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

[daeymien]

World of Warcraft Optimization
The launcher now optimizes your game folder and tries to improve game performance/reduce the size of the install on your hard drive.

So...In my real-world experience:

Started with 25.3GB PTR folder, ended optimization with 21.9GB. 3.4GB saved.

Then downloaded a 4.2 GB patch. Net +0.8GB.

[chaos5061]

From Blizzard:
With the 4.3.2 patch we’ll be testing some new file optimization tech. As you may be aware, with previous major expansion patches (2.0, 3.0, 4.0, etc.) we’ve carried out a time-consuming process to reorganize the game files currently installed on your hard drive to integrate all previous patch files, essentially ‘cleaning up’ what’s on your computer and reducing the full installation size. This process used to require an amount of free hard drive space double that of the entire installation size to complete, which is why we’ve reserved them for large expansion-sized patches.

The new tech we’re testing with the 4.3.2 PTR will process these cleanups with no additional hard drive space required beyond what the patch is adding. Because of that you may see them appear more frequently with patches.

While the cleanup is occurring you’ll see a specific message on the launcher informing you the process is currently taking place. If you encounter any issues with the new process please be sure to visit our support site at http://www.battle.net/support/

[chaos5061]

Cross Realm Raids coming 4.3.2

From Blizzard:
We previously introduced the ability to form cross-realm parties with Real ID friends, and now with Patch 4.3.2, we're adding the ability for players to use that same functionality to form raids to run older normal or heroic raids, or participate in Battlegrounds!

This will allow you to join up with your Real ID friends from other realms and:

Form a cross-realm raid and use Raid Finder
Jump in to any classic dungeon or raid and be automatically placed in the same instance
Join forces and dominate the Battlegrounds


Please note, you will not yet be able to run normal or Heroic Dragon Soul with cross-realm Real ID raids.

As we look forward to the BattleTag system, it’s a very exciting time for World of Warcraft. No matter what realm you and your friends are on you’ll be able to team up and take on group content throughout the game.

[chaos5061]

4.3.2 PTR Notes 1-8-12

From Blizzard:

World of Warcraft Patch 4.3.2

Classes: General

Vengeance is no longer triggered by receiving damage from other players.


Druids

The Tier 13 Balance Druid 4-piece bonus now also increases the damage of Starsurge by 10%, in addition to its current effect.


Hunters

Aspect of the Hawk now grants roughly 35% more attack power.
Deterrence now also reduces damage taken by 30% while active.
Black Arrow now ticks every 2 seconds for 20 seconds, as opposed to every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. The total damage dealt by the ability is unchanged.
Lock and Load no longer benefits Arcane Shot, nor is it consumed by Arcane Shot.


Mages

Fireball damage has been reduced by roughly 6%.
Pyroblast damage has been reduced by roughly 6%.


Paladins

Holy Radiance now costs 40% of base mana, up from 35%.


Priests

Mass Dispel should again prefer dispelling targets that have magic effects that can be dispelled.


Dungeons & Raids

You can now form same-faction raids with Real ID friends, allowing you to enter Raid Finder in groups larger than 5, run older normal or heroic raids, or participate in Battlegrounds. You will not yet be able to run normal or heroic Dragon Soul with cross-realm raids of Real ID friends.
Several typo fixes and clarified descriptions have been added to the Dungeon Journal entries for Dragon Soul.
Players can no longer win multiple copies of the same item on a single Raid Finder boss kill. For example, a player who chooses Need on two set piece tokens or two weapons and wins the first, will not be eligible for the second on that particular boss.

[chaos5061]

From Blizzard:
We’ve just released updates for the iPhone®, iPod touch®, Android™, and Windows™ Phone 7 versions of the free Battle.net Mobile Authenticator app. We now support the following additional languages:

Português
Italiano
Polski

Visit this link to find out how to download the right version for your mobile device.

[chaos5061]

Hotfixes 1-9-12

From Blizzard:
January 9

General

Killing a boss in a guild group while using the random Heroic Dungeon Finder should now award guild reputation and experience.
Mobs that have been damaged by Shadowy Apparitions should again provide experience when defeated.
Darkmoon Tonk and Darkmoon Zeppelin should no longer become a horde balloon after performing a faction change from Alliance to Horde.

Dungeons and Raids


Hour of Twilight


Archbishop Benedictus


Thrall and Archbishop Benedictus should no longer fail to complete their roleplay introduction (preventing players from completing the instance).

Well of Eternity


Mannoroth


Starting the Mannoroth encounter should no longer remove Stealth effects.

Dragon Soul


Twilight Elite Dreadblades and Twilight Elite Slayers should now refrain from doing melee attacks while mounted, and always engage and melee players after landing on the gunship deck.


Ultraxion

All Fading Light debuffs and Aspect crystal buffs on players should now be cleared when the encounter ends.


The Madness of Deathwing

The Corrupted Parasite debuff is removed from a character who leaves the zone.

Events

Darkmoon Faire

Players should now be able to complete the quests "The Captured Journal" and "The Enemy's Insignia" after having completed them in a previous month.

Items

Vial of Shadows proc damage should now be increased by ranged attack power for hunters.
Souldrinker and Gurthalak, Voice of the Deeps no longer have a chance to proc twice for paladins with Seal of Truth active.
Vishanka, Jaws of the Earth now invokes Speaking of Rage bonus damage that is treate as ranged damage and benefits from ranged critical strike chance.

Quests and Creatures

Pelturas Whitemoon should no longer becomes unresponsive after a player completes the quest "All's Well".

[chaos5061]

From Blizzard:
WoW No Longer Compatible with Windows 2000
In preparation for the upcoming release of Mists of Pandaria, updates to World of Warcraft will no longer support Microsoft Windows 2000. Microsoft ceased support for this version of their operating system in 2010. Players still using Windows 2000 are encouraged to upgrade prior to the release of Mists of Pandaria.

[chaos5061]

4.3.2 PTR Notes 1-12-12

From Blizzard:
Rogues
Adrenaline Rush no longer triggers a global cooldown.

Dungeons & Raids
Baradin Hold
The roaming Eyes of Occu'thar have been replaced by hateful creatures who serve Alizabal.

Dragon Soul
Warmaster Blackhorn
The visual warning for Twilight Elites' Blade Rush should be easier to see.

Items
Vial of Shadows damage (Lightning Strike) has been reduced to approximately one-third of previous damage. However, it will now trigger approximately 3 times as often. This is intended to keep overall DPS the same while reducing burst damage, especially in PvP.

[chaos5061]

Aspects Buff coming to nerf the Dragon Soul Raid

From Blizzard:
During the scheduled server maintenance on the week of January 31, the Dragon Soul raid will become enveloped by the “Power of the Aspects” spell, reducing the health and damage dealt of all enemies in the raid by 5%. This spell will grow progressively stronger over time to reduce the difficulty and make the encounters more accessible. The spell will affect both normal and Heroic difficulties, but it will not affect the Looking for Raid difficulty.

The spell can also be disabled by talking to Lord Afrasastrasz at the beginning of Dragon Soul, if a raid wishes to attempt the encounters without the aid of the Dragon Aspects.

For those of you who raided in Firelands and/or Icecrown you’re no doubt aware that as time goes on we want to keep people progressing by adjusting the difficulty. For any number of reasons a group may be having difficulty on a specific encounter each week, and our intent in adjusting the content is to ensure the ability to keep progressing, enjoying the content, and gearing up. With Icecrown we progressively buffed the players, and while this slow progression (and ability to opt-out of the buff) were both beneficial, it led to an expectation of your characters power, and once you left the raid you could certainly feel less effective. For Firelands we attempted to fix that by nerfing the content instead of buffing players, but we nerfed the content difficulty all at one time, which was counterproductive for players who really didn’t need as severe a change as we made. With Dragon Soul we’re attempting to do the best of both by having a progressive nerf to the content, keeping player power constant while providing small increases in assistance over a long period of time, as well as allowing players to opt-out of the assistance by speaking to Lord Afrasastrasz.

We hope you continue to enjoy Dragon Soul, and that these changes encourage you to attempt a higher difficulty, or just keep pushing to down that next boss.

Follow Up:
Believe it or not there are actually guilds and raiding groups that are attempting to progress through Normal and Heroic raids, but are hitting a wall, and have been hitting a wall. We have actually statistical date we base our changes on, we know exactly how many people are clearing these raids each week, we know exactly how many people are able to down just a few bosses, and how many were only able to down a few bosses every week for weeks on end and then stopped raiding altogether.

The issue we're constantly trying to combat is the one where people feel like they're just out of options. One way this is an issue is the content is too easy, they blasted through it, have everything they could possibly want, and have nothing else to do. Ideally that's a small subset of very hardcore players. For everyone else it's a feeling of just being stuck with no possible way to progress. Very few players are willing to suit up, buff up, do all the necessary requirements to raid, jump in, and then do no better than they did last week for hours and hours, only to return next week and do the same.

If a guild doesn't want the help, they're free to opt out of the buff. For those that do it's an approximate 5% change, which is pretty minor, and we expect it to be about a month before we raise it another 5%. This first change will absolutely help the guilds that are just barely scraping by, or just need a tiny bump to cross the next hurdle, but it's just not logical to exclaim that someone will roll into Raid Finder, grab a couple items, then be looting Heroic Deathwing's corpse the next night.

We feel the content has been out for quite a while now, that most people who have progressed and downed Deathwing on Heroic have done so, they've had sufficient time to celebrate in their accomplishments, and these very small progressive alterations will only help guilds that are already doing well in the raid get over some hurdles they may be facing.

[chaos5061]

Just to let everyone know I have still been following the WoW news but there hasn't really been anything. From what I'm seeing on twitter and other places though we can be expecting some MoP news soon maybe starting sometime next month. All the big devs "The Head Guys" just got back from vacation this week and have already sent out tweets saying that some big news will be coming soon and they are flying through stuff.

[chaos5061]

From MMO Champion:
Activision Blizzard Q4 2011 Conference Call
The Q4 2011 Earnings call will take place on February 9, at 1:30 PM PST, which brings us an update on subscriber numbers for the final quarter of 2011. Keep in mind last call informed us of a 800,000 subscribers loss, but this time around the Annual Pass and Patch 4.3 may soften the blow.

The week of the call also may bring us information on upcoming releases, if there will be any announcement expect it before the call takes place. During the previous call they wanted to remind investors that there is normally an increase in subscriptions around December, with previous quarters showing the following losses:

Q1 2011 - 600,000 subscribers lost
Q2 2011 - 300,000 subscribers lost
Q3 2011 - 800,000 subscribers lost

[chaos5061]

From Blizzard:
Blizzard Entertainment is proud to announce the 2012 Battle.net World Championship, a major global eSports event featuring some of the best pro-gaming competition in the world. Slated to take place in Asia toward the end of 2012, the Battle.net World Championship will host this year’s StarCraft II and World of Warcraft Arena World Championship tournaments. Blizzard gamers and eSports fans from around the world will be invited to attend and witness some of the most skilled pro players on the planet battle it out for cash and glory.

We’re excited to be showcasing Blizzard eSports on a truly global stage this year. We're also heavily focused on getting Diablo III, Mists of Pandaria, and Heart of the Swarm into players’ hands as soon as possible. In light of our jam-packed schedule, we’ve decided to hold the next BlizzCon in 2013.

More details about the 2012 Battle.net World Championship and BlizzCon 2013, including specific dates and locations, will be coming in the months ahead.

[chaos5061]

More on no BlizzCon 2012

From Blizzard:
Yeah it's a bit disappointing because we all really do enjoy being able to 'open the doors' so to speak. But, it is an enormous effort by all employees, including our game designers and artists, not to mention customer support and quality assurance, PR, our business departments, and *hot breath on fingernails & shirt rub* Community & eSports to make a BlizzCon happen. In a year when we're working to release multiple titles (knock on wood) it makes sense to focus our efforts. Also with multiple game releases we just wonder if we'd be at a point with any of them where we'd have anything really big or new or cool to talk about.

We didn't have a BlizzCon in 2006 either, and at that time we were really strong on the idea that BlizzCon isn't really supposed to be and doesn't have to be an annual event. Of course then we have it for five straight years in a row... which obviously built some expectation.

Personally I always enjoy seeing the excitement, the rushing crowds, hearing the clicking of mice on the demo stations, and waiting in agony as the seconds countdown to an announcement and then the waves of emotion from the crowd that follow it. But thinking about our year and what we're trying to get done already without a BlizzCon, and having to think pretty hard about what we'd have to announce or demo, it just makes sense to me not to have one.

Here's to the Battle.net World Championship, it's going to be awesome, and to a bigger and better BlizzCon in 2013.

[chaos5061]

From Blizzard:
During the scheduled server maintenance on the week of January 31, the Dragon Soul raid will become enveloped by the “Power of the Aspects” spell, reducing the health and damage dealt of all enemies in the raid by 5%. This spell will grow progressively stronger over time to reduce the difficulty and make the encounters more accessible. The spell will affect both normal and Heroic difficulties, but it will not affect the Looking for Raid difficulty.

The spell can also be disabled by talking to Lord Afrasastrasz at the beginning of Dragon Soul, if a raid wishes to attempt the encounters without the aid of the Dragon Aspects.

For those of you who raided in Firelands and/or Icecrown you’re no doubt aware that as time goes on we want to keep people progressing by adjusting the difficulty. For any number of reasons a group may be having difficulty on a specific encounter each week, and our intent in adjusting the content is to ensure the ability to keep progressing, enjoying the content, and gearing up. With Icecrown we progressively buffed the players, and while this slow progression (and ability to opt-out of the buff) were both beneficial, it led to an expectation of your characters power, and once you left the raid you could certainly feel less effective. For Firelands we attempted to fix that by nerfing the content instead of buffing players, but we nerfed the content difficulty all at one time, which was counterproductive for players who really didn’t need as severe a change as we made. With Dragon Soul we’re attempting to do the best of both by having a progressive nerf to the content, keeping player power constant while providing small increases in assistance over a long period of time, as well as allowing players to opt-out of the assistance by speaking to Lord Afrasastrasz.

We hope you continue to enjoy Dragon Soul, and that these changes encourage you to attempt a higher difficulty, or just keep pushing to down that next boss.

[chaos5061]

From Blizzard:
One of our upcoming goals in Mists of Pandaria is to make the gap between the overall DPS/healing of both PvE and PvP items smaller. In fact, we have design plans for new PvP combat mechanics that will make PvP gear and weapons markedly better in PvP than equivalent level PvE gear and weapons.

The overall goal is to reduce the barrier for crossing between PvE and PvP (and vice versa), as well as to also ensure that PvP gear is the best in PvP, and PvE gear is the best in PvE. More details on these upcoming changes will be posted as they become available.

Regardless of anyone’s rankings past or present, the process of learning and striving to improve never stops: it helps even the most battle-hardened gladiator remain able to go toe-to-toe with their fiercest opponents.

In team-based combat such as Arenas, pressuring an enemy in order to go for a kill or striving to protect your comrade from being the brunt of a focused assault are part of the experience, no matter what classes are driving to get the job done. Most matches are an incredibly complicated dance between combatants: a push and pull of offensive and defensive tactics, of coordinating switches, interrupts, dispels, crowd control, and of learning when to use your particular cooldowns or abilities, and when to change your tactics on the fly. Depending on who you ask, what class they are, what brackets they are in, and what team compositions they run, you are likely to get a totally different answer as to what particular class gives them the most trouble at any given time.

As far as the current balance of various classes: it’s something we are, as always, keeping a close watch on. We welcome you to post constructively about your observations in the appropriate threads, and the more focused and on-topic you can keep it, the better.

While it's not possible to address every individual thread or concern of the community, rest assured we are listening, regardless if you see us post within a particular thread or not.