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Category: Warcraft

More signs of a WoD beta coming soon(tm)?

Often forum threads pop up over the web with fake information for new games or expansions to try and trick people. So take this with a grain of salt although looking at some of the responses and what we posted just a bit earlier about Rygarius’ tweet about patch notes it does look quite compelling. So it’s looking like more of a possibility that the Warlords of Draenor beta might be coming within the next month. What am I talking about? Well a poster on the MMO-Champion forums found the following image on the battle.net servers for the account pages:

Which by itself is a great thing to find, however another poster said the following:

The MoP one was discovered March 7th, the beta started March 22nd.

The original post was not even about this, in fact it was about PvP Lead Developer Holinka’s tweet:

Of course Holinka could be talking about a 6.0 pre expansion internal testing server, or even one just for WoD pvp changes. So take all these signs with a mountain of salt, but these things could indicate a possible beta within the next month. Hope for the best but assume the worst, but it certainly gets this warcraft player’s hopes high! We will of course continue to watch for any solid information concerning the beta in the weeks to come.

News, Blizz tweets and Subscriber numbers Recap 1/02 – 7/02

Another week has gone by and things have been quite busy both inside the world of warcraft and outside it so we have some catching up to do!

First off Celestalon sent out a tweet earlier in the week talking about how blizzard intends to explain the reasons behind major changes in the upcoming expansion, however this seems to be a huge logistical undertaking because of translating into different languages alone. So we shall see how long it takes for them to come out with new information in the coming weeks/months!

On the WoW forums someone asked about the art for the upcoming garrisons and community manager Bashiok had the following to say:

Quote from: Bashiok
The level of detail we’re approaching with Warlords of Draenor means that these are going to be some-of-if-not-the-best looking sets, props and buildings ever seen in the World of Warcraft. Creating just one set of buildings for each faction (as well as their individual upgrades) is a huge amount of work, and they rely on most of the same artistic resources as the expansion’s dungeons, raids, quest hubs, and cities. Creating any additional buildings would quite literally translate to less content for those other parts of the game. We are incorporating some elements of other races into the individual Garrison buildings, but the themes are largely of Durotar and Elwynn. We’ll be offering a sneak peek at the Garrison buildings in the next Artcraft, which is currently slated to be posted next Tuesday–written by the art team and formatted by moi–so be sure to keep an eye on the front page next week.

Certainly there will be updates and changes as the expansion progresses, but I don’t believe there’s any current intention to add full sets of additional buildings. If we were to work on those for an expansion patch it would quite literally come at the cost of a raid tier. That is where that work would come from. We have to make decisions on how to spend our time.

I think if the Garrison becomes a long-term persistent feature there’s certainly a possibility for larger additions, but we’re focusing on it being a feature for Warlords of Draenor as your fortress against the Iron Horde. I think we’ll have to see how it goes.

Which means that next Tuesday, possibly Wednesday for us folks over in Europe depending on how late they release it, we’ll get a new update on the art in Warlords of Draenor, although this time for the garrisons!

Moving on, Activision had their earnings call for Q4 2013 and it yielded in possibly surprising numbers. The subscriber numbers have gone up (so yes, not down) by 200k subscribers! Putting the World of Warcraft subscriber base at the end of December 2013 at 7.8 Million players. You can find the full (albeit boring) details of the earnings here. The only other notable blizzard information was that the Diablo 3 expansion, Reaper of Souls will be released on March 25th, although this was already known.

Moving on to another set of tweets, this time from lead encounter designer Ion Hazzikostas (did I spell that right?) or known as Watcher. He had some very interesting things to say about the WoD raid system being brought to Siege of Orgrimmar in 6.0 . Keep in mind though that it’s likely 6.0 is still quite far away, so no need to panick if you’re in a 10man raiding guild.

Community managers can sure be mean on twitter when it comes to dropping possible, but could just be nothing hints! Rygarius had the following to say:

This if course could just be for patch 5.4.7 but it seems unlikely that it has so many patch notes. So does this mean a beta is near? One can only hope!

And then to end it off, let’s talk PvP! We’ve talked about the arena seasons on the podcast before and it looks like Season 14 will be ending in less than 2 weeks!

Quote from: Blizzard
Blood, sweat, and tears stain the Arena floors and Battleground fields—a grim chronicle of the hard-fought battles many of you have survived. Once again, the time has come for the victorious to be heralded, and champions to be rewarded!

Season 14 is coming to an end as early as two weeks from now. On that day, we’ll begin the process of determining end-of-season reward eligibility, which could take up to two weeks to complete.

Qualifying players should note the following in order to ensure you receive your just rewards:

  • Please do not transfer your characters to another realm or faction until after Season 14 has ended.
  • Award distribution for Season 14, including titles and mounts, could take up to two weeks after the season ends, though our goal is to finish in one.
  • Only players who have a rating of 1,000 or better are considered when calculating rewards.

At the end of the season, Conquest Points will be converted into Honor Points, and any Honor above 4,000 will be converted into in-game currency at a rate of 35 silver per point. There are a few other things to keep in mind once the season ends:

  • The Honor Points cap will remain at 4,000.
  • All Season 14 items will have their costs converted into Honor Points equivalent to their previous Conquest Points cost, with the exception of any items that have a rating requirement.
  • Season 14 items with rating requirements will no longer be available for purchase.

Season 15 Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds will begin approximately one week after the end of Season 14, and all Personal Ratings will be reset at the same time. Also note that Arena and Rated Battleground matches will not be available during the break between seasons. Once Season 15 begins, players will battle for the right to equip Prideful Gladiator gear, the most powerful PvP gear in game to date with an Item Level of 550.

Lastly, as of the beginning of Season 14, PvP players no longer needed to join or create an Arena team to compete. You can find more information about this earlier change in our Patch 5.4 Arena Update blog.

News Recap 27/01 – 31/01

warlords banner small

The week’s nearly over and there have been a few interesting things over the past 2 weeks from blizzard. Starting with blizzard coming out with many numerical facts about World of Warcraft. Such as that there have been 100 Million WoW accounts created of the past 9 years. Click on the image for the full details!

The folks over at ReadyCheck Podcast got to talk to some developers, from which you can find the full transcript of the interview here. One of the more interesting questions/answeres, however was the following:

Moldran:
Going back to Burning Crusade, one thing that I really liked about it was the difficulty of the heroic 5-mans. Recently I was playing Mists of Pandaria 5-mans and they were laughably easily. Are there any plans to reintroduce difficult 5-mans, or will it just be challenge modes?

Quote from: Blizzard
Ion Hazzikostas:
To some extent we’re looking to make heroic dungeons in Warlords of Draenor more difficult than they were in Mists. They aren’t going to be as difficult as they were in Burning Crusade, but we want to have a more robust tier of normal dungeons at max level for people who just want to casually queue up get some more or less guaranteed loot without too much of a challenge. We like heroic dungeons to require a bit more coordination, but we do recognise that there is this audience for really hardcore Burning Crusade-style or Challenge Mode-style dungeons. However, in Challenge Mode right now, the focus is so much on speed you don’t get that feeling of having to go through and mark your CC, polymorph that, sap that, for example. But we’re actually exploring the possibility of having Challenge Modes, as well as the speed component, also offer a chance at some gear rewards, LFR quality perhaps, so someone who doesn’t want to do LFR can do some hard content with friends and get epics that way. Further down the line, we have this new Mythic raid difficulty – we’re not planning on Mythic dungeons at launch, but that’s something that we could do. If we wanted to have an additional tier of difficulty, that option is open to us. It’s not a really good fit for random matchmaking, which is something we learned quickly at the start of Cataclysm, since there would be a lot of frustration. We do recognise that there is a lot of really cool play there, a lot of interesting MMO co-ordination in a smaller group, so we want to find a way to do it.
* NB: To clarify, Ion was indicating that they would like to offer rewards for completing hard dungeons with a deliberate pace, utilising CC etc., as opposed to speed runs through Challenge Modes. Apologies for the lack of clarity.

Continuing on to last week, Hearthstone is now officially in Open Beta and they also released a pretty cool intro trailer for Hearthstone! You can click here for the open beta announcement and here to go to the hearthstone download page.

And then to end our recap, last week the 2nd Heroes of the Storm Developer Q&A as well as a live match took place! Check out the Q&A here and the live match shoutcast by Developer Dustin Browder and Starcraft Caster Day9 here.

PTR Patch 5.4.7 – Build 17807 Datamined

Patch 5.4.7’s first PTR build will hit the PTR soon and the folks over at MMO-Champion have already data mined it. It’s looking to be the patch that will be needed to allow players instant access to a free lvl 90 when they buy Warlords of Draenor and both the Mount and Pet when you buy the Digital Deluxe edition of WoD. The mount is indeed the flying version of the Raven Lord Anzu, which was posted a few days ago on Warcraft’s facebook page. Check out the images below, originally from MMO-Champion.

The karazhan “event” has also gotten a new name “Karazhan: Adagio of Misery”. This could either be to continue joking around with it’s name changing each PTR patch or blizzard might be attempting another go at getting the Karazhan event to work. Keep in mind though that they’ve already said that it just didn’t work out with their tech. So it’s unlikely that they are still putting resources into it, but we can certainly hope!

There were also some strings datamined, including the words “veteran bonus”.
CHARACTER_UPGRADE_NO_VETERAN_BONUS – No Veteran Bonus
CHARACTER_UPGRADE_PROFESSION_BOOST – |cff00ff00Veteran Bonus:|r |cffffffffLevel 60+ characters will also receive a skill level boost to their primary professions.|r

Now this could mean a few things, and remember this is all speculation.

  • All level boosted characters get their primary professions boosted up to current content.
  • All characters who reach lvl 60 (or are higher) get their primary professions boosted.
  • We could possibly be seeing a “veteran bonus” for players who have been playing WoW for a long time, which would be easier profession leveling on alt characters.
  • The “veteran bonus” could also be for everyone who has atleast an X amount of lvl 90 characters, making lvling professions on alts easier. X could of course be just 1.

As a final mention, the Prideful Gladiator items, which were put in for a possible and now confirmed extra arena season, have received and item level boost from 540 to 550. Putting it at a higher level than Siege of Orgrimmar Flex raid rewards. In an ongoing discussion on the US WoW forums about it making PvP items more desirable for raiding than Flex items, Community Manager Lore had the following to say:

Quote from: Blizzard
It’s important to remember that Flex gear can be upgraded to item level 548, and has extra advantages through things like sockets and set bonuses. We don’t feel that the extra 2 item levels on Prideful pieces are going to make them more desirable for Flex raiders.

You can follow the discussion on the US forums here.

No matter how it goes, this is another stepping stone towards Warlords of Draenor. Any new information is great and hopefully we’ll be seeing more shortly.

This week’s changes in the Siege of Orgrimmar raid

This week the targeted nerfs went into effect for Siege of Orgrimmar, and although we already knew the general changes that were going to be made, the exact numbers were not known until the reset on Tuesday (US) or Wednesday (EU). So here they are:

Galakras

  • Reduced health on various ranking officials (High Enforcer Thranok and Korgra the Snake) and foot soldiers (Dragonmaw Bonecrusher, Dragonmaw Flagbearer, and Dragonmaw Tidal Shaman) by about 15% on Flexible and 10-player Normal difficulties.

Thok the Bloodthirsty

  • Thok the Bloodthirsty’s Defeaning Screech now deals 10% less damage on Flexible, 10-player Normal, and 10-player Heroic difficulties.
  • Thok the Bloodthirsty’s Shock Blast now deals 10% less damage on Flexible, 10-player Normal, and 10-player Heroic difficulties.

Siegecrafter Blackfuse

  • Automated Shredders’ health has been reduced by 10%, and its Overload ability now deals 10% less damage on Heroic difficulty.
  • Crawler Mines now have 20% less health on 10-player Heroic difficulty.
  • Disassembled Crawler Mines, Deactivated Electromagnets, Deactivated Laser Turrets, and Deactivated Missle Turrets now have 20% less health on Heroic difficulty.
  • Electromagnet’s Magnetic Crush ability now deals 15% less damage on Heroic difficulty.
  • Laser Turret’s Superheated damage-over-time effect now deals 25% less damage on Heroic difficulty.

Paragons of the Klaxxi

  • Hisek the Swarmkeeper’s Multi-Shot ability now deals 20% less damage on Heroic difficulty.
  • Iyyokuk the Lucid’s Insane Calculation: Fiery Edge now deals roughly 10% less damage on Heroic difficulty.

Some changes are less significant than others, but looking at the list Siegecrafter Blackfuse took quite a hit. It will be interesting to see how raiding guilds progress over the next few weeks!

New Character Model Previews!

Female Human Model preview

This evening Blizzard came out with a new blogpost giving some insight on how the new character models are being developed. They also released a character preview model of the Female Human model. Check out the screenshots and blizzard article below.

Quote from: Blizzard
Hi, I’m Chris Robinson, senior art director of World of Warcraft, and this is the first in a series of articles we’re creating to bring you all closer to the development of the player character model revamps we announced at BlizzCon. In this series, we’ll give you an inside look at the process we go through to do one of these revamps, discuss the kinds of art issues we’re addressing with the new models, and provide a bit of insight our future plans for their continued polish.We’re happy to begin our series by sharing a first look at where we’re at with the Human female. While future articles won’t always be about revealing a new model, we thought this would be a great introduction to the approach we take for every one of these redesigns.

We’re looking at these model revamps as a sort of “spiritual update” to the art content that currently exists in-game—except we’re completely redoing them from scratch. That includes the base model, skin tone variations, customization options (e.g. wrinkles, scars, moles, earrings, etc.), hairstyles, and any skin variations for NPCs you see out in the world, like Iron Dwarves or Leper Gnomes. We’re pretty excited about some of the ideas you’ve given us for new customization and skin options you’d like to see, but our first goal—which is already a monumental endeavor—is to make sure that the visual content that currently exists is brought up to or surpasses the level of quality you see in current boss models, the Pandaren, and central NPCs like the new Vol’jin model.

With the revamp, we’re completely overhauling every aspect of the player models, but our goal is to do so while retaining the core look and feel that has always made them your character. We’ll feel like we’ve succeeded if you see the updated version of your character and it still feels like you’re looking at the character you’ve been playing for the past however many years—only someone has finally focused a lens.

To achieve this, we’re increasing the polygon count significantly (in some cases going from less than 1,000 to over 5,000), more than doubling the texture resolution, increasing bone count significantly to support updated animation and facial expression, and retouching nearly every animation for all of the characters. For animation alone, that’s roughly 180 animations per character, times 10 races in both male and female variants, equaling approximately 3,600 animations. We’re also incorporating the rigging technology we introduced with the Pandaren into every character to provide better posing, smoother animation, and the ability to pull off some fantastic facial expressions. In the weeks and months ahead, we’re going to be bringing you in for a closer look at some of the processes, challenges, and results of this revamp process.

“When developing the base model we keep the expression on the face as devoid of emotion or expression as possible”

What you’re looking at here for the Human female is a single face option and a single skin tone on the base model without any animation or posing. When developing the base model we keep the expression on the face as devoid of emotion or expression as possible, as that allows our animators a greater range of motion when they start posing and morphing the face into different expressions. If we were to put any amount of expression—even a slight smile or mildly angry eyebrows—in the base model, that would carry through to every animation, and we’d end up with some very confused-looking characters.

Joe Keller is a senior character artist on our team and was responsible for the lion’s share of modeling and texturing the Human female. Here’s what he had this to say about this challenge:

“Everyone is pretty familiar with the Human character models in WoW, but working on these updates gives us a chance to embellish and fill in the blanks. For the Human female this meant we could give her more muscle definition and personality in the face while still staying true to the overall look and spirit of the original. Hopefully this will also help show her as more of the capable fighter that she is.”
This process has been a welcome challenge for all of us on the World of Warcraft art team. We’ve all wanted to address the player models and bring them up to a more current fidelity for some time now, and we’re as excited as you are to get these models into the game. We hope you’ll enjoy this series as we invite you to meet the team and see more on our development process.

Thanks so much, and see you next time.

New Mount Preview!

Late last night blizzard shared a new image on their social media, of a new flying mount. It looks like a flying version of the Raven Lord Anzu (and his mount) possibly indicating that this might be the mount you’ll get if you pre-order the digital deluxe edition of Warlords of Draenor. Check the mount down below or here on WoW’s facebook page.

Post by World of Warcraft.