Diablo 2 Ladder Reset, Wudijo 3-Man GR 68 PoV, Heroes of the Storm Crusader

The Innkeeper's Tale: A Mysterious Patron

Dustin Browder Interview, Youtube Livestream Event on June 6th, Hearthstone Mount, North American Road to Blizzcon

Patch 6.2 - Darker Nights
Warlords of Draenor added darker nights in a few areas and Patch 6.2 will expand upon that by darkening most of the northern half of Kalimdor.



Hellbreach Normal Testing
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We've opened up Normal Hellfire Citadel, and will keep it open for the next couple of days. The only bosses currently enabled are Hellfire Assault, Iron Reaver, and Kormrok. Please use this thread to provide feedback, bug reports, and otherwise discuss the encounters. Logs are very helpful, and please, when offering feedback, specify the nature of your group: Group Finder PUG, full guild group with Heroic/Mythic/etc. experience, partial premade, etc. Ultimately, bear in mind that this is Normal mode, and the audience is Friends/Family groups and pickup groups - a core question would be whether you'd feel comfortable joining a Premade Group via Group Finder to complete these encounters. Thanks!

Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Why is 6.1 known as the selfie patch among the community then?
There wasn't a lot of content in 6.1 & players, understandably upset, used that label as criticism. (CM_Zarhym)

Only an hour for the chat Saturday? Doesn't seem long enough, will there be some type of followup?
We'll be setting up some fansite interviews where we expect follow-up questions will be collected & asked. (CM_Zarhym)

The devs you ADDED, and the amount of content produced is why resources are misallocated. Excuses dont help
You don't know that. You can give feedback about the game w/o inventing reasons why the game is as it is. (CM_Zarhym)

PvE
Any chance to make pets semi transparent like in Diablo 3? Sometimes its really difficult to see whats under the boss...
We're exploring solutions to the visual clutter caused by pets and guardians and their impact on melee players. (WarcraftDevs)

PvP
Ashran is a bit of a stretch in this regard. Told it was a Modern AV, when it's nothing like it at all.
.What would you change? What about AV do you miss? Sorry if I'm always asking these Q's, I'm curious! (Muffinus)

Reputations
Do you think cata faction rep grinds for gear were good or bad? I know apexis dailies simplify, but factions felt more roleplay-ey
I liked faction-specific reps with different, unfolding dailies that told a specific story to that faction. Unsure on rewards. (Muffinus)

Flying
I think I'm in a minority though. I feel these days the majority always prefers the path of least resistance.
I dunno, I feel like getting flying, especially full speed, back in TBC felt like a huge hurdle and felt awesome once you got it. (Muffinus)

Quests
Both extremes of "hours of daily quests every day" to "no daily quests ever" are bad.
Agree! (Muffinus)

If the MoP style dailies didn’t have progression gear tied to them, it should have been fine.
I dunno, personally having some power rewards is nice, having shortcuts to them is nice too. (Muffinus)
Wasn’t MoP when the daily limit was lifted? People suddenly binged on dailies.
Yep, so doing 50 felt mandatory, which removed all choice you had in what you did for 3 hours. (Muffinus)
Timeless Isle didn't have enough draw after the first month due to lack of story-driven dailies.
Also agree, layering 5.1 over it with the size and uniqueness of IoT would have been cool. (Muffinus)
Which seems like such an obvious design decision that it's perplexing this didn't happen in the first place.
Development is a complex and peculiar beast, with many heads, and some breathe fire. (Muffinus)

Ghostcrawler Tweets
While the developers have been pretty quiet since @WarcraftDevs appeared, Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard.
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Developer Communication
what if the "bold" decisions come off as lazy with the reasons that are being given?
It generally isn't worth lying to players. They will figure out the truth. (OccupyGStreet)
If something is too much work given the benefit, they'd likely just say that. (OccupyGStreet)
So my advice is to argue based on the reasons stated, not try to make up or guess at reasons and argue those. (OccupyGStreet)

Classes
I think we (meaning I) went too far in removing what was unique about some classes. (OccupyGStreet)
What made you guys start homogenizing? Just easier to balance?
And it came largely from trying to address player concerns about balance or utility. (OccupyGStreet)
Barring those concerns, would homogenization have ever taken place to the degree it did, or eventually a future necessity?
I don't think it was a foregone conclusion. These things are all trade offs. What do you value more? Identity or utility? (OccupyGStreet)

Do you think Cata / MoP / WoD took bring the player, not the class too far? As Ret I now feel more like a DPS than a paladin.
I feel like we gave players what they asked for: near parity in all encounters, which made then happy short term. (OccupyGStreet)
But long term it's possible those decisions (mine) erode depth in the long term. (OccupyGStreet)
But had we gone the less homogenized route, there would have been a lot more "my dude sucks on burst AE fights" etc. posts. (OccupyGStreet)
u still see those posts now and I hear a lot of talk from blizzard that they like Class Niche
Many decisions devs make may seem weird in the short term but pay huge dividends eventually, (OccupyGStreet)
dividends is a strange term in this context. Are you still thinking from a player POV or dev?
Short term, a player may say: I hate that feature. (OccupyGStreet)
Long term, they may say: I don't know why, but I just lost interest in the game. (OccupyGStreet)
Devs generally worry more about that second case. The risks there are probably greater. (OccupyGStreet)
So they may make a change that is unpopular in the short term to keep the game healthy in the long run. (OccupyGStreet)
is indecisiveness a real thing on big dev teams? Have teams been very split and much conflicted on design?
I haven't seen that much indecision in my time. I have seen a ton of disagreement though. (OccupyGStreet)
Game development, where I have been, requires a lot of discussion. People burn out on the debate culture. (OccupyGStreet)
It's just so subjective. Should we fix a bug that affects 0.1% of players? Is that animation good enough? (OccupyGStreet)



Final Boss #82 - Elemental Shamans
Final Boss covered Elemental Shamans this week. Be sure to check back Sunday for a Discipline/Holy Priest episode.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 6.2 - Darker Nights, Hellfire Citadel Normal Testing, Blue Tweets, Final Boss started by chaud View original post
Comments 89 Comments
  1. mmoc70c28d0008's Avatar
    I loved nights in DAoC, wow is still too bright.
  1. Tucci's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Maklor View Post
    This place really has turned into a cesspool of whining, seems it's the hipster thing to do these days.
    It's depressing.


    and lol @ people complaining that this isn't content and that we aren't getting content in 6.2. I guess new raid tiers aren't content either. People apparently want a new raid tier every 2 weeks, gear raining from the sky, 200 new mini games, 700 dailies, a new zone every week and at least 10 completely unique mount models added every patch but NOT for the Blizzard store. But then the argument will be "quality over quantity Blizzard, WTF". Oh and they don't want to pay anymore. Paying with gold isn't good enough, they want to pay with the air their characters breathe. Also, they want air added to the game. And a new game engine that let's them run it on ultra, 120 fps at all times with their laptop from 2007.

    Then and ONLY then will it bring back SOME of the quality gameplay of 8 years ago.
  1. luckydan79's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tucci View Post
    It's depressing.


    and lol @ people complaining that this isn't content and that we aren't getting content in 6.2. I guess new raid tiers aren't content either. People apparently want a new raid tier every 2 weeks, gear raining from the sky, 200 new mini games, 700 dailies, a new zone every week and at least 10 completely unique mount models added every patch but NOT for the Blizzard store. But then the argument will be "quality over quantity Blizzard, WTF". Oh and they don't want to pay anymore. Paying with gold isn't good enough, they want to pay with the air their characters breathe. Also, they want air added to the game. And a new game engine that let's them run it on ultra, 120 fps at all times with their laptop from 2007.

    Then and ONLY then will it bring back SOME of the quality gameplay of 8 years ago.
    Nope, long term player here. What they done is absolutely abohhrent, they had absolutely everything in the bag. They could of made the game actually fun and have different terms of progression but hence they didn't and like Ghostwalker said "i have really lost interest in the game, selfie patch really done it probably for everyone".

    I just pop in here now and then, just to see how the game is going and may enroll for a month since I can grab money with the treasure trove across 4 characters.

    What they should of done, made Garrisons server-wide so only 1 per server and if you level an alt you get an extra level in the garrison where adding up to the max allows you to have access to all buildings say every 1 character extra small plot, 2 extra character extra medium plot, 3 extra characters extra large plot where you have 1 extra building called Heroes' bunker where you can use your alts as followers allowing them to be used in missions or in profession when not in use. "Players characters who are on missions cannot be used till they come back" and some will unlock special missions which you cannot unlock without this feature this adds another path of progression.

    Ashran they shouldn't of touched it was absolutely fine and allowed progression into arena just removing all the features, just removed the path of progression altogether and just made the game fucking boring literally. It was fun till they started to fix things like adding 30 min timer, removing conquest, removing other things. Everyone was literally in ASHRAN TILL THEY FIXED IT. THEY FUCKED UP REALLY BAD ON THIS. Even new players who were overwhelmed got used to things and just found it intense till they slowed it to a crawl.

    So what does that leave since they don't have any progression? Just arena and raiding... exactly the same thing in MOP and nothing new. Blizzard removed the paths of progression or something to strive for and just gave us a treasure trove of stuff and need to time-sink on the same thing we done on the previous expansion good job blizzard.
  1. Asylumander's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Banchou View Post
    For some zones like Mulgore and Barrens it seens like the effect is worst than it is at now since they lost the "blue" effect. Too much warm collors to be night, need more "cold" shades like actual Mulgore and Barrens + a little more dark (only a little).

    Other zones changed almost nothing. Azshara is totally meh since the extreme light line at horizon kill any effort done to make the night like more like night.

    The only positive changes was on Orgrimmar and Darkshore.

    Well, I think I'll go take some screenshots at Mulgore and Barrens... For the memories.
    I agree. Looks more like early dusk or sundown. This is especially noticeable in Darkshore and Winterspring. I'd prefer something a little darker myself. Maybe give players personal torches to lug about. I believe this was experimented with in beta, for Duskwood at least.
  1. arcaneshot's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by liquidlyon View Post
    There's a difference between people still playing, and the dedicated defenseforce that sets out on the forums here and elsewhere everyday to defend every.
    So just as you had to invent your own mob mentality group you also had to invent a faceless enemy so it seems like you're some scrappy rebel group bringing down the evil empire.

    People call that "8th grader delusions."
  1. Eliazer681's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by liquidlyon View Post
    There's a difference between people still playing, and the dedicated defenseforce that sets out on the forums here and elsewhere everyday to defend every. Fucking. Thing. That. Happens. People literally invent reasons to defend Blizzard now. You get rustled when people bash your game. We get it. Shut the hell up already. If you were really enjoying the game that much, you'd have spoken with your actions and not get tilted whenever you read something you don't like.

    But you aren't, and you instead get out of bed every morning to respond to people with negative opinions... in which case, wow. Sad for you.

    See how easy that is genius?
    Sure, I see it's easy to be a flip a sentence around. The difference, douchebag, is that my statement is grounded in reality, while I assume somebody had to wipe the drool off your face while you typed out that masterstroke.
  1. Thelonicus's Avatar
    touchè good entertainment tho, reading all these conpiracy theories It sure must hurt alot to be put in place in tweets by the devs. Their responses are fine and inline with how the question they recieved was written
  1. l33t's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Shudder View Post
    There was a poll asking if people wanted it on the posts. They said they do. You're in the minority, you need to get over it. I don't want to read his opinions either. Know what I do? I scroll past it and read other things in the post. Much easier to do than bitch and whine and demand things change to revolve around you.
    Dude, you know, negative feedback is not always "whine". It turns to whine if a person starts to give same negative feedback over and over and over again, turning it into some kind of kids tantrums. I never saw any poll about this particular topic, and now I understand why these tweets suddenly start to appear in the first place. Which saddens me, but its not hard to ignore them, you know.
  1. Draculla's Avatar
    http://i.imgur.com/8hzLQ6P.jpg - Orgrimmar Darker Night

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