Утечка из альфы: так выглядит Смертокрыл

Альфа-тест World of Wacraft: Cataclysm начался, разумеется, под соглашением о неразглашении информации (NDA), однако душа тестеров все же не выдержала, заставив их показать фанатам главное – финального босса дополнения Смертокрыла. Разумеется, вряд ли главный враг игроков World of Wacraft будет попросту разгуливать по столице людей. Скорее всего, была использована модель из файлов клиента альфа-версии. Тем не менее, ведущий сайта mmo-champion.com, имеющий доступ к альфе, уже подтвердил, что этот скриншот показывает настоящего Смертокрыла из игры.

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Forum Avatars, Battle.net Real ID

Official Forum Avatars Updated
The avatars on the official forums have been updated with 2 new Goblins and Worgens avatars. No female Worgen for the moment, sorry.

Connect with Your Friends Using Real ID

Quote from: Nethaera (Source)
We’ve just released a new preview of our upcoming Real ID feature, ( http://www.battle.net/realid/ ) a new, optional way to connect with your friends on the revamped Battle.net. When you and a friend agree to become Real ID friends, you’ll have access to a number of options designed to enrich your social gaming experience, including cross-game chat, broadcast messages, the ability to keep in contact with your friends without having to keep track of their different characters across realms or across games, and much more. Check out our new Real ID page here. http://www.battle.net/realid/

Battle.net Real ID

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)
One of our goals for the new Battle.net is to create the framework for an online gaming experience that is even more accessible, more engaging, and more entertaining than the previous Battle.net. Our new Real ID feature is an integral part of this effort, providing you with advanced ways for forming and maintaining meaningful relationships with your friends on the service.

Real ID is a completely voluntary and optional level of identity that keeps players connected across all of Battle.net. When you and a friend mutually agree to become Real ID friends, you'll have access to a number of additional features that will enrich your social gaming experience in new and exciting ways.

Read the Real ID FAQ for additional details.

Real Names for Friends
Your Real ID friends will appear under their real-life names on your friends list, alongside whatever characters they're playing. Gone are the days of having to remember which of your friends is which. You'll also see your friends' real names when chatting, communicating in-game, or viewing their character's profile.

Cross-Game Chat
With Real ID, friends can now chat cross-game, cross-realm, and cross-faction across all supported Blizzard games. In World of Warcraft and need more players for your Icecrown Citadel raid? You check your Real ID friends list to see if anyone's available, and sure enough, a couple of guildmates are playing a 2v2 ranked match in StarCraft II. Real ID makes it easy to ask them to come along.

Rich Presence
See additional information on your friends list about what your Real ID friends are up to. Find out what your friends are doing and which games and modes they're playing in real time. Invite that buddy just sitting around in Dalaran to play some StarCraft II with you without fear of interrupting a raid or a heated Wintergrasp match.

Broadcasts
Broadcast a short status message for all of your Real ID friends to see, whether you want to issue a call-to-arms or let your friends know about an important change of plans. You can also read your friends' broadcast messages on the "Recent Broadcasts" feed on the Battle.net welcome page — kind of a "corkboard" to leave messages to your friends when offline or busy.

Friend Once, See All Characters
When you agree to become Real ID friends with another player, both of you will automatically see all the other's characters on your friends list. You'll even see any characters your friend creates in future Blizzard games, carrying your social network forward and helping you stay connected with the people you enjoy playing with most.

Battle.net Facebook Integration

Update – Added a couple of blue posts because, well, this is a news site!

Battle.net Facebook Integration
The news was posted on the official WoW forums and we can assume that it will also affect our lovely game when the new version of Battle.net goes live.

Quote from: Vaneras (Source)
The action taking place on the battlefield is just one part of the StarCraft II experience — we're also working to make sure that you can easily connect, communicate, and play with your friends. To help accomplish that, the new version of Battle.net will offer integration with Facebook. This new functionality will start off by allowing you to quickly import Facebook friends into your Battle.net friends list, and additional features will be added over time. For more information, check out the official announcement.

Press Release

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)
PARIS, France – May 5, 2010 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that its Battle.net® gaming service will integrate with Facebook®, linking the world's premier online gaming platform with the world's most popular social platform. The first step in the integration will enable StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty™ players to quickly add Blizzard gamers who are friends on Facebook to their Battle.net friend lists, facilitating their social gaming experience on the service.

"We're pleased to be working with Facebook to integrate their platform with Battle.net to enhance the social-entertainment experience for our players," said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. "This new functionality will make it easier than ever to connect with friends on Battle.net and play StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games together."

The new Facebook functionality in Battle.net will be tested in the near future via the ongoing StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty beta test and will be available to all StarCraft II players when the game ships later this year. Information about other Facebook-related features on Battle.net will be announced at a later date.

Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.

Dalaran Children’s Week Quest Line Issue

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)
We are aware of the issue that is currently affecting the Children’s Week quest line in Dalaran which does not allow players who have completed the quest line last year to take part in it again this year. We do not currently have a fix planned to address this issue at this point in time.

To clarify, this issue won't be able to be resolved for Children's Week this year. If you completed the quest previously you won't be able to complete it again for the other pet this year.

Blue posts

Quote from Blizzard staff
Capped stats
It's better now, but GotEM and Celestial Focus (and talents of that ilk in all specs) still provide too much haste such that its realistic to get capped. Any class with so much vested in instant spells risks not valuing haste as much as other casters. That's okay to a point, but a big focus of Cataclysm is not to have these situations where players dismiss as junk gear that is targeted for them because one of "their" stats (meaning things like crit and haste for a healer, not hit or Agi) become excessively devalued relative to another stat.  (Source)

Mandatory Glyphs/Talents
We're stuck in this trap sometimes where players want glyphs and talents to be meaningful but optional. That's a pretty narrow design space.

If we make a talent that affects Shield Wall, then it feels mandatory. If we make no talent that affects Shield Wall, then it feels like the talents aren't affecting things you actually care about and can become this potentially marginalized aspect of the game.

The argument seems to be that if you didn't have to get Improved Disciplines, that you could get some other potentially juicy talent. True. The same would be true if you didn't have to get Shockwave or if paladins didn't have to get Ardent Defender. You need Improved Disciplines, but they need Vindication. My point is that classes are balanced as part of their entire package. You aren't balanced at the core level with talents and glyphs thrown on as gravy on top of that.

Now we are making an attempt with Cataclysm to give players more options in how they talent. But still if you imagine a talent tree in which every single talent is optional, it's also hard to imagine how every single talent is interesting or powerful enough. (Source)

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Lack of new healing spells
Paladins are getting several new healing spells. Druids aren't, so I figured it was worth a little bit of explanation for why we made that decision. The short answer is that we're trying to find homes for all those druid spells that don't get much use. A devious alternative I suppose would be to cut Healing Touch and Regrowth and then make new druid spells to fill in the holes with different names. The druids that are going to be the most sad about the healing changes will be those who like just using the same couple of spells (Rejuv + WG in today's environment) over and over. I can't offer to much to placate them, except that unless you're up against the game's most challenging content, you have a lot more flexibility in how you choose to play your character.

Lifebloom is a good tank healing spell. Sorry if you find that delusional. (If you disagree with that, I assume it's because you put the paladin on the tank and the druid on the raid. That's a fine strategy, but we want to create more room for both classes to branch out.) Healing Touch is not, but that's for several reasons that we now have a chance to address: 1) Certain talents / glyphs / set bonus shore up spells like Rejuv a lot. 2) Healing Touch currently would overheal a lot. 3) Players would currently die while winding up a heal with such a long cast time. (Source)

Healing mechanics

We're not getting rid of the notion of druids using lots of hots when healing. We think that's an important part of the spec. There are some players who want to cast almost nothing but hots though, or some players who don't see anything wrong with the strategy of trying to keep Rejuv up on as many targets as possible whether or not they are taking damage. We want druids to make more *decisions* about which spells to cast and which target to heal. Some of you claim you do that today, and that's great. We want to reward you more for being good at that.

There are several heals that are just doing too much work individually in the current game, which makes other spells seem relatively pointless by comparison. Rejuv and Wild Growth are two of them, but so are Circle of Healing, Power Word: Shield, Holy Light, Flash of Light and others. It's not that the numbers are just borked on those spells (though they probably are in some cases). It's just that the current environment really rewards over-reliance on certain spells. We think the Cataclysm healing game will be more dynamic. There will be fights that emphasize efficiency and fights that emphasize triage and I'm sure there will still be fights that emphasize quick timing and spamming — just hopefully not as many. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Deep Wounds

There are several posters in this very thread though saying it's not fair that they can't always get Deep Wounds in their tanking build for threat. Threat talents like Defiance were something we cut awhile ago because players thought they were mandatory and uninteresting. If threat was relatively easy to maintain today, then all of those talents might be considered junk and warriors would be asking for more talents that actually made a difference when they invested in them.

I'm not trying to dismiss your feedback, but I am saying it's not as easy as you make it sound. In a perfect world, players would like for their class to be fully functional and completely balanced. Only then do they get to choose talents and glyphs. We have to factor all of that power and utility in though. The alternative is a talent tree that looks a lot like minor glyphs where the choices are all cosmetic and the effects pretty trivial. This is why I'm trying to steer the topic away from warrior vs. paladin and get players to focus more on what fun talents and fun glyphs look like. Warbringer… Sword and Board… awesome. I get that. I'm not sure how realistic it is to have a tree with 51 talent point like that and with no Improved Disciplines or Toughness (which someone else brought up earlier). A few players opined that the existing Glyph of Shield Wall would feel awesome if it was reversed with the base Shield Wall. Feedback like that is really useful. (Source)
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В Ираке солдаты США играют в WoW


Сайт massively.com опубликовал интервью с солдатом 7-го инженерного батальона армии США, развернутого в Ираке, также известного как чернокнижника 80-го уровня по имени FallenWolf с американского сервера US-Anetheron. По словам игрока, расквартированного в Ираке уже в течение 11 месяцев, ему довольно сильно досаждает низкое время отклика сигнала во время игры в World Of Warcraft – скорость его интернет-соединения составляет всего 128 Kbs, а самые большие затруднения возникают во время скачивания обновлений, занимающих порой целый день.

Когда воинская часть, в которой служит FallenWolf, находится на базе, скорость соединения возрастает до 512 Kbs – в этом случае он уже может более-менее достойно проходить некоторые «героики». В основном же, ему приходится фармить «как сумасшедшему», избегая группового контента: солдат собирает в WoW редкие материалы и затем выкладывает их на аукцион с целью продажи (на вырученные деньги он хотел бы купить жене, также играющей в WoW, мотоцикл).

Берется ли игрок за автомат, когда нужно отбить атаку моджахедов, или за него это делают товарищи, в интервью не сообщается.

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