A Wizard of Ice and Fire, Hardcore Muhammad Ali Monk, Disney Diablo Crossover Fanart
Hearthstone on Mobile is now LIVE, Patch 8416 Official Notes
This Week's Hero Rotation, Heroes of the Dorm: Super 16 Wrap-Up
Patch 6.2 - Alt Catch Up
It looks like it may be a little bit easier to catch up on alts in Patch 6.2.
Patch 6.2 Preview – Timewalking
You may remember Timewalker dungeons from when they first appeared in Patch 5.4. They are finally here as a weekend event that reward scaled up versions of old items!
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
As we get started testing Patch 6.2 on our public test realms, we’re looking forward to discussing all of the new features and content coming to World of Warcraft. First up, we’re excited to present Timewalking.
In Patch 6.2, we’re introducing seven different weekend events that will run from noon Friday through noon Monday every week. Two of those events will be Timewalking weekends, in which you’ll be able to queue up for a randomly selected old-school dungeon with a new sort of “heroic” difficulty: When you Timewalk these dungeons, you’ll find that your character’s power and gear has been scaled down to a fraction of what they normally are. For the first time in years, some dungeons you outgrew long ago will once more put your skills to the test.
A good challenge deserves a good reward, so to go along with scaling you down, we’re going through most every piece of loot in each Timewalker dungeon and scaling it up. That’s right, when you Timewalk through Utgarde Pinnacle, take down King Ymiron, and loot his Red Sword of Courage, it will scale up to an item level appropriate for use at your level.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll test Timewalking on the PTR in the following dungeons:
The Arcatraz
Black Morass
Mana-Tombs
The Shattered Halls
The Slave Pens
Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom
Gundrak
Halls of Lightning
The Nexus
Utgarde Pinnacle
Timewalking will be available to characters who are level 71 and higher for Burning Crusade content, and level 81 and up for Wrath of the Lich King dungeons. It will open up only during certain three-day-long weekend holidays. While Timewalking, your power will be adjusted down to the level of the Heroic dungeon, but you’ll retain all of your skills and talents. We will also be testing additional rewards, such as a level 100 quest that rewards one Seal of Tempered Fate per weekend, so keep an eye on the in-game calendar.
Patch 6.2 PTR testing is underway! You can get started testing with us by copying your character and downloading the PTR client. Once you've had a chance to try out the patch, visit our PTR Discussion forum to talk about your experiences. To report any issues or errors, use the in-game Submit Bug feature (found under Game Menu > Help > Submit Bug) or visit the PTR Bug Report forum.
Blizzcon Tickets on Sale Wednesday at 7 PM PDT
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
The first batch of BlizzCon 2015 tickets will go on sale Wednesday, April 15 at 7 p.m. PDT through Eventbrite—visit www.blizzcon2015.eventbrite.com for a chance to buy yours.
Click here to buy tickets Wednesday at 7p.m.!
If you’re going to try for tickets, you might want to check out the ticket info section of the BlizzCon website or read our ticket-purchasing guide. Please note you’ll have 8 minutes to complete the purchasing process, and you have until August 14 to edit attendee information.
If you don’t get tickets tomorrow, a second batch will go on sale Saturday, April 18 at 10 a.m. PDT. In addition, tickets to an exclusive pre-BlizzCon dinner to benefit Children's Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) will go on sale Wednesday, April 22 at 7 p.m. PDT. For those unable to attend the show, in-depth coverage of BlizzCon will also be available through the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket—further details will be announced at a later date.
BlizzCon 2015 will take place November 6 and 7 at the Anaheim Convention Center, and tickets cost $199 each (plus applicable taxes and fees). Tickets to the BlizzCon Benefit Dinner cost $750 each (plus taxes and fees) and include BlizzCon admission. For further information, check out the official BlizzCon site.
Patch 6.1.2 Hotfixes - April 13
An important scaling hotfix went live yesterday, making things better for smaller raid groups.
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Raids and Dungeons
Blackrock Foundry
General
The health and damage scaling of aspects of several encounters on Normal and Heroic difficulties have been adjusted to make them less punishing for smaller raid groups, to account for reduced availability of external cooldowns and the larger relative portion of the group that must deal with certain mechanics. Overall, these changes should make the encounters easier for groups with closer to 10 raiders, while having little noticeable effect for groups with closer to 30 players.
Kromog
Stone Breath now deals up to 20% less damage on Normal and Heroic difficulties.
The Blast Furnace
Foreman Feldspar, Security Guards, Bellows Operators, Firecallers, and Engineers now have up to 15% less health on Normal and Heroic difficulties.
Blackhand
The damage over time dealt by the Impaled effect has been reduced by up to 30% on Normal and Heroic difficulties.
Blackhand now has up to 10% less health on Normal and Heroic difficulties.
PvP Live Developer Q&A April 16
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
This Thursday, I’ll join Senior Game Designer Brian Holinka to answer your questions live on Twitch. This live Q&A will be focused on PvP, in all shapes and forms: Arenas, Battlegrounds, Ashran, and so on!
When: Thursday, April 16, 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time (check here to convert that into your local time!)
Where: The World of Warcraft channel on Twitch.tv/WoW
You can submit your questions via Twitter by using the hashtag #WarlordsQA, or simply by replying to this forum thread. As we’d like to get to as many questions as possible, we’ll only consider forum questions that use 40 words or less, and all questions must be submitted before 12:01 AM PDT on Thursday, April 16. Keep in mind that we’re focusing on PvP for this Q&A session -- questions on other topics will not be answered.
See you there!
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Patch 6.2 Concerns
I'm always concerned that one of these days someone may look at the notes and be upset about a change they're reading about instead of logging into the live testing environment we've created--where they're able to try out the change--and provide the results and careful feedback from their experience. It's a long shot, but it could happen.
tl;dr: Do your own job. I'm not doing the *math* for you. I'll test for things to *break* but not math.
We don't want for you to do math. Why do you think we want you to do math? We really only want to hear people's experience from playing. Very rarely do we ask for math. It's great people want to theorycraft and they're absolutely valuable to us, but for the vast 99.9% majority we really get the most out of hearing how you feel about the game, and your experiences. Try the PTR and let us know how it went, what did you like, what did you not like? What was your experience? That's actually a lot more helpful to designers than an attempt to fix math problems, because the solution isn't always (usually?) to change a % point. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Patch 6.2 Testing Duration
PTR duration is largely going to depend on what's being tested. With a new raid, a very large piece of outdoor content, quests, creatures, gear, itemization, etc. etc. as well as some new and complex systems, you can expect testing will take a number of weeks--potentially more accurately counted in months. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Garrisons
Haven't upgraded my mage tower to level 3. I could, but two ground-level ports are more convenient than three portals upstairs.
Good point, we'll look into it. (Muffinus)
Holidays and World
Question for the WoW audience as a whole: describe a memorable outdoor spawning experience for you. An area, spawn, or event. (Muffinus)
I understand why these don't exist anymore, but long spawn contested PVE bosses from Vanilla/BC. Very fond memories + lots of fun.
Like, green dragons? (Muffinus)
Obvious examples: Fel Reaver, Son of Arugal. (Muffinus)
Less obvious: for me, OG moonbrook. First time I died a lot to dudes in houses, felt sinister. Felt more sinister with Stalvan Q. (Muffinus)
Memorable 2: Duskwood, all of it. Finding Mor'ladim's Tomb, discovering the secret of Stalvan. (Muffinus)
THERE'S WORGEN IN THE WOODS (Muffinus)
old Fozruk patrolling in Arathi, stumbling upon the old Scarlet Courier, Thrym being Thrym.
He's the Hope-Ender. (Muffinus)
but de world bosses, particularly de blue an' green dragons, held fond memories for a long time.
*Nods Warchiefly* (Muffinus)
Also, those ghosts that spawned from the blood item things in EPL. And the roaming patrol on horseback. O_O scary times
Blood of Heroes, needed to craft the epic chromatic stuff (Muffinus)
#Noblegarden Did you run an Easter Egg hunt this year? Was it fun? Did you get trolled by Painted Eggs? How do you feel? Get at me. (Muffinus)
I went out to collect 100 eggs for the new pet, but that was it. I've already completed & collected everything else in years past.
.What would you like to see in the future? (Muffinus)
I kind of feel like most events haven't changed much in recent years. I say completely flip them up! New stuff!
Woah, settle down. (Muffinus)
I think I spend more time making DMF updates than anything else. There's something about a dark carnival that's just fun to design for. (Muffinus)
I would love to see a raid in the darkmoon fair but I know its unlikely due to it being around only for a couple of weeks
Like harder than the rabbit/moonfang? (Muffinus)
Holidays ever going to be fun and exciting again? Ppl who complete everything never have anything to do when it comes around
What would you want to see? (Muffinus)
Crafting Shadowmourne
There is now a video that shows how the Shadowmourne prop was made!