World Joyland (环球动漫嬉戏谷, Huánqiú Dòngmàn Xīxì Gǔ) better known as the Warcraft and Starcraft-themed amusement park, has been the subject of massive speculation since the first digital rendering surfaced on the internet six months ago. An amusement park entirely devoted to making your online virtual nerd-topia a reality, the EPIC potential of our MMORPG fever-dreams made manifest led us to the park with pretty massive expectations.

Joyland is located in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, and if you need directions we’ve got you covered (even though non-noobs would probably be able to find the park relying on nothing but their roaming skillz). It claims to be the world’s first video-game-themed park, it cost 200 million yuan (about $30 million USD) and includes seven sections (see our review of the non-Blizzard sections here) spread over 600,000 square meters.

Joyland might not succeed in actually evoking the gamer’s experience – there were no activities anywhere evocative of actual game-play (they confiscated our bow and mage staff at gate, so no 20-sided dice) and there was a shocking dearth of nerds. But the sheer and constant stimulation factor more than makes up for the lack of felicity in recreating epically massive terrains that gamerz have sacrificed their health and sex lives to live inside of.

The concept of the park in general is actually pretty cool – Joyland is an attempt to merge our digital entertainment lives with the real world:

World Joyland will gather the world’s best contents of digital culture, combine the newest digital entertainment and interactive technologies, partially realize anime-and-game virtual sceneries, innovate anime and game communication and display methods, interpret the core value of digital culture, archive education during entertainment.

To that end, they have devoted a large section of the park to arguably the two most popular games on the planet: Blizzard behemoths World of Warcraft and Starcraft. And the park has now successfully become a conceptual mecca of sorts to the gamers of the earth. 1337!

They’ve also built enormous gaming and technology R&D facilities on the park premises, including the National E-Sports Competition Center(!!!), International Anime-and-Game Expo Pavilion, Anime-and-Game Technology and Derivatives R&D Park, and a Digital Technology High-end Professionals Training Center.

According to their promotional video (see below) China wants World Joyland to compete with the likes of Universal Studios and Disney! They don’t bother to address the logistical and legal issues involved with exporting such a shanzhai-tastic park, though, without going completely broke from legitimately licensing the project.

Because they obviously didn’t purchase the rights to use characters and names from Blizzard, the Warcraft park is instead “Terrain of Magic” and Starcraft is humorously mislabeled the “Universe of Starship.”

The sheer size of the park left some of us wishing we’d done more research before our visit. We missed entirely, for example, the giant theater near the entrance that was likely screening the terrifying fire-breathing underwater/space monster show being promoted on Joyland’s many posters around Changzhou.

After hitting the restrooms and traipsing through Taobao street, we hung a left and entered World of Magic. Park maps are available at the entrance, and except for the section titles, are entirely in Chinese. We set our sights on what looked like the largest things on the map, and made our way in that direction.

Terrain of Magic (a.k.a Warcraft world)

No doubt about it, one of the most entertaining aspects of the park is the sign boards in front of each attraction. They include huhlarious descriptions, in both English and Chinese, followed by a rating system using one of three indexes: Splendor Index, Happiness Index, and Thrill Index (no damage index). Here’s an example from the first attraction:

With thousand years of unstopped war, this place is forbidden to losers and cowards. We are looking forward to a hero to bring back peace with his sword!

Unfortunately that ride was closed, particularly disappointing because the map makes it look like a giant battleground. Idk, maybes we have to L2p b4 going in.

We couldn’t help but imagine finding groups of aimless people waiting outside rides looking to join a raid. Or giant microphones blasting agitated youths cursing one another, or costumed dwarves screaming LEEEEROY JENKINSSS at 15 minute-intervals throughout the park.

Our first ride was an exciting little number called Splash of Monster Blood, and they’re not kidding about the splash. We’ll just say this much: trying to act cool by refusing to buy a sky blue poncho on your way in is a giant n00b stamp.

The ride was, as its sign board attests, a “beast-bloody journey” (a.k.a. your standard amusement park log ride affair.) After clicking and chugging up a tunnel full of orcs and monsters, you are then plunged down into water that manages somehow to smash you from both the front and the back simultaneously. Sadly, this was not the wettest part of the ride. You are then squirted by multiple streams of water, which we later found out are aimed by demonic lookers-on who fill water-gun machines with coins to spray you.

Ride attendants in the Warcraft park were forced/delighted to be wearing what appeared to be glorified bam-bam outfits of brown and leopard-print spandex.

You can buy fake battle swords and Minnie Mouse hair bows, respectively, from the merch carts. Sword ran us 20rmb (about $3.50), Minnie ears about the same. One may be tempted to ravish the big-breasted elves and mer-women statues with one’s sword, but be prepared to face a judgmental “dude, there are kids” from your companions.

By the way, there are a LOT of kids.

The most impressive part of the Warcraft park are the enormous statues lining your park experience with massive copyright infringement written all over their faces. There’s no horde/alliance distinction however, and tauren/night elves/humans are strewn about with seeming abandon. They throw in mermaids and dragons for good measure.

universe-of-starship.jpg Universe of Starship (a.k.a Starcraft world)

The transition from Warcraft World into Starcraft world was noticeable in the color palate. Everything changed from brown/orange/red to blue/yellow/white.

We saw a total of two other foreigners in the park, and barely more Chinese. We couldn’t imagine why it wasn’t packed on a summer weekend afternoon, but we also didn’t care because the longest we had to wait was 20-25 minutes for any ride, including the big-name roller coaster.

In fact, the best rides in the park often seemed the least populated, which was probably because most of the park guests were children, and locals in general tend to prefer the boring rides.

The main attraction of the park is a big blue inverted rollercoaster, aptly named the Sky Scraper but misspelled as the Sky Scrapper on its signboard. Amusement park rides are a dangerous affair in China, and we weren’t entirely sure we’d come back from this one alive. But we did, and have the photos to prove it.

One of the most disturbing parts of the park was the general decay we witnessed, unnerving in a park open only a hair shy of two months. Cracks in paint and rust on handrails made the attendants’ habit of screaming “Goodbye!” as the roller coaster surged out of the gates even more terrifying.

The other big attraction in Starcraft world is the Wrath of Ratheon, one of those drop tower rides that we skipped because every park has one.

Lastly, we walked into the largest, most overpowering unit at the center of Starship Universe to see what the 4D theater was all about. By far our longest wait, we were surrounded by oodles of teenage girls, which we don’t have time for because we’re busy farming XP, DUH! We were picturing the aforementioned fire-blasting sea monster posters 4D extravaganza, but instead got a boring Star Wars Episode I pod racer knock off ride. The 4D chairs jiggle you around enough to make the girls scream bloody murder, but it was a totally uninspiring experience in general. EXCEPT for the safety instructional video on the way in, where a ninja tells you not to smoke or get pregnant or tear off your shirt and get drunk:

The park is open from 9am to 10pm, but if you want that much time in the park you’ll have to arrange for your own transportation. In fact, if you have more than three or four people, hiring a car could actually be cheaper than the 160RMB roundtrip on trains each. Directions here.

The Idea of Joyland video via MIC Gadget (and yes, that is in game music from WoW you’re hearing):

July 19

General

• The frequency at which players can use /yell, /say, and any emotes is now throttled to prevent excessive spamming of chat logs from occurring.

Death Knights

• Improved Death Strike now provides 40/80/120% bonus damage, up from 30/60/90%, and a 10/20/30% critical strike chance, up from 3/6/9%.

Druids

• Flight Form now cancels the Leyara’s Locket buff.
• Moonfire will now generate Lunar Energy when crossing from Solar to Lunar on the Eclipse bar.

Dungeons & Raids

• All bosses in The Bastion of Twilight, Blackwing Descent, and Throne of the Four Winds once again award Valor Points in all raid sizes and difficulties. 10-player bosses award 35 Valor Points, while 25-player bosses award 45 Valor Points. This change does not apply to Argaloth in Baradin Hold. More information can be found here.
• Firelands
  • Superheated cannot be cast on players, even if they attack the Flamewaker Animators as they are channeling energy towards the Unstable Magma.
  • Alysrazor
    • Collecting Blazing Power now refreshes Wings of Flame to its full duration each time.
    • Alysrazor will now always face the correct direction during Firestorm.
    • Imprinted should now be cleared from characters under all conditions when the encounter resets.
    • Interacting with a Molten Feather will now dismount characters, preventing the feather from being wasted.
  • Beth’tilac
    • Beth’tilac will now only eat spiderlings that move very close to her (the range on her ability to consume them has been reduced). In addition, eaten spiderlings will no longer sometimes remain on the ground or on players once she consumes them.
    • Drones should no longer evade or aggro characters on top of the web.
    • Fixate now truly fixates on random targets.
  • Ragnaros
    • On 25-player Heroic difficulty, Cloudbursts will now always properly apply Deluge to 3 players before fading away.
    • It should always be possible to interact with Cloudbursts, even if several players click on one at the same time.

Items

• Heroic bind-on-equip items now sell to vendors for gold.

PvP

• A resolution has been put into place which should help alleviate Rated Battleground matchmaking delays. This fix corrects an issue that could occur if a team at the front of the queue was particularly difficult to match, resulting in a bottleneck which slowed matchmaking for all players in queue. More information can be found here.

Quests & Creatures

• The melee evasion angle of several creatures has been adjusted. Most notably, melee classes should no longer be seeing abilities, such as Backstab or Shred, getting parried when standing well enough out of Ragnaros’s melee evasion angle, or other bosses/creatures with similar evasion angles.

Hey all,

We are aware of the issue regarding extended queue times affecting Rated Battlegrounds. We’re currently investigating the situation and working to resolve it as soon as possible, but there isn’t an ETA for when this process will be complete. We’ll provide further updates as the situation develops and we thank you for your patience in the meantime.

Due to some recent player feedback we’ve made the decision to implement a hotfix that will put Valor Points back on the bosses in Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight, and Throne of the Four Winds (except Argoloth).

We agreed that players should have some additional options for earning Valor Points beyond Firelands, Zandalari dungeons, and tier 11 Heroic difficulty raids. We don’t want raiding guilds to feel like they have to raid Firelands AND the old raids every week, but we do want players to feel like they have some options besides running ZA/ZG over and over.

Bosses in these raids will award 35 VP on 10-player normal difficulty, and 45 VP on 25-player normal difficulty, to match the rewards currently offered for the Heroic versions of those encounters.

This change should be live within the next few hours. You can stay informed about the latest hotfixes by checking the Patch 4.2 Hotfixes article for updates: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3019413

BlizzCon may still be months away, but we’re already getting our contests ready for your invariably impressive submissions. You’ll be able sign up for the online and onstage contests soon with the launch of our upcoming brand-new BlizzCon Contests page. Keep checking in at BlizzCon.com so you don’t miss your chance to sign up for our Costume and Dance contests and submit your masterpieces for our Original Song, Fan Art, and Movie contests.

Let us know what you think of the Dungeon Journal so far! Good information? Will it be helpful? Or is it jsut another icon to clutter up your action bar?

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that sometimes caused player to disconnect when zoning into another location.
• The title Blackwing’s Bane awarded for defeating Nefarian on Heroic difficulty is now selectable again by characters who have earned it.
• The targeting reticule should no longer disappear when players cast spells.
• Resolved some issues that were causing Movement Enforcement Errors.
• Resolved an issue affecting death knight runes after switching specializations.
• Party member positions should show up correctly when in dungeons.
• Animations while mounted should work normally again.
• NPCs should no longer be floating… unless they’re meant to float.
• Character legs should move properly when the character is moving.
• Players using a single client to connect to multiple regions should be able to do so again.

May 3-4

General

• An issue was preventing some players from properly mailing account bound items to other characters on the same realm and Battle.net account. If you are still experiencing this issue, we recommend you log into both characters before sending the mail. The characters don’t need to be online at the same time for this to work.
• Children’s Week quests should no longer be unavailable to players who recently transferred factions.
• Flying wisp form and flying mounts, both living and dead, can enter bodies of water smoothly.

Classes General

• Spells or talents which provide pushback protection should now be functioning correctly (i.e. Burning Soul for mages or Suppression for warlocks). This time we mean it.

Rogues

• Shadowstep is instantly teleporting players behind their target when the target is in motion.

Dungeons & Raids

• Call to Arms rewards will now be displayed in the Dungeon Finder UI while a player is in the dungeon so they know what rewards they will get.
• Throne of the Four Winds
  • Damage from Ice Storm in phase 1 of Al’Akir is ticking twice per second, which was causing excessive damage on Heroic difficulty. To compensate, the damage per tick has been reduced for Heroic difficulty.

Items

• Players are now able to get a random Darkmoon card inside of a Sealed Scroll Case, instead of always getting a Darkmoon Card of Destruction.

Quests & Creatures

• The Innkeeper’s Daughter can no longer be targeted for healing or harmful effects.
• Players now fail The Crucible of Carnage: The Earl of Evisceration when killed by Lord Geoffery Tulvan during the encounter. Players are able to pick up the quest after it is failed and the event starts again without issue.

“I’ve found that when you’re trying to tame that rare pet or get the rare kill for your achievements, the best way to do it is to have a camping character. Use whatever alt you haven’t played in a while. Take that alt, park them at the spawn and log them out there. Then you can just log them on and check every once in a while to see if the mob is spawned, instead of flying your main character all the way out to timbucktoo for nothing.”

Death Knight

• Rage of Rivendare again applies 15/30/45% additional damage to Plague, Scourge, and Festering Strike, up from 12/24/36%.

Druid

• Swipe (Cat) damage has been doubled.
• Berserk is no longer on the global cooldown.

Paladin

• Selfless Healer: The damage bonus from this talent now has a 30-second duration, up from 10.

Shaman

• Grounding Totem cooldown has been increased to 25 seconds, up from 15.
• Earth Shield healing done by Restoration shaman has been reduced by 20%.
• Nature’s Blessing has been improved to 6/12/18% bonus direct healing on Earth Shielded targets, up from 5/10/15%.
• Glyph of Grounding Totem now increases the cooldown of the ability by 35 seconds, down from 45 seconds.

Warrior

• Improved Hamstring now reduces the global cooldown on Hamstring by 0.5/1 0.25/0.5 seconds in addition to its current effects.

Dungeons & Raids

• Players will now get bonus rewards 7 times per week (while earning less than 980 Valor Points) instead of once a day when using Dungeon Finder.
• When there is only 1 player left in a Dungeon Finder group, they will now be able to queue for replacements as long as they queue within 2 minutes or stay in the dungeon.
• Once the dungeon is completed the eligible player will receive a Satchel of Exotic Mysteries (account bound) with various potential rewards including: gold, rare gems, non-combat pets, and (very rare) mounts.

Guilds

• The criteria on many of the profession-related guild achievements has been significantly reduced.

Items

• The caster shaman 4-piece PvP set bonus now reduces the cooldown of Grounding Totem by 3 seconds, up from 1.5.

UI

• The Network category contains the options “Optimize network for speed” and “Enable IPv6 when available”. “Optimize network for speed” will be enabled by default, and will send packets more frequently at the cost of higher bandwidth. The higher bandwidth may lead to disconnects for some players who have limited bandwidth. Players getting disconnected frequently should try unchecking this box.

BlizzCon® is a celebration of the global player communities surrounding the Warcraft®, StarCraft®, and Diablo® universes. This two-day event features discussion panels with Blizzard Entertainment developers, hands-on play time with the latest versions of Blizzard Entertainment games, professional and casual eSports tournaments for players to showcase their talents, social events for players and developers to meet one another, community contests with great prizes, and much more.

Tickets to attend BlizzCon 2011 will go on sale in two batches on Saturday, May 21 at 10 a.m. Pacific Time and Wednesday, May 25 at 7 p.m. Pacific Time. Visit the official BlizzCon website or the online Blizzard Store on either of these dates for a chance to purchase tickets.

On-Sale Dates:

Saturday, May 21 at 10 a.m. Pacific Time

Wednesday, May 25 at 7 p.m. Pacific Time

Price: $175 USD each (limit 4 per household)

What’s Included:

• One BlizzCon badge that grants access to the convention.
• BlizzCon goody bag containing exclusive swag (contents to be announced)
• Opportunity to participate in a limited-time, online BlizzCon merchandise sale before the show (details to be announced)

“The “L” key on your keyboard opens up your Quest Journal. This handy-dandy little item contains literally all the information you need to solve whatever quest you are given. The “M” key on your keyboard opens up your map. Quest Helper is automatically enabled so your quest objectives will be clearly marked on the map. Check it early and check it often.”

Submitted by: Syia

We’ve been following discussions and reading feedback on the Dungeon Finder Call to Arms feature, and appreciate everyone’s opinions on the topic. We wanted to share a few items though that supplement the recent announcement:

The additional reward for completing the Dungeon Finder Call to Arms (called the Satchel of Exotic Mysteries) will be Bind on Account; able to be freely sent to other characters on your account once you receive it.

An error existed in the announcement regarding flasks and potions being picked based on your spec. This is not the case. If someone earns a Satchel of Exotic Mysteries, and if it rolls the random chance to provide a potion or flask, it will be a randomly selected. This helps ensure a broad array of available flasks and potions for all characters.

We also wanted to clarify, mounts that have a possibility to be found in a Satchel of Exotic Mysteries are found with the same rarity as if you had slain the dungeon boss that normally drops them.

General

• Flying mounts can now be used in Ghostlands.
• Honor is now purchasable from the Justice Commodities Vendor at 250 Honor per 375 Justice.
• Justice is now purchasable from the Honor Commodities Vendor at 250 Justice per 375 Honor.
• Conquest is now purchasable from the Valor vendor at 250 Conquest per 250 Valor.

Classes

• Several persistent ground effects now display different visuals for hostile and friendly players. The following spells have the same visual effects for friendly players, but new alternate visuals for hostile players: Ring of Frost, Consecration, Desecration, Wild Mushroom, Flare, Ice Trap, Power Word: Barrier, Smoke Bomb, and Hand of Gul’dan. As a general rule, the alternate effects have a red tint or hue indicating they are created by an enemy player. There are currently some issues with this new change which are affecting several of these abilities and is not working as intended at this time.

Druid

• Enrage no longer increases physical damage taken

Hunter

• Deterrence: The area damage of the paladin ability Hammer of the Righteous will no longer hit Hunters with Deterrence active.

Mage

• Frost Armor has been reworked:
  • It now reduces physical damage taken by 15%, instead of providing 20% additional armor.
  • The Chilled proc from Frost Armor can no longer proc Fingers of Frost.
  • The attack speed slow from the Chilled proc is now 20%, down from 25%, but it also affects ranged attack speed.
  • Frost Armor also no longer increases Frost resistance.

Paladin

• Selfless Healer: The damage bonus from this talent now has a 30 sec duration instead of 10 sec.
• Avenger’s Shield can no longer be blocked.
• Judgements of the Just debuff can no longer trigger talents and other effects.
• Seal of Truth: Fixed a tooltip error that stated swings at targets with Censure fully stacked dealt 9% weapon damage. They actually dealt 15% damage and the tooltip has been updated accordingly.

Warlock

• Dark Intent: The friendly target of this ability now receives 1% (stacking 3 times to 3%) periodic spell damage and healing bonus instead of 3% (stacking 3 times to 9%). The casting Warlock still receives 3% (stacking 3 times to 9%).

Dungeons & Raids

• The Dungeon Finder: Call to Arms will now identify which class role is currently the least represented in the queue, and offer them additional rewards for entering the Dungeon Finder queue and completing a random level-85 Heroic dungeon.
  • The least represented class icon will show within the Dungeon Finder to indicate the role that is eligible to earn the bonus reward.
  • Players must queue solo with the currently indicated least represented class (by the system) and complete the dungeon up to and including the final boss in order to be eligible for the bonus reward.
  • The bonus reward will be displayed to eligible (system identified as least represented) classes within the UI.
  • Once the dungeon is completed the eligible player will receive a goodie bag with various potential rewards including: gold, rare gems, non-combat pets, and (very rare) mounts.
• Bastion of Twilight
  • Sinestra
    • Twilight Slicer is now less likely to target two helers at once.
    • Wrack will avoid jumping to tanks.
• Halls of Origination
  • Temple Gardian Anhuur should now properly go into his Shield Phase at 33% even if he was channeling his 66% shield phase.
• Lost City of Tol’vir
  • Soul Fragments that spawn during the High Prophet Barim encounter should now perform an emote when they merge with the Harbinger of Darkness.

Guild Challenges

• Gold rewards require the qualified guild members of the group to be honored with their guild, and the guild must be are now deposited into the guild bank once the guild reaches level 5. The text for the Cash Flow guild perk has been updated appropriately.

Quests & Creatures

• New Cooking and Fishing Dailies have been added to Darnassus, Ironforge, Thunder Bluff, and Undercity.

User Interface

• Targets and focus targets now display on the mini-map.
• Moved Video and Sound to a new “Options” screen.
• Added a network category to the new Options screen and included the two network checkboxes.
  • The Network category contains the options “Optimize network for speed” and “Enable IPv6 when available”.
• Visual Settings Updates
  • Removed the red bar preventing the overall graphics slider from going to ultra based on computer specs.
  • When the user moves the overall slider to a setting that would have previously been prevented, any option that can’t go as high as that setting will get the warning icon with a tooltip explaining why it can’t go higher. For example: The user sets the overall slider to Ultra and the water setting can only go to Fair. The water setting would automatically switch to Fair.
  • Support for DirectX 11 can now be found in the Advanced tab of the Options screen.
• At the login screen:
  • Moved the “Reset User Options” button from the popup window that appears when you click Options to the actual Options window.
  • Clicking Options now goes directly to the Video tab of the Options screen.
  • Removed the now-unneeded popup.
• The New Features (!) Option Screen has been updated:
  • Cast action keybinds on key down (Combat)
  • Pick Up Action Key (ActionBars)
  • Nameplate Motion Type (Names)
  • Graphics API (Advanced)
  • Network category

“Did you know? Sometimes you can buy enchanting shards, break them into smaller shards, and sell them for a profit!”

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.

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.

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.

So how is the view from way up here? It’s great actually — we’re really happy with how Cataclysm is going so far, and we have big surprises on the horizon. On the other hand, there are details you can see at ground level that you can’t make out from 10,000 feet.

When we started these blogs, the idea was to foster developer communication to the players without some of the inherent problems of posting in forums. Some players have pointed out recently, and we totally agree, that the blogs up until now have been from a very high vantage point. We looked for topics with universal interest that would feel important and newsworthy. That has worked overall, but we also feel like we’ve lost something from when I used to be down in the metaphorical trenches talking to players in the forums.

So we’re going to try something a little different. We’re going to unleash some blogs that are much more conversational and less proclamational (that’s a word now). If we deliver on this, it will hopefully feel like you’re eavesdropping on our design meetings. You won’t always learn a lot about exciting new features coming to the game, but you will (ideally) learn something about the design process itself. (When we have big, exciting news to share, or ‘State of the Game’ style blogs, we’ll still do those as well.)

But to pull off this more casual blog style, let’s establish a few ground rules:

1) No promises. I’m going to be talking about a lot of things we might do or things we could do. You shouldn’t interpret this brainstorming as patch notes. Our creative process is insanely iterative. We might pitch dozens of ideas before we find one we like. That can be really exhausting if you’re not used to it. If you’re more interested in final decisions and not idea churn, then this style of blog won’t be for you.

2) Don’t read too much between the lines. I’m going to point out a lot of design flaws in our game. “Oh no! Goatcaller admitted WoW was deeply flawed! It’s shark-jumping time!” Look, Blizzard is very critical about our own designs. There is virtually nothing in World of Warcraft that could not be improved. That has always been the case and will continue to be the case. Just because I’m going to be sharing that more frankly with you doesn’t mean that the game now has more cracks in its foundation than it ever did. There is an old saying (misattributed, from what I understand, to Otto Bismarck) that laws are like sausages; it is best not seeing them being made. My old friend and mentor Bruce Shelley used to apply the same maxim to game design.

3) No complaints about the topic. If we didn’t have an interesting discussion about a topic recently, e.g. shaman mechanics, I’m not going to invent one. That doesn’t mean that the class is perfect, or that we don’t love shaman players, or that the shaman class has no direction, or that the class design is frozen in carbonite. I’m not going to keep hash marks next to every class and spec to make sure I’ve covered their “Very Important Issues” lately in a blog. World of Warcraft design being what it is, we’ll probably eventually get around to talking about everyone on here, but it may take weeks or months or years. My team is responsible for areas of the game including classes, items, encounters, trade skills, achievements, combat, and UI, so my blogs will probably stick to those topics.

Okay, all that preamble is out of the way now. I’ll probably refer back to it sometimes, if we have some players stomping all over the ground rules.

One topic we’ve been discussing lately is the role of Hit and Expertise on tank gear (or more precisely, plate tanking gear). The conventional wisdom is that Hit and Expertise are threat stats, and you may need to swap them out with some of your mitigation stats depending on the situation. Realistically, unless you severely overgear the content, we don’t think that is actually true. Tanks almost always worry about survival first and foremost, which totally makes sense, and are willing to trade off threat stats for better mitigation in almost all situations. It’s much harder to progress if the tank explodes than it is if the cat occasionally pulls aggro. (It’s not quite that simple, but I’m going to gloss over details and exceptions since I spent so much text on the preamble up above).

Once upon a time, taunts could miss, and so Hit was marginally more interesting than it is today. Once upon a time, having a boss parry your attacks could speed up its swing timer, which turned Expertise into a (often weak) survival stat. Boss parries felt very random though, both in the sense that sometimes the tank would suddenly take much more damage than anticipated and there was no easy way to know which bosses had parry speed up. (Today, you can assume none of them do.) Until recently, interrupts could miss, but asking a tank to stack a bunch of Hit just for those few opportunities when they were probably going to hit anyway but disaster would occur if they did not felt crummy too.

The problem is that there aren’t a lot of stats that are interesting to tanks. Stamina and Armor are great, but their stat budget is often in lockstep with item level. (It would be interesting to consider if we could make that not the case once again, but that’s the topic for another blog.) We got rid of Defense as a stat that tanks needed to worry about. We have managed to make Mastery pretty good to excellent for tanks, so that’s at least one stat they like to see. Dodge and (if you’re a plate-wearer) Parry are good, and slightly interesting because of talents like Hold the Line. But beyond that, it starts to go downhill. Sure Haste and Crit can sometimes be fun, but really they often aren’t worth the trade off. That leaves us with Hit and Expertise. We’d like to make them more interesting to tanks. But how?

One way is by turning them into defensive stats. They are defensive stats for Blood death knights, because the DK self-healing is tied into Death Strike, which can miss. It might be possible to do something similar for the other classes. Imagine if Shield Block had to actually hit the target. Presumably you raise your shield, but not high enough to intercept the incoming blow. Now hit becomes a mitigation stat for warriors as well. We might have to adjust the mitigation amount on Shield Block or give warriors a small Hit bonus so Hit capping wasn’t totally unreasonable, but you get the basic idea. You could do the same with paladins (make Holy Shield more interesting?) and druids as well (Savage Defense could proc on a hit).

Is this a good idea? We’re not sure yet. You won’t see this change in the 4.1 patch for certain. There are trade-offs to making Hit and Expertise more valuable. Gearing as a tank might be more fun for experienced players, but it also might be more challenging for less experienced players. The number of struggling tanks in your Dungeon Finder groups might go up. Some less knowledgeable players (and to be fair, this stuff doesn’t exactly explain itself on the character sheet) might stack Hit way too high at the expense of a more valuable mitigation stat, such as mastery.

It is the kind of thing we’re talking about though, and if you want to make a contribution to the tanking forums but aren’t quite sure on a topic, here is one potential possibility.

-Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is the lead systems designer of World of Warcraft. He still has Buru’s Skull Fragment.

We want to give everyone an early heads-up regarding our plan to implement a guild relocation service for World of Warcraft. The idea is for a guild leader to be able to transfer a guild to another realm. The guild structure remains intact, including the guild leader, guild bank, ranks, and guild name (depending on availability).

Guild members who decide to relocate with their guild may initiate their own paid character transfer. Upon a successful transfer they will automatically be part of the guild when they first log into the new realm. Their guild rank and guild reputation will be intact.

Guild leaders who do not want a change of scenery may also choose to pick a new guild name using another new service. These services are in development and we will be providing additional details at a future point in time.

As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the guild relocation service in a way that will not disrupt the game play experience. Please note that this feature will require extensive internal testing, so you may see bits and pieces of the service appear on the public test realms. We’ll announce further details at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com.

Achievements

• A new feat of strength with an associated title, “the Camel-Hoarder”, has been added for players that have bested Dormus and obtained the Reins of the Grey Riding Camel — because there must always be a Camel-Hoarder.
• PvP
  • Rated Battlegrounds
    • The achievements to win 100 rated Battlegrounds have been renamed to “Veteran of the Alliance” and “Veteran of the Horde”, and now award those titles.
    • Achievements to win 300 rated Battlegrounds have been added, awarding the “Warbound” and “Warbringer” titles to the Alliance and Horde respectively.
  • Arathi Basin
    • The achievement “We Had It All Along *cough*” now requires the player to win Arathi Basin by 50 points or less, up from 10 points or less.
  • The Battle for Gilneas
    • The achievement “Jugger Not” now requires the player to win The Battle for Gilneas by 100 points or less, up from 10 points or less.
    • The achievement “Out of the Fog” requires the player to defend 2 bases in a single battle, down from 3.
    • The achievement “One Two Three You Don’t Know About Me” requires the player to assault 2 bases in a single battle, down from 3.
    • The achievement “Not Your Average PUG’er” now requires 10 total flag defenses, down from 50.
    • The achievement “Battle for Gilneas All-Star” now requires a single flag assault and flag defense in a battle, down from 2.

Death Knight

• 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.

Mage

• Frostbolt damage has been increased by 10%.
• Fingers of Frost bonus damage applied to Ice Lance has been increased to 25%, up from 15%.

Paladins

• Illuminated Healing shield duration is now 15 seconds, up from 8 seconds. In addition, Illuminated Healing has been increased to provide 1.5% effect per mastery, up from 1.25%.

Shaman

• Improved Fire Nova has been redesigned and replaced by a talent called Seasoned Winds. When an enemy spell cast is successfully prevented with Wind Shear, the shaman gains magical resistance (in an amount equal to what a protection totem/aura would grant, stacking with such buffs) to the spell school(s) of the interrupted spell (except for Holy spells), lasting 10 seconds.

Dungeons & Raids

• Dire Maul North
  • The Gordok Courtyard Key in Fengus’s Chest is now replenished after several seconds.
• The Mechanar
  • The Cache of the Legion now unlocks when Gatewatcher Gyro-kill is gyro-killed.
• Stratholme
  • Postboxes no longer require keys to open, because really, who locks their postboxes anymore when they’re all undead? It’s just people sending coupons for brains anyway.
  • The Postmaster now spawns when 3 of any postbox are opened.
• Uldaman
  • The Staff of Prehistoria is no longer required to open the door in the Map Room.
  • Baelog’s chest has been given new loot. If it’s grey it’s good, right?
• Zul’Farrak
  • Troll Cages no longer require the Executioner’s Key to open.

Guilds

• The amount of guild experience rewarded for rated Battleground guild group wins has been dramatically increased.
• Players are now rewarded guild experience for Honorable Kills in the field.
• Players are now rewarded guild experience for Battleground wins in Battleground brackets up to level 80.
• Arena teams are now awarded guild experience for wins. The entire team must be members of the same guild to earn this experience.

Items

• All trade goods available for purchase with Honor or Justice Points from the associated commodities vendors have had their prices reduced by 50%.
• Maelstrom Crystals are now available for purchase with Honor or Justice Points from the associated commodities vendors.

PvP

• Arenas
  • The Ring of Valor has returned! It should now be playable again in the Arena map rotation.
  • New starting areas have been added for Ring of Valor. Players will no longer enter the Arena on the elevator. It’s been removed. Instead players will start in a room at opposite ends of the Arena.

Quests & Creatures

• Loot from the creatures Garr, Julak-Doom, Mobus, and Poseidus has been adjusted to be commensurate to their rarity and invested effort.

User Interface

• The Guild Finder has been implemented! While we are continuing to add final polish to this feature.

 

Tip of the Day – <3 Them Critters!

“Did you know that WoW Vault can help you get an easy 30 achievement points? Of course we can! Check out Rill’s & Pallydog’s guides to loving those squirrels, sharing your lives, and those that cared for me.”