Ahead of the Gamescom announcement later this week we took the time to do some speculating of our own on the podcast. From silly “leaks” like Rise of the Syndicate to the Chinese riddle leaks and loose threads that still have to be resolved ingame.
For the first time ever the next World of Warcraft expansion will not be announced at Blizzcon! We’ll find out next week what it is! And on the Sunday after that there will be a livestream giving us more details about the expansion!
Quote from: Blizzard
Join us Thursday, August 6 at 18:00 CEST for a special World of Warcraft event streamed live from gamescom 2015 in Cologne, Germany—where we’ll be unveiling the next chapter of the World of Warcraft saga. . . .
Tune in again Sunday, August 9 at 17:00 CEST for a World of Warcraft developer chat before the show ends, and find out more about what’s in store.
Stay tuned to our dedicated gamescom page for further details on the live stream. Those who are able to join us in person at gamescom can visit us at the Blizzard booth in hall 7.1. We hope to see you there!
Quote from: Blizzard
Here you’ll find a list of hotfixes that address various issues related to the recently released World of Warcraft Patch 6.2.0. Hotfixes are updates made without requiring a new client-side patch. Some of the hotfixes below take effect the moment they were implemented, while others may require a realm restarte to go into effect. Please keep in mind that some issues cannot be addressed without a client-side patch update. This list will be updated as additional hotfixes are applied.
| Previous 6.2 Hotfix Blogs |
July 27
Garrisons
Shipyard
- Ships constructed at a Level 3 Shipyard should now always be Rare quality or better with an increased chance to be Epic quality.
- All rare creatures and NPCs in Tanaan now have a chance to drop a number of equipment blueprints for ships.
Buffs to Garrison Resource
- Completing the first Draenor Heroic Dungeon of the day now awards 200 Garrison Resource (up from 50).
- Bringing Down the Iron Horde: The daily quest now awards 100 Garrison Resource on completion (up from 50).
- Demonslayer of Tanaan: The daily quest now awards 100 Garrison Resource on completion (up from 50).
- Pressing the Attack: The daily quest now awards 150 Garrison Resource on completion (up from 0).
Items
- Tablet of Ghost Wolf’s movement speed increase to Ghost Wolf form should now be working correctly.
Quote from: Blizzard
Here you’ll find a list of hotfixes that address various issues related to the recently released World of Warcraft Patch 6.2.0. Hotfixes are updates made without requiring a new client-side patch. Some of the hotfixes below take effect the moment they were implemented, while others may require a realm restarte to go into effect. Please keep in mind that some issues cannot be addressed without a client-side patch update. This list will be updated as additional hotfixes are applied.
| Previous 6.2 Hotfix Blogs |
July 24
PvP
PvP Reward Changes
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.
- For more information on these PvP reward changes, please visit the forum thread titled: Recent PvP Rewards Hotfix.
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.
July 23
Creatures and NPCs
Tanaan Jungle
- Supreme Lord Kazzak should now be immune to taunts from Bodyguard Followers.
Raids and Dungeons
Hellfire Citadel
General
- Combat Rogues should no longer receive daggers via Personal Loot or Bonus Roll.
- Affliction Warlocks should no longer receive Prophecy of Fear via Personal Loot or Bonus Roll.
Dragon Soul
Warmaster Blackhorn
- Fixed a condition where damaging Warmaster Blackhorn and Goriona too quickly could cause players to be unable to progress onto the next boss encounter.
PvP
- All healing and damage absorption has been reduced by 15% in PvP combat.
Ashran
- Players that accept the queue and teleport into Ashran should now correctly receive credit when their faction wins an event.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an internal bag error that could occur upon entering a seamless instance with the prospected ore window open.
Class
Druid
Balance
- Starsurge now deals 15% less damage in PvP combat.
Warlock
Affliction
- Haunt now deals 25% less damage in PvP combat.
July 22
Raids and Dungeons
Hellfire Citadel
Hellfire High Council
- Fixed a situation where Mark of the Necromancer could stop dealing damage to players.
PvP
Ashran
- Winning events in Ashran should now always award a Dented Ashmaul Strongbox.
Items
- Etheralus, the Eternal Reward’s absorption effect should now correctly factor in Multistrikes from Healing Stream Totem and Healing Tide Totem. Additionally, healing dealt by Spirit Link’s health redistribution no longer counts towards the absorption effect.
- Nithramus, the All-Seer’s damage effect should now correctly factor in damage caused Prophecy of Fear’s Doom Nova.
- Prophecy of Fear’s Doom Nova effect should no longer be incorrectly triggered by Sunfall.
Class
Rogue
Talents
- Fixed an issue where Venom Rush could incorrectly persist indefinitely.
In addition there are a few undocumented hotfixes:
@Wowhead @perculia Also several increases to Garrison resource rewards from Tanaan, and first Draenor Heroic Dungeon of the day.
— Lore (@CM_Lore) July 25, 2015
Quote from: Blizzard
Here you’ll find a list of hotfixes that address various issues related to the recently released World of Warcraft Patch 6.2.0. Hotfixes are updates made without requiring a new client-side patch. Some of the hotfixes below take effect the moment they were implemented, while others may require a realm restarte to go into effect. Please keep in mind that some issues cannot be addressed without a client-side patch update. This list will be updated as additional hotfixes are applied.
| Previous 6.2 Hotfix Blogs |
July 21
Class
Paladin
General
- Tier-18 2-piece set bonus for Protection Paladins‘ Avenger’s Reprieve effect no longer stacks and will refresh the duration of the effect instead.
- Fixed an issue that caused Hammer of the Righteous to often hit the primary target twice instead of damaging one of the secondary targets.
Priest
General
- Fixed an issue where the damage increase in a hotfix from June 26 for Repudiation of War was not working correctly.
Warlock
General
- Felhunter should now correctly require line-of-sight with its target to use the Spell Lock ability. Previously, it was incorrectly using line-of-sight with the Warlock instead.
Garrisons
Naval Missions
- Black Market Journal: This naval mission should now have the correct blockade prerequisite for Barrier Sea.
Achievements
- Filling the Ranks: Tracking for progress towards completing the achievement should now be working correctly.
July 20
Class Tuning Changes
Please note that the following class tuning changes are now live for the US region.
Druid
- Guardian
- Ursa Major now lasts 15 seconds (down from 25 seconds).
Hunter
- Beast Mastery
- Bestial Wrath now lasts 15 seconds (up from 10 seconds).
- Survival
- Black Arrow, Explosive Shot, and Serpent Sting damage increased by 25%.
Mage
- Fire
- Dragon’s Breath damage increased by 150%.
- Flamestrike damage increased by 50%.
Monk
- Windwalker
- Stance of the Fierce Tiger now increases all damage dealt by 10% (up from 5%).
Paladin
- Retribution
- Sword of Light now increases damage dealt with two-handed melee weapons by 30% (up from 25%).
- Protection
- Avenger’s Shield damage increased by 30%.
- Bastion of Glory now increases the healing received from Word of Glory by 8% per stack (up from 6%). Additionally, Mastery: Divine Bulwark now adds 8% to Bastion of Glory (up from 6%).
- Tier-18 2-piece set bonus for Protection Paladins now grants an absorb effect equal to 5% of maximum health (up from 1.5%).
- Tier-18 4-piece set bonus for Protection Paladins now triggers Grand Crusader.
Shaman
- Elemental
- Mastery: Molten Earth damage has been increased by 11%.
- Ascendance now has a 2-minute cooldown (down from 3 minutes) for Elemental Shaman.
- Enhancement
- [Added to yesterday’s class tuning changes] Stormstrike damage has been increased by 30%.
Warlock
- Affliction
- Drain Soul damage has been increased by 50%, and now causes all other damage over time spells to instantly deal 50% of their normal damage (up from 40%).
- Haunt damage has been increased by 25%, and now increases periodic damage dealt by 35% (up from 30%).
- Destruction
- Chaos Bolt, Conflagrate, Immolate, Incinerate, and Shadowburn damage increased by 5%.
Warrior
- Protection
- Bastion of Defense now increases block chance by 15% (up from 10%).
- Arms
- Tier-18 4-piece set bonus for Arms Warriors now increases the tick rate of Rend by 33% (down from 50%), and fixed a bug where it was granting double the intended increase.
Class
Monk
Mistweaver
- Fixed a number of issues with Sacred Draenic Incense for Mistweavers where it would benefit twice from effects which increase healing taken, and could bypass area-of-effect healing caps.
Priest
Armor Sets
- Tier-18 4-piece set bonus for Discipline Priests now targets friendly targets to heal with the greatest % of missing health instead of current health. For example, the heal now prioritizes a player with 350k/500k instead of a player with 300k/300k health.
Shaman
Enhancement
- Fixed an issue with Maelstrom Weapon that caused Healing Surge combined with the Tier-18 4-piece set bonus to heal for more than the intended amount.
Quests
Garrison Campaign
- High Overlord Saurfang and Muradin Bronzebeard in the player’s Garrisons now have chance to offer the Hellfire Citadel weekly raid quest when eligible.
Professions
- Ruined Construct: Jewelcrafters in a raid group should no longer see an option to insert 1000 Apexis Crystals into the Apexis Gemcutter Construct.
Creatures and NPCs
Tanaan Jungle
- Fixed an issue that could cause the demon invasion leading to Painmistress Selora appearing to not work correctly.
Raids and Dungeons
Hellfire Citadel
Gorefiend
- Gorefiend should no longer be using other abilities while channeling Feast of Souls.
Fel Lord Zakuun
- Fixed an issue that could cause Fel Lord Zakuun to cast two Rumbling Fissures in rapid succession depending on when he was brought below 30% health.
Xhul’horac
- Xhul’horac’s Overwhelming Chaos now increases damage dealt by 15% (down from 20%) per stack on Normal difficulty.
- Combat rogues should now be able to correctly use Killing Spree again after receiving the Empowered Singularity debuff.
Archimonde
- Dreadstalkers should no longer incorrectly spawn on players that are not on the platform.
- Players should no longer be occasionally dropped off the platform when transitioning into the Twisting Nether.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the portal leading to the Archimonde encounter to not reappear in the raid instance after a soft reset.
- Fixed an issue that could cause Archimonde’s Shadowfel Burst to not be removed correctly when the ability struck multiple targets.
PvP
Ashran
- Ancient Artifact should now only appear when there are more than 20 players per team in the battle, and the item now has a respawn timer.
Items
- Prophecy of Fear‘s visual effect for Doom Nova is now more subdued.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue that could occasionally cause the client to crash while loading into an Arena.
- Fixed an issue where players were unable to queue for Pet Battles through the Pet Journal while in Tanaan Jungle.
- Fixed an issue where players were unable to queue as a party for Timewalking dungeons if one of the party members had already completed the Timewalking Bonus Event quest.
Welcome to the WoW Weekly Design Corner! In this editorial series I (Mezzy) look at different parts of WoW and see how I would design the next new thing, or perhaps improve upon it.Today we’ll be taking a look at dailies and world content.
In the past 2 expansions we’ve gone through all types of degrees on dailies and more recently exploration content in the form of treasures. In Mists of Pandaria we started out with a huge amount of dailies, then it got brought back to singular daily hubs and the unlocking of new dailies over time in the throne of thunder. We ended up in the timeless isle with many rares and treasures but no real direction which would turn out to be an experiment for Warlords of Draenor.
The problem of Mists was that at the start of the expansion there was a daily overload, you had to unlock multiple factions to do more dailies for gear and profession rewards. This burnt out people from dailies which gave some an aversion from the concept of dailies.
As you know in Warlords we had the apexis dailies which would push you into going to different areas every day where you would kill mobs, rares and destroy objectives. It would allow you to slowly grind up the reputations and see different parts of the world to prevent getting sick of the same area. Unless you got The Pit over.. and over.. and over.
One of the issues was that the reward, apexis crystals, didn’t really get you anything that was still useful by the time you had saved enough. The other issue was that there was no story connected to them at all.
Now we’re in Tanaan where we get more dailies that makes us visit different parts of Tanaan every day and we have the option to continue to do the remaining bonus objective areas if we want even more apexis crystals. At the same time we have 3 new reputations that gain rep either through dailies and a weekly quest or grinding out the Saberon mobs.
While this is definitely an improvement over what we had in 6.0, going to the same areas every day despite the added structure will burn you out quickly.
So how can world content be improved? Well for starters let’s look at what worked and should come back.
- Slowly gaining reputations through dailies and weeklys is a lot better than the passive grind we had in 6.0.
- Going into a different area every day helped prevent burnout from the same environment
- Both one time and recurring treasures were a nice extra niche to explore
- The same goes for one time and recurring rares. If anything it would be nice to see a combination of Mists and Warlords style rares.
- Reputations having rewards that still mattered by the time you got them leveled up.
- And the rotating daily npcs such as Harrison Jones in the garrison.
So let’s take these elements, put them in the next continent and give some structure to it. How should the world content look like next?
To illustrate it we can use the map of Draenor to get a better picture. Have 3 or 4 reputations that give useful gear and profession rewards along with the usual toys, mounts and pets. Have 7 different areas that are possible daily hubs each day. An npc will send you to one of them each day, and for that day you will be able to do a set of dailies in that area. Each reputation can be earned in 2 of the areas, leaving 1 reputation for just 1 area and allow thatreputation to be grinded out through mob killing.
And then finally have the rotation of these areas set just like the current profession npcs in the garrison so that you don’t get the same area 4 times in a row and every reputation has a chance to be gained equally.
Now this will eventually become boring like all content eventually becomes. However the diversity should prolong it before this does happen. Keep in mind that while you have these dailies, there will be rares and treasures out in the world as well.
Now while they will help we need more dynamic content. Which is why I would love to see world invasions being introduced to the world as well. These would be similar to the rifts in Rift. Have random invasions out in the world where you have waves of mobs attacking a certain area, ending in a mini-boss.
Helping get rid of these invasions will reward the player with a currency that they can turn in for certain items. Think of items like account bound reputation tokens. Which would allow you to speed up getting reputation with a certain faction if you feel the rotation of hubs doesn’t give you reputation quickly enough or extra reputation for your alts.
Of course that’s just one example of a possible reward, but think of items that don’t give a massive character power boost, but are useful for a while. Later patches could of course introduce new rewards to keep invasions relevant.
Which concludes how I’d design future world content. What are your own thoughts on what type of world content should be added to the World of Warcraft? Let me know in the comments! If you liked this video please subscribe and like the video to help us out. For now, I’m Mezzy and I’ll see you again next time.
Patch 6.2.1 PTR Patch Notes
The patch with flying and a fix for Ashran is hitting the PTR!
Quote from: Blizzard
Patch 6.2.1 is now available for testing on the Public Test Realms (PTR)! Participating on the Public Test Realms lets you test a patch before it has been released on live realms. If you’d like to help test and provide feedback, you can start by copying your character and downloading the PTR client. Once you’ve had a chance to try things out, visit the PTR Discussion 6.2.1 forum to discuss the patch. To report issues or errors, use the in-game Submit Bug feature (found under Game Menu -> Help -> Submit Bug) or by visiting the PTR Bug Report 6.2.1 forum.
- Text in red means it’s newly added or has changed since the last update.
Crossed outmeans the change has been reverted since the last update.
PTR Disclaimer
- Please keep in mind that the notes below are not final, and details may be subject to change before the release of Patch 6.2.1.
- New information for features that are still in-development will be added as it becomes available.
- Not all content listed in the PTR Patch Notes may be available for testing or may have a limited test window.
World of Warcraft Patch 6.2.1 PTR
Updated: July 15, 2015
In Development: Flying on Draenor
Flying has been enabled on Draenor for level-90+ characters that have attained the account-wide achievement, Draenor Pathfinder. To help facilitate testing of this feature, accounts that have not yet obtained the achievement will be able to purchase a Manual of Rapid Pathfinding from Flaskataur in their Garrisons on the PTR.
- Please note there may still be areas or pockets on Draenor where flying has not yet been fully implemented. These areas will be tracked and listed in a forum thread on the Patch 6.2.1 PTR forum.
In Development: PvP Mercenary Mode
Players will be able to act as a mercenary for the opposite faction in PvP whenever your faction is experiencing a long wait time to get into Ashran or unrated Battlegrounds. Agents of the enemy faction will appear in your base in Ashran (Stormshield for the Alliance, Warspear for the Horde) and allow you to enter Ashran or Battlegrounds disguised as an enemy player, and actually fight as the opposite faction.
While competing as a mercenary, players will automatically have their race changed into one appropriate for the opposite faction. Players will still be able to earn all the same rewards as winning or losing as their original faction (with the exception of faction-specific achievements).
- This feature is still in development and is not available initially on the PTR. Mercenary Mode will be enabled later in the PTR process.
- See the blog “In Development: PvP Mercenary Mode” for more information.
In Development: PvP Mercenary Mode
Quote from: Blizzard
They say, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer”—and soon, you’ll be able to do just that.
In an upcoming patch, we’ll be adding a feature that allows you to act as a mercenary for the opposite faction in PvP. Whenever your faction is experiencing a long wait time to get into Ashran or unrated Battlegrounds, agents of the enemy faction will appear in your base in Ashran (Stormshield for the Alliance, Warspear for the Horde). These agents will allow you to enter Ashran or Battlegrounds disguised as an enemy player, and actually fight as the opposite faction.
When you compete as a mercenary, you’ll still earn all the same rewards you would have by winning or losing as your own faction (with the exception of faction-specific achievements). You’ll also have your race automatically changed into one appropriate for the opposite faction while you’re still inside the Battleground or Ashran. Perhaps most importantly, however, you’ll experience much shorter queue times, as our matchmaking system will be able to fill up groups much quicker!
Our goal with Mercenary Mode is to allow players who want to participate in Ashran or unrated Battlegrounds the ability to do so without having to wait through long queues, while still maintaining the spirit of the core Alliance vs Horde fantasy. We’ll be testing this feature soon on the Public Test Realm, and look forward to hearing your feedback!