Dragon Soul US First Kills, December 6 Hotfixes, Blizzard Sales, Blue Posts, TCG Art

General

• Transmogrified items should always lose their transmogrification when mailed.
  
• The Darkmoon Firework no longer has a duration, is now holiday-bound, and requires Darkmoon Faire to be active.
  
• Darkmoon Faire revelers who enter an off-limits area in ghost form should now be properly ported out.
  
• Entangling Roots, Freeze, and Frost Nova should now properly break when the affected player takes damage while a damage absorption effect is also active.
  

Classes
Hunter (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Kill Command should now always consume the Resistance is Futile! buff, regardless of whether the target has Hunter's Mark or not.
  
• Reverted a bug fix that caused Bombardment to be consumed by the next Multi-Shot. Fixing this bug proved to be a significant dps loss, so Bombardment once again lasts for its full 6 second duration regardless of the number of Multi-Shot casts. The tooltip will be updated in a future patch to reflect that this change is intended.
  

Paladin (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Divine Aegis, Ancestral Awakening, Ancestral Vigor, Holy Priest Mastery, Holy Paladin Mastery, and Living Seed now trigger properly based on pre-absorb healing, even if the triggering heal is fully absorbed.
  

Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Deep Wounds should now be correctly activated by critical hits from Opportunity Strike, Raging Blow, Heroic Leap, and Intercept.
  
• Using Pummel, modified by Gag Order, will now Silence the target for 3 seconds in addition to locking out the spell school for 4 seconds.
  

Dungeons & Raids

• End Time
  
  • The trash preceeding Echo of Baine should now hit for less Fire damage.
    
• Hour of Twilight
  
  • Flailing Tentacles now despawn shortly after they appear, and can no longer be attacked.
    
  
  
• Well of Eternity
  
  • Players should no longer lose the Shadowcloak buff when a group member leaves, joins, or zones in or out of the instance.
  • Mannoroth
    
    • Magistrike Arc should no longer be activated by pet attacks, and now has a 100% chance of being activated after a 3 second cooldown.
      
    • Rogue Stealth and mage Invisibility are no longer broken when Doomguard Devastators land and become valid targets, or when other Demons spawn from the Nether Tear portal.
      
  
  
• Dragon Soul
  
  • Accepting a Warlock summon while riding a drake taxi in Dragon Soul should now cancel the drake ride and port the player to the location of the summon.
    
  • Fall of Deathwing is now available via Raid Finder once you have completed Siege of Wyrmrest.
    
  • Players who have killed the final boss in one of the wings of Dragon soul via Raid Finder will be more likely to enter fresh instances on subsequent Raid Finder instances that week. This should make it easier to kill earlier bosses that they might have missed.
    
  • Yor'sahj the Unsleeping
    
    • The Aggro Radius has been properly adjusted for all difficulties of this encounter.
      
    • Slimes, Mana Voids, and Forgotten Ones have had their HP reduced by 20% on Raid Finder difficulty.
      
    • Pets cannot be summoned during the decent into this encounter.
      
  • Warlord Zon'ozz
    
    • Ball damage should now be splitting its total damage amongst all players nearby on Raid Finder difficulty.
      
    • Pets cannot be summoned during the decent into this encounter.
      
  • Ultraxion
    
    • Players should no longer find themselves in the Twilight Realm after Ultraxion has been defeated.
      
    • Essence of Dreams should strain CPUs less in 25-player raids. This buff will now activate once per second for each healer who has the buff, and the healing done by the effect will equal the amount of health healed by the healer within that one second window.
      
  • Spine of Deathwing
    
    • Corruption, Hideous Amalgamation, and Burning Tendons are now level 88, up from 87, and have had their health slightly increased.
      
  • Madness of Deathwing
    
    • Priests under the effect of Spirit of Redemption will now receive credit for defeating Deathwing as long as they were part of the encounter.
      
• Temple of Ahn'Qiraj
  
  • The Prophet Skeram, the Illusions of The Prophet Skeram, Princess Yauj, Lord Kri, and Vem no longer grant reputation when killed.
    
  
  
• Throne of the Tides
  
  • Lady Naz'jar
    
    • All of the creatures in the Lady Naz'jar gauntlet are now immune to mind control mechanics.
      
  
  
• Zul'Gurub
  
  • High Priest Venoxis has been convinced to clean up after himself when his encounter is reset, and his venom puddles should disappear.
    

Items

• Bracers of Flowing Serenity now have a +20 Intellect socket bonus that is properly applied when the gem requirement is met.
  
• Foul Gift of the Demon Lord and Varo'then's Brooch should no longer be usable by players under the effects of crowd control spells.
  
• All three Heart of Unliving trinkets now additionally provide a passive intellect bonus.
  
• Mana Tide Totem now benefits from Heart of Unliving.
  
• Pit Fighter and Master Pit Fighter now have more stamina.
  
• The Moonwell Phial trinket buff shold no longer be disabled when the player enters combat.
  
• The paladin tier-13 four-piece set bonus should now increase healing done by Holy Radiance by 5%, down from 20%.
  
• The priest tier-13 two-piece set bonus should again trigger a 23-second Temporal Boon for Discipline priests, up from 20 seconds.
  

Quests and Creatures

• While on the quest "Archival Purposes", players should now be able to open Elementium Gem Clusters.
  

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• WoW: Battle Chest for $5 (reg. $19.99)
  
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• Wrath of the Lich King for $10 (reg. $39.99)
  
• Celestial Steed for $10 (reg. $25)
  
• Pandaren Monk for $5 (reg. $10)

With these deals, there’s never been a better time to recruit a friend to World of Warcraft or hook up your guildmate with a new mount or pet. Click here to start shopping, but don’t delay; these offers end Monday, December 19, 2011.

Darkmoon Faire Items Are Too Expensive
Thanks everyone for your feedback. To hopefully clear up some of the confusion over time investment vs reward costs we've broken down exactly how many tickets you can obtain in a single Darkmoon Faire week. The design intent of the Darkmoon Faire is that it’s available for one week out of the month, and in that one week we expect you to be able to obtain a significant amount of tickets. To clarify the OP’s point of how long it would take to obtain an entire set of cosmetic gear, the math presented was incorrect, and it would in fact only take 4 Darkmoon Faire weeks to complete an entire set. That’s of course still no quick task, and the intent is not for it to be. There are plenty of rewards that can be obtained in one or two weeks of the Darkmoon Faire, but we expect that an entire set will take a few events to obtain. Here’s the breakdown:

Tickets Per Faire

• Dungeon: 40
• Heroic Dungeon: 15
• Raid: 10
• Tradeskill quests (primary): 8
• Tradeskill quests (secondary): 12
• BGs: 15
• Kill Quest: 10
• Mini Games*: 35

Total Tickets per faire: 145

* 5 mini games, available daily: 7*5=35

As an example, here are some options that you can choose over the course of two Darkmoon Faires (2 weeks over 2 months):

• Prioritizing mounts/pets: 1 mount + 1 pet, with 20 tickets to spare
• Prioritizing pets: 3 pets, 20 tickets to spare
• Prioritizing cosmetic armor: 4 pieces of cosmetic armor, with 30 tickets to spare
• Prioritizing heirloom armor: 1 piece of heirloom armor + 1 heirloom weapon, with 20 tickets to spare

Keeping all of this in mind we don’t feel the current ticket acquisition rates or reward costs are out of hand, but we’re interested to hear your thoughts after reading this information and considering the longevity of the content, as well as the ‘once a month’ format of the faire. We’ll be continually evaluating it, and we’re looking forward to incorporating more goodies to be won, and more activities to the faire, in the future.

We're not attempting to recreate the time investment that was originally seen to obtain these items when they were relevant. They exist for transmogrification/customization choices, not necessary power increase requirements to be able to progress your character.

If they were part of a progression path we'd definitely look at the acquisition rates and standardize them, but as they're show-off pieces the acquisition rate is usually gated a little higher so that the appeal and worth of showing them off remains high.

Just to clarify one point, the quest drops that happen in the dungeons/raids/BG’s happen all the time, even if the faire isn’t in town. Think of it sort of like the Darkmoon Card redemptions. You’re out playing all month, while you’re doing stuff you’re getting chances at the items, then when the faire is in town you turn it all in. (It’s also worth pointing out that the turn-in items aren’t soulbound, so just like the cards I’d expect some people to farm them just to put them up on the AH.)

It’s really just this first week and appearance of the faire that’s off because the Darkmoon Adventurer's Guide wasn’t available for the 3 weeks prior. When it rolls around next month there should be better feel for how the whole system and ticket acquisition rate feels.

Why is there a perception both within the community and from the developers that there should be a lower acquisition rate for people who want to customize how their character looks compared to those who simply want higher stats?

It's a simple fact of the intent behind the vanity rewards and people's desires to customize their appearance, and do so in a way that they are unique from other players. To be unique, or close to it, the desire is to have something to show off that no one else has, or at least very few people have. Secondarily (or in some cases primarily) the appeal of the item can simply be due to some very difficult-to-reach goal. "Look at me, I did X". To achieve that from our side there needs to be a high barrier of entry to obtain the item or else everyone can get it, the item loses its special 'show off' value, and as a way to be unique from other players it has completely lost all value. This isn't just a dress up game, the items have significance attached to how they were obtained. Some things, like pets or mounts, have alternate values through achievements and such though, so things can get a bit more complex.

Obviously it doesn't apply to everything, there are nigh unlimited amounts of ways now to customize your character with transmogrification. The vast majority of customization options don't require a ton of time investment. But if you look at these items in the Darkmoon Faire, or the mounts or pets that are hard to obtain, and you really want them to dress up and show off, I think that's proving the exact point of why they're difficult to obtain.

I'll bring up the sparkle ponies. When they came out everyone wanted one and sure enough on the first day the sky was filled with sparkles, and ponies, but now days you rarely see anyone bring theirs out because they became too common. You see people, usually, on their rarest/most difficult to obtain mount, because that's the satisfaction of obtaining these things and then displaying them in a social setting. "This is who I am, and this is what I've achieved."

Hold on, hold on. Aren't you guys the people who have, for years, told everyone who complained about other players getting rare things easier after time had past that they shouldn't complain because, after all, they had those things and got to enjoy them longer than players who are now able to get the items far easier?

Time changes all. We're not going to be able to keep everything in the game relatively "difficult" to obtain from now until forever. There are going to be game changes or a progression of player power that simply makes some of their acquisitions easier. We can try to build in gates, such as lockouts and timers to help mitigate them, but it's very possible that at some point in the future the Darkmoon Faire items become substantially easier to obtain through some change.

As time goes on more and more people will naturally be able to achieve these desired 'show off' items, and so as time goes on it makes sense to continue to introduce new ones. Being the first, or one of a few is awesome, but unless we do something like the AQ gong event again (never) we're not going to literally gate items to a specific number of people.

Such is the reality of a constantly moving and evolving game. It's a big reason why we use words and phrases like "currently" and "at this time", we can't speak to how we're going to be thinking or designing the game a year from now, or what items will be available and at what cost.

I understand the intent of obtaining items to customize your character, and I would absolutely argue that it is not devoid of wanting to appear special/unique to those around you. World of Warcraft is not a strict 'roleplaying' game, in that the majority of focus is on cooperative or competitive group-based content, and much of that is to obtain and earn prestige through displayable rewards. Because of that our intent is largely going to be to create methods through which that prestige can be obtained. That doesn't mean everything has to be some kind of crazy long time investment, and it's a fact that World of Warcraft asks very little in that regard for 98% of the content, but surely there needs to be some that are very difficult to appease those who are looking for it. I would also argue the Darkmoon Faire and its items are not one of them, though, and do not ask an out-of-the-ordinary amount of dedication to obtain the rewards.

We were not requesting the items be very easy to obtain, we're requesting that the time it takes to acquire such items be reduced by adding 2-3 more tokens to the daily rewards.

We're more than willing to take feedback on how the rates could be adjusted, but at this time we feel four months to obtain a full set seems about right, should you choose to not seek them out through other means (trading/AH). Of course should we decide to make any adjustments we'll let you know as soon as we do.

This, it seems to me, is related to the assumption on Blizz's part that the only "valid" purpose for Transmogrification is prestige-- to show off the armor we earned, preferrably in an attempt to look more powerful and awesome. But many of us are not in fact motivated by that-- we're motivated by the desire to customize our characters to make them look the way we want, according to our own feel for our characters-- whether that feel is "powerful and awesome" or "silly and quaint".

No and I apologize for using that phrase, my intent wasn't to devalue character customization it was to make a point that the items don't just exist in the world for baseless customization, but they're either obtained by killing a boss, being great in the Arena's, or even putting time into gathering enough tickets so you can look awesome.

Like I said before there are tons of customization options that are very, very easy to obtain, and the combinations and customization potential is really insane. But, there are going to be restrictions and requirements to get what's considered the higher prestige items because that's in no small part what makes them prestigious, and drives people to obtain them. I understand that may not be why you play the game, but it is why the majority of people play, and the majority of the content that's developed.

We're in the infancy of transmogrification though, and so I don't think we really have any idea where we'll be six months or a year from now and the various venues we could have available to obtain pure-customization options for your character. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

PvP Season 11 Begins
The second PvP season of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is now underway! Matchmaking (MMR), Team, and Personal Ratings have been reset and players are once again able to compete in level-85 Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds for the best PvP gear, items, and titles. The 4000-point Honor cap has been restored, and Season 11 Conquest Point and improved Honor Point rewards are now available for purchase.

Players who were in the top teams from each battlegroup at the end of Season 10 will also be receiving their end-of-season rewards shortly. These include Arena- and Rated Battleground-specific titles and, for players who have earned the rank of gladiator, the Ruthless Gladiator’s Twilight Drake.

Prepare yourselves for battle as the bloody struggle between the Horde and the Alliance continues. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Expand the LFR Loot System to all 5 Man Instances
I just wanted to let you all know that we would indeed like to expand this loot system to 5-player dungeons as well. However this is something we are looking into for the future, but we would like to see how the loot system holds up in a raiding environment first. So hopefully we may introduce this to 5 man dungeons soon™ (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)