Top 5 Plays of the Week, Hearthstone Day Dev Q&A Notes
Hero Intro Questions, Talent System Dev Q&A on Wednesday, New Heroes Unveiled at PAX East
Warlords of Draenor Developer Interviews
PvP Live had the opportunity to interview Holinka and Kim Phan this weekend during their PvP Tournament.
eSports
- Blizzard is always looking to make WoW a better esport.
- Right now the team mostly focuses on 3v3 arenas, but they want to hear what the community wants in regards to eSports, in PvP or otherwise.
- Arenas are a big part of what makes WoW an eSport, but there may be other parts of WoW that players would also be interested in. For example, some players enjoy the Live Raid at Blizzcon.
- Other partners have reached out to Blizzard to see what tools they are putting in place to support eSports, including MLG.
- PvP can be hard to watch, especially with TDM being much faster in other games. In WoW, it can take 15 minutes for someone to die or something exciting to happen, which is a long time for someone watching that isn't very familiar with the game. This can be partially mitigated by casters keeping viewers informed with what is going on and why.
- The game has to be fun to play before it can be fun to watch. The next step is having tools that make it easier to watch, such as spectator mode.
- The devs are looking at the smaller things they can do to grow the WoW eSports community.
Spectator Mode
- Being able to set the time before Dampening activates in Spectator Mode games isn't planned right now, as having inconsistent rules would make arenas harder to watch.
- The addition of spectator mode for Warlords of Draenor arenas being one example of something the community has been requesting for a long time that is finally being added.
PvP in Warlords of Draenor
- If the team makes a balance change, players get upset about the changes that were made. If they don't make any balance changes, people complain that the game is starting to feel stale.
- The team has been trying to increase the participation in PvP, without hurting the game that people already doing PvP love.
- The way that CC and DR works is hidden to many players, but it is also one of the important parts of competitive PvP. The team would like to make them less complex, as complexity is good when it adds depth, but not good when complexity exists for no reason.
- The PvP game is going to feel very new and different in Warlords of Draenor, almost starting from scratch with balance. This time around the team will spend a lot of time on iterating on things and collecting feedback from top players that give useful feedback.
Holinka
- Holinka does rated battlegrounds and arenas most days of the week, as well as some arenas at lunch almost every day.
- He also plays other games as time permits, such as Titanfall and Stick of Truth. There are lessons to be learned from playing other games.
- He had 6 characters and 8 specs that he played last season, so he understands the effort it takes to cap on alts.
Blizzard at PAX East
Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
War Crimes Novel Sneak Peek
You can find an excerpt from the War Crimes novel here.
Dark Legacy Comics #432
DLC #432 has been released.
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