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New User Interface Updates
There's a new preview of some of the upcoming UI enhancements in 3.1, check it out.
Quote from: Blizzard (Source)
There are many new additions and changes coming in the near future for World of Warcraft. Alongside the hotly anticipated raid dungeon Ulduar, several new user interface features will be debuting, and we’ve put together a preview of them to let you know what to expect when the patch arrives.
Patch 3.1 PTR Ulduar damage analysis
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
As another experiment, we are creating this thread for posting and analysis of PTR raid damage parses. If you don't understand what that means, you probably don't need to be posting in this thread.
I am going to be keeping a low profile in this thread. Please do not use it to ask questions or make demands. Please do not include any pre-3.1 numbers unless they are solely for comparative purposes. Please do not make definitive statements unsupported by data. Please do not derail the thread. We will try to delete off-topic responses.
For an example of what we would like to see, you can refer to the better parts of this thread:
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Blue Posts
As a reminder, there's a video recap series of blue posts on YouTube. They're a fantastic summary of more important posts made recently -- many of which are related to 3.1. Take a look if you haven't, and please give the creator of the videos feedback! For the recap below, there are quite a few interesting topics on Ulduar.
3.1 Downloader? (Source)
The Background Downloader starts downloading data for the next patch ahead of time. As you can see, patch 3.1 is a big patch, so when the patch launches you may only need to download an additional 100MB (yes, this number was pulled out of a hat) instead of the full thing to allow you to install and get in the game faster.
New 3.1 Cooking Recipes: Chef de Cuisine (Source)
All of the new recipes in 3.1 should should toward your recipe total.
Warsong Gulch Reputation Gains (Source)
There are no current plans to change how you gain reputation with Warsong Gulch.
Spirit As An Attribute (Source)
I do think it is a little odd that Spirit isn't value in and of itself (at least by some classes) but by what your talents can turn it into. It becomes this wild card stat. Similarly, either Spirit or mp5 always seems to win the race for best regen stat. I imagine before too long we'll take a hard look at the system overall.
Raids & Dungeons
Why does the 10/25 paradigm exist? (Source)
We offer two levels of content because some players just like to raid in smaller groups. It also got pretty boring to run Karazhan every week after the 20th or 30th time.
Gear Consolidation: Is Blizzard happy? (Source)
We are pretty happy with it. There is plenty of room for improvement.
Even with gear consolidation, Ulduar probably has as many items as all of BCs raiding content put together. Even if you divide the number in half to account for 10 vs. 25 player content, Ulduar still has like twice as many items as Black Temple or Sunwell. Perhaps our design makes more sense in that context.
GC, your comments suggest the game is turning hardcore! (Source)
That isn’t our intent at all. Lich King’s first tier of raiding and all the heroic content is much easier than it was in Burning Crusade in order to make it more approachable for players not interested in hardcore raiding. I think there is a lot of focus on it because 3.1 brings a gigantic raid with it, however there is non-raid content too and not every patch will have those in the same skewed proportion.
Ulduar Hard Modes (Source)
Hard modes are designed to give very skilled groups something to do while still allowing more casual groups to see the content. Ulduar has 14 bosses. We haven't done an instance of that size since the original Naxxramas, and Ulduar has a lot more unique content than Naxx had. You are imagining a world in which if we had not done hard modes, you would have gotten another entire raid. That is a bad assumption. You would have gotten Ulduar, cleared it quickly, and then been bored again.
Yes, we know players given the choice will always want more content. If we offered 6 levels of raid content, there are still players who would clear it quickly and be looking for something new. Welcome to the challenges of MMO design. :)
Naxx / Ulduar Comparisons (Source)
They should not be running out of mana in Ulduar if they play well. In Naxx you can do things like stand in fires, overheal like mad, bring players in green gear to get geared up, or not even explain the fights to pugs because you can brute force your way through them. One the mechanics that allows you to brute force is having so much mana regen. Now all of that is appropriate for the first raid tier. Things will start to get a little more difficult now, and a lot more difficult if you want to do the hardest fights. Naxx = play bad and win. Ulduar = play good and win.
Ulduar's Challenge Level (Source)
It isn’t. We had to fix some problems, and very rapid mana regeneration was one of them. Another big one was amazing tank cooldowns (mostly from the DK). However we stepped up the difficulty on the encounters too. There is no “just burn him down” boss like Noth. The trash will require crowd control on some pulls. Ulduar is not Sunwell. It is not a huge leap up in difficulty from Naxx, but it is a step up. If that isn’t enough of a challenge for you, then I suggest you try the hard modes and pay a visit to Algalon.
Twilight Vanquisher / Of the Nightfall Titles and 3.1 (Source)
The current plan is to leave them in for players to obtain after 3.1 is released.
Content in Ulduar (Source)
Ulduar has a ton of bosses. While I'm sure some players would love for us to deliver an instance with that level of content every month or so (and throw in a 5-player run to boot!), it's not in the cards, at least not for the next couple of years.
Instead, what we tried to do with Ulduar is offer a lot of different ways to play the encounters. While the progress-oriented guilds may clear it quickly, we hope that some of the hard modes will offer them a lot to chew on. All of the players who are somewhere between barely being able to clear the instance and the "world first" crowd should be able to find a comfortable difficulty level as well.
The old model towards in game was a success, it brought you eleven million players! (Source)
Most of whom never had a chance to finish a raid. They didn't get to see some of the best art in the game, hear the unique music or voice over, or in many cases even see the villian at the end of their quest line. From a production POV, instances are very expensive. It seems an odd choice to lavish all that attention on such a tiny percent of the player base.
At the same time, we know there are players who love a challenge and are willing to do almost anything to beat a raid-destroying boss provided they also have a shot at the best loot. They don't want the instances to be over too soon. They like banging their head against the wall.
And so hard modes were born. We tested the water a little with Obsidian Sanctum. We're going full bore with Ulduar.
Wrath Tier 1 10/25 Difficulty (Source)
This is the first time we have offered parallel 10-player and 25-player content. We'll probably reflect on what worked and what didn't work. The intent was not necessarily to make the 10-player content more difficult, especially since we offer less powerful rewards for completing it. I would say the 10-player stuff was probably tuned correctly and the 25 stuff was too easy. But we'll see how Ulduar goes.
Druid
Swipe's Range (Source)
The correct range for the new, 360 Swipe should be 8 yards. It appears to only be 5 in your version of the data.
Mage
Spirit Improvements (Source)
I agree with that and think all of the discussion about whether mana should equal energy is a distraction.
I said that a proper benefit of Spirit to mages would be for it to affect dps. But I cautioned that you should not expect your dps to go up overnight because of this change. Perhaps I was being too cautious, but I know that at least some players are hoping to get free dps out of the deal. The problem we are trying to fix here is not "mage dps is too low." The problem we are trying to fix is "mage gear has spirit, which doesn't do much for them except for a small bit of in-combat mana regen."
If you think mage dps is too low, that is a separate topic, but we would still be unlikely to fix that by suddenly giving you 10 dps for every point of spirit on your gear.
Imp. Scorch / Winter's Chill Nerfs (Source)
All of that logic makes sense, and we might in fact convert Spirit to crit, except for your point 2. All casters lost 5% of crit with this change. So then you would only risk falling behind melee, but we have nerfed the melee damage of many specs.
Paladin
Seal of Martyr/Blood Self Damage and Raids (Source)
The fires typically do a lot more damage than Seal of Blood. What is the most you have ever been bled for on a Judgement crit? Maybe 10K? And that’s a crit. No offense, but your healers probably laugh at the kind of damage you are inflicting on yourself. The tank is getting hit for much more, much faster and the fires or big AE sprays generally do more. A stray PoM or CL can probably top you off. I know you don’t want to use Command, but if you’re sitting at 10% of your health or you know the dragon is about to breathe, it may be an attractive option until you get healed back up again. I know the self-damage is a concern of the paladins though, and we’ll keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t feel like too much of a liability in raids.
Design An Encounter Contest -- Winners
While 3.1 has taken up a bulk of everyone's time, we did have a little contest running up until right before the PTR went up. The contest asked entrants to design a World of Warcraft encounter -- dungeon or raid -- and submit it to us. Some entrants even went as far as laying out encounter maps, designing loot, and creating the lore behind the characters involved. Suffice to say, we had over 150 entries and all we appreciate all of the participation for such a daunting challenge.
It's time to announce the winners, of which the community directly contributed to the selections; each will receive a BlizzCon 2008 goodie bag card that includes a BlizzCon Polar Bear Mount, as well as a beta key for StarCraft II. Please congratulate the winners!
- DrCheese for Stormstout and the Brewmaster
- derfranz for Warlord Mok'thar
- Zaniel for Esrever the Unbound
- SirAlex for CoT: Dalaran
- Imari for Caverns of Time: War of the Shifting Sands - Race Against Time
Wrath Sees Delays in China; The9 Faces Bankruptcy
While many of us are churning through the content of Wrath of the Lich King, anxiously awaiting Ulduar and everything else that patch 3.1 has to offer, a fair portion of the global playerbase hasn't even touched the expansion yet. They haven't been able to experience the starting area for Death Knights -- and probably never will -- and now the company that publishes World of Warcraft in China -- The9 -- is facing bankruptcy.
You see, the Chinese government instituted policies to forbid negative content in video games and on the internet. And, well, the entire basis for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion is something China has forced alteration of in the past -- the undead and the Scourge. What this means for The9 is that they secured a license to publish the expansion, and thus far have failed to get it approved twice, including the most recent version that doesn't even have the Death Knight Hero class. What's going to happen to The9 and Wrath of the Lich King in China is still up in the air, but one thing's for certain -- this will likely be a long process of iterating, if it's even worth it for Blizzard to go through the process.
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(i'm slow)
