MMO-Champion - Auchindoun Dungeon, Mage Tier 6 Recolor, Warlords Features, Blue Posts, Wowcraft
Sanctuary Sunday Talk, Jakarro's "Arctic Zoo" Demon Hunter, PTR Cold Demon Hunter

Icecrown Season Five Begins August 1st, Versus Series: AcB Fire vs GC Jirachie, Naxx Patch 6141

Chen Stormstout Sneak Peek at ChinaJoy

Warlords of Draenor - Auchindoun
Today we are taking a look at the Auchindoun dungeon, located in Talador.

Warlords of Draenor - Mage Tier 6 Recolor
One of the recent beta builds added a nice recolor of the Mage Tier 6 armor set.

Warlords of Draenor Features
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
The OP appears to be a copy/paste from a forum reply on MMO-Champion, which is unfortunate as almost everything listed is just incorrect, if not intentionally misleading. Reading it I'm tempted to say it's a well crafted troll because ... I'll say: because of the outlandishness of some of the claims, but the fact that it has so many upvotes here tells me that either people didn't read it, or they're agreeing with something that promotes their general feeling without counting on any of the specific points being made.

Being wary of a feature or direction is absolutely warranted, being unhappy or even upset about something is something we want to know about, providing feedback and telling us how you feel about something is critical to us so we can create an excellent gaming experience, but it's so absolutely important that everyone be curious, and research, and want to learn, and become knowledgeable, and use that knowledge to empower what they themselves think and say. I see a lot of people here are being critical of the points listed, which restores some of me, but so many are assuming the things they're told are true, and that's a poisonous way to ... hell, to go through life, let alone how to feel about a video game.

Simply repeating what someone else said is so very easy, and especially in this case, a good way to undermine your own voice. Have a voice, be critical, but do it because you have something to say. That is what is helpful, and that is what we want to hear.

For those in the thread attempting to inform people of what is accurate, we appreciate your effort. We'll try to step it up to help you out.

Sorry Bashiok, but OP is right about a number of things, including the massive amounts of cuts to content on launch, low number of dungeons, and extreme dumbing down of PVE. Look at the forest from outside of the trees. You and the rest of the devs.
Massive cuts of what? Faction hubs being in a different place? There are 7 dungeons + an updated max level UBRS. What does extreme dumbing down mean? This kind of response is the exact point of my previous reply.

Ability pruning for one.
After 10 years of adding more and more abilities, there's a point when we need to take a critical look at all that we have wrought. We can't just constantly add more and more and more abilities to the game forever and expect it to hold up under the weight of itself. Our intent as a company is always to design simple systems with lots of fun gameplay depth. Easy to learn difficult to master is our motto. Having tons of abilities does not necessarily make a game deep or fun, just complex. We've posted these exact points many times. If you disagree with Blizzard's core design principles, or any specific changes being made, we'd be happy to hear specific feedback, but saying a game is going to be bad because there are less class abilities is not particularly helpful, or even accurate.

This thread is getting a lot of attention, which is unfortunate, as it's chock full of misinformation. Let me clarify what I can:

-Black Temple and Frostwolf keep no longer hub cities, just quest locations you visit once.
They won't be hub cities, true. They're a bit more than "just quest locations you visit once," though.

-New faction cities are copy pastes of the 4.1 krasarang wilds faction bases in ashran, an island in nowhere
Even in their current state in Beta, this is false. They don't look anything like the Krasarang bases. Also, they're nowhere near complete in the current build. They'll look closer to what we're aiming for in the next one.

-Garrisons only in one zone now, no longer customization, no longer lets you name npcs, no longer has skill boosts, is just a daily quest hub phased to you.
True, false, true, false, extremely false.

-average class goes from 40 spells to 7
I'd double check your math. We pruned some abilities, but in even the most extreme cases it wasn’t nearly that many.

-no new skeletons or animations, literally every creature in the expansion is a remodelled creature.
False. Even the new character models are getting re-done animations.

-portions of entire zones are copy pasted from the BC devset
False. Everything has been built from scratch.

-the rest are not flying compatible and have 2d jpg mountains -now you know why shamans had far sight and hunters had eagle vision removed.
False. Every zone is built to be capable of flying, and I have no idea where you're getting "2d jpg mountains" from. Also, Far Sight and Eagle Eye were not removed.

-now only 4 dungeons from level 90-100
There are 4 dungeons from 90-99, and 4 more that open at level 100.

-client code for garrison cash shop functionality discovered, quickly removed along with tweet mentioning it from cory stockton
This never happened and such functionality is not planned, please don't spread false rumors.

-less raid content at launch than any expansion
False. The first tier of Warlords raiding contains 17 bosses.

-less dungeons than cataclysm had in PATCHES
False. Cataclysm added 3 brand new dungeons in 4.3, and 2 updated dungeons in 4.2. Warlords is launching with 7 new dungeons and 1 updated dungeon.

-no flying
True, at least at launch.

-story is a barely canon side timeline alternate dimension just to give another enemy to fight while trying to lure in veterans with nostalgia and a 'veterans first!" beta access program
Story opinions are subjective, but I’m sorry to hear you’re not as excited about it as we are. We've had tons of requests over the years for veteran perks.

-almost all CC removed in pvp. totally removed in pve
False and completely false.

-adding healing and tanking npcs in quests
I don't know what this is referring to. Maybe the occasional quests where you rescue someone and they help you fight for a brief time? Is that a bad thing?

-Heirloom and tabard storage tab just cut until "later"
True, though they haven’t been cut, merely delayed.

-replacing quests with "dynamic, interactive world experiences" that appear once and when you do them disappear leaving huge swathes of zones empty.
Questing hasn't been "replaced", and the "appear once and then disappear" bit is just false. Maybe you’ve just encountered an unfinished zone in Beta?

-new models have a single face and the cosmetic choices in almost every model but undead simply adds a new texture to said single face.
False. Have you seen our recent ArtCraft on the topic?

-homogenized healing to the point that its all just different colours now
False, but if you have specific feedback on why you feel that way, we'd love to hear it.

-guild levleing removed
True. We think this is a good thing.

-talents auto fill per spec to avoid confusion.
False and I have no idea why you'd think this was the case.

-80% of announcements from blizzcon for the expansion are confirmed cut or extremely truncated in some way.
We've made some cuts since Blizzcon, yes, but not nearly that many. We try to be as open as possible about what we’re dreaming up when we first announce an expansion, but a lot of things change and evolve from those basic concepts as development ramps up.

Regarding Twitter: it's a medium we're still kind of trying to figure out how to utilize most effectively. It's an extremely powerful way to talk to and engage with the community, but it's not great for everything, and we've certainly made some missteps. We're learning, though.

This feedback is what really discourages me about the direction WoD is heading. "Story opinions are subjective" is not a helpful thing to tell players who are dissatisfied with the way you're telling a story. It more or less brushes them off and tells them that their opinions are worth less than other players.
Definitely not my intention, and I apologize for being unclear if you've taken it that way. I only called it subjective because, while I would call it false, opinions don't really lend themselves well to true/false answers. I'm excited about the WoD storyline, but that may not be the case for everyone (and feedback on why you're not is very useful!)

But really, it's indicative of an even larger problem: you say you like feedback, but you don't respond to it unless it's positive. When something is brought up that the playerbase doesn't like, you don't talk about it and then sit back and wait for us to accept it.

It's like what you want to say is "we love feedback, but only if it validates our current ideas about where we'd like to go."

One extremely important thing I want to get across here: when we're not talking about something publicly, that means we're talking about it internally. We're discussing the feedback and trying to determine what, if any, action needs to be taken. And until we have a solid answer, we don't want to tease people with a "we read this, but don't have anything to share just yet" response. Aside from the fact that it would slow us down dramatically (we read a LOT of feedback every day), we just don't think a non-answer is a great one.

That said, we're always aiming to improve how we communicate, and definitely get the message that we can do better. We'll keep aiming to improve.

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Targeted Feedback Request: Quest Bottlenecks
Beta is a crucial time for players to make their voices heard and give feedback to help make Warcraft the best game possible. While all constructive feedback is appreciated, one specific type of feedback that is uniquely valuable to us are examples of things that slow you down while questing out in the world: there's a lot of words to describe these types of situations, but perhaps the best word is "bottlenecks".

Bottlenecks are basically the term we use to describe situations that stop players from questing at their normal pace. Players tend to progress through zones and quests at different rates, but if a quest target (object, drop rate, or mob spawning rate) is too rare, it can really slow players down. The fastest players will run into this first, and they might get through without too much of a reduction in their speed, but just like a traffic jam on a highway more and more people will pileup behind them.

This type of testing is super important for you folks to look for while leveling through zones in the beta. While my Quality Assurance (QA) team works to find and report issues like this in our testing, we're not able to easily replicate the large numbers of players hitting quests and zones at the same time.

In an effort to keep things organized, I've made one thread for each Draenor Questing zone. Please click on the appropriate link below and post in that thread with any examples of situations where you were slowed down by questing due to a bottleneck of some kind.

Quest Bottlenecks in Tanaan Jungle
Quest Bottlenecks in Shadowmoon Valley
Quest Bottlenecks in Frostfire Ridge
Quest Bottlenecks in Gorgrond
Quest Bottlenecks in Talador
Quest Bottlenecks in Spires of Arak
Quest Bottlenecks in Nagrand

Thanks! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Beta EU Character Copy
EU character copies are coming. We're hoping to have them functional in the next major build.

To give a little insight: the beta realms are located in one of our North American datacenters. European characters are, obviously, located in European datacenters. For a number of obscure technical reasons, getting those datacenters to securely communicate with each other to transfer character data has been a much larger challenge than we expected.

We think we've got it solved, though, so (fingers crossed) you should be able to copy your characters soon! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Stat Squish Status
Just a quick update here: all old world content should now be properly scaled.

If you want, go on some transmog runs, go do old content like you do on live, etc. In general, everything should be similar or easier than it used to be. Please report any issues you encounter here.

Known problems:
  • Damage reflect effects like Reliquary's Aura of Desire will cause excessive backlash damage.
  • Boss fights that rely on healing NPCs (e.g. Valithria, Sinestra) will be very difficult to complete due to the bonus vs. lower-level targets not applying to healing.

These two problems should both be fixed next build. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

"Premade Groups" / Group Finder Feedback
There's a known (major) issue with the tool currently, where the server handling the group matchmaking can crash and fail to recover, breaking the tool for everyone. It should be fixed next build, but I'll provide an update if anything changes before then. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

EU Connected Realms Update - 31/07
P.S @ Tak, I'll ask once again, please stop drip feeding us information. We deserve better and for a community facing representative tasked with keeping the playerbase up to date on something that is important to them your performance has been pathetic at best. This has been a work in progress for Blizzard for almost 6 months. It's just not good enough.
We can only pass on information that we actually have. The schedule is worked on and updated constantly, and once we know which realms are to be connected, we share it with you guys. I understand everyone is keen to see their realm connected, believe me I do. I play on these realms too. Connecting realms is not straightforward though, and we're progressing at the speed that we're able to when all the necessary steps and precautions have been taken. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Whichever dev thought giving Hunter/MagesRogue huge raid utility while taking away Tranq/HTT/Devo/etc from hybirds is making a mistake. #WoD
Do you disagree with the reasoning, or the strength of the relevant cooldowns? (Celestalon)
I think it is neutering hybrids too much. Example:Why bring a moonkin over another pure if they are even remotely on par w/ dmg?
Hybrids and pures will do the same damage, and bring the same utility. That's the goal for Warlords. (Celestalon)
Roar/HotW/Vortex isnt in the same ballpark as Smokebomb, Raid raid movement, Amp Magic, etc.
[Roar+NV/HotW+Vortex/Typhoon] vs. [Smoke Bomb] seems like a fair choice to us. (Celestalon)
Roar/Vortex/Typhoon are extremely situational(eg AE DeathGrip). Amp Magic/Smokebomb are used(required) on almost every fight.
NV is useful in every single encounter. Roar is useful in 90+% of encounters. (Celestalon)
You think NV is going to be as strong as Amp Magic? I don't think it will be.
Depends on what you stack it with. NV plus Ysera's Gift, or the constant healing of Dream of Cenarius... It adds up. (Celestalon)
Small heals dont have the same weight as bulk heals (in most situations). I just feel hybrid cds should be stronger.
For sustained, they may, in Warlords' healing world. (Celestalon)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
You miss the point, Blood no longer has any choice to it. F/U/D on DS, B on Pes, RP on DC. Thats it.
Or D on Blood Boil. (Celestalon)
You guys got "a little" carried away. WoW with Diablo III skills is not a good way to go... Sadly
You don't need to have a dozen rotational abilities in order to have good gameplay. Less can be more. (Celestalon)

A nerf to Necrotic Plague doesn't fix the problem of what makes it so attractive. Sorry folks, number tuning isn't going to solve this.
We're planning one tweak; making only ones directly applied be contagious. (Celestalon)

Druid (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Does the druid claws use the ZG tiger shapeshift graphic? That would be awesome.
No, though both of the ZG Tigons had some sweet looking animations that we wished we could use, but they just weren't... (Celestalon)
...compatible with modern models, unfortunately. (Celestalon)

now if Feral could use Fist Weapon off-hand also that would be #savage
One of our in-progress designs was actually that it let you have an offhand attack, but turned out not to be... (Celestalon)
...very compelling. You already alternate hands that you claw with, and attack fast, so you couldn't even tell a diff. (Celestalon)

Cats have been asking for Claws of Shirvallah for years. Wow, good job
We basically looked at that row, and thought, "there needs to be something more exciting here." It's getting late in the process... (Celestalon) design a whole new talent, but we tried to come up with the most exciting talent we could, with our limited time. (Celestalon)
Will you get rid of the perk that makes rejuv castable in cat form to make the talent more attractive?
No plans to do that, no. (Celestalon)
Nice, really excited about lunar inspiration and the kiting cat aspect. Opens up a whole new gameplay for feral.
Yeah, Moonfire in Cat Form is actually pretty neat too, I'd say, but it just doesn't have that 'new shininess' to it. (Celestalon)

Don't think Worgens are the Snow Leopard Type....Maybe like a Black Striped Cat...or you know..a wolf >.>
Limited options. It's subjective. It's black and white, which fit Worgen best to us. (Celestalon)

Uhh, what happens when you Incarnation in Claws of Shirvallah form?
Back to Incarnation form. (Celestalon)

.the shivarrah models look pretty bare boned. Any plans to add racial tweaks? Nelf ears/bull horns/druid tatoos/etc?
It's something we're considering for the future, but not for 6.0. Gotta get this game shipped! (Celestalon)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Is Aspect of the Hawk going to be on the GCD? Please say no.
You mean Fox? No. (Celestalon)

I assume at this point we won't be seeing Kungchong or Sand Reavers this go around?
Not this round! (Muffinus)
How about Teroclaw and Teroclaw Chick (Mainly the chick!) as Birds of Prey?
Yes! Though considering their story, maybe closer to Carrion birds or... dare I say... raptors? (Muffinus)

Mage (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
wait, where IS ice block. That's one of the iconic spells.
I'm guessing you took Evanesce. (Celestalon)
If one takes Evanesce, does one become unable to benefit from Glyph of Regenerative ice?
No, it should work with Evanesce instead (likely at a reduced amount). Not sure if it does, yet. (Celestalon)

are you happy with how prismatic crystal/frost bomb/frozen orb/ice lances interact right now? Crazy combos ensured!
Tentatively. It'd be weird if they didn't interact. Helps make up for the fact that Squirt can't hit the Crystal. (Celestalon)
also favoring frost bomb being the best 75 talent when used properly, high skillcap with brain freeze, FoF and squirt timings.
Why would that favor Frost Bomb? All 3 talents on that row do cleave. (Celestalon)

Monk (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
1.5s GCD for MW monks, makes me feel so slow, can you explain why? i understand haste will reduce GCD but still.@Celestalon
It's important that haste remain a valuable stat, and so its effects need to be attractive. (Celestalon)
Renewing Mist and Uplift are inefficient and weak on 5 targets, when compared single target heals, is this intended?
You're probably looking at the version with the bug where they scale from AP, not SP. (Celestalon)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
How will a protection paladin deal "slightly less damage "than retribution in WoD when it doesnt have a burst CD ?
They can talent into some cooldowns. And a cooldown alone doesn't make up the difference between a tank and a DPS. (Celestalon)

Priest (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Install time long enough to explain why Void Shift is going away? >.>Please don't take it!
Simply because it was underused, and we are cutting down on cooldowns, and Priests already had enough. Bloat. (Celestalon)

Rogue (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Thoughts about Sub Rogue dot snapshotting? Given how it calculates the dot, effects still snapshot trinkets/procs.
Can you clarify what you're talking about? (Celestalon)
Crimson Tempest in particular, when using, appears to still snapshot effects for the duration like on live.
Well, that's not so much snapshotting as the basic design of the skill. There's nothing to be dynamic there. (Celestalon)

Sub will end up using its own version of Affdots due to snapshot synergy with the blade twisting passive on Sinister Calling
It's something that we're concerned about and keeping an eye on. Our hope is that an addon will be pointless, and that all... (Celestalon)'ll tell you will amount to "keep all the DoTs up, Backstab as filler." That may be wishful thinking; we'll see. (Celestalon)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Do you think that lava burst w/ improved lightning shield will be enough to account for no rolling thunder procs thru overload?
No, all the Multistrikes triggering it will. (Celestalon)

Currently see no changes for Shaman mobility in this build, getting worried, anything planned?
Surge and Echo procing at the same time is fine, they don't conflict. (Celestalon)
That and Molten Earth can be maintained via Earth Shock alone, which I don't think many are considering.
Yep, Molten Earth is effectively a large buff to mobile damage as well. (Celestalon)

Any reason why the arctic wolf glyph was removed?
Shaman are using the new wolf model now. It's pretty badass. (DaveKosak)

Warlock (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
So how do we math out on the fly just what sort of procs are needed to eat the debuff and make it worth the cast?
It may sound complex from that description, but there's no "on the fly" math needed, generally. (Celestalon)
Either it's better than Soul Fire (damage numbers make that obvious, 0 or 1 stacks), or it's not (only use for burst) (Celestalon)

will Ashran have destructable structures WG-style?(still waiting for that invite, btw xDD)
We explored some ideas with destructibles but decided against it. (holinka)
I'm curious: What steered you away from destructibles?
It wasn't the gameplay we were going for. (holinka)

will skirmishes only be implemented at max level? Pls revive 70 arena
No they'll be at all levels, but rated arena will only be at max level. (holinka)

Can you share or hint anything about plans for S15 closure or balance tweaks? Anything you can will go a long way for arena players
Looking into exploits but no balance changes planned. (holinka)
What about S15 closure? it's been extension of Grevious and feels like it has been a 50 week season since virtually nothing changed
Nothing to share about the end of season 15 but there won't be another season before Warlords. (holinka)
Holinka last question.. Not a single person likes the Prideful Serpent. Would you ask the Devs to do a color swap for us? Please?
There are no plans to change the look of the S15 mount. (holinka)

Will Elite PVP gear models be obtainable with honor in seasons after it's current?
Probably not. We'll have to discuss options there. (holinka)

With so many portals in WoD's story, why don't the Iron Horde just use them to invade Azeroth without the Dark Portal?
They don't have Khadgar. And after the Tanaan intro, they don't have Gul'dan either. (DaveKosak)

How hard lore wise is it to open a portal from Azeroth to Draenor post expansion launch?
Lore-wise, extremely hard! For gameplay, there are a few in-game. Khadgar mentions how difficult it is. (DaveKosak)

Is there any in-game lore behind "Claws of Shirvallah"? And if so are these "renegades" inherently evil?
Almost no in-game lore. What do you guys think? Should we create a faction of crazy cat people? (DaveKosak)

Beyond The Dark Portal, Turalyon and co went to Blade's Edge Mountains(BEM). In WoD BEM's don't exist to my knowledge. Wut?
Blade's Edge was formed when parts of Frostfire crashed into the main continental plate when Draenor exploded. (DaveKosak)
But this was before the explosion, correct me if I'm wrong.
Oh I see what you mean. Same area. You can see a hint of Blade's Edge in the rocks of Frostfire. We just didn't use the name. (DaveKosak)

Does the Choice Between Lumbermill & Fighting Arena in Gorgrond Effect which quests you get? Ty
Yes. (_DonAdams)

Wowcraft Episode 9 - Warsong Gulch (Part 3)
Another part of the Warsong Gulch miniseries of Wowcraft is here!

This article was originally published in forum thread: Auchindoun Dungeon, Mage Tier 6 Recolor, Warlords Features, Blue Posts, Wowcraft started by chaud View original post
Comments 108 Comments
  1. Mendal's Avatar
    an you ppl think that 4 dungeons for 90-99lvl is OK?
  1. Venziir's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Mendal View Post
    Yes, because this game isn't just about instances.
  1. IIamaKing's Avatar
    Any one else think that recolor is a sign of them maybe dumping t6 recolors of all the sets into 5 mans?
  1. 3clipse's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Mendal View Post
    >Implying people will do anything other than quest and power level to 100 before running any instances
  1. Arvandor's Avatar
    4 instances from 90 - 99 !

    mop alt level desaster part 2..
  1. IIamaKing's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by 3clipse View Post
    Slamming through instances with a guild group can be fun and effective for leveling. Especially when its really all the same quests as always, kill, fetch, escort.
  1. Khiva's Avatar
    Someone was hitting the meth pipe pretty hard when they decided to go with Snow Leopard for the Worgen's CoS form.
  1. xpose's Avatar
    This is why I don't even bother going to the forums or really read too much about the expansion, people will continue to harp and hate on something regardless if its accurate.

    TLR - I'm ignoring everything and will experience the game myself

Site Navigation