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
Comments 172 Comments
  1. Kalx's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Devlin- View Post
    I still don't understand why you get rewarded for doing the same stuff you do anyway... Wherein lies the challenge?
    wondering the same thing. that's no challenge at all, i was expecting more fun stuff, like making the guild complete a achievement (even if all the members already completed it) or make a harder version of an existing achievement that wouldn't be puggable

    for example, one week we would have "faster than the speed of light guild challenge edition", complete vault of lights in 4:30 instead of 5 min
    or "too hot to handle guild challenge edition", stacking the debuff to 20 instead of the usual 15

    stuff like that would be real challenges. not "complete 5 dungeons in a week" that they're proposing...
  1. Lyndétruit's Avatar
    I have Rogers. I didn't really notice any problems? O.o
  1. Nah's Avatar
    Woo go Ensidia!
    Quote Originally Posted by invictusordead View Post
    Where is the fire mage pve buffs???????
    Lolwut?
  1. theonly's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by mikedarling905 View Post
    <--- Rogers Customer in Canada that plays wow!

    and man it sucks sometimes.
    And Rogers likes to overcharge us for everything.
    really it sucks butt and i have 3 people at my house playing wow almost all the time -_-...

    rogers just switched there phone lines to primus to in Ontario witch has crap features and half of the ones rogers had.. rogers really pissing me off lately -_-, overcharge for crappy everything -_-
  1. AeneasBK's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ralphie View Post
    Waiting to hear on the exploit they used this time.....
    It's ok, say what you want bro, They Can't Hear You Over The Sound of How Awesome They Are.
  1. Syctris's Avatar
    Wow buffing warlock dispell protection... Where the hell is the shadowpriest Dispell Protection!? 2 second fear that half the time doesn't do anything...
  1. muCephei's Avatar
    ...I realize this isn't really constructive, but...
    FUCK
    YOU
    ROGERS

    I've been getting lagged out horribly from WoW these last few weeks (and months now) and I had no idea why. This explains a lot...they'd better fix it soon, I am NOT paying stupidly high prices to get throttled =__=
  1. Araun's Avatar
    the guild challenges are really meh. maybe not even worth a meh. and gz to ensidia, I've been watching vodka do the fight the last couple of weeks and it's a real challenge to do it without any1 dying and then on the first try as well gj!
  1. Iyarashii's Avatar
    GJ Ensidia but this will also be used as another excuse by blizzard to hold back content >.<
  1. ashley2ashes's Avatar
    yeah, my internet is from rogers and i havent been able to play the game for months without using a VPN that costs an extra $11 per month that is preventing rogers from throttling me. i really hate living in canada and honestly if i ever had the chance to get out of here, i wouldnt think twice about it.
  1. Naus's Avatar
    Hmm glad im with MTS. Bloody Rogers...
  1. Uhaneole's Avatar
    I dont play a lock but i have seen that ptr video of a priest dispelling UA and getting bonked for 300k... does that blue post mean working as intended?
    oh and grats Ensidia...
  1. Karnige's Avatar
    thank god im with telus
  1. Olderonous's Avatar
    totally posted first on that shit
  1. Raediance's Avatar
    Yeah I'm with Rogers and it's been terrible. Besides the throttling, here in Canada you can only download and upload a certain amount of gigs per month. If you go over they charge you extra. It's brutal. I've barely played the last couple of weeks. Tried to do 3s last week, that had to be the worst.
  1. Zulandia's Avatar
    Grats to Ensidia, also coming from a Canadian Roger's user I'm glad more and more sites are posting about the issues affecting the ISP it will help them get in gear about fixing it so thanks Boub!
  1. Buckwald's Avatar
    Grats to them! I have that achievement in real life... (I'm a liar).
  1. drukai's Avatar
    Not knowing the whole story but having read the reply from Rogers, I would choose a different word. Generally when a company throttles usage, its intentional and unlikely to change... in this case it looks like an accident.
  1. Psii's Avatar
    No issues with Rogers here. 60ms
    I'm fine with that.
  1. Tnep's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ralphie View Post
    Waiting to hear on the exploit they used this time.....
    Lol? We would have had it a few weeks ago, but our OT died RIGHT before she did.

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