New Connected Realms Coming, Oct 16 Hotfixes, Flex Mechanics Scaling, Blizzard Art

The Future of MF & GF in Paragon 2.0, Diablo 2 Battle Chest for $4.99, Patch 1.0.2 is Now Live on Xbox 360 As Well

New Connected Realms Coming
Realms are being connected faster now! Keep in mind that Bloodscalp, Maiev, and Boulderfist will make the first group of three realms.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
As a part of our ongoing Connected Realms implementation, we will be connecting additional pairs of realms as listed below. We don’t have a specific date yet on when these connections will occur, but we’ll provide another update once we do. Please be aware that as a part of the connection process realm times may change to match each other.

Next Realm Connection Pairs:
  • Balnazzar and Warsong
  • Gurubashi and Aegwynn
  • Dalvengyr and Dark Iron
  • Garithos and Chromaggus
  • Onyxia and Burning Blade
  • Maiev and Bloodscalp

We're currently evaluating further realm connections and will provide updates as they're available.

For more information on Connected Realms, please read the preview blog post here.

Maiev, and...Bloodscalp?
You MIGHT want to clarify that it is US Bloodscalp, and Not the EU one. Might confuse some people.
All of the connections announced on the North American forums are for North American realms.

Patch 5.4 Hotfixes: October 16
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Classes
  • Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
    • Class Armor
      • Resolved an issue that could cause the Tier-16 2-piece set bonus Frozen Thoughts to be consumed without effect.
  • Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
    • Holy
      • Mastery: Echo of Light's healing has been increased by 4%.
  • Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
    • Talents
      • Archimonde's Darkness' effect should now be correctly removed when the Warlock switches talents or glyphs.

Quests
  • Timeless Treasures: Weekly treasure chests on the Timeless Isle can now grant credit towards completing this quest.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
  • Siege of Orgrimmar
    • Galakras
      • Reduced the health of ranking officials and foot soldiers in Phase 1 of the encounter on 10-player Normal difficulty.
    • Kor'kron Dark Shaman
      • Ashen Wall, Toxic Storm, Toxic Mist, Foul Stream, and Foul Geyser now deal less damage on Raid Finder difficulty.
    • Spoils of Pandaria
      • Reduced the health of most of the creatures during the Spoils of Pandaria encounter on Raid Finder difficulty.
      • Having multiple players start the encounter should no longer incorrectly cause the timer to count down rapidly.
    • Thok the Bloodthirsty
      • Captive Cave Bats on Raid Finder difficulty will no longer incorrectly drop Normal difficulty loot.
    • Garrosh Hellscream
      • Garrosh Hellscream should now use his abilities more predictably when starting Stage Three: MY WORLD.
  • Mogu'shan Vaults
    • Resolved an issue that prevented players from completing the Straight Six achievement.

Battlegrounds and Arenas
  • [Requires a realm restart.] Silvershard Mines: The eastern mine cart now doesn't spawn in until shortly after the gates open.

Professions
  • Cooking
    • Noodle cart chefs will now receive a well-fed buff while serving other players bowls of noodle soup.

Items

Flex Mechanics Scaling
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Thanks for some excellent feedback so far. Boss mechanics inevitably involve some breakpoints (alas, there's no way for Malkorok to create precisely 3.7 Implosions), and they do need to scale in some form, or abilities only targeting maybe 2 players out of a 25-player Flex raid would make some of those mechanics feel completely trivial and detract from the intended experience and tuning. In general, we try to err on the side of rounding down, and making sure that the ratios are never worse for any group size than they would be for a normal 10- or 25-player raid. Norushen orbs are a great example of a place where that logic doesn't quite work, though, since you actually want more orbs, and not fewer. That's something we can adjust.

Personally we have found 11 to be just about the hardest number. The difference in scaling between 10 to 11 is about 11mill HP. Now for a boss like the Iron Juggernaut, that’s fine. You pew pew the boss the whole fight. 11 mill over 5-6 mins is do-able. But, for a fight like Galakras where the boss is a burn at the end. That 11 mill is pretty tuff to make. Especially being flex so the extra members are not exceptional.

TL;DR the boss HP Scaling is a bit over tuned for 1-2 extra players. (on some fights)
A bit of clarification here: Boss health and damage scaling are both completely linear and proportional to group size, but scale up more slowly than raid size does. So, all else being equal, if you add players who are roughly on par with the average gear/skill of your current group, you'll have a slightly easier time as a result.

Thok, for example, has 355 million health with a 10-player Flexible raid. If you add an 11th player, his health will go up to 390 million. I.e., you've increased your raid's damage output by somewhere between 14 and 20% depending on how many healers you were running, but the boss's health only went up by 10%. Adding that 11th player will also make Thok melee for about 3% more damage, which will barely be noticeable.

Wait, what? He has like 440 million on 10 normal.
Whoops, sorry about that. I was looking at the LFR numbers. He has 355 million with 10-player Flex, and 390 million with 11 players. Same general point holds, but I goofed on the exact values.

33% Off Winged Guardian Mount—This Week Only
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
For a limited time, the Winged Guardian mount can be claimed and added to your personal collection for 33% off the normal price. You’ll be the talk of Azeroth as you soar through the clouds with this fiery golden-maned lion—but don’t delay . . . this sale ends October 22, 2013 at 11:59 p.m. PDT.


Get yours now! (US / EU)

Blizzard Art Update
Blizzard has added more pieces to the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Art gallery.

This article was originally published in forum thread: New Connected Realms Coming, Oct 16 Hotfixes, Flex Mechanics Scaling, Blizzard Art started by chaud View original post
Published on 2013-10-17 10:01 AM
42 Comments
Comments 42 Comments
  1. medievalman1's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Miuku View Post
    Nope, as usual EU comes behind US when it comes to importance to Blizzard.

    No surprises there, for anyone.
    Well Blizzard is based in the US and not EU...
  1. Blur4stuff's Avatar
    so if connected realms ends up causing catastrophic problems you'd rather it be for EU servers?
  1. Toiran's Avatar
    I haven't ran flex, can someone explain how big the jump in difficulty is?

    I'm wondering because this isn't the first set of LFR buffs, and whilst it can be needed due to the very nature of LFR, it also makes me wonder how its going to effect tactics on entering Flex, if they make it a total face roll some people may think "Well it got out-healed in lfr i'll be fine" etc etc etc.

    EU Realms do need some love, but atleast if we are last, they should have no excuse if something fucks up because they did it on US first.
  1. Venziir's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Miuku View Post
    Nope, as usual EU comes behind US when it comes to importance to Blizzard.

    No surprises there, for anyone.
    Not a suprise obviously, but still...
  1. rsxarmyfan's Avatar
    how has nothing been done with tortheldrin yet? #244 on wowprogress, and we've been crying for the realm to die/get merged/anything since cata launched.
  1. Kazuchika's Avatar
    It's cool let's let the EU be the guinea pigs for all of Blizzard's mad scientist shit and then see how much they complain about it.

    Also imagine that.. a company based out of the US is rolling out things for the US first.
  1. mag07's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kektonic View Post
    It's cool let's let the EU be the guinea pigs for all of Blizzard's mad scientist shit and then see how much they complain about it.

    Also imagine that.. a company based out of the US is rolling out things for the US first.
    Funny, wonder why we can't pay the sub with a delay as well.... Company home town is irrelevant. I can understand why it is easier to roll out those changes on a set of servers in a particular country first, and not spread your workload across the world - that said, the head office location is completely irrelevant and it's a matter of choice, not a given. Lastly, a little respect for all your paying clients goes a long way, and a simple courtesy explanation would do the trick. But manners are hard to come by on top of the chain in Acti Blizz.
  1. Eeyoreprime's Avatar
    I like how Blizzard is connecting several dead realms to another dead realm, because that makes perfect sense.
  1. mmocbfaacb1cad's Avatar
    They are taking their sweet time with connected realms for EU. Why am I not surprised?

    Also, I was hoping to see 'X dead realm merges with X medium/High Realm' doesn't seem to be the case.
  1. mmoce1e4d9dec7's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kektonic View Post
    It's cool let's let the EU be the guinea pigs for all of Blizzard's mad scientist shit and then see how much they complain about it.
    We're actually paying more for the game than you are yet we have worse service. Ironic, isn't it.
  1. Pacster's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Exuja View Post
    They are taking their sweet time with connected realms for EU. Why am I not surprised?

    Also, I was hoping to see 'X dead realm merges with X medium/High Realm' doesn't seem to be the case.
    Now imagine that happens with in my absolutely dead realmpool(which actually consists of 2 realmpools!) where all 20 or so realms together don't make one decent realm. Gonna need them a couple of months with this speed....aside the fact that we are in the EU...so not even got started yet.
  1. themightysven's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Eeyoreprime View Post
    I like how Blizzard is connecting several dead realms to another dead realm, because that makes perfect sense.
    yes.
    That's the point.
    I can usually see the other side of the argument, but I see this argument a lot, and I have no idea what they're complaining about
  1. lokithor's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Eeyoreprime View Post
    I like how Blizzard is connecting several dead realms to another dead realm, because that makes perfect sense.
    Well if realmpop is half ass accurate, then my servr is going to quadruple in size. I'm happy, and whos to say they dont add more realms to our three thats getting connected.
  1. Ecwfrk's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Miuku View Post
    Nope, as usual EU comes behind US when it comes to importance to Blizzard.

    No surprises there, for anyone.
    Blizzard is based in the US and only has support offices in Europe. It's basic logistics. They are of course going to get all the kinks worked out of the procedures needed to do things like server mergers on their native US realms before they stick a bunch of IT guys on an 11 hour flight to work on the EU servers.
    US servers are being done first, but in a trickle. When they get everything worked out then you'll likely see them do EU servers in one big push.
  1. Woa's Avatar
    Act now and you, too, could have this 3 year old mount that wont impress anyone ever.
  1. Nuvuk's Avatar
    Well since my original realm was Ony and I still have the majority of my toons on that realm Im interested to see how a dead realm looks as a connected realm.
  1. El_Diabl0's Avatar
    What good will two completely dead servers being linked together do? Hopefully they're going to add additional servers, but it makes me wonder, wouldn't it better to link a low/dead with a medium and give it some time to see where things go from there?
  1. duveen's Avatar
    When the first two realms were connected, Blizzard indicated that a player's macros might be lost. They were looking into this issue. Has anyone heard if this is still a problem at this point?

    Thanks.
  1. Juulna's Avatar
    As a member of Boulderfist, I'm happy they're adding another realm to our group already. The last connection with Bloodscalp worked alright, and we saw a few more people around... but it's not enough. Like people said, connecting dead realms to dead realms only solves part of the problem. We need a healthy realm to latch onto, please!
  1. lokithor's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Juulna View Post
    As a member of Boulderfist, I'm happy they're adding another realm to our group already. The last connection with Bloodscalp worked alright, and we saw a few more people around... but it's not enough. Like people said, connecting dead realms to dead realms only solves part of the problem. We need a healthy realm to latch onto, please!
    lol sorry man, I run wowcensus addon all the time, so far its only found 1000 people total on Maiev Alliance side (and im 10 of them )
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