Trading Post Community Council Chat, Blizzard Turns 32, Primordial Stones

Community Council Live Chat - The Trading Post
Today, several members of the WoW Community Council met with the World of Warcraft Trading Post developers Jeremy Feasel, Jen Hauer, Crystal Tam, Tyler Neuhaus, and Kenny McBride.

The discussion covered details on the development of the Trading Post as a new WoW feature as well as thoughts and suggestions about what items and cosmetics could be included in future updates.



Blizzard Turns 32 Years Old
Blizzard turned 32 today!



Feedback: Onyx Annulet Ring and Primordial Stones
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Greetings!

We’d like to shed some light on the specifics of the feature surrounding Primordial Stones and how they work.

By questing in 10.0.7, you’ll unlock the Zskera Vaults, which is a solo instanced dungeon with some fun puzzles to solve. As you venture through, you’ll acquire the Onyx Annulet ring and a bunch of Primordial Stones that can be socketed into it. These stones have trinket-like effects, and some also work together to create some spicy combinations.

When it comes to acquiring these:

  • The Zskera Vaults are where you get Primordial Stones, and can be accessed with keys that you’ll receive from rares and chests across the Forbidden Reach.
  • The keys will be Bind On Account, so you can get your alts into the Zskera Vaults easily.
  • You can crush your Primordial Stones into fragments which can be repurposed into an item to upgrade your favorite stones (through your local Jewelcrafter).
  • You can use these fragments to purchase newer stones from Researcher Imareth. While you can’t buy specific stones, they come in families, so you’ll be able to target the Stones you want.
  • Primordial Stones can be unsocketed from the Annulet.

Our intent here is to minimize random outcomes so that you can customize and experiment with your Onyx Annulet, similar to the Mechagon Trinket (the Pocket-Sized Computation Device). Being able to upgrade your favorite Stones will also increase the item level of the ring up to 424, allowing its power to scale up in a deterministic way.

Of course, given its maximal item level, we expect that you’ll replace it with something better in Dragonflight Season 2.

Thank you for reading. We’re excited to see what you do with them, and how you feel when you get your hands on these!

UK Regulatory Agency Suggests Breaking Up Activision Blizzard Before Merger
Kotaku noted that UK's Competition and Markets Authority agency said that Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision could result in higher prices, fewer choices, or less innovation for UK gamers. They laid out their logic and some possible solutions:

  • They said that Xbox and PlayStation compete closely with each other and access to the most important content, like CoD, is an important part of that competition.
  • The evidence indicates that Microsoft would find it commercially beneficial to make Activision’s games exclusive to its own cloud gaming service (or only available on other services under materially worse conditions).
  • Microsoft already accounts for an estimated 60-70% of global cloud gaming services and also has other important strengths in cloud gaming from owning Xbox, the leading PC operating system (Windows) and a global cloud computing infrastructure (Azure and Xbox Cloud Gaming).
  • The agency surveyed Call of Duty gamers and found that:
    • 24% of players said they would move away from PlayStation if CoD was no longer on that platform
    • The large majority of gamers said that content available on a console is important in their choice of console
  • They also found that:
    • CoD players that stayed on PlayStation could be harmed by the reduction of choice. They'd likely spend less time and money, reducing revenue and the ability for PlayStation to compete.
    • Microsoft has acquired a range of gaming studios over the past few years and, with very few exceptions, has made their future releases of games exclusive or redirected the efforts of those studios to produce exclusive Xbox games
    • Making CoD partially or totally exclusive could bring Microsoft longer-term strategic benefits.
    • Making CoD exclusive to Xbox could be profitable for Microsoft
  • Proposed solutions include:
    • Selling the Call of Duty portion of the business
    • Selling Activision and Call of Duty
    • Selling Activision and Blizzard
    • Disallowing the merger
This article was originally published in forum thread: Trading Post Community Council Chat, Blizzard Turns 32, Primordial Stones started by chaud View original post
Published on 2023-02-09 01:01 AM
60 Comments
Comments 60 Comments
  1. GreenJesus's Avatar
    "proposed solutions include" - "Selling activision and Blizzard"..

    Lol UK be trolling pretty hard with that one.
  1. |Dexter|'s Avatar
    Everyone is so worried about Call Of Duty, I'm personally far more worried about WoW and other Blizzard games. Microsoft got Rareware and destroyed that studio lets hope they not will do the same with Blizzard and Warcraft!
  1. Mysterymask's Avatar
    Today is the first time I've ever seen Call of Duty regarded as "important content" and I kinda vomited in my mouth

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by |Dexter| View Post
    Everyone is so worried about Call Of Duty, I'm personally far more worried about WoW and other Blizzard games. Microsoft got Rareware and destroyed that studio lets hope they not will do the same with Blizzard and Warcraft!
    Call of Duty is a more popular game so yeah they are gonna worry about that more...you a niche bro
  1. SinR's Avatar
    Does that include the time as Silicon and Synapse?

    - - - Updated - - -

    Doing the math on it, that's like 1991. so yeah probably.
  1. SniperCT's Avatar
    The more pressure there is to tank this deal, the better. Just wish there'd been pressure with earlier acquisitions such as Bethesda. All this consolidation of IPs and studios into fewer and fewer umbrellas is bad for gaming and bad for consumers.
  1. Polybius's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Mysterymask View Post
    Today is the first time I've ever seen Call of Duty regarded as "important content" and I kinda vomited in my mouth

    - - - Updated - - -



    Call of Duty is a more popular game so yeah they are gonna worry about that more...you a niche bro
    They're both niche markets. CoD playerbase is independent from WoW, same with their respective genres when one does not affect the other.

    ot: The sooner they break up the better. Sh!t started when they were under the same roof.
  1. Mojo03's Avatar
    Sony just seems hellbent on not allowing MS to get stronger and for some reason using COD is their strongest angle with regulators.

    I don't actually buy any of their arguments, especially when they're the indisputable king of console exclusive games/content.

    They just want to keep MS in a weak state and are using/saying anything they think will work with regulators to do it.
  1. Relapses's Avatar
    I doubt any of those solutions will come to fruition and after a few high profile lunches and a couple spontaneous manifestations of Italian sports cars in the garages of key UK lobbyists, the ultimate compromise will be something like, "Call of Duty is leaving PlayStation in the year 2068."
  1. Tentim's Avatar
    So the stones are going to be a derpy bis you have grind... wonderful.
  1. FelPlague's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tentim View Post
    So the stones are going to be a derpy bis you have grind... wonderful.
    Show me the grind.
  1. Linkedblade's Avatar
    How is the potential fix to sell activision and blizzard? What assets does that leave microsoft with? King?
  1. Bwgmon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by GreenJesus View Post
    "proposed solutions include" - "Selling activision and Blizzard"..

    Lol UK be trolling pretty hard with that one.
    I also like the chain of events involving CoD:

    • Sony is afraid Microsoft will make CoD Xbox/Windows exclusive
    • Microsoft should agree to sell CoD
    • We should somehow expect Sony to NOT be the first in line to try and scoop up CoD
    • We should trust that Sony won't make CoD PS exclusive
  1. Exedore's Avatar
    Apparently PC and mobile games don't compete with consoles. It's like we're living in the early 1990s.
  1. lordjust's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Mojo03 View Post
    Sony just seems hellbent on not allowing MS to get stronger and for some reason using COD is their strongest angle with regulators.

    I don't actually buy any of their arguments, especially when they're the indisputable king of console exclusive games/content.

    They just want to keep MS in a weak state and are using/saying anything they think will work with regulators to do it.
    Thing is that Sony's exklusive games are new IPs they created with the studios they bought. With Microsoft pulling the plug for some games that were already announced to come for playstation like Starfield or Elder Scrolls 6. Microsoft said that all previous deals will be respected and all games that were already announced for playstation will come to playstation and then later said only deals up to them buying bethesda will be respected and Starfield being so early in development, there was not yet a deal to release it on playstation and all future bethesda games will be exclusive to microsoft plattforms.

    So regulators are more careful now because Microsoft will say some things and then do something different. Some regulators say the Bethesda deal was a mistake and they don't want that to happen again and force Microsoft to make existing IPs available on all plattforms. Microsoft would be free to do what Sony does and use the studios to create new IPs that are exclusive to their plattform, but all existing IPs (which include already announced games) would remain available to all plattforms. But that isn't what Microsoft wants. The existing IPs are what makes the deal so expensive and if they can't capatilize on them then it's not really worth it and Microsoft has a bad track record of supporting existing studios to create new IPs.
  1. Asrialol's Avatar
    Funny how losing cod is harmful, but Xbox not getting spider man, last of us and so on is fine.
  1. Tentim's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by FelPlague View Post
    Show me the grind.
    Doing multiple runs to buy specific clusters you have to gamble on because they desperately want to hit participation metrics on torghast 2?

    Never mind the rng drop for keys. Even if this content is fantastic they are still propping it up with a bis time grind.
  1. Jester Joe's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by |Dexter| View Post
    Everyone is so worried about Call Of Duty, I'm personally far more worried about WoW and other Blizzard games. Microsoft got Rareware and destroyed that studio lets hope they not will do the same with Blizzard and Warcraft!
    Rareware was a completely different time though.

    I mean, never forget the fact that some of the Microsoft workers thought they owned Donkey Kong because Rare's office had Donkey Kong posters up from the games they made.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Asrialol View Post
    Funny how losing cod is harmful, but Xbox not getting spider man, last of us and so on is fine.
    That's a weird comparison.

    Sony straight up has owned Spider Man, and Naughty Dog has worked with Sony since their inception basically (and is also under Sony's umbrella for a long time). Those are first party at that point.

    CoD is third party currently. And far bigger for sales I'd wager overall, I'm too lazy to look it up though.

    It's not like it's illegal to have first party games.
  1. vilememory's Avatar
    Microsoft sells CoD, Sony buys it. Sony immediately makes it a PlayStation Exclusive, on the PlayStation. Only the Playstation on the Playstation Network, EU is okay with this.
  1. Rustykeyboard's Avatar
    i hope this gets through. I dont want a big corp have monopoly on the games
  1. kamuimac's Avatar
    this means 1 thing though - S2 is far far away - no surprise there with how they rushed S1

    also honestly - .... all those complaining baout grind - finally there will be 1 thing to do in endgame besides spaming m+ and raids.

    its amazing thing
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