Day: May 12, 2010

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=24038608865&sid=1

5/11

• The amount of health has been increased on demolishers in the Strand of the Ancients battleground.

Now that the 3.3.5 patch is available for PTR testing, we wanted to have a round of focus testing for Ruby Sanctum this Thursday, May 13. Only normal mode will be available, with Heroic testing to occur at a later date.

Everything related to this zone is implemented for this test, please note any issues with the trash creatures and sub-bosses, loot, achievements, and quests.

US Testing Schedule: Thursday, May 13 starting at 19:00 EDT.

EU Testing Schedule: Thursday, May 13 starting at 19:30 CEST.

We plan to allow testing for an extended period on Thursday. However since this is the Test Realm, unforeseen issues could delay or cancel testing at any time.

The second issue of the World of Warcraft Official Magazine is winging its way to subscribers' mailboxes now. It features a spectacular high-quality, double-foldout cover depicting Deathwing in battle with Alexstrasza.

Inside you'll find a guide to Azeroth’s dragons, a look at the lore of the titans, an interview with the development team behind the game's quests, expert advice from top raiding guilds and PvPers, and much more.

For a sneak preview of some of this issue's articles and info on how to subscribe, head over to- http://www.worldofwarcraftthemagazine.com

Adding a friend through Real ID
To add a Real ID friend to your friends list, one of you will need to know the others email address. When you add someone as a Real ID friend, a request will be sent to the person you invite and they'll need to accept the request before you can see their information (character, server, etc.) in your friends list.

Your email address is not displayed in the friends list, and not visible to friends of people you are Real ID friends with.

Crowd Control in Cataclysm
Not every pull is going to require crowd control, but there will be pulls that require crowd control, which isn't really the case today. Once you overgear content you overgear it, and you can take shortcuts.

We're going to make sure warriors have reasonable crowd control. Redesigning Intimidating Shout is a likely candidate. Death knights may need something more reliable depending on how they shake out with the resource changes. We're making some other adjustments here and there, but for the most part every other class has something they can do. (Source)

[…] There are exceptions of course and it depends a lot on your group composition and the skill of your players, but generally we assume that CC is something for which the dps players in the group are responsible.

Under that model, Mind Control works fine for priest crowd control since the healers have plenty to do already. Mind Control won't work on every type of target, but many types of crowd control have a target type limitation. We think having to approach a pull differently depending on your comp is one of those things that makes classes feel distinct from each other. It's hard to put together a 5-player dungeon group or a 10-player raid in Cataclysm that is totally helpless with regard to crowd control. If you don't like approaching encounters as puzzles to be solved, and / or really aren't interested in dungeons being challenging, then stick with normal dungeons or wait until you outgear the heroics. (Source)

Mob positioning bug
It was pretty bad in 3.3, but then we fixed some things in 3.3.3 to get it back to how it felt earlier. In general, if you don't move at all, then a mob targeting you shouldn't move either. The only exceptions would be if they were trying to coordinate with their own allies in some specialized cases. But if you move, even if you rotate or shift just a little, then the mob is going to try to get back into position as well.

There's some interesting speculation above for reasons I am perceived to have given for why the situation exists. The actual reason it exists is that if mobs did not quickly reposition, you could get them into a mode where they couldn't hit you because they would always moving back into position to hit you. They would be doing too much adjusting and not enough hitting. (I'm simplifying a lot, so suggestions like "Why can't they just move and swing at the same time?" aren't super helpful.) We don't want tanks to feel like what they're supposed to do is shift around constantly to minimize taking damage. It's a fine line between mob movement feeling correct and minimizing potential exploits. (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Death Knight changes in Cataclysm
For every player who liked the fast pace of having to hit a button every GCD, there were plenty of others who found it tedious, repetitive and exhausting. I'm just asking you to be realistic about the accuracy of posts you read that say "Nobody was asking for this" or "This is not what we want."

The main goal of the resource change is to buy DKs some free GCDs. Currently some abilities just can't compete, even if free, because you don't have the GCD to use that button. However, it's also not the goal that DKs stand around doing nothing for long stretches because all their runes are used up and everything else is on cooldown. Being GCD locked isn't a fun place to be, for any class. You can't vary your actions at all — in fact you are often such a slave to those actions that you have tunnel vision for your UI (even if modded) and can't react to the dynamic nature of most encounters these days. If anything messes up your rotation, say you have to move or are temporarily CC'd, then everything just falls apart.

We don't get every change in place before making an alpha or beta build. It's much like the way large patches roll out but to an even greater degree — you'll see some changes, then some more, until the rate of change ultimately slows down right before ship. There are very few Cataclysm mechanics, and no classes, that we think are "done" yet. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Heroic Strike
The design intent for Heroic Strike has pretty much always been that you use it to bleed off excess rage and convert that into damage. We haven’t been happy for some time that warriors can hit a near-infinite rage plateau, but we knew changi…