MoP: Enter the Dragon or Game of Death? We'll find out.

[chaos5061]

PvP Season 12 Streams
With the start of the new PvP season, many of the higher ranked players will be streaming tomorrow (Oct 3) at 11 AM PDT / 2 PM EST / 20:00 CET.

• Athene: Holy Paladin
• Biotox: Death Knight
• Blazin: Combat Rogue
• Braindeadly: Beast Mastery Hunter
• Dakkroth: Affliction Warlock
• Diablous: Enhancement Shaman
• Dreamz: Restoration Shaman
• Evoque: Monk

• Hoodstar: Restoration Druid
• Hotted: Restoration Druid
• Hydra: Discipline Priest
• Jimos: Retribution Paladin
• Minpojke: Restoration Druid
• Pookz: Frost Mage
• Totemtoe: Enhancement Shaman
• ZumioNET: Beast Mastery Hunter

[chaos5061]

Tanking Damage Adjustment Hot Fixes

We’ve recently implemented several hot fixes to adjust tank damage output, particularly area of effect (AoE) damage. Now that Mogu’Shan Vaults is available, and the first week of Mists of Pandaria raiding is about to begin, we wanted to call out what’s changing.

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Warriors have several mechanics that improve their tanking performance when dealing with multiple foes, as well as their damage output against them. Their damage against packs of creatures, especially when three targets were present, was much higher than other tanking classes. While some variance is expected, it was clear that an adjustment was necessary.
The primary culprits here were Revenge and Deep Wounds:

Revenge now deals 50% damage to a secondary target, and 25% damage to a third target.
Deep Wounds now does 50% less damage for Protection Warriors only.

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
One of our goals with our active mitigation tanking model is that you have opportunities to trade significant survivability for more damage when maximum survivability isn’t required. For example, a Warrior could opt to use their rage for Heroic Strike instead of Shield Block or Shield Barrier. This damage gain is intended to be relatively small, and not worth the loss in survivability when actively tanking.

However, for Protection Paladins, this trade-off was much too lucrative. For maximum survivability, Protection Paladins are intended to use Seal of Insight, since it provides a buff to their self-healing, and also provides a significant self-heal on their melee in combination with Vengeance. Unfortunately, when using Seal of Insight, their damage was too low compared to the other tanks. When using Seal of Truth, their damage was too high. So, we’ve increased Protection Paladin damage in general to compensate for Seal of Insight’s relatively low output, while simultaneously reducing the damage of Seal of Truth to bring it into line.

Holy Wrath now deals 100% more damage.
Avenger's Shield now deals 50% more damage.
Seal of Truth and Censure now deal 80% less damage for Protection Paladins only.

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Bear tanks have been in a decent place, but we were a little concerned about their sustained area of effect damage. This update to Thrash should address that.

The periodic damage of Thrash (Bear) now deals 60% more damage. Initial direct damage remains un-changed.

Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
We’re really excited about how Brewmaster Monks are turning out. They can still stand a few tweaks though. Their damage, especially AoE damage, was relatively low, and they lacked a way to apply Weakened Blows to a large pack of creatures (which all of the other tanks have).

Keg Smash now deals 50% more damage and strikes all nearby targets, rather than three.
Swift Reflexes now deals 100% more damage.

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
While Blood Death Knights have been higher on damage than most other tanks, we’re expecting that the adjustments we’re making to the other tanking classes will close the gap. While we haven’t made any changes to Blood lately, we will be keeping a close eye on it.

[chaos5061]

General
Players no longer require Honored reputation with Mists of Pandaria factions to purchase gear with Justice Points.
The reputation requirement to purchase certain pieces of Mists of Pandaria Valor Point gear have been reduced from Revered to Honored. These include:
Klaxxi - neck items
Golden Lotus - rings
Shado-Pan - cloaks
August Celestials - bracers

The item level of Mists of Pandaria gear that is purchased with Justice Points has been raised from 450 to 458.
The item level of Mists of Pandaria gear that is purchased with Honor Points has been lowered from 464 to 458. As a result, the quality color of these items has been changed from Epic to Rare. However, the PvP Power and PvP resilience of these items has been increased significantly so these items retain their previous degree of effectiveness in PvP.
Mists of Pandaria PvP item vendors were tired of getting the dook kicked out of them. Their health has been increased significantly.
The item level requirement to queue for Mists of Pandaria Heroic dungeons has been reduced from 440 to 435.

Classes
Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
The area of effect damage from Nature's Vigil will no longer hit stealthed targets.
Fixed an issue with Incarnation that could allow flight without using Flight Form.
Dream of Cenarius now correctly increases the healing from Cenarion Ward by 30% instead of 70%.
Starsurge casts that trigger an Eclipse now deal the correct amount of damage.
Mojo is now removed properly when a druid assumes Flight Form.
Symbiosis has been changed, and now grants the following abilities:
Protection warriors - Stampeding Shout
Blood death knights - Wild Mushroom: Plague
Protection paladins - Wrath
Brewmaster monks - Bear Hug

The periodic damage of Thrash (Bear) now deals 60% more damage. Initial direct damage remains un-changed.

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Death and Decay will no longer trigger the Runic Return two piece PvP set bonus.
Howling Blast and Unholy Blight now properly spread their diseases to the primary target as well as other targets within range.

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Nether Tempest no longer strikes targets the Mage is not already in combat with.
Charges of Ice Floes are no longer consumed when the Chilled effect from Frost Armor is applied to enemies.

Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Casting Roll while accepting an Arena queue will no longer prevent the monk from taking actions once within the arena.
Glyphed and un-glyphed versions of Spinning Fire Blossom now deal the same amount of damage.
Missing with Blackout Kick after the Mastery: Combo Breaker activates will no longer grant two free Chi.
Swift Reflexes now deals 100% more damage.
Keg Smash now deals 50% more damage and strikes all nearby targets, rather than three.

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Protection warrior damage values has been adjusted:
Revenge now deals 50% damage to a secondary target, and 25% damage to a third target.
Deep Wounds now does 50% less damage for Protection warriors only.
Warbringer will now stun the correct target when using macros.
Wild Strike that consume the last charge of Bloodsurge will now properly cause a one second global cooldown, rather than a 1.5 second global cooldown.

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Many beasts are now properly able to be tamed.
Deterrence now properly prevents the stun effect from the Warrior talent Warbringer.
Explosive Shot can now properly trigger Thrill of the Hunt. Explosive Shot that have no cost due to the effects of Lock and Load can not trigger this effect.

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Holy Wrath now deals 100% more damage.
Avenger's Shield now deals 50% more damage.
Seal of Truth and Censure now deal 80% less damage for Protection Paladins only.

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Flash Heal will now consume both Surge of Light and Inner Focus when both buffs are active.
Void Tendrils root effect is now subject to diminishing returns in PvP.
The Shadow version of Divine Insight no longer procs for Holy or Discipline priests.
Healing from the Divine Star spell no longer breaks channeling for the caster or friendly players.

Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Hellfire no longer does damage immediately when it is initially cast, and now does the correct amount of damage over its 14 second duration.

[chaos5061]

Creatures
Players visiting other realms via RealID or Battletag parties will no longer receive loot from Galleon/Salyis's Warband.
Mutated Silkmoths and Tiny Mutated Silkmoths are now more abundant.
Sprites will now only stack the Spritely buff to 20 (was 40).
Orchard Wasps will no longer attack critters in the area.
Creatures slain in the Krasarang Wilds will no longer clutter the environment.
Groundbreaker Brojai in Krasarang Wilds is no longer quite so loud.
Captain Doren will now correctly respawn if players leave his cave after he enters his Sha form.
Cheerful Jessu and the mailbox are now always available in Pearlfin Village.
Birds and beasts in Kun-Lai Summit are now meatier.
Various NPCs in Kun-Lai Summit now respawn less frequently.
Fixed an issue that could cause the Sha of Anger to despawn under certain certain circumstances.
Captain Ripflesh should no longer despawn unexpectedly.
Creature respawn rates in Howlingwind Cavern has been adjusted when many players are in the area.
Giant Cave Bats now award significantly less experience.
King Spineclaws now award significantly less experience.
Captive breeding programs have brought the endangered Briny Clacker and Brineshell Snappers back to sustainable populations.
The Shuffling Mistlurker's Smash attack no longer has a knock-back effect. They are still jerks.
Osul Sharphorns in Townlong Steppes now leash properly, and no longer knock themselves silly when using Gored or Demolish.
Ordo Overseers now leash properly and reset if they stray too far away from the farm.

Items
The Cremating Torch effect no longer affects players or pets.
The Mithril Stopwatch trinket's effect Now is the Time! activates properly from spell damage.
Puntable Marmot may no longer be used in Rated Battlegrounds and Arenas. The Puntable Marmot may no longer be used as the target of a Warrior's Intervene or a Druid's Wild Charge.
Merchants will no longer buy certain pets or mounts.
The Amber Sledge of Klaxxi'vess is now correctly be purchased from The Klaxxi at Exalted reputation.
Reward satchels can no longer be sold to vendors.
The Umbrella of Chi-Ji has had its stats improved.
The Malevolent Gladiator's Touch of Defeat, Malevolent Gladiator's Heavy Crossbow, and Malevolent Gladiator's Baton of Light are no longer available for sale from arena vendors.
Season 12 off-hand items and shields have been adjusted to match other, equivalent PvP gear.
Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Plate Gauntlets no longer have Spirit.
Voodoo Brew no longer allows players to attack others of the same faction.
The Price of Progress Price of Progress - Item - Proc Mana Energize been adjusted to occur less frequently.
The Hozen Peace Pipe now only grants 100 reputation for Shado-Pan, Klaxxi, Golden Lotus, and the August Celestials. This item will continue to grant 1000 reputation for other Pandaren factions.

Pet Battles
Many pet abilities have been improved.
Wild battle pets in The Veiled Stair now spawn at the correct level.
The Clockwork Gnome's ability, Build Turret, now properly has a 2 round cooldown.
A wayward Tiny Harvester can now be battled normally.
Turns should no longer inadvertently be skipped when multi-round abilities are used in a Pet Battle.
Fixed several issues that could occur when using offensive pet abilities in PvP, Tamer and Wild Pet battles.

[chaos5061]

Quests
Fixed several issues involving daily quests and Cross Realm Zones.
Players are now able to complete the quest "Mimicking Nature's Call".
Anduin Wrynn should now return if he wanders off during quests in the Krasarang Wilds.
Players are no longer able to obtain multiple Teng Appleblooms during the quest "Priorities!".
The Silk Cocoon Bucket for the quest "Where Silk Comes From" can now be looted multiple times by different players.
Players who have completed the quest "Weed War" no longer leave a weedy lawn in their wake.
The Diabolical Plans that start the quest "Diabolical Plans" now drop properly for Horde players.
Chen Stormstout and Li Li Stormstout will no longer disappear unexpectedly during the quest "Chen and Li Li".
Hao Mann is no longer quite so loud.
Hatchling Poop for the daily quest "Pooped" is now slightly more... persistent.
Players can no longer be interrupted by enemy attacks when looting the Big Bag of Poop and the Tiny Bag of Poop for the daily quest "Pooped".
Turning in the repeatable quest "Replenishing the Pantry" no longer fulfills daily quests completed achievement criteria.
Fixed an issue that could prevent players from turning in the quest "Immortality?".
Players must now properly earn the right to Lao-Chin the Iron Belly's company by completing "The Challenger's Ring: Lao-Chin the Iron Belly".
Peat Clumps for the quest "Golgoss", and Peat Mounds for the quest "Arconiss", can both now be interacted with properly.
Shao-Tien Ritual Statues for the quest "Smashing Impression" have been fixed so that they can once again be broken.
All players attacking Aetha, Leechfingers, and The Ook of Dook will now properly receive credit for their respective quests.
Players should now receive credit for the quest "Free From Her Clutches" when freeing Kunchong Hatchlings, and Kunchong Cages will now reset properly once opened.
The following quest items can now be looted by all party members: Clacker Tails for the quest "Fine Dining", Volatile Blood for the quest "A Bloody Delight", Pristine Mire Beast Eye for the quest "Putting and Eye Out", Amber-Encrusted Brain for the quest "A Little Brain Work", and Thresher Jaws for the quest "Shark Week". In addition, players can now obtain up to ten un-opened Thresher Jaw at one time.
The daily quest, "My Town, It's on Fire Again" is now more fiery.
The daily gift quest granted by "Blingtron 4000" is now only available to players of level 80 and above.
Terracotta Defenders now properly attack the player who looted the Bottom Fragment of Lei Shen's Tablet for the quest "Stealing Their Thunder King".
Shao-Tien Surveyors are now easier to spot from a distance.
The Claw of Anger, which begins the quest "Remnants of Anger", can now be looted by all members of the party or raid that slew the Sha of Anger.

Dungeons & Raids
Level 85 players should be able to queue for random normal difficulty Cataclysm dungeons.
Cannons in the Gate of the Setting Sun now properly propel players precisely.
Zao Sunseeker can no longer be encountered in the Temple of the Jade Serpent.
Level 90 players can now join the random queue for normal versions of lower level Mists of Pandaria dungeons.
Striking Ook Ook with multiple barrels simultaneously now awards the correct number of stacks for the achievement, "Keep Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'".
The doors leading to Master Snowdrift in the Shado-Pan Monastery should now remain open to prevent players from becoming locked out during the gauntlet. The inner doors will still close once Master Snowdrift himself is engaged.
Hateful Essence in the Shado-Pan Monastery will no longer cause players to become stuck in combat.
The High Inquisitor Whitemane encounter in the Scarlet Monastery now properly awards reputation upon completion.

Bug Fixes
Player resources are now properly set to default values when the arena preparation phase ends.
Players can no longer stack on top of the Season 12 PvP item vendors, PvE item vendors and Challenge Mode item vendors.
Portal: Vale of Eternal Blossoms and Teleport: Vale of Eternal Blossoms are now properly retained after a paid faction transfer.
Players are now ported directly to The Grim Guzzler tavern after accepting the queue for Coren Direbrew.
All players that slay Warbringer Qobi are now properly awarded the Brewmoon Festival achievement.
Turning in the quest "Flying Colors" will now properly complete the Tian Monastery portion of the Upjade Complete achievement.

[chaos5061]

As some of you have noticed, MMR did not reset today with the start of Season 12. This was indeed a last minute decision and we apologize for any confusion this has caused.

[chaos5061]

We're working on a change for a future patch that will make it easier to gain reputation with a specific faction on every alt on your Battle.net account, after you reach a certain reputation with that faction on another character.




Stay tuned for more information on this, likely coming before the end of the week.

[chaos5061]

Earning reputation with various factions has long been an important part to World of Warcraft and as time has gone on, we've made tweaks and changes to the system to make it more interesting and to give players access to unique items. For example, we recently hotfixed the game to apply a change to some reputation items which you can read about in our recently updated blog that allows players to purchase certain items much sooner. And we're not done!

Coming in a future patch, earning reputation is going to become much more fluid. Basically, once one of your characters has reached at least Revered reputation with a faction, all other characters on the same Battle.net account will then earn reputation with the same faction at twice the rate. Going one step further, and as an added bonus, your main character who reached Revered will also begin to earn double the reputation as he or she climbs to Exalted.

Here's a simplified break down:
Any single character earns Revered reputation with a faction
All other characters on the Battle.net account begin to earn double reputation for that one same faction
The Revered character earns double reputation as he or she works toward Exalted
???
Profit

We’ll keep you posted as this change is closer to being implemented. In the meantime, we’d love to hear your feedback!

[chaos5061]

2.7 Million copies of MoP sold, WoW passes 10M Subscribers
Blizzard just published the sales numbers for Mists of Pandaria and it looks like our favorite game is back over the 10M subscribers mark. For reference, the sales number for the previous expansions were:

• The Burning Crusade - 2.4M First Day, 3.5M First Month
• Wrath of the Lich King - 2.8M First Day, 4M First Month
• Cataclysm - 3.3M First Day, 4.7M First Month

PARIS, France -- October 4, 2012 -- Following the September 25 global rollout of World of Warcraft®: Mists of Pandaria™, the new expansion to the world’s #1 subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that millions of players have already joined the fight for Pandaria. During the first week of launch, prior to the release in China on October 2, the expansion had already sold through approximately 2.7 million copies and the game’s global player base passed 10 million subscribers, with growth across all major regions.*

“With Mists of Pandaria, we set out to expand on the sense of fun and discovery that’s always been at the heart of World of Warcraft -- in addition to adding a huge variety of new content and features to the game,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “It’s been gratifying to see the results of all of the work we put into this expansion and to hear all of the positive feedback from players so far.”

The World of Warcraft development team is already hard at work on the first major post-launch content update. Further details, including features and release timing, will be provided in the weeks ahead.

[chaos5061]

All Gold Challenge Modes Completed
Two groups have now earned a Gold time in all of the challenge mode dungeons, earning them access to the Challenge Mode Sets. WoWProgress has a nice worldwide leaderboard for characters.

You may have to turn off the Silver Time count by clicking in the legend to see all of the Gold Time runs.

Number of Challenge Mode Runs






Temple of theJade SerpentGate of theSetting SunMogu'shanPalaceScarlet HallsScarletMonasteryStormstoutBreweryScholomanceS iege of NiuzaoTempleShado-panMonastery








0100200300400500600Number of Runs
Scarlet HallsSilver: 146GoldSilver

[chaos5061]

Aquila Interview
Nik recently had the chance to speak with the members of Aquila that were the first to complete all Challenge Modes with a Gold time.

Firstly huge congratulations, from playing live and attempting the challenge modes myself a bit I know first hand how challenging (excuse the pun) they can end up being.

Do you want to introduce yourself?
Hey everyone! I play Shadow Priest called Taik and I'm an officer in a Finnish guild called Aquila. I joined Aquila almost 2 years ago and ended up as the raid leader in the late tier 11.

Our group consisted of:
Taik - Shadow Priest
Razoki - Combat/Assassination Rogue
Rathy - Blood Death Knight
Decev - Frost/Blood Death Knight
Deloop - Elemental/Resto Shaman

First real question from me really is how did you manage to fit it all in? Between gearing, dailies, slight bit of pvp and everything else in this expansion I’ve barely had time to have a moment to think let alone invest time in challenge modes.
Most hardcore guilds use the first week of an expansion to level and gear up multiple characters for raid progress. As Aquila is a semi hardcore guild we're fine with members leveling and gearing just one character. Our group managed to to hit realm first level 90 in about 13-15 hours and used the next 2 days to fully gear up from heroics.

After that we ran out of things to do on our mains so we decided to try challenge modes. The first challenge mode was easily cleared in 2 hours but after that the difficulty ramped up pretty hard and we had to spend more time to progress and improve our strategies. For the rest of the week we ran the last few heroics and did dailies or PvP during the day and then progressed challenges in the evening.

How many hours did it really take you to do? From what I’ve seen from some of the videos you’ve not had the easiest of times with some of the instances.
We started the challenge runs on Thursday by choosing the daily challenge in Shado-Pan Monastery. We had been steamrolling over heroics for 2 days and went in blind and started AoE pulling with 4 DPS and a tank. Shortly after we realized how much harder the challenges were and ended up running with a healer. The final time for that run was almost 2 hours and we called it for the day.

From Friday to Monday we spent about 4-10 hours a day on challenge mode progress which means the total time spent is somewhere between 25-30 hours. Hardest of the challenges for us was Scarlet Halls because of the gimmicky mechanics like the dogs and archers in the beginning and the damage of trash mobs. It was too difficult to pull more than one trash pack at a time so we started to run out of cooldowns to use.

The last day of challenges was probably the most enjoyable and we ended up streaming the last 8 hours we spent on the last 3 gold times. We also saved the last day of progress on Razoki's stream channel and made a video of the final boss of Shado-Pan.

If you had to go back and do it again would you change anything? I can see from the rankings and your group setup that DK’s are highly featured.
We would've ran our current setup from the beginning. We started off with double rogue and ended up swapping one of them for a Death Knight because of the insane AoE damage and survivability that Remorseless Winter and Army of the Dead bring. We would probably use cooldowns more intelligently as well. For the first few golds our hybrids had to off heal and shaman had to switch to restoration a couple of times during the run because we didn't use Army of the Dead or Earth Elemental to soak tank damage.

Our classes synergized together really well for challenges. We had balanced amount of AoE and single target bursts DPS, both of which were required for gold times. All 5 of us also had engineering and the Nitro Boosts, Goblin Gliders and Gnomish Army Knife resurrections helped immensely. We also joked about never doing these instances again after challenges are cleared but we'll probably try to improve the high scores in the not too distant future.

You ran a healerless comp very similar to lots of other groups. Were your priest/shaman required to do anything special during the runs in order to survive?
We killed almost everything without healer with the exception of a few bosses and trash packs. For example Sha of Violence was unkillable without a healer so we had our shaman switch to resto for it. The rest of the instances were either healed by priests Vampiric Embrace and Halo, Shamans Guidance, damage soaked by Army of the Dead and Earth Elemental or just simply off spec healing by the priest. We also used a lot of damage Mitigation abilities like Anti-Magic Zone and Anti-Magic Shell, Feint and Cloak of Shadows, Dispersion and Death Knight self heals so our priest and shaman could dps as much as possible. Hardest parts to heal were Scarlet Halls trash mobs and Sha of Violence in Shado-Pan Monastery.

I know that you don't want to give away all of your tactics, but do you think that a rogue is a requirement in order to get a good time? I know first hand how well group stealth can be used.
Rogue was helpful in terms of skipping some packs but not mandatory. Other classes bring more survivability, burst and aoe DPS than rogues so it's a fair tradeoff for gold modes. In Shado-Pan the combination of Mass stealth and invisibility potions allowed us to skip almost all trash mobs between 2nd and 3rd bosses. For other instances the invisibility potions alone are enough. On the other hand invisibility potions also put your damage potion on cooldown for 10 minutes so mass stealth is better in some situations.

Lastly out of all the instances and runs you’ve been able to do what was the favorite for you?
Our favourite instances are Mogu'shan Palace and Shado-Pan Monastery. Neither of these have any annoying gimmicks that might ruin the run and both have insane aoe pulls which require good cooldown usage.

Any shoutouts you’d like to give as an ending?
Shoutouts to everyone in Aquila for being supportive and helping with potions, foods, flasks etc. It was awesome to have the entire guild on mumble cheering for us during the Shado-Pan Monastery clear. Also special shoutouts to Mieto and Táukki who were with us for the silver mode clears but had to step out for gold runs.

[chaos5061]

The first Normal difficulty Mists of Pandaria Raid Dungeon is now available: Mogu’shan Vaults. Raid Finder and Heroic difficulties will be available Wednesday, October 10.

Raid Finder will unlock bosses in Mogu’shan Vaults and Heart of Fear over time, and all Mogu’shan Vaults bosses will be unlocked and available Wednesday, October 17. To access the new Raid Finder dungeons, you will need a minimum item level (ilevel) requirement of 463.

Here is the current schedule for these Raid releases:

Wednesday, October 3 - Normal Mogu’shan Vaults
Wednesday, October 10 - Heroic Mogu'shan Vaults and first half of Mogu'shan Vaults on Raid Finder
Wednesday, October 17 - Second half of Mogu'shan Vaults on Raid Finder
Wednesday, October 31 - Normal Heart of Fear and Normal Terrace of Endless Spring (Must clear Heart of Fear first) with Heroic and Raid finder versions unlocking one week later.

We will update this blog with additional unlock information at a future point in time.

[chaos5061]

Purpose of Justice Points
There is literally no point in JP or JP gear once you are already running heroics.
I think that might be misrepresenting the situation a bit. Even if Justice Gear isn't at the same level as Heroic gear, it will still raise your average item level and help shore up your Heroic and Valor gear to potentially get you into normal raiding and LFR faster.

What are you and what are we getting out of having a currency obtained from heroics give out loot that is useless to heroics?
I think that Justice Points are perhaps more of a stepping stone than they once were. They were originally added for those situations where RNG turns against you, and you haven't obtained a drop for a particular slot. Even if you didn't get the gear over successive runs, at least you have some Justice Points to help fill in the gaps in the meantime. They are returning to that intent more than being an alternative method of accruing Heroic level gear.

After you obtain your Heroic gear, it's true that Justice Points won't be as useful. Obviously, they can be turned over for Honor, and at some point in the future we may add trade materials or Heirlooms to the quartermasters.

If every single piece isn't 463 you don't get to do LFR. Please consider reducing LFR to 458 to match up with justice.
That's part of the reason why I mentioned Valor Points in a previous post. Item level 489 Valor pieces will certainly help bring your average item level up. Some of those pieces are now available at Honored reputation with Mists of Pandaria factions.

Also - Didn't you remove head enchants because you didn't like forcing people to grind a reputation so they could raid? Suggesting that for people to get their ilvl high enough to get in to LFR they should go and grind a rep so they can purchase a VP item is basically the same thing.
We're not opposed to making earning some reputation compelling. You'll recall that a lot of those items were only available at very high reputation levels though, whereas the Valor Items I was referring to become available at Honored.

Yes, but a majority of valor gear only becomes available at revered for various factions.
Granted. You won't need all of those pieces to progress into raiding or LFR though. Hopefully, as you continue to do dailies (assuming they're something you want to do, that is), you'll gain enough reputation to allow you to pick up the occasional Revered level Valor piece to supplement your raiding set.

By the way, I don't want any of you to feel as though your feedback is falling on deaf ears. I'll make sure that your perspectives are shared with the development team. On the same token, I want to emphasize that Justice Points aren't useless, even if they don't fulfill the same role that we've grown accustomed to.

I bet this came about from one of the meetings where you get input from the other blizzard teams. Seems like this cross team strategy is working out well.
Sarcasm aside, Blizzard always operates in a spirit of cooperation.

I'm sure that many of you recall the days before Valor and Justice. You'll recall that before there were points there were badges. Before that, there was nothing. Many of us remember the days when you could spend upwards of an hour in a single dungeon, and come away from it without a single drop: not a even an Uncommon. We try new things. A lot of the time they work well. We're not always right, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes what ultimately ends up being a good change for the overall World of Warcraft experience doesn't seem so great at first: there was a significant segment of the player base that railed heavily against the idea of purchasable dungeon quality gear, let alone raid quality gear, period. We've come a long way since then, and we'll see where this shakes out together.

Moreover it further makes the case that once you've done "enough" dungeons to be kitted out with, say, 70% 363 gear, and have earned enough justice to buy some stopgaps, there is little incentive to keep running the dungeons.
In reality, that's no different from how Justice worked before, except the process would occur faster then. In the early days of Cataclysm, for example, between dungeon drops and Justice Point gear, active tanks (and to a lesser extent healers) very rapidly loaded up on all the tanking gear they could carry, filled out dps sets, loaded up on Heirlooms, then walked away from dungeons without looking back.

There are potential down sides to any system.

[chaos5061]

Conquest Gear
The Conquest PvP gear is intended to be equivalent to raiding gear, not heroic dungeon or justice points gear. So you are actually comparing apples to oranges, where apples are clearly better than oranges and that is the natural order of things

If you compare the two items below you can see that they are quite similar overall and can potentially be used in both settings, but each one is clearly better for its intended purpose of either PvP or PvE:

Malevolent Gladiator's Warboots of Cruelty
Jasper Clawfeet

The reason that these are better for their specific roles (even though there are major stat differences) is because while PvP power and resilience do not influence PvE in any way, they have a large impact on PvP.

So this is why the Honor and Justice points gear is being changed but not Raiding and Conquest; because PvP and PvE gear of the same level are meant to be able to adequately perform both roles but be best for their intended purpose.

Daily Quests and Rep Grinds
A: Op if i could be bothered i would argue with you all day about things but I can't. This game has nothing to offer other than max level content, why on earth would I want to be a low level?

B: If you dont want to level, do dailies, grind rep, earn stuff, earn your levels, make gold, level proffessions and such don't

A: It's not enjoyable. Doing the same thing day after day on repeat for the next two years is fun?

B: It's lazy players like you who mess up this game for players who actually enjoy grinding for items, farming for gear/professions and such. get a feeling of accomplishment for doing so.

A: That's why we need choice, options for both types of players. I have no issue with things being hard but when its boring as hell to achieve something it takes the value of doing so away.
Whether something is 'enjoyable' or not is a matter of opinion. Plenty of people enjoy the leveling process—I'm one of them. I'd rather be gearing up a new character than getting my behind handed to me in PvP, for instance.

Giving someone the option to start at max level is controversial. Some people will of course take the path of least resistance, despite how they feel about the current way we level characters. This scenario reminds me a little of the situation with the LFD tool. Many claim that they would prefer to make groups the old fashioned way, having to travel to the instance instead of porting there etc. but that they feel they have to use the tool now because it's there.

Basically, I think if you give people the option of doing something faster, most will, even if they feel it takes something away from their gaming experience.

[chaos5061]

Sever Queue Times
This is not my main. My mains are on another server. I use this as an alias to avoid being ridiculed by a community that believes every person making a complaint is a troll. This is not a solution. As a paying customer, something needs to be done about this.
It's not fun to wait in queues, I hit them myself from time to time. People tend to 'clump up' to play with friends or join guilds on specific realms, and then everyone comes back for expansions or even new patches. We'll pretty commonly see queues hit a couple hours. The realm hardware, not to mention game content, is designed to house and support a specific number of characters per realm. It's not feasible to increase and decrease those allotments as interest increases and wanes, which is why we offer free character transfers when queues get too high.

With the advent of BattleTags and cross-realm zones, being on separate realms from your friends actually doesn't mean much as to your ability to talk and interact with them. Of course the best solution might just be trying to get everyone to move with you.

Cloud Serpents and Account Wide Mounts
Cloud Serpents. You need to grind the reputation to buy the cloud serpent license or some other nonsense. Hope that gets changed.
Cloud Serpent mounts are indeed account-wide. However they require the Cloud Serpent Riding skill, which is a faction requirement and character specific. Characters that meet the faction requirement will see the mount as account-wide. I’ll bring this up with our developers to see if that’s intended.

Challenge Mode Nerfs
We've said this in the past, but it might be a good moment to bring it back up. Challenge modes have a different design philosophy than raids, and therefore the developers don't plan to nerf them.

If you haven't tried them yet, go give them a try. It's not just a race against the clock. And if you see someone sporting the full transmogrifiable set, you'll know that you're looking at a really skilled player.

Quest "!" on Zone Maps?
The zones are set up in such a way that exploring the world is going to yield quests and quest hubs that you aren't directed toward during the course of the main story line. The exclamation points on the map help give a hint, at least, where some of them are. Certainly though you'll find more just by exploring.

Pre Level 90 Flight Restrictions
but wrath was alot more alt friendly, i understand us having to do it on the first toon but as soon as alts get involved with that brutal (and yes its brutal) grind to level (and the grind is far from over then too, with 2 hours a day worth of dailies for EVERY toon, 2 alts makes 6 hours a day worth of dailies)
I think adding a Tome would be cool, but just to ensure we're all remembering history correctly, Tome of Cold Weather Flying wasn't added until patch 3.2. 8 months after release. Not saying it needs to be 8 months again, but I'd (personally) argue it's not something that needs to be available day 1 either.

I would ague your dead wrong. I will just get around your no flying restrictions by using a 2nd account to level my alts on and my 2 person flying dragon to take my alt where ever I need it. I think that indicated the need for this if you have players looking for how to get around this stupid limitation.
Like I said, games are different for everyone. I wouldn't dare tell you what you would prefer or not, but as you can see by the comments here your perspective isn't shared by everyone. As the game creators we have to leverage what individual types of players want against our own artistic and design visions, and hopefully those line up the majority of the time. In this case (aside from the convenience of helping alts fly sooner) I'd say most people are enjoying the change of pace.

You don't get honest opinions here and it's only a fraction of the population.
It is interesting how that flips around to suit the wielder. We're not listening, we're listening too much, everyone hates it, not everyone is giving their opinion, etc.

This same complaint came up in the first couple weeks of Wrath. As far as I've seen many people look back on that expansion with fondness, and "Remember when we couldn't fly?" isn't even in the top 40 of complaints about it. I guess what I'm saying is that it seems really super important right now, but ultimately it leads to a better experience in the long term for the majority of players.

Other Lore for Expansions
If you can manage to find copies of the D&D "Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game" dungeon guides, I swear they read like a laundry list of things that have come true since release. They aren't canon, and I don't think anyone is literally going back and checking things off, but they contain a lot of un-materialized ideas for classes and playable races. It stands to reason those ideas are still swimming around somehow, somewhere.