So speculate how long until MOP? June, August, October, December or ?

[chaos5061]

Jade Forest Zone Preview
As we get closer to Mists of Pandaria, now is a good time to take a look at the new zones. You can find this preview again in the menu at the right side of the navbar. Below is an edited video by BaronSoosdon that adds some eye candy to the zone, let us know what you think!

[chaos5061]

We've enabled Challenge Mode in the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria beta for Stormstout Brewery. We'd like to see as many players as possible challenge the dungeon to score your fastest times, and join us in discussing this new aspect of the game in this thread.

Here are the key things to know about this Challenge Mode test:

To participate, characters must have completed at least one run of the Heroic Stormstout Brewery dungeon.
Characters that meet that requirement will be able to set the difficulty to Challenge from the contextual unitframe dropdown and zone into Stormstout Brewery with your pre-formed party of five.
There is no queuing for Challenge Mode dungeons.
Inside, you’ll experience a more challenging version of the instance, with a timed run that begins the moment you interact with the Challenge Orb in front of you at the entrance.
Your gear will be normalized to item level 463, even if you have inferior gear on your beta character. (Note: This is only a beta feature. On live realms, gear won’t scale up, only down.)
Anyone with a level-90 on a beta realm can participate.
You can reset the dungeon and restart the timer mid-run if you make a mistake and feel you can do better. Simply have your leader right-click on his/her character unit frame and select the Reset option from the contextual drop-down while inside the instance.

This test will likely end late Monday, September 17. We're working on producing some non-official, test-only leaderboards for you, but don't forget -- there are going to be full-fledged, Armory-based leaderboards for Challenge Modes after Mists of Pandaria goes live.

We want players to race through the dungeon and try to get the best time possible. For many groups, simply finishing the dungeon will be challenging and an accomplishment. That’s fine, and we’d love to hear from you.

[chaos5061]

WoW Losing Its Social Aspect
I recently did RaF with my girlfriend and I realized how less social WoW is now. I realized this when she kept telling me how boring it was when she was on because she didn't know anyone. Back when I started playing, there was no cross-realm and you had to ask trade chat to join groups to do dungeons, which you actually had to communicate in. You needed to join a good active guild to survive well. My point is you had to be social and make friends to truly play the game. It's difficult to find social groups besides guilds.*




To Blizzard: Do you intend on bringing any of this some what mandatory socialization back to the game?
There are still many facets of the game where socializing and communicating are mandatory. While maintaining the MMO nature, what we've been doing over the years is work to provide something for people to do when they don't have a lot of friends online, or not a lot of people on their realm who are willing or able to run a dungeon, or a Battleground.




This game has always had a broad appeal. We're committed to striking a balance between very social gameplay, and progression on a more individual level. We work to create systems to support different play styles so that, ideally, you get to choose how you want to spend your time in the game -- knowing that you progressed your character in some fashion by the time you log out.




The thing is, it's always easy to forget that WoW is a delicate balance of opposing pressures. While we sit here remembering the time when we had long bonding dungeon crawls on realms where people knew each other and reputation mattered... there are also people who post here who just want the quick runs. They don't want to wait on others, they don't want a long crawl, they don't want to teach - they just want to play. Who is to really say who is right?
From my own perspective, I've certainly been in plenty of Dungeon Finder groups were there was virtually no communication -- though sometimes watching avatar body language, rare pets being pulled out, etc. brings about this funny sense of communication even in a virtual world. Yet, even in most of those relatively silent dungeon runs, I still had a great time playing the game. I definitely don't feel like it's the equivalent of playing alone when I'm a group. I still do my part and am happy to socialize if anyone in the group seems down for it. I just tend to be shy and not always initiate conversation myself.*




And I'll continue to do that in Mists. But I'm also looking forward to joining with a set group of people, traveling to an instance location out in the world, and zoning in for Challenge Modes. I'll just have more choices on any given night of queuing for something, or joining friends/guild mates to tackle content that requires more of a coordinated strategy.

Theramore Scenario Requirements
You just need two other level 85 friends of any class to do it (for the first week it's out). After that, it just goes to 90 and it will work the same. (Only needs three people.)

So it could just be 3 dps & we'd be fine?
Any three classes. The speed at which you complete the Scenario may vary based on that (slightly) but they are designed to be run by any class combination.

Your ticket to ride is your level. If you don't have anyone to go into the Scenario with, we can provide people to group with via the queue.

Cross-Realm Challenge Modes
Will challenge modes be cross realm?
Yes.

If Challenge Modes can be done cross-realm, I think we need a region ranking system (US, EU, etc) instead of realm. It would make more sense.
Leaderboards will also display information on a regionwide basis as well as by realm.

[chaos5061]

Challenge Mode Difficulty
Wait, so I cannot queue up Looking For a Challenge (LFC)? Guess I won't be doing challenge modes. Thanks for more content I won't be doing!
If you're looking for endgame content for which you can queue up to find a group, there's more of that for you in Mists than there ever has been in the history of this game.

You will never outgear challenge modes. One of the neat things they do is normalize your gear to a certain item level. Basically how it works is they take all of your gear and set it at a certain item level say 450 and then all of your gear becomes 450 item level (at least if it works same way as normalization in beta).
The format is actually even a little more complicated than that. Just as an example: hit cap. As you surpass the 5-player Heroic dungeon item level you'll eventually cap out hit. If we equally averaged all your stats back down to 90 Heroic dungeon levels, it'd feel crappy. In that scenario you'd be running upcoming Heroic raid content at hit cap without missing, then enter a Challenge dungeon and be missing too much. You'd then have to keep a separate set that stacks a ton of hit to make up for the loss in averages. So your hit won't scale down as much. If you're not missing raid bosses in your epic gear, you probably shouldn't be missing bosses in Challenges either.

But trinkets effects and procs will be scaled down as well and set bonuses will be deactivated.

The automatic queuing systems in WoW come with the built in assumption that those involved will have a reasonable chance of succeeding at the content they've queued for. This is not the case in rated arenas, nor is it likely to be the case in rated challenges.

All the option would do is raise false hopes & risk player frustration when they discover the pug option is guaranteed not to succeed.
Lakhesís, your statements are very in-line with some of our development philosophies regarding matchmaking systems, player expectations in random versus pre-made groups, etc.

My biggest concern about Challenge modes is the opposite. Not that they will be nerfed, but they will be hotfixed to remove semi-exploits.

Let me give an example. In a certain dungeon, it is determined that a druid, shaman and mage can use certain abilities to bust through a dungeon and crush the gold medal time. The symbiosis between those 3 classes causes them to clear the dungeon 5 mins before any other comp can.

The devs know that in no time, Youtube will be filled with vids of how to do this and that soon everyone will know that you must bring a certain comp to even get close to the record time, so they hotfix it the first month of MOP. The original druid, shaman, mage did not cheat.. so probably their record time will stand forever.

If you think I am exaggerating.. look at 75% of world first raid kills. They mostly all involve some ´tactic´ that is ruled not an exploit, but is still hotfixed very quickly to not work any longer. Of course there are other true exploits that are hotfixed as well.

My guess is that there will be a lot of challenge mode top times that come from the first 2 weeks of the expansion and last a long long time.
You bring up some legitimate concerns, Adrena. All I can say is we share those concerns and will be watching things very carefully. There will definitely be some class synergy that will work well for specific dungeons or encounters. That's okay. But we do want to make sure there's integrity in the leaderboards regardless.

If you're raid hit capped, will you be massively over the hit cap in challenge modes (and thus wasting offensive stats) or when it scales you down will it ensure you are right at the hit cap, but not (significantly) over it, and reallocate those points to some generally useful stat.

Or to ask it another way, will players want to be aiming for a cap below raid hit cap when doing challenge modes so as not to waste stats (or are challenge mode bosses +3 bosses instead of +2 as is typical in heroic dungeons)?
If you're just at hit cap in a raid, you'll be just at hit cap in Challenges. So if you swap out any hit to stack other stats you'll be dropping below cap.

Challenge Modes and Loot
This is probably a stupid question, but I'm assuming no loot or gold drops off mobs in challenge modes, yes? Otherwise wouldn't gold farmers just endlessly reset them?
No loot or gold drops in challenge modes, though you will get Valor Points for any and all completions (up to the weekly cap, of course). Challenge modes are something you do once you are fully equipped with dungeon-or-better gear.

Because no loot or gold can be obtained, we'll be disabling durability loss in challenge modes.

[chaos5061]

PvP and PvE Gear Strength in PvP
Great, another PVP season that needs PVE weapons for BiS. Perhaps if enemy players had a low % chance of dropping sub-par/LFR versions of PVP items when you kill them I'd feel better about all of this but pffft, dragon killing is not what I want to be doing.
I feel that PvP weapons will actually be far more desirable than their PvE counterparts for PvP in Mists of Pandaria. This is because 265 PvP power equals 1% increase in damage and healing done and with the large amounts on PvP weapons, they are definitely nothing to be sneezed at.

Keep in mind that this is for the Ilvl490 PvP weapons:
Caster weapons, one-handed (Malevolent Gladiator's Spellblade), wands (Malevolent Gladiator's Touch of Defeat) and two-handed (Malevolent Gladiator's Staff) have 2874 PvP power increasing healing and damage by 10.84%
Two-handed melee weapons Malevolent Gladiator's Pike and ranged weapons Malevolent Gladiator's Longbow also have 2874 PvP power increasing healing and damage by 10.84%
One-handed melee weapon such as Malevolent Gladiator's Cleaver have 1437 PvP power which equals a 5.42% flat increase in damage and healing. And when you equip two, that number doubles

As you can see, equipping these items is a significant increase in the damage and healing that you can perform in PvP. The guide that I linked earlier in the thread explains, much better than I can, why the PvP stats are astounding. I do recommend take a look.

Arena Rewards and Cheating Teams
We did not rely only on player reports for our investigation, however we did look into teams if we were contacted about them. We gathered reports from multiple sources and in the end all teams eligible for the rewards were investigated; any of them that were found to be exploiting or cheating were disqualified from the end of season rewards.

One large point to note is that it was the teams being disqualified and not the accounts of the participating players, which is where I believe the confusion is coming from. Before I go any further I want to make sure that you are all aware that the end of season rewards are account wide. This means that if one team on an account was disqualified for any reason but there was still another legitimate and eligible team on that same account, they could still receive the rewards.

I hope that this clears everything up and ensures that you are all aware that any teams found to be abusing the ladder and queue systems were sanctioned accordingly.

So why are some players on certain teams being punished and not the rest of the team? You're pretty inconsistent with what the Armory is telling us.
How so? As I said in my post, it is the arena team that gets disqualified from the end of season rewards and not its players. So if someone had two teams that were both eligible for the end of season rewards and only one of them was disqualified, their characters would still receive awards from the team that achieved its rank legitimately because of account-wide achievements.

But there are teams with some players who have got the title when it's their only team (which has been disqualified).
I think that you have misunderstood the statement. This is because on their account, another team on a different character has received the end of season rewards legitimately. The Feat of Strength is currently account wide which means that all of their characters have access to the Feat of Strength, but not to the title and mount.

Nop, only the mount achievement is account wide, the actual mount isn't.
My apologies, I did indeed make a mistake. It is just the Feat of Strength that is account wide for the mount and title, but the mount and title is only usable on the character that received the rewards.

Level 90 Arena Tournament Realm
We hope that we can have the level 90 Arena Pass realm up and active within weeks after the release of Mists. So it might be possible, if the realm is up soon enough, that you can get full Malevolent gear on the Arena Pass before it is even possible to have the full set on the live realms. This is because the Conquest per week cap limits the speed you can get it on live realms, but you can get the full set straight away on Arena Pass.

Wasn't it a promise that we will eventually get one though? I wasn't sure of wording with when we get it though.
Oh yes, there will definitely be a level 90 Arena Pass. Also, If you purchased access to the 2012 Arena Pass earlier this year then you receive free access to the level 90 one!

You can find out a little bit of the information for the level 90 Arena Pass realm in the FAQ here: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/game/arena/arena-faq

Start Date of Season 12
There is no official set in stone start date for Season 12, but it should begin approximately 1 week after the release of Mists of Pandaria.

[chaos5061]

Beta Class Balance Analysis
Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
One of the posters on the Paladin forums theorized it had something to do with Divine Storm and Light of Dawn, but many took it to mean chain procs were basically cut from Divine Purpose. We did a few tests and chain procs were definitely not cut, but just in case, could you clarify the change for us?
It was just a few bugfixes to Divine Purpose, not a functionality change. Here's a more detailed description of what was fixed with Divine Purpose, for those curious:

Word of Glory was mistakenly giving two chances to proc Divine Purpose (one for the cast, one for the heal / damage). It now only gives one chance, as you'd expect.
As previously mentioned, Divine Purpose's proc chance is supposed to be reduced to 8.33% or 16.66% if you cast a finisher with 1 or 2 Holy Power. That was also incorrectly applying to casts of finishers with Divine Purpose active. For example, suppose you had 4 Holy Power, and cast Light of Dawn (dropping you to 1 Holy Power). That procs Divine Purpose. You then Light of Dawn again. Previously, it would see that you're at 1 Holy Power, and give that second cast only an 8.33% chance to proc Divine Purpose again. This fixes that, so that casts made with Divine Purpose have the full 25% chance to proc Divine Purpose again.
Some finishers would proc Divine Purpose instantly when you cast them, and some would have a moment of delay between the cast and you gaining Divine Purpose. Those have been fixed to always proc instantly; it should feel much more responsive now.

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
We have currently estimated that Blood Boil was nerfed by about 40% for Unholy. Does that sound accurate?
No, it sounds like you’re missing the very large increase to its base damage. It should change Unholy’s AoE damage somewhat, but it shouldn’t be huge. At low gear levels, it may be a buff even.

Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
An earlier blue post indicated that Soul Burn: Soul Swap should NOT put soul swap on cool down if you have glyph of soul swap equipped. On live SB:SS is still triggering a cool down. Have you changed your mind on this or is a fix incoming?
We’re seeing it working internally and on live. Can you double-check?

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Penance Overpowered
I think it's important for everyone to keep in mind that what you're seeing/experiencing is an incomplete picture. We've been working on maintaining balance through the levels as much as possible, but ultimately, the development team is tuning for level 90.

While there has been a spate of "nerf this/nerf that" threads because of these experiences, it's important to remember that these types of comments (nerf threads) are not generally very helpful. It also leads to flame wars from those that are at risk of being subject to said nerfs.

If there's a legitimate bug that you're seeing/experiencing, that's a whole other kettle of fish.

[chaos5061]

September 14

General
Talents can no longer be removed if they are currently on cooldown.

Classes
Druid
Druids under the effect of Dash no longer gain the Stampeding Roar buff from other Druids.
Eclipse should no longer provide bonus damage after it fades.
Hunter
The Devilsaur Hunter pet ability Terrifying Roar should no longer apply to player pets or guardians.
Mage
Pyroblast and Combustion should combine to do the expected amount of damage and critical damage.
The initial damage of Combustion is now properly affected by Shatter, increasing its crit chance accordingly.
Cauterize can now only absorb up to twice the mages's maximum health.
Glyphed Inferno Blast should properly apply the Pyromaniac debuff.
Paladin
Holy Paladins should now get the intended 15% bonus to spell hit.
Priest
Shadow Word: Pain should now interrupt flag captures and other similar processes with its initial damage (but not it's periodic damage over time).
Rogue
Crimson Tempest should now stack correctly with Sanguinary Veins and Mastery: Executioner.
Cheat Death can now only absorb up to twice the rogue's maximum health.
Warlock
Shadowburn should always return a Burning Ember when it instantly kills the warlock's target.
Soul Leech now causes Fel Flame to heal the Warlock for 10% of damage dealt in all three specs.
Fel Armor now increases Warlock's health by 10%.

Dungeons and Raids
Scholomance
Janice Barov's Gravity Flux and Whirl of Illusion should now interact with players' immunity abilities as expected.

Items
The level requirement for use of a number of elixirs has been fixed.

Quests
Players are now able to complete the quest Mimicking Nature's Call by using the Carved Horn near the frozen waterfall in Howling Fjord.
The quest objective for Call of Duty should again require that players "Ride the mercenary ship to Vashj'ir".

Bug Fixes
Level 10 characters logging into patch 5.0.5 for the first time will now learn Control Pet and Control Demon properly.
Death Knights advanced via a scroll of resurrection should now receive all level appropriate abilities including Death Gate and the two unique mounts: the Deathcharger and the Winged Steed.
In the Gilneas starting area, Lady Sylvanas' health has been returned to normal.

[chaos5061]

Vale of Eternal Blossoms Zone Preview
As we get closer to Mists of Pandaria, now is a good time to take a look at the new zones. You can find this preview again in the menu at the right side of the navbar. Below is an edited video by BaronSoosdon that adds some eye candy to the zone, let us know what you think!

[chaos5061]

Kun-Lai Summit Zone Preview
As we get closer to Mists of Pandaria, now is a good time to take a look at the new zones. You can find this preview again in the menu at the right side of the navbar. Below is an edited video by BaronSoosdon that adds some eye candy to the zone, let us know what you think!

[chaos5061]

EU Community Q&A
Blizzard sent out answers to a number of questions to the EU fansites, and you can find the full list on WoWSource. We have selected some of the more interesting questions below.

[chaos5061]

Q: Do you plan to implement more new functions in the BG UI, like tag as team button, categorize BGs by type (CTF, Payload, Murder Ball, etc.) to make BGs even easier to get into for MoP?
A: No current plans to adjust any of the Battleground UI features.

Q: What are you doing in order to try and ensure that players no longer play for a short while at the start of a season and then sit on their ratings to get gladiator? This causes issues because there are quite often very few players playing at higher ratings because of this and it creates a repetitive experience of fighting the same teams constantly.
A: It's really difficult to measure this type of thing right now, but we don't ordinarily see large numbers of players making a habit out of achieving a rating and sitting there successfully without playing.

Q: Ever since the transmogrification feature has been added to the game, players seem to be more concerned with their character’s appearance. Since so many tabards give such good buffs, players feel “obligated” to use them, even if it ruins their character’s look. Having said that, do you have any plans for adding an interface option to “Hide Tabard”?
A: The reason we haven't allowed tabards to be hidden is because the very idea of a tabard is to allow the wearer to proudly display the faction or guild they're representing. With that being said, we know that tying bonuses to tabards creates the feeling of a mandate to wear some of them. We're fixing this in Mists by removing the whole concept of tabards providing reputation bonuses. Reputation and factions work a bit differently than those in past expansions. Beyond tabards which provide reputation bonuses, there aren't really any other tabards players should feel obligated to wear for an extended period.

Q: Does the current account-wide achievement/mounts/pets tech allow you to also have account-wide attunements if desired in the future? (Although we don’t have attunement questlines anymore).
A: We don't have any plans to bring attunements back, nor is there any intention to somehow share quests across characters. There are points where we have to draw the line and say "this is something you have to earn at the character level." We don't want to pull too much meaning from the act of rolling alts.

Q: Looking back, are you happy with the moment at which the debuff was introduced in Dragon Soul? (Some players feel it happened too early.)
A: Yes, we're happy with the point at which the debuff was introduced. The timing of each nerf was completely data-driven. As we see participation and progress start to flatline across the board due to raid groups hitting "brick walls" on particular bosses, we introduce a nerf to encourage them to come back and keep trying. Each time we do this we see Dragon Soul participation increase exponentially compared to previous weeks.

The most advanced raiders who can work through a single progression block for weeks a time, or who aren't stopped by such blocks for very long, will probably never see eye to eye with us on these nerfs. They perceive it as nerfs to content that's already doable. But as we've said in the past, it's not reasonable to ask the majority of casual riders who'd like to progress through normal (and maybe some Heroic) to wipe on the same boss for weeks or months at a time without giving up. It's better for the overall community for us to make goals feel more attainable over time before they become discouraged and stop playing, particularly during long content lulls like the one between Dragon Soul and Mists of Pandaria.

Q: Players on low population realms are very concerned that the cross realm zones won’t alleviate their troubles. They point out that the cities will still feel empty and the economy will not be improved, and they do not see that guild recruitment will become any easier. Do you have any plans to address these concerns?
A: We recognize that the cross-realm zone feature won't solve all population and balance issues. With that said, we're anxious to see what effects it does have, and we'll be monitoring realm population and faction balance very carefully.

Q: What's the reasoning behind removing the Auction House from Pandaria?
A: Firstly, we want to ensure our servers are stable. The Pandaria hub will be a very crowded area. Ultimately, we think the model for TBC and WotLK worked okay, so we don't foresee any major issues with requiring players to return to capital cities to use the AH. This also helps keep the capitals from being ghost towns.

Q: With cross-realm questing coming in MoP, will elite quests be re-introduced?
A: No, we don't have plans to bring back elite or group quests in Pandaria zones. Scenarios are designed to somewhat replace the need for those quests, while also providing a matchmaking, cross-realm option to solve the problem of players not being able to find groups for elite quests if they miss the initial game release leveling rush.

Q: Many raiders ask for more recognition (feats of strength, achievements, cosmetic rewards, pets, mounts, titles, etc.) for completing dungeons before debuffs are enabled. Have you given this anymore consideration for Mists?
A: Yes, this is what the new "Cutting Edge" feat of strength is intended to accomplish. This feat of strength will only be obtainable when players complete the content before any debuffs are introduced to nerf the content, or before the next raid tier becomes available. We'll see how it goes, but the idea is to stick with this type of reward structure for future raid tiers.

Q: Can you elaborate on how the raid progression (gear-wise) will look in Mists of Pandaria? Some players wonder if having LFR right from the start means we might see a progression system that requires players to start on Tier 14 and progress from there, or if there’ll be new heroics and gear that will allow players to bypass older raid tiers, as in Cataclysm and Wrath of the Lich King.
A: Each new LFR tier will have an increased minimum ilevel requirement, so there will be sort of a natural progression path there further in the lifespan of the expansion. Players will conceivably run Heroic dungeons to gear up enough to hit the minimum ilevel for the first tier of LFR, then collect enough gear to be eligible for the second tier of LFR, and so on. That said, it won't be mandatory for every player to progress this way, particularly if they run normal or Heroic raids. We're not yet ready to talk about the potential for additional Heroic 5-player dungeons with higher ilevel requirements coming in future Mists patches.

Q: Players with heirlooms in low level BGs can, quite frankly, trounce anyone in questing gear, and this is highly frustrating for new players and those who don’t have heirlooms. Seeing that ‘twinks’ were moved to their own BG queues for also having a massively unfair advantage over regularly geared players, are you considering doing something about this situation too?
A: Heirloom gear is basically the equivalent of rare-quality items at any given level. It doesn't feel right to nerf them somehow in PvP when people can run low-level dungeons for similar gear. Players competing with heirloom gear in Battlegrounds will still continue to gain experience if they don't branch off into the "twink" queue.

[chaos5061]

Q: From a lore aspect, how do you feel the three dragon soul dungeons turned out? Some players were surprised to see Benedictus’ story play out the way it did as no one really anticipated seeing that twist.
A: We originally wanted more story hooks to really highlight Benedictus's betrayal. Unfortunately, we didn't end up having the time to build his character out as much as we had hoped.

Q: In BC, 5-man dungeons were replete with missions that appeared to be heavily lore-centric; this was not felt too much with Cataclysm. Is there anything in the pipeline to add more lore-based and engaging content in regular dungeons for current or future content?
A: We don't feel like dungeon quests really served the purpose they were meant to. They didn't really help advance the story and sometimes just added an unnecessary feeling of gating. These days we try to do a better job of telling the story of various dungeons by nicely tying the lore to the zones in which the dungeons reside. A great example of this in Mists of Pandaria is the quests in Valley of the Four Winds really paving the way for what's happening in Stormstout Brewery.

Q: Can you explain our stance on the difficulty of the leveling experience? Many players, having been around for some time, feel that low-level content is too easy beyond level 20 and should increase in difficulty over time (they cite lack of elite packs, no more group quests, gear optimization, etc).
A: We agree that the low-level experience is a little too easy at times. We wanted to make sure we weren't scaring new players off, but we don't want to bore people either. There needs to be some fear of death. We've been going through and working to increase spawn points and try to make the world feel more dangerous in certain places (particularly 1-20). We don't want to make it frustrating, but people should notice in the 85-90 zones that much more attention needs to be paid to how their characters are positioned, what other creatures are around them, how many creatures they can take on at once, how creature pathing could put them in harm's way, etc.

Q: Some players had great experiences with things such as the Chess Event in Karazhan and the Ulduar Siege encounter in Wrath patch 3.1. Are there any plans to add additional interactive encounters such as these in future raids?
A: Whenever it makes sense we'll certainly try to do more unique events like these. They're a lot of work, but they're definitely a lot of fun too. The chess event, for example, was an idea one developer worked through on his own time and had a decent mock-up ready to present to the dungeon encounter team. He saw it through and it was awesome, so we added it to the game.

Q: Regarding LFR, is it your intention to make LFR completely uninteresting for hardcore raiders so that they don’t ever want to go there with their main characters? Some people dislike the idea of having to go through LFR to get some upgrades and claim that even if the chance of getting and upgrading gear is smaller than before, most guilds will always go there if there is any chance at all of getting the slightest competitive advantage from it.
A: While we would prefer that LFR not be part of the progression path for people who are doing the content on normal/Heroic with organized guilds, we understand that competitive raiders will take every possible advantage, and that when everyone is starting in dungeon blues, they will take any possible upgrade they can get. We’ve made adjustments to the loot system that curb some of the more onerous practices (i.e. doing a dozen guild runs to optimize LFR loot allocation). We’ll structure the power level of future tiers’ LFR loot so that it doesn’t replace Heroic gear from the prior raid, and we’re continuing to discuss other solutions internally to limit the pressure for competitive raiders to run LFR. That said, there are some positive community effects when groups of guildmates hop into the LFR queue, and are able to lead and share knowledge about the encounters with the core LFR audience.

Q: When will we update the Zergling Leash model to get it more in-line with the HotS models?
A: We have no plans at this time. It’s not a simple model port from game to game.

Q: People would like to see more ways to teach other players how to become better at PvP, especially in the battlegrounds. Many people feel that game really needs more tutorial systems and tooltips that could help newcomers or "weak/unskilled" become better players. What are your thoughts on this, and is it something you would consider for the game?
A: We want to make an effort to make BGs easier to learn. At some point we want to do Dungeon Journal-type entries that explain the lore and basic strategies of each map. Eventually we’d like to elaborate on that by having fly-through videos that demo what each BG is all about. We might do more queue separation as well based on gear quality, if we can avoid inflating wait times.

[chaos5061]

Stormstout Brewery Challenge Mode Event
The barrels are bugged and we're working on a hotfix for them.

In general, in Challenge modes we try to remove randomness, because we don't want external factors to have an undue influence on completion time, and we definitely don't ever want people to be 80% of the way through a clear and say, "Oh, the boss spawned with the wrong set of abilities, reset and try again."

On Normal and Heroic, Yan-Zhu picks three random abilities out of a possible six. On Challenge mode, we've pre-selected the same set of three abilities every time.

Similarly, in Mogu'shan Palace, the Trial of the King encounter normally randomizes the order of the bosses, and Raigonn in Gate of the Setting Sun randomizes the order of the adds he summons, but in Challenge mode those are all set to specific orders.

Theramore Scenario Item Level Requirement
Thank you for giving us some much needed answers Neth!!! Appreciate it!
I just went back to verify this further to make sure I wasn't giving incorrect information. (Sorry for the confusion folks.) There is also an item level that goes with it. At level 85 Theramore's Fall is set to item level 353. At level 90 the item level is currently set for 425.

If you're not at the correct item level for the level 85 scenario when it goes live, you still have some time before it releases (Sept. 18) and it will be running for a week at that level before it goes to level 90.

Challenge Mode Stats Normalization
The explanation can get a bit technical, but basically no, you don't need a separate set of gear for challenge modes.

When your gear is scaled down, we keep your hit and expertise % the same, and if needed, subtract extra from your other ratings while keeping their proportions the same. It's also worth noting that we've added 1 level to every enemy in challenge mode dungeons, so that the bosses are 93 instead of 92.

These numbers aren't accurate, but just to illustrate how it'll work: If you have 15% hit, 10% crit, 10% haste, and 10% mastery, and your gear needs to be scaled down by 20% to reach the normalization threshold, normally you might expect your stats to go down to 12% hit, 8% crit, 8% haste and 8% mastery. Instead you'll end up at 15% hit, 7% crit, 7% haste, and 7% mastery. (I know that not all stats require the same ratings so this isn't precise, but hopefully you get the idea.)

Now, I did lie a little bit: If you're very precisely trying to hit some haste breakpoints for your spec, you may end up wanting to keep a separate set of challenge mode gear, but that's the sort of behavior we expect from people who already have Gold and are trying to improve their time by a second or two for realm/region leaderboard bragging rights. But the impact of a stat point or two here or there is going to be trivial compared to basic things like how your group handles patrols, how much or little crowd control you choose to use, and so forth. If you think back to something like the original Zul'Aman bear run, success or failure was never a matter of having 1% extra crit or not; it was more typically a product of whether you let that scout make it to the drums, or whether you got too reckless and wiped to one of the bosses.

Healing Balance
Hello my fellow life menders and givers,

Most of the tuning that has been done so far has been focused on level 90, that's why sometimes we may see a few abilities that are clearly too good at lower levels. (Holy Shock comes to mind, and this one has already been hotfixed).
We’re not focusing our efforts in balancing abilities prior to Mists, the most important thing right now is that we get everything tuned correctly for the new MoP content and particularly for level 90.

[chaos5061]

Zone Previews: Krasarang Wilds, Dread Wastes, and Townlong Steppes
As we get closer to Mists of Pandaria, now is a good time to take a look at the new zones. You can find this preview again in the menu at the right side of the navbar. Below are edited videos by BaronSoosdon that adds some eye candy to the zone!

[chaos5061]

PvE
Your tidbits about 10/25 don't do the topic justice at this point. Any chance on a more detailed thought in the near future?
Yeah, it would make a good watercooler / coffee article. Good idea.

How will the mounts from Sha of Anger/Galleon work? Will they be random internal roll chances for players like the other loot?
Yes.

Challenge Modes
I'm assuming challenge modes won't be able to be done with a friend on Real ID?
I'm pretty sure you can. Battle Tags too.

Do the Challenge Modes have a lockout? Is it possible to restart a run once the timer has started?
You can reset them if you realized you screwed up.

Are Challenge Modes Heroics with a timer or do they come with increased enemy damage and health etc?
Both. The timer won't be very relevant for Bronze. You just need to finish.

Do challenge modes and heroics have separate lockouts?
Challenge modes have no lockout.
They do reward VP
But so do a lot of things and there is a VP cap.

Do you expect players to be able to jump into challenge modes in blues? or will set-bonuses make that non-viable?
Challenge modes are harder than level 90 heroic dungeons and we don't scale gear upwards. Set bonuses also are disabled.

How will trinkets work in challenge mode? Are there a few that will be accepted or will they be scaled some how?
For now they all work.

Based on internal and external testing/feedback, which Challenge Mode dungeon appears to be "hardest" at present?
I'd say Brewery. Scarlet Halls is up there too.

LFR
Is the Bag of Gold from LFR in case you win the roll but no loot is available on their loot table or do you get 1 every time?
If you don't win an item, you win gold. All LFR MoP bosses have deep enough loot tables.

So why does LFR exist when it requires little to no effort?
LFR is like a roller coaster. It's not hard but it can be fun.
But it completely removes the purpose of raiding - to see the awesome content. 1.1M drop in subs wasn't just cause of diablo 3
I don't raid just to see the content. I raid to hang out with my friends and strategize to beat the boss. LFR can't do that.

If you're "pushing secondaries", should elixirs be a viable option over flasks?
Have you looked at their stats?

Why do you lie that Raiders don't need LFR when legendaries drop there?
The items that drop in N and H are higher ilevel. RF would at best tide you over a couple of weeks.

Previous Raids / Reasons to Raid / Raid Difficulty
"We took the resources and put them back into FL" Does this mean the official stance on FL is that it was not terrible?
Nope. I was really happy with Firelands.

As we approach MOP and Dragon Soul becomes irrelevant.....will you admit that it's the worst raid to ever be made?
I liked DS. It went on too long as final raids tend to do. There are some things we'd do differently.
I didn't hate DS, and I know we got better since ICC, but DS was also considerably easier and shorter than ICC was.
Not the length of a single raid. The number of months when there was nothing else. The raid itself was probably a little short.
Tell us what you wish you could have done differently other then get MoP out faster
Some new architecture, less teleporting, maybe 1-2 more bosses. Maybe 1-2 more new boss models. More DW in the DW fights. I should add that we are our own harshest critics. That should not be interpreted as we hate the work we do.
People liked the difficulty and the raid when it was fresh and muchness nerfed. The worst raid thing is just boredom
Players drop out of raiding when there is no sense of progression. That can mean too easy or too hard. It's a myth that hard content just inspires people to keep trying. Dedicated players might make 400 attempts. Others just quit.
but simply the fact that the progression through content/gear was interrupted and restarted every patch cycle.
Yeah, when you catch people up too quickly, you do erode the desire to stick with tough challenges. Easier to wait than wipe.
Also, don't nerf Heroics unless you plan to introduce Challenge raids. Heroic-bound raiders don't want it.
Not actually true. Heroic raiders quit when they see no progress after weeks of wiping just like everyone else.
You didn’t Nerf Black Temple or sun well. Pretty sure they are better then any cata raid. Even if they were harder.
They were good raids, but very few players saw them. At the time, things like leveling alts or professions were fun alternatives
(Tweet missing, about leveling alts instead of raiding)
But once you level so many alts, it holds less attraction. Raiding = one of few systems we've come up with that keeps attention. Raids have a good track record for holding player attention so we like letting lots of folks raid.
The top end beats it easily, and the bottom end gets stuck. There has to be something for them to do other than quit.
Exactly.

Bliz likes the idea of more people seeing content because it values the work more.
That's not really it. When players have a lot to do, they want to play. Simple as that. Raids give players a lot to do.
True but you also just confirmed what I said. The strength of BC was the amount of raid content. The present system of raids being obsoleted during their own expansion has caused a dramatic reduction in raid content - and this came about in large part because of the idea of making them more accessible.
I think the strength of BC was it was the first expansion. Making an alt was exciting and new. We didn't need Raid Finder then.
True but why did you need raid finder? What shifted so much in Cata? TBH I believe the benefit 25 mans brought was not realized until most of them went away.
What shifted in Cata was players needed something new to do. For many, raids were something new.