Blizzcon in a Box Contest Ends Tonight!

Reaper of Souls First Look: The Mystic

NA Connectivity Issues, Opt-In Waves, Hearthstone Highlights, Beta Key Giveaway Reminder

Patch 5.4.1 PTR - Build 17513
Build 17513 was deployed to the PTR realms yesterday, with tooltip updates being the only spell changes.

This patch is a ~3 GB download and combines all of the previous Mists of Pandaria patches into one file. This should allow the launcher to remove all of the old patch files that have built up over the expansion, saving a little bit of disk space and having to go through multiple files to patch assets that changed over the expansion while playing.

Recruit a Friend In-Game UI


Recruit a Friend Pet Rewards
Some pets that were previously only used for promotions in Asia are now Recruit a Friend rewards.


Spell Changes
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Item Set Bonuses
  • Item - Mage T15 4P Bonus Increases the effects of Arcane Charges by 20% 5%, increases the critical strike chance of Pyroblast by 5%, and increases the chance for your Frostbolt to trigger Fingers of Frost by an additional 6%.

Warlock (Forums)
Affliction
  • Haunt You send a ghostly soul into the target, dealing [ 2,804 + 262.5% of Spell Power ] Shadow damage and increasing all periodic damage done by your spells on the target by 0% 35% for 8 sec. Warlock - Affliction Spec. 1 Soul Shard. 40 yd range. 1.5 sec cast.



Next Connected Realms (EU)
The first set of EU Connected realms is going live today and it looks like the next batch will be coming next week!
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
As a part of our ongoing Connected Realms implementation, we will be connecting additional 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.

Realm Connections:
  • Mug’thol and Dethecus/Theradras
  • Temple Noir and Naxxramas
  • Crushridge and Emeriss/Hakkar
  • Sporeggar and Scarshield Legion

We’ll provide updates on the next batch of realm connections as they're available. For more information on Connected Realms, please read the preview blog post here.

Upcoming Dampening Hotfix
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We agree that matches where one team decides they can’t win (usually because they’ve lost a player), and thus decides to play defensively in an attempt to force a tie, don’t really make for fun gameplay. In fact, one of our original goals for 5.4 with The Crowd Chose You was to eliminate that sort of behavior. We’d much prefer matches to end with a winner whenever possible through fair play.

To that end, we’ll be applying a hotfix that will add one small tie-breaker. After the hotfix, if a match should last for the full 20 minutes, the team with the most players left standing will be awarded the victory. If both teams have an equal number of players alive, the match will still end in a draw (as it does currently).

We feel that this will continue to encourage players to try to defeat the other team, while discouraging them from dragging the game out hoping for a tie, without any other major impact on player behavior. We’ll give an update to the official hotfix blog when this hotfix goes live.

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Connected Realms
I was wondering why are all the realms getting merged PvP ones, both in US and here, without any PvE ones getting merges? Any particular reason for this?
No special reason other than we have to start somewhere. Not to worry though, low pop PvE realms will get some love too soon enough

Why are low pop realms connected with other low pop realms? it should be a high pop realm with a low pop realm.
We have just begun connecting realms, and many more connections are planned still. Once we are done with the entire process, the population on all connected realms should be quite healthy

Any plans on connecting full servers with dead ones and moving people over. Or just splitting the server in two, but keeping them connected? Here in Draenor its a mad house. 1000+ queue lines some times, was made to wait for an hour and a half once.
The current high population realms that have queues will remain as they are today, however we are monitoring the situation on those realms. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Arena Queue Length
Klause is correct -- we were actually just unable to start new Arena matches fast enough. Turns out, you guys really like to PvP.

We pushed a hotfix last night that should have cleared up the issue and sped up queues significantly. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

LFR Queue Time
In my experience, queue times can vary depending on a few different factors including the time of day and which day of the week it is. I usually end up trying to get my alts through on a Tuesday night, and the queues often seem quite short at that point.

If time is your main obstacle, you might want to consider getting a group of like-minded guildies or friends together and tackling it on Flex difficulty at a set time each week (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Reaper of Souls First Look: The Mystic
It looks like Reaper of Souls will be bringing back the Mystic that was removed from beta, adding Transmogrification and Enchanting (similar to Reforging in WoW).



Dark Legacy Comics - #412
DLC #412 takes a look at how many free to play games work.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 5.4.1 - RaF Changes, EU Connected Realms, Dampening Hotfix, Blue Posts, Comic started by chaud View original post
Comments 39 Comments
  1. Dawnseven's Avatar
    Uuuuuugh the pets. I don't know if this announcement makes me terribly sad or if it just righteously ticks me off (I'm leaning toward the latter.) I'm a huge pet collector, but on those things that I just couldn't get (like Korean promotional pets) I was fine with that. If you can't get it you can't. But now if you CAN than .... ggrrrrrrrr. LOL In the past I've done "recruit a friend" with my husband (who happens to be a pet collector too) for a mount or two, but the thought of rolling more alts when I haven't leveled the ones I have yet (I've maxed 12 of 15) is just ... ugh. Damn it.
  1. Shudder's Avatar
    "In my experience, queue times can vary depending on a few different factors including the time of day and which day of the week it is. I usually end up trying to get my alts through on a Tuesday night, and the queues often seem quite short at that point."

    Blizzard telling you to play on tuesday or don't bother playing at all.
  1. Ashadelo's Avatar
    I am not sure about anyone else but that silver pig looks really scary. If you click the video and watch it's mouth....... creepy!
  1. Kazuchika's Avatar
    Hey look they're combining EU servers now. Guess the EU whiners will have to find something else to complain about now.
  1. Taurous's Avatar
    I hope they're only showing 'some' of the rewards and not all or I'm going to be pissed off. I signed up for a mount, not a pointless minipet.
  1. mmoc591720fa53's Avatar
    Haha @ DLC
  1. ganush's Avatar
    The pet thing is omg funny. They game is too old to really attract new players, so they're gonna sucker the pet collectors into buying four more copies of the game so they can catch 'em all. I like pet battles, don't get me wrong, but this is hilarious.
  1. Rushro's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ganush View Post
    The pet thing is omg funny. They game is too old to really attract new players, so they're gonna sucker the pet collectors into buying four more copies of the game so they can catch 'em all. I like pet battles, don't get me wrong, but this is hilarious.
    Yeah, getting something that was nearly impossible for other players to obtain while still keeping a level of exclusivity is the funniest thing I've ever heard. Get your cynicism checked out, it's clearly making you delirious.
  1. Spellweaver's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Taurous View Post
    I hope they're only showing 'some' of the rewards and not all or I'm going to be pissed off. I signed up for a mount, not a pointless minipet.
    You could always just pick the new Hippogryph. (http://media.mmo-champion.com/images...gryphImage.jpg)
    Or heck, you could even pick one of the previous mount rewards. (Zebra, Rocket or Nightwing)
  1. ganush's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rushro View Post
    Yeah, getting something that was nearly impossible for other players to obtain while still keeping a level of exclusivity is the funniest thing I've ever heard. Get your cynicism checked out, it's clearly making you delirious.
    Cynicism? Not so much. Good business move? Probably. Playing on the compulsivity of hardcore collectors? Funny. Do you really think Blizzard isn't doing this to basically sell these pets for $50 a pop instead of $10 that the regular pet store pets go for? The only exclusivity here is if you're willing to shell out or not, because I guarantee, most of us aren't finding 4 people who haven't tried WoW already that still want to. This is just a pet sale disguised as a RAF reward, nothing more. For those of you who are happy to finally have access to these pets, I'm not one to say what is and what isn't a waste of money for you, because I don't know your financial situation, but let's call a spade a spade, this is a pet sale.
  1. mmocced9c7d33d's Avatar
    Golden piggy <3
  1. Alayea's Avatar
    DLC has it right.
  1. mmocced9c7d33d's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kektonic View Post
    Hey look they're combining EU servers now. Guess the EU whiners will have to find something else to complain about now.
    Servers I didn't even know existed..
  1. reddragonkris's Avatar
    I love the new pets. The new mount is awesome also
  1. good diu bro's Avatar
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    We agree that matches where one team decides they can’t win (usually because they’ve lost a player), and thus decides to play defensively in an attempt to force a tie, don’t really make for fun gameplay. In fact, one of our original goals for 5.4 with The Crowd Chose You was to eliminate that sort of behavior. We’d much prefer matches to end with a winner whenever possible through fair play.

    To that end, we’ll be applying a hotfix that will add one small tie-breaker. After the hotfix, if a match should last for the full 20 minutes, the team with the most players left standing will be awarded the victory. If both teams have an equal number of players alive, the match will still end in a draw (as it does currently).

    We feel that this will continue to encourage players to try to defeat the other team, while discouraging them from dragging the game out hoping for a tie, without any other major impact on player behavior. We’ll give an update to the official hotfix blog when this hotfix goes live.
    So... is damping gone?
  1. mmocbab0f24b97's Avatar
    Wow, i hope Blizz will connect Turalyon to some Horde-Heavy server because this server is dead
  1. Army Dreamer's Avatar
    DLC is so damn right...
  1. Doomsailor's Avatar
    Cant beat a good old free mmo lol
  1. Yoda1Fan's Avatar
    Bwahahahahaha that comic is epic.

Site Navigation