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WoD Beta Raid Testing Schedule – July 28

After the stability issues last time there’s new raid testing coming on monday!

Quote from: Blizzard
On Monday, July 28, we will continue Warlords raid testing. As this is early in the overall beta raid testing cycle, it is quite possible that there will be technical or gameplay issues that disrupt the testing. Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.Remember that Heroic difficulty scales for any group size between 10 and 30 players, so feel free to assemble and bring a group of any size within that range. Our general plan is to test every encounter on Heroic difficulty first, and then test sections of the raid on Normal and Raid Finder, alongside targeted Mythic tests.

Each encounter should be available at approximately the listed times below on all Beta servers.twin orgron

Monday, July 28

Oregorger – Heroic Blackrock Foundry
10:30 PDT (13:30 EDT, 19:30 CEST)

Twin Ogron – Heroic Highmaul
16:00 PDT (19:00 EDT, 01:00 CEST)

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a beta environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the boss being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, fire, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

Important Testing Notes

Q: How do I get into the raid zone?

A: In Stormwind, Orgrimmar, Dalaran, Shattrath, the two Vale Shrines, and your garrison, you may speak to Nexus-Lord Donjon Rade in order to teleport into the raid zone while it is open for testing. (The option to teleport into a zone will not be available when the zone is not open for testing.) Note that new teleport NPC locations have been added to other expansions’ capital cities, as well as near the zone portals in Stormwind and Orgrimmar.

Q: What character should I use to test the raid?

A: Whichever you prefer. We will be scaling players’ effective level to 100 for raid testing, and their item level to an appropriate threshold for the encounter(s) being tested.

Q: How long does testing last?

A: The primary purpose of testing is to give us the information we need to balance the encounters, evaluate how mechanics are playing out in practice, and identify bugs. Once we’re satisfied that we’ve received that information for a given boss, we’ll be shutting down testing. Usually this takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours, but there are no guarantees.

Friday Morning News: Get to Your Choppa!, Rest Of Tanaan In Content Patch, Beta Patch Delayed

We got a tiny update on the Chopper from Azeroth Choppers.

Quote from: Blizzard
Get to Your Choppa!

The Horde chopper is on its way, and you need to log in now to claim it!

Your votes for Azeroth Choppers were counted, and one faction’s war cry roared loudest: the Horde bike will now be turned into a mount in World of Warcraft! Anyone who logs in to the game between now and September 30, 2014 will automatically have their account flagged to receive the Horde chopper upon the release of the upcoming Warlords of Draenor expansion. Everyone can (and should!) claim their chopper by logging in now, but as a reminder, only your Horde characters will be able to mount up and take it for a ride.

It turns out we’ll return to Tanaan Jungle (after the intro event) in a later patch!

Quote from: Blizzard
It’s not just Frostfire and Shadowmoon. Most Draenor zones have additional content at level 100. For example, there’s a bunch of content involving Shattrath at level 100 that we alluded to in the recent Talador preview:Even once the Iron Horde is routed out of Shattrath, the city will not remain safe for long, as new foes are waiting to emerge and lay claim to the city. The Sargerai are a sect of draenei who have aligned themselves with the Shadow Council to usher Gul’dan’s twisted schemes into fruition.

As to Tanaan, the rest of the zone has always been planned as patch content. The area past the Dark Portal is where the Iron Horde has amassed the majority of its army and resources. Naturally, it’s going to take some time for the Alliance and Horde to prepare to assault that directly.

And then finally/sadly, the WoD Beta patch has not finished being applied yet due to a power outage.

Quote from: Blizzard
Unfortunately due to the power outage that occurred our staff was forced to leave the office. As such, we won’t be able to finish the push tonight and bring the realms up.

Developer Insights: The Bloodlust of Rehgar

A nice developer interview has come out about Rehgar, the newest hero in Heroes of the Storm!

Quote from: Blizzard
It’s time for another Designer Insights in which we explore a hero’s design and mechanics. We’ll be chatting with Game Designer Kent-Erik Hagman about the Earthen Ring Shaman himself, Rehgar.
 
Trikslyr: Rehgar is a strong support who can certainly hold his own during combat. After learning the ways of the shaman through Thrall, Rehgar will now join the Nexus. How did the design team create a kit for a hero with a small amount of background lore to pull from?
Kent: So Rehgar’s kit, with respect to his core abilities and Bloodlust, actually all used to be available on Thrall, who was one of our support heroes at BlizzCon 2011. As we kept iterating on design and re-evaluating Heroes of The Storm, Thrall’s kit was set aside. After deciding how we wanted Heroes to play, we started bringing the older heroes back online. From there we received feedback internally from other team members, stating they really wanted to see Thrall laying down the hurt with Doomhammer. But we were really happy with the gameplay of Thrall’s previous kit, and wanted to keep it in our game. We decided to find another great hero that could easily fit the lore and theme of the kit, and Rehgar Earthfury was perfect for our goal. From there it was all about updating the design to our new standards and finding an awesome trait to tie it all together!
Trikslyr: Let’s take a second to look at Rehgar’s trait before diving into the process of the design. Rehgar can turn into a ghost wolf without a channel, allowing him to increase his movement speed instantly. In addition, basic attacks during ghost wolf hit for 100 percent more damage and cause Rehgar to change back to his regular form. What were the intentions of the design team with a different trait compared to what’s available in the Tech Alpha?
Kent: There are times with design, where we have a really strong mechanic for an ability, and we’ll look for ways to get the fantasy to bend to fit the mechanic. Then, there are Rehgar times: when we have an absolutely awesome flavor hit like ghost wolf and will rework the mechanics to fit the awesomeness of the fantasy. We thought it was a really awesome hook, and after playing it, immediately decided we needed to work around it. Oddly enough, it was one of the last pieces added to his kit, and is very defining of his playstyle, as it happened to synergize so well with the positional play of Lightning Shield and Earthbind Totem. As for the attack out of wolf form, it seemed like such a natural fit, and that went through a couple iterations before we settled on its current play.
Trikslyr: There are damage and utility options available for Rehgar in the talent selection screen. He reminds us of Tassadar, in terms of versatility. What are some of the talents players can look forward to when playing Rehgar?
Kent: Our talent designer, Matthew Cooper, knocked it out of the park with Rehgar. He has, in my opinion, one of the most fun talent trees to play with. Rehgar boasts so many options and synergies that you can create with his talent tree. There are games where I go for a full wolf harass build, where I’m using Feral Lunge (Rehgar’s attack from Ghost Wolf leaps at the target and does 200% bonus damage) constantly to poke my enemies, and stealth talents like Shadow Wolf to constantly evade my enemies when I’m running from them. There are games where I’m utilizing Lightning Shield often, and so I elect to grab the free Lightning Shields talent on my totems and double cast them on allies! Lightning for everyone!
Trikslr: Thanks for all the information! It’s time to end this episode of Designer Insights. You know the drill, let’s hear an awesome anecdote from playing Rehgar in the bullpen!
Kent: Rehgar’s second heroic ability, Ancestral Healing, heals a target for a massive amount after a short delay. There was a time (and this is reflected in the Level 20 talent for Ancestral Healing) when the heroic simply healed a target to full health (we were inspired by the Hearthstone card Ancestral Healing, but just couldn’t find a way to give taunt capability to a hero.) Well this was all fun and games until someone decided to take the Dragon Knight. While healing an ally for 15,000 HP in one go was certainly fun for one team, it was apparently not as fun for the other team. So yeah…. we had to change the ability!   A huge thank you Kent-Erik Hagman and the design team for taking time out of their day to chat with us about Rehgar.

Artcraft—Body Moovin’ (Female Tauren)

A new artcraft blog has come out today, this time for the female tauren!

Quote from: Blizzard

TaurenFemaleArtcraft01.jpg

We’re here with a brand-new Artcraft! I’m your host, Chris Robinson, senior art director on World of Warcraft, and today we’re showing you where we’re at with the female Tauren.

The original female Tauren had a lot of issues with too-angular geometry and stretched-out textures. It’s not her fault—it’s just what we had available to us at the time. Our new process has allowed us to add a lot of detail to her hair, fur, horns, and hooves, to build a far more detailed and expressive face, and to add a lot of definition to her musculature (while retaining her shape and silhouette).

TaurenFemaleArtcraft02.jpg

One other change of note: Warcraft character design is commonly known for its stylized long arms, large hands, and big feet, but the female Tauren’s hands were just completely out of control. We brought them down to a more consistent size with the other updated models, and were also able to add a ton more detail and dexterity in the process.

TaurenFemaleArtcraft03.jpg

We hope you enjoy her new look—let us know what you think in the comments!

New Beta Build With Spires of Arakk And Nagrand, Warcraft Movie Logo, Enchant Transmog

Lots of WoW news today! Another build is being pushed to the beta servers, opening the Spires of Arakk and Nagrand zones. This means all leveling zones will be open. The lvl cap will be bumped to lvl 100!

Quote from: Blizzard
In a soon-to-arrive build, we will be opening up Spires of Arakk and Nagrand, and will be raising the level cap to 100, leaving the entire level-up experience open for testing.We have a close eye on the feedback that is being posted on these forums, and over the next week or two, you should see resolution for many of the major issues that you’ve been encountering in the currently released zones.

Please, keep the feedback coming. It is extremely useful in helping us identify issues that don’t manifest in our internal environments, and your opinions on our content and systems are very important to us.

Thank you for all of your input and support.

Sadly this also means the characters are being wiped again!

Quote from: Blizzard
In preparation for the next beta build that is planned to go live July 25, we will be doing a character wipe on the beta realms. Once the new build is live, you will also notice that the realms have been renamed, and that you will be able to create level 100 PvP and PvE characters. For more information about the new realm names, check out the thread Lore recently posted here.

EDIT: Apologies for any confusion; characters are being wiped from the beta realms today.

Quote from: Blizzard
In an effort to make it clearer which Beta realms should be used for which types of testing, we’ll be renaming the current Beta realms with today’s maintenance. The realms are being renamed as follows:

Lost Isles (PvE) is being renamed to Beta Leveling Realm 01
Gilneas (PvP) is being renamed to Beta Leveling Realm 02
Mekkatorque (PvP) is being renamed to Level 100 PvP

As a result of the rename, some interface settings (such as combat log filters, or add-on configurations) may be lost, and will need to be reconfigured.

The logo for the Warcraft movie was shown today at the San Diego Comic Con!

It was also explained on twitter today that the enchanting garrison building will allow the changing of the visual effect of your enchants, which is effectively enchant transmogrification!

Ashran Feedback – A Word From Phalanx

With Ashran having opened up in the last WoD Beta there has been a lot of feedback. Game developer Phalanx wanted to respond to the feedback:

Quote from: Blizzard
Greetings everyone! This is my first post on the forum as a blue poster. I’m Chris Kaleiki, a Game Designer on World of Warcraft. I work specifically on Ashran with some guy you may know — Brian Holinka. I previously worked on class design, notably the design of the Monk.The feedback you guys are giving is fantastic! Well appreciated. I wanted to respond.

Wall of text inc —

I have feedback on the “Horde and Alliance Hubs” (aka the staging areas)
The Horde and Alliance staging areas are still being worked on by the world team. As for Ashran the world PvP zone, they have very little relevance. You may see some random PvP skirmishes there in the same way you see skirmishes in any Horde or Alliance capital, but they’re not meant to be part of the overall world pvp zone. While we do want your feedback on those areas, the PvP team’s involvement is pretty minimal so I suggest directing them towards the general discussions in this forum rather than this specific discussion.

I feel the size of Ashran is too small.
During Ashran’s early development we debated whether the zone should be larger, but we ultimately landed on its current size after concluding that if the zone were too big your chances of running into the opposite faction in your day to day excursions would be quite low. We want there to be a feeling that you’re sharing a limited resource with the opposing faction, and you have to fight over that resource. The bigger the zone, the less the opposite faction’s presence matters, and the less tension and ultimately the less world PvP will transpire.

That said, it could be possible that the zone could still stand to be larger. And if more players spill out into the side areas to where it gets too cramped, we may have to make changes. Keep in mind we also want to build onto Ashran in patch content.

What is the philosophy behind Ashran?
Ashran is a new type of PvP design. While it does have the spirit of old Alterac Valley, it’s not supposed to be purely an objective based map. Our goal here was to create situations in where players would engage in world PvP. These situations primarily are the outskirts areas, off the midlane.

In beta it is understandable that players are not reward driven. But on live, we expect players to be driven by getting honor and other rewards for their characters. The PvE on Ashran will be the most rewarding in that regard. The idea is that Horde and Alliance will be fighting over completing the side objectives and spawning and that will create interesting PvP situations (especially since you can loot other players currency). Even within the current incarnation of Ashran on beta I’ve experienced small unexpected fights in the outskirts areas.

We feel we’ve delivered on objective based win condition content through battlegrounds, but we haven’t delivered in giving players a sandbox environment where they can experience PvP similar to that of which you may have experienced before battlegrounds were created. We’re trying to do that with Ashran.

One of my most memorable moments of world pvp before battlegrounds were introduced into WoW was when my guildmates were farming for the frostsaber mount in Winterspring. They were being ganked by a Horde guild over and over, so some of our guildies went to help them out. The Horde guild responded by sending more of their guildmates. Then other random guilds joined in. Eventually, there were so many players in that area we crashed the server.

The spirit of that experience is what we’re trying to go for in a zone like Ashran.

What’s the deal with the middle lane?
The middle lane serves as a centerpiece of Ashran. It’s similar to that of Alterac Valley: a push/pull tug-of-war battle. While the road of glory isn’t exactly world PvP, this type of PvP is appealing to a number of players so we decided to include it in Ashran. It’s also nice to know that there is almost always going to be some battle going on there.

The middle lane wont’ really be very rewarding in terms of honor or currency. And we intentionally don’t have a way to “win Ashran.” Storming the enemy base and killing their commander will give you some reward and an achievement, but it’s not the main focus of the zone. If your time in Ashran is within the middle lane and storming the enemy base, you’re mostly doing that for the intrinsic fun of it.

What is the main objective?
We envision that most players will be coming to Ashran to farm honor and rewards. You’ll do that by killing creatures and participating in the side events. Along the way you’ll find items that boost your characters power (such as the class books, scrolls, wands etc.) and we hope you’ll get some PvP fights.There is no objective like “cap and hold these points, run this flag, kill this guy” like our other objective based maps. We’ve found that more objective heavy maps lead to more predictable gameplay, which lead to less interesting unexpected PvP fights… which defines the idea of “world pvp.”

That said, I would say some goals in the map would be as a faction to maintain the mage portals, warlock gateways, and spawn Fangraal/Kronus. They all serve to help your faction be more efficient in the zone.

Why does Ashran not put you into a group/raid?
Ashran is intended to simulate any other zone in WoW. If we put you into a huge group, that would insinuate that there is some global objective to win… which there really isn’t. We want you to be able to come to Ashran in a small group as you would in any zone to collect honor and other rewards.

That said, I can certainly see the utility of having a raid group if you’re in Ashran to just do some casual PvP in the road of glory. For that, we will just leave it to players to create those groups naturally. It’s a bit anti-social to be forced into a raid group if you don’t want to be in one.

Faction balance
Balancing Horde and Alliance populations is a priority. Current on beta, there is no population enforcement. It’s something we’ll be monitoring and tweaking going forward.

~

Thanks for reading all that!

Keep in mind Ashran is still in development. There are bugs, things will change, items will be put in, new side objectives added etc. We hope you’ll revisit Ashran as the builds progress in beta.