Offset Armor and Ashran Conquest Hotfix, July 24 Hotfixes, Battlegrounds Bonus Event

[chaud]

Vote for Your Favorite Build, Community Buff on PTR, Archon Set Round-Up

New Card Reveal: Wilfred Fizzlebang, Sacred Warrior, King's Defender

Town Hall Heroes #73, Epic Plays of the Week #40

PvP Rewards Hotfixes - Offset Armor and Ashran Conquest

Thanks again for all of your feedback. We’ve been discussing it heavily, and are going to make a few more changes.

First, we’re going to make the remaining non-set armor pieces available on the Conquest vendors. They’ll still be available through the Champion’s Strongboxes, but if you’d rather not leave earning them up to random chance, you’ll be able to purchase them for Conquest points instead. With this change, the only items that will only be available through the Champion’s Strongboxes are the random-stat Accolade trinkets (which cannot be put on the vendors due to some technical hurdles). We're aiming to make this change with this upcoming weekly reset.

Note that, as a result of this change taking place, we no longer plan to make the Champion’s Strongboxes purchasable with Conquest points for players who have earned the Wild Conquest achievement. Since nearly all of the items in the Strongboxes will be directly purchasable with Conquest points themselves, we feel that this would just add unnecessary frustration or confusion if players were to spend their Conquest on a Strongbox instead of just buying the item they wanted.

The other change we’ll be making is to remove the Ashran-only 200 Conquest point bonus to the weekly Conquest cap. The total cap (1700 plus any additional bonuses from rating) will remain the same as it is currently, you just won’t have to go to Ashran to earn all of it. We're hoping to push this change live with this week's reset, but it requires a lot more programming and testing to make sure it's functioning properly, so it may not go live until the following week.

Again, thanks for all the heartfelt feedback on this issue. We’ve definitely learned a lot of very valuable lessons, and are looking forward to seeing how the rest of Warlords Season 2 progresses!

Patch 6.2 Hotfixes - July 24

PvP
Please note that the following PvP reward changes are currently still in-testing.

• Conquest vendors now sell non-set PvP armor pieces that could be found in the Champion’s Strongbox.
• Removed the Ashran-only 200 Conquest Point bonus to the weekly Conquest cap. Total Conquest cap remains unchanged, but characters no longer need to go to Ashran to earn all of it.

Creatures and NPCs
Shadowmoon Valley

• Yggdrel's Entangling Vines should no longer continue to deal damage after the growth has been slain.

Quests
Kezan

• Liberate the Kaja'mite: Fixed an issue where characters above level 20 were unable to loot Kaja'mite Chunks.

Battlegrounds Bonus Event July 24-27

The first Battlegrounds Bonus Event is underway. Through the end of the day on Monday, July 27, you’ll have a constant +200% boost to your honor gains from Battleground objectives and wins.

Earlier this week, we asked you to pick your two favorite Battlegrounds. There’s still time to register your opinion; the poll closes on Monday.

Keep an eye out for the event-only quest “A Call to Battle”, which rewards 500 Conquest Points above your maximum when you win four Battlegrounds.

On which Battleground will you shine the most during the event?

Ghostcrawler Tweets
Ghostcrawler has recently provided longer answers to some questions than tweets would allow.

What's your view on "Bring the player, not the class" philosophy from a couple of years perspective? Do you believe that ultimately it adds more to the game (better flow & acessibility) than it takes away (not feeling unique in a big game) or not really and MMOs should embrace strong class diversity
No, I'm still a fan of the philosophy. The state of the game before that was a value was one about building small groups to maximize buffs.

I do feel that under my watch that class design did get a little too homogenized. It's tough because every day players would challenge us with "Why do I have to be so bad on this one fight? Why can't I have a cool ability that makes me desirable?" We would have (and probably should have) pushed back some on that even at the cost of game balance.

I haven't been keeping up with the game so I can't comment on the state of class design today. I'm just talking about when I worked on things.

Do you think Blizzard's philosophy changed when they merged with Activision? Back in 2008, they said nothing would change, but since then, seems like Blizzard slowly became more interested/focused on the general public (and profit).
We never noticed much Activision influence down in the trenches. Maybe the execs felt it. I don't know.

Profit is a weird thing in this business. Because, yes, it is a business, and not only do we want to keep the lights on, but many of us want to feel that we didn't make a mistake going into this industry. I think we've all played games that felt like they were focusing too much in tricking you out of your hard-earned cash and left us feeling icky. But that doesn't have to mean that being successful is a bad priority.
I am exaggerating slightly here, but I get the feeling sometimes that some players would prefer developers to be sacrificing everything just to pour their soul into a game, that somehow the design is more pure and therefore better that way. In reality, that doesn't happen. World-class artists and hot-shot engineers kind of want to feed their families.

Again, you can overdo it. Since League is essentially free to play, we strive to make players feel good about spending money and not to come across as too greedy.

When you were still at Blizzard, players got used to you communicating with them, and giving them some insights on the decisions, you made. After you left some of the developers actually tried to follow your footsteps, like Celestalon. Then they opened common twitter and went silent, not good imo?
It is hard for those of us on the outside to tell what is the desire of individual developers and what is company policy.

Do you still play World of Warcraft?
I haven't since I left Blizzard. That has zero to do with the game itself and more to do with my relationship with it. I was really, really close to WoW, as you can imagine. Some space has been good for perspective. As just one example, I actually had some trouble during my interview at Riot because I couldn't speak in depth about other game designs to the extent that I could about WoW; it took just so much of my bandwidth at work and at home. I am trying to be a more well-rounded designer now and immerse myself in other games.

There are emotional reasons for the distance as well. I compare it sometimes to having a breakup with your SO. The split may have been for very good reasons, but still driving by their house or stalking them on social media brings up these unresolved feelings.

If I had to guess, I'll be back and playing again in a year or so.

Are you excited to see the Warcraft movie coming out next year and would you watch it?‎
Totally. I wouldn't be surprised if we took a company trip to see it.

I've hinted at this before, but players tend to extend the rivalries they feel with other games to the studios that make them, but we really don't feel it. We want the best for companies like Blizzard and Valve. I have friends at both studios. I want to see them succeed.

Hearthstone - New Card Reveals
Another set of cards for The Grand Tournament expansion was revealed today!

[moveth]

I gave in guys. I came back

#MovethArtificiallyFreed

[Grimalkin of Old]

Ashran is no longer mandatory? I thought I'll never see the day ...

[Sithalos]

And now Assram will turn into the barren wasteland it deserves to be.

[Raevene]

Why would a player above level 20 be questing in Kezan? In fact, how?

[Deleted]

"I am exaggerating slightly here, but I get the feeling sometimes that some players would prefer developers to be sacrificing everything just to pour their soul into a game, that somehow the design is more pure and therefore better that way. In reality, that doesn't happen. World-class artists and hot-shot engineers kind of want to feed their families."

Okay, this has to be accepted. Still I kinda want to nail down the expectations that I want to have of WoW to something more specific. I'd like to see the question if he thinks that the amount of content that we had in Wrath of the Lich King is appropriate to be expected as a customer for future expansions. Not exactly the same features, I don't expect new classes, but more looking at the amount of big zones, the immense capital, number of raids, dungeons, battlefront, that sorta thing.

It's just a question of "they did it before, why couldn't they do it again?"

[arcaneshot]

Why would a player above level 20 be questing in Kezan? In fact, how?

The same way Doubleagent got to Lv.100 in Pandaria.

There's nothing stopping you from using those five Pet Battle dailies to keep leveling even in a Profession-less wasteland.

[Xentronium]

It took them long enough to finally fix Yggdrel. Nasty tree.

[Shudder]

As someone who only pve's and has never pvp'd, and generally ignores all the pvp stuff posted. From the outside looking in it looks like whoever is in charge of pvp this expansion is a fucking twat and has no clue what they're doing. All these constant changes, it looks like amateur hour. This ashran place sounds like a mess.

[Zyranthian]

"I am exaggerating slightly here, but I get the feeling sometimes that some players would prefer developers to be sacrificing everything just to pour their soul into a game, that somehow the design is more pure and therefore better that way. In reality, that doesn't happen. World-class artists and hot-shot engineers kind of want to feed their families."

Okay, this has to be accepted. Still I kinda want to nail down the expectations that I want to have of WoW to something more specific. I'd like to see the question if he thinks that the amount of content that we had in Wrath of the Lich King is appropriate to be expected as a customer for future expansions. Not exactly the same features, I don't expect new classes, but more looking at the amount of big zones, the immense capital, number of raids, dungeons, battlefront, that sorta thing.

It's just a question of "they did it before, why couldn't they do it again?"

Why would they want to do it again? Can you imagine how much flack they would cop if for the first tier of raiding next expansion they just scaled up and re-used an existing raid? They would be utterly crucified for it, and quite rightly so. And Trial of the Crusader? That was barely a raid, they put more effort into 5 man instances these days than went into that raid.

Not to mention there was absolutely nothing to do at level 80 outside of raiding, wintergrasp, and riding around in circles around Dalaran. They're already getting dragged over the coals for how theres 'nothing' to do currently at level 100 outside of raiding, but theres far, far more max level content these days than there ever was in Wrath days. Take off the rose coloured glasses for a second and try and get some perspective.

[Mellrod]

I still don't think I understand why they called this next HS expansion "The tournament" instead of just "The Argent Tournament". Maybe just be me nitpicking, but it's the little details that bug you the most, sometimes.

[Sabrescene]

I still don't think I understand why they called this next HS expansion "The tournament" instead of just "The Argent Tournament". Maybe just be me nitpicking, but it's the little details that bug you the most, sometimes.

It's actually called 'The Grand Tourney' which I think works better than 'The Argent Tournament' for the tone they're going for - very silly/fun rather than paladins and crusaders, important lore, etc. There's pirates, murlocs and dragons running around for example, we've barely even seen any members of the Crusade itself show up yet (though I'm sure there'll be quite a few in there). It just gives the expansion a nice theme to tie it all together.

[Wodark]

no more ashran? NO.MORE.ASHRAN!? I think i just came in my pants DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

[Backjauer]

Why would they want to do it again? Can you imagine how much flack they would cop if for the first tier of raiding next expansion they just scaled up and re-used an existing raid? They would be utterly crucified for it, and quite rightly so. And Trial of the Crusader? That was barely a raid, they put more effort into 5 man instances these days than went into that raid.

Not to mention there was absolutely nothing to do at level 80 outside of raiding, wintergrasp, and riding around in circles around Dalaran. They're already getting dragged over the coals for how theres 'nothing' to do currently at level 100 outside of raiding, but theres far, far more max level content these days than there ever was in Wrath days. Take off the rose coloured glasses for a second and try and get some perspective.

Your wrong about there being nothing to do, there were several daily hubs, and I did enjoy the daily quest experience of Wrath (and other expansions) more than WoD though. The daily hubs available in Wrath felt more compelling to me than the Apexis dailies that we initially had. I do quite like Tanaan, but even then I preferred having the grind broken up into individual quests, as in most other expansions.

[Deleted]

I love that there is a hotfix for level 20+ characters doing a level 1 quest in a level 1-5 zone, and I'm not saying this sarcastically.

[Rioo]

PvP this expansion has been such a mess. At this point I think they would have been better off just not adding any new PvP for WoD.

[QuinthalasKT]

Omg WHO CARES WHAT GHOSTCRAWLER THINKS!! Stop spamming his tweets on the front page! Ffs chaud get better at this, or is there really no wow news anymore?

Sick of constant tweets from a dev at another company/game! Arghhhhh!

Rage!

[Leyre]

Omg WHO CARES WHAT GHOSTCRAWLER THINKS!! Stop spamming his tweets on the front page! Ffs chaud get better at this, or is there really no wow news anymore?

Sick of constant tweets from a dev at another company/game! Arghhhhh!

Rage!

http://websitesetup.org/

Here, you can make you own website if you dont like what's posted here

[Baracuda]

Omg WHO CARES WHAT GHOSTCRAWLER THINKS!! Stop spamming his tweets on the front page! Ffs chaud get better at this, or is there really no wow news anymore?

Sick of constant tweets from a dev at another company/game! Arghhhhh!

Rage!

8 years and 130 posts, you would think you might be the kind of person with a lot of substance in your posts but... nope.

[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

"Yggdrel's Entangling Vines should no longer continue to deal damage after the growth has been slain."

Great. Just took them the entire expansion to fix this.