The Ultimate Horde Fan Site For World Of Warcraft

Blizzard Released a video on Febuary 9, 2010 of an interview with Greg Canessa, Project Director of battle.net Check it out!

Battle.net Preview

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)
Battle.net is about to undergo the greatest update in its long and storied history as one of the world’s most successful online gaming services.

Fully integrated, user-friendly, and fast, the all-new Battle.net makes it easy to find and play games, opening the world of online gaming to generations of players. In the 14 years since the original Battle.net’s launch, the service has seen tremendous growth both in terms of features and active players. Currently, there are more than 12 million active accounts on Battle.net worldwide.

This raises an interesting question. If the original Battle.net was so successful, why change it? Updating a service like Battle.net is a hugely complex undertaking. Are there really that many new features that Blizzard Entertainment could offer that would deliver a world-class online gaming experience to its community?

In one word: Yes.

The list of past innovations integrated into the legacy Battle.net service is long and varied — the introduction of competitive ladders, server-hosted games, online-stored characters, automated matchmaking, and more. But with the release of StarCraft II, Battle.net will evolve into an even more powerful and advanced online game service that will power all Blizzard Entertainment titles moving forward.

The final metamorphosis has only just begun….

The Always-Connected Experience

In the past, Battle.net was presented as a multiplayer option off to the side, off of the main menu of Blizzard Entertainment titles. That is all changing. With the new Battle.net experience, the service and the game are now interwoven into one experience. Whether you are in single-player or multiplayer StarCraft II, you are always connected, and enjoy a bevy of new and enhanced functionality.

Battle.net and StarCraft II are designed to be seamlessly connected. That means even if you’re playing solo you will still view the latest news, receive game and content updates, and be able to see your friends’ status and chat with them. But this new interconnectivity between the game and the service goes even deeper than that. Now, each player will create a StarCraft II Battle.net character. This character serves as your single persistent identity across the service. Everything you do in the game — win/loss record, achievements, unlockable rewards, friends list, and more — will be saved to your character profile for you and your friends to see. Even your save game progress in the campaign can be synched to Battle.net. Say you upgrade your computer and re-install the game; once you connect to Battle.net, you can continue the campaign right where you left off. This is especially useful if you play on more than one computer, because all your data will be carried over for you via Battle.net.

Competitive Arena For Everyone

One of the biggest improvements that the new Battle.net service brings to StarCraft II is smarter and more accurate matchmaking. While the legacy Battle.net service had good matchmaking, the standard experience for new players was usually a series of crushing defeats against seasoned Battle.net veterans until they either left or developed the skills necessary to thrive in Battle.net’s competitive environment.

The new Battle.net matchmaking service will measure player skill more accurately than ever before, making online competitive play more accessible for a wider audience. What’s more, we are introducing an all-new Battle.net Leagues and Ladders System to the service. After using the auto-matchmaking system a few times, Battle.net will automatically slot you into a league and division that best suits your skill level. Our goal here is to encourage local competition by finding you a neighborhood of 100 players of equal skill against whom you will be ranked. This will make ranked online play much more enjoyable and give everyone a realistic chance to win their division.

Beyond ranked matches, Battle.net will also make it much easier to compete by offering a number of other game modes. Custom games will of course make their return, but there will also be a slew of new, casual-friendly game modes such as the Practice League, Co-op Versus AI (players versus the computer), Challenges, and more.

Connecting The Blizzard Community

Battle.net’s social networking and communication capabilities will be some of the service’s biggest new features. This new social backbone for the entire service will seamlessly integrate friends lists, matchmaking, messaging, and more. Text and voice chat are now seamlessly interwoven into and out of the game, enabling communication whether you are in Battle.net or in-game playing StarCraft II. And as is the case with previous Blizzard Entertainment titles, you can form friendships with other characters on Battle.net while preserving your anonymity.

With the new Battle.net, we’re also introducing an entirely new concept called Real ID. With the Real ID feature, you are able to send invites and form friendships on Battle.net with your real-life friends and family. Real ID friends are mutual, which means that both sides need to agree to the friend request. Forming Real ID friends comes with its benefits. You will see your Real ID friends by their real name, along with any character they are logged in as. You will also be able to get rich presence information about what they are doing, send broadcast messages, and communicate cross-game between StarCraft II, Battle.net, and World of Warcraft.

And of course, Real ID is totally optional. By enabling this, you can set up your Blizzard Entertainment social network, communicate and play games, and best of all, carry your network forward to future Blizzard Entertainment titles.

Mods and Community-Created Content

With a community as dedicated and as creative as that of our players, the abundance of exceptional community-created mods is no surprise. When the legacy Battle.net service introduced support for user-created mods such as DotA, Tower Defense, and many others, these user-created game types became immensely popular. But while Battle.net supported mods at a basic level, integration with tools and the mod community wasn’t where it needed to be for a game releasing in 2010.

The new Battle.net service will see some major improvements in this area. StarCraft II will include a full-featured content-creation toolkit — the same tools used by the StarCraft II design team to create the single-player campaign. To fully harness the community’s mapmaking prowess, Battle.net will introduce a feature called Map Publishing. Map Publishing will let users upload their maps to the service and share them with the rest of the community immediately on the service. This also ties in with the goal of making Battle.net an always-connected experience — you can publish, browse, and download maps directly via the Battle.net client. Finding games based on specific mods will also be much easier with our all-new custom game system, placing the full breadth of the modding community’s efforts at your fingertips.

Sometime after the release of StarCraft II, modders will have access to an even more advanced means of sharing their work via Battle.net with the StarCraft II Marketplace. With the StarCraft II Marketplace, players will be able to browse, download, rate, comment on, and even buy mods if their creators choose to put a price tag on their work. We strongly believe that providing content creators with the option of being compensated for their work will lead to some truly amazing projects; having a budget will give modders much more freedom to explore and fully realize all their ideas. This in turn will lead to a bigger selection of mods and a greater variety of content on Battle.net.

PvP Healing Change updated

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)
After further observations of the recent changes made to resilience and healing in PvP, we have made an additional change via an in-game fix so that the PvP healing debuff in Arenas, Battlegrounds, and Wintergrasp now also lowers the effectiveness of Power Word: Shield and Sacred Shield by 10%. The majority of other strong shields or damage absorption mechanics are already affected by the healing change, so we feel this new adjustment is an appropriate step in balancing the effects of resilience versus healing. The ultimate goal is to find a better median between PvP encounters feeling too quick from burst damage, or too long from heals, shields, and absorption effects. We will continue to monitor the way these changes play out and let you know if we feel any further changes are needed. As always, feedback based on your PvP experience with these new changes is welcome.

Blue Posts

Deathbringer Saurfang Hotfix (Source)
We’ve just deployed a hotfix that reduces Saurfang’s blood power gain from ability damage back to 3.2.2 values. There was also a minor visual range issue with Blood Nova that was fixed.

Nibelung Hotfixes (Source)
We are currently in the process of applying two hotfix improvements to the Nibelung staff. The first change is that we are improving the chance for a val’kyr to proc from 1% to 2%. While this may not seem like a significant improvement, it will be notable and result in the val’kyr appearing more often.

The second change is that anytime a summoned val’kyr casts her smite spell, she will heal herself for 25% of the damage done. This will help keep them alive when AoE damage is happening but not make them invincible as we still want them to feel like a summoned creature and not a special form of a DoT spell that has awesome art.

We understand the frustrations players have had with this weapon so far. We currently plan to make more proc weapons in the future and are committed to making this and other proc weapons fun and competitive items.

Upcoming Culling of Stratholme Changes (Source)
We are in the process of making changes to speed up The Culling of Stratholme, but they are not just an on-off switch so we weren’t able to get them into patch 3.3.2. For more details on this check out the post Daelo made:

Warlock

3.3.2 Warlock Improvements (Source)
Affliction was doing good damage before and with the buff should now be competitive with any class in the game, depending on the fight involved (and how much the mages benefit from IA). That doesn’t mean *you* are going to top meters. Big difference. The management of Corruption rolling with NMIC isn’t ideal gameplay. We generally like the kind of gameplay that lets skilled players eek out a little bit more damage, but we agree the Corruption behavior is a little extreme. That said, it’s not as bad as the haste effects on rolling, and ultimately we know how to fix it with a little tech. (Which doesn’t mean we can fix it immediately, unfortunately.)

I’m not sure we have enough data on Demo yet. The buffs definitely did something. Totally agree on the mana issues. That’s something we want to address (standard no ponies promises applies).

We knew the buffs to Destro wouldn’t be enough, but we still thought they were worth making (compared to doing nothing at all). To finish the job will require more extensive talent changes. (Don’t interpret that as a complete redo of the tree though.) We think we can do some of this before Cataclysm ships, but it’s not the kind of thing we felt safe doing with the kind of limited testing / non-PTR status of patch 3.3.2. We could have just thrown caution to the wind and made the Empowered Imp or Conflag changes gratuitously overpowered, but that carries risks of A) forcing all of the Affliction locks to respec, or B) breaking PvP.

It’s tricky with the pure classes because a lot of players will flock to the spec with the highest dps, even if the margin is only 1% (not saying that’s the case here, mind you). The risk then for us is that we force players to constantly change specs every time we make adjustments because someone else is now top dog. We screwed up and did this with hunters and mages in earlier patches and nearly did it with rogues in 3.3. Rogues aren’t in a bad place now, where some players just prefer Combat over Mutilate and actually hunters aren’t far from that either with MM vs. SV (yes, both of those classes have a third tree, but having two raid viable specs is still better than one or none). In any case, we still want to get Destro’s dps higher.

We really don’t expect the healing nerfs that affect warlock self-healing to have a huge impact on PvP one way or the other.

Warrior
Devastate Hotfix (Source)
Yes, we are hotfixing Devastate to do 20% more damage, not just 20% more weapon damage.

I can’t comment on when the hotfix will go live, because there are a lot of people involved in getting those changes pushed out, so we just don’t know. Often hotfixes go live within a day or two, but some may take longer if we find a bug or unexpected side-effect to the initial change.

Blizzard released a newsletter recently. In the news letter came an interview with Scott “Daelo” Mercer and Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street about the Lich King and how the stories leading up to the Lich King and more, check it out!

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Arthas! The blood of your father… of your people… demands justice! Come forth, coward, and answer for your crimes!

Highlord Bolvar Fordragon

In the Fall of the Lich King content update (patch 3.3), Arthas Menethil, one of the most sinister and iconic antagonists of the Warcraft universe, concludes his tragic tale in a final confrontation with the Horde and Alliance.

To gain more insight into this epic moment in Warcraft history, the Insider sat down with World of Warcraft Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer and Lead Systems Designer Greg Street. Read on to learn more about how Arthas evolved, how his fall from the Light influenced the history of Azeroth, and how the end of his tragic character arc could shape the game going forward.

What was the inspiration for the character of Arthas? Was he originally intended to be such a central figure in the Warcraft universe, or did his role evolve as the story developed?

Scott Mercer: Early on in the development of Warcraft III, we knew the game would be about heroes leading their armies into battle. We initially created Arthas as one of those leaders, so we knew from the beginning he would be central to the storyline. Arthas starts the game as a young paladin of the human armies and then, after his fall from grace, he leads the undead through the Scourge campaign. His transformation is the bridge connecting the human and the undead campaigns, and he continues to serve as a villain in the other campaigns as well.

Despite Arthas’s importance in Warcraft III, we weren’t initially sure just how big of an effect he would ultimately have on Azeroth. A lot of his storylines — such as his battle with Illidan and his inadvertent creation of the entire Forsaken faction — didn’t really take shape until Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, or even much later on in World of Warcraft.

Greg Street: Also, it bears mentioning that the Lich King and Arthas are actually two separate entities. The Lich King is the lingering spirit of the orcish shaman Ner’zhul. Ner’zhul originally started the demonic invasions in Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal. So, in a sense, the entity that players know as the Lich King has been around for a long time, even long before Arthas was born, and has had an even larger hand in shaping the ongoing history of the Warcraft universe.

How did the Lich King’s centrality to the concept of the expansion shape its development?

Scott Mercer: After The Burning Crusade, we realized that Illidan had appeared many times in the concept art and the other material surrounding the expansion, but very few players ever actually saw him in the game itself. To most heroes, Illidan was a bit like Sauron from The Lord of the Rings; he was an omnipresent evil that they would hear about, but never actually meet in a face-to-face confrontation.

When development began on Wrath of the Lich King, we knew we wanted the players to have a more personal connection with the Lich King than they did with Illidan, even if it was an antagonistic relationship. So we started designing quests and instances in which we could show the Lich King to the players, even have him interact with or hamper them on their quests, like in Utgarde Pinnacle or Howling Fjord.

In addition to the Lich King himself, we also referenced the events from Warcraft III many times in the content of Northrend. Players can see the wrecks of the Alliance ships that Arthas set ablaze during Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. They can also find the altar upon which Arthas first discovered Frostmourne. And of course there’s the Culling of Stratholme, the Caverns of Time instance that allows players to relive the moment Arthas first began to adopt his zealous “ends-justify-the-means” attitude, which ultimately lead to him becoming a death knight. We deliberately built these aspects into Wrath of the Lich King to help remind players who Arthas is and where he came from, which we hope makes his character that much more vivid in players’ minds.

Overall, we think this new direction for the portrayal of the expansion’s main villain worked very well in Wrath of the Lich King, and we will likely adopt this approach for other villains in the future.

The Fall of the Lich King content update is the culmination of Wrath of the Lich King. Was it daunting to try to create an encounter that topped all of the expansion’s previous epic encounters?

Scott Mercer: Encounter brainstorms rarely begin with the idea of topping previous encounters. Instead, they start with a discussion about finding the best way to portray a particular character or idea. In this case, the initial discussions revolved around how to best convey the Fall of the Lich King via a raid dungeon. Of course, we’re always experimenting with new tools and ideas, especially when it comes to designing encounters, so a lot of what may be perceived as “topping” of previous encounters is actually a byproduct of what we learned through the course of our experimentation. That said, the Fall of the Lich King is going to be epic, even by World of Warcraft’s standards, so get ready for a world-altering finale.

From a gameplay standpoint, how do the other raid encounters in Icecrown Citadel build up to the final Lich King event? Do any raid encounters stand out in particular as the prelude to the Lich King?

Greg Street: One of the things I’ve enjoyed about the evolution of Icecrown Citadel is the way the art and the encounters in the dungeon come together to portray a fully functional enemy stronghold. No boss in Icecrown Citadel is just standing around, waiting for players to kick in the door. Instead, they all have a reason to be there and a vital role to play in the Lich King’s army. As the players progress through Icecrown, they are attacking the leaders in charge of the various day-to-day operations of the Scourge. There’s the Soul Forge in charge of “recruitment” and Professor Putricide who heads up R&D…. And that’s pretty much what Icecrown progression is all about, attacking the Scourge’s operational strength as you move higher and higher up the chain of command before finally confronting the Lich King himself.

Can you give us any teasers about the final Lich King encounter from a gameplay standpoint? How difficult will he be? Any insight into how his skills and powers from Warcraft III will carry over into the final Lich King raid event?

Scott Mercer: We’re going to keep those cards close to the vest, as players will be toe-to-toe with the Lich King soon enough, but I can say that he will pose the greatest challenge yet found in World of Warcraft. Beyond that, I can only share a few additional details. The battle against the Lich King takes place at the top of Icecrown Citadel where the Frozen Throne protrudes from the citadel’s tallest tower. Throughout the fight, players will have an epic view of Icecrown Glacier, and falling off the tower will be a real danger, especially as the fight progresses. Also, I’ll just say that Frostmourne serves as more than just a weapon wielded by the Lich King during the encounter; it will actually provide a core mechanic of the fight itself, a mechanic which we hope will resonate strongly with all players — especially the lore buffs.

The rest, you’ll have to see for yourself.

Let’s talk loot: what kinds of rewards await players strong enough to bring down the Lich King?

Greg Street: Well, with great challenge comes great reward. So, in addition to the usual stuff, the Lich King is also going to drop some epic weapons that have a higher item level than any other item in Icecrown Citadel. We’re hoping to have something for every character class in this bag, but note that this is just our current goal, not a promise. The main idea is that the Lich King has an inventory of weapons that he has stolen and corrupted throughout his reign. These weapons originally belonged to characters like King Terenas, Antonidas, Sylvanas, and Muradin Bronzebeard. In addition to the corrupted weapons, we’re also planning to have Arthas’s undead mount, Invincible, drop each time the Lich King is defeated in 25-player Heroic mode. Also, once the Lich King is finally defeated, there will be an in-game cut scene, similar in size and scope to the Wrath Gate cut scene.

The title “Fall of the Lich King” suggests the end of an era. Can you give us any teasers for what next awaits the denizens of Azeroth?

Scott Mercer:: Players have been gearing up to fight the Lich King for a long time and it’s definitely the end of an era, but it’s by no means the end of World of Warcraft. We’ve already begun to hint at an in-game event surround the upcoming Cataclysm expansion that will be at least as big as the zombie invasion that kicked off the Wrath of the Lich King. Players already know that the Barrens are getting cut in half by a volcanic chasm, so we’ll have to show you how that happens. The Cataclysm in-game event will probably hit in a patch before the actual expansion goes live. We’re still figuring out the details, but whatever happens, it will be felt throughout the entire world, and it’ll be just the beginning of the reign of Deathwing.

World Of Warcraft is bringing Auction House to Armory!
So it was announced yesterday that Blizzard is going to have the auction house as their next step for upgrading WoW Armory! It’s something many players have wanted for a while, imagine to be able to access armory via your phone! This will be possible with the Armory App on Iphones! Also next thing I want to add is that blizzard might actually have a premium section for people. We don’t know exactly what for, but we speculate its to create auctions from outside the actual game!

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)

Since the launch of the World of Warcraft Armory, we’ve been regularly releasing updates and new features designed to help players stay connected to the game even when they’re not logged in. Today, we wanted to give you a heads-up about a new service now in development that will let players access the Auction House directly through the Armory website or Armory App for iPhone or iPod touch.

While there are still plenty of details to be worked out, we’re designing the service to offer auction functionality similar to what’s available in-game. Players have been requesting — and we’ve been hoping to implement — a feature like this for a long time, and we’re excited that the Armory and the game have evolved to a point that makes it possible.

This is a fairly complex service to develop, due in large part to its unprecedented integration with the game, so we don’t have an exact release date yet. It’s important to note here that certain elements of the service will be premium-based, which we’ll go into more detail on once the service functionality is finalized. As with all of the services we offer, we plan to integrate the Auction House and Armory in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience, and we won’t release it until it meets the quality standards that we’ve set for our other features and services. You may be seeing bits and pieces of the Auction House service pop up in the test builds we use for the public test realms as we go through the process of internal testing. We’ll have more info to share with you here and at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as we get closer to release.

So here it is people, patch 3.3.2 is live, this means that Shadowmourne quest is now also doable! But here is a ton of information to help you in your endeavors!

PvP Healing Change

Quote from: Zarhym (Source)

Patch 3.3.2 is bringing about a change to the way healing functions in Arenas, Battlegrounds, and Wintergrasp. We have applied a debuff to all players in these zones which will decrease the effectiveness of all forms of healing by 10%. This includes heals from items such as Healthstones and potions, however, it will not affect defensive shields or auras. This change is being made to balance the effectiveness of healing against the recent buff we made to the damage reduction component provided by resilience. Rest assured that we will be closely monitoring the effects both the healing and resilience changes have on Battleground, Wintergrasp, and Arena PvP game play to ensure that fights last a reasonable amount of time without overtly skewing the effectiveness of any class, role, or team combination.

The official patch 3.3.2 notes can be found here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22748761862&sid=1

The Lich King
This section will be updated as more information comes along about the actual fight. We don’t want to provide you with the wrong information at this point. What IS known though is that in the 25 player mode Lich King drops the Invincible Mount

Sindragosa

Highlights

This encounter has three phases; she begins on the ground but will take off into the air from time to time to drop a Frost Bomb similar to Sapphiron.  She will also cast Ice Tomb on four random targets in 25-player; hide behind them to block line of sight on the Frost Bomb.

At 30% she no longer takes off into the air, but she will begin using a few new skills and will target random players with Ice Tomb every so often.  Consider 30% the soft enrage.  Be sure to damage the Ice Tombs while she’s in the air, but don’t kill them too early or you’ll be hit by the bomb.

• Phase 1 Abilities (Ground)
  • Blistering Cold
  • Cleave
  • Frost Aura
  • Frost Breath
  • Icy Grip
  • Unchained Magic
    • Triggers Instability on your spell casts when affected.
  • Permeating Chill
    • Chance to trigger Chilled to the Bone on your melee attacks when affected.
  • Tail Smash
• Phase 2 Abilities (Air)
  • Frost Beacon
  • Frost Bomb
  • Ice Tomb
• Phase 3 Abilities (30% Health)
  • Blistering Cold
  • Cleave
  • Frost Aura
  • Frost Beacon
  • Frost Breath
  • Ice Tomb
  • Icy Grip
  • Mystic Buffet
  • Unchained Magic
    • Triggers Instability on your spell casts when affected.
  • Permeating Chill
    • Chance to trigger Chilled to the Bone on your melee attacks when affected.
  • Tail Smash

Video By Vodka PTR

Valithria Dreamwalker

Highlights

Valithria starts at 50% health and the objective is for players to heal her to full.  This is accomplished through player heal spells.  While you do this adds spawn and rush you to try and stop you from healing her and to deal damage to her.  The adds spawn progressively faster as the fight goes on, so it’s important to have a good mix of DPS to keep the adds down, as well as healers to heal Valithria.

• Abilities
  • Column of Frost
  • Emerald Vigor
  • Summon Nightmare Portal
• Blazing Skeleton (Add)
  • Fireball
  • Lay Waste
• Blistering Zombie (Add)
  • Acid Burst
  • Corrosion
• Gluttonous Abomination (Add)
  • Gut Spray
  • Spawns several Rot Worms on death.  Rot Worms hit for 4-5k damage each on plate wearers.
• Risen Archmage (Add)
  • Corruption
  • Frostbolt Volley
  • Mana Void
• Suppresser (Add)
  • 6 of these spawn per wave of adds and will cast Suppression on Valithria.

Video By Cuties Only

Quote from: Zarhym (Source)

World of Warcraft Client Patch 3.3.2

The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

Dungeons and Raids

• Icecrown Citadel
  • Frostwing Halls, the final stronghold of the Scourge and their Lich King, has been added.
• Halls of Stone
  • Brann Bronzebeard has been getting into shape and now feels comfortable walking faster when escorted.
• The Forge of Souls
  • The Devourer of Souls will now cast Mirrored Souls less often.
  • The Spell Reflect ability has been altered on several creatures. It now has a cast time, only has 2 charges, and has a 75% chance of reflecting spells.
• The Nexus
  • Anomalus will now use the Create Rift ability only once, down from 3 times.
• The Old Kingdom
  • Elder Nadox now only gets one Ahn’Kahar Guardian during the encounter.
  • Jadoga Shadowseeker now only ascends once during the encounter.
  • Several enemies between the Befouled Terrace and The Desecrated Altar have been removed or had their pathing altered.
• Pit of Saron
  • Players can now zone back into the instance if they are dead while encounters with Krick and Ick or Forgemaster Garfrost are in progress.
• Utgarde Pinnacle
  • Skadi the Ruthless can now be removed from his drake with 3 harpoon strikes, down from 5.
  • Svala Sorrowgrave now casts Ritual of the Sword 1 time during the encounter, down from 3.
• Vault of Archavon
  • Toravon, the latest boss to join the Vault’s giants and masters of the elements, is now accepting challengers in 10- and 25-player formats.
• The Violet Hold
  • The time between a boss being defeated and a new portal opening has been decreased.

PvP

• All healing abilities (including items such as potions) will be decreased in effectiveness by 10% when in Battlegrounds, Arenas, or Wintergrasp.
• Arenas
  • Season 8 has officially begun featuring all-new rewards!

Druids

• Talents
  • Balance
    • Earth and Moon: This talent now increases the druid’s spell damage by 2/4/6%, up from 1/2/3%.

Shamans

• Talents
  • Elemental Combat
    • Shamanism: This talent now provides 4/8/12/16/20% extra spell damage to Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning, up from 3/6/9/12/15%, and 5/10/15/20/25% to Lava Burst, up from 4/8/12/16/20%.

Warlocks

• Talents
  • Affliction
    • Shadow Embrace: This effect can now stack up to 3 times, up from 2. However, the periodic healing reduction effect has been reduced from 3/6/9/12/15% to 2/4/6/8/10% per application.
  • Demonology
    • Demonic Pact: The damage bonus granted the warlock by this talent has been increased from 1/2/3/4/5% to 2/4/6/8/10%. The buff granted to a raid or party by this talent remains unchanged.
  • Destruction
    • Conflagrate: The damage-over-time effect of Conflagrate has been increased to 40% of the spell’s total damage, up from 20%.
    • Empowered Imp: The pet bonus damage provided by this talent has been increased to 10/20/30%, up from 5/10/15%.
    • Improved Shadow Bolt: Damage done by Shadow Bolt increased by 2/4/6/8/10%, up from 1/2/3/4/5%.

Warriors

• Talents
  • Protection
    • Concussion Blow: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 50%, but its threat generation will remain approximately the same.
    • Devastate: This ability now deals 120% of weapon damage, up from 100% of weapon damage.
    • Shield Slam: The damage scaling from block value for this ability now diminishes faster and diminishes starting at a lower block value. The difference should be negligible for players in high-end tanking armor. In addition, the threat caused by Shield Slam has been increased by 30%.
    • Warbringer: This talent no longer allows Charge and Intercept to break roots or snares. Intervene remains unaffected.

User Interface

• The party leader is now referred to as Guide in chat when a group is formed via the Dungeon Finder.
• Fixed a bug where players with Raid Assist capabilities were unable to perform a Ready Check.
• Fixed a bug where the first couple of tutorials were not displaying upon logging into the game.

Items

• New strength-based melee DPS rings are now available from representatives of the Ashen Verdict.
• Tier-9 Sets: The Aspirant vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds have worked out a deal with merchants in Dalaran so that all item level 232 set pieces will now be available on armor vendors in the city. Set pieces which require trophies will still be available for purchase only from vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds.
• Tier-10 Balance Druid 4-Piece Bonus: Fixed a bug to allow for this bonus to properly trigger.
• Tier-10 Elemental Shaman 4-Piece Set Bonus: Redesigned. Successful Lava Burst casts now increase the duration of Flame Shock on the target by 6 seconds.
• Tier-10 Tank Sets: The gloves and chest pieces for warrior, death knight, and paladin tanks have had their stats adjusted slightly to provide additional armor value.
• Tier-10 Warlock 4-Piece Bonus: This bonus should now correctly be applied to the warlock’s pet.

Technical Support

• The cvar ‘processAffinityMask’ controls which CPU cores are available for the World of Warcraft client to use. Previously the game client was limited to 2 cores as a default which players could override in the configuration file. In the past this provided a performance boost on some CPUs and operating systems. We have identified several systems that are experiencing severe performance issues with this restriction and have removed it. Players who would like to restore the old behavior can do so by updating the Config.WTF file by adding: SET processAffinityMask “3″.

3.3.2 Patch

Quote from: Enthati (Source)

We will be performing scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, February 2nd. Maintenance will begin at 3:00 AM PST and conclude at approximately 11:00 AM PST. During this time, all realms and many web services will be unavailable.

Thank you for your patience.

Trinket and Itemization Ideas

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)

Our raid item philosophy has evolved a lot since vanilla. The tier sets were once considered a badge of honor. Someone stalking around (or mailbox afking) with their full set bonus might as well have been sporting a legendary item. These days, we virtually guarantee that any player with an interest in raiding is going to be able to complete at least the lowest level version of their set with just a minimal level of persistence. This ultimately serves as a powerful reward mechanism and is in line with our philosophy of letting more players actually see the content.

This design though also has its risks. One of the big ones is that item progression becomes very predictable and deterministic. Imagine (just as an example) a model where all bosses drop emblems and every item you want is for sale. That may sound cool for a few weeks, until you hit the point that without any kind of random element to progression that you can calculate to the day/week at which you will finish gearing up your character. The excitement of what the boss drops would be gone and we feel this would end up making the purpose of clearing new content very underwhelming.

Trinkets are really the one item (weapons are to a lesser extent) that we use to try and capture that old slot machine feel from the classic Molten Core days. Yes, completely random loot with huge loot tables can be frustrating but we are pretty far from being completely random these days. Trinkets however are still somewhat random, they can be hard to acquire, and there is often a lot of competition for them.

Trinkets are also tricky to design because we don’t want them to be just a pile of stats like other items. We generally want them to be unique by having a random proc or an on-use ability or something similar. These types of things are always trickier to balance, but this is also what makes them interesting. We also don’t necessarily want every trinket to be a guaranteed upgrade just because the item level is higher. Knowing what works or doesn’t work for your particular character and play style is one of the ways players have to demonstrate their mastery of the game.

There are some aspects of trinkets for which we think we can do better. For example, it’s annoying when a superior item is on a lower tier of content to where you feel like you have to argue with your guild to go back and farm easy bosses or run a 10 player version when everyone else wants to do 25. Many of the trinkets probably represent too big a dps (or equivalent) jump given how difficult it can be to acquire them. It’s also easy for us to fall into a rut of offering basically the same one every time (often because we know players like it) rather than experimenting with different things. We like to try new things to keep gear interesting for players as we know some have been evaluating trinkets for over five years now.

We also probably just need to drop more of them. That doesn’t mean they should be trivial to acquire, but when say a caster only has 2 good options in Ulduar and 1 requires a hard mode, then there is going to be ton of competition when they do drop. We know it’s rough when the trinket you have been wanting finally drops and you have to roll against 10 other people for it. Having more trinkets would mean more variety, which means players may want different ones and ultimately will be a little more different from their friends/guildmates.

Account Security Awareness Page

Quote from: Nethaera (Source)

Protecting the citizens of Azeroth is extremely important to us. Our new Battle.net Account Security Awareness page ( http://us.battle.net/security/ ) provides helpful advice on what you can do to safeguard your computer, how to spot scams, info on the adverse effects of buying gold, ( http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20565929403&sid=1 ) and tried-and-true methods to help prevent account compromises.

Printwarcraft.com Poster Contest

Quote from: Nethaera (Source)

Create a great-looking custom print and you could win a gift code to use on Printwarcraft.com! Show us your creativity by visiting the Printwarcraft.com site, creating your own unique poster of your character, and submitting it. One winner will be chosen each week during the month of February to win a $10 gift code. After the fourth week, we’ll be choosing one entry each as our grand prize, second place, and third place winners for even more prizes. Find out more on our contest page. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/contests/10-01-printwar/index.html

Blue Posts

Patchwerk style fights (Source)

Outside of this being a troll post, I just want to say that fights like Patchwerk have their place but in the grand scheme of things can get really boring really fast. Once it becomes easy to defeat the encounter is more like a mini-boss that just had a lot of health. There are some nice dps-races in Icecrown Citadel like Deathbringer Saurfang (for melee at least) and Festergut but these still require some raid awareness depending on what is going on which is more challenging and more fun in the end.

Death Knight

Balancing DK ranged skills (Source)

It really just comes down to our not wanting death knights to be a ranged class. It is a melee class. Now they have some great ranged tools and some ranged spells, not unlike say an Enhancement shaman who throws out the occasional Lightning Bolt. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s only when the DK strategy shifts to favoring ranged attacks too much that we make adjustments. The DK that runs around and does nothing but Icy Touch or Howling Blast or Death Coil feels like a rogue who forgoes combo points and openers and everything just to spam Fan of Knives and nothing else. It would probably even be okay if Death Coil was the largest component of damage, so long as you had to use your melee attacks to set that up first.

Warlock

4-piece Tier-10 (Source)

There is a bug where the pet is not always receiving the damage bonus from the 4PT10 warlock set. We are going to fix it.

The issue of having to recast Corruption in order to benefit from the proc is a much harder problem to solve. We might be able to do something, but we can’t promise a good solution there. It is just the nature of the way rolling dots work. You gain the benefit of whatever crit you on when you cast the spell, but aren’t going to gain the benefit from procs that occur later on.

Soul Shards in Cataclysm (Source)

Ideally we design it so that you don’t need a way to get them back in combat. We think that makes the shards feel more like cooldowns than something you do every time they are on cooldown. (Example: you generally save Heroism / Bloodlust for the best time to use it, not the first available time to use it.) It is definitely possible though that a lock could feel janked if they used their last shard just as a bunch of adds joined the fight or whatever. In that case we might have to add some kind of Evocation-like ability to get the shards back in emergencies.

In a very pure, possibly unrealistic sense, though we’d love to see 3 shards per fight with some kind of cooldown in between the use of each. I mean non-trivial fights here. Maybe you use 1 shard on raid trash and no shards while killing a mob for a quest while leveling.

Where is your WoW Character going to be buried?!
Interesting post came across in the forums, pretty much where would you want to retire your character in the world of warcraft? If it ever ended lol. Leave your comments!

Quote from: Liessa (Source)

Which zone would they choose ?

Junatami – Resto/Boomkin Druid – Nagrand, no doubts about it.

Plate DPS using Leather or mail

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)

I wanted to address some of the points that have been brought up in this thread so far.

The original post was directed at the plate wearers because a mail-based class who is wearing leather going into Cataclysm won’t be at the same disadvantage as a plate-based class who is wearing leather or mail will be.

For an enhancement shaman or hunter, the mail will lose its Intellect, but the physical dps mail and leather will both have Agility that enhancement shaman and hunters want. However, we are also going to offer a small additional incentive for characters to wear “their” armor so it will encourage shaman and hunters to wear mail over leather, balance druids to want leather over cloth, holy paladins to prefer plate, etc.

We realize everyone will have lots of questions about what will happen to their gear, and we will eventually share all of that with you. We just wanted to post this reminder for plate wearers who are currently after leather and/or mail items to let them they will really not want it when we convert to the next expansion.

Part of the Cataclysm re-itemization will be to change all of the old (pre-Wrath of the Lich King) items, which will include doing things like actually having low level balance druid leather or holy paladin plate.

Ghostcrawler joins in (Source)

If you are focused on Icecrown progression right now, as you probably should be, then pick whatever gear makes the most sense for your character. All we wanted to point out is that once we get closer to Cataclysm, all of your gear is going to change. In most cases, a good piece will still be good for you. In the dps warrior, paladin and DK case, the now +Agility leather and mail you might be wearing will be bad for you. If you plan to keep raiding after the conversion, that might be a problem. If you planned to use your Icecrown gear to help you level in Cataclysm, that might be a problem. It’s just a public service announcement for players who might not be familiar with the Catalcysm stats plan.

—

If you are gearing up for Cataclysm though, I would not suggest plate wearers investing in leather and mail. If getting leather and mail help you beat the bad man with the big sword, then go for it. I posted this mostly in response to tin-foil-hat-wearers above who speculated we were trying to nerf warrior dps or change social norms or whatever by suggesting they stop rolling on leather.

This all may seem perfectly obvious to you, but I promise you we will still see plenty of “you pulled the rug out from under me” posts, which is why we are starting early with the information campaign.

Performance Issues on Thrall’s Realm

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)

We appreciate players’ patience while we worked to resolve stability issues that have affected the Thrall realm. We recently implemented some hardware changes intended to restore the realm to its expected level of performance and have been monitoring the realm closely since then. We’ve been pleased to see major stability improvements over the last week, and we will continue to monitor the realm to ensure players are having a good play experience. We understand the frustration players have expressed following these issues, and if we have any additional updates for the Thrall community, we will add them to this thread.

Blue Posts

Why is Invincible only available to 25-player raids? (Source)

Blizzard loves 10-person content guilds just as much as we love 25-person content guilds. The reason for having this mount in the 25-person Lich King encounter has to do with maintaining the proper distribution of such awesomeness. If it were available in the 10-person encounter as well, it may be come too prolific and lose some of its initial unique qualities.

Talent changes in Cataclysm (Source)

I was going to bump this to the General forum, but I think the talent tree comment is worth addressing in the role forums, since it applies to class design.

1) We are changing talent trees, in some cases substantially. The major focus is pruning out boring but valuable talents that passively increase say damage or healing.

2) A secondary focus is to fix the clunky areas (e.g. warlocks having two conflicting range increasing talents). We’re not going to remove old favorites or radically change the focus of the trees. You will definitely have to rethink your builds however.

3) Because you earn passive bonuses just for spending points in the tree, those fun, niche or utility talents won’t seem as expensive as they do today. We want to create a lot more choices where you are choosing utility vs. utility. We want to see far more “cookie cutter” build guides that say “Spend the last 5-10 points where you want.”

4) In some cases, trees will flat out get new abilities. These are in addition to the new level 81+ abilities.

5) You will get 5 additional talent points for the new levels.

6) We are not deepening the trees. This actually unlocks some interesting opportunities. For the first time, you can reach a 51 point talent and a 21 point talent in another tree.

I’ll also add that for Lich King we just brought Naxxramas back and adjusted the bosses for 10 and 25 raid sizes. The Cataclysm raids are new content with new maps and new bosses. We’re just trying to hit the nostalgia button with mentioning old foes like Ragnaros. Ragnaros may be back, but he’s not in Molten Core.

Purified Lunar Dust (Source)

It is about 22 spell power under budget, and will be fixed.

Top DPS specs on Professor Putricide (Source)

I think one of the most interesting aspects is to look at those classes where one spec is generally perceived to be “the best.”

For rogues, locks and hunters there are some players who choose the “second” spec even at a presumed dps loss. For mages, nearly all go Arcane even though Fire’s damage really isn’t that bad. (What I mean is that I don’t think you can argue Combat, Survival and Destruction all trump Fire to explain why there are more of those specs on this fight). In all four cases, the third spec is pretty dead. (We’ll assume the Demo locks are mostly there for DP, which as I’ve said before is not ideal).

Keep the encounter in mind, too. Putricide is a fight where standing still is heavily penalized, yet healing is also not as much of a bottleneck as is damage. We see a lot of groups have a healer go dps for example, which might boost e.g. the Elemental and Shadow numbers just for this fight.

Death Knight

Death Knight tank representation (Source)

There are still plenty of DK tanks in Icecrown.

The death knight was a new class with a lot of cool abilities, lore and a great starting experience. It doesn’t surprise me at all that a lot of players flocked to them. When it turned out they were overpowered in dps, PvP and tanking early on in Lich King, that probably encouraged more players to pick them up or stick with them. So it’s natural that the numbers have evened out a bit more, but there are still plenty of DKs and they seem to be doing just fine tanking Icecrown. We’ll see if things look different when the hard modes unlock and if DKs (of appropriate gear and skill) struggle on those fights, we’ll buff them.

We don’t balance around representation. We do take notice when populations suddenly shift, but that hasn’t happened in this case.

Mage

Best talent spec for raids (Source)

Some of you Fire mages are having too much fun ranting in this thread instead of focusing on what I was actually saying.

Is Arcane generally above Fire? Yes. The difference may only be 10% though, and Fire is still above many damage specs. Is Arcane so much higher than Fire than Marks is to Survival? Not really. Yet we see more Survival hunters (in this particular data set on one boss) than we do Fire mages. Clearly more is going on that players just gravitating towards whichever spec does the most damage. (The key word is “just.” Players definitely like specs that deliver the most damage, but that does not appear to be the sole governing concern in this case.)

There are a lot of things contributing to Arcane beating other mages. Incanter’s Absorption is probably way too good in conjunction with kind Disc priests. Arcane benefits a lot on movement fights like PP. Arcane benefits a lot from using those Innervates that the Fire mage can’t really use and the healers (for the moment at least) don’t really need. As Lhivera points out, Frost can do decent (not stellar) given the chance, but fights like Marrowgar really exploit (in a bad way) Frost’s relative lack of pushback resistance.

We’d like to get the mages closer together, and that’s something we’re still going to work on. (“Wait until Cataclysm” is something snarky players like to say more than we do.) What we don’t want to do is suddenly catapult Frost up ahead of Arcane such that every mage feels like they have to change… again. Close, without going over, is kind of the mantra at this stage.

Reminder: Battlecry Mosaic
Keep up the Battlecry Mosaic

Details on the Battlecry Mosaic (Source)

The World of Warcraft Battlecry Mosaic has reached its half-way point, with 10,000 photos of gamers from all over the world. Be sure to check out the latest additions as well as a piece of epic in-game music that is part of the encounter with Arthas in Icecrown Citadel: ‘Invincible’. It’s not over yet, though. We still need more of your entries showing off your Horde or Alliance pride. Every 1,000 photos you send us will reveal another part of the mosaic and additional Warcraft artwork. When the full mosaic is revealed, your combined efforts will unlock an epic, exclusive piece of World of Warcraft art as a final reward.

Head over to the Battlecry photo mosaic page ( http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wowanniversary/battlecry/ )to view the mosaic in progress, and keep those photos coming! ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/community/contests/form/battlecrymosaic.html )

Check out our updated special Battlecry Gallery. ( http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/misc/battlecry-gallery.html#18 )

Shaman                                                    Warrior

Warlock                                                     Rogue

Priest                                                          Paladin

Mage                                                              Hunter

Druid                                                          Death Knight

Gunship Battle!
Fun read, enjoy! =)

Quote from: Zarhym (Source)

As the confrontation with the Lich King draws nearer, fire erupts in the skies above Icecrown Citadel. Skybreaker and Orgrim’s Hammer, the flag-flying gunships of the Alliance and Horde, clash near Deathbringer’s Rise — but it wasn’t too long ago that they were just ideas on paper. Read on to find out how our development team built this airborne assault: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/gunship-battle.xml

Deadly Fireworks: Building Icecrown Citadel’s Gunship Battle

The frozen earth of Icecrown roils with throngs of the undead Scourge, reanimated bodies so numerous that there are few physical locations where the Horde and the Alliance can build their camps and strongholds. Instead, the defenders of Azeroth take to the sky.

Two gunships, the Skybreaker of the Alliance and Orgrim’s Hammer, named for the former Warchief of the Horde, patrol the skies of Icecrown. Early in the campaign against the Lich King, these grand vessels were used to scout overland terrain, where they frequently came into open conflict with each other, brightening the skies with their cannon fire.

Now, in the wake of the Argent Tournament, the enemies of the Scourge have finally gathered to lay siege to Icecrown Citadel. With the fortress nearly impenetrable on land and the spires of the citadel touching the sky at their peaks, it’s become clear to the leaders of both the Horde and the Alliance that an aerial assault, spearheaded by these two gunships, is the only way to infiltrate Arthas’s stronghold.

Two prominent warriors have stepped forward to lead the attack: Muradin Bronzebeard of the Alliance and High Overlord Saurfang of the Horde. Both seek to defeat the Lich King and spare the living from another plague — but there are other, more personal stakes for these heroes. Saurfang seeks to uncover the fate of his son, whose body was lost at the battle of the Wrath Gate, while Muradin, bearing the weight of Arthas’s atrocities, seeks justice, closure, and possibly even redemption for his former student.

And yet, even with their noble goals, there will be no shared glory for the Alliance and the Horde in this attack. The dock atop Icecrown Citadel is only big enough for one ship. Halfway up the spires, the Skybreaker and Orgrim’s Hammer are fated to clash again in a storm of gunfire, swinging blades, and bellowing warriors. Foremost in this mayhem are the combat crews, veteran heroes who’ve already begun the assault on Icecrown and who will fight to the last for a chance at Arthas — heroes like you.

In this article, the World of Warcraft development team discusses the inception and construction of one of Icecrown Citadel’s most frantic and epic raid encounters. Take your eyes off the sky — just for a moment — and read on.

Bringing the Fight to Life

Creating the gunship battle in Icecrown Citadel was a unique and exciting challenge for the World of Warcraft team. For quite some time, we’ve heard requests from players who wished to see ship-to-ship combat realized in the game. Since Icecrown Glacier doesn’t have much in the way of flowing water, we opted to use the gunships, which were already a major fixture of the Icecrown zone, to bring that idea to life. In the battle, players take on the role of the combat crew for their faction’s ship: either the Skybreaker on the Alliance side, helmed by Muradin Bronzebeard, or Orgrim’s Hammer on the Horde side, helmed by High Overlord Saurfang. With their own weapons, the ships’ guns, and a strong, coordinated plan of attack, raiders struggle to knock the enemy faction’s gunship out of the sky and ascend to the peak of Icecrown Citadel.

When we began work on the gunship battle, we knew that we wanted the idea of “controlled chaos” to be central to every second of the fight between the Skybreaker and Orgrim’s Hammer. Rather than making the encounter a traditional single-target “wear down” or “tank ‘n’ spank” battle, we took steps to make sure that the heroes who serve as their ship’s combat crew would be constantly engaged — moving, fighting, and dealing with a high volume of visual and spatial inputs.

Our design discussion started with a talk about victory conditions. We planned a straightforward main objective: to win the fight, the enemy gunship must be defeated before it takes down the players’ gunship. Beyond this straightforward objective, we made it a point to include ongoing mini-objectives in order to keep the pace of the fight continually frantic.

“Defeating” a gunship with spells and swords alone wasn’t something we felt would be appropriate for a high-flying, bombastic encounter like this one, so we decided that damage to both gunships would come from an ongoing exchange of cannon fire, and players would man the deck-mounted cannons of their gunship to try and take down the enemy. We supplemented the ship-to-ship exchange by including enemy artillery to blast back at the players — riflemen or axe throwers would attempt to take down the players with their ranged weapons, while heavier artillery would launch rockets and mortars at the gunship.

Though we wanted the battle to look and feel furious, there was a danger that our continued artillery barrage would cause the screen to become cluttered with arcing shells. To combat this, we made our cannon shells, rockets, and mortars telegraph where they were likely to land with an “impact icon.” This would encourage dodging and allow detonations to be deliberately avoided, adding another layer of frenzied movement to the encounter…and that’s even before the cannons get shut down.

Rather than force some players to only manage their cannons throughout the entire battle, we opted to keep players moving by temporarily deactivating the cannons’ ability to deal damage to the enemy ship. After the hull of the enemy ship takes severe damage, an enemy mage encases players’ cannons in a block of ice. In order to defrost their cannons and stay in the fight, players must defeat the mage…who stands protected dozens of feet away on the deck of the enemy gunship. This interruption in players’ damage provided us with one of our most exciting opportunities to keep building “controlled chaos” into the fight.

From our earliest discussions, we wanted to make sure that a way of boarding enemy ships, a classic element of ship-to-ship combat in pirate and fantasy fiction, made its way into the final gunship encounter. Swinging across ropes or using a grappling hook on an airship as it spiraled upwards through the sky seemed likely to send every member of the combat crew falling to their doom — but we needed a means for players to move between the ships in order to let them pursue the enemy mage and make the fight feel cinematic.

To emphasize the danger and chaos of the encounter, we ultimately decided that participants in the battle would use goblin rocket packs to travel back and forth between the gunships. Goblin craftsmanship is notorious for being unreliable, and sending first-time rocketeers careening between ships with thousands of feet of open sky beneath them was our way of ratcheting up the tension and keeping the battlefield constantly shifting. The packs can also be used for offensive positioning. When a member of the crew lands from a rocket jump, the rocket pack deals damage and provides a slowing debuff to nearby enemies.

We knew that players would use their rocket packs to reach the enemy mage on the deck of the opposing gunship, but we wanted to put a few additional obstacles in their path. First is the enemy leader — Muradin or Saurfang — a dangerous melee powerhouse. Each leader defends the deck of his ship when players rocket over and must be held at bay while the players simultaneously face off against the enemy mage and combat crew.

The enemy crew themselves provide the second major obstacle: they continue to assault the players’ gunship while their own is boarded. Their ongoing attacks provide them with combat experience, which increases their strength and the damage they do to the players’ gunship the longer they are ignored. If the players’ deck is left insufficiently defended in the assault, enemy forces will hurl burning pitch that does significant damage to the hull and can even set the deck ablaze. Lastly, the enemy’s forces are replenished from below deck, resulting in a continuous surge of foes that must be held off even as the players race to unfreeze their cannons and continue their offensive.

The battle rages on until one ship sinks below the horizon.

We’re excited we were able to bring the gunship battle to life in patch 3.3, and we hope players enjoy it. It continues Wrath of the Lich King’s tradition of epic dungeon brawls while providing a new, different, and exciting challenge on the path to Arthas. Grit your teeth, keep your footing, and watch the air catch fire. We’ll see you in the skies over Icecrown.