Patch 6.2 - Darker Nights
Warlords of Draenor added darker nights in a few areas and Patch 6.2 will expand upon that by darkening most of the northern half of Kalimdor.
Hellbreach Normal Testing
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker
/ Official Forums
)
We've opened up Normal Hellfire Citadel, and will keep it open for the next couple of days. The only bosses currently enabled are Hellfire Assault, Iron Reaver, and Kormrok. Please use this thread to provide feedback, bug reports, and otherwise discuss the encounters. Logs are very helpful, and please, when offering feedback, specify the nature of your group: Group Finder PUG, full guild group with Heroic/Mythic/etc. experience, partial premade, etc. Ultimately, bear in mind that this is Normal mode, and the audience is Friends/Family groups and pickup groups - a core question would be whether you'd feel comfortable joining a Premade Group via Group Finder to complete these encounters. Thanks!
Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Why is 6.1 known as the selfie patch among the community then?
There wasn't a lot of content in 6.1 & players, understandably upset, used that label as criticism. (CM_Zarhym)
Only an hour for the chat Saturday? Doesn't seem long enough, will there be some type of followup?
We'll be setting up some fansite interviews where we expect follow-up questions will be collected & asked. (CM_Zarhym)
The devs you ADDED, and the amount of content produced is why resources are misallocated. Excuses dont help
You don't know that. You can give feedback about the game w/o inventing reasons why the game is as it is. (CM_Zarhym)
PvE
Any chance to make pets semi transparent like in Diablo 3? Sometimes its really difficult to see whats under the boss...
We're exploring solutions to the visual clutter caused by pets and guardians and their impact on melee players. (WarcraftDevs)
PvP
Ashran is a bit of a stretch in this regard. Told it was a Modern AV, when it's nothing like it at all.
.What would you change? What about AV do you miss? Sorry if I'm always asking these Q's, I'm curious! (Muffinus)
Reputations
Do you think cata faction rep grinds for gear were good or bad? I know apexis dailies simplify, but factions felt more roleplay-ey
I liked faction-specific reps with different, unfolding dailies that told a specific story to that faction. Unsure on rewards. (Muffinus)
Flying
I think I'm in a minority though. I feel these days the majority always prefers the path of least resistance.
I dunno, I feel like getting flying, especially full speed, back in TBC felt like a huge hurdle and felt awesome once you got it. (Muffinus)
Quests
Both extremes of "hours of daily quests every day" to "no daily quests ever" are bad.
Agree! (Muffinus)
If the MoP style dailies didn’t have progression gear tied to them, it should have been fine.
I dunno, personally having some power rewards is nice, having shortcuts to them is nice too. (Muffinus)
Wasn’t MoP when the daily limit was lifted? People suddenly binged on dailies.
Yep, so doing 50 felt mandatory, which removed all choice you had in what you did for 3 hours. (Muffinus)
Timeless Isle didn't have enough draw after the first month due to lack of story-driven dailies.
Also agree, layering 5.1 over it with the size and uniqueness of IoT would have been cool. (Muffinus)
Which seems like such an obvious design decision that it's perplexing this didn't happen in the first place.
Development is a complex and peculiar beast, with many heads, and some breathe fire. (Muffinus)
Ghostcrawler Tweets
While the developers have been pretty quiet since @WarcraftDevs appeared, Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard.
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Developer Communication
what if the "bold" decisions come off as lazy with the reasons that are being given?
It generally isn't worth lying to players. They will figure out the truth. (OccupyGStreet)
If something is too much work given the benefit, they'd likely just say that. (OccupyGStreet)
So my advice is to argue based on the reasons stated, not try to make up or guess at reasons and argue those. (OccupyGStreet)
Classes
I think we (meaning I) went too far in removing what was unique about some classes. (OccupyGStreet)
What made you guys start homogenizing? Just easier to balance?
And it came largely from trying to address player concerns about balance or utility. (OccupyGStreet)
Barring those concerns, would homogenization have ever taken place to the degree it did, or eventually a future necessity?
I don't think it was a foregone conclusion. These things are all trade offs. What do you value more? Identity or utility? (OccupyGStreet)
Do you think Cata / MoP / WoD took bring the player, not the class too far? As Ret I now feel more like a DPS than a paladin.
I feel like we gave players what they asked for: near parity in all encounters, which made then happy short term. (OccupyGStreet)
But long term it's possible those decisions (mine) erode depth in the long term. (OccupyGStreet)
But had we gone the less homogenized route, there would have been a lot more "my dude sucks on burst AE fights" etc. posts. (OccupyGStreet)
u still see those posts now and I hear a lot of talk from blizzard that they like Class Niche
Many decisions devs make may seem weird in the short term but pay huge dividends eventually, (OccupyGStreet)
dividends is a strange term in this context. Are you still thinking from a player POV or dev?
Short term, a player may say: I hate that feature. (OccupyGStreet)
Long term, they may say: I don't know why, but I just lost interest in the game. (OccupyGStreet)
Devs generally worry more about that second case. The risks there are probably greater. (OccupyGStreet)
So they may make a change that is unpopular in the short term to keep the game healthy in the long run. (OccupyGStreet)
is indecisiveness a real thing on big dev teams? Have teams been very split and much conflicted on design?
I haven't seen that much indecision in my time. I have seen a ton of disagreement though. (OccupyGStreet)
Game development, where I have been, requires a lot of discussion. People burn out on the debate culture. (OccupyGStreet)
It's just so subjective. Should we fix a bug that affects 0.1% of players? Is that animation good enough? (OccupyGStreet)
Final Boss #82 - Elemental Shamans
Final Boss covered Elemental Shamans this week. Be sure to check back Sunday for a Discipline/Holy Priest episode.
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