Dragon Soul Difficulty Change - 35%, Misc 5.0.4 Changes, Blue Posts, Weekly Roundup

Many exciting new mounts will be hitting the skyways and byways of Azeroth when adventurers set sail for Mists of Pandaria on September 25. From Cloud Serpents to Water Striders to your own flying clouds, mount collectors will get to ride off into the sunset on a plethora of exotic rides.

What is a plethora?

Mobile Armory Remote Guild Chat Update
The Mobile Armory Guild Chat and Auction House recently went free to all World of Warcraft subscribers giving access to many great features including the Remote Guild Chat. We are aware of issues affecting connectivity to this feature and have temporarily disabled it until we can resolve the issue. A fix should be in place very soon. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Alterac Valley NPC Difficulty
From this post, are you saying that the NPC's on beta are deliberately weaker than they're intended to be so that the levelling bracket isn't punished? I always thought - and it certainly seems that way if you level through the brackets - that the NPC's have their own stats based on the bracket, not a direct scale down based on the max bracket... maybe I read the post wrong!
As I said, it's complicated, but essentially in order to make the bosses appropriate difficulty at level 90, they have to be either very strong or very weak at level 85. We went with the latter. Check them out at level 90 and see if they feel better.

Could you take a few minutes to address the concerns in the main post as well please? AV just isn't fun now and if things stay the way they are looking to stay based on the beta - won't be fun for Mists. I think a lot of players all over the world would really appreciate it.
There are two big relevant topics for Alterac Valley. One is that the BG is scary to work on. What I mean is that it was super ambitious, probably over ambitious, for when we released it. It is probably the single most complicated design in WoW in terms of how it was built. Some days I am surprised it works at all. Brave designers run in terror when they peer into the dark recesses of AV to try and figure out a bug or even dare to hope to understand how many of its complicated parts work. We've known for a long time that AV needs to be rebuilt. The good news is that we have many more powerful tools these days. While they still aren't as complex as AV, the new BGs took a fraction of the time to build. I think we could rebuild AV with less duct tape and baling wire these days, which in turn would make it a lot more reasonable for us to test out changes.

So, we can fix the functionality. The second question is, can we fix the design? Should we? This is a very big topic, so I don't expect it to be fully resolved even in a thread of this length. Obviously AV has changed a lot over the years. It rarely lasts 7 hours anymore and you don't see bombers and scrap turn-ins and Ivus. I personally thought it was a lot more fun when you engaged the opposite faction instead of running past them. We could have a long discussion about what the role of the towers and mines and graveyards should be and how much difference players playing defensively should be able to make. Should the bosses behave like raid bosses or should they just be speed bumps? Some players like AV's size and scope because it's easier to blend into the background -- it's a great beginner's Battleground. Other people think it would be more fun if it was smaller (maybe in geography and team size). Maybe we need a small rated version and the 40-player unrated version.

One of the new features we just introduced is the ability to thumbs down certain BGs. You better believe we're going to monitor that data closely and see which BGs players actually like and hate. (We'll compare that data with completion rates, and honor per time and so on -- we won't just delete or overhaul the two least popular maps.) Maybe AV ends up as the most popular BG, which means that changing it might make a lot of people mad. Maybe the right answer is to leave AV as it is and just make a new BG that plays the way we think AV should be played. I doubt that will be our conclusion, but we do want to gather some more data before we do anything drastic.

I'm sorry I can't burrow into every single suggestion, but I do like the idea of turning the (non-scaling) trinket into a tabard. We do appreciate all of the feedback. We really do pay attention to it. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

New Talent System Feedback
We have these sorts of concerns and threads every expansion or every major patch that makes additions and changes. We understand that there are those that love and embrace change and others that don't or take a bit longer to adjust. It's the very nature of these types of development for MMOs.

There are a few things to keep in mind though as you're experiencing these things for the first time (if you are experiencing it for the first time.)

First off, it's important that everyone remembers that feedback needs to remain constructive. Telling us that you don't like something without specifics is just unhelpful. Also, using profanity in your posts, no matter how strongly you may feel about something, is not appropriate for the forums. Again, if you want to share your thoughts and ideas, we're always open to what those are.

Next, it's important to keep in mind that much like with previous expansions, you're only getting one part of the overall picture. There's a lot more coming with the release of Mists of Pandaria, and we are aware things aren't going to feel "quite right" right now to some people. As the rest of the systems and design are released with the expansion, some of that unease or apprehension may well go away.

Lastly, we have been doing our best to convey what's coming for some time now. We have the beta going and the PTR that was available for those that wanted to test things out. We've taken into account a lot of that feedback on many fronts over the development of this expansion, and as always, we don't plan to simply stop working on it just because we've patched. The design team is always working on finding ways to improve the experience for all players. This is no small task though.

This isn't a new game. It's an evolving one and much like a fine wine, we'd like to think it's only getting better with age. It's understandable though that not everyone will enjoy the changes we've made, but we'd like to hope that if they don't they'll take the time to get a good feel for the changes and go into it with an open mind. Hopefully, the next step for these people is to share their constructive feedback as always. We just released the patch after all, and we'd hope that people would give it a little time before immediately deciding they're unhappy. We are also not unaware of things that may need fixed or adjusted. Again, constructive feedback is key and we'll continue to smooth things over as quickly as possible.

I like change, but this is way too easy. When I was choosing my talents it was a no brainer on all of them. I liked the old talent tree way more, being able to spec wrong is apart of the learning experience, which is gone now. There is no learning curve anymore, and its sad
I think you're making the same error that others are in this regard. There's going to be something to being able to switch out abilities as the situation needs. So, you may decide that a certain talent is better against one boss than another, or in PvP, or for soloing. You won't just simply set your talents and leave them for every and ever untouched because someone told you it was THE spec to be in. You'll be able to define your experience from situation to situation. I think there's a subtle sort of complexity available that many are overlooking because they just see a simple streamlined interface.

Maybe you will just set your talents and forget them, but from what I've seen in beta, it's very easy to slip into the idea of "this isn't working for me, I think I'll change it up with this instead". It's very freeing and at the same time, makes you think about things just a little more before just jumping into the fray.

Are you really trying to sit here and suggest that this is a matter of "some people don't like change"? No, this is a matter of people don't like the development decisions. We want change, we have for a long time, just not the changes that you're making. There is a huge difference.

Part of the problem here, I feel, is lack of acknowledgment coming from the developers toward the part of the community that disagrees with their current vision of the game. Chalking that up to a personality trait is really ludicrous and insulting.

For example, There was a LOT or constructive criticism about this new "talent" system and class design. Specifically that the entire system was too dumbed down and we'd really like an actual talent system. How was that taken? Clearly, we still have the same system in place.

There are a lot of little things I could say about design, but at the end of the day, as the OP said... the train goes on regardless. Sure, there may be some turns here and there .. but at the end of the day we're still on the same set of tracks.
No, it's not absurd. It's a simplification of the sentiment perhaps, but not absurd. Keep in mind, sharing constructive feedback doesn't mean that change is going to occur. It's no guarantee the developers will agree with your thoughts, but it does help shape future endeavors. Sometimes the answer is "no, we don't agree" sometimes the answer is , "interesting but we can't do that right now" and sometimes it's "good point, we should look into that." Sometimes your feedback leads us to unintended changes or bugs that need fixed. Sometimes, it's the spark of something for another time. This is why we have these conversations with you all. It may be frustrating not to see the change you want. It may be frustrating to not agree with the direction the design team is taking too and that is understandable as well.

But in the end, the development team has the health and well-being of the game as a whole in mind and we will continue to talk to you all about what those things are as much as we can. As far as developer feedback goes too, we've been sharing it on a regular basis both in these forums and on the beta forms (Ghostcrawler himself in many cases). We may not be hitting every topic you want, or telling you what you want to hear, but we haven't been avoiding these conversations. There are just a lot of conversations to be had or at least a lot of desire for conversations. In some cases, there's just not much we can say either. We sometimes just want to wait and see how something plays out before taking anything further.

(As for the avoiding profanity comment I made earlier, it was a reminder for those who have been posting other threads or are thinking of posting their own.)

For those that feel there may be specific talent choices that are missing that you had in 4.3, could you share what those are? I think that could lend itself to a more interesting discussion at this point. I think we've gotten too far off the tracks with people arguing about whose opinion is more valid.

We're still keeping an eye on the thread and would love to see what your thoughts are.

I miss all the talent options
Which ones specifically?

Honestly......its like there are zero talents for PVE. Look at the hunter talents not a single one seems to benefit, in any way, the PVE player.
Specific examples of what you feel is missing is key. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Account-Wide Titles
So..I have this old title Corporal on this old rogue and my other toons don't have it. What gives? Do they have to be on the same server?
Not all titles are available to use account wide, PvP titles being one of them. There are exceptions that apply to mounts as well (in particular a couple of PvP mounts.) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

PvP Power
Hopefully 11% damage is enough to offset Ilevel and set bonus differences on legenderies as well unless they pack some outrageous procs.
PvP power is actually not counted in the stat budgeting of an item and this causes the Ilvl to be lower. So do not worry, the increase in damage from PvP power is designed to offset the Ilvl difference between PvP and PvE items.

Any news on this? I checked the armory site, looked up my pvp chars after last night's 5.0.4 patch and my weapons do NOT have pvp power, only pvp resillience. Is this gonna be different for lvl90 gear? PvP power is only on level 90 gear. As you can see it is on Malevolent Gladiator's Bonegrinder (season 12) but not Cataclysmic Gladiators Bonegrinder (Season 11). (Official Forums)

PAX Prime begins this Friday in Seattle, WA, and with all of the madness that’s sure to ensue we’d be remiss if we didn’t make a cameo of our own. We do hope you’ll come visit Bashiok and me at the Intel booth, and Nethaera and Vaeflare at the NVIDIA booth. You can’t miss us. We’ll be the bright-eyed idealists ready to share a conversation or two.

In addition to what Intel and NVIDIA have planned, we’ll have hundreds of Mists of Pandaria beta keys to randomly giveaway, as well as playable demos at both booths! We look forward to meeting with those of you attending. All Seattle’s a stage.

Follow us on Twitter to see what we’re up to and chat with us during the festivities:

• @Bashiok
• @Nethaera
• @Vaeflare
• @CM_Zarhym

View the full event map (Intel booth 6109; NVIDIA booth 3747).