Addon Spotlight – AVR
It's time for another spotlight! This time I would like to point out a fairly new addon called AVR (Augmented Virutal Reality) and AVR Encounters. This addon will let you draw markings on the 3D world anywhere and share it with anyone! This is incredibly useful for any raid leader, but it's not the only feature.
Some of these drawings can be automatized and triggered by spells and NPCs, this is how you get AVR Encounters! This submod adds warnings and very noticeable visual helps for for various boss abilities.
I know a lot of people will ask: this is JUST an addon and it doesn't use anything else than the Blizzard's API, you won't get banned for using that (but I cannot guarantee that Blizzard will not disable it at some point). For more information on the addon you can also check the following:
But it will probably be easier to understand how things work with a couple of screenshots and a video.
Boss encounters
AVR does not contain a built in boss encounters module anymore. They are now done by a separate addon. At the moment there are two options.
- AVR Encounters adds AVR warnings for various boss abilities. It does not require any other boss encounter addon to work. It is not a replacement for traditional boss encounter addons as it does not do ability timers, sound warnings etc. It can be used with any traditional boss encounter addon such as BigWigs, DBM or DXE.
- Raid Watch 2 is a full boss encounter addon much like BigWigs, DBM or DXE. It has built-in support for AVR and also does timer bars and other kinds of warnings.
Whichever you choose to use, you will also need to install AVR.
Limitations and known issues
There are some fundamental limitations caused by what information is available to addons. These are mostly related to the exact position of camera and lack of unit Z coordinates. In particular you should note following:
- Drawing works best on a flat surface (note that for example Dalaran has very uneven roads).
- Camera getting stuck in a wall or ceiling will cause any markings to go out of sync with rest of the world.
- Any kind of stairs/slopes and such cause troubles.
- Jumping and other kinds of vertical movement causes the drawings to move with you.
- Everything is drawn over the 3d world. This means that things that should be behind walls or units will appear in front of them.
- Camera auto follow causes some problems.
Some other known issues are:
- All vehicles (like the ones at the start of Ulduar) are a bit problematic.
- Lifts, moving platforms and in particular Gunships in Icercown Citadel raid have some problems.
- Player map coordinates are unavailable in Icecrown Citadel raid on Lich King platform after the edges have collapsed. This means that any markings tied to zone coordinates or other players than yourself are unusable there. (Lana'Thel's room was fixed in 3.3.3 though the ramps leading there are still a bit odd.)
Blue posts
Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)Wild Growth cooldown change in Cataclysm
This kind of thing comes up a lot, where players see us messing with cooldowns and assume it's a nerf instead of our trying to give them room to actually cast more spells.
Raising the cooldown on spells like Wild Growth and Circle of Healing are good things for healers. It's one of the few* things that will buy you GCDs to actually cast other spells. With a 6 sec cooldown, you really only get to cast maybe 3-5 other spells before you need to hit that magic button again.
Let me put it another way… if there was no cooldown on Wild Growth would you ever hit another button? The frequency with which druids use it today suggests the answer is: not often.
* – an alternative is to make the mana cost so extreme that you're making a very bad decision any time you use Wild Growth or Circle and 5-6 targets aren't seriously injured. I'm not sure that would be any more fun though. You don't always have the precious seconds to analyze the situation and calculate how many players need instant healing. It's one thing to guess whether your fast or big heal is more appropriate on a target. It's a little trickier to do that for multiple targets at once.
In before "It wouldn't be overpowered if we didn't do raid damage" and "Well we come to expect nerfs when all of our overpowered spells get nerfed." 
(Source)
Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Warrior tanking in Cataclysm
I'll abstain from using actual quotes here, but these things were basically said above.
Using Demo Shout to tank:
— We don't like the feel of this. It hits for no damage and puts a debuff on the target that isn't visible and doesn't change the target's behavior at all.
Getting a new tanking AE to use when SW and TC are on cooldown:
— What's the point though? Why not just remove TC's cooldown rather than add yet another ability you're supposed to spam in rotation?
On warriors losing Cleave:
— You're not losing Cleave. You don't have infinite use of it, but you're not going to have infinite use of any of your abilities, because things will cost rage and if you spend rage unwisely you're going to starve yourself. Use Heroic Strike vs. single targets and Cleave against groups. Besides, I hardly see how Cleave is this panacea for the staggered adds scenario seeing as how it hits a grand total of one additional target (two if glyphed).
On tab targeting:
— We really don't want to see a scenario (for any tank) where you just stop using your single-target abilities completely. It's fine to supplement those with an AE attack, but not completely ignore them in group situations. (As an aside, the paladin doesn't really do this now because he uses the same rotation for both singles and groups. The druid doesn't do this now because Lacerate doesn't hit hard enough relative to Swipe. Both are easily fixable though.)
[…] Let's take four scenarios that cover the majority of encounters:
1) If dozens of twilight whelps are streaming in, fine, just AE tank them and have the dps use Blizzard, Hurricane, Whirlwind, etc. I think you all know how to this by now.
2) If you're doing a four pull and the mobs hit really hard, then CC one or two and dps the others down single target. You'll want to keep threat on all the loose mobs, but not by spamming an AE ability unless you can buy yourself plenty of room. I know everyone is scared of CC, but we actually made a pretty good spread of CC abilities in LK, and then sadly nobody ever got to use them. In Cataclysm we are making sure to spread abilities around even more.
3) Now, if you're doing a four pull and you think you can get away without CC, then ideally you'd use your AE attacks but still…
Cataclysm Artworks, LK US First Kill, Blue posts
New Cataclysm Concept Art – Deathwing Human Form?
Scrolls of Lore was part of a trip at Blizzard HQ this week and came back with a couple of exclusive pictures of Cataclysm artworks displayed there. I only linked a few of them below, you can check the full galleries on their site.
Now, the fun part. There was a giant version of the Alextrasza vs. Deathwing artwork released last week and it looks like it was originally cropped. The full version is below and shows the human form of Alextrasza … and possibly the human form of Deathwing for the first time.
Lich King (25) Heroic US First Kill by Premonition
Premonition (US-Sen'jin) killed the Lich King in 25-Man Heroic mode a few hours ago. Congratulations to them!
From Premonition
So, at long last, we have slain the dragon. First off, big grats to Paragon for getting it done years ahead of everyone else. We should have had a kill a few weeks ago, with a few situations like the following screenshot depicts: sub 20% wipe on our first or second attempt of the week/night, and then nothing but wipes getting worse thereafter!
To further complicate things, it's no secret we lost a lot of long term members in the Icecrown progression cycle, which massively hamstrung us. So when it came down to Lich King, we ended up having to rely on a very strict set of players, and if they couldn't be on or if their internet was bad, we couldn't raid. It got to the point, actually, where we got one hour of raiding when we started raid, then had to call raid for several hours while a certain paladin's internet stopped chain d/c'ing him, and that was how we raided for the past week (a couple hours in the AM).
As for the boss itself, it's of course very challenging. We would've loved to be able to have more opportunity to try it at the 5% level, but alas. A few aspects of the fight made us want to smash our keyboards in to the wall now and then, namely all of your priests getting picked up by the Val'kyrs at the same time, and so on!
We're happy to have come through and end up with a US first, even if it wasn't a typical world rank for a US first kill, after the hardship that we had to work through. Congratulations to everyone and all of the other guilds that have come this far.
New Concept Art Gallery
Europe – Arena Pass Registration Now Open!
Players on this realm will have the freedom to equip pre-made level 80 characters with gear of their choosing, including the latest Wrathful Gladiator Season 8 items.
Face enough challengers, and you will receive the exclusive Murkimus bind-on-account pet. The very best Arena teams will contend for the exclusive Vanquisher title, bringing great fame to their high-level characters on their home realms.
Sign up on our Arena Pass registration page and get ready for the most exciting Arena matches of your life!
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/esports/arena/arenapass/index.xml
For more information on the 2010 Arena Pass service, check out the Terms of Use and the FAQ.
Terms of Use: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/esports/arena/arenapass/tou.html
FAQ: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/esports/arena/arenapass/faq.xml
To discuss the Arena Pass, please visit the Arena Pass Forum:
Blue posts
We don't think slight variation on hot durations will mess anyone up. Slight variation on dot durations might mess you up a little bit (in terms of having a very predictable rotation), but since you can just refresh those spells without clipping, that seems okay too. Meanwhile, we think there is benefit in the damage per tick not changing.
Channeled spells are a little trickier to solve. While they technically work like dots, they feel more like nukes to players using them, so changing the duration may feel awkward on those. You may not care about a slight duration change on say Blizzard but you might on Mind Flay when you want to go directly from a channel to another spell. We may end up letting channeled spells just cast faster and finish sooner. We don't want to lower the durations continually with increased haste on hots and dots because it can turn into a real dps or hps loss depending on the situation. Try the Glyph of Rapid Rejuv. It can be useful on some fights but a real pain on others. Tight dps rotations could likewise get screwed up by dots with short durations.
[…] We might lower the cooldown on some of those spells. Alternatively a spell like Wild Growth could stand to have its cooldown raised. The idea of having a single use on some of those spells might work too.
[…] Sorry, I meant that some of those spells have cooldowns equal to their durations to prevent you from blanketing the room with them. You essentially get one at a time. That might become a problem if haste shortened the duration to the point where you had dead time before the cooldown. We don't want to reduce cooldowns with haste though. That is potentially too powerful in a lot of situations. So one answer is that every time you cast one of those spells, it removes the previous version. Thus you still get one. (Source)
Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Tanking dungeons in Cataclysm
I feel like you're setting up a situation in which the only acceptable answer is "No cooldown on Thunder Clap." If you just dismiss all your other tools as unreliable or not perfectly suited for the situation, then yeah, you're going to end up in a place where you are waiting 6 long sec fo…
Bidding for Good, Blue posts, Fan Arts
Bidding for Good – World of Warcraft Collector Basket
Blizzard Entertainment is selling a pretty nice basket of World of Warcraft collector Games / Goodies on BiddingForGood.com
This World of Warcraft Basket includes the following:
- World of Warcraft Collector's Edition (Signed by the Development Team);
- World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Collector's Editions (Signed by the Development Team);
- World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Collector's Edition (Signed by the Development Team);
- World of Warcraft TCG Etheral Plunderer Loot Card;
- World of Warcraft TCG Spectral Tiger Loot Card;
- World of Warcraft TCG Spectral Kitten Loot Card;
- World of Warcraft 1 year Subscription Card;
- World of Warcraft Gryphon Hatchling Plushie with In-game Companion;
- World of Warcraft Wind Rider Cub Plushie with In-game Companion.
Proceeds go to Peninsula Education Foundation in order to support PVPUSD. If you have some money lying around and planned to spend an insane amount of money on a WoW Collector Edition on EBay, you might want to do it for a good cause!
Blue posts
First, it's a powerful new tool, but it's by no means the only tool in the toolbox.
Second, higher health pools and survivability relative to damage means damage output won't be balanced on the same razor edge in Cataclysm as it is now. When increasing damage by 5% means you knock off 90% of a health pool in five seconds instead of 86%, that's pretty risky. When it means you knock off 40% of a health pool instead of 38%, that's not a real big balance changer. Numbers made up, but that's the general principle.
Third, a greater focus on large-scale PvP will also probably help moderate the effects of changes like this.
This.
Pretty sure PvP gear will have mastery.
And this. (Source)
Tanking is (not) hard!
'm just reading a lot of "tanking is so hard" threads, and A) we don't really agree, and B) if it's any less challenging I fear a lot of tanks may get bored and move on to other classes. There are some annoying parts of tanking we need to fix, and we definitely want to fix the threat scaling problem and any major disparities in AE tanking. But if you're looking for an experience even easier than tanking Naxx, I'm not quite sure how to provide that given my A and B above. (Source)
Faction equality on servers
The average alliance to horde ratio for Trollbane is 1.08:1. That doesn't take into account things like player participation, character level, interest in certain activities such as world PvP, etc. but the actual ratio is pretty much even.
We do what we can to encourage faction equality though. If any situations arise that require our intervention we do so. We've had realm transfers that only allow one faction to move, we've shut down character creation for a single faction. We have methods to help balance realms or even battlegroups and we do use them, for all US realms at current and especially in this case though I wouldn't characterize it as needing that level of intervention. (Source)
Arena Tournament in Europe
We will very soon be opening registration to a brand-new service for players with a European World of Warcraft account. The Arena Pass will give access to our special Arena Pass realm, designed to give you the perfect platform to prove your competitive abilities.
Players on this realm will have the freedom to equip pre-made level 80 characters with PVP gear of their choosing, including the latest Wrathful Gladiator Season 8 items.
Successful teams will be rewarded! Face enough challengers and you will receive the Murkimus pet, which can be shared with all other characters on your World of Warcraft account. The very best teams will also receive the exclusive Vanquisher title, which can be shared with your high-level characters. All will know of your mighty achievements!
Stay tuned for more information, including pricing, availability and other details, later this week! (Source)
Upgrading the original backpack
We think about this one all the time, be it an upgrade to the backpack, or making it replaceable by larger bags. We'd just have to be careful to not make it possible to have no bags equipped at any given time, because that would get messy. No guarantees on this one, but do know we're considering it. (Source)
Celestial Steed scaling
We acknowledge that the Celestial Steed can seem a little out of proportion when especially some of the bulkier races are riding it, and this is something that is being looked into. (Source)
Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
AE Tanking in Cataclysm
I didn't mean to imply that blowing Intimidating Shout is a swell idea on every AE pull. The context was a scenario that apparently comes up all the time where the warrior has recently used Thunder Clap and Shockwave and a whole lot of Morogrim-style adds pour into the room, leaving the hapless warrior without an AE button to push and solve the whole problem. I was pointing out that there are a lot of things you can do in that situation. Yes, if someone is about to die and you can't wait for Thunder Clap to come back up, then by all means use Intimidating Shout. That's what it's there for.
We're just not crazy about the sound of any of these ideas that have the warrior able to use Thunder Clap and have it tick away on the mobs or on the ground to make sure things will stick to you no matter what.
Warriors tanked for years without Shockwave and with a pretty wimpy Thunder Clap that only hit four adds. Yet, they still managed to handle a variety of fights, including this staggered adds situation that is the current hot topic button for this forum. I played a warrior tank a lot in that time period, and yeah, sometimes you lost aggro and sometimes you wiped. It's a lot easier today. I'm not trying to use one of these "back in my day, we tanked uphill in the snow" arguments, but I am trying to get a sense for how easy you really want tanking to be and still have fun doing it.
(Again, I'm totally bought into the argument that AE tanking on live may not be as easy for warriors as paladins and druids. I'm trying to establish how AE tanking should feel in an absolute, not a relative sense.) (Source)
Fan Art
The American and European Blizzard Fan Art Section have been updated with 4 Fan Arts. Warning: You might want to delete all your Horde characters and reroll Alliance after that.
2010 Arena Tournament, Blue posts
Important – The Blue Tracker is (mostly) back online!
2010 Arena Tournament Registration Open
The 2010 Arena Tournament is now official.
Now is the time to get your teammates together and get registered for the biggest online Arena competition World of Warcraft has to offer with a total cash pool of over $200,000!
The exclusive Armored Murloc in-game pet is an additional earnable reward for all participants, and members of the top 1000 teams will also be given an exclusive title for their eligible live characters as well.
If you have any questions or would like more details, please read the FAQ, and remember to check our tournament News Section for more updates: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/tournament/news.xml
2010 Arena Tournament FAQ
The FAQ is pretty long and you should check the official site for the full version. I will only quote the most important answers below.
The 2010 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament is a competition based on the Arena System in World of Warcraft. All teams participating in the tournament will be competing on regional tournament realms — separate from the live realms — for a spot to play at the live events and win prizes. In addition, there is a registration fee to join. This specialized format provides a means for high-level players to face off in an intensely competitive environment that emphasizes strategy, skill, and execution over all other elements of play.
The tournament will consist of one regional qualifier, followed by the regional finals. Winners of the regional finals will be invited to compete in a global championship. The cash prize package for this tournament, including prizes awarded at the regional finals and world championship, amounts to more than $200,000.
What is the format for this years Arena Tournament?
Participating players will gain access to our dedicated tournament realms and be able to create up to three level-80 characters per registered account. This special realm will allow players to fully customize tournament characters with some of the best items available in the game. We will continue to use the 3v3 Arena format for this year's competition. Please note that the standard 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5 Arena season games will continue as normal on the live realms and will not be interrupted by this tournament.
What are some special features of this years Arena Tournament?
- Customizable level 80 character templates with gear from the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
- Tournament vendors have been updated with some of the best items available in Northrend.
- Players can earn the exclusive Armored Murloc pet for their live characters.
- Players can earn the exclusive Vanquisher title for their live characters over level 71.
- Cash prizes totaling over $200,000.
How do the dedicated tournament realms work?
By signing up for the tournament, players will be granted access to special tournament realms. They will be able to create up to three new level-80 characters of any race and class combination on these realms. There will be special vendors available who will have epic gear for players to choose from for equipping tournament characters. These realms have been created for the sake of the tournament and will not have any PvE instances or Battlegrounds available. Only Arenas will be available at this time.
How will each character obtain gear and other commodities?
Upon entering the world with a new character, nearby NPCs in your starting area will outfit the character with gear, training, class-specific needs such as soul shards and hunter pets, and all the gold you'll need. In fact, everything your character will need to participate in the tournament will be located conveniently in your starting area.
Can I have more than three people on my team roster?
Yes. You can have up to six players on your 3v3 Arena Tournament team for the online qualifiers. The additional players will act as "bench" players in case one of your starting three cannot play, or if you want to change the makeup of your team. If your team advances to the live events, however, you will have to choose three players to represent your team. These players can choose which characters they wish to play at the live events and may switch characters as needed.
How do I check my rankings?
Team rankings will be available on WorldofWarcraft.com at the Armory and updated daily, with the tournament realm making up the Coliseum battlegroup.
How is the tournament structured?
There will be one online qualifier that will run for eight weeks. The first four weeks of the qualifier will be used for practice. After the practice period, ratings will be reset and the tournament will continue for four weeks. To encourage team stability, there will be a 150 team rating penalty for any player additions to your team during the first two weeks after the practice period. Player rosters will be locked down during the final two weeks of the tournament, and no changes may be made to your team during that time. Please make any adjustments to your final team roster prior to the roster lockdown. The top eight eligible teams from the online qualifier will advance to the regional finals. The top teams from each regional final will be invited to represent their respective region at the global world championship.
What are the prizes?
The available prizes are listed below:
- Players who participate in at least 50 rated tournament games on one character and with the same team during the last four weeks of the online qualifier will be eligible for the Armored Murloc pet for their live characters.
- Players who have a character in one of the top 1000 teams and have participated in at least 100 rated tournament games during the last four weeks of the online qualifier will receive the Vanquisher title for their live characters level 71 and over.
- The grand prize for the global invitational world championship will be $75,000 for the top team. The top team of each regional final will receive $15,000. For more information, check the complete breakdown of prizes in the rules.
- Please Note: The characters that players use to qualify for the above prizes must play all of their qualifying games on the same team and must remain on that team for the duration of the tournament. If a player leaves their team at any time, it may void their eligibility by resetting the number of games needed to be played. The live characters players wish to receive the in-game prizes must be on the same account as the one registered for the tournament.
How many games do I have to play to be eligible to qualify?
Each team must play a minimum of 100 rated games during the last four weeks of the qualifier and each player, including "bench players," must participate in at least 30% of the team's total games to be eligible to advance to the regional finals. If a team were to play the minimum of 100 games, then each player on the team would have to have played in at least 30 of those games. Only three players per team will be eligible to attend the live events.
Why is there an entry fee to join the 2010 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament?
There are several reasons for the entry fee, one of which being that, as with most professional tournaments, the fee helps ensure that participants are invested in the competition and remain dedicated to it for the duration of the tournament. In addition, the stakes are higher for this tournament than for standard Arena play, with a total prize pool of more than $200,000 in cash prizes up for grabs. Furthermore, this format should help provide high-level players with an intensely competitive, even playing field on the tournament realms.
Blue posts
The realms will open on April 27 with the launch of the tournament. (Source)
Arena Tournament 2010 Rewards
The pet and title are the same as for the 2009 tournament. The only difference is in the way loot codes are now applied to World of Warcraft licenses. Once the code is applied to an account, all characters on that license should receive the pet, including characters that have yet to be created. (Source)
[…] While it would be cool to provide a new pet, we're not necessarily trying to encourage as many people as possible to pay $20 and sign up for this tournament ultimately because they want a new pet. It's a nice perk to encourage people, but we don't want the Arena Tournament to be a more complicated version of the Pet Store. We want players who are serious about competing to sign up for the tournament, not just a reason to take in more money through offering a new vanity pet with each new tournament. (Source)
Celestial Steed, where is the line?
This is a very fine, but determined line. The purpose of allowing the Celestial Steed to scale with your riding skill is so that it can be useful to anyone in the game, but does not provide one with a better mount from a gameplay standpoint. ([url=http:/…
Arena Tournament 2010, Blue posts
New Arena Tournament to begin soon
The registrations for the 2010 Arena Tournament are now open in the US! You can upgrade your account through http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/tournament-upgrade.html.
The official announcements/rules and EU registration pages will probably be here very shortly.
Blue Posts
Maybe I'm misremembering something, but the goal going into LK was that warriors should be able to AE tank rather than every group using paladins for trash, and that casters should be able to use their AE spells, otherwise what are they there for? We succeeded in both of those, but a little too well on the latter to the extent that anything with more than 1 mob became a job for Blizzard / Hurricane / Mind Sear, etc.
In Cataclysm, there will be more threat to the tank of dying if you try to just AE tank every pull. Likewise, AE damage won't be quite as awesome so that single targeting things will probably be a better strategy when there are say 3-5 adds. If it's a dozen twilight whelps, then sure, AE away. (Source)
Haste on channeled spells in Cataclysm
It's probably more accurate to say that the haste will lower the duration until you earn a whole additional tick, at which point the duration will go back up again (but with more damage / healing because of that extra tick). Getting more haste will never be a bad thing, but there will be break points where haste is more valuable than others. You should also never want to cancel the spell early.
This is definitely one of those cases where we'll have to see how it feels, but it is more intuitive when you're actually casting spells in the game than it might sound on paper. (Source)
[…] The answer we were trying to give was that "channels won't just get shorter and shorter the more haste you get." But a more complete answer is that hasted channels will get shorter until you get a whole additional tick, at which point the duration will go back up again. We don't want to do partial ticks or things like that because they encourage you to just recast the spell. (Source)
Overused stats in WotLK
Yeah, I agree with that. For a number of reasons (that I've gone into before), we allowed some stats to become much more valuable than competing stats that also occur on your gear. We're really trying to prevent this in Cataclysm. We're making changes including, but not limited to, letting hots and dots crit, asking healers to care about mana regen, getting rid of group buffs that improve hit, keeping combat rating from getting inflated, etc. (Source)
Healing and mana regeneration / stats effect
Yes, I agree that having high mana regeneration will allow you to use inefficient spells more often. I was reacting against some of the player saying they would just stack Spirit and nothing else because Spirit also allows you to cast big heals or fast heals more often. A hasted Flash of Light is still going to be pretty good in many situations, as is a Flash of Light that crits for a big amount. The numbers should be such that all stats are valuable, not that the guides say "Stack Spirit and all other stats are garbage." (Source)
[…] We don't want that either, and in the absence of a five second rule, it won't help you that much anyway. Instead, we want you to choose whether you use your GCD on a moderate heal, a huge heal or a fast heal. Today almost every GCD is spent on the fast heal because someone will die if you don't do that and your mana regeneration supports that play style.
Now, we might slow combat down a little to the point at which you have enough time to make a decision about which heal to cast, but that can probably be on the order of 0.5 to 1.0 sec and not 2-5 sec. (Source)
Heroic Leap and "old" abilities in Cataclysm
We change our minds sometimes, like about letting Charge work in combat for example.
In fact, one of the reasons we changed our minds about Heroic Leap (and Camo, and Trap Launcher) were so many players that were sad about seeing those abilities not make it in LK. (Source)
AE Tanking in Cataclysm
Some of you seem to be confusing intensity with diversity. It's easy to imagine a world where a class has one AE tool that works phenomenally well and a different class that has several AE tools, none of which actually allow them to tank worth a hoot. There seems to be some kind of logic train (wreck?) here that because some classes got abilities that might be useful when AE tanking that we are wrong / changed our minds / lying about how often you will be AE tanking in Cataclysm.
Our goals are that you won't be spending as much of your tanking time AE tanking in Cataclysm as you did in Lich King. A second goal is that when you are AE tanking, you should use different abilities than when you are single-target tanking. A third goal is that when you are AE tanking, you should use more than one (or maybe two) abilities. None of those seem contradictory.
If you want to challenge our goals as being unrealistic or dumb, then feel free. But we're seeing a lot of this inductive (specific to general) logic where a player tries to poke a hole in one ability and use that to mean our goals can't possibly be met.
Try one of these arguments instead:
1) I disagree with Blizzard putting more emphasis on crowd control and single-target damage.
2) I agree or am ambivalent about that goal, but I don't see how we'll get there because of X reason.
3) I agree or am ambivalent about that goal, but I don't see how Y ability will help realize that goal. (Source)
Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Tranquility / Healing in Cataclysm
He meant this. Tranquility will always be raid wide, just because the concept of a "group" within the raid is kind of a strange one. What does that group refer to in the game? It's not distance for example. We'd like to do this with every spell.
As far as druids being too powerful because hots are too powerful in a world where they don't overheal as much, that is definitely on our radar. Hots can be good and the "druid thing" without druids spamming nothing but Rejuv ("Because if I cast anything but Rejuv, then I'm not a druid!"). (Source)
Paladin (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Healing Hands
Healing Hands is one of the ways we want to let paladins raid heal and it might even be the dominant way. We want to give them a group heal that isn't Circle of Healing or Chain Heal, because we've already done those spells and we want to do something new here.
What we want to avoid: "Well, we don't have our paladin tonight to heal the tank, so let's call the raid."
What we also want to avoid: "Well, we have too many paladins and they can't raid heal, so let's replace one with an undergeared alt."
There are extremes of course. All things being equal, we'd rather you not stack too many of any one spec. We just don't want to make it impossible to heal a raid if your group of friends just happens to have a lot of Holy paladins. (Source)
Critical Healing (Mastery)
I'm not sure I understand the logic here. Having larger crits makes crit chance attractive on gear, but I don't think the reverse is true. You won't be at a disadvantage if you have high crit and low mastery because you will just crit more often. You won't be at a disadvantage if you have low crit and high mastery because when you do crit, your heals will be larger. Crit and mastery do complement each other well and I can understand why it might be a problem if haste and Spirit weren't attractive stats so you were pigeon-holed into just crit + mastery gear, but those should both be very good stats.
(I'm ignoring the effects of Illumination, overhealing and the (specious) argument that "crit is inherently bad because it's RNG" to keep things simple, so let me know if any of those is key to understanding this.)
If at any point in the expansion crit is a poor stat for paladins, they have no third stat to retreat to.
I agree with this, but that's like saying that if at any point in the expansion Holy damage is a poor damage source for Retribution, they would have no other spell damage source to focus on. If paladins don't…
Lil’ XT Hotfix, Cataclysm Class Previews, Comics
Lil'XT Sounds Hotfix
The issue was that some of his sounds were flagged in such a way that they play for everyone around him and not just the player that owns the pet, an annoying problem to be sure. We cant alter volume or who the sounds play for through a hotfix so the temporary workaround is to disable them completely right now until the proper fix can be patched in later.
Cataclysm Class Previews – Updated
All the cataclysm class previews posts have been updated on their respective forums. I didn't plan to update them regularly at first but it's a fast and easy way to keep everyone up to date while we wait for the beta. As usual, feel free to discuss the changes on the forums!
Comics
Dark Legacy Comic #234 and Teh Gladiators #124 / #125 are out!
Blue posts, MMO Report
Blue posts
We're working to ensure combat, breathing and travel are less cumbersome in this underwater zone than many of you may be thinking. The zone is quite large with a great deal of quest content and exploration to be done. In many areas you'll really get a deep ocean feel, but since you're questing down there, we want to make sure underwater gameplay is greatly improved. (Source)
Uldum / Larger 5-man Dungeons
There's a level 85 five-player dungeon you might just learn about soon which holds seven bosses in a single instance. It's in a place you may have heard of before… Uldum. ^.^ (Source)
Armor upgrades at level 40
We talked about changing it, but decided we liked it the way it is. It's a pretty nice reward to suddenly be able to equip mail or plate at higher level. By similar logic, you could argue that we should make helms, shoulders, trinkets and even mounts at low level because they're awesome upgrades and players are going to get them anyway.
It doesn't actually make the itemization simpler to add plate at lower levels. We have to create more items and make sure they are well distributed. That's not a huge consideration either way, but you listed it as a benefit and we don't see it like that.
We also don't think it's a huge balance problem either way. Nobody is so weak below level 40 that perfect gear optimization is really going to make a difference between success and failure.
The strongest justification for letting e.g. warriors use plate at level 1 is the feeling at level 40 of having to swap out all of your gear. But even in that case if you hold on to the mail for a few more levels until you get a more suitable quest reward you're not really going to be at a noticeable disadvantage. (Source)
Mage (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Winter's Chill
Yeah, we probably need to make Winter's Chill apply the entire stack at once like Improved Scorch and Improved Shadow Bolt. (Source)
Paladin (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Healing in Cataclysm
Our goal is for paladins to be able to raid heal. Don't look at the designs for spells that none of you have even been able to try and conclude those mechanics can't possibly allow you to raid heal and therefore our goal can't possibly be met and will therefore be abandoned. It's fine to raise concerns — that's one of the reasons we announce stuff like this early — but some of you are trying to get a spell buffed that you haven't even cast yet.
I will say our vision for the AE spell though is not that the paladin runs around constantly, but that you position yourself where you can do the most good. Sometimes that will be back with the healers. Sometimes that might be in the melee. Sometimes you'll have to spread out and your group healing won't be as efficient (in the same way a shaman's group healing isn't as good in the same scenario).
Tranquility is on a very long cooldown. It is not the way druids AE heal. We want to shift it from 5-person group to raid because we'd like to do that with every spell. Having to organize players by arbitrary group is a strange concept since it doesn't actually manifest itself in the real world (in the way distance from you on the battlefield does).
We aren't going to give paladins anything resembling Circle of Healing. One (or two) of those spells in the game is plenty.
Spirit will be a good stat to stack but only to a point. Once you can heal say a six minute boss fight without going out of mana, then any additional Spirit is pretty much wasted. At that point stats like crit start to look pretty attractive because they increase your spell's throughput without increasing the mana cost. Maybe you'll be able to heal someone with one cast, allowing you to swap over and heal another player. In today's healing environment, where a lot of that excess healing will be wasted overhealing, getting a huge crit on a spell isn't nearly as valuable.
We'll have to see how raid healing goes. We might be okay with the tendency for groups to still assign paladins to tank healing because they are particularly good at it. What we want to avoid are those cases where a group feels like they can't possibly keep tanks alive because they lack a paladin or they can't possibly keep groups alive because they have too many paladins. (Source)
Rogue (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Rogues Cooldowns
In actuality it's not quite this extreme, but the stereotypical rogue encounter is that if they have their cooldowns available, they're going to wreck you and if they don't have their cooldowns available, you're going to wreck them. Giving Cloak a chance to fail was a way to make sure that rogues couldn't guarantee that they would be immune to spells for a few seconds. Usually they would be, but sometimes they'd get unlucky and the lock or whoever would have a chance against them.
In Cataclysm, we want to reduce both extremes. That is, the rogue shouldn't feel invulnerable when they have all of their cooldowns available and they shouldn't feel helpless when they get caught without them. In that environment we think it's safe to remove the chance to fail because Cloak won't be the only thing that determines victory or defeat vs. a caster. Things like Smoke Bomb and larger health pools as well as other changes should help keep a rogue alive when Cloak is on cooldown. Likewise, the warlock won't be stunned so much so they won't be quite so frustrated when the rogue does pop CoS.
Having a ninety percent chance to succeed is actually a pretty frustrating place to be. At that point you aren't grateful when you roll lucky. You're mad because you were so unlucky. At 90% you start to count on something, which makes it worse for it to fail. If Cloak had a 10% chance to succeed (we wouldn't do that, but just for sake of argument) then you'd feel awesome when it did work because you got lucky. What I'm getting at is that it's not like we thought the 90% deal was super fun gameplay. We just thought it was necessary.
Without the entire gamut of Cataclysm changes though, we're not sure rogues need a PvP survival boost at the moment.
My paladin comment above was more poking at the silliness of expressing "Gotcha!" because we figured out a way that we're comfortable getting rid of a 10% chance to fail on Cloak of Shadows. (Source)
Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Bladestorm
It isn't necessary to change Bladestorm just because Whirlwind changes. If you want to blow the cooldown for a single target damage boost we don't really have a problem with that. Whirlwind was balanced around doing single target damage, which meant it just got free damage when there was more than one target. Bladestorm by contrast doesn't amount to a sizable chunk of damage in PvE. (Source)
The MMO Report
A slightly earlier MMO Report this week because I don't like posting blue posts alone.
#BlizzChat Developer Chat on Twitter 4/16
#BlizzChat Developer Chat on Twitter 4/16
Q: Do you intend to have all 280% flying mounts scale to 310% when a 310% mount is earned, or will only purchased mounts do so?
A: Our current plan, is that in Cataclysm, you can learn a new rank of flying that lets all flying mounts move at 310% (even current 280% mounts). That will probably be as fast as mounts will ever get. We dont like it that when you get a 310% mount that you stop using your old ones.
Q: If 310% speed is becoming trainable, does that mean we'll be able to fly in Azeroth from the get-go?
A: We have considered the concept of Old Weather Flying. Just kidding. More than likely, youll just be able to fly from the beginning.
Q. You mentioned at BlizzCon that all races would be getting revamped racial abilities. Care to shed some light on any of them?
A. Were going to do something similar to what we did in Wrath of the Lich King, where we just refresh them to make sure theyre balanced and feel cool. Something you could see is dwarves getting a bonus to Archeology, or undead getting a new activated racial ability that will be more useful in PvE.
Q: Can you give us some more information on how and what Path of the Titans will reward you with? Talent points? Unlock talents?
A: The Paths unlock a new kind of glyph called an Ancient Glyph. These dont enhance class abilities, since they are designed to work with any class. They do grant bonuses that might be useful to a wide variety of characters as well as offer some actual new abilities as well. If you think your action bar is full, then you may want to head for the passive bonuses instead of the active abilities.
Q: Will the new guild perk system kill a lot of smaller guilds?
A: Our goal is not to encourage players to have to change their existing guild. We realize some players like smaller guilds and some like larger guilds and we dont want to ask you to change that.
Q: What improvements to the UI are being considered (particularly for raid healing)?
A: We would like to update the default Blizzard UI. It has some fatal flaws, such as not being able to show buffs and debuffs simultaneously. We probably wont ever go as crazy as some of the mods out there just because they provide a ton of customization, which is one of the things players like about them. We do think players deserve a raid UI that is fully functional for those players who just dont like to install a lot of mods. We hope to get this change in for Cataclysm, but were changing the UI for the spell book, talent pane, professions window, character stats, guild, friends and probably a dozen things Im forgetting, so its just a matter of how much time we have.
Q: What kinds of UI updates are planned for Cataclysm. Eclipse and Soul Shards are two, but any others?
A: We have already moved professions from the skill tab to an awesome new page on the spell book. In fact, in the absence of weapon skills, we got rid of the skill tab entirely. We have a new talent tree UI that shows all of the talent trees without scrolling and provides the passive bonuses as well. Were changing the glyph UI to support Paths of the Titans. Were changing the PvP queue UI to support rated Battlegrounds. Wed like to improve the V-nameplate feature. Wed like to provide more information when you level up about what new spells or features are now available to you. Were experimenting with better ways to organize buffs and debuffs and communicate procs and cooldowns too.
Q: What change are you most excited about?
A: We are changing the old zones probably more than most players realize. A place like Stonetalon is virtually unrecognizable. It has all new quests and item rewards and dramatic changes to the landscape. A zone like Western Plaguelands has actually been updated to reflect the fact that the Scourge are in retreat (which is not to say that the zone is without its dangers). Everywhere youre going to see something new and surprising. I think a lot of players are excited about the level 80-85 experience (as they should be!) and the goblin and worgen zones (which if anything are better than the death knight starter zone, if you can believe that), but I think a lot of players are going to want to reroll new character of existing races and classes just to see how much everything has changed.
Masteries
Q: Can you go into more detail on Vengeance? As it stands it sounds like off tanks will be at a significant disadvantage.
A: We want Vengeance to have a long enough duration that off tanks wont lose their damage bonus. In most situations, the off tank is doing some tanking along the way. The worst case scenario would be say a fight where the off tank needs to tank in phase 3 but not phase 1. Remember, even in that case though you have tools to generate high threat. Vengeance is there to keep DPS from pulling off you late in the fight.
Q: With armor class bringing mastery bonuses, will players never want to "downrank" from, say, leather to cloth?
A: Thats the idea, really. They still can wear the older armor, but theyll lose some stats from doing so.
Q: Can you allow points spent in your off tree give a diminished amount of mastery bonus toward your main tree so as to not nerf hybrid specs?
A: Does the Elemental shaman really want more melee damage though? Does the Shadow priest really want to heal better? If anything it feels like it would be a nerf to hybrids, since a warlock would get more damage from any tree, while a DPS hybrid might only get more damage from their tree.
If hybrids end up coming out a little short, well compensate in other ways (such as more oomph in talents) instead of doing hacky things with the mastery system.
Q: Compared to some third mastery bonuses (radiance etc) others are a little boring (+crit damage etc) Intended? Comments?
A: The mastery bonuses are obviously a really new concept. The risk on the one hand is that theyre too boring and dont affect gameplay and on the other extreme they take specs which already have a lot going on and just make them overcomplicated. For now we wanted to implement a range and see what feels the best in beta. We expect to iterate on these a lot.
Class Mechanics
Q: How will haste affect channeled spells. Will it be similar to DoTs and HoTs?
A: They will channel faster but their duration will remain unchanged. You will get more ticks on the same cast.
Q: When does the homogenization of classes stop? Paladins are starting to look like priests. Where is the diversity?
A: We want the challenge of beating PvE encounters or enemy teams in PvP to be how awesome you are at strategizing, not how often you are at recruiting the right classes. While it is very, very important to us for classes to feel different, its also very important to us that friends get to play together.
Q. Is every healer supposed to be able to tank-heal efficiently, or will we still see specs excel in it more than others?
A. Each healer is intended to have a different niche, and different strengths. Such as Restoration druids with HoTs, or paladins at direct healing, Discipline priests at absorption/prevention, etc. That said, each healer should be able to keep up a tank and have some deeper tank healing gameplay as they do now.
Q: How will "active spell is more powerful" be handled with no more dot clipping?
A: How about we get rid of a more powerful spell is active altogether? If you have some bonehead overwriting your more powerful buff or debuff, wed rather you handle that issue socially.
Cataclysm – Raids & Dungeons
Q: Can you make crowd control in raids and 5-mans an important aspect of the PvE game again?
A: An emphatic yes.
Q: With more players raiding in Wrath of the Lich King than ever before, do you plan to raise the difficulty to accommodate our new skill/experience?
A: The heroic difficulty is designed for the players looking for more of a challenge. One of the things we learned from Icecrown is that we unlocked the heroic modes so late that players had tons of practice on the encounters on normal mode, so the step up was smaller than it was in say Ulduar when players on hard mode were still learning some of the encounter basics. (In our defense though, because of the time of year we released Icecrown we made a conscious decision to not ask players to choose between holiday events and hard-mode raiding.)
Q: Will Ragnaros have a new weapon in Cataclysm, considering that we stole and reforged his? I'm sure he's not happy about that either.
A: Oh come on, it never actually dropped for you. Then again, is there really much demand for a Strength, Stamina, Fire resist, cosmetic Fireball proc weapon?
Cataclysm – Items
Q: Will relics and wands be getting any new attention in Cataclysm?
A: With relics, the plan is to make them class agnostic. In other words, there might be a +strength relic that a death knight or paladin might want to equip. We think that will let us add more of them to the game without them being so specialized. They will feel more like wands.
How to make wands and relics a bigger part of gameplay is something weve had many, many discussions on. Ultimately though wed rather see warlocks, mages and priests casting their spells, not zapping someone with a wand. In Cataclysm we dont expect to see much wanding, even at lower level.
Q: What will happen to our gems and enchants on gear that give us stats that are being removed in Cataclysm ?
A: We are going to change most ge…
Twitter Dev Chat, Blue post
Once again, all the super-important announcements this week left little time for blue posts and other things, back to work!
Developer Chat on Twitter This Friday
Questions will be taken live through Twitter, so be sure to sign up for a Twitter account and follow @Warcraft (http://www.twitter.com/warcraft) in order to participate!
To submit a question for the developer chat, please tweet using the #BlizzChat hashtag between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. PST on April 16. Due to the character limitation on responses within Twitter, all answers will be posted on the World of Warcraft forums in a dedicated thread.
Link to the last developer chat: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23425524394&sid=1
Blue posts
The store itself does not act as a generator for loot codes, so a set number of codes had to be added to the store. That number is very high. If it's ever reached, we can add more. The item offer isn't intended to be of a limited quantity. (Source)
Mastery and multiple trees
If you are a 5/20/51 Ret paladin, you get mastery bonuses for spending 51 points in Retribution, and nothing else.
If a rogue is 55/21/0, they get mastery bonuses for spending 51-55 points in Assassination and nothing else.
We went back and forth on this for a bit, but Emogenheap's examples are correct. Basically it came down to two things:
We could do cooler bonuses (like Balance and Shadow) if we knew it would be restricted to those guys only and not all members of that class.
Several hybrids would have trouble finding enough attractive in other trees. Why does the Elemental shaman want better melee damage or healing? Meanwhile the Fury warrior happily dips into Arms to pick up their bonuses too. (It's fine to sub-spec into other trees is there are sexy talents there, even if they are different roles. We just didn't want someone to potentially get 9 different passive bonuses from doing so.) (Source)
Passive Mastery Benefits
On the broader topic of whether more creative or more passive mastery benefits are more fun, we just need to get players in there in beta and trying them out. The risk of more passive bonuses (like the current Enhancement one) is that it's just a little dry. Since your spell damage tends to scale roughly (roughly) with your gear, it risks just feeling like more damage. On the other hand, bonuses like Shadow and Balance affect gameplay an awful lot and may end up being just one too many things to monitor. We wanted to split the difference for now and see what feels the best. It could be that we spice up some of the passive ones or it could be we tone down some of the crazier ones, or we continue to offer a mix and let players gravitate towards what they like. I can see how the more creative ones might just sound more exciting, but then again getting 12 new abilities might sound exciting too until you're struggling with how to learn the nuance of when to use each one (if that lousy analogy makes sense). (Source)
Showing absorbs in combat log
We're still working on showing absorbs. It's technically very challenging. It's not information we currently pass down to the client, and while passing that information down isn't too tricky itself, making sure we can share it without affecting your performance is less trivial. (Source)
Vengeance Mastery Bonus
If you've spent much time on this forum in the last several months, you'd have noticed a common theme is that tanks start to have threat problems again at extreme levels of gear. The problem really isn't that surprising. Say that tanks start out doing half the damage of DPS specs. All is well. But the DPS specs continue to improve their DPS stats while tanks continue to improve their survival stats. Even if tanks spend a little effort on threat stats (some of which they get naturally on their gear), they still can't keep up with the DPS specs. It's a gear scaling problem.
We considered, and rejected, many other solutions to the problem, such as increasing threat modifier or choosing to no longer make tanking gear. Ultimately we decided that there were good things about the way rage works on warriors and bears (translating incoming damage into threat) and the way the mage talent, Incanter's Absorption turned damage taken into damage done. It just provides the damage increase in a way that's controllable.
Vengeance is NOT there so that you no longer have to ever worry about threat. It's fine with us if you have to consider threat a little bit at the start of a fight. Again, if we wanted to make threat not a factor in WoW, we'd just remove it and have mobs always stick to you rather than just cranking the threat numbers up so high that you don't have to take it very seriously.
Vengeance is also not designed to keep tank dps high no matter what in any circumstances. It's designed so that when you're being hit, your damage stays elevated. The damage done scales with your health, essentially allowing tank DPS to increase as DPS specs DPS increases. It scales a little bit with damage being taken too so that you don't turn into a juggernaut if a rogue sticks you with a dagger in PvP. (Source)
Encounter design and raid composition
Encounter design will always favor someone over someone else. It's probably impossible to make things absolutely even across every class (or even every tank class) on encounters that are tuned this tightly. And really, we wouldn't put that kind of constraint on the encounter designers. It's tough enough coming up with mechanics that you guys aren't totally sick of seeing while still giving you enough flexibility to bring whoever you want.
If we thought it was impossible or even really, really difficulty for some classes to tank some encounters, then that would cross the line for us. Death knights coming off of Sarth and going into Ulduar crossed the line because the advantages they had seemed like they were giving them an advantage on every fight. Blocking made too much of a difference on Anub, and we probably won't use that mechanic again. The Lich King hits so freaking hard on 25 heroic mode that a giant health pool is pretty useful. But the three guilds that have killed him now have used pretty different comps and even different tanks, so that seems pretty successful. So few guilds have anything approaching a reasonable shot of being able to handle that fight until the buff stack gets much higher that it seems a little silly to worry about it too much. (Props if you guys think you're close.) Meanwhile, you can do every other encounter in the game with the tank of your choice without being at a major disadvantage. Doesn't sound that bad overall. (Source)
Downranking
Yes. Actual downranking had two problems though. One, it was a pretty obtuse concept for new players. If you're super elite you might dismiss that concern, but it was something players had to figure out (typically be reading forums or something) and worked nothing else like anything in the game.
Even more of a concern, a lot of players downranked not only to conserve mana when they didn't need to heal much but because at some point in gear the coefficient starts to matter a lot more than the base points. They could essentially get a fairly powerful heal off at a lower cost.
We think the decision of when to use a big heal and when to use a small heal is a fun one — it was fun for players for vanilla and BC. Healing might be too bland if you literally only had those spells, but nobody will. (Source)
Paladin (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Paladin Healing model
We talked a lot about keeping the paladin model inverted, where the small heal is super efficient. There is probably a way it could still work. In the end we were just concerned that it would end up biting us in the rear. Somewhere along the way we'd have to make special rules to handle the paladin, who would risk being too mana efficient or too incapable of healing when forced to heal outside of their mana-efficient comfort zone. Could we have designed it? Probably. But frankly I'd rather spend our time on more interesting mechanics and spells. I'd rather the new AE heal really make paladins feel like they can AE heal rather than really making sure FoL felt small, cheap and fast. I agree it erodes a little bit of distinction among the classes, but only a little bit. There are far more interesting ways to make healers feel unique than in th…
Vashj’ir: Surviving the Depths
Vashj'ir: Surviving the Depths
The Sunken City
Vashj'ir is a level 78-82 zone in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm where players will be called to explore the depths of the Great Sea and stop the naga from seizing immeasurable power from the realm of Neptulon the Tidehunter. This expansive underwater zone will feature an unprecedented fight for survival against the naga overwhelming the area, several new quest hubs — including Alliance and Horde naval ships and submarines — all-new underwater travel and combat mechanics, several pocketed undersea caves free from water's grip, two new five-player dungeons (Throne of the Tides and Abyssal Maw), and the first-ever opportunity to explore the remains of the once-majestic city of Vashj'ir!
Bottled Distress Message Found Adrift at Sea
Need your help. Time is short. I'm held captive in what I hope to be a nightmare.
Enjoying the ocean air just days ago. We were determined to control key trade routes through victory at sea over the Horde. Their fleet came into our scopes. Our world became the deafening sound of battle, the smell of gunpowder, and the feeling of fear. Looking back now, though, that wasn't real fear.
We weren't alone in those waters. Our naval warfare attracted attention and rendered us prey. With our vessel already torn apart and taking on water, we saw a tremendous creature rise from the depths and shatter the hull, sucking us down to the sea floor. It all happened so fast. I was quick to tread the waters, hoping to regroup with any survivors I could find through a dense garden of kelp, constantly gasping for a chance breath. That's when the onslaught began. From all directions swarms of brutal naga swept through and captured a great many of us. Beaten near to death, I awoke in agony, bound in chains.
And here I still sit. I can only describe our prison as very big and somehow very much alive. We're in the hands of the naga now. Surviving crewmates in better condition than me are driven into slave labor.
One escaped. Thomas. He didn't make it far before I saw him dragged back. Before being forced into labor, he spoke in a panic about some large shell protecting this living prison, expansive night elf ruins in the distance, strange naga rituals underway, and sea vrykul battling our captors. He made little sense. Could be mad. Or I could be mad to hope vrykul are fighting to free us.
Prison patrols out again. Send word to Stormwind. Sunken city far from extinct. Naga plotting something horrific. Please help.
