General Nazgrim Preview, Dev Interviews, Aug 27 Raid Testing, Blue Posts, News Recap

Quests

• Death to the Broodmother: Desperiona should no longer get stuck while approaching the player, allowing the quest to be completed.
  
• Last Rites: The quest event should now work properly, allowing players to complete the quest.

On Tuesday, August 27, we will continue testing raid encounters in the Siege of Orgrimmar raid.

Each encounter should be available at approximately the listed times below for all Public Test Realms.

Tuesday, August 27

• Fallen Protectors - 25 Player Heroic - 10:30 PDT (13:30 EDT, 19:30 CEST)
• Kor'kron Dark Shaman - 25 Player Heroic - 13:30 PDT (16:30 EDT, 22:30 CEST)
• General Nazgrim - 25 Player Heroic - 16:00 PDT (19:00 EDT, 01:00 CEST)

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a beta environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the boss being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

Future
Fact that it's in the final phase in Europe as far as trademarking goes says a lot on what it could be.
As I said in Legendary interview today, just bookmark all of that so we can later see how accurate they turned out. (Source)

Speaking of outdated content a scenarios, can we get Battle for Undercity as a scenario?
We get that request a lot. We'd love to do it sometime. Obviously can't whip it together for 5.4. (Source)

Ever thought about making Scenarios something to do while questing/leveling instead of dungeons?
Yes. (Source)

Any chance we'd see a hide enchant button any time soon? Dancing steel looks terrible in my mog!
We would like to do it, but it requires code, and realistically probably won't make 5.4. (Source)

Each character should have a bag that includes all the BoA items available; they would appear automatically and not be managed
I said last Blizzcon that this is a dream of mine. Maybe someday. (Source)

i just can't say anything in front of the hugeness of 5.4 content. but is your team ok to keep the rythm of 4 raid tier/patch?
There may come a time when expansions come out so quickly we can't fit as may tiers in. That's more speculation than a plan. (Source)

Lore
wrong attitude to have. Like saying last of us shouldn't have story, cause its a game.
There are studios that believe in story first or world first or maybe social first. Blizzard is gameplay first. (Source)
you picked the wrong type of game then. Kill X, collect y isn't exactly pushing gameplay to limits.
And yet I'd argue the game has had a pretty long lifespan and I don't think it's from the story. I think it's fun. (Source)
BTW you can say its fun. the 2.3 M sub loss the last year CLEARLY disagree.
We lost folks because of story? Sketpical. Maybe some did. I doubt it was big contributor. The rest of us are still having fun. (Source)

Do you guys believe blowing up Theramore was a mistake? If not, why the resistance to more oldworld changes in the same style?
That's a long topic I'm not sure I can cover in Twitter. We have some concerns about how it worked out. We lost a cool place. (Source)

conquered a city but after the raid it will be a horde city again, Theramore is still a hole in the ground
If this was a single player or non-persistent game, we'd consider removing one faction's capital permanently. (Source)

Was stunned that you broke the timeline in Cata and shrugged it off. Lore (& community) should be top, not bottom priority.
Lore is important. A fun expansion is more important. (Source)

(I lied) Garrosh was a bit better, but you took him too dark too fast, and didn't temper that with any internal struggle.
Arthas was conflicted. I'm not sure Garrosh really is. He has strong convictions... that are just quite at odds with others. (Source)
5.4 intro nails that by the way. I think you'll like it. (Source)
Garrosh killed Cairne, murdered others.However necessary he felt it was, part of him must be struggling. Where is that part?
Not sure he struggles with that. He probably struggles with the legacy of his father (pro and con). (Source)

(last one!) Deathwing had good amount of exposure. Problem was his character was an inch deep. I just didn't care about him.
DW had depth if you knew the backstory, but not everyone did. If just meeting him, we agree he was too much Rar! Dragon! (Source)

Example of game mechanics needing to trump in-universe logic. AvH always going to be central theme, says Metzen.
The story is always going to serve the needs of the game, not the other way around. We understand that doesn't sit well with all. (Source)

It would be nice to know what we worked towards somthing in MoP, deposed one Horde Warmonger for another not cool.
H and A competed over the newly rediscovered continent. It ended up coming at a huge cost though. (Source)

I agree, progressive phasing would help keep the world large and alive. The world shrinks as zones become irrelevant.
That provides gameplay though. That's a different argument IMO from Alliance get Ashenvale just for a sense of victory. (Source)

I feel like MoP is disconnected in terms of story. previous raid content each teir built to a common goal. Mop....not so much
I guess I disagree somewhat. No sure many raiders could answer what their character's motivation was for Karazhan or Ulduar. (Source)
"Stop Lei Shen. Stop Skek'zeer," may be shallow motivation, but it is motivation. (Source)
With MoP, we it didn't make sense to say "Stop Garrosh" until he had become bad enough to stop. (Source)

In fact, at Blizzcon we didn't even mention the final bad guy. We wanted players to discover where the story went. (Source)
But that confused so many players that we finally just said "Look, Garrosh is the final bad guy." (Source)

Proving Grounds
After testing proving grounds I feel it may be hard a bit harder and unfair for some specs that underperform with low ilvl
It's a reasonable concern. We're not sure of the best way to handle the item scaling. (Source)

Reputation / Questing
Totally agree. I fear for the dailies future with that outrage since 5.0.
We're not so sure. We worry that even a huge pool of dailies can end up feeling repetitive quickly. (Source)

PTR
Please, your QA team unfortunately needs a reshuffle because A LOT of stuff STILL comes through.
It's a ridiculously complicated and changing code base that has to work on 1000s of different hardware configurations. (Source)
Given that, I stand behind our QA team. They are exceptional. (Source)

Patch 5.4 Windwalker Changes
Quick clarification: the datamined changes you're seeing to Windwalker/Brewmaster abilities are simply tooltip fixes. The actual abilities have functioned this way for a while.

Something something datamining something something grain of salt something something. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)