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World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1
IGN showed off a preview of the upcoming World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1 book.
Legion - Artifact Weapons
Recent Legion builds added more Artifact Weapon variations.
Patch 6.2.3 Hotfixes - February 19
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker
/ Official Forums
)
Bug Fixes
Creatures and NPCs
- Fixed an issue that could cause Mahka, a quest NPC in Southern Barrens to become unresponsive.
- Upper Blackrock Spire: Fixed a situation on Challenge Mode and Mythic Difficulty that could cause Ragewing the Untamed's Engulfing Fire ability to be unavoidable.
- Lovely Luck Is On Your Side: Fixed an issue that could cause players to not correctly receive credit for completing this achievement.
FEEDBACK: Eye of Azshara (Normal)
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker
/ Official Forums
)
We will be opening the Eye of Azshara dungeon on Normal difficulty shortly.
Please use this thread to post any feedback on the dungeon. When posting, please note your group composition and any relevant information about the nature of your group (e.g. random LFG group, Mythic raider guildmates, etc.). At this stage, a lot of overall combat balance is in flux, but we're still very interested in hearing overall feedback and impressions of the experience and mechanics.
Legion Class Feedback
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
[Feedback] Beastmastery Hunter
Entirely too much focus on Random Beasts, not enough on our actual pets
Since Beast Mastery has been unlocked, this has been the strongest point of feedback, and we've heard you, loud and clear.
Coming soon will be a glyph that makes Dire Beast summon your stabled pets, instead of random area-themed beasts. We're also considering a talent that replaces Dire Beast with a new shot, and are interested in feedback and ideas on that concept.
Thanks! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Aura of Sacrifice / Divine Shield Interaction
Aura of Sacrifice is not intended to deal damage through Divine Shield; this should be fixed in an upcoming build. This will also fix the issue where it kills you if you stand near a "healer" target dummy that does very high DPS to itself. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
[Feedback] Shadow Priest
In the vast majority of cases, you'll likely want to enter Voidform as soon as you're able to. However, there are still many cases where it's extremely valuable to be able to delay it until the right time. This includes things like saving burst for a key moment in a fight, or when out questing if you're about to kill the last mob that's in range. Because of this, we're trying out a more flexible, manually-activated Voidform. Feedback on how that feels, whether it's more hassle than it's worth, etc, is quite welcome. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
[Feedback] Resto Shaman
Two simultaneous Healing Stream Totems not working is a bug.
As is Resurgence not working correctly when you take the Queen Ascendant trait; this one should be fixed for the next build. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Polls
I don't understand why the blues are continually putting up these random and completely arbitrary polls that mean nothing for the well being of the game. Blizzard, why don't you look at the reaction to your game and understand the discontent that people have with it. Start by bring up some polls that narrow down what people hated about trashran and what they liked about it, that way you can use that information to improve and create new content that will actually cater to what your player base wants.
It's pretty obvious that garrisons worked, maybe a bit too well. They are wonderful safe havens that allow people to make gold and relax without actually having to play the game, which is kind of counter intuitive. Create a poll narrowing down what people liked about their garrisons and what they didn't like.
Just some odd suggestions, I expect this thread to be censored and/or moved to the garbage can, but hopefully it resonates for a second
Polls aren't generally meant as a means for collecting feedback. They are designed as a way to engage the community in interesting/entertaining topics. (Hopefully - At least for those who choose to take part.)Feedback occurs on these forums and in the game (among other places) and is ongoing. We read/watch/collect as we go.
When we have used polls in the past for collecting information it's been done very deliberately and with much care due to the inherent pitfalls polls can present such as a smaller portion of the community taking part or undue weight being put on the results by those who did take time to vote.
We (in community) spend a lot of time thinking about the need to manage expectations because if we over promise we've failed to deliver. If we under promise, we're not telling people enough of the 'real' news. It's a like walking a slackline (tightrope is so yesterday). We have to maintain balance or at least try to maintain balance.
I would hope that the devs have better metric tools. They can put in measurements to see what we're doing and use that to see what people are actually doing. Not just complaining about
Yep. They do. We watch for what people are both saying and what they are actually doing in game.
I assume that Blizzard has some really smart people that can do amazing math with data. I guess they do more than purely look at what people do as Ashran probably would have been really highly rated based off of that metric. (For some of the expansion it was practically required, and the easiest way of getting a reward) It makes me wonder if what people spend the most time doing is related to enjoyment or reward. Eh, I know they probably have a whole team dedicated to looking at many different sets of data to try to find what is enjoyable, not just usage time.
We have some wicked smart people here that can drill down into the data. It's true. As with anything, the data tells a lot of the story, but not the whole story. Being able to understand "why" is also looked into which includes what people are saying. Thus why it's so important to put the two together. We have a much larger pool of information that comes from within the game and the vocal community while passionate enough to speak up, aren't the majority so we have to be careful about how we weight the types of feedback.
Polls as a tool can be used in many ways. For us, the larger value is more in engaging than getting wide ranging thoughts and opinions.
There will always those who are fine with "still working on it" and those who aren't and see it as giving something and then taking it away when it doesn't happen. It's not anyone's 'fault'. It's just human nature. It's why the study of human behavior is such a large wide-reaching field and there are so many books on just what makes people tick. But those will never encapsulate what all people want and neither can a poll.
*Yes, we know what you did last weekend. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Undead and Forsaken
Could we possibly get new models for the Forsaken and other undead to reflect the race they were prior to becoming undead?
I highly doubt a huge Tauren would look like a humanoid. And I highly doubt that only Humans can be turned once dead.
I would love to see models of each race that's playable, have an undead version to them. Well, excluding the Worgen, which aren't a race, but a group of cursed humans. And last time I checked, the Worgen Curse made you immune to the curse of undeath, and yet there are Worgen DKs. I still don't get how that works.
Anyway, I'd love for us to have the option to select Forsaken as our race, then choose the race which we once were, if we want to pretend there's a backstory to our new character, then customize how that character will look (like we do with the current ones in the human forms they have).
The Forsaken are by and large Lordaeron humans who were raised from death by minions of the Lich King, who were rallied to action by Sylvanas against the Dreadlords Balnazzar, Detheroc, and Varimathras. The Forsaken adventurer that a player would control in Azeroth has a full-featured story that you can experience in their starting area that will help explain the nature of being Forsaken versus being Undead.
While many races can live in Undeath, these races would not be part of the Forsaken faction of Undead, which is why you don't see them as playable. I would think you would be much more likely to see Undead Death Knights of various races than to ever meet a Tauren who was living in Lordaeron at the time of the death of King Tereneas, which is basically the only possibility of finding a Forsaken that is a Tauren.
As far as I know, and feel free to correct me, the Forsaken are specifically those Undead Humans and a number of Undead High Elves from Lordaeron and Quel'Thalas who pledged their allegiance to Sylvanas and The Horde following the events of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.
TLDR; Undead doesn't mean Forsaken (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Patch 6.2.4 Testing
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker
)
Greetings everyone,
I wanted to provide some insight into the 6.2.4 patch and hopefully, answer outstanding questions you may have regarding features and areas to test.
In 6.2.4 World of Warcraft will transition to a new Battle.net infrastructure. While this infrastructure change contains a multitude of backend improvements for communication between WoW and Battle.net, there are also a number of changes that will directly affect you. It is our goal to make sure these changes don’t negatively impact existing systems, and functionality remains as it was prior to this migration.
To help us with this task, we’d like PTR testers to focus on the following areas:
- Social features, including whispers between characters, different Blizzard games, the Battle.net app and other in-game characters.
- Realm List functionality.
- Authentication, logging in, and security features.
- Parental controls.
- 3rd party add-on functionality.
- In-game shop functionality.
- Character Boosts.
- Faction, Race, and Name changes.
Development for patch 6.2.4 is ongoing so there may be issues during testing regarding things like logging in and selecting realms. Random disconnects from Battle.net may also occur. It is important that things of this nature are reported in the forums to help ensure a resolution before 6.2.4 goes live.
I hope this provides a little more insight into what PTR testers should be on the lookout for in this patch. Thank you all for helping to make World of Warcraft an epic experience time and time again!
Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
only time you see calls for someone to be fired is coaches & game designers "My happiness trumps your livelihood!" (holinka)
no. People work hard for their money. Asking 65 bucks for a game means people feel entitled to quality.
I've paid $65 for a meal out before. If things don't go well I don't ask that people get fired. I might complain and that's fine. (holinka)
Hell I've paid hundreds/thousands of dollars to get my car fixed. They often don't do it right and I am mad as hell. (holinka)
But I just ask them to make it right, I don't insist they fire someone. (holinka)
So your "I worked hard for this $65 so you should fire someone when I'm not happy" is malarkey. (holinka)
But I'd guess after that you think two or three times before giving them repeat business eh?
Yes and that's 100% okay to me. (holinka)
Ghostcrawler Tweets
Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard.
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
From a designer PoV, what do you think about the legion artifacts forcing people to use a certain kind of fighting style/weapon? Many people built their characters around certain fantasies (mostly roleplayers), and now they are forced to cope with Blizzard's fantasy. No more 2H frost or 2x1h Fury.
A huge challenge of trying to continually improve a game as popular as WoW (and this applies to League to by the way) is the risk that someone won't like a particular change that you make. As a developer it's easy to become paralyzed and not make any changes at all, but that usually ends up being a losing strategy, as players get bored without seeing any updates to the game.
So while you may not support a particular change, maybe you can get behind the idea that the team is trying out a new idea, and that the idea may be large enough that it can't also support every possible play-style out there.
I have no particular insight into the dev philosophy at play on Legion -- you'd have to ask those devs. But I am sympathetic with the challenge of trying to do something cool without alienating too many people that wishes you'd do something different but still cool or maybe nothing at all.
Warcraft Movie - Khadgar
IGN talked to Ben Schnetzer, the actor that plays Khadgar in the Warcraft movie.
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