Virtual Realms
can someone explain how this works, and which realms will be linked together etc? Will I be seeing people from WRA etc in Stormwind?
We're working on an article currently that will explain more about Virtual Realms in detail. We're hoping to have it out to you all soon and will do our best to answer as many questions as you have as possible.
Keep in mind, we've only released the PTR notes at this point and still have testing, refining, more testing, gathering constructive feedback, testing, and then... when we think it's actually ready, releasing this live. While we have an idea of when we think we are going to have the patch go live, it's no guarantee that everything will go as expected (*crosses her fingers*). This isn't something that's going to be out in a week or anything.
You mean listening to the complaints of the players and then promptly spitting in their faces?
I've never "spit" in anyone's face in my life, I assure you.
Ghostcrawler said it yesterday in a tweet, consider the PTR like a petri dish. We're going to put things on there from time to time to test out how they work. By doing this, we get to see the results without having to commit them and affect a larger population of players in a "permanent" way. Constructive feedback from testers is always a valuable commodity as is just having people go in to the PTR and playing like they normally would so that we can see the effect of the changes.
As I also said, Virtual Realms will not be releasing overnight. There's still time before we go live with them and we still have more to do to make sure they work in a way that makes sense and adds value to the community they serve. Again, I think once we get more details in front of people, and are able to answer more questions about it and what it will do, the more likely many of the concerns I've seen here will be addressed. And if they're not, we'll work to address them as much as possible.
Area 52 currently has queues as high as 1300 just to get on. Are these super high pop realms going to be merged with other super high pop realms? A52 is mostly horde, but if we merge with a mostly alliance server, we're looking at double the queue if we have another 1300 alliance also trying to get on. That's the major concern I have, is population and massive queues, especially with everything being 50% off and more people coming to our already flooded server.
I can't answer about specific realms or how they will be connected (or not) currently, but I can say that we're very aware of the need to balance between a having a healthy population and ending up with queues. We will want to make sure that people can get in and play when they want to and still have people and resources they can rely on to have a great play experience. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Patch 5.4 Set Bonuses
I don't think these will go live in their current state in rated PvP.
You're correct, the numbers on set bonuses are actually just place holders for the moment. At this time try focusing your feedback for set bonuses around the actual mechanics rather than the tuning of the numbers. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
LFR and Flex Loot Restriction
Our very own “Crabby” recently tweeted (
#1 #2) about loot options in Flexible Raids. Just in case some of you missed it, we’re considering the possibility of having certain pieces of loot drop only in Flexible, Normal and Heroic raids.
We know that Tier and Legendary items are both very appealing to all types of raiders, but removing either of those from LFR at this point in time would tamper with the consistency of this expansion, there are a lot of players that rely solely on LFR to get those items and they are expecting LFR to continue to have the same sort of philosophy and design until at least the end of the expansion. Drastic and unexpected changes that impact negatively on parts of the player base is something we should try to avoid as much as possible.
So, for now, instead of making tier pieces exclusive to F/N/H raids, we’re considering the possibility of giving exclusivity to F/N/H on certain valuable pieces that don’t belong to any Tier. We know this isn’t exactly what some of you have been asking for, and that is doesn’t solve the issue of players going into LFR for a chance to get a piece of Tier, but it does provide more value and exclusivity/prestige to raids other than LFR without undermining players that have been relying exclusively on LFR as their main endgame progression experience since the start of the expansion.
I’d also like to point out that LFR content has always been staggered, and FR follows that same pattern but at an accelerated pace; that will probably make it less likely for raiders to run LFR in search for Tier drops, unless of course, they still prefer the accessibility of LFR over Flexible raids. I know that being time efficient is what drives many players, and having tier bonuses at the cost of a lower ilvl might still look like a better option than having to organize a Flexible raid. In the end we like to give players more options, and despite what some might say, I don’t think they will be overwhelming with the addition of Flexible Raids.
May I ask what the reason is for the stagger in Flexi? Makes sense in LFR, but not so much for Flexi imo!
You didn't exactly say the reason for flexi, only LFR, but maybe its one and the same?
Same reason as LFR I would say. We want to make a distinction between Normal and Heroic from the rest, players shouldn’t feel very compelled to go into LFR or even FR if they’re into more serious raiding, it’s still ok if there’s some appeal to them just as long as it doesn’t feel absolutely mandatory, especially a few weeks after LFR has opened.
I don’t like to generalize that much and I think that sometimes I inadvertently fall into the trap of extreme generalization. What I mean is, not all raiders are the same. There’s players raiding normal at a very slow pace, others that clear content as fast as it opens, so I can’t really say FR or LFR will be appealing to normal or heroic raiders, I can only imagine that guilds with slower progress will probably go into FR and LFR to help with their progression much more often than a guild that clears all normal content in a week, so I suppose we can say that FR and LFR shouldn’t be very appealing to anyone at a moderate to fast progression rate, but it’s ok if others that are struggling a bit more or those that can’t commit to guild raiding schedules for more than 1 or 2 days a week feel more inclined to try FR and LFR. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)