RSS Build 10179, Blizzcon Streams & Badges, Blue posts

PTR Build - 10179 A new build has been deployed on PTRs, once again this is only a bug fixes patch and there isn't any change here. <div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><div class="blizzquoteheader">Quote from: Dresorull (<a href="" target="_blank" style="color: white;">Source</a>)</div><div class="blizzquote">We're currently finishing updating the servers to a new build, and they should be back live again soon. You'll need to apply a small PTR patch to your client before being able to connect to the servers again. The new build on the PTR is 0.2.0.10179. </div></div></div> BlizzCon Tournament Coverage Streaming <div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><div class="blizzquoteheader">Quote from: Blizzard (<a href="http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml" target="_blank" style="color: white;">Source</a>)</div><div class="blizzquote">We are pleased to announce that this year, for the first time, all of our streaming tournament coverage for BlizzCon will be available in both high-resolution and low-resolution formats, and you can choose whichever fits your available bandwidth. The <a href="http://www.blizzard.com/blizzcon/tournaments/" target="_blank">BlizzCon website</a> will host one stream featuring StarCraft and Warcraft III events and another dedicated to World of Warcraft. As in previous years, all of this streaming tournament coverage will be provided free of charge. Be sure to tune in to find out which teams and players are the best in the world by visiting the <a href="http://www.blizzard.com/blizzcon/tournaments/" target="_blank">BlizzCon site</a> on August 21 and 22. To clarify, the tournament coverage streams are free, but to watch panels, see new announcements as they are made, or receive the in-game pet, you will need to order the <a href="http://blizzcon.rayv.com/" target="_blank">Pay Per View Internet stream</a>. </div></div></div> BlizzCon Badge Confirmation Emails <div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><div class="blizzquoteheader">Quote from: Zarhym (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/18872651930-blizzcon-badge-confirmation-emails.html" target="_blank" style="color: white;">Source</a>)</div><div class="blizzquote">BlizzCon is coming and so are “BlizzCon 2009 Badge Confirmation” emails. It is important for all attendees to print and save these emails in order to pick up your purchased badges at the event. These emails are being sent in waves, so if you haven’t received confirmation emails for all of the tickets you purchased yet, please be patient. They should be arriving within the next 24 hours and are coming from a PNMI.com address. Be sure to check your “spam” or “junk” email folders in case your confirmations were directed there. In the days to come, the bar codes contained within these emails should also be available for viewing through the Battle.net account with which you purchased your tickets so you can verify you have all of the bar codes associated with each badge you purchased. We look forward to seeing you all at the show! </div></div></div> Blue posts <div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><div class="blizzquoteheader">Quote from Blizzard staff</div><div class="blizzquote">Instance servers are full! We have known about this for awhile, that is why we have been pointing out that the solution(s) are not as simple as buying a new stick of RAM and being done with it overnight. It took a lot of investigating and planning before we could physically do something and now that we have plans, they still aren't something that we can do very quickly and easily as we want to try and make sure it is done right. [...] The instances being capped isn't something that is surprising. We intentionally implemented this cap because after a certain point when too many instances were active they would all run into various issues like lag. As much as this is an issue we want to solve, we feel it is a better situation to have a large number of players enjoying stable instances instead of nobody able to play anything. We aren't happy with the fact that having these stable instances includes preventing others from getting into instances, but that is why we are working very hard on a more long term solution. [...] My guess is simply based on the idea that when major content patches launch, you tend to see people play more than they were the couple weeks before. The point is mainly that patch 3.2 won't resolve the issue as the fixes that are being worked on are more on the hardware side. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/18704857925-instances-full-come-32.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Currently we are trying to find ways to minimize or (hopefully) completely get rid of the issue. Not everybody runs into this capacity issue, but we understand the frustration for those who do encounter it. Measured Battlegrounds We aren't reluctant to do a measured battleground system - we are, in fact, at work on one. However, measuring individual contributions to a battleground is a much more difficult prospect than our previous measurement systems. Having to rate each player in a 10 to 40-man fashion requires a varied and versatile tool that is capable of capturing defining moments in battleground matches and player contributions throughout the game. This is not an easy prospect. It is something we've been working hard on for some time and we hope that it will come to fruition sooner than later. Unfortunately, we don't have a date as to when this will be added to World of Warcraft. Rest assured, this is something we want to see added to the game as much as our fans do. Once it is in place, we will all breath a collective sigh of contentment... just before we leap to our desks and join the queues to begin bashing our way to the TOP! (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/18971778092-why-does-blizz-fear-the-ranked-bg.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Adding an underwater dungeon to the game? We typically never throw anything completely off the drawing board when it comes to conceptualizing fun content. I think there would have to be a good opportunity for a water dungeon in the game first, but more importantly, we'd have to really make sure it would be done right and feel fun. Under water combat can be a little chaotic, especially when using any sort of ground-targeting spell. We wouldn't want to come out with such content were it to feel like the game play would suffer from the format of the setting. In a way you could relate it to our decision to remove flying vehicles from Wintergrasp. It sounded awesome and was, in some cases, pretty fun. But it just didn't feel right or balanced with the way it was implemented, made the zone even more chaotic and really fell short of providing the player with the physical sensation of being in flight. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/18704858325-hey-blizz-can-we-have-a-water-dungeon.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) <img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/images.gif" alt="" border="0" /> Mage Living Bomb on 3.2 PTRs The intent, as of this writing, is that Living Bomb ticks that crit will proc Hot Streak. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/18697257498-confirmation-on-livingbomb-tics-procing-hs.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) <img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/iwarlocks.gif" alt="" border="0" /> Warlock Changes to Affliction We are unlikely to revert the SL or Immolate changes. If Affliction's damage ends up being too low, we would be more likely to address it in other ways. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/18983418654-revert-changes-to-aff-plz--ty.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) <img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/iwarriors.gif" alt="" border="0" /> Warrior Tanking as a warrior If warrior MTs are standing aside because DK OTs can handle the fight much better, and this is happening for a lot of encounters, then that's a problem. If it happens for a few encounters it's probably not a problem and if the advantage the DK conveys is modest, it's not a problem. This isn't an issue of how many warrior MTs there are. It's an issue of whether one class has a much, much easier time on certain encounters. DKs probably had too easy a time on Sarth +3 and Vezax. The second issue is: should we nerf warriors because there are so many warrior tanks and we want other tanks to be more common? I think most reasonable people, including us, would say that's a bad reason to nerf someone. However, players also infer a lot of design intent to our actions. We've finally gotten to a point where there are 4 classes that can serve as your raid's MT. If we turned around and buffed warriors a lot while nerfing the other classes, players might mistakenly assume that we want the warrior to be the "real" tank, which is certainly an understandable conclusion given that it was the design for the first 3-4 years of WoW. Now, where I think I lost some players in the thought process was in a discussion combining those two issues (power and representation). If druid MTs are so much better than warrior tanks, then why don't we see more of them? Furthermore, why aren't warriors stepping aside for druids on those fights where they are currently (in 3.1 I mean) stepping aside for DKs? Maybe there are just a lot of DK tanks because the class is new (and has at times been overpowered). But why aren't there more druids if they are a superior tank on many encounters? Do we nerf druids anyway, knowing this will probably lead to there being fewer of them? What if they don't really convey as much of an advantage as players think? Now we've made an unpopular spec weaker. Players sometimes (and often depending on the argument they are trying to make) argue that representation equals power. There is a correlation there, but it's not 1.0. These things are rarely black and white. I think sometimes some players try to distill everything down too much into rules like this. You can't feed variables into a computer and have it spit the right answer back out at you. That's not intended to be a criticism of player logic powers, more of an explanation of why we sometimes might view things differently. (Fonte