out the story, get some gear for your alt, finish a quest, and enjoy a bite sized chunk. It's not meant to be a lasting social experience, just a chance to experience raid content and an alternative progression path.
  • It isn't possible to merge both of those experiences without heavily disappointing one group.
  • Heroic is for more organized groups that value performance and class composition.
  • Mythic is for players that want to do that at the very highest level.
  • Hopefully groups feel like they can focus on two difficulties. Mythic raiders aren't going back to Normal.
  • 30 item levels per tier is the right number assuming players are doing two tiers. The gap allows for progression and getting meaningfully more powerful. Heroic of next tier has to beat Mythic of the previous tier.

Professions
  • With every expansion, the team has changed their approach to professions.
  • Delivery mechanisms for recipes and ways for crafters to differentiate themselves from each other change.
  • What makes one Blacksmith different from another? One can make something that the other can't.
  • A lot of the differentiation was accomplished through rarity. A lucky drop gave players a reward.
  • A world where everyone can make steady progress towards making everything harms the ability for a crafter to have an economic advantage. All crafters are basically the same thing.
  • If you never get the thing you want, that would be frustrating, maybe some bad luck protection would help.
  • You may not get Rank 3 of what you really want, but you might get Rank 3 for another recipe that will give you a different economic advantage.
  • If you spend time being better at a progression, that should come with some economic and power advantages. The team isn't quite there yet.


Hotfixes: December 13, 2018
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Classes
Items

Player versus Player

Quests
  • (With server restarts in each region) Fixed a bug that caused repeatable quests, such as Pet Battle dailies or Blingtron, to reset incorrectly.
  • Fixed an issue where Alliance players could not turn in "An End to the Killing" to King Anduin Wrynn in Stormwind if they were also on the quest "On Whispered Winds".
  • All NPCs related to “The Right Mech for the Job” should now be visible, even when a Faction Assault is active.
  • Fixed an issue where certain players could see multiple copies of Anduin, Velen, and Genn in the Stormwind War Room.

World Quests

  • Fixed an issue where Horde players could not complete the quest "Cease all Summoning" while the Nazmir Assault is active.
  • Fixed a bug where players were sometimes not granted quest credit during “Desert Crawl”.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Blight Barrels from behaving properly on “Barreling Through”.
  • Baron Cloudsnipe will no longer chase players in Pozzik's Experimental Bomber to the ends of the earth on “Romp in the Swamp”. He's still a crack shot, though.

HGC and Heroes of the Dorm 2019 Cancelled, Some Developers Switching Teams
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
We’re constantly changing and evolving not only our games, but how we support and grow them. This evolution is vital to our ability to continue doing what we love to do—making great games—and it’s what makes Blizzard, Blizzard.

Over the past several years, the work of evaluating our development processes and making hard decisions has led to new games and other products that we’re proud of. We now have more live games and unannounced projects than at any point in the company’s history. We’re also at a point where we need to take some of our talented developers and bring their skills to other projects. As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to shift some developers from Heroes of the Storm to other teams, and we’re excited to see the passion, knowledge, and experience that they’ll bring to those projects. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to make tough choices like this. Games like Diablo II, World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Overwatch, and more would not exist had we not made similar decisions in the past.

Despite the change, Heroes of the Storm remains our love letter to Blizzard’s worlds and characters. We’ll continue actively supporting the game with new heroes, themed events, and other content that our community loves, though the cadence will change. Ultimately, we’re setting up the game for long-term sustainability. We’re so grateful for the support the community has shown from the beginning, and the development team will continue to support Heroes with the same passion, dedication, and creativity that has made the game such a unique experience.

We’ve also evaluated our plans around Heroes esports—after looking at all of our priorities and options in light of the change with the game, the Heroes Global Championship and Heroes of the Dorm will not return in 2019. This was another very difficult decision for us to make. The love that the community has for these programs is deeply felt by everyone who works on them, but we ultimately feel this is the right decision versus moving forward in a way that would not meet the standards that players and fans have come to expect.

While we don’t make these decisions lightly, we do look to the future excited about what the decisions will mean for our other live games and all the projects we have in the works. We appreciate all of our hard-working developers and everyone in the Blizzard community, and look forward to sharing many more epic gaming experiences with you in the future.

J. Allen Brack and Ray Gresko
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