World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

I start this post saying that I think that flying mount removal was a good thing. Yeah it slows down travel times, but its made the game feel more open and alive in my opinion. That doesn't mean that flying mounts don't have a place in the game. I just think that they need a redesign.
A number of flight-specific toys and items were implemented to let you glide around the game world. There are also some zone-specific items, as well as items from past expansions that can help achieve the same thing as well--as well as potentially combined to some extreme results. I may also be forgetting a few?

Why do you guys say you're removing flying to help untrivialize combat and then put in items to help trivialize it
These don't allow you to lift up and set down wherever you like. They are generally also managed with cooldowns or charges. They do allow you to travel quickly across the game world, but they're generally not as precise or consistent as to change the moment to moment gameplay like full flight does.

I've always wished that when you aim your mount down it accelerated though. Like a dive bomb of sorts. Screen shaking, all that jazz.
Me too, actually! Or that the flaps/gliding animations would match my in-game trajectory. I think it's probably a fair amount of art and engineering work to do, though, and to be frank flight just isn't a system we've ever really looked at building out. Actually... that's sort of not true, early on in BC we tried some things to try to make flight a part of the gameplay, and even put a lot of effort into new flight mechanics in Wrath (which then got scrapped), but it really just doesn't work for what this game is and how the engine and content are created. WoW just isn't a flight sim, and creating those kinds of mechanics is very difficult, and even potentially radically different than the core gameplay that defines it. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Character / Items
anatomical dummy, spirit of shinri, swap blaster. That's 2 more I just thought of so 9. And the 3 guild battle standards so 12
Anything with a gameplay application is currently not being considered for Toy Box. (Muffinus)
can we define a game play application?
Anything that's not purely visual, e.g. a speed bonus, a teleport, or summoning a creature you can attack. (Muffinus)

PvE
I'd like to thank you for adding incentive to run older raids more, i feel like older content still has alot to offer even today.
I love some of the VO work in those dungeons/raids especially! (Muffinus)

3 essence pets, 1 boss, do all the 3 essences drop from Reliquary of souls?
Yep, you should be able to check the pet journal descriptions on various sites to check the droppers of these lil' cuties. (Muffinus)

Blackrock Foundry was the ancestral home of the Blackrock orcs, wherein master smiths smelted and worked the impossibly hard ore that is the clan’s namesake. Now, massive giants captured and broken by the Thunderlord heat the great forges, flamebenders of the Burning Blade imbue the ore with an inner fire, and engineers shape the slag according to otherworldly schematics. Warlord Blackhand’s foundry is the center of the Iron Horde’s military might, churning out the weaponry that will be used to raze Azeroth.


Just when you thought you’d become comfortable (as comfortable as one can get in a gladiator pit) with Highmaul, we thought it was time to shake things up and show you what’s waiting in our next Raid—Blackrock Foundry—and introduce you to Rukhmar, the latest world Raid boss.

We asked senior 3D artist Andy Matthews to provide some insight into the dungeon’s visual development:

The Foundry’s spark of inspiration was the creation of the Slagworks’ “furnace room;” it created iconic silhouettes that we carried throughout the rest of the Raid, which has a very strong industrial look and feel.

The Dread Grotto was my favorite shot to establish in the Raid. In its early development, we wanted to show the Iron Horde’s shipping area from multiple angles, foreshadowing later content. The Workshop shows the daily grind of factory life for the Ironworkers. Most workers dread the “flame-jet Fridays.”

Some say the Iron Horde motto is, “When in doubt, add a spike!”


You’ll need a minimum item level of 635 to tackle Blackrock Foundry via Raid Finder. The Foundry’s rewards range from item level 650 (Raid Finder) to 695 (Mythic).

Let’s take a look at the bosses that await you within Blackrock Foundry. . . .


Slagworks
Gruul- Garrosh knew that the surest path to breaking the gronn lay in subjugating their great father, Gruul. Known in another time as the Dragonkiller, here Gruul has been reduced to the role of menial laborer. In a cruel mockery of the Shattered Hand’s warrior tradition, his hand has been replaced with a hook to enable him to more easily haul pallets of fuel to the furnace.


Oregorger- The storehouses of the Blackrock Foundry, laden with heaps and pallets of unprocessed Blackrock ore, represent a grand banquet feast for the ravenous rock-eating goren who have burrowed into the chamber. Oregorger is by far the largest of the invaders, gluttony swelling his frame far beyond the size of any goren previously seen in Draenor.


The Blast Furnace- The Blackrock clan’s unique ability to smelt the black ore, a substance so dense that ordinary flame does not even soften it, has always been their most closely-guarded secret. Deep within the Foundry, their furnace contains a primal force as old as Draenor itself, raging within the confines of its prison as it emanates a preternatural heat.


The Black Forge
Hans’gar and Franzok- Hans’gar and Franzok are twin brothers raised and trained as masterful brawlers of their clan. Both carved paths of glory as warriors, but destiny had other plans. The brothers, each unwilling to slay the other in the rite of mak’gora, were banished from their clan and left for dead. They survived as outcasts in the savage wilds of Draenor and when the Iron Horde called, these powerful warriors found a new home in the massive war machine.


Flamebender Ka’graz- Under the banner of the Iron Horde, Blackhand has enlisted Flamebender Ka’graz of the Burning Blade to imbue the Blackrock-forged armaments with the essence of flame. Along with her assistant Aknor Steelbringer, Ka’graz toils before an ever burning forge in support of the Iron Horde’s conquest of Draenor.


Kromog- The magnaron are mysterious in their ways, ancient and inscrutable. Miners excavating an expansion to the Foundry, in support of the Iron Horde’s massive production needs, were horrified to unearth a chamber containing a living magnaron. To their astonishment, Kromog began to assist in their endeavors, and now uses his massive stone fists to hammer out the gigantic plates needed for the Iron Horde’s dreadnaughts and siege machinery.



Iron Assembly
Beastlord Darmac- As a young orc, Darmac quickly rose through the ranks of the Thunderlord as a gifted trainer of beasts. Where others only saw animal instincts, he recognized intellect and drew forth untapped potential from brain and muscle and bone. When the Iron Horde demanded his service, Darmac saw no greater honor than to outfit and train the most savage beasts Draenor has to offer.


Operator Thogar- Known more for his cruelty and cleverness than for brute strength, Thogar oversees the operation of the Grimrail. From the Foundry’s depot, he coordinates the ongoing ground battle against the draenei in Talador, with entire battalions of troops and artillery at his beck and call.


The Iron Maidens- With little opportunity to exercise her tactical brilliance under the ancient social structure of the orc clans, Gar’an was thrilled to be one of the first warriors to volunteer for naval duty under the Iron Horde. Instantly successful in battle, she was named Admiral of the iron Horde fleet and selected Marak and Sorka as her lieutenants. Together, they are called the Iron Maidens, and have crushed any who have dared face them.


The Crucible
Blackhand- A ruthless tyrant and fierce warrior, Blackhand is Warlord of the Blackrock clan, second only to Grommash in stature within the Iron Horde. Bathed in sweltering heat that few other mortals could withstand, Blackhand oversees the operations of his Foundry from atop its Crucible, wielding his smoldering slag hammer to forge weapons of peerless quality.


For more information on each of these bosses, their abilities, the items they drop, and more, check out the in-game Dungeon Journal.


World Boss: Rukhmar
Rukhmar occasionally appears as a blazing firehawk soaring through the skies high above the Spires of Arak. The origins of the great bird are unknown though Rukhmar is venerated as a deity by the arrakoa, seen as an embodiment of the sun itself.

Check out the Raid unlock schedule here.

Flying in Draenor
It's weird, I got the Garrison mission that rewards the Halaa tokens, so I went back to Outland to go buy the war Talbuk I never got. I take a taxi from the portal to Telaar, and then run to Halaa, and it wasn't until I saw someone else on a flying mount that it even hit me that I *could* fly. It was a really ... impactful, I guess, realization on how flying/not flying impacts my own personal gameplay. I guess the answer for me is not very much.

I know. Blah blah blah I'm a corporate drone, etc. etc. but honestly, as a player, I didn't even consider it was something that I had available to me. I think that says... something. I'm not sure what... Maybe just that I'm not personally that attached to flying as a game mechanic? I can understand how the exact opposite could be true for others, though. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Twitter Communication
The Real reason I hate Twitter. It causes people to use shorthand. I cannot STAND seeing people use shorthand like ppl for people, or no for know, or 2 for too/to.
I think there's always a way to find room without abbreviations. The most I'll tend to do is use an ampersand (&) instead of "and". Things like that. But I know what you mean. It doesn't rile me up, but I have enough trouble living my own life to also try to live everyone else's for them too.

The thing I don't particularly like about Twitter use is when someone tweets a whole forum post at me in 10-20 individual tweets. It's bad form for the format, and really goes against the primary benefit of the limited length format. Twitter, like any form of communication, has benefits and drawbacks. Talking on a phone cuts out the all-important body language. Talking in-person is ad hoc, and largely without the ability to put enough thought/editing into conveying an idea, and is influenced by sometimes uncontrollable physical distractions or cues. Which can also be a good thing!

Twitter is quick, it's short, and it's kind of like a one-on-one conversation in a large crowd of people. It works well at getting short and quick little bits of info back and forth between people, and others can listen in or interject (or amplify it) if they want, and also be able to curate the kinds of people they want around them. It's the cocktail party of communication formats. Whereas the forums are quite like a cork board where people can type up big long letters, and post them up, people can be typing up responses to other people's posted notes while other people type theirs, and there can be these really complex and chaotic conversations going lots of different ways, but with a lot of reading and filtering you can get a good sense for a sort of temperature range of the discussion and get lots of different ideas and thoughts out of lots and lots of text. It's a really interesting format for communication, but certainly has it's benefits and drawbacks as a form of communication and interaction, like... literally everything else! ...until complete peer to peer communication nears light speed with organic computing and a "human internet" which is, of course, just a step away from our consciousness merging into a being of pure light anyway. Of course. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Polished Battle-Stone
Polished stones don't have a specific type and i've tried them on every family and gray/whites to see if it mattered.
Hey all, hang on to those stones! We were able to investigate this issue and we have a fix coming in Patch 6.1. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

TM vs SS Veto
Just dropping a note here for anyone that had Tarren Mill vs Southshore vetoed (unchecked) when the realms came down for maintenance this week, you may have noticed that you now only have 1 battleground deselected, because the now invisible TM vs SS battleground is still technically unchecked.

It's a bug we're aware of, in the meantime you can fix this yourself by entering the following in chat:

/script ClearBlacklistMap(1280); ReloadUI(); (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Classes
Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Does Mark Of The Shattered Hand weapon enchant scale with feral druids mastery?
No, Razor Claws only affects Feral bleeds. (Celestalon)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Why don't you Guys just deactivate/scale down the Ret Pala 4pc PvP Setbonus, instead of nerfing it?
it was over budget for PvP. Set bonus shouldn't be worth that much DPS. (holinka)
Only issue is, i don't understand why it was brought down to 4 secs. Impossible to keep up 100% now. 2% makes sense
it shouldn't have 100% uptime. That's too much damage for set bonus. (holinka)

PvE
can we please get a different way of getting augment runes, as a mythic raider it sucks feeling forced to do lfr
You feel doing Raid Finder is more efficient than just buying them from others who do? (WatcherDev)

PvP
Why is XP awarded by BGs so low? Agree questing/dungeons should give more XP, but no need for BGs to be THAT low.
An oversight when implementing strong boxes. We are working on correcting but may take time. (holinka)

Haven't won a bg in days, fighting on the road in Ashran..no go - How does it feel to be the most hated dev in history #hordelife
I'd have to see the dev hate index over time to believe you. We need a chart! make it happen! (holinka)
Why do you make so many snippy replies to "hate" messages instead of addressing real concerns?
I make snippy replies because I think humor is great for defusing tension. As for addressing "real" concerns... (holinka)
When people say "address real concerns" they are essentially saying, "tell me the changes that are coming to address X" (holinka)
and my twitter is not the appropriate place to make announcements or post change logs. (holinka)
To discuss what we're thinking about is often confused for actual intent and just leads to confusion. (holinka)
So, it is more appropriate for changes to be announced, once they're made, through our normal channels for clear messaging. (holinka)

Could you quickly explain how criticism/suggestions from the WoW PvP community are handled @holinka
We read the feedback and weigh it against our own experience and internal data before making decisions. (holinka)
But the community is not a hivemind. Many different people with a wide variety of opinions. (holinka)

s15 was overall balanced. that's a fact. Nearly all specs were top tier.
Very hard to compare the first season of an expac with the last season of an expac. (holinka)

Character / Items
Unsure if this is a bug, but killed The Lanticore in H UBRS and no one in group was able to loot/roll. Did the droprate on the pet change?
Droprates when loot is on Personal are different than when loot is on Group. (Muffinus)

This expansion made inventory management worse. Toy box was one step forward and all the new stuff 5 steps back.
What new stuff are you having trouble fitting?
moroes' lucky polish. my inventory is fine save that one item.
Fixed in 6.1 I believe! A few things missed the bus. (Muffinus)

Misc
Hows life on the rollercoaster? 8 sec kidney: "Holinka should be shot." 6 sec kidney: "Praise the second coming of based holinka."
Well, said it many times. It's a team. One person doesn't make all the decisions: good or bad. (holinka)

We’ve always had this kind of weird limitation where if you’ve never played WoW we let you play as much as you want, albeit in a very restricted Starter Edition account. However, if you have ever had a subscription--but don’t currently have one--we don’t even let you log in. In 6.1 we’ll effectively revert lapsed accounts into a Starter Edition “mode”, with all of the same restrictions. The one difference being that your sub-level 20 characters will be able to join a guild if any of your other characters are still in that guild.

The label for this mode internally is “Veteran”, and those are the strings that were datamined, but it’s unlikely to be a term we use to any great degree externally. It will simply be the default state for accounts that don’t currently have an active subscription.

Our server engineers were able to work some magic and get Garrisons to travel along with you when you copy your character over to the 6.1 PTR realms! Your followers, buildings, blueprints and active missions should copy over, but pending work orders will not.

The Character Copy system leverages the same technology that the Character Profiles on the web armory site uses. This means that if you've recently transferred or if your armory profile isn't loading properly you may not be able to transfer your character to the PTR right away.

We had to push some code to live 6.0.3 retail realms to enable the garrison copy. Without getting into too much technical detail, you need to make sure that your character armory profile is updated:

• Log onto your retail character.
• Travel to your garrison.
• Fully log out of the game and wait a few minutes.
• Launch the PTR client via the Battle.net App (making sure the account drop-down says PTR)
• On the character selection screen, click the Copy Character button located under the Template Character box.
• Select your region in the upper-left corner.
• Press the Copy Account Data button in the bottom left and select Okay.
• Once that window closes, re-open the Copy Character screen.
• Your characters should be listed here.
• Copy your character over to the PTR, and login! You should be in your garrison!

If you're not sure your Character Profile is updating, an easy test is to remove a piece of gear (boots, for example), and log out. Once you see your character on the armory without boots, you know it updated properly!

Think I'm confused, I saw a blue post on mmo champ talking about story line garrison missions? Are these different from the daily apexis crystal quests? I haven't seen any other quests available...
Garrison campaign quests start to pop up once you hit level 100 and have advanced your Garrison's development to a certain point (not maximized, but you should be in the right place before you reach 100). They are not tied in any way to the Apexis daily quests; those are related to Garrison invasions. Where this might be causing some confusion for a few is when the Garrison campaign quest takes you to the same area as your Apexis daily.

If you meet the criteria for a campaign quest, you'll notice a regular exclamation mark somewhere in your Garrison that wasn't there the day before. The quest will then lead to a handful of follow-up quests which we recommend you complete so you can move on to the next chapter the following week.

I did iron siege campaign with gazlowe but I never received another quest. is it bugged?
We're currently investigation an issue a small number of players have reported where they are not receiving one of the Garrison campaigns after completing the previous week's quests. However, without knowing which of the Gazlowe-related quests you've completed, there is a chance you might have stopped short of finishing the whole line of quests that are needed to close out that campaign. If you don't finish the full line of quests for this week, then the next set of campaign quests won't be available next week.

Why all this intrigue about when and where the first one pops up?
I wasn't too keen about spoiling all the surprises, but if you really want to know, you need to be level 100 and have a tier 2 Garrison. If you have these two things checked off, there is a chance you started a campaign and have yet to complete it.

If I missed the first one, does that mean I'm out of luck for the whole thing?
No. The first campaign will be available if you meet the initial criteria, and remain available until you accept the first quest. All subsequent campaigns will remain on hold until you complete the full line of quests with that first campaign, and will pop up following Tuesday resets. If you somehow complete the chain on a Tuesday evening, the next campaign won't start until the following week.

Some people are missing quests too because they aren't realizing some of them actually start from npcs outside of garrison, and if you don't actually explicitly look for them there, you miss them.
To some degree this is correct, but to clarify: All Garrison campaign quest lines begin inside your Garrison's boundaries. More specifically, you will never start a campaign from an NPC or object outside your Garrison's "zone", but there are quests outside in other zones or areas that are associated with the campaign (example, Bladefury's Orders). If on Tuesday you log in and don't immediately see a Garrison Campaign quest on your mini-map, you may need to look in obscure areas within your Garrison to find it.

The reason many people arent complaining is because no one knows they are missing campaign quests because they arent popping up each week.
This is the main reason why I've shared some details. Some folks have expressed a bit of confusion about the system, so we talked about this and wanted to provide some clarity. (Yes, we really do discuss player feedback and take it seriously.)

Like I said before, we're aware of an issue with one of the campaigns not registering correctly for a limited number of players and based on very specific criteria. At this time we're investigating the cause and working on ensuring everything is working correctly for everybody. Aside from that, campaigns are pretty straight-forward and by no means have to be completed every single week. You're more than welcome to take your time working through them.

We've been secretly working on creating a one-time gift to celebrate the WoW Anniversary, and it's now on its way to players that have been with us since the beginning. Emails have been sent to North America and Oceanic players to their registered address, which will include shipment tracking info. Our players in Europe will receive a similar email, and their shipments are expected to begin in the next few weeks.

If you're an NA region player (US, Canada, Oceania, Latin America) the receipt of an email is confirmation that you met the criteria to receive an Anniversary celebration gift. Emails have not yet begun to be sent out to our European players, but we'll start sending them soon. Shipment of the gift to EU players will begin in the next few weeks.

Criteria required to receive the gift:

• Started playing WoW within 60 days of the game launch in your region
• A continuous subscription for all 10 years, from launch to the Anniversary

We're thankful for everyone that chooses to spend time in Azeroth with us, and hope that this small token of appreciation expresses our gratitude to those few of you that have achieved the incredible milestone of playing World of Warcraft for all these 10 years.

[Update] All notification emails have been sent to NA and EU region recipients.

As a way to thank our most loyal World of Warcraft players, we are sending a physical gift to players that have stuck with us since the very beginning. Eligible players have received an email at their registered Battle.net email address. If you did not receive an email, your account does not qualify for this gift.

These gifts have been sent to the physical address associated with eligible Battle.net accounts. To be eligible for this gift, a player must have created a World of Warcraft account within 60 days of the game launching in the NA or EU regions, and maintained their subscription or game time for all ten years.

Eligible players in the North American region, along with eligible Oceanic players, have been sent tracking information for the gift. Eligible players in Europe will receive tracking information when their gift ships later this month. If the shipping address on that email is incorrect, you will need to contact us with your updated information.