Cryptozoic acquires WoW TCG, Blue posts, Fan Arts

Cryptozoic Entertainment Acquires WoW TCG License
Quote from: Cryptozoic (Source)
Wrathgate booster set for tabletop game based on Blizzard Entertainment's award-winning World of Warcraft series slated for May release, followed by Class Decks in June
Irvine, California – (March 24, 2010) – Cryptozoic Entertainment is pleased to announce that they have signed a long-term licensing agreement with Blizzard Entertainment. The multi-year arrangement grants Cryptozoic the right to produce the trading card game (TCG) based on Blizzard Entertainment's hugely popular World of Warcraft® massively multiplayer online role-playing game series.

“This is an exciting time for us and for players of the trading card game,” said John Nee, Cryptozoic Entertainment’s CEO. “Our first priority will be to maintain the current programs that the community has come to expect and then build from there. The game itself is fantastic, and will not change. The community can rest assured that we are committed to providing them with the high quality product and organized play that they deserve, worldwide.”

“It's important to us and to our players that every entertainment experience set in a Blizzard Entertainment game universe matches the standards we've established with our games,” said Paul Sams, Chief Operating Officer of Blizzard Entertainment. “We're proud of the quality and accessible gameplay that the World of Warcraft TCG has offered to date, and we're confident that Cryptozoic is the best team to help us continue that tradition.”

Cryptozoic will continue to expand the World of Warcraft TCG for years to come. Players will soon have a slew of exciting new cards to test their skills and defeat their opponents with at the upcoming Continental Championships in June and the World Championship in August. The first product release from Cryptozoic will be the Wrathgate boosters in May followed by the Class Decks in June.

“Having been fully involved with the development of the World of Warcraft TCG from day one, I've always been passionate about taking it into the future,” said Cory Jones, Cryptozoic’s President and Chief Creative Officer, and formerly Blizzard Entertainment's lead business and development liaison for the TCG. “I'm pleased to say that the players have a lot to look forward to as we continue developing and evolving the game to match the action and spirit of World of Warcraft.”

To start, players can get the latest news on the World of Warcraft TCG at www.cryptozoic.com. Then in just a few weeks a brand new website for the TCG itself will launch. Cryptozoic promises ongoing updates on everything from organized play to product releases as well as a regular dose of strategy articles and spoilers as they get closer to their initial product launch.




Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
30 minutes LFD Debuff
We're keeping a close eye on the discussions, feedback and in-game information for this. We don't have any current plans to make changes, and it seems a bit soon to start considering them, but we are paying attention to constructive discussion and feedback on this change. (Source)

3.3.3 Known Issues List - 3/24/2010 Update

• Pit of Saron - Scourgelord Tyrannus can remount Rimefang during the encounter. (Source)

Random Battlegrounds Queue Times
There's a known bug that isn't properly incorporating random battleground queuers with those choosing specific battlegrounds. This can lead to queue times that are longer than what they should be.

A hotfix is in the process of being developed and we anticipate it should be applied within the next day or two. (Source)

Let healers DPS in Cataclysm?
Ideas that would make healing more fun are good things to discuss in this forum, particularly with an eye towards Cataclysm.

The idea to let healers dps a little is a controversial one though. Some healers just have no interest in it, so while it might make healing a lot more fun for you, it risks making healing a lot less fun for them. I would not approach that idea as an obviously intuitive one that all healers will rally around, because I suspect that's just not the case. http://www.mmo-champion.com/Smileys/classic/sad.gif

[...] I could see that if the tree was structured in such a way that you had to give up a little bit of healing for that dps (and to be fair, talents like Searing Light already exist), such that it was the kind of thing you might do while soloing or running easy content (like Dungeon Finder when overgeared). In other words, I wouldn't want us to do it in such a way that healers were then balanced around doing damage -- like we calculated healer damage when we come up with boss berserk timers. Then it goes from a playstyle choice to being the only way to play. (Source)

Commendations of Service - It's fun to click 400 times!
As a one time thing it's really not that big of a deal. You could always do it in increments if you are getting bored. I also ended up figuring out a pretty easy way to do it where I had the vendor box open, I'd keep trading in the BG tokens, and just put the honor token on my 1 key so I was watching/reading other things while just spamming right click + 1 and going through all of them.

What if the 2 second cooldown was 0 seconds instead.
I believe that's more of a safety net to help lower hits on the hardware. These are tougher things to explain but imagine 100 players crunching at the tokens together in the same place, that could lead to issues for these players and others so it's better to be safe. Oops, used the same reasoning again in another post...

Bugs and Test Dummies
If you ever notice a bug, one of the very first things you should probably do is consider if it's a test dummy problem. We've had several false positives reported since we first implemented them, and in fact that's one reason we avoided putting in test dummies for so long.

Which is not to say that actual bugs don't creep in too. http://www.mmo-champion.com/Smileys/classic/smiley.gif (Source)

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...s/ihunters.gif Hunter (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Spirit Beasts
The Spirit Beasts were added as a way to capture that old feeling of having to hunt (which really means be very patient and very lucky) to get rare spawn pets so that you'd feel awesome and be able to show them off. Making those creatures actually more powerful than other pets goes completely counter to that design. If the frustratingly rare spawn is needed for highest possible dps, there would be a lot of exasperated hunters out there, and I think they'd be totally justified.

Spirit Beasts are the hunter equivalent of the Time Lost Protodrake. They are there for bragging rights, not max dps.

We're not sure yet what we're going to do for hunter pets in the future. I fear that even if the dps gain was marginal that hunters would still go for the highest dps pets, so really there only exists an illusion of choice. We could literally make all of the pet families do the exact dps and have rather watered down special abilities (because otherwise one of them might grant a 1 or 2% dps benefit and that would end up being the pet again).

In other words, I can see a design where pet choice is purely cosmetic and pet stats are identical or I can see a design where pet choice matters, in which case you don't really have that many to choose from on content that matters. (Source)

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...ons/images.gif Mage (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Molten Fury and Torment of the Weak
We think we figured out a problem here with the Molten Fury talent not playing well with Torment the Weak. If that proves to be the issue that explains the observations some of you all are having, then we'll try to get a fix in quickly. (Source)

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/.../iwarriors.gif Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Warrior T10 4pc DPS Bonus
Yes, there appears to be a bug with the dps warrior 4 piece bonus. It should be easy to fix. (Source)




Fan Arts
The Blizzard Fan Art Section has been updated with 3 new fan arts.

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