Archive for March, 2011

Tip of the Day – Going Down?

“You can get Going Down and Backdoor Job achievements at the same time, either with a catapult or jumping off the ship, in Isle of Conquest if you click off the parachute before hitting the ground.”

Submitted by: PallyDog

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The Tip of the Day is a new feature on WoW Vault! Submit a tip and you could be on the front page!

Ragnaros with legs!

The problem is that you have no context or perspective on the model you’ve seen a static image of.

Development Teams at Blizzard

Revamping Old Content

There definitely is not a hard and fast rule about updating existing content. If we feel revamping existing content makes sense in the current state of the game and lore — and we think it will be fun — sure, it’s a possibility. You definitely shouldn’t expect this every patch though. In the grand scheme of World of Warcraft’s history, we’ve reintroduced very little existing content per patch and expansion.

(…)Is your definition of rehashed content deduced to the names of bosses being the same? There will always be recurring characters in World of Warcraft, as there is in any fantasy story telling.

GC on the Official Forums

These forums have always been about players talking to players. We don’t want to foster the expectation that it’s going to get a blue response if someone tries hard enough (lol I’m replying to a thread calling for a blue). While GC added a lot to these forums (and I say ‘these forums’ because he only posted in the North America forums) we think we can reach more players, particularly those in other regions, more directly through the blogs, or concerted Q&A’s. Blogs also tend to be a better medium for getting the message out there loud and clear, but does have downsides that it removes the conversation that we know is appreciated quite a bit.

While forum posts do lend themselves to that conversational approach, they actually have a lot of downsides to them from our perspective of attempting to get clear and clean information to the players. They aren’t very visible is really the first and maybe biggest problem. You can liken forum posts and the information given in them to some of the displeasure surrounding how hotfixes are communicated. I may reply to a thread 20 times and in my #13 reply I say something really important regarding class balance. Who is going to see that? How quickly will that knowledge actually permeate? Will the message be kept clear? Will my clarification in post #17 that explains what people are misunderstanding in #13 be seen by everyone that read #13? People tend not to read past the first blue post in a thread, or skip around and don’t read them all, so if you have a correction/addendum to the first post, or just expound upon a thought, it’s generally lost on the majority of readers. Blue trackers can help with this, but we’re generally not having to explain that “post #13 wasn’t the end of the thought and it’s being taken out of context” to people who just go to blue trackers. Forum posts also tend to be fairly quickly written by one of us without much in the way of peer-review, and anything written off-the-cuff like a reply to a thread can tend to be more precarious than a more substantive outlet that has an official process of review and correction before its posted (like the blogs). Much to the dismay of many forum goers I’m sure, there’s just an infinitely smaller chance we’ll say something stupid or mess up in a fully published blog post.

As with anything we do, we never believe we’re perfect. There’s always room to improve. The blogs may not be the best outlet but we’re continually working to improve upon the content we’re delivering, and have some pretty exciting stuff planned. We’re also working to make the comment system for the blogs a bit more like the forums so conversation can be held there more easily, as well. Of course you’ve no doubt see we’re running a recurring global Ask the Devs Q&A. It’s one way where we’re hoping to fill that gap of direct developer interaction that the blogs probably just can’t hit. We think the Q&A’s are going to be extremely popular and fill a big part of what made GC’s interactions on here so useful. And we’re going to continue collecting feedback and posting when appropriate, but we’ll also be trying to come up with additional ways to facilitate the communication between the developers and players.

Also GC wanted me to let you know: “It’s Dr. not Mr., get it right.”

(…) I appreciate everyone’s feedback, it’s actually been pretty helpful and I think we can incorporate more of what you’re looking to get out of the blog into future features.

The blog launching was really a shock to the system for us, and in many ways we’re still adapting to it and trying to find out how to best leverage it. But the world keeps turning and the tasks keep renewing themselves. We’re not going to stop though, and will hit all of our communication intentions one way or another.

3/9 PTR Updates

Top Ten Bags You’d Like Added

Some of you may be OCD collectors. Some of you just carry around enough gear for four different specs. Some of you just like to collect all the cute Holiday stuff. Some of you like to hang on to ye olde quest items/rewards from the classic days before Cataclysm. Regardless of what junk and stuff you hold onto, we all could use a little more pack space. So what kinds of bags or storage additions would you like to see added to the game?

The Top Ten is a contest run by WoW Vault with content chosen for the list from among the replies! Whichever reply gets chosen as #1 will receive 2 weeks if IGN Insider VIP!

Disclaimer: Winners with too many ToS violations on their account may not be eligible to receive the reward.

Tip of the Day – Fighting Raid Leadering Burnout

“Raid Leading can be a high stress and difficult role to take on. It can be made easier though. Make sure you delegate and get help from a group of people willing to help raid lead instead of just depending on one or two people. That way you don’t burnout one person then you’re left wondering who’s gonna lead your guild’s raids now.”

New Community Content!

Below is the latest list of community submitted entries to our databases.

Maps

Ahn Qiraj by WoW Vault (Kalimdor) — Kalimdor

Do you participate in Arenas? Why or why not? Do you 2v2, 3v3 or 5v5…or all of the above? Do you get really high ranking or do you stay middle of the road? Do you only play to get enough points for a few pieces of gear? Do you do Arenas with the same character all the time or do you switch around to whatever seems to be the most powerful after any given patch? Do you stick with the same spec or not?

Disclaimer: Winners with too many ToS violations on their account may not be eligible to receive the reward.

Anniversary Video: A History of Blizzard Entertainment

Did you know that Blizzard Entertainment was originally founded under a completely different name? What is the significance of Jawassic Park in the context of Blizzard Entertainment’s art culture? Whatever happened to Orcs in Space? These and many, many more questions are answered in the full-length video we’ve just released on the Blizzard 20th Anniversary site. Clocking in at almost an hour, this video features candid commentary from the people who have spent the last two decades creating the games that helped make Blizzard Entertainment the company it is today.

Head over to the anniversary site and check out the Blizzard Retrospective Video now!

Ask the Devs #1

Welcome to Ask the Devs, our brand-new World of Warcraft developer Q&A series where we’re asking you to post the questions you want answered. The community will help us decide on what questions to answer through the thumbs-up voting system. We’ll be collecting questions from around the world in each of our regional forums to make this a truly global effort.

Hit up the thread for more information and instructions on how to participate.

New Mount Hyjal Daily Quest Hub

The point isn’t really that we’re delaying Firelands so we can release ZA/ZG instead, or because we don’t think players are ready for a new raid. Our messaging on the subject directly implies this, and that’s our fault.

What we’re really saying is that we want more frequent, slightly smaller updates to the game so that content keeps coming. Since Firelands isn’t quite ready yet, we’ve made the decision not to hold back the other 4.1 patch content for it. Instead, we’re going to release patch 4.1 with the content that’s ready to go so the majority of players have more things to do, while also putting some finishing touches on Firelands so we can ship it out in 4.2 shortly thereafter. We’re not arbitrarily holding back Firelands. On the contrary, we don’t want to hold back other content updates for Firelands.

The main content features currently planned for 4.1 are:

• Zul’Gurub revamp
• Zul’Aman revamp
• New level-85 Stranglethorn quest line (phased) leading players into the troll dungeons
• New tier of Heroic dungeon gear (epic item level 353) to give players a slightly bigger boost going into raids for the first time
• New & updated flavor items, vanity pets, and mounts
• Guild Challenges (new guild quests)

All of this is in addition to a number of UI improvements, class balance changes, and more. We’ll have more information on the patch 4.1 features coming soon.

(…) We thought about different ways to fit in a normal tier of these dungeons, but in the end it just didn’t feel right. We wouldn’t want to make normal versions of these dungeons award current Heroic level loot, but there aren’t really any good places in between to stick a normal dungeon tier.

We feel the best solution for patch 4.1 progression is: level-85 normal dungeons, Heroic dungeons, ZA/ZG Heroics, raids.

ZA and ZG will drop gear for just about every slot as well, but we’re really trying to focus on dropping items for slots that have been hard to fill in the current Heroics.

(…) I don’t have any specifics to share at the moment, save for one I think is cool. Those with the appropriate Archaeology skill will be able to unlock one of four additional bosses (chosen randomly) for their group in Zul’Gurub. These bosses were previously known as part of the Edge of Madness. The four bosses will share some loot, but also have some loot unique to each of them.

(…) [Guild Challenges] We’re preparing all of the information on this new feature for you.

Death Knight Tanking Q&A

Tip of the Day – Fishing in Tol Barad

We’ll have more details about that a little later though.

No Firelands Raid in 4.1 / Justice to Valor Conversion in 4.2

By now you’ve seen that the redesigned Heroic five-player dungeon versions of Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub are on the PTR, featuring all-new boss mechanics, updated epic-level loot, and some rare mounts for players to try to tame.

You may be asking, “where’s Firelands?”

Our goal with each major patch release, and especially with each expansion, is to learn from the past and use that knowledge to improve the game as we move forward. One of our biggest regrets in the pacing of Wrath of the Lich King was the Crusaders’ Coliseum. The Trial of the Champion 10- and 25-player raid was released while many raiders were still busy with Ulduar, which meant a premature end to Ulduar raiding — and a lot of players didn’t get a chance to experience all of Ulduar’s content during the normal expansion progression.

Having learned that lesson in pacing from Wrath of the Lich King, we don’t feel Cataclysm needs a new raid tier just yet. We’re close, though, and Firelands will be part of patch 4.2, which is expected to hit the PTR very soon after 4.1 goes live.

One of our long-standing development goals has been to release more regular content updates for you to enjoy. Our plan is to package features like raids, dungeons, and daily quest hubs into smaller content updates and release them as soon as possible, rather than wait and release them as large but infrequent updates. Our first significant step in this direction will be Cataclysm patch 4.1, and we hope the rest of our content updates moving forward follow this model.

This new flexible approach to updates allows us to release content like Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub so that you’ll have more challenges to overcome while we make the flames of Sulfuron even fierier and this second showdown with the Firelord even more climactic.

While we know that some raiders feel prepared to smack down the Firelord once again, releasing an epic raid dungeon before its time would, in the words of Ragnaros himself, be “too soon!”

A good amount of development progress had already been made on Firelands by the time we decided it would be better to release it in the following patch. Because of that, a lot of information about what is now considered 4.2 content was already in the game files for the initial 4.1 PTR build. This just reinforces what Bashiok said about 4.2 being scheduled for release on the PTR shortly after 4.1 goes live.

Development for both patches is currently well in progress.

(…) Correct. The conversion from Valor to Justice Points, as well as the release of the next Arena season, won’t happen until the release of 4.2.

3/3 PTR Updates

Death Knights

• Howling Blast damage has been increased by 20%. To compensate, the area-of-effect splash now does 50% of the single-target damage, down from 60%. The net result of this change leaves the area-of-effect damage roughly the same as 4.0.6 numbers. In addition, Howling Blast now has a facing requirement.

Druids

• Prowl has a new icon.
• Feral Swiftness now also causes Dash and Stampeding Roar to have a 50/100% chance to instantly remove all movement impairing effects from the affected targets when used.
• Efflorescence has been redesigned. It creates a healing zone at the feet of a Swiftmend target, but this healing zone now restores health equal to 4/8/12% of the amount healed by Swiftmend to the three most injured targets within 8 yards, every 1 second for 7 seconds. This periodic effect now also benefits from spell haste, but the individual ticks cannot be critical effects.
• Glyph of Rake is now Glyph of Pounce, which increases the range of Pounce by 3 yards.

Hunters

• Multi-Shot damage has been increased by 250%.

Mages

• The root effect from Shattered Barrier now shares diminishing returns with the root from Improved Cone of Cold.

Paladins

• Grand Crusader will now generate a charge of Holy Power if the Avenger Shield it procs is used within 6 seconds.

Priests

• Holy Fire damage has been increased to be approximately 30% higher than Smite.
• Mind Sear damage has been doubled.
• Atonement now works with Holy Fire in addition to Smite.
• Glyph of Divine Accuracy now also affects Holy Fire in addition to Smite.

Shaman

• Deep Healing now benefits all heals, not just direct heals.
• Spirit Link Totem (new talent) reduces damage taken by all party and raid members within 10 yards by 10%. This lasts 6 seconds, and every second it is active the health of all affected players is redistributed among them, such that each player ends up with the same percentage of their maximum health. This counts as an Air totem and has a 3-minute cooldown.

Warlocks

• Rain of Fire damage has been increased by 25%.
• Seed of Corruption damage has been increased by 20%.

Warriors

• Precision (passive) now increase auto-attack damage by 40%, in addition to the 3% hit it offers currently.

Items

• The current healing priest 4-piece raid set bonus no longer requires a target to be under the effects of Weakened Soul for the priest to receive the Spirit bonus. Instead the benefit will be granted each time the priest’s Penance spell heals a target.

 

Tip of the Day – A Kindess Today

“The community of this game is often two-faced ,and many times that ugly side which can leave quite the lasting impression will show itself more. Today, or maybe even every day if you feel so inclined help someone out when you usually wouldn’t. Do Crucible of Carnage even though you finished the quest ,or help someone out in trade when usually you would ignore them. Even if only a few people go out of their way to perform one act of kindness it will improve the community to that degree if only for a moment.”

Zul Gurub & Zul Aman

There’s a lot of new content in Cataclysm. There’s also a plethora of updated content to advance the story.

Likewise, there’s plenty of new content still to come in this expansion. But, we’re also going to keep moving existing themes forward when the story calls for it. There were specific reasons for originally entering Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman, but those reasons by no means wrap up the story of the ancient troll empire. These city ruins still serve a major purpose in troll lore, beyond just providing new locations to gain loot.

We’re moving the story of the troll nations forward, and hope you recognize and enjoy that. Hakkar and Zul’jin are gone now. Even so, that doesn’t make Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman irrelevant as key locations of Azeroth.

(…) Zul’Aman is in Ghostlands, which is in Azeroth, not Outland. It’s true Ghostlands didn’t receive any terrain changes after the Cataclysm, but that doesn’t mean the remaining Amani are unaffected by what’s happened.

We’ll have more information to share on the return of Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub soon. But for now I’ll say this: there is a center of troll civilization yet to be seen in World of Warcraft. There was once an ancient empire of troll tribes united. Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub becoming key points of interest in Cataclysm plays into this. Perhaps something has happened to once again call for the unity of the disaffected tribes. Perhaps a certain tribe with allegiances elsewhere sees this as a very bad thing.

Changes to Ambassador Title

3/1 Hotfixes

February Contest Winners!

Here are the contests winners for all of WoWVault’s contests in February! Grats!

Top Ten
• 2/10 Weirdest Things you could find with Archaeology – Cawlin
• 2/24 Hardest Heroic Bosses – Exodus_The_Mage3/1 PTR Updates

General

 

 

• Flying mounts can now be used in Ghostlands.
• Resilience scaling has been modified for linear returns, as opposed to increasing returns. Under the new formula, going from 30 resilience to 40 resilience gives players the same increase to survivability as going from 0 to 10. Resilience now scales in the same way armor and magic resistances do. A player with 32.5% damage reduction from resilience in 4.0.6 should see their damage reduction unchanged in 4.1. Those with less than 32.5% will gain slightly. Those with more will lose some damage reduction, increasingly so as their resilience climbs.

Death Knights

• Raise Ally has been redesigned to be a battle resurrection, analogous to Rebirth. It is instant cast, but costs 50 Runic Power to use, and has a 10-minute cooldown. It shares the same global battle resurrection cap with Rebirth and Soulstone.
• Blood Shield now only works while in Blood Presence.
• Frost Strike now deals 130% of weapon damage, up from 110%.
• Howling Blast damage has been increased by 20%. To compensate, the area-of-effect splash now does 50% of the single-target damage, down from 60%. The net result of this change leaves the area-of-effect damage roughly the same as 4.0.6 numbers.
• Glyph of Raise Ally is now Glyph of Death Gate, and makes Death Gate cast 60% faster.

Druids

• Cyclone duration has been reduced to 5 seconds, down from 6.
• Lifebloom’s bloom effect has been reduced by 20%.
• Stampeding Roar’s duration has been increased to 8 seconds, up from 6. The movement speed effect has been increased to 60%, up from 40%.
• Swipe (Bear) cooldown has been reduced to 3 seconds, down from 6.
• Starsurge damage has been reduced by 20%.
• Gift of Nature (passive) also reduces Tranquility’s cooldown by 2.5/5 minutes.

Paladins

• Aura Mastery: This ability no longer increases the benefit granted by Crusader Aura.

Priests

• Inner Will and Inner Fire now last until canceled.
• Power Word: Barrier’s cooldown has been increased to 3 minutes, up from 2, and its effect has been reduced to 25%, down from 30%.
• It is now possible to remove Weakened Soul effects that were a result of another priest’s Power Word: Shield through Strength of Soul.

Warlocks

• Haunt damage has been increased by 30%.
• Shadow Mastery (passive) has been increased to 30%, up from 25%.
• Mana Feed now restores more mana (four times as much) when the warlock is using a Felguard or Felhunter.
• Doomguard’s damage has been increased by 50%. The Doomguard is intended to be the best guardian for single-target damage, and the Infernal the best when there are multiple targets.
• Shadow Bite (Felhunter) damage and effect has doubled.

Warriors

• Heroic Throw is now available from trainers at level 20.
• Pummel is now usable in all stances.
• Shield Bash has been removed from the game.
• Spell Reflection cooldown has been increased to 25 seconds, up from 10.
• Lambs to the Slaughter now causes Mortal Strike to refresh Rend in addition to its current effects.
  *Flurry haste bonus has been doubled to 16/32/50%.
• Shield Mastery no longer affects the cooldown of Spell Reflection, however, it now allows Shield Block to reduce magic damage as well.
• Gag Order now only affects Heroic Throw.
• Glyph of Spell Reflection reduces the cooldown of Spell Reflection by 5 seconds, up from 1 second.

Dungeons & Raids

• The gold amounts on the following encounters have been substantially reduced: Flame Leviathan, Magtheridon, Gruul the Dragonkiller, Doom Lord Kazzak, and all encounters in Karazhan.

Items

• The current damage-dealing death knight 4-piece raid set bonus now also grants increased attack power when Killing Machine triggers, as well as when the death knight gains Death Runes).
• The current Holy paladin 4-piece raid set bonus now grants 540 Spirit for 6 seconds after casting Holy Shock.

PvP

• Battlegrounds
  • The Focused Assault and Brutal Assault buffs have changed.
  • After 3 minutes of both teams having the flag, both flag carriers will get Focused Assault, which increases damage taken by 10%.
  • Every minute afterward, an additional stack will be applied to increase damage taken by an additional 10%.
  • After 7 minutes, Brutal Assault will be applied in place of Focused Assault. In additional to the damage debuff, this debuff also caps the player’s movement speed at 100%. The damage taken debuff works the same and will add 10% to the debuff up to a maximum of 100% damage taken.
• The Battle for Gilneas
  • Graveyard Changes
  • Players who die at a control point that they own will now be teleported to the next closest graveyard, instead of the one at which they died.
  • If a player’s team owns the Mine and Waterworks, and dies at Waterworks, they will be teleported to the Mine.
  • If an Alliance player’s team only owns Lighthouse, and dies at Lighthouse, they will respawn at their base.
  • If a Horde player’s team owns Waterworks and Mine, and dies at Lighthouse, they will respawn at Waterworks.

Quests & Creatures

• A handful of quests have been added to Northern Barrens to provide more level 18-20 content. Look for new quests at Nozzlepot’s Outpost and Darsok’s Outpost.

User Interface

• Like the Focus Frame, the character Unit and Target Frames can now be unlocked and moved to one’s content.

 

It’s Not Dead Yet!

How goes the progression for your guild’s raiding, if you raid? Are you doing 10 mans or 25 mans and what made you decide to go with one or the other? Do you like the Cataclysm style of raiding? Have you been working on hard modes? Are you all done until the next patch or just barely getting started?

The Topic of the Week is a contest run by WoW Vault! The best reply will receive VIP Insider for 2 weeks! Potential winning posts are judged according to length, interpretation of the subject and writing style.

Disclaimer: Winners with too many ToS violations on their account may not be eligible to receive the reward.