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The screenshots of the day have been uploaded on the official site for the week-end. Today's update features a screenshot of Mount Hyjal already released during the press event and a screenshot of the Barrens.
Sam Raimi talks about the World of Warcraft Movie
Collider.com has an interesting interview of Sam Raimi about the World of Warcraft movie. It was reported a few days ago that Sam Raimi would most likely pick up Oz before World of Warcraft but it looks like he's not comitted to the project yet. However, the WoW movie is currently a "40 page document that needs a lot more work" and it looks like we're far from a top priority. (But that's just my guess)
Ancilorn (Community Manager) leaves Blizzard Europe
Ancilorn is leaving the European community team. That's my 2nd "oh, that sucks" moment of the year.
[blizzquote author=Ancilorn source=http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/13816843736/farewell/]It’s with great sadness that all good things do come to an end in one way or another. For me this is undoubtedly one of those times.
Eighteen months have gone by since I first set foot into these forums and time has flown by. It’s been a great eighteen months and without a doubt it has been a era I will never forget. I have learned a great deal from all of you and my experiences here will be taken with me into the future as I explore new, green pastures.
Best of luck, and may the Cataclysm be kind to you all. So long, and thanks for all the shinies! [/blizzquote]
Blue posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Proto-Drake and Rare Mounts in Cataclysm
This is all tentative and could change, but we don't really have a problem with protodrake farming. What we will probably do with really unusual mounts like Mimiron's Head and Invincible is make them a rare drop. The 100% drop rate won't make sense when you can overpower the content.
If you want to overpower the content for a drake though, go for it. Players who did it "legit" had the benefit of having the achievement and mount earlier than anyone else. The most prestigious mounts will change in Cataclysm. (Source)
Exploration and Quest achievements in Cataclysm
The exploration and quest achievements probably won't change. If you have the achievements, you won't lose them. If you don't have them, you can still get them, but obviously you'll have different quests or areas to explore. The greatest risk is to players who are almost done with one of these achievements, because they might suddenly have to do more than they thought (say 100 quests instead of 50). (Source)
Molten Core/Blackwing Lair/Thunderfury in Cataclysm
We aren't removing MC or BWL as of this writing. We aren't going out of our way to remove old legendaries. The only risk there in a case like Thunderfury is if we change a zone like Silithus so much that the quests become hard to keep intact. (Source)
"What a Long Strange Trip It's Been"
You can still get "What a Long Strange Trip It's Been." In general, we are going to go bend over backwards to not remove existing achievements. (Source)
New classes/races and quest rewards
Yes. We are also making sure we include quest rewards for new classes, such as hunter weapons in the human zones and healing mail accessible to low level tauren paladins. (Source)
"If there is a quest item you really love, you might want to grab it now."
Almost every quest reward in the 1-60 content will be changing. If there is a quest item you really love, you might want to grab it now.
(Source)
ICC Buff and instance nerfs
We're not worried about this issue. If players understand the concept of a stacking buff then they will understand that going into new content without the buff will be challenging, but that the buff will eventually get them back up to allow them to complete the content.
We essentially always had the equivalent of the ICC buff -- we'd just nerf content overtime to make it more accessible to a broader swath of players. The difference is that the ICC style of buff formalizes the concept -- a player whose raid can't beat Putricide at 5% can look forward to the 15% buff.
We also don't know that we'll use the ICC system every time. (Source)
Too many abilities in WoW?
I think this is valid and we're taking a pretty hard look at what abilities every class and talent spec has to deal with. I'm not sure WoW would benefit from a hard cap on the number of abilities you can put on your bar at one time, but we can combine or remove abilities with very situational use. (Source)
Is Dungeon Finder killing the community?
I think this is a legit issue and I definitely miss a little bit of the community feel my server(s) used to have. On the other hand, I'm not sure that's a good justification for long queues. Dungeon Finder can feel a little anonymous at times, but it beats the pants out of not being able to run dungeons at all. (Source)
Inspection Throttle / Gearscore
It's important to understand that this wasn't really the fault of addon authors. This needed to be fixed because we were allowing something we really shouldn't have. Many addons pull Inspect data when mousing over characters and there was nothing on our end to throttle the rate at which that data could be pulled. So if you're standing in Dalaran with one of these mods and slide your mouse across the screen and over several characters within a very small amount of time, your client is spamming the database with Inspect queries. We're correcting that issue on our end.
[...] We're starting by capping the number of Inspects that can be sent in a 10-second time frame. It'll likely be 5 Inspects, but that could change in either direction.
Keep in mind that this change is intended to help those using addons which are sending a lot of these requests from lagging or disconnecting. If you're not actually using such addons, and therefore not sending a large number of queries to our database, the change won't affect you either way. You're not lagging or disconnecting because someone else in a raid or major city is unknowingly spamming such requests. (Source)
[...] I just wanted to reiterate that the original information on this change was meant to help add-on authors more than anything so that they could adjust accordingly. Unless the add-ons you use are requesting a lot of data, there isn't going to be any particular change in regard to the amount of latency you might be experiencing in the game. (Source)
This is all tentative and could change, but we don't really have a problem with protodrake farming. What we will probably do with really unusual mounts like Mimiron's Head and Invincible is make them a rare drop. The 100% drop rate won't make sense when you can overpower the content.
If you want to overpower the content for a drake though, go for it. Players who did it "legit" had the benefit of having the achievement and mount earlier than anyone else. The most prestigious mounts will change in Cataclysm. (Source)
Exploration and Quest achievements in Cataclysm
The exploration and quest achievements probably won't change. If you have the achievements, you won't lose them. If you don't have them, you can still get them, but obviously you'll have different quests or areas to explore. The greatest risk is to players who are almost done with one of these achievements, because they might suddenly have to do more than they thought (say 100 quests instead of 50). (Source)
Molten Core/Blackwing Lair/Thunderfury in Cataclysm
We aren't removing MC or BWL as of this writing. We aren't going out of our way to remove old legendaries. The only risk there in a case like Thunderfury is if we change a zone like Silithus so much that the quests become hard to keep intact. (Source)
"What a Long Strange Trip It's Been"
You can still get "What a Long Strange Trip It's Been." In general, we are going to go bend over backwards to not remove existing achievements. (Source)
New classes/races and quest rewards
Yes. We are also making sure we include quest rewards for new classes, such as hunter weapons in the human zones and healing mail accessible to low level tauren paladins. (Source)
"If there is a quest item you really love, you might want to grab it now."
Almost every quest reward in the 1-60 content will be changing. If there is a quest item you really love, you might want to grab it now.
(Source)ICC Buff and instance nerfs
We're not worried about this issue. If players understand the concept of a stacking buff then they will understand that going into new content without the buff will be challenging, but that the buff will eventually get them back up to allow them to complete the content.
We essentially always had the equivalent of the ICC buff -- we'd just nerf content overtime to make it more accessible to a broader swath of players. The difference is that the ICC style of buff formalizes the concept -- a player whose raid can't beat Putricide at 5% can look forward to the 15% buff.
We also don't know that we'll use the ICC system every time. (Source)
Too many abilities in WoW?
I think this is valid and we're taking a pretty hard look at what abilities every class and talent spec has to deal with. I'm not sure WoW would benefit from a hard cap on the number of abilities you can put on your bar at one time, but we can combine or remove abilities with very situational use. (Source)
Is Dungeon Finder killing the community?
I think this is a legit issue and I definitely miss a little bit of the community feel my server(s) used to have. On the other hand, I'm not sure that's a good justification for long queues. Dungeon Finder can feel a little anonymous at times, but it beats the pants out of not being able to run dungeons at all. (Source)
Inspection Throttle / Gearscore
It's important to understand that this wasn't really the fault of addon authors. This needed to be fixed because we were allowing something we really shouldn't have. Many addons pull Inspect data when mousing over characters and there was nothing on our end to throttle the rate at which that data could be pulled. So if you're standing in Dalaran with one of these mods and slide your mouse across the screen and over several characters within a very small amount of time, your client is spamming the database with Inspect queries. We're correcting that issue on our end.
[...] We're starting by capping the number of Inspects that can be sent in a 10-second time frame. It'll likely be 5 Inspects, but that could change in either direction.
Keep in mind that this change is intended to help those using addons which are sending a lot of these requests from lagging or disconnecting. If you're not actually using such addons, and therefore not sending a large number of queries to our database, the change won't affect you either way. You're not lagging or disconnecting because someone else in a raid or major city is unknowingly spamming such requests. (Source)
[...] I just wanted to reiterate that the original information on this change was meant to help add-on authors more than anything so that they could adjust accordingly. Unless the add-ons you use are requesting a lot of data, there isn't going to be any particular change in regard to the amount of latency you might be experiencing in the game. (Source)
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