Dev Interviews, ToT Progression, Flight Paths, March 14 Hotfixes, Blue Posts, Comic

Blizzard at PAX East, D3 Boss Mechanics, Legendary Item Drop Rates, Monster Affixes, Poll: What's Your Preferred Format for Dev Interviews

Isle of Thunder US - Stage 2 Unlocked

Patch 5.2 Dev Interviews
Let's take a look at the recent Twizzcast interview with Ghostcrawler, where they managed to cover a lot in 30 minutes.

Alt Characters and Catching Up
  • The Dragon Soul patch went on for a longer time, and Raid Finder made it easier to gear alts than was previously possible.
  • In Mists of Pandaria, it isn't as easy to gear alts because there is a lot more for players to do. Many of the alts were created when there wasn't much to do in game.
  • Gearing alts will be something to do when you are done with your main or somehow run out of things to do. Some of the changes in Patch 5.2 were made to make this a little easier. (More Elder Charms, higher LFR drop rates, new rep gear for gold, etc)
  • LFR is a step of the gearing up process for the first tier of content, as it fits between heroic dungeons and normal raids. However, after the first tier, gear from LFR may not be a significant upgrade from Normal or Heroic difficulty gear at all.
  • People would stop playing weeks or months before a new raid because they didn't want to spend time progressing on content that would be outdated as soon as there was a patch. Making catching up too easy reduced the motivation to deal with challenging content.
  • Players that are coming back to the game shouldn't be able to jump right in to end game content with players that have been playing for several months, as some catch up will be required.

Raid, Item, and Class Balance
  • Trinkets are balanced with simulation testing and in game testing, followed by testing on the PTR, and then finally data from live realms.
  • Some players overreact when they see numbers like a 25% reduction to one spell that only makes up 10% of their damage overall. This ends up in a few percentage adjustment to a class's DPS.
  • When balancing classes, there is a lot of in house simulation that looks at DPS on target dummies, AoE situations, burst situations, and other situations.
  • The PTR data is also taken in to account, but it is limited in its usefulness. Usually players on the PTR are just there to play around or are top players practicing the new raids, not average players. There is a lot more useful data once a patch has gone live.
  • Classes shouldn't get an ability that will guarantee them a raid spot because of how good it is.
  • The Rogue population has been dropping for a long time, so Smoke Bomb was added to give them some group utility.
  • The more cooldowns that are added, the harder it is to create encounters that will be challenging, as you can just use a lot of cooldowns on it.
  • There were too many tank and spank style encounters in the past, leading to players being bored. Now Blizzard is trying to ensure there is at least one thing for everyone in the raid to think about during the encounter, rather than just focusing on the boss as a target dummy.
  • The Sealed Tome of the Lost Legion isn't super rare, so most Warlocks that want to start the quest will be able to. One idea that was brought up is increasing the drop rate over time so that everyone can get it. Adding green fire was one of the few ways to increase player prestige without increasing player power.

Low Population Realms
  • Low population realms aren't fun. WoW is designed to be played with friends!
  • Blizzard is investigating making it easier to move all of your characters to a new realm.
  • There aren't any easy solutions, especially when players hear that Mal'ganis has a good raiding community or Tichondrius has a good PvP community. This results in players transferring or creating characters on high population realms, making popular realms grow faster, while lower population realms die faster.
  • Merging or shutting down realms isn't possible because many players like their realm, have a character name they like, and don't want to be forced out or to change their name.

PvP
  • On PvP: "We have some pretty bold plans going forward".
  • Giving players new and different ways to kill each other may not be the best way to advance PvP. There is some room to polish the systems that already exist, especially some of the battlegrounds that players aren't enjoying.
  • One of the things being considering is packaging the big battlegrounds like Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest in with Wintergrasp and Tol Barad and having a new large scale battleground event. (This wasn't really clear, listen to 25:10 to hear the answer)
  • The PvP and PvE daily quest choice was new tech added to give players a choice of the playstyle they wanted to take part in that day, rather than feeling that both styles were mandatory.

Future
  • Patch 5.3 will be a smaller patch, similar to Patch 5.1. It will happen "sooner than players are expecting" and will be followed by Patch 5.4, another larger patch with a raid.
  • The team and systems are finally set up to where Blizzard can really deliver content faster.
  • Proving Grounds is still being worked on as place to safely learn to tank and heal without ruining the experience of other players. It may not be ready for Patch 5.3 or Patch 5.4, but it is still being actively worked on and is not a "it would be nice to do someday" feature.
  • Players expect change in a game, especially to flawed systems, otherwise they become burned out or bored. New expansions should have roughly 30% new stuff, 30% old stuff, and 30% old stuff that has been evolved a little bit.


Throne of Thunder Heroic Progression
Another day of Heroic difficulty raids and Blood Legion is still on top with 8 bosses down, followed by Method with 8 down, and Exodus with 7 down. DREAM Paragon managed to kill 4 bosses since yesterday, putting them at 8 bosses down.

You can keep up with the kills on Manaflask, our forum thread, and WowProgress.



Automatic Flight Path Discovery Removed
One of the smaller changes in Patch 5.2 was the removal of automatic flight path discovery.



Patch 5.2 Hotfixes: March 14
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
Classes
  • Monk
    • Chi Wave should now correctly bounce between targets that are in range.

Creatures

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
  • The time for players to decide if they want to use a bonus roll has been increased to 3 minutes.

PvP

Professions
  • Thunderforges on the Isle of Thunder can now also function as a normal anvil and forge.
  • Archeology
    • Mantid archeology items should now correctly award a Mantid Amber Sliver when turned in.

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
One Death Knight Per Server Limit
Any idea when we might see this lifted? I've seen on MMO-champ a few times where it's been stated this limitation is outdated and no longer needed. It was also said that they likely will remove it, I'm just wondering if there is any sort of time frame for this planned at all?

I'd really enjoy rolling another Death Knight on my home server, on the Horde side, just for the benefit of heirloom gear and to experience the horde storylines and what not, hence the inquiry.
Honestly, there's no update I can provide on when this will be lifted, but we're aware of the feedback. It may be a possibility for the future though. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Larger Backpack Request
I think above all the player base should have a quest to receive a larger backpack. I understand new players start with a 16 slot, and that's a godly amount of space at level 10. After 8 years, I've seen classes come and go, and content in game come and go. I just think that with 8 years of playing, this might have been addressed. Just curios as to why simple quests like this we're never introduced.
We'd love to be able to upgrade it too, but it's not as simple as upgrading it. It was coded into the system early in the development of World of Warcraft and isn't as easy as writing up some new lines of code. In addition, we're not sure that simply adding a larger backpack is the solution people really are looking for. You'll get a few more slots, but you'll most likely fill those relatively quickly.

We've made some progress in regard to storage such as being able to learn pets and mounts etc. vs. having to carry them with you all of the time. We have Void Storage now as well as changed over some currencies (over time) from physical objects to something that gets tallied in your character pane; little quality of life increases such as those over time. The developers continue to do their best to keep storage in mind when designing new content.

But, if you're anything like me, you probably have a difficult time letting go of items that are either sentimental in nature or items that you "might need later... maybe". I'm with you, but in that case, I try to "spring clean" now and then just to go through what I have and figure out what I truly don't need and can get rid of.

As always though, we're open to constructive feedback and discussion. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Raid Finder Difficulty Feedback
I genuinely feel sorry for people who can't commit to a raiding guild and are left with LFR as their raiding experience.
As long as people that are not you are having fun with what they do, and you are having fun with what you do...

Also, keep in mind that right now the average player on Raid Finder is most likely more skilled/experienced than those that will visit the place in, say, 2 months. So perhaps things that now you can ignore because of overgeared/experienced players will pose a challenge to the folks doing LFR with LFR gear from the previous tier. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 5.2 and PvP Gear
Thanks Nakatoir, and now that I'm back from an unfortunate ban, I'd like to ask you what your opinion is on the stat difference between the s13 Tyrannical gear and the 5.3 PvE gear. While you miss out on PvP stats, the ilvl from the PvE gear is so much higher that it might outweight PvP gear for certain classes. What do you think about this?
Sadly I cannot give much of a comment on the difference in stats as the 5.3 gear is yet to be released. I can say however that we want to try and make sure that going into all future patches, including this one, that gear rewarded through PvP remains the best for PvP purposes. We understand that the community is concerned with PvE gear returning in PvP and we will do our best to prevent this.

As for the 5.2 gear difference, I am going to assume that you are concerned with Heroic gear. As you can see on these Hunter sets, while the main stats are lower, the survivability and damage increases caused by the PvP stats compensate for this, and then some. The equivalent budget given to these PvP stats would be approximately 40 Ilvl's, which is quite a lot.

I totally misstyped me there, thank an all-nighter for that. I meant 5.2 Heroic PvE gear. Especially openers from Rogue teams (mass stealth) might totally gib the enemy teams within the first few seconds. We will see how it goes, I guess.
No biggie, I assumed you did and that is why I mentioned 5.2 in the post.

But just to quell some of your concerns in the area of damage, this is something that we are keeping an eye on and will make changes as they are necessary. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Marvel Heroes Beta Key Giveaway
Curse has Marvel Heroes beta keys to give away! The first big beta weekend is taking on Saturday, March 16th from 10 AM to 6 PM PDT, and Sunday, March 17th from 6 AM to 2 PM PDT. You can read more about the Marvel Heroes MMORPG here.

Beta keys are being given away to Curse Premium members on Thursday and Friday, and then to everyone on Saturday starting at midnight.



Comics - Dark Legacy Comics #380
DLC #380 has been released.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Dev Interviews, ToT Progression, Flight Paths, March 14 Hotfixes, Blue Posts, Comic started by chaud View original post
Published on 2013-03-15 08:28 AM
83 Comments
Comments 83 Comments
  1. Wishblade's Avatar
    5.3 will happen sooner than players are expecting? Well... Guess we'll see PTR up real soon, like 5.1 and then have ourselves a patch in May maybe.
  1. mmoc3dde1cb131's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Xihuitl View Post
    No auto flight paths discovery?
    Sod that.

    People level so fast now you'll spend half you time looking for flight paths.
    Auto discovery was a brilliant addition, but no, bliz just wants to make things a pain in the arse.


    As for returning players having to catch up? what the fuck?
    "I'll jump back into wow to see the great new changes.....wait a sec, I have to pay 3 month sub to see them, and thats before I know if they are any good? Fuck that for a lark, I'll not bother at all".....
    3 months?

    Hyperbole much?

    My alt lock went from heroic blue geared to 478 (should hit 481 today if I get the valor neck (which is NOT behind dailies) since 5.2 so that is 9 days, and this was without hardly playing her at all (been focusing on my main since 5.2).

    I swear people would complain they had to go the mailbox if Blizzard mailed them epics when any toon hit 90 and then every toon got new full raid quality epics every major raid patch.
  1. mmoc7b2c979220's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Quilzar View Post
    3 months?

    Hyperbole much?

    My alt lock went from heroic blue geared to 478 (should hit 481 today if I get the valor neck (which is NOT behind dailies) since 5.2 so that is 9 days, and this was without hardly playing her at all (been focusing on my main since 5.2).

    I swear people would complain they had to go the mailbox if Blizzard mailed them epics when any toon hit 90 and then every toon got new full raid quality epics every major raid patch.
    Love it . You complain about hyperbole (which it obviously was and was intended to be for emphasis), and then you go on to do it yourself.

    The irony obviously escapes you.
  1. Pacster's Avatar
    *Merging or shutting down realms isn't possible because many players like their realm, have a character name they like, and don't want to be forced out or to change their name.*

    Repeating the same false argument over and over again doesn't make it right. I play on a dead server(actually one of the smalles around)...and I know NOT one player that is happy with the situation on our realm. They all would leave(if it wasn't that expensive for all their chars and if they could eep all their gold) and even risk losing their nick(tho this is not neccessary at all cause we could simply add the former realmname like we see it in crossrealm already).

    If you can't come up with a real arguement at least don't pretend that you KNOW what players want WITHOUT OF EVER ASKING THEM!
  1. mmoc33dc7af287's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pacster View Post
    *Merging or shutting down realms isn't possible because many players like their realm, have a character name they like, and don't want to be forced out or to change their name.*

    Repeating the same false argument over and over again doesn't make it right. I play on a dead server(actually one of the smalles around)...and I know NOT one player that is happy with the situation on our realm. They all would leave(if it wasn't that expensive for all their chars and if they could eep all their gold) and even risk losing their nick(tho this is not neccessary at all cause we could simply add the former realmname like we see it in crossrealm already).

    If you can't come up with a real arguement at least don't pretend that you KNOW what players want WITHOUT OF EVER ASKING THEM!
    It's such complete bullshit. They did it in Vanilla, so why should they not be able to do it now? Get fucked, Blizzard.
  1. sebun's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by lemonkeyface View Post
    It's such complete bullshit. They did it in Vanilla, so why should they not be able to do it now? Get fucked, Blizzard.
    Perhaps they had people complaining about it in vanilla and they learned from their mistakes?
  1. Yunru's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rexoz View Post
    Most retarded thing ever
    Totaly.....i am not gona lvl alts from 1-80 any more because of this. (got too many anyway)

    At least this is good news:
    The time for players to decide if they want to use a bonus roll has been increased to 3 minutes.

    Now i have time too look on atlasloot what some boss drops and not only haveing 20s too decide.
  1. Necrotica's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Notos View Post
    I feel like catching up alts is in a good place actually. Between the easy to grind honor gear, LFR, normal mode t14 nerfs, and the super easy faction grind thanks to rep tokens from warbringers, you can easily have a raid ready alt in a couple weeks. My hunter hit 90 on saturday and I managed to get his ilvl up to 488 by yesterday through a mix of all of the above. The only part of it that sucked were LFR queues, and that would have been solved easily had I queued with a healer.
    Must be nice, none of my alts got any drops the first week of LFR in the 5.0 content raids (or world bosses either), but my main goes into the new LFR raid and get a piece right off the bat... *sigh*
  1. mmoc852875446f's Avatar
    hahahaha the DLC is realy great!
  1. ihyln's Avatar
    The team and systems are finally set up to where Blizzard can really deliver rehashed dailies faster
    fixed that for you blizzard

    ---------- Post added 2013-03-15 at 10:27 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Milkshake86 View Post
    Lvl 90 as of a week ago, Exalted reps 0, 483 ilvl ToT clear. Catch up is broken
    It's like they are trying to say this game should feel like a job.
  1. Wayne25uk's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Xihuitl View Post
    No auto flight paths discovery?
    Sod that.

    People level so fast now you'll spend half you time looking for flight paths.
    Auto discovery was a brilliant addition, but no, bliz just wants to make things a pain in the arse.


    As for returning players having to catch up? what the fuck?
    "I'll jump back into wow to see the great new changes.....wait a sec, I have to pay 3 month sub to see them, and thats before I know if they are any good? Fuck that for a lark, I'll not bother at all".....

    Oh noes please save this person from a little hard work fellow gods of azeroth,seriously this game is too easy and its getting easier by the day,back in vanilla hard work was all you could do to progress and have fun,stop being a lazy tard and accept it!
  1. moose drool's Avatar
    Some players overreact when they see numbers like a 25% reduction to one spell that only makes up 10% of their damage overall. This ends up in a few percentage adjustment to a class's DPS.
    It was 2 skills nerfed for demo
  1. MasterHamster's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ihyln View Post
    fixed that for you blizzard
    Where's the rehashed dailies? Haven't seen any.

    It's like they are trying to say this game should feel like a job.
    More like an MMO, and MMOs are about progressing your character, not logging on whenever new content is released and be ready immediately.

    Regarding the flight paths? Meh, it was convenient, too convenient. Could just imagine a new player getting a quest to report to someone in a zone they've never seen and they can just freely fly to it. How boring. The flight paths are clearly marked on the map anyway, use the W button
  1. ZeroWashu's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Naidia View Post
    Hahaha, well, hmm, that is an interesting small change they made, certain bringing adventure back slowly but surely for new players, just remove the Hero Board and make people seek their own quest again.
    People do need some guidance as to what is appropriate for their level and with quests chaining so much even within zones its best they get the first.
  1. mmoc443165a3eb's Avatar
    Some players overreact when they see numbers like a 25% reduction to one spell that only makes up 10% of their damage overall. This ends up in a few percentage adjustment to a class's DPS.
    What? Is he nuts?
    For aff Warlocks, Corruption is a large core spell in our arsenal. 2 of our other major damage spells depend on/boost it and it's a part of our AE.

    Checking WoL logs for aff locks his "10% of damage overall" equals to..
    25-30% overall of single target fight damage
    25-30% overall of multidot fight damage
    30%+ overall of AE fight dps

    I don't mind them trying to balance things, but at least be honest about the numbers.


    The Sealed Tome of the Lost Legion isn't super rare, so most Warlocks that want to start the quest will be able to. One idea that was brought up is increasing the drop rate over time so that everyone can get it. Adding green fire was one of the few ways to increase player prestige without increasing player power.
    The prestige comes from defeating the final boss, and I'm perfectly fine with that. Making it a rare drop from rare mobs just to start it is.. odd.
    Making it tradeable feels just insulting, but that might be me.
  1. Fenixdown's Avatar
    I love how MMO-Champion appealed to the majority with their Wowprogress screenshot showing ONLY 10-man guild progression.
  1. mmoc0d08cae5db's Avatar
    Dark Legacy wins again =D
  1. ihyln's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MasterHamster View Post
    Where's the rehashed dailies? Haven't seen any.
    Really? You haven't seen "bring me back 20 [items]" or "kill 20 things" over and over. Solo content in a MMO is genius!

    Quote Originally Posted by MasterHamster View Post
    More like an MMO, and MMOs are about progressing your character, not logging on whenever new content is released and be ready immediately.
    Most people like to progress and play different characters. Doing WoW chores isn't what we'd call content or progressive gameplay. It's a boring grind.
  1. Ferrouswheel's Avatar
    Ok seriously they need to stop that bullshit with the "players like their name". PLAYERS LIKE TO BE ABLE TO PLAY. We all know you're full of shit and want to milk that $25 as much as you can. Other mmo's who don't make insane amounts of money every month allow you to bounce around different realms for free. Money grubbing greediness is all it is and nobody is falling for your like their name bull shit.

    ---------- Post added 2013-03-15 at 12:11 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Xihuitl View Post
    Love it . You complain about hyperbole (which it obviously was and was intended to be for emphasis), and then you go on to do it yourself.

    The irony obviously escapes you.
    That's not irony, it's hypocrisy. The more you know -----=====*
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by SumoSizeIt View Post
    Ridiculous. Some players enjoy having multiple characters at max level. It's not always about boredom, it's a fun playstyle in and of itself, and having multiple characters completing max level content can feel more rewarding than epics and achievements to some. More and more they're shoehorning players into a single vision of the "right" way to play, alienating players that may have been drawn to this game over the years by playing the game a little differently.
    Because your playstyle contradicts what is the norm. Players who have 1 main.

    If you can keep 4 characters fully equipped, what it means is that someone who plays as much time as you, but with only 1 character, runs out of things to do. That was what happened in Cata and the end of WOTLK. there were just too many players who had a real main who had nothing to do with their characters to advance them. The vast majority of players fall into that category of only having one main.
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