Winter Veil 2016, Blizzard Holiday Activity, Developer Communication, Blue Tweets

[chaud]

Season 8 Ends Dec 30th, S9 Starts Jan 6th

Hearthstone Esports is Looking for Casters!

Winter Veil 2016
The Feast of Winter Veil has returned with some updates!

• Snowglobes have been added to Orgrimmar, Ironforge, and Dalaran! While inside, you have the holiday goblin transformation and are able to fly
• The BB King achievements have been hotfixed to remove Varian and Vol'jin from the required leaders
• The Endothermic Blaster is the gift this year, rewarding Brr... It's Cold in Here
• Miniature Winter Veil Tree is now item level 835.
• Finely-Tailored Red Holiday Hat is dropped by Talixae Flamewreath in Court of Stars
• Finely-Tailored Green Holiday Hat is dropped by Illysanna Ravencrest (Black Rook Hold) and King Deepbeard (Eye of Azshara)
• The Abominable Greench now scales with your level, so you can do the quest on a non max level character
• Greatfather Winter spawns hourly near 50, 79 at the top of the mountain, rides down, granting 500 Order Resources to anyone along the way.
• New Winter's Veil music was added in Patch 7.1
• Disposable Winter Veil Suits hasn't been seen yet, but is listed as a Winter's Veil item
• Don't forget to do the followup to You're a Mean One..., as it rewards Smokywood Pastures Special Gift, which has a small chance to contain Winter's Grasp or Flames of Ragnaros.
• The Garrison related Winter Veil activities are still around, so check those out if you missed them last year.

Blizzard Holiday Activity 2016-2017

Hey all!

As you are undoubtedly aware, Winter Veil is soon to come to Azeroth, bringing with it a season of good cheer and high spirits, as well as a time where we gather together with those who we hold closest to us - family, friends, and colleagues.

In the same spirit, winter is upon us, and we wanted to take this chance to share some notices on our activity throughout the remainder of the holiday season and on into the New Year.

• There will be less Blizzard employee activity and engagement across most World of Warcraft forums, especially the PTR forums and General Discussion.
• There will be reduced activity and engagement on World of Warcraft's social media, particularly notable is WarcraftDevs, which will have reduced activity through to the new year.
• Customer Support staff will still be hard at work during the holidays - if you need to contact Customer Support for any reason, you will be able to do so through the Blizzard Support site. Please take note that there will still be Support staff monitoring the forums and assisting with moderation, and our Customer Support forums will remain active through the holiday season!

It’s important to note that we will still be going over threads posted during the holidays when we return, so continue to share your thoughts and feedback while we’re away!

We’d like to thank everyone for their understanding as we step away from our keyboards and take time to travel and visit with our loved ones. We look forward to returning after the holidays in 2017, for what looks to be an amazing year for both Blizzard and World of Warcraft.

From all of us here at Blizzard: Happy holidays, happy New Year, and we will see you in 2017!

Blue Posts

Developer Communication
I think there is still a lot more work to be done to develop a feedback cycle that effectively nurtures constructive discussions.
The "feedback cycle" is one of the hardest things we are working with at the moment. There is just a ton of feedback all the time, and it never ends, so as soon as you, say, send a dev and email and explain the state of the feedback, its probably already changed ten-fold. :P

It's not an instantaneous fix, but more of a long term solution that will take a lot of changes to how we function doing certain processes internally. I think there's some good solutions for this that I'm working with Lore on into the beginning of next year. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 7.1.5 and Nighthold Release Date
They have said before that 7.1.5 and Nighthold release are independent of each other
They are independent of each other.

As another note, this means that Cutting Edge: Xavius and Ahead of the Curve: Xavius will become unobtainable with the release of Nighthold on January 17.

You are still going to release Nighthold with the state of the PTR as it is?
Nighthold =/= 7.1.5

Edit: To clarify a bit, and expand on something I should have mentioned originally - with this I meant the PTR is in flux, and there's a lot of tuning to be done still prior to 7.1.5 and Nighthold's release - but we also don't agree that the state of the PTR is bad. We wouldn't drop a patch with major class changes in the middle of a raid tier, as even we agree that would be silly. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets

Lore
is Elothir a mortal druid that took shape of a tree? If so, is he a Night Elf or Tauren?
Elothir is an ancient. (Alex_Afrasiabi)

Misc
Should make a permadeath WoW server.... hmmm. (Muffinus)
How about just no way to release, you must be resurrected. It would be fairly permanent if you didn't have living healer friends.
.Either way all of your loot definitely drops on the floor when you die and other people can take it (Muffinus)
Meanwhile, gamers around the world start shaking uncontrollably
.Imagine the race for world first Helya if death was permanent. Hahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahhaaaaaaaaaa (Muffinus)
*does dungeon healer afks tank pulls too much, everyone dies* ragequit WoW
But what if there were no dungeons and it was only open world questing... (Muffinus)
sounds like vanilla when I had no one else to play with lol
The true vanilla experience is getting owned repeatedly in STV until you cry (Muffinus)
I know you're mostly kidding, but I always thought an official Iron-Man-Challenge mode would be cool to have.
Until a 65 PKs your 30 and you have a sad/forum thread. Do the kids still say PK? What do you say? (Muffinus)

[eschatological]

At least I can finally get the Flames of Ragnaros from somewhere else now? Yay!

[Kynario]

The new Winterveil music is great.

[Deleted]

Can you please release the artifact catch up NOW!?! We have alts now! not in a month NOW!

[MrExcelion]

Can you please release the artifact catch up NOW!?! We have alts now! not in a month NOW!

Nothing planned till early January

[Arvandor]

a cheap holiday excuse for the lack of communication and fixing their worst class design ever?

i hope they work with the massive good hunter feedback for the next xpac and rework the complete broken class to his former state..

[Deleted]

Highmountain <3

[Faeldan_US]

I say PK every so often.

[Jasper Kazai]

Permadeath WoW would be a terrible and nigh-unplayable game. The game is designed for you to die countless times as you try different things.

[cmlights]

i always assumed that 7.15 would not drop at the same time as nighthold, but i also assumed that 7.15 was going to come out first we get used to the new changes and then we go to nighthold. with the lack of info coming (meaning it's taking a lot longer than expected). i'm fearing that 7.15 is coming after nighthold. them saying class change in the middle of nighthold is silly so what is 7.15 coming out? in fucking april?

[leviathonlx]

i always assumed that 7.15 would not drop at the same time as nighthold, but i also assumed that 7.15 was going to come out first we get used to the new changes and then we go to nighthold. with the lack of info coming (meaning it's taking a lot longer than expected). i'm fearing that 7.15 is coming after nighthold. them saying class change in the middle of nighthold is silly so what is 7.15 coming out? in fucking april?

Probably the end of January. Blizzard never releases patches during the Holidays due to the 2 weeks off they get at the end of December.

[envenger]

Permadeath WoW would be a terrible and nigh-unplayable game. The game is designed for you to die countless times as you try different things.

So is dark souls but people seem to do no death run plenty of times.

[Lady Dragonheart]

I'm really hoping to get Flames of Ragnaros this year... Crossing my fingers and toes... >.<

[cmlights]

So is dark souls but people seem to do no death run plenty of times.

but 7.15 wont come out at the end of january, nighthold is coming out mid january. the post literally just said they wont release class changes during a new raid.

[Tupolew519]

This winterveil music is cool.

[garfeeld]

The new Winterveil music is great.

Where do you get to hear the music?

[derpkitteh]

the red hat is stuck behind a mythic dungeon? did they fucking forget that they haven't added the heroic modes of those yet?

way to go.

[Cobrakai]

the red hat is stuck behind a mythic dungeon? did they fucking forget that they haven't added the heroic modes of those yet?

way to go.

so go do mythic then. 0 people are stopping you.

[derpkitteh]

so go do they mythic then. 0 people are stopping you.

how about don't make mythic only dungeons because it's a stupid idea?

and don't hide shit behind them until you unfuck your fuck up?

[Cobrakai]

or you could just do the mythic instead of waiting for them to fix something they dont really need to fix. one of those things will happen before the other.