PvP Rewards Hotfixes - Offset Armor and Ashran Conquest
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker
/ Official Forums
)
Thanks again for all of your feedback. We’ve been discussing it heavily, and are going to make a few more changes.
First, we’re going to make the remaining non-set armor pieces available on the Conquest vendors. They’ll still be available through the Champion’s Strongboxes, but if you’d rather not leave earning them up to random chance, you’ll be able to purchase them for Conquest points instead. With this change, the only items that will only be available through the Champion’s Strongboxes are the random-stat Accolade trinkets (which cannot be put on the vendors due to some technical hurdles). We're aiming to make this change with this upcoming weekly reset.
Note that, as a result of this change taking place, we no longer plan to make the Champion’s Strongboxes purchasable with Conquest points for players who have earned the Wild Conquest achievement. Since nearly all of the items in the Strongboxes will be directly purchasable with Conquest points themselves, we feel that this would just add unnecessary frustration or confusion if players were to spend their Conquest on a Strongbox instead of just buying the item they wanted.
The other change we’ll be making is to remove the Ashran-only 200 Conquest point bonus to the weekly Conquest cap. The total cap (1700 plus any additional bonuses from rating) will remain the same as it is currently, you just won’t have to go to Ashran to earn all of it. We're hoping to push this change live with this week's reset, but it requires a lot more programming and testing to make sure it's functioning properly, so it may not go live until the following week.
Again, thanks for all the heartfelt feedback on this issue. We’ve definitely learned a lot of very valuable lessons, and are looking forward to seeing how the rest of Warlords Season 2 progresses!
Patch 6.2 Hotfixes - July 24
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker
/ Official Forums
)
PvP
Please note that the following PvP reward changes are currently still in-testing.
- Conquest vendors now sell non-set PvP armor pieces that could be found in the Champion’s Strongbox.
- Removed the Ashran-only 200 Conquest Point bonus to the weekly Conquest cap. Total Conquest cap remains unchanged, but characters no longer need to go to Ashran to earn all of it.
Creatures and NPCs
Shadowmoon Valley
- Yggdrel's Entangling Vines should no longer continue to deal damage after the growth has been slain.
Quests
Kezan
- Liberate the Kaja'mite: Fixed an issue where characters above level 20 were unable to loot Kaja'mite Chunks.
Battlegrounds Bonus Event July 24-27
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker
/ Official Forums
)
The first Battlegrounds Bonus Event is underway. Through the end of the day on Monday, July 27, you’ll have a constant +200% boost to your honor gains from Battleground objectives and wins.
Earlier this week, we asked you to pick your two favorite Battlegrounds. There’s still time to register your opinion; the poll closes on Monday.
Keep an eye out for the event-only quest “A Call to Battle”, which rewards 500 Conquest Points above your maximum when you win four Battlegrounds.
On which Battleground will you shine the most during the event?
Ghostcrawler Tweets
Ghostcrawler has recently provided longer answers to some questions than tweets would allow.
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
What's your view on "Bring the player, not the class" philosophy from a couple of years perspective? Do you believe that ultimately it adds more to the game (better flow & acessibility) than it takes away (not feeling unique in a big game) or not really and MMOs should embrace strong class diversity
No, I'm still a fan of the philosophy. The state of the game before that was a value was one about building small groups to maximize buffs.
I do feel that under my watch that class design did get a little too homogenized. It's tough because every day players would challenge us with "Why do I have to be so bad on this one fight? Why can't I have a cool ability that makes me desirable?" We would have (and probably should have) pushed back some on that even at the cost of game balance.
I haven't been keeping up with the game so I can't comment on the state of class design today. I'm just talking about when I worked on things.
Do you think Blizzard's philosophy changed when they merged with Activision? Back in 2008, they said nothing would change, but since then, seems like Blizzard slowly became more interested/focused on the general public (and profit).
We never noticed much Activision influence down in the trenches. Maybe the execs felt it. I don't know.
Profit is a weird thing in this business. Because, yes, it is a business, and not only do we want to keep the lights on, but many of us want to feel that we didn't make a mistake going into this industry. I think we've all played games that felt like they were focusing too much in tricking you out of your hard-earned cash and left us feeling icky. But that doesn't have to mean that being successful is a bad priority.
I am exaggerating slightly here, but I get the feeling sometimes that some players would prefer developers to be sacrificing everything just to pour their soul into a game, that somehow the design is more pure and therefore better that way. In reality, that doesn't happen. World-class artists and hot-shot engineers kind of want to feed their families.
Again, you can overdo it. Since League is essentially free to play, we strive to make players feel good about spending money and not to come across as too greedy.
When you were still at Blizzard, players got used to you communicating with them, and giving them some insights on the decisions, you made. After you left some of the developers actually tried to follow your footsteps, like Celestalon. Then they opened common twitter and went silent, not good imo?
It is hard for those of us on the outside to tell what is the desire of individual developers and what is company policy.
Do you still play World of Warcraft?
I haven't since I left Blizzard. That has zero to do with the game itself and more to do with my relationship with it. I was really, really close to WoW, as you can imagine. Some space has been good for perspective. As just one example, I actually had some trouble during my interview at Riot because I couldn't speak in depth about other game designs to the extent that I could about WoW; it took just so much of my bandwidth at work and at home. I am trying to be a more well-rounded designer now and immerse myself in other games.
There are emotional reasons for the distance as well. I compare it sometimes to having a breakup with your SO. The split may have been for very good reasons, but still driving by their house or stalking them on social media brings up these unresolved feelings.
If I had to guess, I'll be back and playing again in a year or so.
Are you excited to see the Warcraft movie coming out next year and would you watch it?
Totally. I wouldn't be surprised if we took a company trip to see it.
I've hinted at this before, but players tend to extend the rivalries they feel with other games to the studios that make them, but we really don't feel it. We want the best for companies like Blizzard and Valve. I have friends at both studios. I want to see them succeed.
Another set of cards for The Grand Tournament expansion was revealed today!
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