Tom Chilton Interview, Shaman Cosmetic Armor, Raid Testing, Blue Posts, BG Downloader

[Deleted]

No annual pass until they have another steaming pile of a game they need to boost sales numbers on.

[Shudder]

Sigh, you're a whore. Bet you made your parents proud. Nice profile pic too >_> sarcasm.
Dont care if I get banned for this, It needs to be said.

What's wrong with being a whore? A lot better than being a sad lonely loser making fun of people on a message board. Which is what I'm doing now!

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How much did you love it when the game became World of Teleport/Queuecraft? God forbid they actually do things that encourage players to not hole up in their capital city!

Hey man can you come help me with this?
Sure summon me.
K summon out.
Yay we're having fun.


Hey man can you come help me with this?
Screw that I'm not going all the way out there.
Ah, ok.

[SodiumChloride]

That is always a tough question. Certainly the raid is the cornerstone of the patch. I think that we will probably learn more from Timeless Isle than anything else that we are doing in this patch. What we learn from Timeless Isle can serve as a foundation for the way that we approach creating more re-playable content in the future.

At least they are putting some effort into creating other types of content other than raids and more raids.

[Shudder]

This is the most important piece of info here and no one is talking about it

Nobody is talking about it cause it's common sense that normal doesn't have gating. So if flex is the same pace as normal then it will not have gating.

[bejii]

How will things like realm forums, realm first achievements, and other realm specific things work with Connected Realms?
Frankly, we won't be doing a lot of that stuff going forward, so that's how.

I am very thankful for this. Realm first achievements have never been properly tested before they're released, which leads to all sorts of whining, exploiting, and drama. See Realm First Working as a Team (Cata edition), Realm First Challenge Conqueror Gold (level 10 alt got it on my server), Realm First Ra-den (transfer guilds exploit to get this one).

[Arkenaw]

How much did you love it when the game became World of Teleport/Queuecraft? God forbid they actually do things that encourage players to not hole up in their capital city!

As opposed to how it is now where people still demand summons from warlocks or the group just falls apart if there isn't one?

[Revak]

The only thing removing 'Have Group Will Travel' did was require 1 more person to fly to the raid entrance. That's it. Everyone else still waits for a summon. So I'm not sure how this has helped people see the world.

[Unholyground]

"Another alternative to creating PvP crafted sets would be to segment players more by their gear level, matching you against players with similar gear."

No shit, I have been saying this since fucking vanilla.

[Firebyrd]

Commonality =/= causality. There are more people in the world now not because HGWT was removed but because there's /more to do in the world now/. People weren't afk queuing in Cata due to HGWT-it was irrelevant when queuing due to getting teleported to the instanced content anyway. All it's done is punish people who are either raiding (particularly if you have to replace someone in the middle of a raid with no lock. If you're in the middle bosses in ToT with no lock, have fun taking longer to get outside the instance to the stone than it takes to fly there from the Shrine!) or who are *gasp* out in the world experiencing content that they want others to join them in.

The reason there are more people in the world is due to dailies/pet battles/arch being improved/etc. All the removal of HGWT has done is waste more of my limited raid time.

[Elysia]

the entire purpose of a cosmetic item is that everyone can use it regardless of what armor they use, making this shaman exclusive and cosmetic is pointless because if they want it to be shaman exclusive they shouldve just made it mail

While you have a point about Griftah's shoes, this definition that you're applying to "cosmetic" items was never an official definition from Blizzard. They never at any point guaranteed that items tagged "cosmetic" would be for every single class. It might have just happened to work out that way up until this point, but there was no promise that it would always continue to work that way.

[foxHeart]

Makes the world feel more alive. lol

Yeah, for the two people who actually fly out to the summoning stone as opposed to the single person who flew out by themselves before HGWT was taken away. Dat immersion!

[Azrile]

Did they just confirm exclusive mogging armor for Shamans in 5.4? Oh, the shitstorm will get epic proportions.

Why? they gave a perfectly valid explanation for it. They created a cool armor set for the dark shaman in the new raid, and thought why not give players a chance to also have them.

Put it into comparison to other stuff. Hunters getting unique pet encounters, Locks getting green fire, Rogues getting the last legendary... blah blah blah.. There is a whole list of situations where they added something cool for a particular class. Big deal, get over it. Yes, there is always going to be ´that class´ that has gotten nothing in awhile. don´t cry.

[Deleted]

@Stream

holy moly... holy pally is in pretty bad shape, atm.

[Rolly]

It is important for players to be traveling around and going about their business for it to feel like a world. Have Group, Will Travel really undermined that far more than we had hoped.

Players do plenty of traveling around doing dailies and farming. Have Group, Will Travel was a wonderful quality of life addition for gathering members for raid. Having to fly to the Island of Thunder/HoF/world boss/etc has nothing to do with whether people feel that there's a "world" out there. I wholeheartedly disagree that it was a good move to take this perk out of the game. Forcing everyone to fly to the same place(s) week in week out just to make sure they understand that they're in a world is a weak excuse. The perk was especially nice for farming old world content that we've already flown in for years and don't care to see each and every week, sometimes on multiple toons. 90% of the time I point my toon, hit autorun, and check back in a couple minutes to see if I'm close to my destination; I don't pan around reminiscing about the zones I've seen dozens or hundreds of times already.

Imagine if IRL there was created technology that allowed us to teleport safely from our home to our workplace/grocery store/friend's house/etc. Then after a year, the tech was removed because the government decided people weren't "enjoying the scenery" as they drove/flew from place to place. I'm pretty damn sure the vast majority of people would raise hell and not think it was "a good idea" to remove that tech.

I personally don't know anyone that agreed that the removal of HGWT was a good move. I'm fairly confident that most people reading this thread also disagree with the decision.

Not to mention the idiocy of blathering about getting people "out in the world" then completely removing the need to get "out in the world" for profession mats by instituting a phased solo area where you "farm" all the mats you need. Blizzard hypocrisy at it's finest.

Also "I feel like our general reward scheme is too formulaic. I would like for our reward scheme to continue to get more interesting and exciting."

This is Blizzard speak for "We're going to lower our development costs by introducing EVEN MORE RNG."

[Azrile]

"Addressing the limited storage isn't going to happen in Patch 5.4, but is still on the list for the future."

This is another Blizzardism that really winds me up. What is the problem here? Why don't they just give us more space to store items in our bags. How difficult can it be? It's like when you start an alt and you desperately need some bag space. Why don't they just give you five bags as rewards from the five first start quests? Or get you to turn in a particular item and that item then gets crafted into five bags for you. It's such a small change. But no. Instead they force new players to destroy items because they've ran out of bag space before they get back to town while doing their quests. It's just silly. Sometimes Blizzard make such simple game features sound like building a space rocket to go to the moon.

Because no matter what they do, it would never be enough. People just need to be smarter about what they carry with them. Once dual specs entered the game, the need for more bag space has not grown. In fact, they are less things this expansion because we have spirits of harmony rather than 8 different volatiles. Even stuff like enchanting mats are more streamlined now because you can upgrade dusts. You DO NOT need to carry everything with you.

If they suddenly made our main backpack 40 slots, and gave us 60 slot bags.. people would still find a way to fill it with useless crap and complain in a week about needing bigger bags. ´but I really want to have 300 vanity items in my backpack, you made them, we should be able to carry them all!!´.

Also, your comment about low level characters is wrong. If you are questing, you are never out in the field so long that your bags get filled unless you don´t empty them when you go back to town. At most you have like 4 quests at a time and then you go back to somewhere with a vendor.

[ganush]

If Blizzard thinks 'Have Group' was the problem in Cata, then they are more obtuse than I thought. If there is stuff to do, people will be out in the world. Have Group just allowed them to get there more quickly. Someone on a flying mount, flying somewhere does nothing to add to the game experience, it's people on the ground doing stuff and Have Group got them there more quickly. If there was a concern, then they could have had it only active for level 90's, but once you reach max level, you've seen the world and flying over it one more time doesn't add to the experience.

[Maleagant]

Are there any updates on new character models? Do you still plan to go forward with this and update all of the existing races?
We are still working on it. More on that sometime in the future.

I hope this means they are going to give us at least a preview of there progress on the character models at Blizzcon and that they will be released in time for the next Warcraft expansion.

[Deleted]

They really must think their player base is stupid.

Indeed they think it.

[Alayea]

The removal of Have Group, Will Travel worked out well, making the world feel more alive.

I'm sorry, but that's a load of kodo dung. All did was take out a nice 2-hr cooldown. So instead, people still use the queue system or have 2 people fly out to the summon stone.

Made the world feel more alive? No, you just made it even more dull.

[MasterHamster]

"ok whos summoning

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...
...
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omg"

Good thing they got rid of HGWT before it got classed as a fundamental part of "convenience".