T11 JP shoulders and helm - some clarity
We've offered players who don't raid a reasonable way to gear up, and achieve high levels of power. The JP/VP system makes a lot of sense to us, and gives everyone a pretty good personal progression track in addition to loot drops, and we feel pretty good about the system as it stands. That doesn't necessarily mean that we think that full sets are a necessary part of that picture, though.
We still want to preserve some of the most prestigious PvE loot for players who face down raid content (even if it's a tier behind), and we feel that completing a tier set means that a raid needs to fit in there somewhere. That design makes sense to us, and we want to preserve some of the reward for facing down those bad guys. We re-adjusted those instances specifically to encourage players to go experience them, and we want to leave some incentives in there for players who check those raids out.
[...] We want rewards to retain at least some meaning, because when they don't, all the aspects of play start to blend together. Greater challenges should offer greater rewards, but how do you accomplish that if you also allow lesser challenges to provide all the same rewards, across the board? That's been a long-standing challenge, I think, and the JP/VP system is the compromise answer to it. Please recall that at one time if you wanted purps then you went into a raid, period. We've come a long, long way since then. (
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15 Man Raids!
I'd actually agree that 15 players make for a pretty optimal number of raiders, in terms of the logistics of forming a raid and class representation. The task of tuning raids for three separate sizes is one you probably won't see on our radar any time soon though. (
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45 Minute Dungeon Queue Times (MMO-Champion Note: Hinting to Scenarios?)
We'd like to keep the traditional setting of 5-player dungeons as 1 tank, 1 healer, and 3 DPS. The idea of just adding in NPCs to fill lacking roles is truly not a simple one, nor a route we'd want to take. Not only would this take a lot of design time for a less-than-desirable fix, it'd stand at odds with our philosophy on dungeons for small groups.
That said, you do raise some good points about offering challenging, rewarding content to players which doesn't rely solely on players waiting for a specific class role which is in high demand across the boards. In our minds, there's potentially something missing between daily quests and dungeons, from a content/progression perspective. To that end, we're exploring some options for the future. (
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Limited Number of Characters
It has always been a matter of efficiency in data service. Much like the fabrication of a commercial airplane, the design of the server side of a service like World of Warcraft affects what can be provided to the players for as long as that service is being used.
With an airplane, you can conceivably add more seats inside. You can squeeze more people in there, to a point. But you can't (easily) expand the hull to make room for more seats. Over the long run, if the airline wants to accommodate more people, they add more planes to the route, or replace an existing plane with a larger plane that has room for more seats.
This request - which is heard loud and clear, by the way - is like asking the airline to simultaneously increase the number of passengers that can be carried on every plane in their fleet. Can it be done? Absolutely. It may be something that we are able to do, and soon. It may not be, because providing reliable data service is extremely important to us. (
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Lower level PvP Concerns
We are not deaf to the concerns raised about low-level PvP. We feel it needs some attention too. We don't necessarily feel that it's all just "a heirloom issue," but more to do with time investments reaping rewards that give too great an advantage. While we do agree that low-level PvP isn't in an ideal state and has needed further consideration, our focus has remained where the players are: max-level PvP.
We don't intend to throw oil on the flame by such a comment and this doesn't mean we're completely ignorant of niche playstyles, just that we focus our efforts on where it'll have the greatest effect. What's the answer? We do hear the feedback. When we have looked at the issue, it has simply just seemed too difficult – too tricky – to resolve in a way that we're happy with.
We currently believe resolving it will require much time and effort. But we acknowledge things aren't as great for low-level PvP as they could be and we do have a desire to pay attention to it. (
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