Wrath Classic Beta Development Notes - September 23, 2022

[Lumy]

Wrath Classic Beta Development Notes - September 23, 2022

Beta Updates - September 23, 2022

• Realm first Achievements are now unavailable for 24 hours after a player-character takes a free transfer to another realm (was 60 days).
  
  • Developers’ notes: This is intended to eliminate a concern that some players might have about using Free Transfers to move to a realm that isn’t overcrowded.

• Will of Sartharion now increases Sartharion’s health by 25% with 1 drake alive, 45% with 2 drakes alive, and 65% with three drakes alive (was 25%).
  
  • Developers’ notes: Sarth+3 should still be quite manageable, but the unintended strategy of simply burning down the boss should be much less viable. Please note that the in-game tooltip is currently incorrect and will be updated in the future.

• Raids will now count towards the 5 instance-per-hour limit.
  
  • Developers’ notes: The hourly instance limit prevents players from entering instances that they’ve entered at least once already within the last hour. With this change, farming a dungeon should not prevent you from entering a raid instance, so long as you don’t attempt to reset and re-enter that raid instance multiple times.

• The costs and availability of Season 5 Arena gear have been adjusted to their final values.
  
  • Developers’ notes: There were previously some inconsistencies on PvP gear from season to season, especially with rating requirements. This update fixes Savage and Hateful Arena gear so that they require both Honor Point and Arena Point costs (where intended). Previously in the Wrath Beta, they were sold for Arena Points only. As a reminder, the vendors that offer Arena gear in Dalaran, Area 52, Gadgetzan, and the PvP Barracks in capital cities will not sell Season 5 gear to you until Season 5 begins. Savage Arena gear will be purchaseable for only Honor in capital cities, but is sold for Arena Points + Honor in Gadgetzan, Area 52, and Dalaran. This is intended and corresponds with original Wrath of the Lich King.

[SinR]

"Stop playing the game in a way other than how we intended it"
-Blizzard

[Blackdecker]

Yeah that fix about OS+3 sucks. One of my best memories about tlk was os+3 zerg

[Kralljin]

"Stop playing the game in a way other than how we intended it"
-Blizzard

They just couldn't be arsed to fix it in 2008.
When people attempted a similiar speedkill strat on Freya, Blizzard instantly hotfixed it and buffed the selfheal on Freya massively to prevent any nuke strats.

Completely disregarding that the speedkill obviously trivialized a relatively challenging encounter.

[Zodiark]

They just couldn't be arsed to fix it in 2008.
When people attempted a similiar speedkill strat on Freya, Blizzard instantly hotfixed it and buffed the selfheal on Freya massively to prevent any nuke strats.

Completely disregarding that the speedkill obviously trivialized a relatively challenging encounter.

Nothing wrong with playing a game as intended. This is why in sporting events there are rules and etiquette standards that must be adhered to. People in video games make me laugh because they always want to get things done faster and first and in doing so ruin the spirit and sense of adventure.

[Mendzia]

Oh man... the funny story:
My friend added just for laugh our zerg strat to wowwiki (now wowpedia) of original Sarth+3D... and it is still there to this day.
I was one of the hunters... and yes - i know we had gear from 2 tiers above.

[Alayea]

Reminds me of when players downed Gluth in Naxxramas by pulling him into the tunnel. And that was how it was done until patch 3.2, when Gluth no longer came into the tunnel and would be stuck in evasion. Turned out Blizzard had done so intentionally and without any heads-up, so it was a rude awakening for many people (including yours truly) who had only ever experienced the encounter with the tunnel strategy up to that point. What had been a farm boss overnight became progression again as we all had to relearn the fight the "proper" way.

Left me and my raiding guild at that time quite unhappy, as Blizzard had left that boss alone for two entire patches. So yeah, I'll echo SinR here:

"Stop playing the game in a way other than how we intended it"
-Blizzard

[Kn83]

"Stop playing the game in a way other than how we intended it"
-Blizzard

how game companies alienate their own fans lol

[Kralljin]

Left me and my raiding guild at that time quite unhappy, as Blizzard had left that boss alone for two entire patches. So yeah, I'll echo SinR here:

That doesn't change the fact that the way this encounter was played was absolutely not intended.

If this had happened on Retail, you could bet it that Blizzard would also hotfix this immediately.
Sarth+3D is actually a pretty challenging encounter but the zerg strat completely trivialized the fight, considering this is literally the only encounter in T7 that qualifies as remotely difficult, i think it's absolutely justified to fix that cheese.

There is a world of difference between "Play the game the way we want you to play" and "We closed a shortcut that skips the most difficult part of the fight".

[KOUNTERPARTS]

You know, a part of me was looking forward to the Sarth 3D zerg rushes. I honestly cannot remember any strategy to deal with the 3 drakes other than the zerg rush.


Will be interesting.

- - - Updated - - -

There is a world of difference between "Play the game the way we want you to play" and "We closed a shortcut that skips the most difficult part of the fight".

Quoted for truth. People here are too quick to not use their brains and just... make comments.

[Kralljin]

You know, a part of me was looking forward to the Sarth 3D zerg rushes. I honestly cannot remember any strategy to deal with the 3 drakes other than the zerg rush.

Basically, the massive bottleneck of the regular strat was that the Flame Breath, due to a plethora of debuffs / buffs applied to the player / Sartharion, can do insane damage and you have to kill the drakes (or disciples that spawn inside the portal) that apply these buffs / debuffs before you run out of cooldowns and your Tank gets one shot by it.
That's why the encounter is largely regarded as being more difficult in 10man because the dps requirements (at least at the time) made 2 healing a necessity and thus massively limited the amount of raid CD's available.
Once the 2nd Drake was dead, the encounter was effectively won because your tank was no longer in danger of getting one shot by the breath without CD's.

Matter of fact, Feral Druids were regarded as the best tanks for it (because they could get the highest HP pool) and achieved that by wearing Frost Res gear, because it had the most stamina at the time.

[Alayea]

That doesn't change the fact that the way this encounter was played was absolutely not intended.

If this had happened on Retail, you could bet it that Blizzard would also hotfix this immediately.

The experience I related did happen on live servers -- back in the days of OG WotLK. If Blizzard had actually "fixed" Gluth in a timely manner instead of waiting until ToC, perhaps there would have been less salt about the matter. But they didn't, and left plenty of players out in the cold who'd never seen the fight as it had been "intended".

[Kralljin]

The experience I related did happen on live servers -- back in the days of OG WotLK. If Blizzard had actually "fixed" Gluth in a timely manner instead of waiting until ToC, perhaps there would have been less salt about the matter. But they didn't, and left plenty of players out in the cold who'd never seen the fight as it had been "intended".

There's no way without coming over as an asshole, but Gluth or Wotlk Naxx in general isn't really the thing that is commonly discussed when talking about cheese strats largely because even without cheese, the fights are very easy.

[Drudi]

Regarding os3d “fix”. What else do you expect from the company that BANNED the guild that actually did the encounter for the first time the way it was supposed to be done, according to the achievement description (kill the boss while all 3 drakes are alive)?

[Konteil]

well i guess ill have to learn the fight now. back in wrath my guild did a zer gun for os3d on 10 and 25 every week till the whole guild had both mounts. hmmm. gonna have to look it up now. we all were doing it after we got some naxx gear.

[Drudi]

“ We closed a shortcut that skips the most difficult part of the fight”

Was never this. Zerg had much higher gear requirements compared to conventional (and technically incorrect) way of doing 3d. So it’s either “regular” 3d with lower gear or zerg with better gear, you cannot use the “shortcut” right away

[JSoup]

Regarding os3d “fix”. What else do you expect from the company that BANNED the guild that actually did the encounter for the first time the way it was supposed to be done, according to the achievement description (kill the boss while all 3 drakes are alive)?

Mind elaborating on this? Not easy to look some of these things up without specifics.

[Relapses]

I mean, I'm sure you'll still be able to zerg it in ICC gear. The only thing cool about it was the mount but literally everybody had it by the end of WotLK.

[rrayy]

how game companies alienate their own fans lol

Blizzard should not worry about players who try to cheese encounters.

[Dzonathan]

Nothing wrong with playing a game as intended. This is why in sporting events there are rules and etiquette standards that must be adhered to. People in video games make me laugh because they always want to get things done faster and first and in doing so ruin the spirit and sense of adventure.

Has it not occurred to you that a completely different wild approach that game devs not envisioned is an adventure in of itself?
It's not really an adventure if there's only one way to approach something.