The Big Vote!

Who should I main for WotLK? Shadow-priest or warrior? I have my points of view on each, but I'd like to see what you guys think. I do enjoy both play styles and have fun in either role. Kev's probably tired of questions like this from me, as I've asked him something similar in just about every game we've played together so far.

I can be, but I have a feeling that everyone will be playing a main to 80 before working on alts. I'm just trying to decide which to "main" to 80 first.

Whichever one is more fun

It's OK. I'm here to tell you what to do.

Play Greyzen.

nodden will love you forever.

and its official Motobikes will be available to everyone. and at a measly 15k to make one. I'm sure everyone will have one.

So basically. Traxx, Neusa and possibly Booze will be cruising around as their own biker gang.

Me too when i sell them to each of them for 30k

WOOOOOT!!

The calendar now shows up in armory. Can't edit it but you can see whats going on.

How do you get a mobobike?

Maebee, why is your avatar flipping us off?

Its an Engineer created item

Engineering-only equip?

Nope, anyone can ride them. At least for now.

Wow... I forgot to check the forum till just now. WTF is happening to me?!?

Oh I know. I need more WoW.

We do all this for you and you ditch us till after lunch...


/SHAME!!!!

and he leaves again

Hell, I ditched you BEFORE lunch.

So who wants to post the post from WoR.com for me so I can have something to read?

C'mon guys.

Guys?

GUYS!?!?

Armory - Character Profile Update Delays
With the release of Echoes of Doom there have been some delays on character profiles updating on the Armory. We are aware of these delays and working on optimizations and overall improvements to resolve the issues causing them and to ensure the best experience possible with this feature. (src)

24/10 Echoes of Doom Update
Since the release of the latest patch, Echoes of Doom, we have gone through a series of optimisations in order to increase overall game performance. We’ve seen steady improvements and a flurry of activity and excitement during the Hallow’s End event and the latest rumblings of zombie attacks. It’s been an exciting time for us as we draw closer to the release of our second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

The impact of latency, inaccessible instances, and general frustrations experienced by the community continue to be closely monitored. Many have asked whether we have any sort of compensation planned for those who have experienced these frustrations; the answer is yes, compensation will be offered.

While we‘re not ready to announce the specifics on compensation plans, we wanted to at least make the community aware that we are continuing to evaluate the current state of the game. We’ll be able to give out more specifics once we feel we have ironed out any continuing issues.

We would like to thank you for your continued patience as we work to make your game experience a great one. (src)

Cross-Language Battlegroups
To shorten the queues and provide greater access to warfare between factions, we are currently working on combining existing Battlegroups of different languages, with the aim of creating Battlegroups with higher populations. This change will affect both Battlegrounds and Arenas. Players from realms of different languages will only face each other as opponents in battle and will not be playing on the same faction in Battlegrounds, which will ensure that those playing on your side will speak the same language as you.

Please note that not all Battlegroups will be merged with another, and this feature will not be affecting the Russian-language Battlegroup. More details on this upcoming change will be provided as development nears completion.

To clarify, people from another language realm will only be opponents. Opponents may also be from your realm or other realms with the same language as you. (src)

Europe - 24/10 New realms: Azuremyst and Terokkar
Today we're opening two new English Normal/PvE realms, named Azuremyst and Terokkar, in the Ruin Battlegroup. These are fresh realms, thus no migration will be allowed to the realms during the first months. The realms are now live.
Please note that the starting areas may be quite flooded in the beginning, and the population cap is intentionally set a bit lower than normal to not have them even more flooded. The cap will be raised over the coming days as the population spreads out more. (src)

Europe - 23/10 Queues, new realms and migration
We wanted to give you a quick update on the measures we’re taking to address the queues currently experienced on the English realms. We have two ways of addressing these; migration and new realms, depending on other factors.

For PvP realms the main additional factor is the difference between population on high and low populated realms, thus we plan to address the queues by offering Free Character Migration from the highest populated realms to the lowest populated ones. This will address the population concerns on both the source and target realms. We’d like to assure those concerned with moving to a realm with lower population that we have every intention of using the migration to make sure these have a healthy population over time.

However, due to current concerns with realm performance we wish to wait at least until after the upcoming weekend to start any free migrations, making sure the extra load on the realms from the migration doesn’t impact the game performance.

For PvE realms the situation is different; the population is very evenly spread out, and thus migration is not an option. We plan to open new PvE realms to address the current realm queues. These will be fresh realms, allowing no migration to them at first. We will have more about this tomorrow, Friday, but wanted to at least give you a heads up about it today.

We’ll keep you updated on our plans and considerations moving forward. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in this thread. More details will follow as soon as we have them ready. (src)

Europe - Update on Russian Migration
Following our previous announcements about free character migration from Molten Core, Shadowmoon, Stonemaul and Warsong we wish to advise that we will be closing these realms on Wednesday October 29.
Please see the following thread for more details: here


Daily Blue

Stratholme mount (Deathchanger's Reins) drop rate increased
While random is indeed random, the chance of Deathchanger's Reins dropping was increased with 3.0.2. This is the second time the drop rate has been increased, from the rather crazy 1 in 5000 WAY back in the day to the 1 in 100 it is now. (src)

About the future healing changes
I wanted to start talking about healing because it's on our radar. But we are considering some major changes, so it is going to be a long term design and not something we'll patch in a week or two. I also said "consider." We're in a brainstorming phase and we might not end up making major changes. It could be something close in scope to the tanking changes this time around, or it could be bigger or smaller than that. As I've pointed out, there weren't too many tanks who said that everything was perfect and they were happy (though there were some). There are many more priests who are scared of a major healing change and would prefer things stay as they are. We need to evaluate their opinions as well. It may not be worth a change at all. That's why this thing will take time. (src)

No periodic class review patches
We rejected the idea of periodic class review patches for a number of reasons. First, some classes needed a lot more attention than others but we felt like we had to mess with them all because players had been patiently waiting for months and months. Second, because of the length of the cycle, by the time we were on class 7 or 8 then class 1 needed attention all over again. It also made patches without your class changes a lot less exciting. We certainly haven't abandoned the idea of changing classes after a ship. We just look at them all and who has the most pressing needs.

If you didn't get a change that you were really hoping for, I wouldn't give up all hope. The first patch after Burning Crusade (it was only a few weeks IIRC) had a lot of talent and ability adjustments, and the same will no doubt be true this time as well. We're going to find mechanics that aren't working, bugs that need fixing, or classes who just didn't end up where we planned and predicted they would be. That's not stuff we'll let fester for a year or more. (src)

Other ways to increase your mount speed?
We have some ideas in mind, but they are probably things you'd start to get into at level 80. (src)

Tigole on Guild Achievements
We love the idea of Guild Achievements and plan to pursue the idea in the future. (src)

Hallowed title requirements
Before I get excited I only need a toothpick to get my hallowed title but im missing about half the masks, I can't find any solid proof that "mask for all occasions" is being removed from requirements to get title.
Confirmed. (src)

Ghostcrawler on "no class is required"
Our goal was not to remove anything unique from the classes. Our goal was to get rid of anything that was considered so mandatory that you would consider scrapping a raid without that player. A great example is Bloodlust / Heroism. Raids were absolutely stacking shamans to do a rotation of these spells to the extent that we designed encounters assuming that would be the case.

A slightly different example is Illidan. That encounter assumed (because it has been changed) that you had a warrior in the raid, and that the warrior was tanking.

On the other hand, we didn't design any encounters for LK with the thought that "They'll use a death knight here to pull," or "The druid will use Rebirth here," or "You have to have Spell Reflect or you'll wipe" or "The rogues need to disarm the traps in the Suppression Room." Now all of those spells do have their uses and will make certain encounters easier. If those spells were of questionable or no utility then the class distinction really starts to devolve into damage, healing and tanking. But none of them should be mandatory. I don't think most guilds will call the raid if they don't have a DK for Malygos the way most guilds *did* call the raid if they didn't have a hunter (or two) and a mage for Maulgar (pre-last patch anyway).

There are a few encounters we're keeping an eye on. Naxx 25 still has an encounter that requires 2 priests. That is probably a safe assumption for a raid of that size, but it's a slippery slope. If we had required 2 Shadow priests, for example, it would probably cross the line. (And no, we won't start implementing encounters like that when we allow dual-specs.)

I also realize that some players (particularly those who don't play the class in contention) will argue that Rebirth or whatever is so powerful that raids will require a druid. Maybe there are some out there that do. A lot of these decisions are judgment calls on our part, and as I'm sure you all know, decisions on the part of raid leaders, especially inexperienced ones, can sometimes be misinformed. (src)

Mage
Arcane Blast changes
We think the problem is that Arcane Barrage is a very good spell, so much so that you need to get back to it right away and don't want to waste potential Barrage time with another spell. I know at this point you're expecting me to say that we're going to nerf Arcane Barrage, but actually we're going to mess with Arcane Blast some more. Lowering the cooldown is an attractive idea because it would let you squeeze Blasts off in between Barrages more easily. Alternatively, we could just buff Blast's damage so its clearly superior to Fireball or whatever else you might want to squeeze in there.

We normally don't want to go too far into how to play your class, but alternating Blast and Barrage with the occasional Arcane Missile when the fast cast procs, makes a pretty decent rotation. (src)

Developer Q/A on the Frost tree (src)
Are Deep Frost specs really meant for PvE endgame? I know the answer to this questions a few months ago was “you will be close” but it seems that Frost has made a strong shift back to PvP orientation as the primary function.
We did a lot of raid dps testing last week and Frost was very close to Fire. Fire can be pretty variable depending on crit strings, but it was actually closer than we predicted it would be (and we were happy it was). I wouldn't have a problem raiding as Frost.

Do the devs feel the frost PvE raiding damage rotation is “varied” enough to be in line with other specs/classes that have had this addressed? (ie frostbolt spam with the occasional BF proc)
If "PvE endgame future" means "Can I use it on Arthas?" the answer is probably no. As you can probably tell, we don't design every single talent and ability to maximize single-target raid dps, even though players often suggest that's what they would like.

Is Spirit meant to be completely passive for Frost mages? Or is there some thoughts of making this more attractive for our drops.
We're not entirely happy with the way Spirit is working. It has become, in the minds of the players, a junk stat that is only useful if you have a talent to turn it into something else. This is something we're discussing a lot.

Finger of Frost was touted to be added as a way to provide “shatter combos” on raid bosses, however with the current implementation of this talent, it is more likely that the mage will continue casting Frostbolt spam, treating the talent as a passive crit% increase.
Did you have a question there? Frost gets a lot of damage from shatter combos. I would still try to maximize it.

Is pushback resistance for frost spells expected to be completely from Icy Veins & Ice Barrier? Has there been any consideration for a passive resistance akin to the other trees?
Are you really having a lot of problems with pushback in a PvE setting? We've found that the overall change to pushback has made it much less of an issue in a lot of settings. I would probably always take it for Arcane Missiles, but I'm not sure beyond that.

Paladin
Revisiting Divine Storm
Homogenization is absolutely still a concern. We originally conceived of Divine Storm as Holy and obviously liked it in that role. We discussed several different ways to change it, but leaving it as Holy would have meant really lowering the damage, which might have turned into a greater PvE nerf than intended. (Physical damage is a good knob to turn for PvE because we can assume a boss is sundered, but we can't assume that in PvP.)

I described what we wanted to do as surgical. We wanted to change as little as we could to get the changes we wanted. Switching the spell from Holy was a very easy change. Rebuilding the entire spell might have been prone to introduced bugs or side-effects, which would then prevent us from evaluating if the nerfs to Ret were sufficient.

We plan on revisiting Divine Storm once we have a better idea of where level 80 dps and pvp stack up in general. I won't promise it will return to Holy damage, but it might. We might also try and do something different with it to help push it farther from Whirlwind. (src)

Giving an AoE heal to the Holy tree?
We have resisted giving Holy a true AE heal in order to reinforce differentiation among the healing classes. But if needing an AE turns out to be something that every healer needs, just like every tank need an AE, then we'll man up and give it to them. (src)

Ghostcrawler on various Paladin issues
Re: Sunder
We do assume that a mob is sundered in a raid. Warriors and rogues can offer the debuff and hunters in a pinch. It's certainly possible to beat an encounter without any of those classes, but it will be easier with them. We have tried to give groups a lot of flexibility in who they bring, but we still need to make some assumptions about the capacity of the group. We can't balance encounters well if they are designed to be beaten with and without raid buffs.

WOOT!

Anyone else around? There's more Plague info on WoR.com! I'LL BE YOUR BEST FRIEND FOREVER!!!