Tech and Talk → Gaming → World of Warcraft > Today's MMO Champion RSS Feed

Patch 5.2 Dev Interviews
Let's take a look at the recent Twizzcast interview with Ghostcrawler, where they managed to cover a lot in 30 minutes.

Alt Characters and Catching Up
The Dragon Soul patch went on for a longer time, and Raid Finder made it easier to gear alts than was previously possible.
In Mists of Pandaria, it isn't as easy to gear alts because there is a lot more for players to do. Many of the alts were created when there wasn't much to do in game.
Gearing alts will be something to do when you are done with your main or somehow run out of things to do. Some of the changes in Patch 5.2 were made to make this a little easier. (More Elder Charms, higher LFR drop rates, new rep gear for gold, etc)
LFR is a step of the gearing up process for the first tier of content, as it fits between heroic dungeons and normal raids. However, after the first tier, gear from LFR may not be a significant upgrade from Normal or Heroic difficulty gear at all.
People would stop playing weeks or months before a new raid because they didn't want to spend time progressing on content that would be outdated as soon as there was a patch. Making catching up too easy reduced the motivation to deal with challenging content.
Players that are coming back to the game shouldn't be able to jump right in to end game content with players that have been playing for several months, as some catch up will be required.

Raid, Item, and Class Balance
Trinkets are balanced with simulation testing and in game testing, followed by testing on the PTR, and then finally data from live realms.
Some players overreact when they see numbers like a 25% reduction to one spell that only makes up 10% of their damage overall. This ends up in a few percentage adjustment to a class's DPS.
When balancing classes, there is a lot of in house simulation that looks at DPS on target dummies, AoE situations, burst situations, and other situations.
The PTR data is also taken in to account, but it is limited in its usefulness. Usually players on the PTR are just there to play around or are top players practicing the new raids, not average players. There is a lot more useful data once a patch has gone live.
Classes shouldn't get an ability that will guarantee them a raid spot because of how good it is.
The Rogue population has been dropping for a long time, so Smoke Bomb was added to give them some group utility.
The more cooldowns that are added, the harder it is to create encounters that will be challenging, as you can just use a lot of cooldowns on it.
There were too many tank and spank style encounters in the past, leading to players being bored. Now Blizzard is trying to ensure there is at least one thing for everyone in the raid to think about during the encounter, rather than just focusing on the boss as a target dummy.
The Sealed Tome of the Lost Legion isn't super rare, so most Warlocks that want to start the quest will be able to. One idea that was brought up is increasing the drop rate over time so that everyone can get it. Adding green fire was one of the few ways to increase player prestige without increasing player power.

Low Population Realms
Low population realms aren't fun. WoW is designed to be played with friends!
Blizzard is investigating making it easier to move all of your characters to a new realm.
There aren't any easy solutions, especially when players hear that Mal'ganis has a good raiding community or Tichondrius has a good PvP community. This results in players transferring or creating characters on high population realms, making popular realms grow faster, while lower population realms die faster.
Merging or shutting down realms isn't possible because many players like their realm, have a character name they like, and don't want to be forced out or to change their name.

PvP
On PvP: "We have some pretty bold plans going forward".
Giving players new and different ways to kill each other may not be the best way to advance PvP. There is some room to polish the systems that already exist, especially some of the battlegrounds that players aren't enjoying.
One of the things being considering is packaging the big battlegrounds like Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest in with Wintergrasp and Tol Barad and having a new large scale battleground event. (This wasn't really clear, listen to 25:10 to hear the answer)
The PvP and PvE daily quest choice was new tech added to give players a choice of the playstyle they wanted to take part in that day, rather than feeling that both styles were mandatory.

Future
Patch 5.3 will be a smaller patch, similar to Patch 5.1. It will happen "sooner than players are expecting" and will be followed by Patch 5.4, another larger patch with a raid.
The team and systems are finally set up to where Blizzard can really deliver content faster.
Proving Grounds is still being worked on as place to safely learn to tank and heal without ruining the experience of other players. It may not be ready for Patch 5.3 or Patch 5.4, but it is still being actively worked on and is not a "it would be nice to do someday" feature.
Players expect change in a game, especially to flawed systems, otherwise they become burned out or bored. New expansions should have roughly 30% new stuff, 30% old stuff, and 30% old stuff that has been evolved a little bit.

Throne of Thunder Heroic Progression
Another day of Heroic difficulty raids and Blood Legion is still on top with 8 bosses down, followed by Method with 8 down, and Exodus with 7 down. DREAM Paragon managed to kill 4 bosses since yesterday, putting them at 8 bosses down.

You can keep up with the kills on Manaflask, our forum thread, and WowProgress.

Automatic Flight Path Discovery Removed
One of the smaller changes in Patch 5.2 was the removal of automatic flight path discovery.

Patch 5.2 Hotfixes: March 14
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
Classes
Monk
Chi Wave should now correctly bounce between targets that are in range.

Creatures
Oondasta should no longer drop Terrorful Weave for Discipline and Holy Priests, and Girdle of Dimorphodontics should no longer drop for Mages and Warlocks.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
The time for players to decide if they want to use a bonus roll has been increased to 3 minutes.

PvP
Conquest quartermasters should now be properly stocked with PvP rings, amulets, and trinkets.

Professions
Thunderforges on the Isle of Thunder can now also function as a normal anvil and forge.
Archeology
Mantid archeology items should now correctly award a Mantid Amber Sliver when turned in.

Love when you post this stuff, it's like a swift punch in the face of websense. /cast procrastinate

Love when you post this stuff, it's like a swift punch in the face of websense. /cast procrastinate

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
One Death Knight Per Server Limit
Any idea when we might see this lifted? I've seen on MMO-champ a few times where it's been stated this limitation is outdated and no longer needed. It was also said that they likely will remove it, I'm just wondering if there is any sort of time frame for this planned at all?

I'd really enjoy rolling another Death Knight on my home server, on the Horde side, just for the benefit of heirloom gear and to experience the horde storylines and what not, hence the inquiry.
Honestly, there's no update I can provide on when this will be lifted, but we're aware of the feedback. It may be a possibility for the future though. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Larger Backpack Request
I think above all the player base should have a quest to receive a larger backpack. I understand new players start with a 16 slot, and that's a godly amount of space at level 10. After 8 years, I've seen classes come and go, and content in game come and go. I just think that with 8 years of playing, this might have been addressed. Just curios as to why simple quests like this we're never introduced.
We'd love to be able to upgrade it too, but it's not as simple as upgrading it. It was coded into the system early in the development of World of Warcraft and isn't as easy as writing up some new lines of code. In addition, we're not sure that simply adding a larger backpack is the solution people really are looking for. You'll get a few more slots, but you'll most likely fill those relatively quickly.

We've made some progress in regard to storage such as being able to learn pets and mounts etc. vs. having to carry them with you all of the time. We have Void Storage now as well as changed over some currencies (over time) from physical objects to something that gets tallied in your character pane; little quality of life increases such as those over time. The developers continue to do their best to keep storage in mind when designing new content.

But, if you're anything like me, you probably have a difficult time letting go of items that are either sentimental in nature or items that you "might need later... maybe". I'm with you, but in that case, I try to "spring clean" now and then just to go through what I have and figure out what I truly don't need and can get rid of.

As always though, we're open to constructive feedback and discussion. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Raid Finder Difficulty Feedback
I genuinely feel sorry for people who can't commit to a raiding guild and are left with LFR as their raiding experience.
As long as people that are not you are having fun with what they do, and you are having fun with what you do...

Also, keep in mind that right now the average player on Raid Finder is most likely more skilled/experienced than those that will visit the place in, say, 2 months. So perhaps things that now you can ignore because of overgeared/experienced players will pose a challenge to the folks doing LFR with LFR gear from the previous tier. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 5.2 and PvP Gear
Thanks Nakatoir, and now that I'm back from an unfortunate ban, I'd like to ask you what your opinion is on the stat difference between the s13 Tyrannical gear and the 5.3 PvE gear. While you miss out on PvP stats, the ilvl from the PvE gear is so much higher that it might outweight PvP gear for certain classes. What do you think about this?
Sadly I cannot give much of a comment on the difference in stats as the 5.3 gear is yet to be released. I can say however that we want to try and make sure that going into all future patches, including this one, that gear rewarded through PvP remains the best for PvP purposes. We understand that the community is concerned with PvE gear returning in PvP and we will do our best to prevent this.

As for the 5.2 gear difference, I am going to assume that you are concerned with Heroic gear. As you can see on these Hunter sets, while the main stats are lower, the survivability and damage increases caused by the PvP stats compensate for this, and then some. The equivalent budget given to these PvP stats would be approximately 40 Ilvl's, which is quite a lot.

I totally misstyped me there, thank an all-nighter for that. I meant 5.2 Heroic PvE gear. Especially openers from Rogue teams (mass stealth) might totally gib the enemy teams within the first few seconds. We will see how it goes, I guess.
No biggie, I assumed you did and that is why I mentioned 5.2 in the post.

But just to quell some of your concerns in the area of damage, this is something that we are keeping an eye on and will make changes as they are necessary. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

I don't think current content LFR has many skilled/experienced players at all, in all my runs I had at least half the raid clueless and standing in fire all the time or not DPSing adds, or tanks not switching, etc.

I only saw one overgeared player, one from former #1 guild from MG (Gamble), was doing 200K dps, but that was it, we had 2 wipes on Elders...

Patch 5.2 Dev Interviews
Let's take a look at another of the dev interviews today, the NowGamer interview with Ghostcrawler.

In Cataclysm, players who hit 85 and were not in a raiding guild or a serious PvPer didn't really have much to do, so Mists of Pandaria aimed to solve that problem.

Thunderforged Weapons were supposed to be a way to keep loot somewhat interesting, even after farming the same bosses for months. The increased drop rate in 25 player difficulty was just a way to give players a reward for the increased logistical challenges.

It is much easier for a 25 player raiding guild to drop to 10 players than it is for a 10 player raiding guild to grow to 25 players. Blizzard still likes 25 player raiding though, as it offers a more epic experience, more opportunities for players, and a more resilient raiding group.

There is a good chance that item upgrades will come back in odd numbered patches, as players have run out of new gear to buy with Valor. This also increases player power to help them through progression if they are stuck.

If item upgrades come back, it is likely that they will be much cheaper, making it practical to upgrade everything.
The Patch 5.1 legendary quest that required 6,000 Valor was likely too high, with a number closer to 2,000 or 3,000 being more appropriate.

There is a lot of interest on the dev team in turning old player favorites into challenge modes.
Challenge mode participation rates are higher than Blizzard had predicted.

Adding new class abilities is exciting for current players, but adds something new to learn for returning players. Striking a balance between keeping things fresh for existing players and not making a larger barrier to returning players is challenging.

Blizzard has talked about getting content out faster for a long time, but is really starting to deliver on it now.

Adding new things that last one expansion, but not forever is part of the plan, with the farm in Mists of Pandaria as an example. Otherwise you end up with a system like guild leveling that must be supported forever.

WoW on a console would be very challenging, but possible. There would be a lot of design issues to solve.

Patch 5.2 is an example of the the type of content players can expect year after year, for as long as players keep playing. World Of Warcraft is alive and well!

Solution for Unlucky Bonus Roll Streaks
One of the ideas mentioned in the interviews was a increasing chance to win something to offset unlucky streaks, and Cory Stockton shared a little more about it today!

Throne of Thunder Heroic Progression
Not much progression today! Exodus, Ýêçîðñóñ, and Apex joined the 8/8 club, but no one has been able to down Dark Animus yet. You can keep up with the kills on Manaflask, our forum thread, and WowProgress.

Patch 5.2 Hotfixes: March 15
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
Classes
Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Fixed an issue where Chilblains may fail to apply its snare effect.

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Symbiosis will now cancel properly if the Druid and the target remains separated for a period of time.

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Dire Beast summons should now have the Avoidance aura.

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
General
Incanter's Ward is no longer transferred to a Mage who Spellsteals it, but is dispelled from the target.
Talents
Living Bomb now deals 70% of its damage when used against other players, down from 100%.
Nether Tempest now deals 70% of its damage when used against other players, down from 100%.

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Divine Purpose should no longer activate from unsuccessful attempts to cast Inquisition.

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Glyph of Die by the Sword should now only apply its effect for Warriors that have that it set as an active glyph.

Quests
Be Raptor: Fixed an issue where the final cutscene may not display correctly. Players should now be able to obtain completion credit and turn the quest in.
Liquid Gold: Players should now be able to loot supply crates and complete the quest.
Lunk's Adventure: Rendan's Weakness: Iron Summit Guards should now join the conga line, allowing players to complete the quest.

Creatures
Arcanital Mara'kah's barrier spell now lasts 30 seconds, up from 20 seconds.
Players of both factions are now eligible to receive loot from Nalak when at least one of the factions has fully unlocked the Isle of Thunder.

Pet Battles
Resilient should now properly prevent Critter pets from being stunned by Rupture.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
Throne of Thunder
Council of Elders
Fixed an issue where the Council of Elders did not always drop 2 items on 10-player normal mode.
Durumu the Forgotten
Azure Fogs are now no longer able to be damaged by area-of-effect spells when they are not revealed.
Twin Consorts
Suen's Fan of Flames now has a 50-yard range.

PvP
Tyrannical Conquest achievement for both factions now requires a character to obtain 25,000 Conquest points in Season 13, down from 27,000 Conquest. The tooltip and progress indicator will still display that the character needs 27,000 Conquest. This will be fixed in a future patch.

Items
Reduced the higher than intended drop rates for Shado-Pan Assault Insignia from Sunreaver Bounty.

UI
Fixed an issue where stage progression on the world map for Isle of Thunder was not displaying correctly for players outside the isle.
Reduced the amount of spam on Local Defense - Isle of Thunder channel while engaging Kirin Tor or Sunreaver NPCs.

Bug Fixes
Using a potion while under Stealth/Invisibility no longer causes the potion to go on permanent cooldown.

Patch 5.2 Dev Interviews

Let's take a look at another one of the dev interviews today, the MMORPG interview with Ghostcrawler.

New character models are still actively being worked on.
Pandaren are a good example of how detailed the new models will be. They have facial animations with moving eyes and mouths, fingers that are all individual and not just a mitten, as well as new animations.

"MMORPG: As long as my Dwarf looks prettier. That’s a good thing. Greg: It is coming, and the new dwarf is very pretty."
Defense of the Alehouse is an experiment right now, with no definite release date.
Blizzard is working on other battlegrounds that we likely will see sooner.

Patch 5.3 will tell the story that leads up to the Siege of Orgrimmar. Varian will bring the Alliance together and push the Horde apart.

Work had started on Patch 5.2 and 5.3 before 5.0 even launched.
Blizzard can now plan for the next expansion far enough ahead to put some seeds of what is to come in the current story.
On Blizzcon: "I think we’re going to have a lot to talk about."
Moving to free to play would require it to be more successful than the current business model, which isn't the case right now.

Throne of Thunder Heroic Progression
Lots of progress this weekend! Method, DREAM Paragon, and Blood Legion are all now 10/13. While there is no video of Heroic Dark Animus yet, Blood Legion has uploaded one of Primordius.

You can keep up with the kills on Manaflask, our forum thread, and WowProgress.

Automatic Flight Path Discovery Unintended
It looks like we can look forward to a post in the coming week about why automatic flight path discovery was unintended and is not coming back.

Patch 5.2 and Raid Finder Satchels, 5.2 Hotfixes, ToT Progression, Blue Tweets, Comic
Item Drop Rates Will Impact Gold and Crafting Drops, KageKaze's Diablo Digest, Chris Metzen on Blizzard Art

Isle of Thunder - Stage 3 Unlocked

Patch 5.2 and Raid Finder Satchels
Patch 5.2 added some occasional rewards to the failbags to make them more rewarding. Thanks to the helpful people running the WoWDB addon, we now have a rough idea of what the bags can contain. (Click here if you have Curse Client already installed to help us collect data!)

It looks like there is roughly a ~7% chance for a satchel to contain an item from the list below in addition to gold. Keep in mind not all of the below items appear at an equal rate. For a very rough idea of drop rates, see the pages for the Amber Encased Treasure Pouch, Cache of Mogu Riches, and Dividends of the Everlasting Spring.

Satchel Drop Rate
Patch 5.0 Raid Finder - Dropped ~84% of the time before Patch 5.2. Now only drops 67.8% of the time (Std. Dev. 3.2%)
Throne of Thunder Raid Finder - Drops ~81% of the time (Std. Dev. 1.7%)
Keep in mind that the sample sizes we have for drop rates after Patch 5.2 are fairly small, only a few hundred kills of each boss in LFR difficulty, and only the first three bosses in Throne of Thunder.
We can assume that when a satchel does not drop, you are winning loot, as we don't save drop rates for bonus roll items. This means the drop rate of loot in Patch 5.0 raids went from 16% to 32%.

Patch 5.0 Raid Finder / World Boss Satchels
[Mote of Harmony] and [Spirit of Harmony]
[Blood Spirit]
(Mists of Pandaria flasks) / (potions)
Uncut Mists of Pandaria rare quality gem
[Flawless Battle-Stones]
Item Level 483 Raid Finder Boss Loot
Raid Finder loot that had no previous source, such as the [Jade Courtesan Figurine]
Pets and Mounts found in the [Misty Satchel of Exotic Mysteries]

Oondasta / Throne of Thunder Satchels
The same as the above, except item level 502 Raid Finder gear rather than item level 476 and 483.
[Primal Egg], which turns in to [Cracked Primal Egg] and drops a mount

Weekly Throne of Thunder Quests Satchel
The same as the above, with possibly higher drop rates.

Patch 5.2 Hotfixes - March 18
Some hotfixes went out this afternoon, but no official notes yet.
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Items
Ra'sha's Sacrificial Dagger now has a 30 minute cooldown, up from 5 minutes, as well as a 1 second cast time.

Creatures
Zandalari Warbringer can no longer be taunted, interrupted, stunned, or snared. It isn't clear if all of these nerfs were intended.

Tyrannical PvP Weapons Hotfix
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Season 13 Tyrannical gear has an item level of 493. This is TWO item levels higher than the 2/2 S12 Malevolent. The difference in stats are minimal. Weapons are even worse, as S12 2/2 T2 weapons have better stats than S13 T1.
You’re absolutely right, the difference in ilvl doesn’t make that much sense, and that’s why we’ve decided to change it.
We'll be increasing Tyrannical weapons ilvl from 493 to 498, matching the 2/2 upgraded S12 T2 weapons’ ilvl. This should probably go live after this week’s maintenance in most regions.

I understand that a new character will still only have immediate access to S13 Malevolent weapons, which are far behind ilvl 498, but S13 Tyrannical weapons will be available to anyone who goes at least for the minimum conquest cap (1800)+1 RBG in about 4 weeks (matching the required 7250 conquest earned this season to buy T1 Tyrannical weapons).

Again, thanks for keeping us on our toes and continuously helping us improve the game, we really do appreciate it.

Throne of Thunder Heroic Progression
Not much progress today, with DREAM Paragon moving up to 11/13 bosses down. Still no Dark Animus video, so we will take a look at the Durumu the Forgotten fight! You can keep up with the kills on Manaflask, our forum thread, and WowProgress.

Glorious Tyranny Enchant, ToT Progression, Satchel Addon, Hotfixes, Blue Posts, Comic
Lowering Item Drop Rate, Blue Posts, Lyndon's Happy Day Fan Art

Isle of Thunder - Stage 3 Unlocked

Patch 5.2 - Glorious Tyranny Enchant
Patch 5.2 added a new weapon enchant for players with a 2200 rated battleground or arena rating, [Enchant Weapon - Glorious Tyranny]. The blue post below addresses some of the reasoning for adding it.

Popout

Throne of Thunder Heroic Progression
No real progress today, only Exorsus moving up to 10/13 bosses down. WoWProgress changed their ranking system, explaining why a 9/13 guild is ranked higher than a 10/13 guild in the listing. (Moonz skipped Dark Animus)

You can keep up with the kills on Manaflask, our forum thread, and WowProgress.

Addon: Satchel Scanner
After talking about satchel contents yesterday, now is a good time to talk about getting the [Misty Satchel of Exotic Mysteries]! There is an addon called Satchel Scanner that can keep an eye on the LFD frame and alert you if it is currently being offered.

Using it is pretty simple, open the config, check the roles you are interested in, and start the scan. When the satchel comes up, it will alert you with a raid warning and sound. You can show or hide the panel with "/ss3 toggle", allowing it to continue scanning in the background.

More options are coming in a future version, so be sure to send the author feedback if you want some more features!

Patch 5.2 Hotfixes: March 19
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
Classes
Monk
Tier-15 Mistweaver 2-piece set bonus should now increase the healing of Renewing Mist by the correct amount.

Paladin
Hand of Purity no longer reduces the damage dealt by effects that ignore immunities.

Quests
Captive Audience: Fixed an issue with Rune Prisons that prevented new captives from spawning.

Creatures
Summonable bosses on the Isle of Thunder now leash back instead of despawning when pulled too far from their spawn point.
Zandalari Warbringers are now immune to crowd control and interrupt effects.
Fixed an issue where some players may not receive loot after defeating Nalak.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
Mogu'shan Vaults
Increased the time before the gate to closes while engaging Feng the Accursed to 8 seconds, up from 3 seconds.
Throne of Thunder
Council of Elders
Reduced the penalty to damage taken from the Shadowed Soul debuff from 5% to 3% per stack on 10-player Heroic mode.
Dark Animus
Dark Animus will now use its abilities at more consistent intervals.
Interrupting Jolt now deals less damage on 10/25-player Heroic mode.
Explosive Slam now deals significantly less damage on 10-player Heroic mode.
Fixed an issue where Matter Swap could sometimes teleport players beneath the world.
Ji-Kun
Fixed an issue where Bore Worms would remain submerged.
Fixed an issue where Bow Fly Swarms would enter combat while remaining out of melee range.
Lei Shen
Fixed an issue where players defeating Lei Shen did not receive credit towards the Pinnacle of Storms achievement.
Megaera
Reduced the damage dealt by Megaera’s breaths and Ignite Flesh on 10-player Normal mode.
Reduced the damage dealt by Rampage on 10-player Normal mode.

PvP
Season 13 Tyrannical weapons had their item levels increased to ilevel 498, up from ilevel 493, to match Season 12 Elite weapons.
Season 13 Malevolent Honor gear now gives more Stamina, making them comparable to Season 12 counterparts.

Battlegrounds
Eye of the Storm: Horde teams are now being awarded the proper amount of victory points when holding 3 towers.

Items
[Ra'sha's Sacrificial Dagger] now has an increased cooldown for its special ability.

UI
There should no longer be a delay in displaying Isle of Thunder stage progression status on the World Map.[/bquote}

How about "reduce the amount of trash mobs between bosses by 30% on LFR"

Feel free to nerf the everliving CRAP out of the bridge boss too.

Most.retarded.trash.ever.