Patch 5.4.2 Notes Update, Blue Posts, Blue Tweets, EU FCM Update, RoS Beta, TCG Art

[chaud]

Reaper of Souls Closed Beta Now Available, Diablo III PTR Patch 2.0.1 - v.2.0.0.20847

Hearthstone Puzzles #4, Three Competing Resources, Known Issues Update, Opt-In Update

Patch 5.4.2 Notes Update
A few last minute changes that didn't make it into the PTR notes were added to the final Patch 5.4.2 notes earlier this week.

Shop Now Available

• You can now browse and purchase a bevy of mounts and pets directly from within World of Warcraft through our newly added Shop interface.
• We’ve made it possible for you to receive your new pal right in your inventory (or via mail if your inventory is full). Just click the Shop icon on the menu bar once you’ve logged in to a character, and you’ll be able to pick out a new friend to add to your collection and start your adventures together right away.

Classes

• Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Glyph of Remove Curse now increases the Mage's damage by 5% for 10 seconds after successfully removing a curse (down from a 15% increase to damage).

Quests

• Noodle Time: Resolved a situation that may cause players to be immediately removed from the scenario.
• The Secret Ingredient Is...: Resolved a situation that may cause players to be immediately removed from the scenario.

Achievements

• You Don't Have an Eternity - Guild Edition no longer has a timed requirement. The guild achievement now only requires that players defeat Malygos while in a guild group.
• Resolved an issue that caused players to not receive credit towards the Drop It! and Drop It Now! achievements.

Blue Posts

Low Population Realms and Character Transfers
I think Blizzard arn't focused enough on this issue, surely giving characters on full realms a free transfer to a medium or low realm would be better instead of trying to shove players onto dead realms
All FCMs currently on offer are to medium/high population realms, as it was clear no one wanted to move to realms with low populations, we've been saying this for some time. Low and many medium population realms are in the process of being connected with other realms. We're proceeding as quickly as we can while making sure things continue to run smoothly and no new queues are created in the process.

It's a shame the connected realms aren't having more of an impact
Not many are connected yet, things will be different. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Dismiss Pet Change
Quick comment to clarify since I've seen this suggestion come up a lot:

could have just made RoS share a cooldown no matter which pet one has out.
We'd considered doing something like that, but there's actually major technical hurdles with the way Dismiss Pet works that make it a much bigger task than it sounds. We'd have to make some pretty scary changes to the way pets work (in the underlying code, at least) to be able to implement a shared cooldown on pet abilities. We may end up revisiting the idea sometime in the future, but we simply did not have time for it in the 5.4.2 development cycle. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Boss Must Die Weekly Quests
How about bringing this back for max level? Old raids are pretty dead now outside of alts LFR. Bringing this back will encourage people to use the old raids some more rather than gathering dust, especially HoF, even LFR is fairly desolate in there.

Instead of giving valor (emblems of frost + triumph), which aren't really important right now due to the rep required to buy 522 gear on alts, why not give a warforged seal? (or whatever is its equivalence later on).
The Gods of Warcraft are a bit busy right now working on WoD… You know, that whole thing about creating a world in 6 days? Well… maybe for a very, very tiny world, not Draenor for sure!

So, this is a pretty good idea but it's not going to happen for Mists of Pandaria. It might be something we could do later on in Warlords of Draenor though. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets

Warlords of Draenor
i keep going through the dark portal to get to WoD but its not working. Any ideas?
Keep trying every single day IMO, and some day (hopefully not far in the future), it will suddenly work. (Source)

By subtly, I mean the format - getting back to the adventure of it all. The fun of an unravelling story line.
The hope is that Warlords feels old-school without all the really old stuff that feels archaic now. (Source)

Why aren't there any new races/classes in WoD? New races/classes are like the bread and butter for a new expansion
Adding a new class is very disruptive for all players and on top of that, Monks are the least played. Boost to 90 may help that. (Source)
For races, there wasn't a slam dunk new race and we wanted players to be able to play their redone current races. (Source)
ghost, i really hope you can reply with your opinion, i think that a new class is un-do-able. It's all been done
I think there are plenty of ideas for classes. But WoW doesn't need 30 classes so they need to be added sparingly. (Source)
don't you feel like it would get ab bit repetitive? Unless new elements are introduced
But I feel like the monk did s good job of bringing fresh approaches to those mechanics. (Source)
An aside, but Monks BM/WW (idk MW) feel exquisitely designed as far as how they feel to play right now imo. Good job!
They didn't come up with years of baggage like existing classes. (Source)

In short, what was the reason for going back to the 10 lvl system vs 5 lvls we have had for cata and MOP? more content?
It feels more epic. It lets the rewards come more frequently. It unasks the whole "what happens next expansion at 100?" (Source)
Previously, we felt constrained because of the desire to add new buttons every level or so. But everyone has enough buttons. (Source)

Garrisons
did you guys consider making the garrison an entire zone and guild specific instead of just individual?
Our fear was only the guild leader would get to have fun. Everyone else would just show up. (Source)

Professions
any chance professions could go back to what they were? ie bs = sword / axe / hammer / armor spec with unique, BoP crafts?
The problem we had back then was every plate melee felt the need to go BS to make Stunherald. Should BS be mandatory? (Source)

Raid Finder
Raid finder is just in a sad place nowadays. No one I know likes it, although some people on the forums say they do.
Originally we thought some players could just have an LFR endgame instead of a raiding endgame. (Source)
Our current thought is that LFR is a way to see the content and maybe some gear but not a great way to spend weeks or months. (Source)

Free Character Migrations (FCM) 12/12
The list posted yesterday has been updated with new destination realms.

The following Free Character Migrations are scheduled to be available until December 17, 2013:

Horde
Kazzak (PvP) -> Tarren Mill (PvP)
Kazzak (PvP) -> The Maelstrom (PvP)
Ragnaros (PvP) -> Tarren Mill (PvP)
Ragnaros (PvP) -> The Maelstrom (PvP)

Alliance
Sylvanas (PvP) -> Tarren Mill (PvP)
Sylvanas (PvP) -> The Maelstrom (PvP)

Both
Draenor (PvE) -> Magtheridon (PvE)
Outland (PvP) -> Burning Legion (PvP)
Silvermoon (PvE) -> Magtheridon (PvE)
Stormscale (PvP) -> Ravencrest (PvP)
Twisting Nether (PvP) -> Frostmane (PvP)

Please note: FCMs are opened based on realm population tracking and analysis, not by request. If you’re looking for a specific migration (from realm A to realm B), you should in most cases use the Character Transfer service.

Character Transfers (CT)
All realms follow the regular CT rules, found here:
http://eu.blizzard.com/support/artic...rticleId=20416

Guild Transfer: Although Free Guild Master Realm Transfers are not possible at this time, the Free Character Migration will allow you to retain your guild membership and reputation, provided that the guild master completes a Guild Master Realm Transfer first and the faction remains the same as that of the source realm.

Please note that the FCM service can be closed at any point in time.

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls - Closed Beta Begins
The Reaper of Souls Closed Beta has started, so be sure you are signed up and keep an eye on Diablofans for updates!

TCG Art Update
Blizzard has updated the TCG art gallery to feature ten new pieces.

[moveth]

i hope they stick to 10 levels per xpac. 5 is nice, but the levels just take so long.

[Deleted]

WTB SoO normal cross realm

[Zelthana]

Okay Blizzard, seriously wtf? Opening up a FCM for horde from two servers to Tarren Mill and only one server for alliance? I play on Tarren Mill and it's like they don't know how the server is, the server is +80% horde, and opening up FCM from two friggin' servers for horde and only one for alliance?! This will just make the server even worse...no alliance will transfer here because it's known how horribly unbalanced the server is, while assload of horde will probably transfer here.

[Deleted]

Whats the difference 5/10 lvls per xpac if it only resets your exp bar (no rewards like skills or talents or whatsoever)

[Toiran]

Outland (PvP) -> Burning Legion (PvP)

Hmm because people on a majority English speaking realm, with a fair few Swedish players, are going to transfer to Burning Legion, where literally every guild is polish.

The transfers never make sense, no wonder hardly anyone takes advantage of them.

10 levels does feel better, I prefer it.

[TCceen]

Lets see... 5 levels on my 12 toons was 60 levels worth of grinding... 10 levels on all my 12 toons ummm ....120 levels to grind. Mentally that just makes me want to cry. Physically? I think my carpel tunnel sees the number and just starts pulsing!

[mstieler]

Whats the difference 5/10 lvls per xpac if it only resets your exp bar (no rewards like skills or talents or whatsoever)

Here's the thing though: at Blizzcon, they showed what those 10 levels were going to do, and that's to tweak core abilities to be more helpful (see this pic from Blizzcon for an idea); 10 levels means more tweaks are possible.

Lets see... 5 levels on my 12 toons was 60 levels worth of grinding... 10 levels on all my 12 toons ummm ....120 levels to grind. Mentally that just makes me want to cry. Physically? I think my carpel tunnel sees the number and just starts pulsing!

Because, since you're gaining levels "faster" (effectively 2 levels in the time it takes to get 1 level in MoP), it won't feel like such a slog. "I'm just going to get my toon another level today" isn't likely to be the multi-hour slog that it is today.

[Schaapa]

Love that fan art! That is all.

[imabanana]

You Don't Have an Eternity - Guild Edition no longer has a timed requirement. The guild achievement now only requires that players defeat Malygos while in a guild group.

What ? "Timed requirement" removed from "You Don't Have an Eternity"... better change the achievement name, this makes no sense now.

[Captain British]

That isn't fan art, it's TCG art.

[Laylriana]

What an assumption for making Garrisons non-guild but player only because "Our fear was only the guild leader would get to have fun. Everyone else would just show up." (Source)
The developers must belong to some douche-bag guilds or else they are douche-bag GMs themselves to make that assumption.

[Tenjen]

they already said in blizzcon and twitter during blizzcon that the farms led to the garrisons which will provide a good testing bed for guild housing later on if it looks viable.

how garrisons plays out will help them develop ideas on how to pull off guild halls without as many problems as creating it right off the bat

[Azerox]

WOO all my chars to Tarren Mill > YAY!

[markdall]

WTB SoO normal cross realm

WTB Cross-faction grouping. Make us look like the race of the group leader for all I care. I'd like to be able to bring my stronger characters to play with some of my wife's characters, meanwhile I had to change factions an expansion ago on my "main" because that's where the raid spot was.

[Deleted]

Wow blizzards retard argument... no new classes cause people dont play monk... dk anyone? >.> thats just a silly comment/argument to use for not adding a new class.

- - - Updated - - -

Lets see... 5 levels on my 12 toons was 60 levels worth of grinding... 10 levels on all my 12 toons ummm ....120 levels to grind. Mentally that just makes me want to cry. Physically? I think my carpel tunnel sees the number and just starts pulsing!

You mean 90% Sweds right?

[Deleted]

my main is on tarren mill but my 5 alts are on ragnaros...what a luck omg thx blizz XD

[Dracbane]

Wow blizzards retard argument... no new classes cause people dont play monk... dk anyone? >.> thats just a silly comment/argument to use for not adding a new class.

No....their argument is wow doesnt need 30 some classes and adding one every xpac has NEVER been on the table to begin with. Adding a new class just causes massive amounts of work for everyone across the board, esp when it comes to PVP. Personally, I dont wanna deal with a new class every xpac. I could deal with new races at a faster pace as this would create some nice new fields of lore for them to pull from. Personally I would have liked the two new races on Pandaria, the Hozen and Jinyu, to have been made available as player races. They are now part of the horde and alliance(respectively) so why not allow them to be playable?

[Funky Kong]

I feel bad for that Tauren.

His face has "I didn't ask for this " written all over it.

[littlemoglie]

i keep going through the dark portal to get to WoD but its not working. Any ideas?
Keep trying every single day IMO, and some day (hopefully not far in the future), it will suddenly work.

I LOL'd, and will LOL when the expansion comes in remembrance of this.