This week in Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor PvP gets an overhaul, a silver medal will be needed to queue for a random group for Heroic Dungeons, and is $60 a fair price for an additional instant lvl 90? Additionally note that next week there will not be a podcast.
There’s more information coming in from the different press interviews and now Ion Hazzikostas, Lead Encounter Designer, has posted a clarification about one of the interviews. He says the following:
Quote from: Blizzard
To at least get everyone on the same page in terms of information, since a summary of a translated version of a translation of a few sentences in a single interview may not be the best foundation for a 24-page discussion, here’s an overview of our current thinking:
- We will have Normal and Heroic versions of our max-level dungeons. (Note that we did not have Normal level 90 dungeons in Mists.)
- There will be no special requirement other than basic level/ilvl requirements on queuing for Normal dungeons or LFR.
- Level-up quest gear will get you into Normal dungeons/scenarios, and Normal dungeon/scenario gear will get you into LFR.
- Heroic dungeons will be more challenging than the Normal version (not brutally difficult, mind you — just somewhat more demanding).
- You will need a Silver Proving Grounds medal in a given role in order to queue for random matchmaking for a Heroic Warlords dungeon. If you form a premade group, you can zone in regardless and no such requirement applies.
In the past, challenging content and random matchmaking have often not gone so well together. Relying on item level does nothing to prevent a random group from getting, for example, a tank who may literally have never tanked before. Everyone has to learn somewhere, but we’d rather not have that learning come at other players’ expense. One option would be to require a full premade group to do Heroic Dungeons, as we do with Heroic Scenarios, but that would present a very high barrier to entry (finding 4 other people with rigid role requirements is much harder than finding 2 other people with no role requirements). This solution represents a compromise in order to allow the content to see a broader reach via matchmaking, while minimizing frustration.
And yes, we realize that by formally using Proving Grounds as a qualification, it will be incumbent upon us to further refine their balance and mechanics. We’ll be updating them for Warlords, and we’re confident that we can make them a fair test of baseline ability within a given role.
His second to last paragraph really explains the reasoning well, let’s hope the proving grounds update will provide more interesting game play!
New screenshots about Draenor have been released check them out in the gallery below!
Welcome to another Mezzy Talks! This time I’d like to talk about the screenshotted price of $60 for the lvl 90 character boost, ahead of Saturday’s podcast.
So on Tuesday after patch 5.4.7 hit the US servers for a short while you could see the following in the ingame blizzard shop:
On first glance this seems a bit much doesn’t it? It doesn’t come close to any other blizzard service in terms of price. And as expected a part of the community became mad over the price. And I in return, am frustrated beyond belief with those very people who refuse to think it through. Why? Because it’s a perfectly reasonable, maybe even cheap price. Let’s break it down shall we?
The original concept of the lvl 90 boost and it’s intent
The original lvl 90 boost when it was presented at blizzcon was to give a chance for new and returning players catch up to the current content and play with their friends when Warlords of Draenor was released. You would get the lvl 90 boost with Warlords of Draenor, the expansion. Now a rightfully so good question came up, what will prevent people from buying multiple games (accounts) and the expansion along with it, to get an extra lvl 90 which they can then transfer to another account on their battle.net account? The solution blizzard presented and are moving forward with is the instant lvl 90 also buyable in the ingame shop as a service to prevent the mass influx of what would really be dummy accounts, just for the extra lvl 90.
The price
So without that solution, what would people have to buy to get an additional lvl 90 on top of the free one they’re getting when they buy Warlords of Draenor for their main account? They would have to buy:
- The battle chest, which is currently $20
- Mists of Pandaria, which is currently $20
- Warlords of Draenor, which will likely be $40 for the normal edition and $60 for the collector’s edition
So until Mists of Pandaria gets added to the battle chest, to get the extra lvl 90 on top of the one they’ll already get on their main account they’d have to pay $80 for getting another account up to Warlords of Draenor. But we’re not done yet! They’d still have to buy the character transfer to transfer the character to their main battle.net account. Which as of right now, costs $25. So now we’re up to $105.
Assuming MoP gets added to the battle chest pretty quickly it will go down to $85. And that’s just from all the things you would have to buy to get that far.
Compared to the current situation
Instead of having to do all that, people will get to pay $25 less than it would require without this service. Then add to that the fact they do not have to spend any time lvling a character up. Time after all, is also a different kind of cost. Which for an extra one on top of the original one you’re getting, would be fair to add in the price. Anyone who is whining about the current price has absolutely no right to. Not only is it cheaper than the alternative that would’ve been without the service, it saves you time if you really want another instant lvl 90. If you don’t want to pay for another instant lvl 90, lvl a character up like you’re meant to do.
In closing, the instant lvl 90 is meant to catch up to your friends if you’re returning to WoW for warlords, or if you’re joining as a new player so you can play current content. The character service is only a measure to make it easier for you to get another instant lvl 90 character if you really want to dish out the cash in favor of lazyness. It is not meant for everyone to massively buy lvl 90 boosts when they play new characters.
The new female dwarf
In another surprise, not just one but now a second character model preview has come out this week! However instead of an Artcraft blogpost they put the new model up on the Warlords of Draenor website. The preview is a bit different from others but check it out here or the images down below (click on them for the full image)!
Blizzard WoD Press Tour
Blizzard also started a WoD Press Tour in Europe and Korea, so we can expect more information from those in the next few days/weeks! To start off with the french site Mamytwink.com got to play in Draenor and he gave his first impressions. The full article can be found here, below is a translation (My french is not brilliant but I’ll do my best):
- I played a Gnome Warrior in Shadowmoon Valley, the area of the alliance. After playing for about 5 hours and 80 quests I reached the end of the zone and lvl 92.
- The new character models are excellent. The facial expressions are great!
- At lvl 91 I had 63k health as a tank.
- Mobs had around 100k health.
- I did between 1k and 5k noncritical damage. I hit for 10k with crits.
- To get from lvl 90 to 91 I had to get 597k experience and 640k exp for 91-92.
- Quests grant between 10k and 15k exp with the hardest ones giving 20k experience.
- There’s a new type of quest, the bonus quest. When you walk into a zone bonus quests can appear in your list. If you complete them you’ll get bonus experience and if you leave the zone it’ll be removed.
- Shadowmoon Valley consists of big lush plains, everything happens in the moonlight. The surroundings are calm and feel good. The trees and plains are beautiful (colorful). The zone contains the Naaru, Draenei Villages and an Iron Horde base.
- The Alliance starting area is very far along. Many details, impressive vegetation and full of different types of mobs.
- I found a whole lot of The Burning Crusade mobs: Talbuks, Turtles, Larvas, Bears, Sporebats, Wolves, Bees. The new Talbuk and Sporebat models are EPIC.
- The Alliance area focusses on Sporebats, Draeni / Iron Horde. Ner’zhul is the main bad guy in the zone.
- The Zone ends with a scenario which I could not test. It’s called “Grommar’s Purge”.
- I got to listen to the new music which was very good.
- To conclude I thought the zone was really well done. The fact that it exists out of the colorful plains it immerses you in a new game with out a feeling of déjà vu (with the exception of the mobs but that’s not a real shock).
The Korean site Inven posted 3 videos with Warlords of Draenor footage on youtube:
Celestalon Tweets
And then to end this Warlords packed news post, Celestalon tweeted we’ll be seeing much more WoD information soon!
In the mean time, please hold tight, and forgive me for not answering every question until our big burst of info goes out. Thanks!
— Celestalon (@Celestalon) February 21, 2014
@JustinBHDev I don’t want to sidestep our wonderful community team with giving estimates yet, but it’s not far off.
— Celestalon (@Celestalon) February 21, 2014
@Hinalover Sooner than what we’ve commonly used Soon™ to refer to.
— Celestalon (@Celestalon) February 21, 2014
@ForAntics Yes.
— Celestalon (@Celestalon) February 21, 2014
So all in all we can hear the drums of Draenor getting closer!
Blizzard just released a new character model preview, and this time it’s the female orc model! Check out the preview below:
Quote from: Blizzard
Welcome to the third edition of Artcraft! I’m Chris Robinson, senior art director for World of Warcraft, and today we’ll be discussing the revamp of the female Orc model. As part of that, we’ll touch on our overall character redesign philosophy, show before and after images, talk about our art process with this particular model, and give you a glimpse at some of her awesome facial expressions courtesy of our animation team.
Before we start talking specifically about the female Orc update, I’d like to address some questions we’ve received regarding our goals for these revamps. Boiling it down to essentials, our primary focus is to upgrade the aspects of player character models that currently exist in-game.
We’re all creative people with tons of great ideas, and we could certainly keep designing and redesigning and never actually release anything—and while we’d no doubt have a lot of fun doing that, obviously we need to set specific goals so we can actually create finished artwork for you to see and play. That’s not always easy to do—we’re a passionate bunch, and we get incredibly excited about new features and want to do everything. Nonetheless, staying focused and keeping the scope reasonable (while still ambitious) helps us stay on track and avoid having to make painful cuts later on down the line. We really wanted to prevent that with the player-character revamp, so we made the decision early on to stay focused on improving what already exists in-game, and making sure we really nail it.
That said, we’ve also read your great ideas and feedback about features that you’d like to see as character customization options. Your collective voice matters to us, and we’d love to bring some of the coolest ideas to life someday if we can. We’ll continue to share behind-the-scenes information with you in these Artcraft pieces, and I look forward to giving you more insight into our plans for character models beyond the initial release of Warlords of Draenor.
Enough about philosophy—now on to the female Orc!
We’ve actually been working on this particular model for quite some time now. You may have caught some brief glimpses of her new model in the Warlords of Draenor announcement cinematic at BlizzCon. Since then, we’ve been balancing our effort among all of the models currently in progress, and she’s received some additional polish along the way.
When we first discussed the direction for this character, I think we all agreed right off the bat that we wanted to focus on her “warrior” side a little more. That means moving away from the more doe-eyed version we know now toward a character you would expect to see fighting on the front lines alongside any of her Horde brothers and sisters. We’re still ironing out the fine details, so the art you see here is subject to change, but I’ll let Senior 3D Artist Dusty Nolting and Lead Animator Steve Aguilar expand a bit on where we currently are with our green-skinned . . . oh wait, green and brown-skinned, long-tusked heroine.
Lead Animator Steve Aguilar:
“The original female Orc’s facial expression is pretty much a blank stare, which sadly doesn’t convey much life or personality. We wanted to give her more of an edge so she would project a confident ‘Don’t mess with me!’ attitude. Now that these new high-definition models have a facial rig attached, the animators can bring to life the personality that has been so sorely missing. She now looks and feels more like you’d expect an Orc to. When you get your hands on the expansion, be sure to take a look at her talking animations, dancing animations, and emotes to see all the various expressions the team has created for her.”
Character Artist Dusty Nolting adds:
“Orcs are one of the most iconic parts of the Warcraft universe. Because she’s so identifiable, it was important for us to use the original female Orc as a starting point and stay true to the silhouette and proportions that existed. The goal was a new model with much higher fidelity, while still retaining that classic look. We want a strong female counterpart to the male, equally battle-ready in appearance, yet still feminine.”
That’s all we have for the female Orc right now. We hope you’re continuing to enjoy this series as we invite you to meet the team, get some insight into our development process, and get an early look at some of the art we’re creating for Warlords of Draenor.
Thanks, and see you next time!
Let’s start off with the most recent news, the price for a lvl 90 character boost was shown on the US servers today, a wooping $60! Is it a fair price? I have a hunch we’ll be discussing it on the podcast this week, so check it out saturday night!
Next up, Patch 5.4.7 has hit the US servers and will hit the EU servers in the morning. Blizzard has released the patch notes for the patch, of which you can find the full notes here. However some highlights that are not class balance changes:
Quote from: Blizzard
Creatures
Celestials now drop Season 15 Prideful Gladiator gear in place of Season 14 Grievous Gladiator gear.
Rare spawns in Krasarang Wilds now award Honor Points only when they are defeated for the first time each day.
NPC guards around PvP vendors on the Serpent’s Spine have been upgraded to have more health and deal more damage.
Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
Siege of Orgrimmar
Garrosh Hellscream
Garrosh Hellscream and Minions of Y’Shaarj now have less health on 10-player Heroic difficulty.
Unstable Iron Stars now triggered when 4 or more players are together (up from 3 players) on 10-player Heroic difficulty.
PvP
Season 15 has begun! With the start of the new season, Prideful Gladiator gear, and weapons are now available for purchase.
Season 14 Grievous Gladiator gear and weapons can now be purchased using Honor Points instead of Conquest Points.
Base Resilience for level-90 players is now 77% (up from 72%). Base Resilience for players below level 90 remain at 40%.
Resilience Diminishing Returns curve for Resilience has been adjusted for the new base resilience value to maintain the same value per point of Resilience as previously.
Battle Fatigue now reduces healing received while in PvP combat by 60% (up from 55%).
Gladiator’s Distinction, the set bonus for wearing two PvP trinkets, now grants 5280 Resilience (up from 2600).
Battlegrounds and Arenas
Arenas
For the 2v2 Arena bracket, Dampening is now applied to the match starting at the 5 minute mark (down from 10 minutes).
For 3v3 and 5v5 Arena brackets, there is no change. Dampening will continue to be applied at the 10 minute mark.
Alterac Valley
The following NPCs now have more health and deal more damage.
Alliance: Vanndar Stormpike, Balinda Stonehearth, Stormpike Defenders, Stormpike Bowman, and all Marshals.
Horde: Captain Galvangar, Drek’thar, Frostwolf Guardian, Frostwolf Bowman, and all Warmasters.
The following NPCs are now immune to disarm, daze, and Death Grip.
Alliance: Vanndar Stormpike, Balinda Stonehearth
Horde: Captain Galvangar, Drek’thar
Terrain outside of Frostwolf Keep has been modified to prevent players from jumping over the walls.
And then finally, blizzard came out with a blogpost today about some updates to their plans for PvP in warlords of Draenor! Highlights are the scrapping of trial of the gladiator, the return of skirmishes and the addition of the much requested Spectator mode! Check out the full article below:
Quote from: Blizzard
Warlords of Draenor will introduce tons of new features and updates to improve and expand upon many aspects of World of Warcraft, including the PvP experience. We gave you a first look at some of our PvP plans BlizzCon, and as with any development process, plans can sometimes change as they—well—develop. We’d like to share a few of those changes with you today.
The Tale of Trial of the Gladiator
At BlizzCon, we unveiled plans for a new form of ranked Arena competition called the Trial of the Gladiator, a mode of play that would available during certain hours and which would require players to use a special Trial-only set of gear. The goal was to concentrate high-level competition to specific times, to better match players against competitive opponents, and to make exploitation more difficult.
While there were a lot of potential benefits to that system, ultimately we agree with some of the concerns community has raised about the way it worked. Ultimately, players who couldn’t play during the pre-set times for Trial of the Gladiator might feel like they’re missing out, and it was possible that normal Arena games would lose a lot of their replay value without rating to push for. Because of these issues, we’ve decided not to continue development of Trial of the Gladiator and to focus our efforts on giving players more ways to find PvP that suits them—so here’s what we’re doing instead:
Arena for Everyone: Skirmishes
You might recall the Skirmish feature that went alongside ranked Arena play when that feature was first introduced. It was virtually identical to ranked play, with the exception that there was no ladder or rating involved. However, Skirmishes felt very redundant at the time, and few players took advantage of them, so they were removed with the release of Cataclysm. However, as more and more players get involved in PvP, a higher demand for a form of “lower-pressure” Arena gameplay made us think it was time to revisit the Skirmish idea . . . and make a few important improvements along the way.
In Warlords of Draenor, Skirmishes will return as a form of unranked Arena play that will allow you to queue for 2v2 or 3v3 battles with friends or by yourself. Winning a Skirmish will reward you with Honor and a random bonus, which could be gold, more Honor, a small amount of Conquest Points, or possibly something entirely different. We think this will be a great way for players who haven’t tried Arenas before to get their feet wet, and will allow experienced players to experiment with alternate specs or builds without worrying about tanking their rating.
But Wait, There’s More: Spectator Invite System
While Skirmishes should provide a great opportunity for some more laid-back PvP gameplay, we also wanted to address top-end competition as well. Tournament organizers, often with the use of various third-party add-ons, have been able to piece together a “spectator mode” of sorts and run online tournaments, but they’ve been required to jump through several hoops to actually make that work. We’d like to simplify that process and put more power in the hands of add-on developers so that community-run tournaments will be easier to organize, manage, and broadcast.
Our new Spectator Invite system will allow a match organizer to invite two teams to play against each other in a PvP spectacle called a War Game. Then, when the match begins, everyone in the match organizer’s party will be able to watch those two teams duke it out. We’ll also be opening this feature up to add-on developers so they can come up with tools for tournament organizers to customize how the match is presented on the screen. Finally, we’ll be providing Tournament Mode gear—a special set of gear that can only be used in War Games—to help tournament runners ensure that all players are on equal footing.
We’re excited for these new features, and we feel they’ll allow a much broader spectrum of players to be able to find a type of PvP gameplay they enjoy. Whether you’re looking to compete against the best of the best in a tournament or just want to hang out and relax with a little bloodshed, we hope these updates provide something for the PvPer in you.