88 MPH!! Speed to get to the new War of the Ancients Raid? Maybe.

[chaos5061]

Patch 4.2.0A Notes

From Blizzard:
Bug Fixes
Using an instant cast spell right after a target dies should no longer re-target the dead target’s body.
Using an ability immediately after switching targets should no longer affect the previous target.
Resolved a movement error when jumping onto an object while experiencing a low frame rate.
Mac: Fixed a bug preventing shift and mouse wheel commands from registering properly.
Resolved issues that were causing client crashes near Beth’tilac in the Firelands.
Disconnecting while riding as a passenger in a vehicle should no longer cause an error upon subsequent login.
Entering a password with Japanese Hiragana selected as the keyboard type should no longer cause a crash.
Resolved an issue that was causing the client to crash under certain conditions when minimizing the game client.

Items
The tooltip color for heirloom items has been returned to gold.

Quests
A move enforcement issue has been resolved that was affecting the death knight starting area quest Death Comes From on High.
Tarecgosa's platform during the cutscene from Alignment (Elemental Bonds legendary quest) should now be visible before she lands on it.

[chaos5061]

4.2 Hotfixes Aug. 10th

From Blizzard:

August 10

Classes
Death Knights
Applicable death knight abilities are now using the correct amount of resources (and putting them on cooldown) when there are 4 Death Runes available and the Unholy Runes are depleted.

Druids
Druids that shapeshift will now clear the Potion of Illusion buff.

Mages
Combustion damage from Ignite is no longer penalized by Resilience more than once, nor can it gain double benefit from Flashburn (mastery).

Dungeons & Raids
Dungeon Finder
If a player is kicked by vote from a dungeon finder group, the leader of the group is no longer able to invite that player back.

Firelands
Rogue Smoke Bombs cannot prevent the spawning of Magma Traps during the fight against Ragnaros.
Several creatures in the Firelands are no longer susceptible to snares or other immobilizing effects.
Unbound Pyrelords, Unbound Smoldering Elementals, Unbound Blazing Elementals, and Patriarch Fire Turtles now drop silver instead of gold.

Guilds
The Recently Mass Resurrected debuff is correctly being applied to players who are in the process of logging out of the game.

Items
Brawler's Trophy and Core of Ripeness cannot be active at the same time as each other, or other burst trinkets.
Eternal Embers are now epic quality.
Heirloom items can once again be linked in chat.
Creating a macro to use the Runestaff of Nordrassil multiple times will only trigger the use once.

Quests & Creatures
Hyjal Regrowth & Molten Front
The Burning Treants summoned by the Druid of the Flame now disappear when the summoner is captured.
3 different elementals spawn on any given day for the Death From Above achievement, up from 1.

[chaos5061]

New NPC's on PTR.

From MMO Champion:
Void Storage and Transmogrifier - Patch 4.3 Teasing?
A teaser on the official Warcraft Facebook Page hints at two new types of NPCs coming in a future patch, most likely Patch 4.3: the Transmogrifier and Void Storage NPCs.

"Transmogrifier" seems to hint at a way to change the appearance of something, the first thing coming to my mind is either a way to change the look of your items (it was experimented in the past with things such as Darkspear Overcloak but dropped later). I guess it could also be a way to change facial/body features on characters.

The "Void Storage" is probably ... well, another kind of storage? Or a high-tech magic trash can.

[chaos5061]

4.2.2 PTR Notes Aug. 11th

From Blizzard:

Dungeons & Raids

Firelands
The visibility of Ragnaros’ Dreadflame ability has been increased.
The size of Ragnaros’ hit box during the final phase of the Heroic encounter has been increased.

User Interface
Raid Frames should now remember whether they were shown or hidden upon subsequent logins.

Technical
Players using multiple accounts should now be available to be invited to a Real ID Party.
Attempts to purchase Arena Season 10 items should no longer sometimes cause a client crash. (Korea Only)

[chaos5061]

4.2 Hotfixes Aug. 11th

From Blizzard:
August 11

Classes
Threat
Threat generation for all tanks has been increased to 500%, up from 300%. This applies to warriors in Defensive Stance, death knights in Blood Presence, druids in Bear Form, and paladins with Righteous Fury.
Vengeance should no longer be generated when damage is fully absorbed by damage shields. When the shield breaks from damage or damage is partially absorbed, the amount of Vengeance generated is equal to the full amount of damage taken (including the damage absorbed.)
More information can be found in our latest Dev Watercooler. (Or you could read my next 2 posts)

Dungeons & Raids
Baradin Hold
Occu’thar has come into a larger supply of PvE gear than he previously possessed.

Firelands
Hell Hounds should now be nigh impossible for a single player to kill.
The Grab Bag dropped by all Firelands bosses should now occasionally contain Crystallized Firestones in Heroic difficulty.

Baleroc
Baleroc should now always choose Inferno Blade the first time he casts Blades of Baleroc.

Beth’tilac
Beth'tilac now does slightly less damage on normal difficulty.

Lord Rhyolith
The explosion damage radius of each Magma Meteor just before Lord Rhyolith should now more closely match their spell effect visuals.
Volcanoes should no longer emit plumes of smoke while they are dormant.
Concussive Stomp should no longer knock nearby players back.
Magma Flow lines are now 30 yards long, down from 40 yards.
Rhyolith now activates volcanoes less often on normal difficulty.
Stepping on an active volcano now removes 16 stacks of armor, up from 10.

Majordomo Fandral Staghelm
All threat generated in this encounter has been reduced in Heroic difficulty.

Ragnaros
Ragnaros’s Sons of Flame should now be immune to silence effects.

Shannox
Shannox, Riplimb and Rageface have all had their damage reduced slightly on normal difficulty.

Quests
Players should now be able to keep the Quest Giver buff from the quest Welcome to the Machine in Hillsbrad Foothills.

[chaos5061]

Threat Dev Watercooler Pt.1

From Blizzard:
Threat revisited
One of the fun things about working on an MMO is that the game design will evolve over time, and you have the opportunity to make changes to reflect those design shifts. (And yes, we know that it can sometimes evolve too quickly).
Back in December, I wrote a blog post about our vision for how threat should work. Since then, the game and the community have continued to progress and the designers have found ourselves changing our minds about the role of threat. Enough that we’re planning to apply a hotfix this week to change how threat works.
Why have threat?
Threat’s role, just so we’re all on the same page, is to make fights more interesting. Tanks spend a lot of effort staying alive, but they aren’t under immediate threat of death one-hundred percent of the time. Plus, their staying alive is also dependent on their healers and other external cooldowns. We have always been concerned that if threat was not a big part of tanking gameplay that tanks might get bored just waiting around until it was time to use a cooldown. Likewise, if DPS and healers had no risk of being attacked themselves then the sense of danger facing a powerful creature could erode. Furthermore, every character’s toolbox includes some cool survival and utility abilities and the game feels more shallow if those are exclusively used for PvP. It’s fun for a mage to Frost Nova an attacker and Blink away. It’s fun for a hunter to Feign Death. Yes your life would be a lot easier without threat mechanics, but our goal isn’t to make fights as easy as possible. Our job is to make fights fun. Having too much to manage might not be fun, but it’s also not fun to be bored.
That’s been our traditional argument for threat needing to matter. Here is the case against it:
Why not have threat?

Throttling

As I said in the previous blog post, it’s not fun to feel throttled. It’s not fun for the Feral druid to stop using special attacks in order to avoid pulling aggro. It’s fun to use Feint at the right time to avoid dying, but it’s not fun for Feint to be part of your rotational cooldown. We want you to spend most of your effort trying to overcome the dragon or elemental, not struggling against your own tank.

Tanks are busy

I’d also argue that our encounters aren’t really boring these days. We ask tanks to do a lot -- everything from picking up adds, to moving bosses around, to staying out of fires, to providing interrupts, in addition to the classic tank roles of staying alive and generating threat.

Threat stats aren’t fun

We put threat stats (hit and expertise for the most part) on tanking gear, because without those, tanks would be limited to choosing from among mastery, dodge, and parry. (In the current state of itemization, you are rarely choosing more Strength, Agility, Stamina, or armor.) Druids can’t parry, and even for the plate users, there is a tight relationship between dodge and parry, and even mastery for the warrior and paladin. That gets us dangerously close to the old model of stacking a single uber stat (like Stamina or defense), which makes gearing choices too simplistic for tanks. Did something drop? Okay, put it on. (Contrast this to a DPS caster who might want more or less hit or might favor haste over crit, etc.)

We want threat stats to be interesting, but the reality is that they aren’t. Any decent tank will usually choose survivability stats over threat stats. Back in the day when taunts and interrupts could miss, you could argue hit was marginally useful. But in a world where hit is really just for generating threat, it isn’t very exciting and tanks get understandably emo when we put too much on their gear. (DKs are somewhat of an exception in a good way -- more on that in a sec.) We do see some players try and get excited about threat stats or even proud of their ability to generate threat, but overall we feel like threat stats are a trap, and it’s usually the case that improving your survivability will have a better net impact on your group’s progression.

We don’t need a more complex UI

We have threatened for years (see what I did there?) to build in some kind of threat tracking tool into WoW. But is that really good for the game? Do we really need yet another UI element for players to look at instead of looking at the actual game world? We know many raiders in particular use third-party threat mods today, but that has really been borne out of necessity rather than a sense that watching threat is super compelling gameplay. (When we say “super compelling gameplay” you can mentally replace that with “fun.”)

Dungeon Finder

I know this bullet will be a point made by players critical of this change, but I would feel remiss in not bringing it up. We want it to be a positive experience when Dungeon Finder matches experienced players with newer players. The skill and gear of the former can help make up for that of the latter. Who better to teach you boss mechanics than players who have done the fights before? Even better, the gear of a veteran tank can make up for the less powerful gear of a beginning healer (which doesn’t necessarily mean a noob -- it could be the alt of a very experienced raider).

However, this system fails and often spectacularly so when it’s the tank who is the undergeared player. Even if a competent healer can keep the undergeared tank alive, the fully raid-geared DPS spec is going to constantly be on the verge of pulling threat. That’s not an issue of skill. It’s just numbers. It’s also not a problem that is easy to overcome for either the overgeared DPS or the undergeared tank -- it’s just not a lot of fun for anyone.

[chaos5061]

Threat Dev Watercooler Pt.2

From Blizzard:
So now what?
Given all of that, and watching how tanking has unfolded in Cataclysm, we’ve gotten over the concept that threat needs to be a major part of PvE gameplay. We have therefore decided to buff tank threat generation in a hotfix this week to where it’s generally not a major consideration. We expect the community to gradually stop using threat-tracking mods as players realize they don’t need them.
It’s an important distinction that the concept of “aggro” will still exist. If a DPS spec attacks an add the second it shows up, then the creature is going to come at her. However, if a tank gets an attack or two on a target, then the target should stick to the tank. Worrying about who has the creature’s attention should generally only be a concern at the start of a fight or when additional creatures join the battle. Worrying about a warrior or DK (the classes with nearly non-existent threat dumps) creeping up on tank threat after several minutes will almost certainly not be an issue any longer. (And if it is, we’ll have to make further adjustments.)
We like abilities like Misdirect. It’s fun as a hunter to help the tank control targets. We are less enamored of Cower, which is just an ability used often to suppress threat. We like that the mage might have to use Ice Block, Frost Nova, or even Mirror Image to avoid danger. We don’t like the mage having to worry about constantly creeping up on the tank’s threat levels. The notion of aggro (who the target is attacking) is a keeper. The notion of threat races (who is about to pull aggro) is going to be downplayed from here on out.
Upcoming changes
Here are the specific changes you’re likely to see:

Hotfix: The threat generated by classes in their tanking mode has been increased from three times damage done to five times damage done.
In an upcoming patch: Vengeance no longer ramps up slowly at the beginning of a fight. Instead, the first melee attack taken generates Vengeance equal to one third of the damage dealt by that attack. As Vengeance updates during the fight, it is always set to at least a third of the damage taken in the last two seconds. It still climbs from that point at the previous rate, still decays at the previous rate, and still cannot exceed the current maximum.

Long-term changes
You could argue that once threat is very easy to manage that a warrior tank could just go AFK. In reality, given today’s boss encounters, an AFK warrior would end up standing in the wrong place, missing a tank transition, or otherwise do something or fail to do something that wipes the party or raid.
That said, we ultimately don’t want tanking to be just standing there soaking boss hits and we would like to have more stats on gear that tanks care about. To solve those challenges, we want to shift more tank mitigation to require active management. We’ll still give all the tanks emergency cooldowns like Shield Wall and Survival Instincts. However, we want to move the shorter cooldowns like Shield Block, Holy Shield and Savage Defense so that they work more like Death Strike. Blood DKs have a lot of control over the survivability they get from Death Strike, but as part of that gameplay, they have to actually hit their target. The other three tanks will get similar active defense mechanics. This doesn’t mean everyone needs to use the DK model of self-healing, but they can use the DK model of managing resources to maximize survivability.
Death Strike consumes resources to help the tank survive. We toyed at one point with the paladin Holy Shield being a Holy Power consumer and we think we could do so again. Heck we could make Word of Glory the thing you’re supposed to do with Holy Power, so long as we balanced all tanks around that idea and didn’t feel it infringed too much on the DK mechanic. We could make Shield Block cost rage, and change Protection warrior rage income such that they had to manage rage, the way Fury and Arms warriors now must do. If tanks generated more rage from doing damage and less from taking damage, then hitting a target becomes very important, but for mitigation, not threat management reasons. This is a bigger change than it seems though. We don’t want a model where the Prot warrior ignores Shield Slam, Devastate and Revenge (since threat isn’t a big deal) in order to bank all rage for Shield Block (because survival is). Imagine a rage model where you always had enough rage for your core rotational abilities (they could be cheap or even generate rage), so that you could funnel most of your rage into Shield Block when survival mattered and Heroic Strike when it did not. Redesigning Savage Defense to make it a rage sink is an even bigger change, but we think there is an opportunity there to make the rotation more interesting for druids (and all tanks really). Their rotation would help them achieve the goal that usually matters the most to tanks: living.
This is the kind of design for which we’re really going to need a lot of feedback once it hits. We can implement and verify empirically how much threat a tank generates, but it’s hard for us to replicate the experience of all of the various raiding groups and dungeon parties out there. We invite you to try out the immediate and eventually the long-term changes when they are available and let us know how they feel. Do you miss the threat game? Are you bored when tanking now? Conversely, with the changes, is tanking more fun for you? Does this new implementation of Vengeance feel better? Some systems design calls we can make just by processing numbers, and some are more squishy and involve a lot of gut checks and wishy-washy “but how does it FEEL?” language. Messing with this kind of thing is definitely somewhere in the middle.


Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft, and lead eater at the dinner table.

[chaos5061]

4.3 Info: Deathwing Raid 3 5mans armor reskinning armor closet

From WowInsider:

European gaming convention Gamescom is in full swing this week in Cologne, Germany. German entertainment site Gamona.de sat down with both Tom Chilton and Chris Robinson to discuss the details of the upcoming patch 4.3: The patch where your dreams come true. It was revealed that the patch will include:

Deathwing's raid and three new 5-man dungeons
Cosmetic armor skins (!)
An armor closet to store old gear, freeing up bank space

As patch 4.3 will include Deathwing's raid, that probably means it will be the final patch in the expansion's overall narrative. If you doubted for a moment that Blizzard will announce the next expansion at this year's BlizzCon, doubt no more. We expect that these new 5-man dungeons will provide a new tier of heroics as well, pushing difficulty about Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub.

Follow us past the cut below for details on cosmetic armor skins and more!

In the grand scheme of things, that's actually the smallest piece of information Gamona.de managed to gather. Surely you remember the "Glimpses" screenshot that community manager Zarhym revealed via Warcraft's Facebook. The NPCs there had two curious labels: Void Storage and Transmogrifier. Void Storage, as revealed to Gamona.de, will act as a massive bank specifically for armor. Armor probably makes up the vast majority of what all (old school) players have clogging their banks, so we will all appreciate such a feature. We will appreciate it even more as time goes on, too. There are only so many bank slots to stuff with armor and nearly every content patch brings us new tier gear to collect.

Transmogrifier is the feature players have been begging for for years: It provides the ability to alter the visual look of your armor into something more desirable. Don't like the look of your tier 12? Then reskin it with a tier you do like. It is made clear that you can only skin your armor as things your class could/should wear. For example, plate armor can only be transmogrified into other plate armor and if you're a mage, you can't transmogrify your set armor to look like a different class. Currently, it's undecided whether you can only transform your armor into something you've previously acquired or not, but it's a possibility for the system. Needing to acquire gear before you can use it as your armor skin will lead to players frantically running old content to assemble their dream gear.

The costs associated with using these services has not been provided. They may cost nothing. They may cost ludicrous amounts of gold. It would be unwise to dismiss the possibility that cosmetic features such as Transmogrification could cost real money.

With the addition of these cosmetic, quality-of-life changes that patch 4.3 is implementing, this patch may very well be the most memorable patch in the game's recent history.

Keep an eye on Gamona.de. The video interview will be made available later today.

[chaos5061]

Translation for the Gamona.de interview. Thanks to Cartman for translation.

From Gamona.de: (Translation by Cartman)
We are here for you at the Gamescom in Cologne and just had an interview with Tom Chilton, Lead Game Developer and Chris Robinson, lead art director, in which there were many new details about patch 4.3. And Blizzard's announcement that it is a really big patch does not appear to be exaggerated.
With Patch 4.3 we expect nothing less than the Deathwing Raid. So we will probably fight the Aspect of Death later this year and we certainly can expect a truly epic raid experience. The raid, which we had originally expected, the Abyssal Maw, was however removed because the setting and the story could not satisfy.
Furthermore, this will certainly please even more players, there will be three completely new instances. These will include no recycled old content, but really completely new and very demanding instances. Chilton implied that one of them will be in the Caverns of Time and lead the players back to a well known place. Ahn'Quiraj is therefore still on the table but it was assured that it will be a completely new design with all-new enemies and bosses.
And now we come to the dream, which many players have stated repeatedly and with patch 4.3 will be finally coming true. We can now reveal the secret of the three Astral in Stormwind. Transmogrifying will find its way into World of Warcraft. What's this? Nothing other than the opportunity to give your current armor the appearance of old armor while preserving the values. It will finally introduce the possibility to change the look of our characters. There are some things to consider.
First, we are only able to change armor of the same class. This means that you can convert only one plate armor into another plate armor. Furthermore, you will only be able to choose pieces of armor which your class can use. There will be no Warriors in Death Knight armor. And finally it is still considered whether the armor pieces that are available must have been earned yourself once. That would mean that we will experience a big run on the old instances, because certainly some players then there are farming their dream armor.
Also the Voidstorage was explained to us. It is a very, very large bank in which you can put in your old armor and thus keep it forever. This is intended to provide more space in the bank and the player's inventory. What items can be stored there, how much it will cost and whether these items are available to other characters of the player will be decided in the future.
All in all there really seems to be a huge patch coming. A raid, three completely new instances, optical armor adjustments and there’s still a lot more to come. What do you think? Are you happy with these announcements? What instances would you like to see and what you think of Transmogrifying? We are very excited about your thoughts!

[chaos5061]

More 4.3 info

From Wow Insider:
German site Buffed.de recently posted a rundown on the newest patch 4.3 news from Gamescom in Germany, where Tom Chilton revealed that part of the Deathwing fight will take place on the back of the Aspect of Death. We might actually be fighting Deathwing multiple times, with one of the fights being on his back. The translation is a little fuzzy, but there will definitely be some fighting while in-flight as players try to bring the great dragon down.

Gamescom has already brought us huge WoW news in the form of the gear transmogrifiers as well as gear storage NPCs and the fact that we will get to face Deathwing sooner than we thought. Stay tuned for more announcements.

Finally, Chilton and Chris Metzen, vice president of creative development at Blizzard, explained a new feature coming with the patch called "Raid Finder". The Raid Finder essentially operates like a dungeon finder, automating the search for fellow players on the hunt for a good raiding party. It will be built into the game's updated user interface when the patch hits, they said.

The Kotaku article doesn't call it a "cross-realm" raid finder, but I think it's safe to assume that it will be -- otherwise, it'll just be like the one that's in game now (you remember that one, right?). There's no more details on the interface or accompanying restrictions on the new raid finding, but expect that information to be discovered or announced soon.

Void storage to be 100 to 150 slots of specialized bank-like space.

[chaos5061]

Armor appearance changing info.

From Blizzard:
You’ve been asking for it, and we were listening. In patch 4.3 you’ll be able to customize the appearance of your weapons and armor like never before.

The Ethereals, emerging from the nether, will bring with them a new technology they call Transmogrification. They’re heading to the capital cities of Azeroth to set up shop and to offer adventurers a unique service -- copying the appearance of one magical item onto another. They only ask for a modest gold donation to recoup their costs.

Visiting a Transmogrifier will present players with a new interface that will allow them to change the appearance of an item while retaining its original stats. This means that you can raid in your paladin tier 12 Immolation set, but look like you’re wearing Lightbringer, while priests can bring Benediction back -- at least in spirit. Hunters can once again roam the jungles of Stranglethorn Vale in their tier 2 Dragonstalker set. You could even slip into the saucy tailored Black Mageweave set for that matter. You know, with the thigh highs, and the little gloves, and the cute little… ahem.
*


Placing an item into the Transmogrifier interface will offer a preview of how the item will appear once the change is applied. However, not all item pairings are compatible with Transmogrification. In general, only items that have stats can be used in the transmogrification process. You must also be able to wear both items when using this service. Ethereals don’t have much in the way of ethics, but allowing someone to appear as if they’re equipping unusable items crosses the line. Similarly, they won’t allow you to change weapon or armor types. Sneaky death knights can’t make that breastplate look like a cloth robe, and you can’t make a one-handed axe look like a two-handed axe, or transform a sword’s appearance into that of a mace. Guns, bows, and crossbows will be the exception to this rule. You will finally be able to retain your dwarf’s racial gun bonus while appearing with all the splendor and elegance of a bow wielder (or at least the relative silence of one).



Placing items into the Transmogrify interface will increase the gold cost of the process, and clicking the Transmogrify button (assuming you have the necessary funds) will put the appearance change into effect. The process can be reversed by clicking the undo icon on each item, and then hitting the Transmogrify button once more to save the changes. Any item that’s transmogrified will have text indicating it’s been altered by the process for all to see, similar to the item tooltip callout for reforged items.
*


Transmogrification encourages players to hold onto items with sentimental or aesthetic value, and the Ethereals anticipate that personal bag and bank space will be at a premium now that everyone will be hoarding their frilly pantaloons and leather jerkins. In anticipation of this new demand for additional storage space, they’ll be introducing a unique Void Storage service. What’s Void Storage, you ask? We’ll provide more details soon.



We’re looking forward to seeing how players choose to customize their character’s appearance, and hope you’re as excited as we are for the arrival of patch 4.3 and the Transmogrification feature. Do you have a favorite set or weapon that you’ll be bringing back? Let us know in the comments below.

[chaos5061]

Transmogrify Pictures From Blizzard:

[chaos5061]

From Blizzard:
You will not be able to transmogrify using a legendary item as either the source or the recipient of a change.

[chaos5061]

From Blizzard:
Darkmoon Faire
There will be a new Darkmoon Faire island with a bunch of new activities such as "Whack-a-Gnome"

[chaos5061]

Blizzard has corrected that void storage is not 100-150 slots it is 80 slots.