Improved Scenario Rewards, Nov 28 Hotfixes, CRZ Brawler's Guild, Blue Posts, Fan Art

Classes
Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Stormlash Totem now has a radius of 40 yards (was 30).
  

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Skull Banner now has a radius of 40 yards (was 30).
  

Quests

• Quest targets on Bilgewater Beach in Krasarang Wilds will no longer improperly apply PvP flags to attacking players.
  
• Agent Malley, the Operation: Shieldwall Quartermaster, now accepts the proper currency for his wares.
  
• The quest "Touching Ground" can now be completed correctly.
  
• NPCs in Domination Point will no longer ask PvP Guards to assist them in combat.
  
• Great Cranes now drop Pristine Jet Crownfeathers more frequently.
  
• Fixed an issue that would sometimes prevent players from witnessing their respective faction's landing on the shore of Krasarang Wilds.
  

Pet Battles

• Mr. Bigglesworth will no longer drop from Kel'Thuzad, as he can now be obtained from the achievement Raiding With Leashes.
  

Dungeons, Raids & Scenarios

• Fixed an issue that could cause some players to be friendly with the denizens of the Black Temple.
  
• The Heart of Fear
  
  • Garalon will no longer despawn when moved near the outside edges of his platform.
    
• Mogu'shan Palace
  
  • Trial of the King
    
    • Defeating Kuai the Brute while he is casting shockwave will no longer sometimes prevent players from completing this encounter.
      
• A Little Patience
  
  • It is no longer necessary to slay the Kor'kron Elite preceding Commander Scargash to engage him.
    

PvP

• Players are once again correctly affected by silencing effects in PvP.
  

Items

• Scavenged Pandaren Weapons are now correctly Bind on Pickup.
  
• The Malevolent Gladiator's Ripper now has the correct amount of PvP Power.
  

Bug Fixes

• Character specific macros should no longer sometimes be removed from action bars when logging into the game for the first time.
  
• Players that have faction changed will now receive the correct Pandaren Campaign commissions for their current faction.
  
• Field Merchant Skevin now appears on the Skyfire.
  
• Spirits of Harmony can no longer be sold, auctioned or mailed.
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause players to become disconnected during the Domination Point event.
  
• The Sturdy Crane Crate, Sturdy Tiger Trap, and Sturdy Crab Crate are now consumed once the quests they offer are accepted.
  
• Guild tabards will now display correctly on the character selection screen.
  
• Classes
  
  • Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
    
    • Mutilate, Killing Spree, and Fan of Knives once again apply poisons correctly.
      
  • Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
    
    • The effects of Symbiosis: Prowl will now correctly be removed once the duration of Symbiosis expires.
      
  • Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
    
    • Safeguard once again properly removes snares and rooting effects.
      

We've seen some confusion about people from other realms showing up in the Brawler's Guild.

It's important to note that the Brawler's Guild only uses realm coalescing when the number of participants is really low, so a lot of people are seeing people from other realms due to the fact that there haven't been many invitations to join distributed yet. It's highly likely the area will cease to activate CRZ on most realms as participation increases. Having 100+ people in the queue doesn't create a good experience, but, from our perspective, neither does having only a small handful of people.

The feature is designed to bring a decent population into the guild, and those people should spend at least a modest amount of time as spectators or loiterers before getting into the ring. We didn't design the Brawler's Guild with the intention of getting you through queues in 10 minutes or less. We're not trying to replicate Dungeon Finder for the solo player with Brawler's Guild.

If the place seems overcrowded AND you're seeing people from other realms there, it could be a situation where the population check that determines whether or not to coalesce a realm hasn't run again yet. As I said before, this should stabilize in time and likely automatically disable CRZ for the guild.

Lack of Complete Patch Notes
Maybe I'm just ignorant of the reason here but is there any reason that the absolute full list of changes in a patch are not listed? For example, the stealth nerf to Spectral Guise, the change in pvp power as it relates to healing, etc. were not mentioned. Most of the times people have to find these out for themselves then wait for confirmation on their respective forums. Any ideas?
I compile the notes, so I should probably explain a bit.

Essentially, the development of every World of Warcraft patch is a highly iterative creative process. Like most creative processes, there's a little bit of chaos involved, with discreet sub-teams working on individual projects, but also coordinating closely at the same time, so there's always a frenzy of activity going on at any given moment. With that in mind, there's not one comprehensive, monolithic source of information on what's being changed. Instead, information needs to be solicited, provided, re-phrased, confirmed, re-confirmed, edited, and revised as the patch is developed and I compile the notes. That also means that if there's an omission, you can be reasonably certain that it wasn't intentional. It's also worth noting that, as the code changes to resolve issues and implement new features, sometimes things go unexpectedly wonky with older parts of the game.

I'm careful to compile the notes as completely as possible, but it's not unlikely that some things will slip through the cracks from time to time. Perhaps an item didn't follow a typical development pipeline, or something was fixed at the last second. And of course, there will be rare occasions when I simply make an error and omit something that should have been included.

In all cases, we try to make the notes as informative and complete as possible, while also keeping them relevant for 99% of players.

Because if they detailed everything that went into a patch it'd be about ten pages long and everyone would whine about that. I agree that they could be a touch more extensive though.
That's not precisely the case, but we do try to keep things relatively concise. Admittedly, there are many changes that occur that wouldn't mean anything at all to 99% of players, and really crunchy notes of that sort have historically always been omitted.

They do not mention the ones which are apt to upset a large majority of the players.
That's not the case either; there are notes in virtually every update that we know will upset someone. We don't shy away from providing information that needs to be provided, and I'm afraid that you are ascribing a motivation to an event that is actually happenstance.

So it's just coincidence that almost all of the stuff that you "forgot" to put in the patch notes are things that negatively impact the game?
I have a question for you: Do you really think that we believe that players are happier to find these things out on accident, with no warning? That somehow we think we can slip things by un-detected, when logic, history, and all evidence points to the contrary?

What's the advantage there?

This should most definitely been in the patch nots yet absolutely nothing has been said about it from Blizzards end.
Indeed, it should have been. The fact that completing a partially cleared instance should cause your next Raid Finder queue to always be a fresh instance should also have been noted as well.

I'll be adding both of those to the notes shortly, in fact.

The advantage is you can simply ignore addressing the issue like is almost always done with "stealth nerfs." Just change it and not say a word.
I still don't see how that's an advantage. We always have the option of discussing a topic or not. 'Hiding' something would just make people grumpier when it sneaks up on them, which makes it even harder to speak about it in a constructive atmosphere.

I'll be honest: I'm having a hard time picturing how you think things work around here. I admit to having a nice diabolic cackle now and then, but it's not like I'm sitting in front of a bank of monitors each filled with an angry forum thread, stroking a siamese cat and telling my henchmen that they've failed me for the last time.

But won't this just perpetuate the problem of people leaving during raids even more? If I join a partially finished raid, then go to another raid to finish the bosses I haven't done I will then be leaving after completing the bosses I need. Blizz needs to find some way to keep people in the raid for the whole thing from boss 1 to until the end.
We're always working toward a better system. In the meantime, while the scenario you describe could happen, we should still see more consistent groups and lower queue times than we were seeing previously.

Solution: release a patch note addendum. "Official" additional notes will settle questions of if a change is an actual intended change, and so on.
I've been updating the notes as items are confirmed. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Quests Causing PvP Flagging on PvE Realms
Thanks for everyone's feedback on this issue. These quests are supposed to encourage PvP, but remain PvE friendly, so the more information we can gather regarding what might still be flagging players is helpful. The following hotfixes have already been implemented:

• Players are no longer flagged for PvP combat when engaging Lieutenant Ethan Jacobson.
• Players are no longer flagged for PvP combat when engaging Chief Engineer Cogswrench.
• Getting in combat with NPCs in Domination Point will no longer cause guards to assist them.
• Removed Kor’kron Elite near a quest objective.

Obviously, some of you still seem to be getting flagged inappropriately. If you are still being flagged incorrectly, we'd like to address it.

It will help us investigate if those of you still experiencing issues could please let us know what exactly you were doing when you were flagged. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Loss of Control Alerts
You get mad because Blizzard is offering you an option to disable it? This thread is pretty absurd.. and the "anger" over this feature is pretty absurd, too. Don't like it? Don't use it.
Actually, the frustration is understandable.

This thread might have been started out of context though. The player I was originally responding to seemed to simply resent that the feature existed at all, despite being an option that can be disabled. He hadn't mentioned that the screen flash and action bar 'red out' persisted after disabling the Loss of Control UI, nor had anyone else, when I first responded to the thread.

We're looking into it now. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

PvP Fist Weapon PvP Power Amount
Thanks for your report on fist weapons not having the appropriate amount of PvP power. We are aware of this issue already and are actively investigating the matter.

Nothing to investigate, you only need to look at the facts, and the facts are that the fist weapons, again, have been overlooked. Isn't it just awesome to have chosen both the Shaman class AND fist weapons on a day like this?
They have not been overlooked, the PvP power adjustments simply did not apply to them and we are investigating as to why and sorting out a resolution. It is not a simple matter of flipping a switch, but we are working to have the correct amount of PvP power on fist weapons as soon as possible.

Indeed, the PvP power on the fist weapons has been hotfixed to match other weapons - however, people who bought the weapons before today are still unable to upgrade them.
We have now hotfixed the the PvP power on fist weapons as you said, however being unable to upgrade fist weapons purchased before 5.1 is unrelated and as such requires some additional investigation to solve. We are still looking into this and hope to have it sorted out as soon as possible.

Good that it's acknowledged, got any kind of ETA (today, tomorrow, next patch, the next expansion)? It seems the ones that are on the vendors are upgradeable but not the ones that players have already bought.
Indeed, it is only the ones bought before patch 5.1 that cannot be upgraded and this is what we are looking into. Unfortunately we cannot provide any ETA at this time, but do hope to get this sorted out quickly. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

BWL Soloing
How did u do it solo? The adds kill the boss way to fast.
Some adds should be sticking to you (but won't interrupt your channel). There's no debuff when using the orb, so you can interrupt it, clean adds, and retake control of the boss as much as you want, and you can destroy eggs non-stop (other than his 3 second cast).

Also, Razorgore has an ability that will put to sleep a dragonkin unit, this is very useful if he's under attack. Just keep practicing and make the most of the period between the pull and the first wave of adds! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

WoW Engine Upgrades
Technology never stops evolving and we all know that most games usually end up falling behind, as time never stops, while trying to keep up with the latest hardware.

But actually, a game like WoW is constantly updating its engines, with every new expansion and sometimes even during normal patches, we get a few updates here and there, both to the graphics engine but also to many other kinds of engines, like animation, A.I., network, scripts, physics…

WoW is actually a very efficient and polished game, and it has to be so, players need a smooth gameplay while doing very demanding CPU/GPU intensive tasks, like being in a city with hundreds of players around you, 25-man raids, or even world bosses when there’s 2 or 3 more 40-man raids around you trying to tag the same boss, and then there’s addons, which introduce some overhead but provide one of the most powerful game customization capabilities that I know of, adding extreme versatility and expansibility to the game.

Many changes and updates have been done to the game’s engines throughout all these years, some players might not notice them immediately but they are there.
Most of the engines that we use are made in-house and remain exclusive to our games. That’s why we typically don’t discriminate most of those changes and release extensive technical details.

For example, with Cataclysm we were able to introduce DirectX 11 support and many new different features like dynamic sunshafts and improved “liquid” rendering (aka awesome looking water!). With Mists of Pandaria we have better and bigger textures, improved shadows, overall better and more detailed 3D models and some stuff that you just won’t notice because it’s not visually distinguishable, like performance improvements on the way the game renders the world around you.

We also need to be careful about any changes we might apply to graphics, as sometimes those changes can mean a feeling of loss to many players that love and are used to the way the world looks. We know WoW can be very close to player’s hearts and that our community is incredibly passionate about the game, so we need to be extremely careful about any design changes we apply, not only visual changes. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Burning Crusade Content Difficulty
We know that there are players interested running TBC at the appropriate character level but we can’t really tune old content to match every single change we apply to the game when we’re also adding options at the same time for high level players to enter those raids alone so they can solo bosses.

These are two different philosophies that just don’t work well together, it’s hard to tune things for both a level 90 to solo and for twinks to have a competitive and challenging raid, we do try to make that possible but our main focus is on level 90 content at the moment and in fine-tuning high level balance.

Honestly I love the idea of being able to raid all the old instances at the appropriate level and difficulty, there’s so much content left behind that new players will never get to experience the same way we did in the past and that feels like a bit of a loss to me as well, but on the other hand, I think it’s easy to understand why that happens, the amount of resources that would be required to constantly keep all old content perfectly tuned would be enormous.

With the launch of MoP, the talent revamp, all the changes that were applied to classes, all that has an effect on low level characters’ DPS, we know they’re not perfectly tuned, and although we always strive to perfect every single aspect of our game, priorities need to be taken in consideration and on top of the list needs to be high level content, when we’re satisfied with the state of that content we can start to pay a bit more attention to low-level tuning of characters and npcs. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We will soon begin limited testing on updates to some Battle.net functionality (mainly communication and login). As a part of this process, you may notice some minor Battle.net-related UI changes while logged in to Diablo III, World of Warcraft, and StarCraft II.

Patch 1.0.6 for Diablo III includes some of the data for this testing but will not impact your play experience. Similar testing-related data will be patched into World of Warcraft and StarCraft II in the future.

Please note that at this stage the testing is limited, but we’ll keep everyone updated and invite you to help us test the changes as soon as we can. We look forward to sharing more information about what’s in store for Battle.net in the future, so stay tuned.​