May News/Discussions

[Monkey]

More Wrath tidbits continue to surface. Things such as mounts that can carry passengers,

This sounds like a great change, but the context makes it clear that Kaplan was discussing the vehicle engine's capabilities and not a specific LK feature:

Worldofwar.net: We saw 2 characters being able to share a horse. Are we going to be abel to give our friends a lift?

Kaplan: With the introduction of our siege vehicles, which is really what all that technology is about. A vehicle in WoW can hold up to 8 players, that's 8 different seeds and we can give the seeds any number of abilities or let you do your abilities from the seed. At the very basic level , for the first time it allows us to let a player give another player a ride on their mount should we choose to do so. We're not sure if that will be available from the start but one of the ideas is to give the players new mounts they can buy and allow these new mounts to be available or passengers.

Worldofwar.net: Will they be usable in the old world?

Kaplan: If they are on the ground we can make them usable in the old world.

Sounds like they're pretty open to implementing that feature, but as a proud member of The Lounge, it's my sworn duty to pick whatever nits are pickable. :P

Edit: Here's a link to a transcript of the Kaplan interview: http://www.worldofwar.net/articles/413362/...ranscript/page1

[Concillian]

Yeah the PvP forum and Customer Service forums have some real winner stories.

My favorites

- "But the win trading happened after I sold the team" (uhh... after you what?)
This excuse seems to be extremely common. It's kinda funny.


- "I win traded with my alt on this other server, but never win traded with my main on this server, you wrongfully took gear from both my toons"

AHAHAHAHAHA

[Treesh]

May 13 News
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As mentioned earlier, it looks very much like Patch 2.4.2 is going to drop today. Those are the most up to date notes from the PTR

And the default chat windows actually retain their settings between logins! Hooray! Now they just need to fix it so I can have combat logs in more than one window.;)

[Bolty]

In a "Rust Storm" style move, Blizzard has taken action against Arena Teams that practiced Win-Trading.

Thank you, Blizzard, for doing this 7 months too late to help me in Season 2 as I watched cheating run rampant in the last 2 weeks.

Oh well.

-Bolty

[Icebird]

Those alleged win traders probably shouldn't use account sharing as an excuse. Blizzard tends to punish that harder.

One of our rogues got the Warglaive MH from Illidan then had his account banned a week later. He had given his account details to a friend a while back, and the friend have moved to Taiwan. Unknown to our rogue (who plays on an Oceanic server), his friend was levelling up a character on a US server. Account got permanently banned. Fortunately we did have another Warglaive MH drop a couple of weeks later.

In other developments, M'uru got a nerf in the patch, with the "Negative Energy" attack no longer causing spell pushback.

In regards to Gnollguy's comments about "nerfing of encounters" - I think almost every boss encounter nerf you could name was aimed at balancing the encounter to be more in line with its intended difficulty in progression. Magtheridon, Kael'Thas and Vashj are all examples of encounters where the initial difficulty was completely out of line with everything before them (and many encounters after). Vashj 1.0 (where she would randomly mind control 5 people for something like a minute during phase 3) was apparently a nightmare, and I think Method might have been the only guild to kill her more than once before the mind control was removed. In other words I don't think Blizzard would nerf encounters if they felt they were tuned appropriately to their intended level of difficulty in the first place.

The removal of attunements is a slightly different beast, and it seems like we've reached the point where guilds only halfway through SSC and TK are killing Rage Winterchill.

[Bolty]

The removal of attunements is a slightly different beast, and it seems like we've reached the point where guilds only halfway through SSC and TK are killing Rage Winterchill.

The only people who liked attunements were those who got an epeen thrill from being in a zone that "nubs aren't allowed to go in to." They were silly from the start, and I think Blizzard has finally learned. We'll see in the expansion.

You handle attunements via hard boss encounters that prove whether or not your guild is ready. Like Razorgore in BWL, and now Kalecgos in Sunwell. Blizzard's mistake with Hyjal was that the early bosses were so much easier than Vashj and Kael'thas that they almost had to lock people out for a while to stop them from trying to run four raid instances in a single lock. But that's a whole separate issue regarding raid release schedules that's also been beaten to death on other boards like EJ.

Then again, the trash in Sunwell drops a number of best-in-slot items for different classes, along with epic gems and sunmotes, that's it worth farming by even ssc/tk guilds. So, I dunno what Blizzard's doing. :(

-Bolty

[Mordekhuul]

Those alleged win traders probably shouldn't use account sharing as an excuse. Blizzard tends to punish that harder.

This was demonstrated clearly in the thread. Someone says they were initially given a 72 hour suspension + removal of all season 3 gear from their toon.

They called Blizzard and used the "but someone else was using my account when the win-trading happened" excuse. Perma-ban. Grats!

[oldmandennis]

In regards to Gnollguy's comments about "nerfing of encounters" - I think almost every boss encounter nerf you could name was aimed at balancing the encounter to be more in line with its intended difficulty in progression.

With the exception of Mag, I agree. The current incarnation of Mag is just a total joke. If he is to be anything more then just a vending machine, the mind exhaustion needs to go back to the point where you need 2 teams of clickers.

The reduction of HP for Kael's weapons/advisors I think was a pretty big nerf too. The encounter was very doable without it, and I think losing the part of the strat where you say "we probably can't get all the weapons, which ones are we going to leave up, why, and what are we going to do about it" was a mistake.

That said, most of the "nerfs" in the game are just more gear being available over time. Well itemized blues from DM replacing pretty crappy ones from strath/scholo nerfed MC was the first big one, and now T6 badge gear and the welfare epics at the start of BT/MH are nerfing Kael even farther.

[Swiss Mercenary]

With the exception of Mag, I agree. The current incarnation of Mag is just a total joke. If he is to be anything more then just a vending machine, the mind exhaustion needs to go back to the point where you need 2 teams of clickers.

He's only a joke because he's tanked by 16K health, unbuffed main tanks in PUGs (Made possible by ZA and badge gear).

Try doing him with a full raid of kara-geared players, without access to badge loot, and you'll be spending quite a few nights on the fight. For one thing, you won't be getting all 5 channellers down before he releases.

For another, your main tank will keep getting 1-shotted by 13K cleave + attack spikes.

Right now, if he still required the two teams of clickers, he'd still be a joke, because of the factors I've outlined. I've ran PUG raids several times on him... And never had a problem with clicking. Never even had to switch people around. Requiring 2 teams, instead of one to click doesn't seem like at all a stretch.

And looking back to last year, when my guild was struggling on him, we weren't struggling because of the clicking - we were struggling because of lack of DPS, healing, and well-geared tanks.

The thing with Mag was that, when you still need gear off him, he is a very tough fight - you need solid DPS, healers, and a beast of a tank. However, once you meet those requirements, you are far better off heading straight into SSC/TK, instead of trying to farm him for a pretty terrible drop table. The epic gem bag changed that... Just like the badge gear simplified the fight.

The reduction of HP for Kael's weapons/advisors I think was a pretty big nerf too. The encounter was very doable without it, and I think losing the part of the strat where you say "we probably can't get all the weapons, which ones are we going to leave up, why, and what are we going to do about it" was a mistake.

The answer to it was, inevitably, the axe. Not like your fourth tank has anything to do once Phase 3 hits.

Although, to be fair, these days, a T5/Badge geared guild should have no problem at all with getting him into phase 3 with all the weapons dead (Even if it takes them ~6 attempts to do a repeat kill). What it means is that the fight doesn't get interesting until Phase 3 (Where, I do believe that advisor health was not reduced).

That said, most of the "nerfs" in the game are just more gear being available over time. Well itemized blues from DM replacing pretty crappy ones from strath/scholo nerfed MC was the first big one, and now T6 badge gear and the welfare epics at the start of BT/MH are nerfing Kael even farther.

Indeed.

[Mordekhuul]

Yeah, advisor health was reduced in phase 1, which isn't a nerf, it just makes the fight mildly less annoying. Kind of like life would be better if A'lar had less health in phase 1...damn that's a boring fight until phase 2.

[Skandranon]

Yeah, advisor health was reduced in phase 1, which isn't a nerf, it just makes the fight mildly less annoying. Kind of like life would be better if A'lar had less health in phase 1...damn that's a boring fight until phase 2.

But advisor health and weapon health was reduced in phases 2 and 3.

The relevant section from the 2.3.0 notes:

Kael'thas
All four advisors have had their health reduced by 10%.
All of the summoned weapons have had their health reduced by 10%.

This is, across all weapons and advisors, a nerf of 400,000 hp or so, which results in, as oldmandennis said, the possibility of a kind of back-door solution where you can wipe out all the weapons before the phase change, and then kill all the advisors before Kael pops loose. Fighting the phases completely independently greatly simplifies the fight. The essence of the fight - at least from my perspective - was in managing the phase transitions, controlling the next phase while cleaning up what was left from the last one.

[Mordekhuul]

But advisor health and weapon health was reduced in phases 2 and 3.

The relevant section from the 2.3.0 notes:
This is, across all weapons and advisors, a nerf of 400,000 hp or so, which results in, as oldmandennis said, the possibility of a kind of back-door solution where you can wipe out all the weapons before the phase change, and then kill all the advisors before Kael pops loose. Fighting the phases completely independently greatly simplifies the fight. The essence of the fight - at least from my perspective - was in managing the phase transitions, controlling the next phase while cleaning up what was left from the last one.

Cool, I was mistaken then. The advisors have half the HP in phase 1 as phase 3, but maybe that was always that way, not something they changed.

I think Kael is pretty well tuned at the moment. Even with some of the badge loot and a few (not many) pieces from early hyjal bosses, we spent a good 5+ nights of wipes before we got a kill, a lot more than we spent on other bosses in tier 5 content.

He's a tougher and more epic fight than the first 4/5 Hyjal we've now cleared or the first 3 in BT, and frankly I'm not looking forward to going in for a 2nd kill because of all the little things that can sink a Kael attempt even with an experienced group.

I guess like most fights, he'll seem easier the 2nd time we go in after having killed him, but still - after the initial excitement there sure were a lot of folks saying "never again" and "f*** that guy" after he died for us =)

[Swiss Mercenary]

Fighting the phases completely independently greatly simplifies the fight. The essence of the fight - at least from my perspective - was in managing the phase transitions, controlling the next phase while cleaning up what was left from the last one.

Eh, from the few attempts where the axe tank wasn't on the ball, and where it stayed up until Phase 3, I didn't notice much of a difference in the following phases - it just means that a 400 dps tank and his healer has to be occupied for another minute or two, as the ranged burns down Thaladred, and spends a few seconds on the axe.

As for the final advisor, while we were getting all four of them down before Phase 4, I didn't see the threat in Copernian staying up for another minute. She doesn't deal too much damage, and Kael hits like a wuss when his fireballs are constantly being interrupted.

The nerf that helped us the most, I'd say, was the change to clouds so they reduce your health by at most -60, instead of -90... Considering that our main tank seems to be all over them as soon as Gravity Lapse starts. Every time we've killed him, or came close, he was at 40% of his health for most of the fight (Meaning that an uninterrupted fireball will 1-shot him)...

[Mirajj]

May 17 News
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It's an interesting time in the World of Warcraft. A lot of information has been recently released about the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King...and folks are starting to find that the same problem that beset their guilds when The Burning Crusade launched are coming back. Folks are bored with farming content, and want to get alts or other things in line for the upcoming xpack. Or think it's a great time for a break now before things get back hot and heavy with all new content and the experience bar. World Reknown guild Death and Taxes has succumbed, and will be disbanding/rerolling. This is a guild with 14 credited World First kills, and 16 US First Kills. It seems that no guilds are safe, even the ones folks never thought would end. In his post, Xi discusses why it happened, and there are several reasons. They are reasons that are not unique to any one guild. Any guild that heads into a raid will suffer these at some point, it seems. It's led to a lot of discussion on various boards, Jennie Lees article is a good look at the problems, and the comment section has some very good reads. Recruitment is always an issue, and one that I'm looking at quite a bit right now. This is an interesting look into the raiding culture of WoW, I think.

[oldmandennis]

On the topic of Mag - Even unnerfed I don't think he really hit that hard. Of course, I don't pug things like this. All our healers had already learned the TBC style of "tank always topped off" healing doing Prince P2. Even if you had a tank death, you should have an offtank in pretty good gear there (is he tauntable?). It was much harder to do things like control the infernals (there used to be twice as many) get the interrupters/CoT moving correctly so the DPS target doesn't get healed, and flow the healers from the first kills through the last ones and onto the MT. The two teams of clickers only made it really hard because there was such a high chance (while you were learning) of one of those people dying.

[Mirajj]

May 20 News
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The servers are just doing rolling restarts today, so I'll keep this short so you can get right back to playing.

Might want to take a good look at your alts. Bornakk let's those of us who love alts know that we'll need to free up an existing Character Slot for one as there are no current plans to add more slots per account/server to the game right now.

Danial Whitcomb has a nice article on how Arena Point/Rating Matching is supposed to work. Clears it up nicely, so here's hoping it actually works.

In a move that I'm not sure would work very well in this country, China's government has asked businesses to shut down for 3 days as a period of mourning for all the tragedy suffered over there of late. The company that provides WoW service that way, along with several others are honoring this, and shutting down. I can approve of the intent of the gesture, but wonder how well it'd actually go over in North America.

Back, way back when Blizzard's Warden program was discovered, it set some tongues wagging. Now due to another lawsuit, a lot of details about what Warden does are coming to light. I have to say, this is some interesting stuff. It must be a pretty complex program, and has a lot of folks wondering just how legal it's use is.

[Mordekhuul]

In a move that I'm not sure would work very well in this country, China's government has asked businesses to shut down for 3 days as a period of mourning for all the tragedy suffered over there of late. The company that provides WoW service that way, along with several others are honoring this, and shutting down. I can approve of the intent of the gesture, but wonder how well it'd actually go over in North America.

Out leaders would instead ask us to do our patriotic duty and spend more than we earn ;-)

[Swiss Mercenary]

On the topic of Mag - Even unnerfed I don't think he really hit that hard.

I don't think his damage changed, unless you are talking about some really old nerfs.

[Monkey]

Might want to take a good look at your alts. Bornakk let's those of us who love alts know that we'll need to free up an existing Character Slot for one as there are no current plans to add more slots per account/server to the game right now.

Although it doesn't affect me (I have space on my favorite servers), and I'm not particularly excited about the Death Knight, this is a pretty disappointing response. His answer is to suggest deleting a character or some combination of paid character transfers. I have two characters I rarely play, but would be loathe to delete:

--Spacegrrl, a Draenei Hunter (She has a ravager named Spacecaat: "He's a cat--FROM SPACE,")
--Angerball, a bald (and very very angry) gnome mage

And if I transferred them, I'd (probably) be paying Blizzard $25 to lose the names I love so much. This was their response pre-TBC, too. How many added races / classes will it take before they add a character slot?

[Mirajj]

May 20 News Addendum
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Gaeowyn strikes again, tanking Gruul this time. They learned some neat information about him in the 23 minutes it took to down him. His Growths cap at 30 and expire after 5 minutes, for example. Quite an accomplishment, this.