Ensidia is Awesome, Rogers throttling WoW, Guild Challenges Preview, Blue Posts

Patch 4.1: Guild Challenges
Blizzard released an official preview of the guild challenges found on test realms earlier this week.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
In addition to updating Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman for level-85 players, we're also excited about another patch 4.1 feature: Guild Challenges. Built into the Info panel of the guild user interface, Guild Challenges will be weekly tasks guild groups can tackle for additional guild experience, achievements, and gold.

This feature has been designed and implemented to be quite simple. At the top of the guild user interface Info pane, a new Guild Challenges section will be displayed and broken into three categories: Dungeons, Raids, and Rated Battlegrounds. Any guild group will qualify for Guild Challenges credit and there is a set number of times each challenge can be completed per week. There’s no need to add a quest to your Quest Log or anything of that nature. Just grab a guild group eligible for any of the challenges and go.

Completing a Guild Challenge will result in a popup to confirm credit has been awarded, similar to achievement popups (or “toasts”). The participating guild members will then earn experience for their guild. In addition, a gold reward will be deposited directly to the Guild Vault. The gold and experience rewarded varies for each challenge type, but you won’t have to worry about receiving reduced rewards if, say, you happen to be in a guild group that completes a raid or dungeon on normal difficulty. Since there is a limited number of times each challenge type can be completed per week, we want to make sure guilds don’t feel set back if a guild group of level-18 players receives credit for completing Deadmines, versus a level-85 guild group completing Heroic Deadmines. The same applies to normal and Heroic difficulty raid progression. Provided the content is level-appropriate for your guild group, you’ll earn experience and gold for your guild.

To earn Guild Dungeon Challenge credit, the 5-player party must be composed of at least 3 guild members. Raid and Rated Battleground Challenges require that 8 out of 10 players be guild members, while 20 guild members are required to earn credit for 25-player raids. To earn gold for Guild Challenge rewards, a guild must be level 5 or higher and the participating members must have earned honored reputation with the guild. For example, 3 out of 5 guild members in a 5-player party must be honored to earn gold for the guild. If those three guild members have only reached friendly reputation, they would still receive credit and earn guild experience, but the guild would not receive gold.

So, let’s say your guild has been regularly hitting the daily experience cap. You might be wondering how beneficial it’d be to do Guild Challenges. Well wonder no more, amigos: Guild Challenges award guild experience above the cap. Think of it like rested experience. The guild experience cap will extend itself relative to the guild experience earned by completing these challenges. It’s a great way to get an extra edge on your guild leveling! Not only that, if your guild reaches the level cap, continuing to partake in Guild Challenges will yield a much more substantial sum of gold deposited directly into the Guild Vault.

We’re very happy with Guild Challenges and feel that they’re a fun way to continue expanding upon all of the new guild features added in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Your feedback regarding this system is always appreciated, as you can be sure we’ll be looking for ways to beef it up in future patches.


Update - Patch 4.0.6 Hotfixes - March 29
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
March 25 - March 29
Dungeons & Raids
The Bastion of Twilight
  • A bug has been fixed that could cause Flame Strike during the Ascendant Council encounter (Heroic difficulty) to target an existing fire patch, instead of creating a new one.

Guilds
  • The guild perk “Have Group, Will Travel” no longer allows players to summon guild mates inside dungeons, raids, Battlegrounds, or Tol Barad when the battle is in progress. It will also not function while the player is on any transport.

Quests & Creatures
Uldum
  • Hostile NPCs are no longer present at the Temple of Uldum once the cutscene from picking up "Harrison Jones and the Temple of Uldum" finishes playing.

Ensidia is Awesome
Don't blame me for the title, that's what the game said! Ensidia was the first guild in the world to complete the I Can't Hear You Over the Sound of How Awesome I Am achievement! Congratulations to them!



Rogers (Canadian ISP) admits throttling World of Warcraft
ArsTechnica has a very interesting article about how Rogers has been throttling traffic from WoW for the past few weeks. According to the reply from Rogers (pasted below), the problem might not be fixed before June.

"Our tests have determined that there is a problem with our traffic management equipment that can interfere with World of Warcraft," said Rogers. "We have been in contact with the game manufacturer and we have been working with our equipment supplier to overcome this problem.

"We recently introduced a software modification to solve the problems our customers are experiencing with World of Warcraft. However, there have been recent changes to the game, which has created new problems. A second software modification to address these new issues will not be ready until June."

Read the full article on ArsTechnica.com


Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Paladin (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
Word of Glory 20sec cooldown in Patch 4.1
I recently spoke to the devs about this, and their direction on it has not changed. We want Ret to be able to heal. However, if a Ret paladin is healing so often that a 20 second cooldown is a constraint, then that Ret paladin is spending too many GCDs healing. Spending a lot of GCDs on heals isn’t what we want a DPS spec to be doing.

We’d rather it be a big heal that is used infrequently, than a small heal that is only makes a difference to you if you give a lot of your GCDs to it. (Source)

Priest (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
Holy Word: Sanctuary
I had a talk with the devs about this very issue yesterday, and they are well aware of this subject, and tend to agree with those of us (one of my mains is a holy priest) who have noticed that Sanctuary could do with a buff.

There are two things that have to be dealt with here: 1) Holy priest AE healing is pretty decent as-is, and 2) we don’t want Sanctuary to be so similar to Healing Rain.

Again, the devs agree that a modest buff is a fair solution, although it is hard to know when or by what magnitude such a buff might come along. (Source)

Warlock (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
Unstable Affliction Dispell Penalty
We think the silence from dispelling Unstable Affliction is sufficiently punitive, but the damage may be too low currently - - that it isn’t scary enough to make it a decision to dispel or not.

In general, it’s not our goal to offer dispel protection for every dot or hot out there, but Unstable Affliction is a spell and mechanic we like and we want to make sure it’s doing its job. Maybe a damage bump would be enough, but in any case it's an ability we're looking at. (Source)
This article was originally published in forum thread: Ensidia is Awesome, Rogers throttling WoW, Guild Challenges Preview, Blue Posts started by Boubouille View original post
Published on 2011-03-30 01:40 AM
174 Comments
Comments 172 Comments
  1. Resa's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by nnelson54 View Post
    I wish we could get the full story behind the Rogers thing but it would never happen since it seems like it is being resolved, because you're right. My guildmate has been having the problem with them for like a month and a half now and he called them up three weeks ago and their tech support told them they were purposefully throttling WoW.
    As requested, the full story:
    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9038867/Roge...029%202011.pdf
  1. Kazlehoff's Avatar
    @Powerstruck: some other crap company doing it as well doesnt make it right.
  1. pateuvasiliu's Avatar
    Gz ensidia,it's good to see them coming back !
  1. CarnatiaSpiritfield's Avatar
    Is this why I got so many Dc's while in Ontario, than I do in Newfoundland?

    Damned Rogers.

    They said it was a problem with how we had it set up, it was them!
  1. insomniac190's Avatar
    I always like seeing what the mages in top guilds are wearing, being that my main is a mage. I just found it odd when I pulled up Hearnt's armory

    He's using that spirit wand. Now that's cool as I'm sure even with the spirit it's better than the only other PVE wand Blizz put in this tier. But I find it weird that he reforged the mastery to hit, when he would gain just as much hit reforging out the spirit...which is useless for mages.

    All that aside, grats on the 'chieve.
  1. SpriteMystic's Avatar
    Glad I use Cogeco
  1. mmoca15e426598's Avatar
    lol that achievment name is so fucking win tbh it should have given the title the awesome just for shits and giggles :P
  1. Rukentuts's Avatar
    Ensidia is a buncha has-beens. That's right I said it.

    5000g says they exploited.
  1. NaRa_'s Avatar
    This is probably a stupid question, but how is ensidia the first guild in the world to get the achievement? They achievement is required to get the drake, and there are plenty of people that were put on the front page last week if not before with the drake, so how is ensidia the first guild to get that achievement, when other people already have it?

    Is it guild as a whole? Because they first guild that got the drake could have just kicked everyone else out of the guild had three members and said "look our whole guild has the achievement"
  1. Vinhz's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by NaRa_ View Post
    This is probably a stupid question, but how is ensidia the first guild in the world to get the achievement? They achievement is required to get the drake, and there are plenty of people that were put on the front page last week if not before with the drake, so how is ensidia the first guild to get that achievement, when other people already have it?

    Is it guild as a whole? Because they first guild that got the drake could have just kicked everyone else out of the guild had three members and said "look our whole guild has the achievement"
    I think you fail at checking the requirements for the drake.
  1. Espria's Avatar
    Thank you for posting the CRTC email, Resa. Much appreciated.

    This has been ongoing with Rogers for a few months now... I'm pleased they've finally owned up and accepted responsibility. If they had done this sooner (you know, when customers first informed them of the problem) maybe things would look a little nicer. It's unfortunate that customers have to complain to the CRTC as almost a method of customer service.

    Initially the stance was that it was Blizzard's fault and it was out of their hands... Which was ridiculous because it was only Rogers customers effected and every other ISP that had encountered this issue fixed it pretty quickly because, you know, their customers were unhappy.

    For those of you still stuck with Rogers until June (I'm with you, I'm moving apartments in a few months and didn't see the point in changing ISPs), I would look around for an IP tunneling service. I don't know of any good free ones, but there are some good ones for a small charge that I've had success with. It'll get you locked out of WoW from time to time, but a password reset (takes 5 minutes) is better than constant DCs at the worst of times and random, crippling lag.

    On an unrelated note... I don't think there's a single Rogers service I've had that I've been happy with. I've had problems with their cable, Internet and cellphone service. I haven't used their streaming or home phone services
  1. Masqerader's Avatar
    thank god for eastlink
  1. Luminar's Avatar
    Word of Glory 20sec cooldown in Patch 4.1
    I recently spoke to the devs about this, and their direction on it has not changed. We want Ret to be able to heal. However, if a Ret paladin is healing so often that a 20 second cooldown is a constraint, then that Ret paladin is spending too many GCDs healing. Spending a lot of GCDs on heals isn’t what we want a DPS spec to be doing.

    We’d rather it be a big heal that is used infrequently, than a small heal that is only makes a difference to you if you give a lot of your GCDs to it.
    Or... y'know, they could notice that a DPS class is spending a lot of GCDs on heals and say "Why does he need so much healing as opposed to other plate wearing classes? Could it be because balancing around bubble is a terrible idea?"
  1. Lune's Avatar
    Grats to Ensidia! Awesome achieve.
  1. mmoc6ae9b18026's Avatar
    Gz to Ensidia . Its one of the awesomesous achis out there .
  1. tenzing21's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pumps View Post
    Yeah, its putting a damper on the speed - i would guess its because they think its pirate traffic. After all Blizzard uses bittorent to distribute the wow patches - that must be evil, right?

    Its a bad idea just to block certain protocols.
    Obviously, this is a test to see how well throttling can be done, and what the ramifications are. I expect that over the next few years, mmos and torrent sites will have their traffic banned by many if not all of the big time providers. As the computer industry gravitates away from static, go-nowhere pcs, to a dynamic take-it-with-you tablet/phone, this won't be an issue, as mmos will gradually fade away, anyways.
  1. Geekbustarz's Avatar
    I have a question about the achievment.. I mean, is it once per week? do you have one shot at the achievment per week, or one at all? (the latter sounds extremely... dumb)
  1. mmoc0ab66374a7's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Geekbustarz View Post
    I have a question about the achievment.. I mean, is it once per week? do you have one shot at the achievment per week, or one at all? (the latter sounds extremely... dumb)
    roflmao man.. if its (one at all then every guild would've had to make new alts and gear them up in heroics pre-sinestra then do a perfect pull..

    OFC ITS PER WEEK
  1. Alayea's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by un_known View Post
    and big grats to Ensidia, last time they fell out of the world first kill competition and came back to get an awesome achievement was world first Tribute to insanity (can't remember if they did WF dedicated after as well.... )
    They got world first for H LK 25 (I believe), but had it taken away due to use of an exploit.
  1. Mnementh's Avatar
    Ehh I use Rogers internet (their highest offered service) and I don't notice any throttling or at least haven't had any issues in game.
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