Day: February 18, 2010

We have several changes planned for Battlegrounds in the next minor content patch and would like to share them with you now. This patch will be available for public testing and we encourage you to participate, queue up and provide some feedback on these changes.

• Firstly, say goodbye to Battleground Marks of Honor. We feel this currency system is a bit outdated and are getting rid of it. Any items which require these marks as currency will have their costs adjusted appropriately to remove this requirement. The quest NPCs will still be available to award players Honor for turning in leftover marks, but this is only to help players clear this expired currency.
• Next, the Battleground holiday weekend will now be denoted as “Call to Arms” in the Battleground tab and Calendar. If you prefer a specific Battleground over all others, look for those words next to its name to determine whether or not you’ll receive bonus Honor. The bonus awards for Call to Arms Battlegrounds have been adjusted.
• Winning a Call to Arms Battleground for the first time in a day will award players with 30 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
• Additional Call to Arms Battleground victories after the first win for a player that day will award them with 15 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
• Losing a Call to Arms Battleground will award players with 5 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.

• To bring the rate at which players obtain PvP rewards with Honor more in-line with the rate at which players obtain PvE rewards via the Dungeon Finder, we’ll also be increasing the amount of Honor awarded for an Honorable Kill by 100%. In light of this, the amount of experience provided from an Honorable Kill, and the amount of Honor awarded for completing the Wintergrasp weekly quests, have been reduced by 50%.

  It’s important to note one thing about these 50% decreases. All Honor awarded for completing objectives in Battlegrounds and Wintergrasp is actually based on an Honorable Kill conversion rate. So if you destroy a tower in Alterac Valley for example, the Honor you’re awarded is actually based on a flat number of Honorable Kills. Since Honorable Kills will now award 100% more Honor, completing such objectives will also award more Honor. This is why experience gains based on completing Battleground objectives and Honor awarded from the Wintergrasp quests are being decreased by 50%.

• Now that we hopefully have your attention, we’re pleased to announce the implementation of the Random Battleground system! This system will work virtually the same as the Random Dungeon option in the Dungeon Finder. Players can queue with a group of up to five players for a Random Battleground in the Battleground tab. As with the Random Dungeon option, the Battleground chosen will not be revealed until players zone into the Battleground for which they are selected. The bonus rewards for this system are identical to the updated Call to Arms bonuses.
• Winning a Battleground using the Random Battleground option for the first time in a day will award players with 30 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
• Winning additional Battlegrounds using the Random Battleground option after the first random win will award players with 15 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
• Losing a Battleground using the Random Battleground option will award players with 5 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
• When using the Random Battleground option, players will not receive additional rewards if the Battleground chosen is under the effects of the Call to Arms bonuses. In other words, the bonuses do not stack. In addition, if a player has been rewarded 30 Honorable Kills worth of bonus Honor currency from either the Random Battleground system, or the Call to Arms Battleground, he or she will be rewarded 15 Honorable Kills worth of bonus Honor currency that day for each additional victory. This applies whether the Random Battleground system is used, or the Call to Arms Battleground is chosen specifically, as a player cannot be rewarded the full amount of bonus Honor more than once per day.

All of these features and changes will be available in the next minor patch which should be hitting the public test realms in the near future. Please help us out by testing this system and providing your feedback so we can make some fine-tuning adjustments before the patch's release.

Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. Keep in mind that some of these changes may not be active until after the realm has been restarted.

To review previous in-game fixes, please visit: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21723843880&sid=1

02/17

• The drop rate of Frost Lotus, from herbs in Northrend, has been increased by 50%.

On Tuesday, Feb. 16, we were honored to host a special event at our Irvine, Calif. headquarters to mark the donation of more than $1.1 million to the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Make-A-Wish Foundation International, two organizations that grant the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions in 36 countries around the world.

This donation, which was based on 50 percent of the total sales during November and December of the Pandaren Monk pet for World of Warcraft, was ultimately made possible by the World of Warcraft community. We appreciate the support the community showed for this important cause.

As part of yesterday's event, we invited 15 wish children and their families to tour the Blizzard campus, meet with the World of Warcraft development team, and participate in a variety of fun activities. Check out the press release to read more about the event, and visit the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Make-A-Wish Foundation International websites to learn more about these organizations.

Over the past few months there has been much speculation about the future of the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game and Miniatures Game and due to ongoing discussions, we haven’t been able to provide any clear answers until now.

After long and careful deliberation, Upper Deck International (UDI) will not be renewing its World of Warcraft license agreements with Blizzard Entertainment. We’ve had a fantastic time working on the World of Warcraft brand and feel we have produced some of the most compelling TCG and Miniatures Game products since the turn of the century. Unfortunately, due to gradually declining sales over the past few years and the overall downturn in the economic climate, we have had to make the tough decision to discontinue our World of Warcraft product lines.

UDI World of Warcraft products will be available until the end of March. Upcoming products such as the Class Starter Deck, Wrathgate Booster, Souls of Vengeance Starter, Deluxe Starter and Booster will not go into production.

We know this is disappointing news for all World of Warcraft fans and want to thank players and retailers for their ongoing support over the years.
Being part of such a great and passionate community has truly been a privilege.

We are currently working with Blizzard Entertainment to facilitate a smooth transition as they work on their own plans for a World of Warcraft Trading Card Game.
Further announcements on this transition will follow over the coming weeks.

We will be pulling out all the stops to send off the UDI World of Warcraft lines in style. Look out for special events at your local gaming store with some of the greatest prize support ever and a final opportunity to complete your collection.

Joeri Hoste
Category Manager Trading Card Games
Upper Deck International

Carl Crook
International Marketing & Community Manager
Upper Deck International

Are we done with game balance changes until Cataclysm?
We're not done until Cataclysm actually ships. (Source)

Housing
While this originally came up before I was around, I think this has been answered at some BlizzCons since then. While we think this could be a fun idea, we also like the idea of seeing a lot of people in cities and don't want to make main cities feel like ghost towns – if you need an example of this head to Silvermoon (yeah, that's a cheap shot, I know). So for now this idea remains an interesting idea but we'd have to make sure it fits into the game well and meets our expectations which are pretty high for something like this.

[…] It's generally a better idea to keep the world filled and alive than empty, yes. It's also hard to say that letting people run off to their own cabin to relax in peace will really be a big bonus to the game for the vast majority of the playerbase. We'll see how things go in the future though. (Source)

Phylactery of the Nameless Lich (Normal / Heroic)
The Phylactery of the Nameless Lich's proc is a little underbudget and we plan to correct that in an upcoming patch. (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Glyph of Disease bug – Icy Talons not active after a disease refresh
The intent is that the Glyph of Disease counts as Frost Fever for the purposes of activating Icy Talons. The issue you describe is a technical limitation which prevents it from working this way. It's something we definitely want to fix, though I don't have a time frame to provide at the moment for when this fix will occur. (Source)

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Glyph of Wrath Suggestions
Glyph OF Wrath: Increases the cast time of Wrath by 0.5 and increases damage by X%
I understand the intent and it's clever in a way, but we would be hesitant to introduce a glyph that would actually be a bad glyph for players who weren't capable of benefiting from a bunch of haste. There are some glyphs with a kiss / curse vibe, but usually not this severe, and with a curse that really isn't a curse when you consider that it lets you benefit more from haste in the long run.

It might make more sense if you tucked it away where only endgame focused players could reach it (like an idol that dropped off an ICC boss), but even then it would almost need a warning label explaining what it was trying to do. (Source)

Warlock (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Destruction Spec
We know that Destruction is a little low on damage at the moment and needs a bit of help which we hope to deliver before Cataclysm. As usual we can't make any guarantees on when or if this will happen for sure though. (Source)