Patch 6.2 - Demon Models, Flying Feedback, Blue Posts, Vanilla Servers, DLC #490

[chaud]

Zero Empathy Beats GR 71, Sunwuko Zodiac Monk, John Yang Paragon 800

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Rotation for May 26, 2015, Upcoming Shop Sales

Patch 6.2 - Updated Demon Models
Patch 6.2 finally updates many of the old demon models. Warlocks only use the new Doomguard model and the rest of their pets are still the old demon models.

Flying Feedback

"Didn't listen" doesn't = "didn't implement." Designing is a group activity, what I want may not matter in the end, but I read your post. (Muffinus)
I think it's a slight misnomer and most are looking for discussion. Only implementing and saying why feels a bit dismissive.
Understood. While I can't offer much for discussion, hopefully it's a small comfort that at least their posts are read/voices heard. (Muffinus)

Mr. Feasel, ask yourself why you disagree that much with many of your players. Do you still think you adress them?
I may not disagree with you at all. I don't make all of the decisions (Muffinus)

Thanks again for the continued feedback. Still here, still listening, (Muffinus)
"Thanks for the feedback" is becoming the wowdev version of "umadbro"
If I didn't want people to continue providing feedback, I wouldn't have posted anything at all (Muffinus)
feedback is useful with two-sided communication, and you (as a team) are still too quiet
I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I think it's important to note that I'm reading all of the responses. (Muffinus)
Would be nice to get the actual reasoning behind decisions instead of snark. A good start is "I'll mention it next meeting."
I never take a piece of feedback lightly. Every Voice Matters. However, I can't talk about internal goings-on. Apologies. (Muffinus)
Sometimes seeing "I hear everything" feels impersonal. Maybe see if you can get a public facing response to some "no" decisions?)
Usually the next product or patch addresses issues, we live in interesting times with instant communication. (Muffinus)

If you're going to announce a major feature being removed indefinitely, an interview isn't the place. Perhaps the main website?
Curious why you feel that way. An interview on a major press site will likely be seen by more players. (CM_Lore)

you realize most of the post has turned into just flaming you guys because months of real feedback was ignored right?
There is a massive difference between "ignored" and "disagreed with." (CM_Lore)

Blue Posts

Selfie Contest Confusion
Hello! Yes we've been working on this for the last few hours after running into an issue with the page not resetting people's entries for the new week. As a solution we're going to be creating a new weekly entry page for each week's challenge that will be specifically for that week. When a new week is available it'll be a new page. To help make that easy for you we're going to constantly update the blizz.ly URL we've been using to always point to the current week's entry page: http://blizz.ly/WoWSelfie

If you did clear your browser and already entered don't worry, your entry is saved, but if you'd like to enter again on the new page there's no penalty, we'll just delete the duplicate. We'll be closing what will be the 'week 1 page' here shortly.

Thanks for your patience, and good luck! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Iron Man Challenge Stats
I have a few convoluted ways of detecting whether a character has equipped certain restricted gear for the Iron Man challenge, however, I would love to be able to just look at their statistics at a character level
Done. Check out the next PTR build - there should be visible character-specific statistics available to track this information. (Official Forums)

Vanilla Servers

I would come back to wow in a heartbeat if blizz made vanilla servers. I would love to experience it all again. By the way I don't mean this as a knock to current WOW, it's just something I would find incredibly fun.
I think the biggest challenges for an idea like this are a) would it be interesting enough to keep playing, and b) would there be enough sustained interest from other players to make the world feel alive. I could easily see the outcome being people logging in, going "wow the game is so much better now," and logging out. (CM_Lore)
IMO seeing how popular uh "theoretical" vanilla servers seem to be, I would say there is at least some demand.
Sure, there's definitely interest, even internally. We just don't think there's enough to offset the costs. (CM_Lore)
Personally, I'd 100% expect it to be something almost everyone just pokes at for a week or two and then drops. (CM_Lore)
Not really an effective use of time for devs who could be working on any number of features for the live game. (CM_Lore)
Speaking for myself, I'd love to go back and poke at classic. I just don't think I'd play it for long. (CM_Lore)
Or, the devs could just 'go back to the core roots', as it were. Yep, especially the class designs, every class used to be fun, but in WoD.
If that's the case, I think we'd rather focus on fixing the modern game. (CM_Lore)

Ghostcrawler Tweets
While the developers have been pretty quiet since @WarcraftDevs appeared, Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard.

Developer Communication
While I didn't always agree with what you had to say, i, at-least, appreciated that you took the time to say it.
Thanks. I figure at least then players can argue whether we aren't hitting our goals or if the goals themselves are bad. (OccupyGStreet)

We miss you dearly GC. @WatcherDev and his team are alienating @Warcraft players with their hubris.
Whether you like every decision or not, I am confident they have your best interests in mind. (OccupyGStreet)

Game Design
If I was going to make an MMO (I'm not) I think I'd shoot for something episodic with the expectation players come and go. (OccupyGStreet)
How does the social aspect play into that, though? Sounds like it would be hell on guilds.
I agree, but I think players are episodic already so the business model might as well be. Social hard either way. (OccupyGStreet)
Was there ever a time where that wasn't the case? Is it a more prominent problem today versus 2007?
I *think* so (?). A lot of games, LoL among them, are huge. They try to be the only game you need. (OccupyGStreet)
Which means ironically we tend to drop games as soon as we hit diminishing returns b/c there is so much else out there. (OccupyGStreet)

What you say you prefer and what you actually did ended complete opposite.
I was a lead designer not a dictator. (OccupyGStreet)

It stopped being fun when my hunter was mocked for not pulling over 100k dps. That was a year ago. #NoEpeen
I wish we had been more progressive about trying to curb bad behavior. (OccupyGStreet)
I wish so, too. I would never raid because of all the bs. But i have some awesome rare hunter pets
One secret is to turn off chat (in any game). That is pretty much their only tool in being a tool. (OccupyGStreet)

The game has too much math and has lost the adventure part. ilvl has ruined the fantasy journey of azeroth. Players couldnt see item ilvl back then. There was no need for perfect dpsrotations in molten core. It was an adventure
I don't think it was ilvl per se. There was just less shared knowledge, which makes sense for a younger game in the 2000s. (OccupyGStreet)
Most of us didn't approach *any* game back then with "How do I min/max this? What is the best spec?" (OccupyGStreet)
We played the characters we chose and when our guilds ventured into MC we used what we had. Alts were rarer in those days too. (OccupyGStreet)

Do you think WoW should have more exclusivity - like it did back in the old days? BC
Exclusivity works when it's stacked on top of normal content (not replacing it) which just means you need more content. (OccupyGStreet)
I was under the impression that Exclusivity was an integral part of why MMO's were successful in the first place.
I think so. But you can't have special content for the elite and nothing for everyone else. (OccupyGStreet)

I didn't start WoW until 2007. I recall lots of fun times since, screencaps from most of them, others just memories in brain.
I remember the feelings so vividly. I don't think you can recapture them though. (This is also true of most of life, sadly.) (OccupyGStreet)

DLC #490 - Food Buff
DLC #490 has been released.

[Buttonmasher]

But warlocks are still not getting updated demon models?
aight....

[Deleted]

They always give the same response to vanilla servers, they just "think" people will play for a week, funny how many "vanilla" servers there are (private), and they seem to keep playing. I think its more like they would feel like accepting defeat or failure if they actually put up vanilla servers, and that is one of the major reasons it has not been done yet, even after constant requests for it.

[Immitis]

oh yeah, next expac has to be burning legion. pls gief nathrezim homeworld blizz.

[furydeath]

Well we know what calss blizzard favors alone with the horde. Green fire then says class quests just don't work. New demon looks and we still have the old water pet on mages UNLESS we glyph it UNLESS

[MikeBogina]

There's a lack of beards and mutton chops on those demons

[Yrjaan1]

They always give the same response to vanilla servers, they just "think" people will play for a week, funny how many "vanilla" servers there are (private), and they seem to keep playing. I think its more like they would feel like accepting defeat or failure if they actually put up vanilla servers, and that is one of the major reasons it has not been done yet, even after constant requests for it.

Looking at the vanilla (not the other expansions) private servers, there aren't very many online. If you put them all together, maybe 50,000 (no specific numbers, grabbing them out of my own experiences). That's nothing compared to what live WoW has right now. Let's say they open a vanilla server, and 300,000 starts playing there regulary. Not a very high number. The numbers will also drop, cause in the end there is not much to do. The only reason people stayed in World of Warcraft was because The Burning Crusade came out, followed by other expansions with new content.
I feel like Blizzard should rather focus on their live game instead of going back to the past. That's what we have the private servers for anyway.

[thilicen]

Loving the no flying thing, glad to see it's continuing.

Next x-pack looks more and more like it's going to be a Burning Legion expansion. Probably not Argus itself though.

[Granyala]

No Sukkubus update?

Figures... ._.

[Somarlane]

I currently do not feel that they have our best interests in mind. It's their Vision that occupies their headspace. They can go artsy all day long, but at the end of that day... It is a dangerous thing to confuse popularity of the product with popularity of the entity producing the product. Just ask TotalBiscuit back in Cataclysm.

[Kauko]

When will people stop whining with all this vanilla server ****. It has been 10y, but most some of you still act as 12year old. As if you don't remember all the whining back then how hard everything was, how only very few were able to see endgame, how much time you had to put in. Its like the same people that were whining back then are whining now. Look in the mirror!
And I agree with blue, Vanilla servers would be popular for couple of months... Blizz just has to fix the problems that are in the game, thats all. And at least admit, tell us why problems as are in WoD happened. All what players want is honesty.

[Deleted]

Looking at the vanilla (not the other expansions) private servers, there aren't very many online. If you put them all together, maybe 50,000 (no specific numbers, grabbing them out of my own experiences). That's nothing compared to what live WoW has right now. Let's say they open a vanilla server, and 300,000 starts playing there regulary. Not a very high number. The numbers will also drop, cause in the end there is not much to do. The only reason people stayed in World of Warcraft was because The Burning Crusade came out, followed by other expansions with new content.
I feel like Blizzard should rather focus on their live game instead of going back to the past. That's what we have the private servers for anyway.

your numbers are purely out of imagination i guess ^^ Do you even know how many players are online on a "Normal" blizzard server/realm on average? With those numbers the realm would be full all the time, just saying They should atleast open one in US and one in EU, and run it for some time and see if its something that sticks.

[Mekh]

"You guys suck for taking away flying!"

"Give us a server with a state of the game before flying existed!"

[Deleted]

When will people stop whining with all this vanilla server ****. It has been 10y, but most some of you still act as 12year old. As if you don't remember all the whining back then how hard everything was, how only very few were able to see endgame, how much time you had to put in.
And I agree with blue, Vanilla servers would be popular for couple of months... Blizz just has to fix the problems that are in the game, thats all. And at least admit, tell us why problems as are in WoD happened. All what players want is honesty.

Yet there are a lot of vanilla servers (private) that has been running for years...

- - - Updated - - -

"You guys suck for taking away flying!"

"Give us a server with a state of the game before flying existed!"

Do you seriously believe that its the same people :P? i give up on commenting here now ^^

[Mekh]

Do you seriously believe that its the same people :P? i give up on commenting here now ^^

The flying-guys say they are the majority.
The vanilla-guys say they are the majority.

There has to be an overlap for certain. Unless they are not the majority...? OH SHI-

[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

"You guys suck for taking away flying!"

"Give us a server with a state of the game before flying existed!"

Two different groups of people. I know, using your logic is hard.

[Backjauer]

Absolutely hate the no-flying. Plenty of other problems with the game too, but it's pretty pushed me into not continuing after this expansion. Getting around is too much of a chore at end game. I don't want my games to feel like a chore.

As far as Vanilla servers go, I have no interest. Give me a WOTLK or maybe TBC server and I'd be quite interested though. I'm calling bullshit on

Yep, especially the class designs, every class used to be fun, but in WoD.

. Class design was all over the place in Vanilla, and some specs were basically unusable in raids and stuff.

[thilicen]

Two different groups of people. I know, using your logic is hard.

And they both have one thing in common: Both claims they are the vast majority, and the fact that Blizz disagrees with them can only mean that they are completely ignoring the entire community.

Or as I like to call them: Entitled whiny shits who can't comprehend the fact that not everyone shares their train of thought.

[aeuhe4yxzhds]

Lets hope they keep upgrading the models, we might have Wow2 sooner than what we think

[Mekh]

And they both have one thing in common: Both claims they are the vast majority, and the fact that Blizz disagrees with them can only mean that they are completely ignoring the entire community.

Or as I like to call them: Entitled whiny shits who can't comprehend the fact that not everyone shares their train of thought.

Thank you for the summary.