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Winter Veil 2012
The Feast of Winter Veil is here and brings new gifts this year! When you unwrap your present this year, you will find a Foot Ball or The Pigskin inside. You will need them for They're Both Footballs? Don't forget to grab the Battle Pets as well.

This year also adds an updated version of the old Miniature Winter Veil Tree! Not many people have opened this year's Stolen Present yet, but it likely has a similar droprate (~1%) to the old one.





Patch 5.1 Hotfixes - December 13
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Classes

Quests
  • Players that leave the area during the ending sequence of "Heart of the Alliance" will no longer be placed into the wrong phase.

Pet Battles

Items

Dungeons, Raids & Scenarios
  • Heart of Fear
    • Grand Empress Shek'zeer
      • The Empress now always drops three tier-set tokens and three non-set items in the 25 player Heroic mode version of this encounter.

Bug Fixes

Pet Battles Updates
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We’ve been receiving a few inquiries over Twitter and through email regarding Farmer Nishi, so we thought we’d share our thoughts on Pet Battle experience gains with you.

We will soon be applying a hotfix that causes level-25 pets to no longer “steal” experience from your lower-level pets. Previously, if you had a level-3 and level-25 pet grouped together for a battle, the XP earned would be shared between the two at the end. This resulted in some players doing what they could to kill off their level-25 pet so the level-3 pet would get all of the experience. You no longer need to worry about this as the level-3 pet will now receive 100% of the XP that’s earned, so long as it has participated in at least one round of combat.

With max-level master trainer dailies available for Northrend, Cataclysm, Pandaria, and the new line of Spirit Trainers, you have quite a few endgame battles in Pandaria which you can use to level up new pets. Be sure to wear your Safari Hat to get the most out of your battles! The over-arching goal is to provide a variety of content with which you can level up your pets each day.

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
LFR Feedback.
Reason 1: People can get an item twice, thrice, even 4-5-6-7 times. Why is this bad? If we had normal looting, they would simply pass on the item, and let someone without one get it. Basically, loot that someone COULD use is being vendored, because this faulty loot system keeps giving certain other people an item they already have.
If we were still using a looting system with finite loot drops, I think this would be more of an issue. Each fight, everyone has the same chance to get loot. It could be that many people are getting loot on a single fight, though that's very uncommon.

Because the loot pool isn't finite as it used to be, this kind of duplication isn't as much of an issue in terms of total loot awarded, though I acknowledge that it probably doesn't necessarily feel great. The psychology gets weird: "I got this item, but it could have been *that* item, so this is frustrating."

The loot is meant to be random though, which means the possibility of getting duplicates - but even that isn't necessarily all bad. Sometimes it's worthwhile to gem or enchant duplicate items in a different way for a different application. Enchanters can also benefit.

-Reason 2: The chances of getting loot are spread unevenly. Some people are lucky, others are not. This is a part of how the game has always worked, but I do not think the gap should be so large.
This has, alas, always been the case. On the up-side, this also eliminates Master Looter scams, and organized groups of players rolling on items for each other, wildly swinging the odds of getting loot in their own favor.

Reason 3: People are switching specs for fights so that the auto-loot-generator will give them spec-specific loot. I cannot remember exactly, but in DS LFR, didn't the rolls there base off what you queued as? I could be wrong.
This is a valid concern. We're looking into the possibilities of implementing an elegant method of letting players decide what spec they would like the Raid Finder loot system to use when providing rewards.

-Reason 4: No Off-spec gear. Bonus rolls were a great thing, but I feel as though the above has already covered this. Simply editing this section to reflect that.
The above solution could help with this. In the meantime, off-spec gearing has always been tricky, and has been the source of significant ire in the community. Nobody likes losing a main-spec roll to someone else's off-spec.

-Reason 5: The excitement factor. Seeing loot drop was always fun, but so is simply getting an item directly after the boss dies. Getting gold bags from ALL the raid bosses in a week severely diminishes a lot of the excitement.
We're actually looking at ways to make getting loot in the Raid Finder more exciting. Both in terms of visual feedback as well as making the Satchels of Exotic Mysteries more interesting.

Any chance we can get other people's loot visible to raid? Its fine if I have no shot at getting it, just feels nice to see the boss drop loot instead of just a bag.
We're not sure. Would that really feel good?

I don't believe we're too keen on allowing players in the Raid Finder to trade loot, so it could feel not so great if someone else gets an item that they don't want, that you've been after, and they can't trade it to you.

That's surely already happening, but currently there's not quite the same cat-and-a-window-pane effect. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Low Level Instance Difficulty
The problem with lower level dungeons is that they are used by many players as an alternative to questing for levelling up.
So they need to be somewhat similar in terms of xp/time, otherwise players would probably skip dungeons altogether and simply quest, only a very small minority would probably be joining dungeons for the sake of curiosity, and some loot.

There’s also the trick about making dungeons easy enough for the less experienced players (new players levelling up for the first time). This becomes particularly important and we need to pay more attention to it whenever we release a new expansion since we usually tend to reduce the amount of xp needed to level up on lower levels or we usually adapt it in a way so that levelling becomes faster on previous expansions’ content.
This has the inconvenient of making players less prepared since they have less time to get to know their characters and their new abilities that constantly unlock while levelling up.

Still, I agree, some do seem a bit too easy, but I don’t know if I would feel exactly the same way if I had just started playing WoW and ran dungeons while levelling up my very first character.

Maybe its a possibility to make heroic versions of those instances for lower lvl's who want a challenge, and get better gear from them. I understand that blizzard's mainly focus is at the lvl 90's but they could atleast do something to make it more challeging.
That’s one possible solution; it’s all a matter of priorities and the amount of resources that we have at our disposal.

Still, while we always strive to make the game appealing and have something for every kind of player to do and enjoy in-game, it seems to me that the amount of players that would actually be running such dungeons would be very small, I suspect most players, even those that would enjoy a more challenging version of the dungeons, would probably still take the easy route simply because it’s there, it’s available and it will make them level up faster. Also, the queues would probably be long and players would tend to cancel them and re-queue for the normal version.

Actually even right now, depending on the level of your character, you should be able to queue for the heroic versions of certain instances, for example, if you’re level 80 you should be able to queue for Cataclysm heroic and normal dungeons, it’s up to you if you want to queue for the heroic version, but I suspect the system only allows you to queue them at very specific levels. Some improvements have also been made regarding allowing more players into older heroics. BC heroics for example, used to require specific reputation levels to queue for the heroic versions, those restrictions have all been removed. (there are no more keys) This change actually happened during Cataclysm. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Alts in Mists of Pandaria
We recognize that MoP is probably not the most alt-friendly of all the expansions and since WoW has been running for so long with its persistent world where characters usually don’t get deleted very often, it’s normal to expect a higher average number of alts per player as time goes on.

Our development team is very aware of this and they are trying to find more solutions for alts in MoP. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

WoWDB Addon Data Collection
How do we know what is inside Stolen Present within hours of an event going live? People like you running the WoWDB addon!

To help out, just install the WoWDB Profiler addon from Curse and check the box in the Curse Client options as seen below. When you are playing the addon will gather data and save it. When you are done playing, Curse Client will see the game close and upload the collected data from the addon.



Curse Weekly Roundup
This week has Jeb taking over Minecraft: Pocket Edition, Metro: 2033 giveaway, The Secret World goes Free to Play, and your weekly Game Forecast.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Winter Veil 2012, Dec 13 Hotfixes, Pet Battles Updates, Blue Posts, Weekly Roundup started by chaud View original post
Comments 24 Comments
  1. moveth's Avatar
    Never could get that Dagger on my Rogue. Not likely Ill be able to this year, either.
  1. Nexsa's Avatar
    Yay. Winter events are here. : )
  1. mmoc852875446f's Avatar
    Too bad the dagger has such a low droprate, it looks awesome!
  1. snuzzle's Avatar
    Once again, Blizz missing the point that there is a happy medium between "impossible to wipe, pull all the things at breakneck speed because we can" and "brick wall, high skill cap." Can't we get a happy medium? A dungeon that requires you to pay attention, but doesn't throw brick walls in your face?

    And while I'm at it, can't we can an actual HEROIC version for level 90? No, not CMs, those require you to race if you want any reward. Just like raids have RF > normal > Heroic, why can't we get the same for dungeons? DF > ??? > CM.
  1. mmoc4df2ab8a0e's Avatar
    Did they just buff Mages again?
  1. kassy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by snuzzle View Post

    And while I'm at it, can't we can an actual HEROIC version for level 90? No, not CMs, those require you to race if you want any reward. Just like raids have RF > normal > Heroic, why can't we get the same for dungeons? DF > ??? > CM.


    what you're asking for in that sense is level 90 dungeons to be normal -> heroic -> CM. they dropped that cus it's bullshit to have 2 easy modes. really, CMs are heroics this expansion.
  1. Bluesftw's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tyrasibion View Post
    Did they just buff Mages again?
    nope, its quite significant nerf to frost pvp
  1. Yunru's Avatar
    We will soon be applying a hotfix that causes level-25 pets to no longer “steal” experience from your lower-level pets. Previously, if you had a level-3 and level-25 pet grouped together for a battle, the XP earned would be shared between the two at the end. This resulted in some players doing what they could to kill off their level-25 pet so the level-3 pet would get all of the experience. You no longer need to worry about this as the level-3 pet will now receive 100% of the XP that’s earned, so long as it has participated in at least one round of combat.


    Now thats a good news. I always had too skip the turn so my low lvl pet could get 3000xp instead of only 1500.
  1. duster2's Avatar
    Thankfully Blizzard is starting to admit the shortcomings of the LFR loot system. They need to get offspec or select spec in asap. That will mean that ppl are at least playing their proper roles in the first place and not causing extra troubles with ppl not doing the role they signed in with.

    BLizzard needs to focus on the important part about LFR atm. The important part is that ppl are not waiting in endless Qs. The current systems in the game are pushing everyone to get dps gear. The honest ppl at least Q up as dps... but there are also alot of ppl that just sign up as healers with no healing gear and then blame everyone else for wipes. And the most sad part ofc... those ppl are getting loot while cheating the game... and their fellow players.
  1. iindigo's Avatar
    Maybe its a possibility to make heroic versions of those instances for lower lvl's who want a challenge, and get better gear from them. I understand that blizzard's mainly focus is at the lvl 90's but they could atleast do something to make it more challeging.
    I would kill for heroic leveling instances. Dungeons not being total pushovers when going from 1-60 and 1-70 in vanilla and BC was great, it offered a change of pace from leveling and actually required players to play their roles.

    If they're worried about incentive, put a chance for a sweet low-level epic to drop on the last boss and increase world drop chances on all mobs in the instance. To prevent farming by 90s, only level-appropriate characters would be able to run low-level heroics.
  1. Cirque's Avatar
    I find it unbelievable people are still complaining about the loot rules in LFR. Holy crap, it's nothing but an improvement. You get items at a faster rate than you would in ninjaLFR, and nobody can steal them from you either.

    And if bad RNG is with you.. Deal with it. It has with me and I'm not making the 23813098th cry thread either. :<
  1. Achaman's Avatar
    the tree dagger is quite cool
  1. nightmarchers's Avatar
    You guys always plug the WoWDB Profiler addon in your posts, but it is really buggy and causes problems for most people I know. I'd have no problem running it if it didn't crash chunks of my UI all the time.
  1. Zoldor's Avatar
    I don't mind LFR loot at all seems fine to me. These damn holiday weapons with Agi on them are killing me though. Hook a caster up
  1. QuizTIC's Avatar
    new LFR system great. so much better than Before. They should implement it in 5mans too.
  1. Trinora's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Slavechampion View Post
    Too bad the dagger has such a low droprate, it looks awesome!
    I was thinking how silly it looks. And how that is inconsistent with blizzards stance on silly transmog gear.
  1. Alta's Avatar
    Im going to get ghostcrawler a bottle of lube for Christmas, Maybe he will go easier on my class then.....
  1. Kaleredar's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by iindigo View Post
    I would kill for heroic leveling instances. Dungeons not being total pushovers when going from 1-60 and 1-70 in vanilla and BC was great, it offered a change of pace from leveling and actually required players to play their roles.

    If they're worried about incentive, put a chance for a sweet low-level epic to drop on the last boss and increase world drop chances on all mobs in the instance. To prevent farming by 90s, only level-appropriate characters would be able to run low-level heroics.
    low level epics are still ultimately pointless when compared to heirloom items, as the heirloom gear will supersede the epic item in a handful of levels anyway.

    As much as I like challenging content, I DON'T believe it would be a good use of resources for blizzard to create "low level heroic" versions of all the old dungeons... very few items they could offer could make them worthwhile. Perhaps, upon completion, they give you a consumable item that tremendously increases your experience gain for a few days? Having the dungeons there "for challenge's sake" isn't really something people are striving to do every step of the way while leveling.
  1. nnelson54's Avatar
    I really don't get this obsession some people have with what loot other people get in LFR. Who cares what other people got? You didn't get it and you're just going to cry about it if you see what other people got.

    This is one of those times that Blizzard is absolutely 100% right. All this would do is turn, "I've been doing TotES every week for a month and using three coins on the Sha and I haven't gotten my axe! This isn't fair!" to "I've been doing TotES every week for a month and using three coins on the Sha and I haven't gotten my axe! I just saw four people get the axe in my last run! THIS IS BULLSHIT BLIZZARD!"
  1. Keristrasza's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by nnelson54 View Post
    I really don't get this obsession some people have with what loot other people get in LFR. Who cares what other people got? You didn't get it and you're just going to cry about it if you see what other people got.

    This is one of those times that Blizzard is absolutely 100% right. All this would do is turn, "I've been doing TotES every week for a month and using three coins on the Sha and I haven't gotten my axe! This isn't fair!" to "I've been doing TotES every week for a month and using three coins on the Sha and I haven't gotten my axe! I just saw four people get the axe in my last run! THIS IS BULLSHIT BLIZZARD!"

    I agree with this, the LFR loot is working fine as it prevents loot drama. "My gears better I deserve that loot more than you do scrub!" Which is how half these people act. As if because they are doing better DPS or in better gear some how makes them more deserving and a priority over everyone else. It's really quiet nauseating to be honest.

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