fbpx
Menu Close

Category: Warcraft

Blizzcon WoW Q&A Panel Summary

The Blizzcon WoW Q&A panel just concluded, here’s a summary of the new information that was shared:

  • When players have to make choices (primarily for horde players thusfar) there have to be repurcussions of these choices in the future. Blizzard is experimenting with this.
  • There might be a job posting up soon on the orgrimmar boards for new warchief for the Horde…
  • The Auction House architecture needs to be rewritten before the 20% AH fee can be removed.
  • Things you earn in WoW Classic will not have any effect on your Modern WoW account.
  • They are still working actively on the class flavor visuals like librams. The way it takes form might be more along the line of heritage armor.
  • They are not satisfied with the leveling experience. They do not know if a level squish would be the answer, but they are discussing how to solve this.
  • They have taken more measures in the last years against player toxicity and will implement new technologies in the future to further combat it.
  • RNG has always been a part of WoW and will continue to be so. If there was no RNG for rewards you could always note on the calendar when you get a certain reward, there would be no excitement in whether or not you’ll get an item or something cool happening.
  • There’s nothing to announce yet, but they’re looking at improvements for the mythic+ cache.
  • They’re satisfied with offensive cooldowns being on the GCD. If it doens’t feel right for an ability they’ll look at the ability. Movement abilities will go back off the GCD.
  • They are looking at using sharding in WoW Classic in a limited way. The first few weeks when the servers are very busy they think they can use sharding to limit the issues of a launch.
  • They’re looking at how Gallywix’s story can be expanded beyond “a 2 dimensional moneygrabber”.
  • You’ll be able to transmog over fist weapons with 1 handed weapons in patch 8.1. Wands still can’t be fixed due to their special ranged animations.
  • The story isn’t over yet, there’s much left to explore. There will be a difference between Sylvanas’ story and Garrosh’ story. Garrosh was an amateur compared to Sylvanas.
  • PvP talents are not active in island expeditions/warfronts because you’re not fighting other players.
  • In patch 8.1 an account bound item is being added for BfA flightpoints for alts.
  • In patch 8.1 mythic+ progress will show on the armory.
  • Class themed tier sets will not return in BfA, that does not mean they won’t return in the future.
  • For now they are focussing on restoring WoW Classic, after that they will look at what makes sense in terms of updates.
  • Questions that couldn’t be answered will be answered on the forums in the next week or so.

Blizzcon WoW: What’s Next Panel Summary

Next at Blizzcon is the WoW: What’s Next Panel. This is a summary of the panel:

  • Roughly 760 million turtles have made it to the water since the start of Battle for Azeroth.

Patch 8.1

  • Summary of Tides of Vengeance (Patch 8.1): A new Warfront in Darkshore, Assaults (Invasions) are coming to BfA, New Island Expeditions and updates to the system, Battle of Dazar’alor Raid, War Campaign continues, Heritage Armor for Blood Elves and Dwarves, Azerite Armor Improvements, Dubloon vendor, Improved emissary rewards, alt reputation quality of life improvements, war mode bonus changes, pvp talent reworks, Warfront quest structure improvement (world quests, daily things to do)
  • Patch 8.1 will be released on December 11th/12th.
  • The Battle of Dazar’alor will release at a later date.
  • A new cinematic was shown: Terror of Darkshore (see below)

Patch 8.1.5

  • The next patch will be patch 8.1.5.
  • Kul Tiran Humans and Zandalari Trolls will become available in 8.1.5
  • Zandalari trolls can be druids, hunters, mages, monks, priest, rogues, shamans, warlocks, warriors, paladins
  • Kul Tiran humans can be hunters, warriors, priests, rogues, monks, druids, shamans
  • The Darkmoon Faire gets a new attraction: a rollercoaster
  • Children’s week will get an update with Kul Tiran and Zandalari storylines
  • A few new micro-holidays will be added
  • Warlords of Draenor will be added to the Time-Walking rotation.
  • Orgrimmar and Stormwind are getting Portal Rooms to make it easier to get around the ever increasing world of warcraft
  • Crafting Professions are getting new Tools of the Trade Questlines. They result in unique items for crafting profession users.
  • The Brawler’s guild returns in patch 8.1.5
  • A new questline is being added to the brawler’s guild.
  • New transmog sets and a mount are being added to the brawler’s guild
  • Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin are being remastered with a whole new set of models.
  • There will be a new Brawl where players face AI in Arathi Basin.

Patch 8.2

  • After the battle of dazar’alor both factions leak their wounds.
  • The Naga take advantage of this and make their move!
  • Both the Horde and Alliance find a crack in the ocean: The zone Nazjatar
  • The content patch will be called Rise of Azshara
  • Nazjatar will feature new story quests, new friends for the factions, replayable outdoor content
  • There will be new rewards: Naga themed weapons and armor sets and mounts (crab, seahorse)
  • The crab mount walks sideways!
  • New pets such as a little naga holding a fork
  • Azhara’s Eternal Palace has 8 bosses and features a naga hatchery, an underwater boss and of course Queen Azshara!
  • There will be a Gnome and Goblin adventure, featuring the zone Mechagon.
  • This is not a happy place. Both factions will find friends here. Alliance the Mechagnomes and the Horde
  • King Mechagon wants to turn everyone into full robots.
  • This will feature a new Megadungeon, like Karazhan in Legion.
  • It’s a mythic only (for now) 8 boss dungeon.
  • The major stories for Sylvanas, Saurfang, Jaina, Anduin and Magni will continue in 8.2.
  • New Heritage Armors will be added for the Tauren and Gnomes.
  • More islands will be added for the Island Expeditions: Crestfall and Snowblossom
  • A new difficulty will be added to Warfronts: Heroic Warfronts.
  • They require 10+ players, have a higher difficulty with new mechanics and new rewards
  • Mechagon Arena will be introduced for arena pvpv
  • Flying will come back in this patch!
  • BfA Season 3 for both Mythic+ and PvP will come in 8.2.

Patch 8.2.5

  • Patch 8.2.5 was teased: New Character models for Goblins and Worgens will be added in 8.2.5

Blizzcon Opening Ceremony Summary

The Blizzcon Opening Ceremony just concluded! Here’s what Blizzard revealed (All cinematics are at the bottom of this post):

  • Destiny 2 will be free for all battle.net players, this offer is available to be claimed until November 18th
  • Starcraft 2 gets a new Co-op commander: Zeratul.
  • Heroes of the Storm gets its first new original hero character, originating from HotS itself: Orphea, daughter of the Raven Lord
  • Orphia is free for all blizzcon attendees and virtual ticket holders.
  • Heroes of the Storm will finally see the Janitor Leoric skin making its appearance!
  • The current World of Warcraft segment was a repeat of the patch 8.1 Tides of Vengeance announcement. What lays beyond patch 8.1 will be discussed in the What’s Next panel for WoW.
  • In addition to that WoW Classic will fully release in the summer of 2019.
  • Anyone with a WoW subscription will have access to WoW Classic!
  • This year’s WoW charity pet will be Whomper, a little yeti and the money goes to the organisation code.org.
  • A new cinematic for BfA “Lost Honor” was shown.
  • A new Overwatch animated short was shown: Reunion
  • The 29th Overwatch hero to join the roster will be Ashe, the leader of the Deadlock gang
  • Warcraft 3 is being remastered! It will be released in 2019.
  • You can order a spoils of war edition of warcraft 3, pre-ordering it will unlock bonuses for the other Blizzard games. This includes a meatwagon mount in WoW with a functioning catapult!
  • You can find more information here for warcraft 3 reforged: https://playwarcraft3.com/en-us/
  • The next Hearthstone expansion is the troll themed Rastakhan’s Rumble, with a snazzy new cinematic trailer!
  • Hearthstone will get a new keyword “Overkill”, this will activate if you deal more damage than the target has in health.
  • (Hearthstone) Each class gets a troll champion, a loa (troll god) and a spirit.
  • Rastakhan’s Rumble releases December 4th.
  • The next Diablo game will be a mobile action RPG called “Diablo Immortal”.
  • Diablo Immortal will take place in between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3.

Hotfixes: October 23/26, 2018

Last week 2 small sets of hotfixes were released including fixes for the explosive affix in Mythic+ and increased rewards from gold and Artifact Power emissaries.

Quote from: Blizzard

October 26, 2018

Classes

  • Death Knight
    • Necrotic Aura, Heartstop Aura, and Decomposing Aura will no longer interrupt actions such as scrapping and crafting.
  • Paladin
    • Holy
      • Fixed a bug that caused Pure of Heart to remove Poison and Disease effects more often than intended with items and enchants such as Coastal Surge.
  • Priest
    • Shadow
      • Fixed a bug where Void Shift could cause the Priest or target to end up below 25% maximum health after the spell is cast.

Creatures

  • Cleansed Timberlings summoned from the Cleansed Timberling Heart now have a maximum level of 20 and can no longer be used in instances or Rated Battlegrounds.

Items

  • Fixed a bug that could cause a player who was online during a weekly reset to not receive a Mythic Keystone.

World Quests

  • Emissary rewards of gold now provide 2000 gold (was 700).
  • Emissary rewards of Azerite now provide 1400 total AP (was 1000).
  • On “Boarder Patrol”, Ornery Battleboars will now disappear in a huff if you hop off them.

Hotfixes

October 23, 2018

Classes

  • Death Knight
    • Necrotic Aura, Heartstop Aura, and Decomposing Aura will no longer interrupt actions such as scrapping and crafting.

Dungeons

  • Reduced the number of explosive spawns on certain bosses in Underrot, Temple of Sethraliss, and King’s Rest on Mythic Keystone difficulty.

Holiday

  • Shade of the Horseman now scales up to level 120.

Player versus Player

(With maintenance in each region)

  • The first Rated Battleground victory of the day now rewards 150 Conquest (was 100). Subsequent Rated Battleground victories now reward 100 Conquest (was 65).
  • The first 2v2 Arena victory of the day rewards 35 Conquest, and subsequent victories reward 25 conquest (was 10).
  • The amount of Conquest granted to the losing team in a Rated Battleground match has been slightly increased.

World Quests

  • Players who are “Saving Xibala” can destroy all Forsaken Blight Throwers, as intended.

Shadow Priest Changes in 8.1

Blizzard has announced changes coming to Shadow Priests in patch 8.1! They’ll soon be on the PTR.

Quote from: Blizzard
The next PTR build includes some changes to Shadow Priest with the following goals:

  • Make Voidform matter more, make staying in Voidform longer matter more, and give the player more agency over extending its duration
  • Improve Shadow’s defensive power and utility

Make Voidform Matter More
Moving into Battle for Azeroth, we consciously reduced the maximum power of Voidforms, for the purpose of evening out Shadow’s heavily backloaded Voidform cycle damage. This had some positive impacts, which many of you are aware of – mainly this greatly reduced the harsh penalty for dropping out of Voidform early – a common occurrence in any content outside of raids, including dungeons or questing. That said, we think we went a little too far with peeling power off of Voidform, which has resulted in Voidform not feeling impactful enough, and with not enough reason to work to extend it. We are easing this change back a bit:

  • Voidform increases spell damage by 20% (up from 10%)
  • Insanity drain increase per second in Voidform reduced by 15%
  • Void Bolt Insanity generation increased by 25%

Dispersion
Dispersion’s damage reduction has been increased to 75% (up from 60%). We agree that because it comes with the penalty of not being able to cast spells, it deserves to be stronger. Additionally, it now increases movement speed by 50%.

A new talent Intangibility replaces Mania (which was similar to and far less popular than Body and Soul), and reduces Dispersion’s cooldown by 25% and causes it to heal you for 50% of your maximum health over its duration.

Shadowform’s Physical Damage Reduction
Shadowform’s 10% physical damage reduction was intended to feel like a bonus to Shadowform, but instead felt like a penalty to Voidform, since you lose that defensive benefit going into Voidform.

We’re replacing this bonus from Shadowform with the Focused Will passive (which the other two Priest specs already have), causing melee abilities and attacks to reduce all damage taken by 15% for 8 sec.

Hallucinations
Hallucinations (the PvP talent) is becoming a baseline passive, and allows your successful Dispel Magic, Mass Dispel, Purify Disease, Vampiric Embrace, and Power Word: Shield casts to generate 6 Insanity (same amount per cast as your filler, Mind Flay).

This give you more freedom to use your on-global cooldown utility buttons, especially in Voidform, without incurring as much damage loss, since Insanity is constantly draining.

Other talent adjustments worth mentioning:

  • Mind Bomb and Psychic Scream now take 40% longer to break from damage.
  • Void Torrent generates 30 Insanity over its duration and deals 20% increased damage. Additionally, no longer requires Voidform to cast, so you can choose to use it on a priority damage target at any time.
  • Lingering Insanity fades every 3 sec instead of every 2 sec.
  • Surrender to Madness cooldown reduced by 33% and penalty duration reduced by 50%.

Dev Watercooler: Inside the World of Warcraft Classic BlizzCon Demo

Quote from: Blizzard

Hello World of Warcraft community! With BlizzCon 2018 getting closer every day, we wanted to give you an update on what you’ll be experiencing at BlizzCon around WoW Classic. We’ve been hard at work on bringing the original Azeroth back to life, and we’re excited that you’ll be able to get your hands on the demo we’re creating for the show—both at BlizzCon and at home with the Virtual Ticket.

What to Expect

From the beginning of this project, the team’s mission has been to be as faithful as possible to World of Warcraft as it existed back in 2005 and 2006, before Cataclysm altered the world as we knew it—and we wanted to make sure the demo we built for the show was a clear reflection of that. The focus of the demo is on outdoor questing, and we’ve selected two iconic zones that most original WoW players will no doubt be familiar with—Barrens for the Horde and Westfall for the Alliance—so you can step back in time and experience these zones as they were originally designed. You’ll be able to search for Mankrik’s wife, curse at Ornery Plainstriders for not having beaks, and make a group to kill Defias Pillagers in Moonbrook. You might even get to improvise a new rotation against the Harvest Golems in Farmer Saldean’s farm, since in this era, mechanical creatures may be immune to some of your abilities. We brought all of that back, and we’re as excited about it as you are.

Because it’s a demo, there’ll will be some limitations on the content: the Deadmines and Wailing Caverns dungeons won’t be available, the only PvP will be dueling, and you won’t be able to visit zones other than Westfall and the Barrens.  We also typically limit the time our BlizzCon attendees can play a demo, and that will be the case for BlizzCon WoW Classic Demo players at home. In order to maximize the number of people who can try out the demo, initially you’ll be logged off after playing for a certain amount of time to give somebody else a turn. We haven’t determined exactly how long this time limit will be yet, but we’re also planning some flexibility, so if we’re able to relax the restriction and still give everyone who wants to play a great experience, then we’ll do that. If you do find your session has ended before you’ve done everything you wanted to, don’t worry—your character will be there when you get back in for your next session, and all your progress will be saved.

You’ll start the demo at level 15. While we know that starting at level 1 holds a lot of nostalgia, you’re also limited in what you can do when you’re first starting out. Given the time constraints of a BlizzCon demo, we wanted to give players some freedom to explore and experiment with core systems like talents or professions, which are unavailable at level 1. We also wanted you to be able to get a good sense of the original class played. At Level 15, warriors have Defensive Stance, priests have Psychic Scream, hunters have their pet, and so on—so at this level you really start to feel like your class has some of the key tools that make the class distinct. Additionally, all characters will be capped at Level 19. But you can create multiple characters, so you can try out as many different classes and races as you’d like!

What’s “New”

As we mentioned in our original Dev Watercooler blog we posted in June, we’re building WoW Classic on the foundation of our modern code base. That means you’ll be able to download the demo through the Blizzard Battle.net desktop app and use Battle.net chat integration in-game to ask your friend to come check out the Barrens with you. You’ll also find there’s improved support for widescreen monitors—so instead of the world looking stretched and distorted in widescreen, it’ll look like it did on your old 4:3 monitor. Only bigger!

All of the current game’s tools that help ensure World of Warcraft is a welcoming and fair environment, such as right-click player reporting, will also be in the BlizzCon WoW Classic Demo. Cheats, bots, and other exploitive behavior will also not be allowed, and the modern engine no longer permits some behaviors that could be used to get out of bounds. Support for 32-bit clients has also been removed. One of our core values is “Play nice; play fair,” and we want to do everything we can to ensure a few bad apples don’t ruin the experience for others.

You’ll also find that post-launch accessibility options such as colorblind mode are in the demo—though as we were working on it, we realized some words and images used in the current Accessibility panel come from the modern game. So we replaced the modern icons with some classic icons, and removed the term “Heirloom” since it doesn’t appear anywhere else in WoW Classic. It’s important to us that in situations like this we blend the old and the new in such a way that it still looks and feels like the game you remember.

See You in November!

We’re really excited about the BlizzCon WoW Classic Demo, and hope you are too! But we definitely don’t want to send the message that we’re done, because we’re not. There’s still lots of work left do, and the BlizzCon demo is an important step in the process of bringing the original WoW back to life as authentically as we can. This is a great chance for you to see the direction we’re heading and give us some early feedback, so be sure to leave your thoughts in the Classic section of the WoW forums.

Thanks for playing, and we’ll see you in Azeroth!

Mythic+ Azerite Armor Improvements

At the end of the week Blizzard came out with some changes to gaining azerite gear in Mythic+, allowing players to target specific items (and azerite traits) through a new currency in patch 8.1!

Quote from: Blizzard
Throughout the discussions regarding Azerite Armor, there’s been a lot of talk about how you earn Azerite pieces from Mythic+ dungeons. Players have told us – and we agree – that the process of earning Azerite Armor through Mythic+ feels overly based on luck, and that there isn’t enough control in the players’ hands. Even with our bad luck protection systems in place, the sheer number of potential Azerite pieces you can get from the weekly chest means that trying to get ahold of a specific piece feels hopeless.

That’s a problem we want to solve, and give you some control over the Azerite gear you earn through Mythic+. So here’s what we’re working on for Tides of Vengeance:

First, we’re adding a new (as yet unnamed) currency, which you’ll earn from your weekly Mythic+ chest as well as from scrapping (or disenchanting) epic-quality Azerite Armor. This currency is rewarded in addition to the item in the chest (which can no longer be an Azerite piece), and the amount you earn will scale up based on the highest level Keystone you’ve completed. For example, completing a level 10 Keystone will reward you with about three times as much as clearing a level 7. Similarly, scrapping higher-item-level Azerite pieces will give you significantly higher amounts of this currency than lower-level pieces.

To spend that currency, we’re bringing back an old friend: Thaumaturge Vashreen. He’ll have two main types of items for sale. The first are caches that reward a random dungeon Azerite Armor piece for a given slot (helm, shoulders, or chest). They’ll be separated out by item level as well (at 355, 370, and 385), with higher item level caches requiring significantly more currency to purchase.

But we recognize that with six or more options per slot, this may still not be enough control for high-end players who want to be able to work towards a specific piece that perfectly complements their build. Thus, Vashreen will also offer Item Level 385 versions of the specific dungeon Azerite Armor pieces for each class, sold at a premium.

We’re still nailing down the exact numbers, but our goal for tuning this new currency is that you’ll be able to purchase one of the Azerite caches that lines up roughly with the item level of the gear you’re getting from your Mythic+ runs every two or three weeks, with the specific 385 pieces as long-term goals for top players.

Overall, we believe that this change will improve things in a lot of different ways:

  • Mythic+ players of all skill levels will now have a clear path to upgrading their Azerite slots
  • High-end Mythic+ players will have a way to target specific Azerite pieces to optimize their setups
  • Duplicate or unwanted Azerite pieces from other sources (such as raiding) now have some additional value
  • The piece of gear in your weekly chest will have a more reliable item level

You should see all of this hitting the Tides of Vengeance PTR sometime in the next week or so. We really do appreciate your feedback, and believe that this, in addition to the new traits and other improvements coming to the Azerite system in Tides of Vengeance, will help ease a lot of the concerns about Azerite Armor in Mythic+ and as a whole.

Quote from: Blizzard
Couple quick clarifications based on feedback so far:

  • Only Azerite Armor that drops after Tides of Vengeance is released will scrap/disenchant into the new currency. Don’t worry about hoarding the Azerite pieces you’re earning now.
  • When the next Mythic+ season starts, and item levels increase, the item levels of Thaumaturge Vashreen’s wares will increase accordingly.
  • We recognize that PvPers want more options and choice too. We’re talking about that separately.