World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Get ready for first contact with the Iron Horde—oh, and you’ll probably want to prepare yourself for battle. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be testing a pre-expansion patch that will bring players to the brink of great peril, as the Iron Horde begins to aggressively gain a foothold on Azeroth.

As part of this patch, players will encounter fierce new opponents and get their first chance to experience a number of updates we’re making to the game. In addition to changes to the skills and abilities for every class, this patch will introduce brand new features such as 20-player Mythic-difficulty Siege of Orgrimmar, as well as systems adjustments including stat squish and diminishing returns on crowd control. The next chapter in the World of Warcraft saga is coming at you armed to the teeth.

Treacherous Developments
The Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands has turned blood red. Hundreds of strange-looking orcs are violently pouring into Azeroth, killing everything that stands in their path. Nethergarde and Okril’lon have already fallen, and while the Horde and the Alliance moved as quickly as they could to get reinforcements to their people, they are too late. The Iron Horde invasion has begun.

In this desperate hour, King Wrynn and Warchief Vol’jin have called upon their greatest champions to join the front lines in the Blasted Lands and do whatever they can to stop the Iron Horde . . . before the rest of Azeroth falls before them.

Word of this surprise attack sends players rushing to the Blasted Lands to reckon with the barbarous infiltration. After the fall of a high ranking Iron Horde general named Gar’mak Bladetwist, you’ll report what you’ve witnessed in the Blasted Lands to King Wrynn or Warchief Vol’jin. It’s apparent to both the Horde and the Alliance that this is only the first salvo in a much larger conflict, and the only way to win is to take the fight directly to the Iron Horde . . . by journeying through the Dark Portal into Draenor.

The Infiltration of Blackrock Spire
An advance party of Iron Horde forces has barged right out of the Blasted Lands and pushed all the way to Blackrock Mountain, where they found refuge and supplies in Upper Blackrock Spire. There can be only one response: the Alliance and the Horde of Azeroth must face this iron incursion head on.

Available to level-90 characters for a limited time, this specially revamped five-player version of Upper Blackrock Spire sets the stage for the coming counterstrike against the Iron Horde. Here, you will face Orebender Gor'ashan, Kyrak, and Commander Tharbek as you begin to take the fight to the enemy and sharpen the skills (and swords) you’ll need to succeed on an unwelcoming alien world.

Draenor is waiting.

Gamescom 2014 has begun and Blizzard is there with its biggest booth to date!

If you can’t make it to gamescom, you can still catch the latest news, interviews, and gamescom highlights on our stream, live from the Blizzard booth. Our dedicated website will give you the schedule and details on all the activities you can enjoy at the booth, including show matches, live drawing sessions, the renowned Blizzard costume and dance contests, and more.

In addition, we will be hosting hour-long live streams on August 15, 16, and 17, bringing you all the highlights from the show, plus developer interviews and insights. You can watch the action live on the website, and replays will be available afterwards. So if you can’t make it to gamescom, you don’t need to miss out on any of the fun and games.

Blizzard gamescom live stream:
Friday, August 15 from 18:00 to 19:00 CEST (9:00 to 10:00 PDT)
Saturday, August 16 from 18:00 to 19:00 CEST (9:00 to 10:00 PDT)
Sunday, August 17 from 16:00 to 17:00 CEST (7:00 to 8:00 PDT)

Watch the show live at http://blizzard.com/gamescom -- replays will also be available.

We’ll look forward to seeing you there!

Slow Flight Paths
So, first thing I should mention is that, while we're still adjusting and tweaking the flow of each zone, it doesn't make much sense for us to spend a bunch of time optimizing flight paths. Any manner of changes could happen to a given location or quest hub that would require us to redo all that work -- even something as simple as moving the flightmaster to the other side of a camp, or raising the terrain a bit to make it look more interesting.

We've done a little bit of optimizing here and there where we've felt confident that such changes won't happen, but we're getting to the point that we can start collecting a broader range of feedback on flight paths for future adjustments. To help with that, I've just posted a stickied thread in which we'd love for you to share your feedback on flight paths that could use some attention.

We're still very much committed to making sure that getting around Draenor doesn't feel like a chore, so any such feedback is extremely valuable to us. Thanks! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Targeted Feedback Request: Flight Paths
As we start to wrap up major changes to quest flow and zone layouts, we're ready to start taking a harder look at flight paths and work on cleaning them up. To that end, we're putting this thread together to serve as a centralized location to point out flight paths in need of improvement.

Examples of the sort of feedback we're looking for include:

• Flights that seem to move slowly
• Flights that make unnecessarily meandering loops or turns
• Flights that could make more efficient connections
• Any other weird glitches, stops, etc. that occur while on a flight

Thanks! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Classes
So your version of equality is take away utility from low dps classes and give it to high dps?
No, it's to reduce the utility of high utility classes and increase that of low utility classes, then equalize DPS. (Celestalon)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Why is DeathKnight the only class with 2 roles that doesn't have Talents change based on spec when pure DPS classes like mage do
Because none of the talents need it. DKs overlap a lot between tank and DPS. Same resource system, for example. (Celestalon)
Many counterexamples. NPlague WAY mandatory for Unholy DPS w/+60% disease dmg, and covers-up Blood's huge wait time.
Those aren't counterexamples. Those are tuning problems. Or do you just mean that they need different tuning by spec? (Celestalon)

Druid (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
dream of cenarius has always interacted with healing touch, why was the decision made to make it a passive heal for balance?
It's really tough to make a talent that's supposed to be DPS neutral for a Moonkin, yet add Healing Touches. (Celestalon)
So, the new version still gives you Healing Touches, they just auto-pick their target for you. (Celestalon)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
by engine i mean the synergy between master marksman and steady focus etc marksman now looks kindaempty
Yeah, totally understandable. We removed MMarksman because it became a lot less interesting with... (Celestalon)
...the switch to making Aimed their main focus dump. Goal is to allow talent choices to add... (Celestalon)
...rotational depth and complication, but I think many of their talent choices boil down to 'Use on CD' (Celestalon)
I'd say that Focusing Shot does a good job of that, but it's not a style that everyone will like. (Celestalon)

Mage (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Well my feedback is change Arcane Orb is not useful in boss fights and Overpowered is just crappy like Flameglow.
Why do you not find Arcane Orb useful in boss fights? Which boss fights? What makes Overpowered feel crappy to you? (Celestalon)
And Flameglow is much less crappy now; we upped its numbers considerably. Have you tried it with that change? (Celestalon)
Overpowered is based in proc from AM and even saving those procs you may only prolong AP a few more seconds
You should always be able to prolong it by at least 6sec, more like 12 on avg. That 'fighting against time' style... (Celestalon)
...can be a lot of fun. Definitely possible that its effects are heavily RNG; data/analysis on that is welcome. (Celestalon)
ok ill give you Overpowered what abiut Arcane Orb is to low damage compared to PC or even Overpowered.
"Low Damage" = Tuning problem. We'll get that fixed. I've heard that the gameplay is a ton of fun. Agree/disagree? (Celestalon)

Arcane Orb interacting with the spec is cool. Any thoughts on having Meteor interact more?
I believe we made it cause Ignite, and the delay lets you stack it on top of Pyros, for Combustion (Celestalon)
That's awesome! Thanks. Anything to be done with Comet Storm?
Tough one. Not sure that Frost needs more of any procs. Suggestions welcome. (Celestalon)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
are you worried that arms might stance dance to fill in gcds if def stance gets devaste and revenge?
Yes, absolutely a concern that we'll make sure doesn't happen with whatever design we settle on. (Celestalon)

PvP
There any talk of doing a legendary pvp item done like the cloak?
I don't think so. Rarity and extreme power are inherent to Legendaries and that doesn't seem like the best fit for PvP gear. (holinka)

World
What you're telling us right now is that it apparently takes longer that 10 months to make two capitals w/o copy/pasting.
In terms of man-months, it's actually longer, if you can believe it. (Muffinus)
How do you not have infinite time.... Blizzard has always stood for releasing quality products with no release dates at all.
Always has to be weighed against the community not getting content for another X months. It's a tough call. (Muffinus)

well we could also make Gilneas our home city if we felt like it, but why would we do that? zero hub utility = no visits
You could argue that Silvermoon has full functionality and isn't visited, but is very pretty. Why aren't people there? (Muffinus)
At the risk of opening a can of worms: Silvermoon also has no flying and so is esp. awkward to get to compared to the likes of Org
All of Draenor has no flying too (Muffinus)

If you're on one of the source realms listed below, you can move your characters to one of the designated destination realms and avoid the queues—for free!

By initiating one of these transfers, you will be moving your character to a new realm and home. This is a one-time, one-way move. If you wish to move your character elsewhere, you will need to use the paid transfer service.

Outland -> Grim Batol, Karazhan

Please be aware that, due to the unpredictable nature of free transfers, we may close down any Free Character Migrations at any time and without warning if the target realm becomes full. If you plan to move with friends or your guild, we suggest that you coordinate the effort to reduce the chance of any stragglers being left behind.

Early closures aside, this set of Free Character Migrations will end on Tuesday, August 19.

Begin a Free Character Migration now! We recommend reviewing the FAQ, as it details what is or isn't allowed for transferred characters.