We’ve seen a lot of discussion and debate over
the new set bonuses. Just so everyone is aware, we’re still assessing the set
bonuses for tier 12 as we go through more testing and gathering more feedback.

To give you a heads up on what we’re looking at so far though, here are
the most recent bonuses we have in mind for some of the sets (some of what’s
listed below are amendments to the existing bonuses on the PTR).

Some of
these bonuses might already be live as of the build pushed earlier this week,
while some are yet to be implemented. If your class/specialization isn’t listed
here, it means the bonuses either haven’t changed, or the changes haven’t been
solidified. Just the same, all of this is subject to ch-ch-changes over the
course of the PTR process. Your feedback is appreciated!

• Blood Death Knight 4-Piece: The bonus to parry from Dancing Rune Weapon now
  begins when Dancing Rune Weapon wears off, instead of lasting while Dancing Rune
  Weapon is active.
• Frost/Unholy Death Knight 4-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced — Your
  Obliterate and Scourge Strike abilities deal 6% additional damage as Fire damage
  over 4 seconds.
• Feral Druid 4-Piece: The bonus to dodge from Barkskin now begins when
  Barkskin wears off, instead of lasting while Barkskin is active.
• Restoration Druid 4-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced — Your Swiftmend
  also heals an injured target within 8 yards for the same amount.
• Holy Paladin 2-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced — Healing with Holy
  Shock has a 40% chance to grant you 6% of your base mana.
• Holy Paladin 4-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced — Your Divine Light,
  Flash of Light, and Holy Light spells also heal an injured target within 8 yards
  for 10% of the amount healed.
• Protection Paladin 4-Piece: The bonus to parry from Divine Protection now
  begins when Divine Protection wears off, instead of lasting while Divine
  Protection is active.
• Holy/Discipline Priest 2-Piece: Now also triggers from casting Prayer of
  Mending.
• Holy/Discipline Priest 4-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced — You have a
  chance when you cast a helpful spell to summon a Cauterizing Flame at the
  target’s location. Each second the Cauterizing Flame will heal an injured party
  member within 20 yards for 9250 to 10750 health. Lasts 5 seconds.
• Shadow Priest 2-Piece: Now requires the priest to be in Shadowform to be
  active.
• Warlock 4-Piece: Now also triggers from casting Drain Soul.
• Arms/Fury Warrior 2-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced — Your Battle
  Shout and Commanding Shout abilities grant you an additional 35 rage. Cannot
  occur more often than once every 60 seconds.
• Protection Warrior 4-Piece: The bonus to parry from Shield Wall now begins
  when Shield Wall wears off, instead of lasting while Shield Wall is
  active.

So, as many of you are interpreting this change,
it is to encourage more participation in Rated Battlegrounds. We see the fact
that participating in Arenas is by far the superior way of obtaining top-notch
PvP gear, in terms of time investment, as a problem. If you want to maximize
your Conquest Point gains in patch 4.2, you’ll need to participate at least a
little bit in Rated Battlegrounds.

We know this may not sound very
appealing to those of you who have grown accustomed to spending as little as an
hour a week getting the top PvP currency in the game via Arenas over the last
couple of expansions. To put things in perspective though, the total number of
items that can be purchased with Conquest Points today is much larger than what
you used to be able to buy with Arena Points pre-Deathwing world explosion. And
there is no longer a requirement to “grind” unrated BGs for Honor each season,
so the real time investment isn’t changing as much as some players are
perceiving it to be.

On top of that, the frank reality is that the total
time investment required in season 9 to get all your points has been much, much
too low, as you could do that from a few 2v2 Arena games each week completed in
less than an hour’s time. It shows that Rated Battlegrounds are currently
sub-par in terms of the rate at which points can be accumulated.

We do
feel this change is necessary to keep the time investment vs. high-quality item
accumulation in check, even if it doesn’t read well on paper. However, as
always, your constructive feedback is welcomed.

We’ve been repeatedly saying in various threads
recently that we are listening, even if we’re not acting on every piece of
feedback we read. Well readers, listen up!

With the help of
Ghostcrawler, the following will be added to the patch notes for the next PTR
update:

• Players are once again free to dance in combat (without causing graphic
  errors). Other animations, such as attacks, will take precedence over dancing.
  The dance animation will be suppressed until the higher priority animation is
  complete. Fun has been unnerfed.

The concerns of the people
vanished. And there was much dancing.

“Since WotLK came out healing has been all about keeping everyone topped
off. Full green bars. But since Cata, healing has shifted to a Triage mindset
and it’s been a rather difficult one to adjust to. Just remember, healing now
means you have to prioritize who gets heals and when. Your job isn’t to keep
everyone at 100%, it’s to keep everyone from reaching 0%. Don’t stress and stay
focused! It takes practice but eventually you get used to it.”

Submitted by: Ashella

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.

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.”

We’ve expanded our Media section to include an
all-new Trading
Card Game art gallery, and are kicking this off by featuring ten spectacular
pieces of art that appear in the World
of Warcraft Trading Card Game, licensed by Cryptozoic Entertainment.
Additional collections will be added to the new gallery in the weeks
ahead.

---

New Lore: Council of Three Hammers Story Available!

Already embroiled by its own internal strife, the fledgling Council
of Three Hammers is put to its greatest test yet when mounting tensions between
the rival Bronzebeard, Wildhammer, and Dark Iron dwarf clans threaten to ignite
violence in Ironforge.

The city of Kurdran’s ancestors was a
simmering cauldron of old prejudice. It churned endlessly, its toxic fumes
dissolving whatever logic and reason remained within the Bronzebeard,
Wildhammer, and Dark Iron dwarves living together in Ironforge for the first
time in over two centuries. And Kurdran was standing at the edge of it all,
gazing into its fiery heart with confusion as it grew closer and closer to
erupting.

In an unsettling way he felt as if he were still at war with
the blood-cursed Horde and trapped on Outland. Yet there were no clear enemies
in Ironforge. No crazed demons. No rampaging orcs bent on decimating all life on
his world. There were only words.

 

Blizzard Entertainment is proud to
present the latest entry in the “Leaders of Azeroth” short story series: Fire
and Iron!

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

I understand and respect gaming masochism. But, I think that changing mechanics to be more reasonable and less punishing is an improvement, not a detriment, to games in general. Many of us Original Gamers pine for the days of D&D-based yore when games were seemingly intended to break us down into sobbing masses created by an uncaring necromancer of pain and suffering, or at least didn’t try to avoid it. Overcoming all of the obstacles (I CHOOSE NOT TO SHOOT HER WITH THE SILVER ARROW… NOOOOO) was a big part of what gaming (I HAVE 1 LIFE!?), and especially PC gaming (HOW DO I LOAD MOUSE DRIVERS?), were about. But, I feel we’re lucky to now be in an age where those ideals (intended or not) are giving way to actual fun, actual challenge, and not fabricating it through high-reach requirements (I NEED A FAIRY MONK WITH A MAGIC LOCKPICK?).

What we’ve always been trying to do, what WoW has always been about (and to which much of its success is due) is to make an accessible MMO. Anyone that looks back at the game at launch and wishes it was as challenging now as it was then is not aware of the painstaking effort put into making this game accessible as compared to its predecessors. Since release we’ve refined that intent, eventually evolving the very few masochistic designs WoW actually ever started with, but ideally still offering those same prestige goals that give that feeling of achieving something great if you’re able to pull it off. We’ve made a lot of progress toward striking that balance and continuing to evolve the game, but it’s not something we’re ever likely to perfect, and we’ll be constantly working to hit that elusive goal. Hopefully it’s to the benefit of everyone playing and enjoying the game, and they’ll continue to enjoy the journey that a living, breathing, persistent universe will take us on.

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!”

“Since Cataclysm launch a lot of cinematics and cut scenes have been added to the game. If you’ve seen ‘em all before you can just hit Esc then click ‘Yes’ to skip them.”

Submitted by: Rill of Hellscream

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.”