Threat revisited

One of the fun things about working on an MMO is that the game design will evolve over time, and you have the opportunity to make changes to reflect those design shifts. (And yes, we know that it can sometimes evolve too quickly).

Back in December, I wrote a blog about our vision for how threat should work. Since then, the game and the community have continued to progress and the designers have found ourselves changing our minds about the role of threat.

Why have threat?

Threat’s role, just so we’re all on the same page, is to make fights more interesting. Tanks spend a lot of effort staying alive, but they aren’t under immediate threat of death one-hundred percent of the time. Plus, their staying alive is also dependent on their healers and other external cooldowns. We have always been concerned that if threat was not a big part of tanking gameplay that tanks might get bored just waiting around until it was time to use a cooldown. Likewise, if DPS and healers had no risk of being attacked themselves then the sense of danger facing a powerful creature could erode. Furthermore, every character’s toolbox includes some cool survival and utility abilities and the game feels more shallow if those are exclusively used for PvP. It’s fun for a mage to Frost Nova an attacker and Blink away. It’s fun for a hunter to Feign Death. Yes your life would be a lot easier without threat mechanics, but our goal isn’t to make fights as easy as possible. Our job is to make fights fun. Having too much to manage might not be fun, but it’s also not fun to be bored.

That’s been our traditional argument for threat needing to matter. Here is the case against it:

Why not have threat?

Throttling

As I said in the previous blog, it’s not fun to feel throttled. It’s not fun for the Feral druid to stop using special attacks in order to avoid pulling aggro. It’s fun to use Feint at the right time to avoid dying, but it’s not fun for Feint to be part of your rotational cooldown. We want you to spend most of your effort trying to overcome the dragon or elemental, not struggling against your own tank.

Tanks are busy

I’d also argue that our encounters aren’t really boring these days. We ask tanks to do a lot – everything from picking up adds, to moving bosses around, to staying out of fires, to providing interrupts, in addition to the classic tank roles of staying alive and generating threat.

Threat stats aren’t fun

We put threat stats (hit and expertise for the most part) on tanking gear, because without those, tanks would be limited to choosing from among mastery, dodge, and parry. (In the current state of itemization, you are rarely choosing more Strength, Agility, Stamina, or armor.) Druids can’t parry, and even for the plate users, there is a tight relationship between dodge and parry, and even mastery for the warrior and paladin. That gets us dangerously close to the old model of stacking a single uber stat (like Stamina or defense), which makes gearing choices too simplistic for tanks. Did something drop? Okay, put it on. (Contrast this to a DPS caster who might want more or less hit or might favor haste over crit, etc.)

We want threat stats to be interesting, but the reality is that they aren’t. Any decent tank will usually choose survivability stats over threat stats. Back in the day when taunts and interrupts could miss, you could argue hit was marginally useful. But in a world where hit is really just for generating threat, it isn’t very exciting and tanks get understandably emo when we put too much on their gear. (DKs are somewhat of an exception in a good way – more on that in a sec.) We do see some players try and get excited about threat stats or even proud of their ability to generate threat, but overall we feel like threat stats are a trap, and it’s usually the case that improving your survivability will have a better net impact on your group’s progression.

We don’t need a more complex UI

We have threatened for years (see what I did there?) to build in some kind of threat tracking tool into WoW. But is that really good for the game? Do we really need yet another UI element for players to look at instead of looking at the actual game world? We know many raiders in particular use third-party threat mods today, but that has really been borne out of necessity rather than a sense that watching threat is super compelling gameplay. (When we say “super compelling gameplay” you can mentally replace that with “fun.”)

Dungeon Finder

I know this bullet will be a point made by players critical of this change, but I would feel remiss in not bringing it up. We want it to be a positive experience when Dungeon Finder matches experienced players with newer players. The skill and gear of the former can help make up for that of the latter. Who better to teach you boss mechanics than players who have done the fights before? Even better, the gear of a veteran tank can make up for the less powerful gear of a beginning healer (which doesn’t necessarily mean a noob – it could be the alt of a very experienced raider).

However, this system fails and often spectacularly so when it’s the tank who is the undergeared player. Even if a competent healer can keep the undergeared tank alive, the fully raid-geared DPS spec is going to constantly be on the verge of pulling threat. That’s not an issue of skill. It’s just numbers. It’s also not a problem that is easy to overcome for either the overgeared DPS or the undergeared tank – it’s just not a lot of fun for anyone.

So now what?

Given all of that, and watching how tanking has unfolded in Cataclysm, we’ve gotten over the concept that threat needs to be a major part of PvE gameplay. We have therefore decided to buff tank threat generation in 4.3 to where it’s generally not a major consideration. We expect the community to gradually stop using threat-tracking mods as players realize they don’t need them.

It’s an important distinction that the concept of “aggro” will still exist. If a DPS spec attacks an add the second it shows up, then the creature is going to come at her. However, if a tank gets an attack or two on a target, then the target should stick to the tank. Worrying about who has the creature’s attention should generally only be a concern at the start of a fight or when additional creatures join the battle. Worrying about a warrior or DK (the classes with nearly non-existent threat dumps) creeping up on tank threat after several minutes will almost certainly not be an issue any longer. (And if it is, we’ll have to make further adjustments.)

We like abilities like Misdirect. It’s fun as a hunter to help the tank control targets. We are less enamored of Cower, which is just an ability used often to suppress threat. We like that the mage might have to use Ice Block, Frost Nova, or even Mirror Image to avoid danger. We don’t like the mage having to worry about constantly creeping up on the tank’s threat levels. The notion of aggro (who the target is attacking) is a keeper. The notion of threat races (who is about to pull aggro) is going to be downplayed from here on out.

Upcoming changes

Here are the specific changes you’re likely to see on the PTR for the next major content patch, 4.3:

• The threat generated by classes in their tanking mode has been increased from three times damage done to five times damage done.
• Vengeance no longer ramps up slowly at the beginning of a fight. Instead, the first melee attack taken generates Vengeance equal to one third of the damage dealt by that attack. As Vengeance updates during the fight, it is always set to at least a third of the damage taken in the last two seconds. It still climbs from that point at the previous rate, still decays at the previous rate, and still cannot exceed the current maximum.

Long-term changes

You could argue that once threat is very easy to manage that a warrior tank could just go AFK. In reality, given today’s boss encounters, an AFK warrior would end up standing in the wrong place, missing a tank transition, or otherwise do something or fail to do something that wipes the party or raid.

That said, we ultimately don’t want tanking to be just standing there soaking boss hits and we would like to have more stats on gear that tanks care about. To solve those challenges, we want to shift more tank mitigation to require active management. We’ll still give all the tanks emergency cooldowns like Shield Wall and Survival Instincts. However, we want to move the shorter cooldowns like Shield Block, Holy Shield and Savage Defense so that they work more like Death Strike. Blood DKs have a lot of control over the survivability they get from Death Strike, but as part of that gameplay, they have to actually hit their target. The other three tanks will get similar active defense mechanics. This doesn’t mean everyone needs to use the DK model of self-healing, but they can use the DK model of managing resources to maximize survivability.

Death Strike consumes resources to help the tank survive. We toyed at one point with the paladin Holy Shield being a Holy Power consumer and we think we could do so again. Heck we could make Word of Glory the thing you’re supposed to do with Holy Power, so long as we balanced all tanks around that idea and didn’t feel it infringed too much on the DK mechanic. We could make Shield Block cost rage, and change Protection warrior rage income such that they had to manage rage, the way Fury and Arms warriors now must do. If tanks generated more rage from doing damage and less from taking damage, then hitting a target becomes very important, but for mitigation, not threat management reasons. This is a bigger change than it seems though. We don’t want a model where the Prot warrior ignores Shield Slam, Devastate and Revenge (since threat isn’t a big deal) in order to bank all rage for Shield Block (because survival is). Imagine a rage model where you always had enough rage for your core rotational abilities (they could be cheap or even generate rage), so that you could funnel most of your rage into Shield Block when survival mattered and Heroic Strike when it did not. Redesigning Savage Defense to make it a rage sink is an even bigger change, but we think there is an opportunity there to make the rotation more interesting for druids (and all tanks really). Their rotation would help them achieve the goal that usually matters the most to tanks: living.

This is the kind of design for which we’re really going to need a lot of feedback once it hits the PTR. We can implement and verify empirically how much threat a tank generates, but it’s hard for us to replicate the experience of all of the various raiding groups and dungeon parties out there. We invite you to try out the immediate and eventually the long-term changes when they are available on the PTR and then in the live game and let us know how they feel. Do you miss the threat game? Are you bored when tanking now? Conversely, with the changes, is tanking more fun for you? Does this new implementation of Vengeance feel better? Some systems design calls we can make just by processing numbers, and some are more squishy and involve a lot gut checks and wishy-washy “but how does it FEEL?” language. Messing with this kind of thing is definitely somewhere in the middle.

We’re happy to announce that the testing period for World of Warcraft’s new Real ID Party system is now complete, and the feature is now officially live! We received a lot of great feedback from the community throughout the course of our testing, and we appreciate everyone taking the time to share their thoughts and experiences with us.

For those who haven’t yet had a chance to try it out, the Real ID Party system allows players to invite Real ID friends of the same faction to a 5-player normal or Heroic dungeon, regardless of what realm their friends are on. This new feature makes it easier than ever for real-life friends to play together, and it’s available to all World of Warcraft players at no additional charge—all you need to do is have Real ID enabled.

To learn more about Real ID, visit the Real ID web page and read the FAQ.

For more information about how the Real ID Party system works, check out the FAQ below, updated with a couple new questions that came up during the testing period.

Q: How do I invite Real ID friends to a Real ID Party?
A: Inviting a Real ID friend to a Real ID Party is simple. Just open up your friends list to see which Real ID friends are online. Click on the “Plus” button to send an invitation to a Real ID friend to join your group. You can continue to add Real ID friends to your party until the group is complete. If you cannot complete the group with Real ID friends, you are free to join the Dungeon Finder to fill in the missing roles.

Q: Does a player need to have Real ID enabled to accept a Real ID group invite?
A: Yes, a player must have Real ID enabled, and both players must be Real ID friends to accept or initiate Real ID party invitations.

Q: Can a party leader invite a mix of Real ID friends, character-level friends, guildmates, or random players to the same party?
A: A party leader can invite any combination of Real ID friends from any realm, guildmates from the same realm, or other characters from the same realm to the same party. If the party leader isn’t able to fill up the entire party, the Dungeon Finder can fill in the missing roles.

Q: Can I invite someone who is not a Real ID friend?
A: You can only invite members to a party if they are on your Real ID friends list or if they are on the same realm as you are.

Q: Can I invite a friend of a Real ID friend?
A: No, you can only invite your own Real ID friends the party.

Q. Are you considering expanding the system to work with raids, Battlegrounds, Arenas, or to allow cross-faction play?
A: We’re always looking into ways to improve features like this to make it more convenient for real-life friends to play together. However, we don’t have any further announcements to share at this time.

Q: Will any future aspects of the Real ID Party system be premium-based?
A: It’s always possible that we’ll add features and functionality that could have a premium component, but we don’t have any specific details to share at this time.

You sit at your typewriter, hands frozen in fear by the sound of crumpling paper from the darkness behind you. Shadows of broken quills encroach on your sight’s periphery but slither out of view when you turn toward them. Summoning your courage, you lash out at the apparitions before they fade, only to awaken in a cold sweat with pencils and pens gripped tight in your clenched fists. You know what this dream foretells: the 2011 Global Writing Contest is upon us!

Enter a short story for the chance to win a free trip to Blizzard’s headquarters in Southern California! This contest is open to entrants from around the world and will be judged by Blizzard’s very own writers and masters of lore. For more information, head to the contest page!

It’s Friday once again and, of course, this fabulous day of the week wouldn’t be complete here at the WoW Community site without the European Community News. Today’s edition brings you the usual selection of tasty goodies such as fansite updates, WoW comics from around the internet and a range of interesting threads from the forums.

Fansites:

• Polish site WoWCenter.pl reports on theworld first Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest. They also speculate on the mysterious picture that appeared on the Warcraft Facebook page last night. Finally, there’s a great recap of the 2011 European Battle.net Invitational which took place in Poland last weekend.
• Italian site Battlecraft.it reports on the 4.2 Hotfix, and patch 4.2.0A going live. There’s also news of Patch 4.2.2 on the PTR.
• Czech and Slovak site WoWFan.cz has posted an extensive history of Thrall so far, starting with his youth and thoroughly covering everything up until now. There’s also a good description of a handy healing addon, and details of the latest WoW gaming mouse.
• English site Manaflask reports on the 25 man Ragnaros kill video from guild For the Horde.

Weekly Comics:

• Looking For Group: Nice Dungeon
• Arena-Inside: Myth Boosted
• The Daily Blink: The People’s Front of Azsharaand At Least the Cardboard Box Went “Boink”
• Coffin Comics: Plants vs Forsaken
• Black Dragons Chronicles: Combat Readiness

Forum Watch:

• Reptile has written an awesome guide on how to be successful as a SMF warrior.
• There’s a great Balance druid guide to be found in a thread by Insidiouz.
• Apparently there’s an “interesting” picture to discuss…
• Speaking of pictures, share a great screenshot you’ve taken.
• If a new class was coming to the game, what do you think it would be?

Fan Creations and Events

• Alixstar is organising The Great Gurubashi PvP Battle on the Hellscream realm, Sunday 14 August and 15:30, visit the thread for more info.
• Another update has just been made to the long-running tale, Alayne’s Story.
• Belon posted a link to his new WoW machinima “One More Soul”.
• Voting for the Golden Joystick Awards 2011 is off to a start, and both World of Warcraft and StarCraft IIhave been nominated for their respective categories!

Another Tuesday has rolled around, so it’s time for the latest edition of the Community News, featuring fan site updates, WoW comics from around the web, and fun threads from the forums.

Fansites:

• Italian site Battlecraft posted the latestpatch 4.2 hotfixes. There’s also a couple of videos up on Italian progress in the Firelands raids. If you’d like some tips, seethe video guides on Alysrazor Normal & Heroic.
• Hungarian site WoW-Hungary has another video up, this time from Nyhm – “Cocky”.
• Czech and Slovak site WoWFan.cz has added a section all about the Warlock class. They’ve also translated the latest part of Vol’jin – The Judgement.
• English site Manaflask has linked to the latest class guide by top guild Ensidia; they’ve added a section on Holy Paladins!

Weekly Comics:

• Looking For Group: Say What Prayers You Will
• Teh Gladiators: Visit Us at Shadowfang Keep Part One andPart Two
• Dark Legacy Comics: Who Needs Other Characters?
• WoW Eh?: How to Make Friends and Influence People
• Arena-Inside: Attuned
• The Daily Blink: But My Liege, He is But One Man
• Daily Quest: How to Annoy Your Guildmates with Leap of Faith 3
• Away From Reality: Press 1 to Ragequit
• Coffin Comics: Economic Stimulus

Forum Watch:

• How viable is going for the insane title at level 33, have any tips?
• What do you think was Kel’thusad’s fate?
• The WoW dictionary: Ever wonder what some of those abbreviations mean? Here’s a nice list of definitions.
• Lethan’s Daily WoW Quiz, always worth a look!

Fan Creations:

• A Murloc doing a Bungee Jump Part One and Part Two
• Ever seen the “Explore with Döra” videos? Here’s how she tackled Mount Hyjal, tough for a level one character!
• Here’s a handy video guide with a few ways on how to make gold quickly.
• Drop in to see the latest addition to Alayne’s Story here.

The first day of the 2011 European Battle.net Invitational has begun! The challengers are poised to battle it out, and you can tune in right now to watch the matches on our free high definition live stream. While you’re here, check out today’s match schedule too (please note, there is a delay of approximately 2 hours on the published times)!

♪♫ Once every super awesome Friday or so, When the sun doth shine and the moon doth glow and the grass doth grow oooh ♫♪

That is when we post the Community News…

Fansites:

• Italian site Battlecraft has posted a neatvideo guide on how to defeat Beth’Tilac on heroic mode. This site is also reports on the progress of a leading Italian guild, Unknown Entity, and their fight againstBaleroc and Majordomo.
• English site WoWJuju announces that their new and improved Reputation Calculator is up and running.
• English site Manaflask has plenty of different updates on their site; amongst them you can find several Ensidia Heroic Videos, including one with Ragnaros. They have also posted the second part of their interview with Method that touches on the subject of the Firelands aftermath.
• Czech and Slovak site WoWfan.cz has posted an interesting article about World of Warcraft fan creations in Minecraft.
• Hungarian site WoW-Hungary tells the story of the Gurubashi Empire in a new lore article, and they are also in taking a look at the MacroBank addon in another article on their site.

Weekly Comics:

• Looking For Group: I Live?
• Beyond the Tree: To Facilitate Unit Cohesion
• Arena-Inside: A Lesson of Two Evils
• The Daily Blink: Devotion to Duty
• Black Dragons Chronicles: Enter the Wolf
• Out if World: True Story
• Altoholics: Rocket 1
• Disciplinary action: Hell Is An Eternity Healing Battlegrounds

Fan Creations:

• [Weekly News] Pulse: Warcraft News
• [Fan Art] Elizabella the Rogue
• [Fan Art] Cairne Bloodhoof Drawing by Zooc
• [Video] Warrior PvP in battlegrounds
• [Music] Elvis comes to Warcraft
• [Music] Shield Slam Drum And Bass
• [Player Event] The Great Gurubashi PvP Battle

It looks like Blizzard is gearing up to announce a new expansion for World of Warcraft. Yesterday they filed a trademark for the title “Mists of Pandaria” in the United States. 

The trademark application (via MMO-Champion) applies to “Computer game software; computer game discs; computer game software and related instruction manuals and guides sold together as a unit; downloadable computer game software; computer game software downloadable from a global computer network; downloadable electronic games via the internet and wireless devices; interactive multimedia computer game program; mousepads.” This rules out the possibility that this is just a comic or some other form of merchandise. 

Some of you aren’t sufficiently nerdy enough to know what Pandaria is. Allow me to explain. Pandaria is the island home of the Pandaren, a mysterious race that resembles giant Pandas. Their society most closely resembles feudal Japan – okay, it’s pretty much exactly like feudal Japan. They appeared in WarCraft III to a limited extent. Players could control Pandaren Brewmaster units in a few select missions. 

The race actually started as a joke. On April’s Fools Day a few years back, Blizzard stated they were going to be one of the four playable races in WC3. The giant Panda people were surprisingly well-received by gamers, though, so Blizzard decided to work them into the game’s lore. 

It’s sort of hard to believe that Blizzard would make an entire World of Warcraft expansion based around a race they made up for “lulz.” While WoW does have a comic tone at times, generally the main focus of an expansion is serious in nature. For example, the Cataclysm expansion is focused on how the world is literally coming apart at the seams after the return of the mad black dragon Deathwing. 

While Blizzard is typically the sort of company that releases one big project a year, I am slightly curious whether Pandaria will be something smaller. Maybe it’s a mobile game? Pandaren would make for a good kid’s game, too. 

If an announcement is forthcoming, it will probably happen at BlizzCon. BlizzCon 2011 will take place on October 21st and 22nd. 

“In a raid you can repair by using a repair bot, Jeeves, a Travelers Tudnra Mammoth. Some dungeons and raids have vendors at the entrance who can repair your things as well such as Ulduar or Firelands. Make sure you hit a vendor for repairs after entering a dungeon instead of using a repair bot cool down!”

Want to experience the panel discussions, tournaments, game-related announcements, and all the excitement of BlizzCon 2011 from the comfort of your own home? Then be sure to check out the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket! 

The BlizzCon 2011 Virtual Ticket is now available for purchase around the world for $39.99 USD (pricing may vary by region). Virtual Ticket coverage will be available as a multi-channel Internet stream and also via Pay-per-View on DIRECTV in the United States, granting viewers a front-row seat to all of the action on the show floor including exclusive interviews, demos, and more! 

DIRECTV customers who order the Pay-per-View event will receive the multi-channel Internet stream at no extra charge, and those who order the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket will also receive this year’s to-be-announced BlizzCon-exclusive World of Warcraft and StarCraft II in-game items. 

Don’t miss out! To learn more about the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket, head on over to our official BlizzCon 2011 Live Stream page or read the FAQ.

Thanks to the overwhelming generosity of World of Warcraft players around the world who purchased the Cenarion Hatchling pet, we’ve raised a total of more than $1.9 million USD to support the ongoing earthquake and tsunami relief efforts in Japan. In May, we announced that for every Cenarion Hatchling purchased by July 31, 2011, 100% of the $10 USD adoption fee would be going to assist victims of this disaster — and the community responded by opening up their hearts and wallets wide. Thanks again for your support and for helping to make an impact on the lives of those affected by these events.