Interview with Alkaizer
Mists of Pandaria TV Spots
The TV commercials that will air during the Packers-49ers NFL match-up at 4:25 p.m.EDT / 1:25 p.m. PDT are now live!
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Get ready for a bold new age of exploration and adventure. Crafted from Mists of Pandaria’s opening cinematic, new TV spots for the expansion are invading the airwaves everywhere… so keep an eye out for Chen Stormstout amidst episodes of your favorite shows. Pandaria opens September 25— pre-order now at Warcraft.com.
RaidComp Update
RaidComp has finally been updated for Mists of Pandaria! Be sure to leave any bug reports or things we missed in the comments.
Season 12 Sets Recap: Part 1
Now that the Season 12 sets are nearly complete we can take a look at the Warrior and Mage sets that we haven't done a video of before. You can find some of the other classes on the Season 12 Armor Sets page with updated screenshots as well. The remaining classes will be in the next news!
Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
PvE
My whole guild is curious, why get rid of Mass Summon? It was 1 of the 2 most useful Guild perks to raid teams.
Hard to discuss HGWT here. High level: We added so much player convenience in Cat that ironically we made it easy not to play. Keep in mind that Pandaria is fairly compact. You won't be flying to Caverns of Time for a raid as is the case for DS.
Why was Karazhan Chess made practically unsoloable in 5.0.4?
Bug.
GC please bring attunements back, BC days were so good...
I think there can be a happy medium. Attunements can be cool accomplishments without sucking (esp. for alts).
Any plans to go back to the trophy of the crusade style of tier tokens? Current system can be really unforgiving.
I didn't like ToC tokens. Took away too much RNG. Loot became a "my turn is next week" instead of excitement when a boss died.
5% buff spell haste seems limited. 3 specs vs others @ 6+ (2 classes all specs) thoughts on widening coverage. 10 mans need it
If your 10 has no hybrid casters, then there probably aren't many casters benefitting from the buff anyway. Also: Sporebats.
Will challenge modes get nerfed someday because of many players who want the mount and transmog wont be able to do it?
We are going to fight that as hard as we can. I love challenge modes. Here are some quotes (as far as I remember) from our internal testers.
"Challenge modes are the most stressful thing I have ever done in Wow. And I love it!"
"Challenge modes make me use every one of my class abilities. No other part of the game does that."
"Challenge modes are like phase 4 Ragnaros... that lasts for 20 to 30 minutes."
"There's that moment after you beat Ook-Ook where your chest tightens a minute because you know what's coming next. That damn rabbit."
"Challenge modes make me wish I could cast spells while casting other spells. Even off the GCD doesn't come soon enough."
Now, those are skilled players going for gold. You can wipe a bit and still get bronze. You can stop and strategize and still get silver.
World
Hey GC, I just wanted to apologize for someone harassing you with a link to my forum post. It was not my intent (the crz guy)
No worries. We understand CRZ concerns, but some of them are misconceptions or bugs. Twitter bad for addressing them. We will. Many questions on CRZ. I don't have the bandwidth here to explore that topic, but we'll work on a forum post. Some misinformation and bugs.
Why still no crossrealm arena teams? I want to do arena with my RBG team mates!
It's something I'd personally like to see.
I think CRZ is seriously messing with wintergrasp. Controlling faction flipflops several times a battle
I've seen reports of issues with WG/TB and have passed them on. I'll see if QA has more info next week.
Classes
We see a lot of "everyone's glyphs are more fun than mine." Would love feed from folks who like theirs, so we can better get the issue.
I bet you a dollar in the next expansion you change talent system again and say FINALLY we got it right yet again.
I think it's extremely unlikely we will change talents soon. We will polish the system of course.
re-phraseed question - What is your plan for Dual wield DK tanking? Do you like it being sub par threat wise?
We consider Blood to be a 2H spec. If you can make something else work, cool, as long as it doesn't totally eclipse 2H.
Can you please tell us why hunters can't tame hydras? Goats and porcupines seem silly in comparison. Just sayin.
Mostly it's because we hate the model. If we update it, then taming would be on the table. Standard no promises.
With Explosive Trap glyph might we see Black Arrow removed from the trap cooldown?
You mean only with the glyph? That might be tricky....
Can Destro locks have their fire animation back with 1 ember?
But you always have 1 ember....
Why has water breathing been removed? Warlocks still have a similar spell. Will we get it back in a near future?
We made drowning take so long that the spells had no real benefit.
In sims for beta hunter dps is very low compared to rest. How are internal sim numbers compared to rest? high/middle/low ?
How close are the 4.3 sims to "reality"?
We hunters want to collect and keep more friends. Why wont you allow us to keep more pets in stables?
More stable slots would be fine to a point. Don't want hunters feeling like they should tame evey pet they see. Taming should be a decision. There are plenty of "collect all" achievements. Hunters aren't crazy cat hoarding ladies.
Why not a happy balance of just as many slots as rares?
Potentially, but we just added a lot of rares.
Shamans feel very gutted to me by removal of traditional totems- numbers ok, but just feels like a lot of junky CDs now.
Junky CDs > junky buffs?
Are you guys looking into the odd Healing Stream Totem behaviour I posted in the Balance Analysis thread?
Yes.
Seems like there has been to many Elemental Shaman nerfs damage is SSSOOO LOW compared to what it was fix this please
What was your damage before? What is it now?
I could burst to 220k now it's maybe 130k.. Long boss fights was 60k now it's 40k to 45k low compared other classes.
That's lower than I'd expect, but I'm not at the office now so I can't double check.
Any chance of making selfless healer/eternal flame more interesting for prot pallies? Without nerfing SS, of course
SH maybe. EF is hard because hots by their nature work well when ticking on multiple targets at once. Maybe via Bastion...
Hello Ghostcrawler why the paladin class judgment does not power sacred specialization holy? sorry for my english, I'm french
We didn't want Holy to have to use Judgment on cooldown.
Was there any stealth nerf for divine purpose for holy paladin? proc is low lately and no chain proc.seems fine as prot
Nope, not that I see.
Why was the decision made to remove Palatanks 'Righteous Defence'? Pretty much the only change I dislike / don't understand.
With so much threat we didn't think tanks also needed AE taunts. We want tasks to have to do something.
Any plans on balancing lower level healing? I've so far crit for over 50k multiple times on my 70 Priest's Greater Heal.
Yes. There is a thread on US beta forums to point out low level balance problems.
Character
Dunno if you're the best person to ask, but why not make reputation achievements account-wide? I see the reasoning for actual reputations, but it's one of those limiting character-swap achievements for me. Making interchangeable reps such as Warsong offensive/valiance hold only count once would be a good compromise, but atm it's annoying having 38 & 8
Why not make loot account wide? Or leveling? At some point you're not actually playing the new character.
Will Violet Proto Drake be fixed to re-reward Master Riding? I got it right before account-wide and feel like I wasted a year
We didn't want all your alts to have 310% forever. That was too much of a perk for the drake. Account wide achievements are so you don't feel like you have to do them on every alt.
Any thoughts of making gold account wide like D3? Could be a nice quality of life change for many reasons.
As I said, I think having to mail your own dudes is dumb. Seeing the mail icon should be exciting not a chore.
Hey GC quick one regarding heirlooms and new pandaren chars. Do we have to wait until we choose a side before we can send them
Yes, but I think you can survive 10-15 levels without them.
You didnt like the idea of grinding a rep for the helm enchants, but yet in MOP you make us grind for valor items? Difference?
There are alternatives to valor items.
Tweet Missing: Regarding achievement points being account wide.
It is account wide. If you have point differences, try logging in each character to force an update.
Misc
Dear WoW forums (and not just ours), adding a million bullets doesn't make your argument stronger. Quality > quantity. I love bullets. But there are many posts with dozens of them, under the belief that more bullets are harder to ignore.
Hi GC, what's the thing you're most excited about for us to see in mists of pandaria?
Most excited? Probably challenge modes. Biggest game changer is scenarios I expect.
Will you continue posting of forums/twitter after MoP is released?
Twitter - sure, if it doesn't all blow up. Forums - unlikely. I don't have the bandwidth to provide posters what they expect.
Was there a specific reason to not raising the level cap & new perks for guilds in MoP?
Avoiding expectation of new perks every expansion. Didn't want to design perks to fill a quota if they weren't cool.
Did your background in Maine biology play a role in mob creation or location? Specifically in aquatic environments?
Level designers and artists deserve all the credit for that. I may have suggested the pogonophorans.
You were a marine scientist? Can you tell me anything about the field, specifically how to get into it from an entry level?
Marine science? Go to grad school or get a job as a lab or field tech. Gaming? Try QA or CS, make a game (such as iOS), or a great fan site, or a great level or mod. Harder = be a great player.
Just out of curiosity, no evil plans: If you would design the mechanics for a new MMORPG, would you still include auto-hit?
You mean no melee autoattack or make everything a skill shot more like an FPS?
Why some changes made on beta are already on live, but some changes aren't? (like havoc with 25sec cd)
We can't generally hotfix cooldowns.
Please remove 'fish oil'. Thank you.
But how will you get your omega 3s?
Why is everyone saying that MoP is casual-oriented?
Because pandaren don't drip blood? Challenge modes are extremely hardcore. Hoptallus may be harder than any raid boss ever.
Would you please tell us if the restrictions to Iranian players will continue or not?
It's not up to me or Blizzard from what I understand. If it was up to me, everyone could play.
Not sure if anyone has asked this yet... How have the first few days on twitter been for you? It's like a devs Q&A up in here!
I dig it. On forums, players can write huge posts then get mad when you don't address every bullet. I like the brevity here.
Well, i am super excited to have you here. you're doing good work, Greg, don't let the haters get you down!
They don't. You can't survive this gig if you have thin skin.
Do you have anything to do with Diablo 3?
I'm not on the D3 dev team. I lead an Inferno strike team. All the designers bounce ideas off each other. We're a family.
You work on weekends? Crazy man!
This isn't the kind of job you go home from
Your changes are not all fun and you have lost one more long time player. If its not broke don't fix it dude. Oops too late
But what about all the players who says something is broken? They just wrong? I get where you're coming from.
Surely you're a gamer beyond WoW (been playing since '05 myself!). Are you pumped for Assassin's Creed 3 or WHAT!?
Love Assassin's Creed. Also remember I was the guy who brought wigs and tomahawks to Age of Empires.
@CM_Zarhym What's your favorite aspect (That we're allowed to know about right now!) of Mists of Pandaria?
Probably Scenarios, the improved structure for faction dailies, and LFR of course. Keep this casual busy!
Deleted Tweet
I haven't raided / PvPd with a mage in a long time. We aren't stupid enough to design the game around our own characters.
GW2 Competitive Build Overview: Support Elementalist
ArenaJunkies has a nice overview of a elementalist build by Team Legacy NA member "Mianhe".
If you want more frequent updates, check out GW2Guru or find some other players to play with in our Guild Wars 2 forum. If you are looking for maps or anything else that can be found in a database, check out GW2DB!
Trading Card Game Art Update
The Trading Card Game art gallery has been updated to feature ten new pieces.