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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.

Dev Q&A 11 October 2018 Summary

Another Dev Q&A with Game Director Ion Hazzikostas is about to take place over on the Warcraft Twitch channel. We’ll be liveblogging the answers here!

Azerite

  • The goal of the azerite changes with the 5th azerite trait ring coming up in season 2 is more spec customization
  • You’ll have access to multiple spec specific traits with the 5th ring changes in patch 8.1
  • It would be simpler for a player to be able to choose Azerite traits on a piece of Azerite Gear per spec, like tier gear used to change to the spec bonuses, however tier gear was an exception. Just like ring and trinkets, you want to have unique Azerite gear pieces for each spec if you want the specialized traits. There is also the respeccing option to change traits when you change spec. You can always choose the generic bonuses to use in all specs, the difference between traits is only a few % in terms of power. The player has the choice to choose how they want to play and how far they want to go with continuous optimization.
  • For patch 8.1 they’re looking at resetting the azerite respec costs for all players during big azerite trait balance patches
  • All azerite items, including from mythic+, will get the 5th ring
  • The devs are not happy with how little azerite gear drops from mythic+ because of it only being from the weekly chest, they are looking for a middleground solution for this.
  • Azerite traits that do not describe what they do, will do so in the next patch. You should not have to consult 3rd party sites to understand what an azerite trait does.
  • Some current azerite traits that were less successful will be retired in 8.1.

Classes

  • Tank balance is something the team is looking at. Monks and DKs are a bit too strong, but other weaker classes are also being looked at.  A big part of a tank’s role is to organize the battle field, toolkits are also being looked at.
  • Resto shamans are extremely strong at AoE, not so much when people are spread out and single target healing is needed. The numbers and a few talents are being looked at. At the same time the very strong healing specs such as disc priests are being looked at so that the disparity between healers is less big.
  • They are keeping an eye on the high burst metagame of the current arena PvP meta. Unholy Death Knights, Shadow Priests and Afflication warlocks will be receiving some changes on the PTR.

Warfronts

  • The warfronts will run in 2 cycles to complement each other. When 8.1 launches the Alliance will be able to attack in Darkshore right away, they will not need to contribute resources first.
  • You cannot group with raid groups for warfronts because the pacing with a full organized group made the experience less fun. They are looking at a new mode for warfronts that are tuned around fully organized groups.

Allied Races

  • There are currently no plans to look at Death Knights for allied races, they will look at it in the future
  • They intend to double the amount of rep you get from old world quests to help speed up the time you need to unlock Legion allied races

Raiding

  • They’re looking at changing the name of the new raid to Battle of Dazar’Alor
  • They’re looking at making the kill order of the 9 bosses for Alliance and Horde the same, so in practice boss 9 may be the same boss but there might be some differences between Horde and Alliance which could spark a debate over the World First race
  • Raid trinkets should be balanced better, they should be more interesting and better budgeted compared to trinkets from World Quests
  • They’re looking at more unique rewards from raiding, they don’t believe tier sets made a big impact on that. For a long time you’ve been able to PuG to piece together tier sets in the first few weeks of a raid’s release.

Other

  • For Island Expeditions they’re looking to add a lot more unique objectives and events for island Expeditions. An example for the next patch is that you’ll be able to place an azerite extractor at a certain point that will give you a steady poor of azerite over the entire time you’re on the island. The opposing faction will be able to steal this away from you.
  • In RP realms old zones will not be sharded, however in the new realms sharding is used for performance and gameplay reasons. This also functioned as such in Legion.
  • Changes to Group Finder for mythic+ are still in the works.
  • Alt friendliness has been discussed a lot for 8.1. For the War Campaign quest completion, significant amounts of reputation will be rewarded. Horde and Alliance assaults will be ways to level alts up as well. They are also looking at a Bind on Account item to unlock all flight paths. And more is planned!

Hotfixes: October 4/5, 2018, Upcoming Azerite Armor Improvements

In the last few days new hotfixes were deployed. In addition to that changes to Azerite Gear were announced to alleviate some of the concerns the community has had.

Hotfixes: October 4/5, 2018

Quote from: Blizzard

October 5, 2018

Items

  • Heart of Azeroth
    • Retaliatory Fury should now activate from abilities cast on friendly targets.

Player versus Player

  • Rogue
    • Assassination
      • The Fan of Knives radius increase granted by Flying Daggers (PvP Talent) and Fan of Blades (Azerite Trait) no longer stack.
      • Fan of Blades effectiveness reduced by 75% when engaged in combat with enemy players.

Hotfixes

October 4, 2018

Achievements

  • Fixed a bug that caused The Faceroller to be impossible to complete.
  • Resolved an issue where credit for Expert Expeditioner was being granted in Heroic Island Expeditions.

Classes

  • Paladin
    • Fixed a bug causing Holy Paladins’ Judgment debuff to be incorrectly consumed by other Paladins.
  • Warrior
    • Fury
      • Death Wish can no longer be cancelled. This was your wish.

Items

  • Fixed an issue where Darkmoon Deck: Fathoms could be triggered by non-damaging abilities.
  • Heart of Azeroth
    • Fixed a bug causing the bonus damage from Shrouded Suffocation to fall off if the rogue used Garrote on another target.
    • Fixed an issue where Steady Aim could not be applied to an enemy by multiple Marksmanship Hunters.
    • Fixed an issue causing Retaliatory Fury to not proc correctly on heals on friendly players.

Player versus Player

  • Fixed a bug that caused players to be stuck at 99% progress towards the Season Reward mount (Vicious War Clefthoof/Riverbeast).

Quests

  • “Pages of History” can now be completed.
  • Image of Zardrax the Empowerer no longer evades during “Paybacks a Lich”.

User Interface

  • Fixed a bug which prevented the weekly Call to Arms World Quests from displaying their 50 Conquest rewards.

Upcoming Azerite Armor Improvements

Quote from: Blizzard
Thanks for all of the continued feedback and discussion around the Azerite Armor system. We’ve been following the community discussions closely, and the systems team has been focusing on making some improvements as their top priority. I’ve got some updates to share on our current thoughts, as well as some upcoming changes.

To start, here’s some of the bigger issues we’ve been seeing brought up:

  • Overall Availability: While there’s plenty of Azerite Armor in the 295-340 item level range, further sources are heavily limited and susceptible to bad luck. Even players who are doing a wide range of high-end content are still wearing at least one Item Level 340 piece, despite having replaced all their other gear several times over. Everything else about the system is basically irrelevant if you can’t get your hands on the gear in the first place.
  • Lack of Agency: When items do drop, it can feel like you’re not really given much in the way of options. You can choose whether you want this to be a Fire or a Frost piece, or a versatile one with a generic trait, but that isn’t necessarily an interesting choice. And when you look at the complete package, those choices don’t often feel like they’re having a meaningful impact on how you play your character.
  • Trait Depth: Several of the traits that are considered the “best” mathematically turn out to be some of the simplest mechanically, which reinforces the sense that the system isn’t really affecting gameplay.

We agree that those issues need to be resolved. So, here’s a few changes we’re working on:

  • We need to make Azerite Armor more available, for all types of players, through a method everyone can utilize. So we’re actually looking at Emissary rewards for that. The plan is to make Azerite Armor rewards from Emissary quests scale all the way up to 370 (based on your item level), which gives everyone a new, reliable source for appropriate gear. Further on, we’re looking at making some further improvements to the ways Emissaries reward gear, but getting more Azerite Armor in your hands is the higher priority for the immediate future.
  • When we add new Azerite Armor in what we’re calling “BfA Season 2” (starting with Siege of Zuldazar and its corresponding Mythic+ and PvP seasons), we’re going to add another outer ring to those pieces of gear that has two spec-specific trait options for each spec. This effectively means that your favorite traits will be available on a lot more items, while also opening up a lot more options across the scope of all of your Azerite pieces (and thus, we hope, create more interesting decisions).
  • We’re also going to continue to work on the individual traits themselves. We’ve done some basic tuning so far, but we’re taking the lessons we’ve learned from these first iterations forward, and Tides of Vengeance will bring new traits into the pool that reflect that. Our goal is to make the more generic traits be decent middle-of-the-road options for when you want to use a single piece for multiple situations or specs, but make sure the spec-specific options (which are generally the more interesting traits) win out in their respective environments.

Some of those changes won’t be coming until Tides of Vengeance (and you’ll see them on the PTR soon), but the overall availability of Azerite Armor is a much more pressing concern, so we’re investigating ways of hotfixing that directly into the live game. I don’t have a solid timeline on when that might be yet, but we’ll definitely have more information to share as soon as we can confirm when that can happen.

Quote from: Blizzard
Got a couple additional notes from the development team based on your initial responses:

  • When Siege of Zuldazar opens, loot from other sources will also increase in quality. So BfA Season 2 PvP rewards will have 5 rings, as well as M+ drops from existing dungeons, etc. Those rewards will be higher ilvl to reflect the new season. The change isn’t retroactive (items you already have won’t be upgraded), but basically all endgame loot will have 5 rings once we’re in Season 2.
  • Emissary Azerite armor still scales with your item level – it’s not just a flat increase. The goal is to make sure that if you have a high item level, regardless of the source of that gear (raiding, PvP, M+, etc.), you have a reliable source of comparable Azerite rewards.
  • The reason we chose Emissaries for this is that it’s an issue affecting a wide range of players, not just those who are clearing Mythic+ dungeons. Adding them to Mythic+ would indeed be a great solution if you’re a player who’s already focused on completing high-level keystones, but doesn’t really help people who just want to stick to raiding or PvP. Emissaries are accessible to everyone.
  • 370 is just the current Azerite cap for the hotfix we’re working on. When Season 2 begins and the overall quality of rewards goes up, that cap will increase.

Hotfixes: October 2, 2018

A new round of hotfixes with class balance changes is out! Check out the full list below:

Quote from: Blizzard

October 2, 2018

Classes

  • Death Knight
    • Unholy
      • All damage increased by 4% (includes pets).
  • Druid
    • Feral
      • All damage increased by 4%.
  • Mage
    • Fire
      • All damage increased by 5%.
  • Priest
    • Shadow
      • Mind Flay damage increased by 10%.
      • Mind Sear damage increased by 15%.
  • Shaman
    • Elemental
      • Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Earthquake damage increased by 15%.
    • Enhancement
      • All damage increased by 5%.
    • Restoration
      • All healing increased by 4%.
      • Healing Surge healing increased by 6%, and mana cost slightly reduced.
  • Warlock
    • Demonology
      • Shadow Bolt, Demonbolt, and Call Dreadstalkers damage increased by 15%.
  • Warrior
    • Protection
      • Vanguard now increases armor by 50% of Strength (was 45%).
      • Vanguard increases Stamina by 40% (was 35%).

Items

  • Heart of Azeroth
    • Fixed an issue where Archive of the Titans was not stacking in combat unless the player was actively attacking an enemy.

Player versus Player

  • The incapacitate effect of Enhancement Shamans’ Sundering can now be removed by abilities such as Gladiator’s Medallion and Ice Block.
  • Alterac Valley
    • Creatures in Alterac Valley will now deal more damage and have more health for players at level 120 with higher iLevel gear.
  • Isle of Conquest
    • Demolishers now deal less damage to Siege Gunners and players.
    • Damage done by Siege Engine against players has been reduced.

Quests

  • During “The Hunt for Sylvanas”, Tobias Mistmantle is now easier to follow.

Hotfixes: October 1, 2018

The first set of hotfixes after the weekend are here with in particular changes to alchemy recipes, Timewalking nerfs and The Warfront war research getting a change!

Quote from: Blizzard

October 1, 2018

Classes

  • Monk
    • Fixed an issue where Rising Mist healed some targets that don’t have the caster’s HoTs.

Island Expeditions

  • Resolved additional issues that could prevent players from gaining progress in Island Expeditions for the weekly quests Azerite for the Horde / Azerite for the Alliance.

Items

  • Heart of Azeroth
    • Fixed a bug that caused Spiteful Apparitions (Shadow Priest) to deal less damage than intended.
    • Fixed an issue that unintentionally reduced the damage of Last Surprise (Unholy Death Knight) by 12%.
    • Fixed an issue where Reorigination Array would sometimes not grant the appropriate amount of secondary stat.

Professions

  • Alchemy
    • The ratio of Siren’s Pollen and Riverbud required for Battle Potion of Agility has been adjusted.
    • Ingredients required to create Potion of Rising Death and Potion of Bursting Blood have been reduced.
    • Minimum range required for Potion of Rising Death’s damage effect to reach full value reduced to 20 yards (was 30 yards).

Timewalking

  • End Time
    • Murazond and the Ghouls in the Sylvanas encounter have had their health significantly reduced.
  • The Stonecore
    • High Priestess Azil’s Gravity Well no longer deals excessive damage.

Warfronts

  • Fixed an issue preventing the “Lost Caravan” event from spawning in the Alliance version of Battle for Stromgarde.
  • The Research option “War Resourcer” has been changed. It is now: Establish access to resources outside of the Warfront, allowing you enter the battle with 80 Iron and 20 Wood.

World Quests

  • “Nez’ara” should now properly reset when she has no enemies to attack.
  • “Running Interference” should now reset properly.

Hotfixes: September 26, 2018

A small round of bugfixes came out last night.

Quote from: Blizzard

September 26, 2018

Dungeons and Raids

  • Uldir
    • Coagulated Bloods roaming the halls of Uldir now inflict a maximum of 3 stacks Roiling Blood on Raid Finder difficulty.
  • Waycrest Manor
    • Fixed an issue where the Heartsbane Triad would not be able to cast Claim the Iris if the iris was not in line of sight.
    • Fixed a bug where the player may remain stunned even if Soulbound Goliath’s Soul Thorns on them were destroyed.

Player versus Player

  • Hunter
    • Survival
      • Sticky Tar now properly reduces the target’s melee attack speed and auto-attack damage.
  • Warrior
    • Fury
      • Fixed a bug that caused Death Wish to only increase damage taken from Physical abilities, instead of all damage as intended.

Warfronts

  • Players who are Away From Keyboard will now be automatically removed from the Warfront.

World Quests

  • Fixed a bug that caused the gryphon mount to disappear and prevent completion of “Saving Xibala”.