World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Grim Batol "Vehicle" combat
Just to clarify, it's not vehicle combat at the beginning of the dungeon. The forces of the Twilight's Hammer within Grim Batol are massive, so you'll start the dungeon with a bombing run through the halls to thin their ranks. It'll be a set flight path and will not involve aerial combat. This is only to get things started. This dungeon is not vehicle-driven at all. (Source)

Lack of class changes in Patch 3.3.5
Our systems team is hard at work tweaking classes, updating talent trees, and restructuring the way in which new spells and abilities are learned during the leveling process (given that spells and abilities will scale with level rather than have multiple ranks). These changes are planned to coincide with a future patch which will implement the framework for Cataclysm. No major tweaking is planned to take place beforehand unless serious class gameplay issues arise. (Source)

Leveling Curve in Cataclysm
As you mentioned, the leveling curve all the way from 1-70 was adjusted in the past. We feel those changes coupled with heirloom experience bonuses make for a reasonable leveling experience up to 70. Since we're making major changes to the 1-60 Azeroth zones in Cataclysm, it isn't likely we'll be making further adjustments to the leveling curve there. The goal is to encourage new and old players alike to try out a new race or class and experience all of the new content and environment changes in the "old world."

As it is, Cataclysm will bring about a much better quest flow, both in terms of the way quests are given in individual zones, as well as the way in which players will be directed from zone to zone. It will be completely reasonable in Cataclysm to level from 1-60 in Azeroth solely on Kalimdor, or solely on Eastern Kingdoms. In general, there will be much less need to jump from continent to continent because you hit dry spots while questing and need to find somewhere else to go in order to find level-appropriate quests. The goal is to make sure players are given the choice to go to the zones they want to while leveling, rather than force them to the other end of the world for a level or two.

Whether or not any changes are going to be made to the leveling curve in Northrend, or additional changes made to leveling in Outland, remains to be seen. We do want to ensure that the leveling experience from 1-85 isn't too daunting. That is a lot of levels after all. Once we have the Cataclysm leveling zones from 1-60 and 78-85 fleshed out, we'll more closely evaluate the full leveling experience during our beta test. (Source)

The Bridge in Redridge Mountains
No spoilers, but there is no way we could request Redridge without the bridge playing a prominent role. (Source)

Honor/Badges Cap
We don't limit honor per week, but we do cap it. In the same way we won't limit the hero points per week that you can earn from heroic dungeons. We do limit the arena points you can gain per week (called conquest points in Cataclysm since you can earn them from rated BGs) as we limit the number of valor points -- the Frost equivalent that you earn from raids. In short, the upper tier is harder to earn and more prestigious to own, but once the tier advances you can quickly catch up to the first tier while the second one becomes the new high-end goal.

Technically the Frost badges are limited per week right now, it's just that the cap is set to max number possible. In Cataclysm, the cap will be lower than the max number possible so you have some decisions about how to earn those points rather than having to do everything.

Lower tier -- no cap per time, but an overall cap. In LK: Honor (PvP) and Triumph (PvE). In Cataclysm: Honor (PvP) and Heroism (PvE).
Upper tier -- cap per time. In LK: Arena points (PvP) and Frost (PvE). In Cataclysm: Conquest (PvP) and Valor (PvE). (Source)

Amount of gear in 10/25-Player raids
Me: "We're going to try instead offering more rewards (which includes loot) in the 25s, especially for the heroic modes."

The heroic 25 will drop more armor, weapons and tier-piece tokens per player than the heroic 10. The normal 25 will drop more badges per player than the normal 10, and it might drop more armor and weapons as well. Legendaries would most likely be both 10 and 25. We don't want a player to have to say "I prefer running 10s, but now I feel like I have to run 25s to get a specific item." If they say "I prefer running 10s, but now I feel like I have to run 25s to gear up faster," well, tough. (Source)

[...] Imagine those ratios were reversed and a 10 dropped 1.2 items per raid (1 per 8.3 players) and a 25 dropped 5 per raid (1 per 5 players). Now the 25 is more efficient. It's more complicated than that because you might have more competition for a powerful drop in 25s, while you might shard more loot in 10s because the target class / spec isn't present. (Source)

Cataclysm Legendary
I don't know the details because we probably won't do a legendary for the first tier, but we would definitely not want a structure such that a 25 guild felt like the fastest way to finish the item was to run multiple 10s. If the 25s could finish it first, that would be fine. The 10s would still be able to get the item, which is not possible today. (Source)

Benefits of 25-Player raids
Your assumption here is that there is some magic tipping point at which a 10 dude wouldn't feel compelled to run a 25 and a 25 dude wouldn't feel stupid for not running a 10. That number may in fact exist, but it may be very hard to hit. I will tell you that we had to go to a whole tier of gear to make the heroics feel like they were worth doing.

The stereotypical hardcore 25 guild (and I used "stereotypical" specifically because I'm not sure how meaningful it is to try and talk about a typical guild) is very concerned with efficiency. They want to get the final boss killed as quickly as possible and gear up everyone quickly. They feel a sense of accomplishment in doing things quickly. Thus we hope the benefit of gearing up more quickly by doing 25s is enough to keep them doing 25s. (Source)

10-Player Heroic Gear = 25-Player Heroic Gear
Yes. The exact same loot tables, but more rolls on those tables for the larger raids, particularly 25 heroic. (Source)

Journey through all the raid tiers in TBC
The problem is that journey was not made by many players (and I'm talking about interested players, not those with no interest in raiding). For everyone who progressed through all of those tiers, a huge percentage of players dropped out along the way, possibly just from the time commitment before they finally got to see the exciting new stuff that everyone was talking about. It might have worked okay for very tight-knit guilds with very stable rosters, but it was a hassle for other guilds who had to go do farming runs just to gear up one or two new players or alts before they could get back into progression. Again, it was more content to have to go back and do old zones, but I'm not sure it was fun content.

We want raiding players, in general, to be able to see the final content. If Icecrown was being used by 10% or less of the raiding population then not only is it pretty hard to justify all of the production time it takes to make a raid, but it also feels to players who don't finish the journey like they don't get to see the climax of the story. Game designers, at least in this day and age, actually want players to finish their games, not drop out somewhere along the way when things get too tedious and difficult. (If you like difficult, that's what heroic modes are for. If you like tedious, well I guess try to get the Insane in the Membrane achievement.) (Source)

Skill vs. Gear
If you want to know a little secret, part of the reason we can't use gear as a barrier to entry any longer is because the skill of the raiding population has grown so dramatically. The guilds who got the first kills in Icecrown probably could have done it with gear from a couple of tiers prior (with the possible exception of heroic LK). Skill trumps an enormous amount of power from gear. (Source)

Raid content accessibility
You're asking for us to spend an inordinate amount of our development time on a very small portion of our player base. That might work for an instance as easy to develop as Molten Core. It won't work for Ulduar. Making raids only for the top 2% is hard to justify when we're sitting there looking at a long feature list trying to decide what features we want to do for Cataclysm and what has to wait. The equivalent would be saying "This is the Survival hunter expansion. We're going to spend a huge chunk of our development time on Survival hunters. If you don't play a hunter, sorry, but please buy our expansion anyway." Your strategy should actually be welcoming as many players as possible into raids -- that's what allows us to keep spending so much time and effort on them. (Source)

Keeping old content alive and challenging
I'm not sure you feel this way, but typically the response is "I walked uphill in the snow, so they should have to as well." You got to the content first. You were showing off your tier set and Shadowmourne in Dalaran before those others guys. Why does it matter if they will eventually be able to catch up to you (especially since you'll pull ahead again the second a new raid is available)? The alternative is saying that those players should want to run through every raid tier before they can hit the new stuff, but I can tell you that whether or not they want to (and many don't) the facts suggest that they never finish and give up on raiding.

We're not really trying to keep Black Temple or Sunwell alive at this point, and by the same token, we're okay if Naxx has basically been reduced to achievements or weekly raid quests. It had its time in the sun. We don't need to prop it up forever. (Source)

Reforging - Spirit will be a reforgeable stat
We don't want players changing Agi, Str, Stam or Int (or armor!) on items for probably obvious reasons, but converting Spirit to something else or something else into Spirit shouldn't be a problem. (Source)

Cataclysm Hard Modes
They will probably be unlocked very quickly, maybe after one clear, or maybe right from the beginning. We're still working those logistics out. We held the LK ones back partially because we shipped that patch late in the year and didn't want to ask players to raid their asses off over the holiday season. (Yeah, I know, more nanny state discussion ensues.) (Source)

Cataclysm Raid Gear Requirements
I would also expect a little more gearing up from 85 quests / heroics / crafted materials before jumping right into the raids this time around. (Source)

25-Player Raids not attractive anymore in Cataclysm?
If we wanted to remove 25-player raids, we'd just do that. We know a lot of players like them. Personally, I will probably keep raiding 25s. A lot of players like the 10s too though, and despite what fans of the 25s might think, offering lower item level loot in the 10s doesn't make them attractive enough. We're going to try instead offering more rewards (which includes loot) in the 25s, especially for the heroic modes. Many (though not all) of the players worried about the reward per effort of 25 raiding are concerned more with the heroic modes. (Source)

Running both 25 and 10-Player raids each week
This isn't speculation on our part. We have the data. As far as motivation, in some cases the 10 gear ends up being better than the 25 gear. Especially on 10 heroic, which a group of raiders in 25 level gear can often handle, the 10 gear is equivalent. There is also the issue of badges, which you can only maximize if you hit both versions every week.

We know there are a lot of players who want to run 10s who feel compelled to run 25s for the better loot. We know there are a lot of players who want to run 25s and feel like they still have to do 10s as well. We know both groups of players are getting frustrated and burning out -- not because they don't like raiding, but because they don't like raiding the same content twice a week, particularly when the 10 version tends to not even be challenging since their 25 participation ensures they overgear it.

One raid lockout with same item levels for 10 and 25 and a weekly cap on badge income solves all of those problems for us. It does creates two potential new problems. One, players may gravitate towards 10s because the logistics are easier. We intend to handle that by making 25s more efficient at earning gear. Two, players who really like to run both a 10 and 25 every week lose that opportunity. Sorry. If it's any consolation, because the bosses are divided among multiple raid zones you can still do some in a 10 and some in a 25 or have an alt that only does a couple of those zones a week without the full commitment of two complete boss kill cycles every week. (Source)

Guild talents "removal"
I think this is a common problem. Some players focused on "cut guild talents" without reading what we are doing instead.

Imagine you are a priest. Some of your spells are talents, such as Penance and Circle of Healing. If you take Circle of Healing, you don't have enough points to get Penance. Talent trees are about (sometimes tough) decisions. However, many of your other spells you get by leveling, such as Prayer of Mending and Mass Dispel. You don't have to make a hard choice to get those, but you do have to put some work in.

The guild bonuses used to be talents. They are now more like leveling spells. We call them perks now instead of talents. We haven't cut any content, but just changed the UI from boxes with prereqs to a list. (Source)

Cataclysm Features
I try not to make ranked lists of features between expansions, because it always feels like you're comparing apples to oranges ("Now with 14.2% more raid bosses!') and has a lot to do with how interested you are in any of those features ("Fishing has a new icon!"). I'll just say that Cataclysm is massive, feels really polished even at this early stage, and has a ton of content. It feels a lot like two expansions, because you have the 80-85 content as well as an all new 1-60 experience. We don't sing the praises of our quest design team enough. They have poured their souls into this expansion and you realize that from your very first quest. There are just so many "holy crap!" moments. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator)
Jumping charge and intercepts
We don't view avoiding a Charge in this way to be an acceptable use of skill. Note that I am talking very specifically about the OP's scenario, and not about whether warriors are punished more or less than other classes for internet latency. (Source)