Author Archive

The Deluge 

A monsoon is coming. We will soon inundate you with Mists of Pandaria information, starting with the upcoming media event and everything that follows. It’s going to be a very exciting time for World of Warcraft, and we are all super impatient for it to happen. 

But… we’re not quite there yet. I want to make that clear upfront, because this blog isn’t directly Mists of Pandaria related. You won’t find any announcements here, just a philosophical discussion that you may or may not find interesting. If you’re looking for thrilling announcements, you know what I’m going to say: Soon™. 

Multiple DPS Roles 

I said this blog isn’t directly relevant though, because I want to discuss a topic that we did struggle with a lot during Mists development, and indeed through most of World of Warcraft. We have classes with multiple DPS specs, and for mage, warlock, hunter, rogue, warrior and death knight, there isn’t even a melee vs. ranged distinction between those DPS specs. The question comes up all the time: “what is the role of these roles?” I don’t think there is a right answer here, and we’ve even changed the design a few times over the last several years. Again, I’m not couching this in terms of an imminent announcement or anything. This is fundamentally one of those designs that could go in a lot of different directions. It’s something we discuss a lot, and we figured given the strong opinions of our forum-posting community, many of you probably do as well. 

A paladin can choose from among specs that let her be a tank, melee DPS or healer, and can shift around which role she fills in a raid or BG team from week to week. Through the Dual Spec feature, she can even do so within a single evening. If her group doesn’t need another healer, or if she needs a break from tanking, she can become a DPS spec fairly easily without having to swap to a different character. A warlock doesn’t have that luxury. Yet, the warlock still has three specs. Is the idea, then, that you are supposed to swap from Destruction to Demonology and back depending on the situation? Is the idea that you play Affliction if you like dots and Destruction if you like nukes? Or do you just switch to whatever theoretically does 1% more DPS for the next fight? 

Players are sometimes cavalier about throwing around the claim that there’s a “lack of design direction” when they want their character buffed. Of course, classes always have a design direction; players just sometimes disagree with it. My point is that just because we debate whether the current design is the best possible one doesn’t mean there isn’t a design at all. That distinction is important. And of course, we do have a directive for which DPS spec you should play: whichever one you enjoy the most. But that doesn’t mean that is the best model or that it can’t ever change. There are other models we could try. 

Model One – Everyone is equal all the time 

If your DPS and utility are the same across specs, then you just play whichever one you prefer. Maybe you like the kit of the Frost mage, or maybe you like the rotation of the Fury warrior, so you play them. As I said above, this has been the model we have used for a while now, with mixed success. The challenge is that “all the time” caveat. We can get all of the DPS specs pretty close together on target dummies, and indeed they actually are very close on target dummies today. Our encounters aren’t target dummies though. Having some adds increases the damage of dot-specs. Having lots of adds increases the damage of strong AE specs. Having to move on a fight, and how often and far you have to move, can cause DPS to go up or down differently. Even if DPS is only off by a few percentage points, many players will respec to the one with the highest DPS (even if it’s theoretical, even if for them they will do lower personal DPS than if they had stuck with a more familiar spec). A mage who just loves Fire might be frustrated if he ever has to go Arcane, while another player might be happy that he gets to try different specs for different fights. 

The class stacking we’ve seen on the Spine of Deathwing encounter relates to the need for massive burst damage in a specific window, such that the difference between a one minute DPS cooldown and a two minute DPS cooldown matters. Even if we could make sure every spec had the same AE vs. single target damage, do we now need to also ensure every spec can do the same DPS in burst windows of various lengths? Is that even mathematically possible? Or do we just test every spec for every raid encounter of the current tier and tweak class mechanics around for whatever is the current status quo? That implies a high rate of change, and I wonder if we’d lose a little bit of the fun of experimentation and theorycrafting if it was basically accepted that you could take any spec to any fight and do about the same damage. It’s more balanced, yes, but does it lack depth or flavor? Is it fun? 

Model Two – Everyone has specialties and you match the spec to the situation 

Under this model, we would establish spec specialties. For example, Arcane could be good for single-target fights while Fire is great at AE fights. Some of that design already exists in the game, but we try not to overdo it. If you really like playing one mage spec, or really detest constant spec swapping, then this model isn’t going to be to your liking. Furthermore, we don’t want to overstrain our boss design by having to meet a certain quota of AE vs. single target fights and movement vs. stationary fights and burn phase vs. longevity fights or whatever. It is also really hard to engineer these situations in Arenas or Battlegrounds (for example, both mobility and burst are extremely desirable in PvP), so in those scenarios there still may just be one acceptable spec. 

Model Three – You swap specs to gain specific utility 

If we used this model, then you might switch out to a different spec to gain a specific spell. Again, we have some of this today. A DK might want Unholy’s Anti-Magic Zone for a certain fight. Hunters might go Beastmaster to pick up a missing raid buff. Mages might go Fire for situations where Combustion shines. Druids might go Balance when they need the knockback from Typhoon. A little of this sort of thing goes a long way though. As in Model One, not every player wants to have to swap specs. If you just like Survival, you might resent having to go BM just to buff someone. If knockbacks are too potent, then it really constrains your raid composition and makes even casual guilds feel like they need to keep a stable of alts or benched players for every fight. If, for example, there wasn’t a boss in the current raid tier for which warrior abilities really shine, then warriors start to feel like a third wheel, yet trying to make sure every boss in a tier has a moment for every spec to shine is a pretty daunting task. 

The extreme case of this is the “utility” spec who does middling DPS, but brings a lot of synergy and utility that improves all of the other specs. This was the Burning Crusade model, where classes like shaman and Shadow priests were brought to raids just to make the pure classes (and warriors, who were always treated as pure classes back then for some reason) do better DPS. In Lich King, we changed the design to make different raid buffs and abilities more widespread and give groups much more flexibility in their raid (and to some extent dungeon) comps. We heard from Shadow priests that they wanted to do competitive damage, not just be there to make everyone else more awesome. But even today we get a lot of requests to improve the utility of someone’s spec so that they are more likely to get invited to a group. 

Model Four – There is just a best spec for PvP and PvE 

This was the model of vanilla World of Warcraft, and we understand some players wouldn’t mind it returning. In this model Arms and Frost and Subtlety (and other specs) were designed to be good for PvP, while others, Fury and Fire and Combat perhaps, were designed to be good for PvE. The PvP specs might have better mobility or survivability or burst damage, while the PvE specs have better sustained damage over the course of a 6-10 minute boss fight. A lot has changed since vanilla. We don’t make many raid or dungeon encounters these days where DPS specs can just stand in one place and burn down a boss. Mobility, survivability, and burst damage can all be really useful on particular encounters, sometimes trumping the higher DPS offered by a competing spec. (There’s that old adage that dead do zero DPS.) In addition, if there is a PvP spec and a PvE spec, then for pure classes that implies that your third spec lacks much of a role. (The good leveling spec? Is that exciting?) Furthermore, our Mists of Pandaria talent tree design explicitly takes away some of the tools from the traditional PvP specs and makes them available to other specs in the class. If this works out, then you can take your Frost mage raiding, or have an Arcane mage for PvP who uses some of what traditionally were Frost’s control and escape tools. That’s great if you PvP and love Arcane, or PvE and love Frost. It’s less cool if you were the kind of player who was totally comfortable with the simpler (and possibly easier to balance) design of having dedicated PvP vs. PvE specs. 

Model Five – Don’t have multiple DPS roles 

This is the most controversial model and the one that would require the most change, meaning we are almost certainly never going to do it. For sake of completeness though, you can argue that classes never should have been designed with multiple specs that fill the same role. In this model, either Arms or Fury goes away and gets replaced with something. (Archery? Healing?) Warlocks and other pure classes would need a massive redo to end up with say a melee and tanking warlock. Everyone becomes a hybrid. The hardest decisions becomes whether you want to be the ranged or melee DPS version of your class (like druids or shaman). This idea is elegant from a design perspective because it un-asks all of those questions about how much more damage pure classes should do than hybrids to justify their narrower utility. But, perhaps counter-intuitively, elegant designs often aren’t the strongest ones (I could write a whole blog on that topic alone). Model Five is the kind of rhetorical question you could go back in time and ask before WoW launched, but not the kind of thing we could change today without taking an enormous amount of effort, to say nothing of the irate players who would feel bamboozled that we were so dramatically changing their character out from under them. I try to never say never, but this model isn’t the kind of change you make in a mature game. It’s here only for completeness and because I suspect some of you will bring it up. 

But Which is the Best Model? 

Hell if I know! I fundamentally believe that none of these models is, without question, the obvious right one. All of them have advantages and disadvantages, and there are probably other models you could come up with that are variants on these five, or perhaps even something new. Like I said, we’re not announcing a philosophy change yet. If we get enough feedback for one model or another, we might eventually change our minds. Also for this blog we’re going to lock the comments and ask that you post your replies in this forum thread. Just remember that even we don’t believe that there is one correct answer, so please keep that in mind when you’re composing your feedback. 

Too scared to Arena

So I finally managed to dodge the angry barrage of 2k+ rated rogues running vial and hit 2.2k. The problem is I am currently too scared to que because of the shear amount of vial trinkets out there and the possibility of running into legendary daggers.I have never been this scared in my life, I haven’t played arena in over 2 weeks. I am currently having nightmares of rogues opening on me and killing me. It’s not only rogues who keep me away from arena, Hunter/Melee cleaves are almost equally as scary. I like arena, I just dislike dying in openers. I dislike dying in openers so much that I can’t even arena anymore. In WOTLK I never had this problem because it was actually balanced around that burst meaning people couldn’t just rush in and spam CC and get a kill without risk of getting counter globalled. Cata burst is not intended therefore not prepared for meaning it’s just plain stupid and gives unfair advantages to one side who can rush in and spend 30 second on CC people while being immune to damage and CC.I don’t really know what to do with myself. I have just been telling my partners I don’t feel like arenaing but I think they might kick me off the team soon. I tried raiding I’ve just cleared 8/8 and it’s getting a little boring. There are no real changes to fix anything in 4.3.2 except the vial nerf, but rogues still do crazy damage without vial.

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Vaeflare replies:

As you already mentioned, in the upcoming patch there is a change to Vial of Shadows that should reduce some of the burst damage you are experiencing in PvP.

Dying in openers certainly isn’t fun, and can be incredibly frustrating if you’re the one on the receiving end of such a coordinated attack, but don’t give up! In addition to perhaps taking some time to focus on other activities such as Rated and unrated Battlegrounds where you have more people to watch your back, you might also consider browsing some PvP videos from other members of the community to not only help inspire you, but to also arm you with a further arsenal of tactics that you can use to your own advantage against opposing teams.

Also, from my own experience, when I was having a lot of trouble against a certain class or spec that I felt countered my usual tactics, I found it helpful to sometimes grab a friend that played that class and spent some time dueling them so that they could critique me on areas where I could improve my skills, including my timing on using certain abilities, and how I could counter some of their own tactics. That way when I stepped back into arenas, I was more confident in my own skills and felt better-prepared for how to expose the weaknesses of my enemies.

Keep at it, and remember there are players out there equally as scared to see you step out onto the Arena floor.

______________________

One of our upcoming goals in Mists of Pandaria is to make the gap between the overall DPS/healing of both PvE and PvP items smaller. In fact, we have design plans for new PvP combat mechanics that will make PvP gear and weapons markedly better in PvP than equivalent level PvE gear and weapons.

The overall goal is to reduce the barrier for crossing between PvE and PvP (and vice versa), as well as to also ensure that PvP gear is the best in PvP, and PvE gear is the best in PvE.

More details on these upcoming changes will be posted as they become available.

Regardless of anyone’s rankings past or present, the process of learning and striving to improve never stops: it helps even the most battle-hardened gladiator remain able to go toe-to-toe with their fiercest opponents.

In team-based combat such as Arenas, pressuring an enemy in order to go for a kill or striving to protect your comrade from being the brunt of a focused assault are part of the experience, no matter what classes are driving to get the job done. Most matches are an incredibly complicated dance between combatants: a push and pull of offensive and defensive tactics, of coordinating switches, interrupts, dispels, crowd control, and of learning when to use your particular cooldowns or abilities, and when to change your tactics on the fly. Depending on who you ask, what class they are, what brackets they are in, and what team compositions they run, you are likely to get a totally different answer as to what particular class gives them the most trouble at any given time.

As far as the current balance of various classes: it’s something we are, as always, keeping a close watch on. We welcome you to post constructively about your observations in the appropriate threads, and the more focused and on-topic you can keep it, the better.

While it’s not possible to address every individual thread or concern of the community, rest assured we are listening, regardless if you see us post within a particular thread or not.

Rated Battlegrounds VS. The Blues [1/17/12]

 

Greetings Combatants of the Glorious Alliance and the Merciless Horde!
It is my great honor to invite you all to test your skills, steel, and sorcery against Blizzard employees such as myself (watch the face though, I got an image to maintain).

So if a bit of You vs. Blue action sounds like your idea of a good time come on down to the 4.3.2 PTRs this Tuesday, January 17th. We’ll be queuing for Rated Battlegrounds from 3pm-6pm PST, you’ll know it’s us from our [Blizzard Horde] & [Blizzard Alliance] guild names.

Hope to see you on the fields of battle!

1/12 PTR Updates

Rogue

• Adrenaline Rush no longer triggers a global cooldown.

Dungeons & Raids

• Baradin Hold
  • The roaming Eyes of Occu’thar have been replaced by hateful creatures who serve Alizabal.
• Dragon Soul
  • Warmaster Blackhorn
    • The visual warning for Twilight Elites’ Blade Rush should be easier to see.

Items

• Vial of Shadows damage (Lightning Strike) has been reduced to approximately one-third of previous damage. However, it will now trigger approximately 3 times as often. This is intended to keep overall DPS the same while reducing burst damage, especially in PvP.

Patch 4.1 Hotfixes – [Updated 6/1]

TCG Art Gallery Now Open

Garrosh Hellscream: Then and Now

Fortified citadels lie in ruins. Once-verdant forests burn brightly in the twilight of the setting sun. And arid stretches of desert, known to have claimed even the hardiest of travelers, now house fertile oases.

The breaking of Azeroth changed a great many things. While the altered landscapes of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor may be the most noticeable evidence of Deathwing’s violent return, many of Azeroth’s heroes have also undergone drastic physical and mental transformations of their own.

Some have questioned Thrall’s decision to set Garrosh Hellscream into the fiery crucible of Horde leadership, but none can doubt that this Mag’har orc from Outland has charted a course for his people that will change the very face of Azeroth.

As the son of the orc credited with his people’s redemption, Garrosh Hellscream has always carried a bitter mantle of duty to his kind. Before learning of his father’s ultimate actions against the Burning Legion, Garrosh had borne the shame of Grom Hellscream’s corruption and feared that such weakness might be found within himself. When Thrall arrived in Nagrand and showed Garrosh the truth of his father’s martyrdom, the Mag’har was transformed. Filled with a renewed sense of strength and confidence, he returned with the warchief to Azeroth to be his advisor. Soon named overlord of the Warsong offensive, Garrosh displayed a courage, tenacity, and hot-bloodedness that both impressed and worried other members of the Horde. These concerns were only heightened after his appointment as warchief, as Garrosh has paid little heed to opinions originating outside of his race.

Hellscream’s ascension has been applauded by most orcs, who feel that his brash warrior instincts and unwillingness to negotiate for needed resources are more in tune with the true orc way. While Garrosh appreciates public recognition, even relishes the acceptance amongst these green-skinned orcs, he has little time or patience for ostentatious displays of leadership. His attention is now focused on strengthening the walls of Orgrimmar and providing supplies vital to his people: food, lumber, and the other essentials for living, which are growing scarcer in the recent drought. If these can only be gained through the blood of selfish Alliance dogs, so be it.

Already distrustful of the other branches of the Horde, Garrosh has learned that the various leaders of these factions are more powerful than he had originally estimated. The duel with (and eventual slaying of) High Chieftain Cairne Bloodhoof was costly, as it resulted in a civil war amongst the tauren. The exodus of the Darkspear trolls from Orgrimmar, led by a dissatisfied Vol’jin, has spread the Horde’s once-concentrated military mighty thin. And Sylvanas Windrunner, the Dark Lady of the Forsaken, has not been reserved in sharing her low opinion of the new warchief. Garrosh is not one for diplomacy—with the Alliance or even among the members of the Horde—and he is only now realizing the price for this mindset. Whether he sets that at a higher value than his vision for an invigorated, purified Horde is yet to be seen. In the end, some feel that Garrosh Hellscream’s ideals will bring about the salvation of the Horde, while others feel he will usher in its downfall.

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We’ll be examining other key characters’ transformations—including those of Anduin Wrynn and Magni Bronzebeard—in the months ahead, so come back soon.

Ask the Devs – Answers #5: Achievements

The answers are in from our last installment of Ask the Devs. We will start a new questions round next week. Please keep in mind that each edition of Ask the Devs is focused on a specific topic, as noted in the thread title.

Q: When will achievements finally be awarded account-wide? – Larosh (Europe [German]), Eneia & Payasos (Europe [Spanish]), Rageudder & Kellgros (Europe [English]), Деадхил (Europe [Russian]), Nyn (North America/ANZ), 기사는아무나 (Korea)

A: Making achievements Battle.net account-wide is something we’d like to do, but it’s not a goal we could provide a current timetable for. All of the original World of Warcraft coding was done with the expectation that the data on every realm would always be independent. Now that we are trying to make as many things as possible account-wide, we’re having to rebuild all of those systems. It is absolutely something we want to do, but it will take a lot of time away from other features.

Q: Will we ever be able to spend our achievement points on something? Or will there be a feature where it will be required to have x amount of points? – Nordicberry (Europe [English]), Hogosha & Wulkuhr (Europe [German]), Neroth (Europe [French]), Kularia (Northa America/ANZ), Trafalgarlaw (Latin America)

A: We want Achievements to remain as an optional thing you can do as bragging rights, or to challenge yourself. As soon as we add any kind of player power, or use them to gate anything, then they feel mandatory for a lot of players. In fact, we think one of the reason achievements are fun is that the drive to complete them is totally up to you, which keeps them (hopefully!) from feeling like a chore. If you want to go after some achievements that’s a choice, and choosing not to care about achievements doesn’t mean you’re making your character less powerful.

We do offer pets, mounts and titles for specific achievements, and we’re unlikely to ever do anything much more “mandatory” than those.

Q: Do you plan to implement more achievements directly linked to professions or classes? – Cith (Europe [French]), Tsuteymanga (Europe [English]), Sergan (Latin America)

A: Until we can do Battle.net account-wide achievements it would be pretty cruel of us to offer achievements for say Illustrious Grand Master Alchemy, Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting on the same character. The same is true of classes. The best we could do today would be to have something like “Land a Pyroblast for X damage” and have an equivalent one for all 10 classes, since you could get only one. We do have more room with the guild achievements, since not every task needs to be completed by one player. We’ll continue to look for fun achievements for Cooking, Fishing, First Aid and Archaeology until then.

Q: Will we ever see a change to the Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin exalted achievement /reputation grinds? While normally a fan of time consuming achievements, these two seem to be a tad excessive. Warsong moreso as you can go entire games without gaining any reputation at all. You could in theory lose every AB you ever do, and eventually get exalted at a “reasonable” pace. Perhaps award rep for Flag returns, killing efcs, capping bases, HKs similar to Alteracy Valley, etc. – Idkmybffyata (North America/ANZ), Lunaticheart (Korea)

A: We think those are fine as achievements. They definitely take a huge time commitment, but so do some of the other achievements. And you don’t need to get them for the meta achievements.

Q: As some achievements like The Keymaster and the Shen’dralar reputations have been removed, have you considered creating a Feat of Strength for those achievements or is it possible that we get them back in the future like normal achievements? – Enarhion (Europe [Spanish]), Деадхил (Europe [Russian])

A: We added a Feat for Exalted Shen’dralar rep in 4.1. We’re unlikely to add a Keymaster feat.

We added the Keymaster achievement and then almost immediately decided to deemphasize the existence of keys in the game, and thus removed the achievement. Unfortunately it probably isn’t even possible to track who had the older keys now.

Q: Guild Achievements related with professions are much more difficult than other Guild Achievements. Is there any plan to give a chance for small guilds to get those Achievement rewards? –버미전사 (Korea), Joq (North America/ANZ)

A: We think some of these are way too high and we plan on lowering them to more sane numbers for 4.1. The Pen is Mightier glyph achievement for example would have been reasonable with the old glyph model but is ridiculous today. We were waiting to collect some additional data from guilds currently working on those achievements, but we feel like we have enough information now to lower them. Pen is Mightier for example will go from 25,000 glyphs to 2,500 in 4.1.

Q: I’d like to see the achievement system become more active and dynamic, will we ever see achievements that unlock quest lines, dungeons, or other Easter egg content as a reward for dedicating so much time in Azeroth? – Grandevil (North America/ANZ)

A: Probably not. As we said above, we want Achievements to feel optional. Some players don’t care for the game of collecting pets or mounts, so they still feel like they can opt out of achievements. If there was a cool quest line involved, then players who felt like they could safely ignore achievements in the past would now have to go back and play catch up. If you are doing achievements today, it should be because you like to do them, not because you’re hoping for some additional reward to materialize in the future.

Q: Currently, the achievement rewards are more focused to common tasks, such as raids, events, PvP. Have you considered creating achievements with rewards that ask to do crazy things around the world, like for example, soloing bosses or mobs, or more achievements like the “Jenkins” one, that are meant to do crazy things. – Thodyr (Europe [Spanish]), Khaelthas (Europe [French]), Assmira (Europe [German])

A: We like for achievements to be fun, but we don’t want for players working on achievements to have a huge negative impact on other players. At first glance, soloing a boss mob might sound like a decent achievement. But consider that if the achievement is very easy to do then hitting all those dungeons may just feel like a chore. On the other hand, if it’s challenging to do then we suddenly have to go back and worry about class balance in a way we never had to before. Blood DKs for example excel at soloing older bosses because of their self-healing mechanic, but the same isn’t true of most other classes and specs. We try not to have achievements that require you to ask your group to do something really bizarre or not fun. “Run a dungeon without picking up any loot,” would just be frustrating every time you had to debate with your group whether you were going for the achievement or not. “Jenkins” is fun for a silly achievement, considering its history, but too much of that sort of thing would get tedious pretty quickly.

Q: Will we ever see a “search” feature in the achievement window? That’s a lot of achievements to search through if you’re looking for something specific. – Grandevil (North America/ANZ), Lonik (Europe [Spanish])

A: Yes, this is something we plan on doing. The current UI makes it hard to find specific achievements. There are several places in the current UI that could benefit from a smarter search.

Q: Will you ever bring back the mounts for achievements that were removed (Naxx Glory runs) as you didn’t remove the later mounts? – Joyia (North America/ANZ)

A: This is a tough one. On the one hand, we know there are a lot of players who would still like to get their hands on these mounts. On the other hand, we were pretty clear that they would only be available for a limited time, and we hate to go back on our word because we know some groups went through heroic efforts to get them before the door closed. This is the kind of thing that is not set in stone and player feedback might eventually convince us to change our minds.

Q: The Achievement reward for “What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been” still remains as a purple proto-drake, which is a WotLK model. How about coordinating the color of the reward upon each expansion theme? – Shory (Korea)

A: The issue with meta-achievements like this is deciding how to structure them for the future. Do current players with the achievement just get a new mount every expansion? Do the old mounts go away and the new mount replaces it? Do we require you to just do one additional holiday and now you can get a second mount? We added Long Strange Trip when achievements first went in the game, and we didn’t always do a great job of designing some achievements with expandability in mind. If we had made the Long Strange Trip reward a protodrake at level 80 and then had a new achievement for doing the holidays again at level 85 that rewarded a different drake, then we might have some easily expandable content. We didn’t do that though, and it’s hard to go back and mess with existing achievements, especially ones that were hard to complete.

Q: There are still no Achievements beyond “Collect 75 unique companion pets”. Can I expect a reward for 100 companion pets in the future? – Whitewnd (Korea)

A: Patch 4.1 has achievements for 100 and 125 companions. Those particular achievements don’t reward pets, but we’ll probably do another reward at some tier in the future, perhaps 150 or 200 pets.

Q: Are we going to see more PvP achievements that reward mounts? Currently most of the cool mounts are awarded for PvE achievements. – Demodras (Europe [English])

A: PvP achievements are even trickier to design than PvE achievements because it’s harder to come up with something cool to do that doesn’t make the experience worse for everyone else. You don’t want to see the one dude who is trying to engineer capturing and losing a flag twenty times in one BG just so he can get the achievement for capturing a lot of flags. As a result, many of the PvP achievements are just for winning a lot of Arenas or BGs, which we feel already come with a lot of rewards. On that note, we are adding unique ground mounts to winning rated Battlegrounds similar to the flying mounts you get for excelling at Arenas.

Top Ten Content Blizzard Will Recycle

It’s a known fact that Blizzard likes to “reintroduce” the “most-popular” content of it’s time as “new” content! From Onyxia to the Deadmines to the return of Zul Gurub and Zul Aman next patch. And let’s let’s not forget Ragnaros in the not “too soon” future. As we’re looking at all this rehashed content, the question becomes…what will Blizzard recycle next?

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.

We’re proud to present the next step in the evolution of the StarCraft series… and Blizzard Entertainment’s long-awaited return to the console scene. Check out our new game information page for all the details, and get ready to fight for control of the Koprulu Sector like never before!

Introducing Crabby: The Dungeon Helper

The next content update for World of Warcraft introduces a brand-new feature designed to make your experience in Azeroth a whole lot user-friendlier. Meet Crabby: The Dungeon Helper! This adorable and knowledgeable crustacean companion will guide you through the game with useful hints, tips, and tricks for every situation. Read more about this upcoming feature on our new

Hold the Power of Horadim in Your Hands

After years of fevered development and tireless research into the mysteries of the Horadrim, we’ve finally succeeded in capturing the power of one of Sanctuary’s most enigmatic artifacts in a portable, downloadable form…. Behold, the Horadric Cube app for your smartphone or supported mobile device! But beware: great power often comes at a terrible price.

Visit our Horadric Cube app page

to learn more, if you dare.

The upcoming World of Warcraft Patch 4.1.11 promises to dramatically change your World of Warcraft: Cataclysm experience for the better, and we want to show you a glimpse of Azeroth’s future. This patch will feature significant class overhauls, faction and race balance changes, changes to the game world, UI improvements, bug fixes, and more.

4.1 Guild Challenges

In addition to updating Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman for level-85 players, we’re also excited about another patch 4.1 feature: Guild Challenges. Built into the Info panel of the guild user interface, Guild Challenges will be weekly tasks guild groups can tackle for additional guild experience, achievements, and gold.

This feature has been designed and implemented to be quite simple. At the top of the guild user interface Info pane, a new Guild Challenges section will be displayed and broken into three categories: Dungeons, Raids, and Rated Battlegrounds. Any guild group will qualify for Guild Challenges credit and there is a set number of times each challenge can be completed per week. There’s no need to add a quest to your Quest Log or anything of that nature. Just grab a guild group eligible for any of the challenges and go.

Completing a Guild Challenge will result in a popup to confirm credit has been awarded, similar to achievement popups (or “toasts”). The participating guild members will then earn experience for their guild. In addition, a gold reward will be deposited directly to the Guild Vault. The gold and experience rewarded varies for each challenge type, but you won’t have to worry about receiving reduced rewards if, say, you happen to be in a guild group that completes a raid or dungeon on normal difficulty. Since there is a limited number of times each challenge type can be completed per week, we want to make sure guilds don’t feel set back if a guild group of level-18 players receives credit for completing Deadmines, versus a level-85 guild group completing Heroic Deadmines. The same applies to normal and Heroic difficulty raid progression. Provided the content is level-appropriate for your guild group, you’ll earn experience and gold for your guild.

To earn Guild Dungeon Challenge credit, the 5-player party must be composed of at least 3 guild members. Raid and Rated Battleground Challenges require that 8 out of 10 players be guild members, while 20 guild members are required to earn credit for 25-player raids. To earn gold for Guild Challenge rewards, a guild must be level 5 or higher and the participating members must have earned honored reputation with the guild. For example, 3 out of 5 guild members in a 5-player party must be honored to earn gold for the guild. If those three guild members have only reached friendly reputation, they would still receive credit and earn guild experience, but the guild would not receive gold.

So, let’s say your guild has been regularly hitting the daily experience cap. You might be wondering how beneficial it’d be to do Guild Challenges. Well wonder no more, amigos: Guild Challenges award guild experience above the cap. Think of it like rested experience. The guild experience cap will extend itself relative to the guild experience earned by completing these challenges. It’s a great way to get an extra edge on your guild leveling! Not only that, if your guild reaches the level cap, continuing to partake in Guild Challenges will yield a much more substantial sum of gold deposited directly into the Guild Vault.

We’re very happy with Guild Challenges and feel that they’re a fun way to continue expanding upon all of the new guild features added in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Your feedback regarding this system is always appreciated, as you can be sure we’ll be looking for ways to beef it up in future patches.

Dev Watercooler: Rude Interruptions

‘Dev Watercooler’ is a blog series that provides an inside look into the thoughts and discussions happening within the World of Warcraft development team. In our first entry, Lead Systems Designer Greg “Ghostctrawler” Street laid down a few ground rules:

1. No promises are being made in these Dev Watercooler blogs.
2. Don’t read too much between the lines.
3. No complaints about the topic not being what you want to see covered.

Are spellcast interrupt abilities, such as Kick, too good? It’s easy to make that argument. We think their ease of use and low cooldown has led to a whole cascade of events in PvP. Because interrupts are so good, casters without a lot of instant spells or mobility are weak. For that reason, we tend to give casters a lot of instant spells or movement abilities, and casters who excel at those (say, Frost mages) are very powerful, while those without (say, Elemental shaman) have more difficulty.

Because interrupts are good, classes without them feel uncompetitive, which has led to us giving interrupts to paladins and druids, which in turn has led to them being even more prevalent. Because casters tend to fire off lots of instant spells while jumping around, melee can be really easy to kite. Because melee can be easy to kite, melee classes without strong mobility can suffer, and we have to consider giving high mobility to all melee, which increases the amount of uptime melee have on casters, which means we have to give casters even more powerful escape mechanisms to survive… and the arms race continues.

See where I’m going with this? Because instant spells tend to be so powerful, we have to make cast time spells insanely powerful to compete or they’ll never see use in PvP. But we have to make those spells so powerful that when they do get off, we can have PvP burst issues. (Look at how much better Frostbolt has to be than Ice Lance for mages to even consider the “long” cast.)

Nerfing all of the interrupts across the board isn’t the kind of thing we can realistically do mid-expansion. Anyone working on the raid content can tell you how important interrupts are to today’s encounter design. We’d have to redesign nearly all of the raid encounters and many of the dungeon encounters as well. Of course once you increase the cooldown on interrupts, then availability of stuns gains relative power, so you have that balance consideration as well.

Instant spells do have their place in the game. If you’re worried about being interrupted because someone is chasing you, or you are chasing them, that’s a great time to use an instant spell. But actual 2.5 sec cast time spells need to have their place too and, if anything, they should be the norm.

Here’s one other way in which interrupts have wide-reaching effects on the game via the chain of consequences discussed above. One of the advantages melee used to have in PvE was on movement fights. If the boss has to be kited or stays in motion, the rogues and warriors can follow along and still deal damage. It will be less damage for sure, but they’ll still get a lot of auto attacks in. It used to be the case that asking the Balance druid or Fire mage to move was a huge dps loss for them, because they were always interrupting their spells. In today’s PvE environment, that role has almost flipped. Many casters can shoot on the run and take only a very minimal DPS hit to do so. For this reason (and a few others) melee classes can feel like a liability on certain encounters. We’d prefer for raids to want a fairly even distribution of ranged to melee classes and ideally groups would have a lot of flexibility in who they bring. It’s okay to have fights that are really good for casters, but there need to be at least a couple that feel great for melee as well.

Is there a design lesson to learn here? I guess it’s some variant of the butterfly effect — apparently innocuous designs (in this case the short cooldown on interrupt abilities) can have wide-ranging effects on all aspects of the game. I’m not sure what the game would look like if Pummel and Kick and Wind Shear had 30 second cooldowns. Clearly we’d have to redesign a lot of other abilities, mechanics, and numbers to make it work. Again, this isn’t a change you’ll see anytime soon. But it might feel better in the long run if we could get to that point.

Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is the lead systems designer on World of Warcraft. He knows how to get to R’lyeh.

3/30 PTR Updates

Achievements

• The following Battleground achievements have been permanently removed from the game, as they do not function correctly with the achievement tracking system:
  • Guild Gankin’ in Gilneas
  • Guild Gulch
  • The Peak of Perfection
  • The Perfect Guild Storm
  • Storming the Beach
• The guild achievements for earning exalted reputation with factions (Ambassador, Diplomacy, and United Nations) have been fixed to now correctly count cumulative guild members with exalted factions. Previously, these achievements would only count exalted factions on one guild member.
• The guild rated Battleground title achievements should now properly be awarded.

Classes

• All non-damaging interrupts off the global cooldown will now always hit the target. This includes Pummel, Shield Bash, Kick, Mind Freeze, Rebuke, Skull Bash, Counterspell, Wind Shear, Solar Beam, Silencing Shot, and related player pet abilities.

Death Knights

• Desecration no longer triggers when an applicable strike hits a snare-immune target. This is primarily to avoid unnecessary spell effect clutter during boss encounters.

Druids

• Cyclone duration has been reduced to 5 seconds, down from 6.
• Lacerate bonus threat has been removed and replaced with increased initial damage done.
• Savage Defense has been redesigned slightly. Instead of a single charge absorption, it now places an absorption effect on the druid absorbing up to 35% of the druid’s attack power (modified by mastery, if applicable) in damage and lasting 10 seconds. There are no longer any charges on the effect.
• Swipe (Bear) cooldown has been reduced to 3 seconds, down from 6, and is now trainable at level 18 (training cost has been reduced). In addition, the bonus threat from this ability has been removed and replaced with increased damage done.
• Thrash bonus threat has been removed and replaced with increased damage done.
• Nature’s Swiftness now also increases the healing done by th eaffected nature spell by 50%.

Hunters

• Summoned pets now start with 100 focus, up from 0.
• Hunters will automatically acquire a new target if the current target dies in the middle of a cast.
• Aimed Shot and Steady Shot should no longer start casting Auto Shot on a new target when the “Stop Auto Attack” option is enabled.
• Auto Shot now automatically turns off until reactivated once Freezing Trap is cast on an enemy player.
• Scatter Shot’s disorient effect should no longer sometimes be broken by the hunter’s Auto Shot.

Mages

• Arcane Blast damage has been increased by 13%, cast time has been reduced to 2.0 seconds, down from 2.35 seconds.In addition, the stacking effect of Arcane Blast now increases the damage done by Arcane Explosion, and Arcane Explosion does not consume that effect.
• Arcane Explosion damage has been increased by 30%13%.
• Fingers of Frost bonus damage applied to Ice Lance has been increased to 25%, up from 15%.

Paladins

• Sacred Duty can now be activated by Avenger’s Shield in addition to Judgements. The effect now lasts 10 seconds, down from 15.

Priests

• Holy Word: Sanctuary healing done has been increased by 35%. In addition, it has a new spell effect.

Rogues

• Cheat Death now reduces damage taken by 80% while in effect, (down from 90%). Its internal cooldown has been raised to 90 seconds, up from 60.

Shamans

• Cleansing Waters now has a 6-second internal cooldown.

Warlocks

• Unstable Affliction damage done when it is dispelled has been doubled, but this damage can no longer be critical.
• Glyph of Soul Swap now increases the cooldown of Soul Swap by 15 seconds, up from 10 seconds.

Warriors

• Heroic Leap is no longer on the global cooldown, similar to other warrior movement abilities.
• Gag Order now applies to Pummel and only affects Heroic Throw, giving these abilities a 100% chance to silence the target for 3 seconds. In addition, Gag Order lowers the cooldown of Heroic Throw by 30 seconds.

Dungeons & Raids

• New level-85 Heroic dungeons are available for partial testing.
  • More information on these updated dungeons can be found here.
  • These dungeons may only partially be available for testing at this time. Stay tuned for additional updates.
• Blackrock Caverns
  • Aura of Arcane Haste now has a clearer visual on the bearer of the aura.
  • Bound Flames in the Karsh Steelbender encounter no longer create Lava Pools when they are killed.
  • The Short Throw ability used by Twilight Sadists has had its range reduced to 10 yards.
• Deadmines
  • Ragezone cast by Defias Blood Wizards now only increases damage dealt, no longer increasing damage taken.
• Grim Batol
  • Bleeding Wound damge from General Umbriss has been lowered by 20%.
  • Malignant Trogg now moves more slowly.
  • Encumbered damage bonus from Forgemaster Throngus has been reduced by 50%.
  • Invoked Flaming Spirits should prefer non-tank targets to fixate on.
  • The Twilight Flame Patch from the Twilight Drake has been removed.
  • The cooldown portion of the Twisted Arcane buff cast by Azureborne Seers has been removed.
• The Stonecore
  • Ground Slam now has a pre-cast visual on the ground in front of Ozruk. In addition, Ground Slam’s damage and radius have been reduced.
  • High Priestess Azil’s Seismic Shard now has a more obvious warning visual.
• Throne of Tides
  • Gilgoblin Hunters’ Poisoned Spear direct and periodic damage has been reduced.
  • Gilgoblin Aquamages’ Tsunami damage has been reduced.
  • Visual effects during the Lady Naz’jar encounter have been improved for clarity.
  • Blight Beasts summoned during the Ozumat encounter now deal less damage with Aura of Dread.
• Vortex Pinnacle
  • The Air Nova ability triggered when a Gust Soldier is killed has had its knockback effect reduced.
  • Altairus now spawns closer to the center of his platform, away from the edge.
  • Temple Adepts and Ministers of Air now wait 2 seconds before starting a spell cast when they are first engaged.
• Wailing Caverns
  • The maze section has been removed, and nearby creatures and bosses have been adjusted to compensate.

Guilds

• Guild Challenges are now available for testing.
  • These challenges can be found in the Info pane of the guild UI.
  • Guild Challenges fall into three categories: Guild Dungeon Run, Guild Raid, and Guild Rated Battleground.
  • Each challenge can be completed a set number of times per week. Guild groups participating in level-appropriate Heroic or normal difficulty dungeons and raids, or Rated Battlegrounds, will automatically qualify for challenge credit.
  • Each time a Guild Challenge is completed, the guild will be awarded experience and gold deposited directly into the Guild Vault, as well as the opportunity to earn all-new achievements. A popup or “toast” will be displayed to confirm a Guild Challenge has been completed (similar to achievement alerts).
  • Guild experience earned via Guild Challenges will be awarded above the daily cap. The experience cap will move forward relative to the amount of experience obtained through completing Guild Challenges (similar to rested experience for characters).
  • Guilds already at the level cap will be awarded substantially more gold in place of guild experience.
  • Gold rewards require the qualified guild members of the group to be honored with their guild, and the guild must be level 5.

Items

• Account Bound Items
  • Many “Account Bound” heirlooms are now labeled as “Battle.net Account Bound”, meaning that they can also be traded or mailed to characters that are on different World of Warcraft accounts under the same Battle.net account.
  • Mail sent to characters on the same Battle.net account now arrives instantaneously, as it does for the same World of Warcraft account.
  • Mailing account-bound items to characters of the opposite faction on the same Battle.net account will now correctly translate faction-specific items to their appropriate equivalent.

Professions

• Alchemy – Flask of Steelskin now grants 450 Stamina, up from 300. The Mixology bonus for alchemists remains at 120 stamina.

PvP

• The rate at which Honor Points are earned has been doubled.
• Arena matchmaking can now extend beyond a team’s Battlegroup.
• Battleground raid leaders can now move players from other realms among raid subgroups.

3/29 Hotfixes

March 25 – March 29

Dungeons & Raids

• The Bastion of Twilight – A bug has been fixed that could cause Flame Strike during the Ascendant Council encounter (Heroic difficulty) to target an existing fire patch, instead of creating a new one.

Guilds

• The guild perk “Have Group, Will Travel” no longer allows players to summon guild mates inside dungeons, raids, Battlegrounds, or Tol Barad when the battle is in progress. It will also not function while the player is on any transport.

Quests & Creatures

• Uldum – Hostile NPCs are no longer present at the Temple of Uldum once the cutscene from picking up “Harrison Jones and the Temple of Uldum” finishes playing.

Darkmoon Faire Chicago

Strong gusts have carried the Darkmoon Faire from Beijing, China all the way to the Windy City. On April 1 – 3, Chicago is hosting Silas Darkmoon and his weekend of World of Warcraft Trading Card Game tournaments. Alexstrasza will be in attendance, so bring your Core deck and challenge her for the title of “Dragon Slayer.” Plus, we’ll have the Cryptozoic Costume Contest at 2 p.m. on Saturday. It’s free to enter and you could win a highly sought-after Spectral Tiger Loot card. If you’ve never played the TCG before, staff will be on hand to provide you with a demo, and then you can jump into one of the Beginner Tournaments. See you in April!

Tip of the Day – City Guards Are Your Friends

“One thing that clogs up the general chat channels is people asking for directions in the hub cities. Fortunately Blizzard has come up with a simple solution – just ask a city guard! They’ll give you directions to everything in the city and even provide you with a little flag in your mini-map! You know, the employment situation in Azeroth must be pretty bad when you consider that most of these guards are high level and can easily wipe out virtually every monster in the game and they’re taking the time out of their busy schedule to help you. The least you can do is avail yourself of their services. I don’t even think they get paid!”