Level 90 Talent Animations Preview
Be sure to turn on annotations if you want to use the menu to skip to your classes' talents.
Dragon Turtle Vendor
The latest beta build added a vendor for the Dragon Turtle mounts, with all of them selling for 3,000 gold. This price is very unlikely to be final! The vendor is located just outside of the Stormwind city walls near the Cataclysm portals.
Great Riding Turtles
- Reins of the Great Green Dragon Turtle
- Reins of the Great Black Dragon Turtle
- Reins of the Great Blue Dragon Turtle
- Reins of the Great Brown Dragon Turtle
- Reins of the Great Purple Dragon Turtle
- Reins of the Great Red Dragon Turtle
Normal Riding Turtles
- Reins of the Green Dragon Turtle
- Reins of the Black Dragon Turtle
- Reins of the Blue Dragon Turtle
- Reins of the Brown Dragon Turtle
- Reins of the Purple Dragon Turtle
- Reins of the Red Dragon Turtle
WoW China Developer Interview
otarma was able to translate the latest China Developer's interview for us once again! Keep in mind that things can get lost or mistranslated when doing translation.
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Why don’t you allow cross-realm trade between Real ID friends?
It would make cross-realm item circulation too easy, which would impact the economy of individual realms. However, if you really want to play with someone, you can transfer to their realm.
Some players are nostalgic about the raid attunement quests. These players sometimes feel the only reason to kill the raid bosses is the loot. Some players are even asking for the return of raid attunement quests. Will this change in MoP?
Quest lovers and raid lovers don’t have much in common. For many raiders, it is a chore to be forced to do a bunch of raid attunement quests. We are not going to introduce any raid attunement quests at all. On the contrary, because players want to have a reason to raid, we will tell the stories through the means other than quests, such as dialogues of NPCs, events in instances, and the quotes of raid bosses.
How do players reach Pandaria?
Through portals. Currently there are no routes to Pandaria.
Will there be regular championships for pet battles?
Currently we don't have any plans to do so.
Some changes in Cata made some reputations ungrindable (such as the two centaur factions). Will this be fixed?
If the reputations are achievement-relevant, we will fix it, otherwise we don’t want players to grind the reputations that reward nothing.
When people try to do The Loremaster achievement, it’s difficult to find the quest lines that they abandoned halfway. How do you think of it? Is there a way to make the achievement easier?
If you can give us a specific example then we can probably fix it. Besides, the Loremaster achievement in MoP has a little tweak. The quest achievements of the new zones will credit the quest lines instead of numbers of quests accomplished. So the credits are “complete X Y Z story lines”.
Are the mounts from Jewelcrafting profession BoP?
No, they are BoE.
I ask this out of curiosity. Are there more quests in MoP than in Cata LV 80-85?
Currently we have about 1300 quests, of which about 300 are dailies. Some quests are available to Alliance or Horde only, but most quests are neutral. The number of faction-specific quests is probably less than 200. We don't have data to compare with the previous expansions yet, but it is likely that the number is close to WotLK. The quests are more focused on dailies (MoP focuses on dailies more than any other expansion).
Of course, the dailies will be randomized. You can never accept all of them at the same time. If you max out the reputation levels of all factions to provide their quests at max numbers, you can accept about 48 level 85+ dailies at the same time.
After the launch of MoP, will you continue to introduce more world bosses in the following patches?
Yes, depending on how well the world bosses are received. If it's a success then we will certainly introduce more.
The Rise of Zandalari patch seemed unfinished; the whole story was not fully described. Will there be more stories about Zandalari?
Yes, you will see a lot about Zandalari in Kun-lai, and you will discover the connections between Zandalari, Pandaria and Mogu.
LFR provides a lot of convenience for players who are not in raiding guilds. Simply clicking a button to find a raid also decreased the communications within realms. The communications between strangers became less and less. How do you plan to deal with it?
We don't have plans to force players to communicate; it is not necessary for those who try LFR to befriend total strangers. Our bottom line is, we think if you play this game with your friends it will be happier, but if you don’t have friends to play with, then LFD and LFR will also help you experience dungeons and raids.
The popularity LFR received and the benefits it brought are undisputed, but did it bring negative effects too? For example, do players get bored more easily because they can experience raid so easily without the efforts of teamwork?
This system certainly has some flaws. One of them is that it gives players more reasons to not play with friends, make new friends or join a guild. But according to the statistics before and after the release of patch 4.3, we didn’t find players more easily bored about the new raid.
A more functioning guild finder may solve the problem to an extent, but a single system could not possibly fulfill the needs of all players. We hope to make more improvements in 5.0 (including off-line communications or a database website).
WoW China and Korea Server Merges
There is also some older news out of China and Korea about server shutdowns!
They have shut down servers with very low populations, allowing players and guilds to transfer to another server. If a player comes back to the game after their realm has been shut down, they are still able to transfer by using the website. Thanks goes to otarma again for translation.
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Since the announcement of the Gaming Environment Optimization Program Phase 1, we have received a lot of support from the players of the relevant realms. So far, Phase 1 goes very well. Most players have arrived at the target realms and received a much better gaming experience. In order for players to begin their new gaming experience more efficiently, we will initiate Phase 2 of the Gaming Environment Optimization Program On June 5th. Hence the source realms will be shut down. The players of the source realms need to organize and take care of the items and money in mailboxes and AH so the transfer can be completed more efficiently.
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Why Not Add Head Enchants to Inscription?
Part of the logic in getting rid of the head enchant was to make it easier for players to use their gear. Gems, enchants and reforges all have their place but too much of that sort of preparation before you can actually use an item gets annoying. I'm not saying freeing up one head enchant solves that problem, but it's a small step. I don't know that enchanting the helmet in and of itself is so much fun that we need to preserve it. I think in the meeting where we discussed cutting the enchant there might have even been a little bit of cheering.
In addition, we're not saying we'll never make head enchants again. Maybe we'll come up with a clever use for them or maybe we'll come up with some kind of system that needs a different kind of reward (this was the original genesis of the enchants back in the day). It would be harder to implement such a design if we had to go take the head enchants away from one of the professions. For now, the idea will just go back in the vault. It may not be there forever. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Testing Heroic Dungeons
We're still investigating the stuck character issue. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
New Beta Scenarios Feedback Forum
Hey all! We hope you're enjoying some of the new features we've added to the beta recently. And, to that end, we've opened up a Beta Scenarios forum so you can let us know what you think of this new system.
Don't be stingy with the feedback! We're very excited about scenarios and look forward to hearing what you have to say about them over the course of testing. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
The Daily Blink - And He Shall Be Known as Sparkle-Tony
The Daily Blink has predicted the next Blizzard Store mount! For the full comic, read it on their site.
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